Jelenka Quick

My 24 yr old daughter has ASD and social anxiety. She was a participant client of a well known disability employment agency, every fortnight she attended for 3 years. They claimed to have a good result in getting clients a job, that didn’t make us feel very good. We finally left and feel discriminated against. They said she needed to just get some basic social skills, from that statement I realised their level of training in a Job as a disability employment officer is very basic and not inclusive of all people.

You cannot put all ASD people in one box. I believe there are jobs out there for people with minimal social skills. We go to another disability employment agency. They gave up on my daughter after 7 weeks. They claimed to have not met anyone like my daughter, that really hurt.

Disability employment agencies, need to have more tact and a deeper level of training in all types of disability and in particular ASD and in all its variants. My daughter has had a work experience twice and never held a job. Is the next attempt at a disability employment agency going to result in the same narrow minded perception of people with ASD? No 2 people with ASD are the same. I think its insulting to clients that the staff at disability employment agencies have this mindset for ASD people.