Helping High School-Aged Military Dependents With Autism Gain Employment Through Project SEARCH + ASD Supports

Abstract

Introduction: Youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face high rates of unemployment, with unique challenges for military-dependent and -connected youth with ASD. This paper reports preliminary findings from Year One of a randomized waitlist controlled trial investigating the efficacy of the Project SEARCH + ASD Supports (PS + ASD) intervention model for military-dependent and -connected youth with ASD. Methods: Treatment group participants (n = 6) participated in internships at a military installation in the southeastern United States; waitlist group participants (n = 8) received special education transition services at their local high schools. Employment outcome data were collected at 12 months for both groups. Results: Fourteen unique internship experiences were developed across seven business partner organizations on the military installation during Year One. Five of six PS + ASD treatment group participants obtained competitive integrated employment for an overall employment rate of 83.3%. Four of the positions were federal jobs. None of the waitlist group participants obtained competitive integrated employment during the same period. Conclusions: Initial results are promising and suggest that the PS + ASD model may help to meet the transition needs of military-dependent and -connected youth with ASD and the employment needs of local military communities.

Vocational Interventions to Improve Employment Participation of People with Psychosocial Disability, Autism and/or Intellectual Disability: A Systematic Review

“…In the Wehman 2017 and 2020 studies, intervention participants were more likely to be in open employment, although the proportions varied across the studies (74.2% and 31.6% respectively, compared to 5.6% and 4.8% amongst controls) [65,68]. The outcome was conceptualized differently in Whittenburg et al, wherein the authors found that more intervention recipients accepted job offers for open employment (83.3%) than did participants in the control group (12.5%) [66]. None of the studies with people with autism measured secondary outcomes of interest to this review.…”

“…Three studies included participants with schizophrenia only [59][60][61], three studies exclusively included individuals with psychosis [62][63][64], and in one study all participants had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [28]. In the three studies including participants with autism, youth were assessed as having autism with a medical diagnosis of ASD or an educational identification of autism [45,65,66]. Nearly half of the studies included were performed in the USA (n = 12) [27][28][29]45,49,53,55,[59][60][61]65,66].…”

“…In the three studies including participants with autism, youth were assessed as having autism with a medical diagnosis of ASD or an educational identification of autism [45,65,66]. Nearly half of the studies included were performed in the USA (n = 12) [27][28][29]45,49,53,55,[59][60][61]65,66]. Three studies were carried out in the UK [54,63,67], three in Canada [48,52,64], two in Japan [51,58], two in Australia [57,62], and one in each of Sweden [46], Switzerland [47], the Netherlands [50], and Hong Kong [56].…”

“…In the eight remaining studies, interventions included: Job Coach based on a modified IPS model [44]; IPS plus skills-development [49]; work-related skills-development [59]; and career guidance [53]. The only interventions assessed for people with autism was Project SEARCH and ASD Supports [65,66,68]. The duration of interventions ranged widely, from 5-10 business days [29,59] to 5 years [44], with some studies placing no limits on intervention duration [27,50].…”

“…A total of 15 studies among people with psychosocial disabilities were assessed to have 'some concerns' [27][28][29]43,44,46,[49][50][51][52]56,58,60,62,64]; eight were at high risk of bias [48,[53][54][55]57,59,61,63]. All three studies including participants with autism had 'some concerns' [65,66,68]. None of the 26 studies included were at low risk of bias.…”