An enterprising autism mom creates a nonprofit to provide employment for those considered unemployable. But the future looks bleak for programs like hers.
Just because someone with a disability may have low productivity doesn’t mean they should be jobless for life.
By Kim Christensen
I’m mom to a 20 year-old daughter with severe autism. She has worked hard all of her life to acquire the limited skills that she now possesses. She is quickly approaching “the cliff,” the federal age limit of 22 when her school based support services will terminate. I see it rushing towards us like a speeding train and I question myself daily if I’m doing enough to prepare us both for it.
She is low-verbal, has a vision impairment, uncoordinated gait and her fine motor skills are pretty much non-existent. She also has behaviors and severe inflexibilities in her daily routines, but she possesses an infectious smile, and can hug her way into the good graces of perfect strangers.
Like all parents, I want her life to be meaningful, purpose-driven and for her to be a contributing member to society, in whatever way suits her. When I started researching adult services a few years ago, however, I saw few resources available, particularly for someone who is low-functioning with intense behaviors. But one day I had an “aha” moment when reading about a laundry service that employs adults with developmental disabilities. It seemed like the perfect match for her, and, given her obsession with washing machines, I knew it could be a dream job for her.
So two years ago I founded a nonprofit in the hopes of creating jobs for those who are considered unemployable. Our tagline and mission is simple: “Everyone is employable.” In our laundry business, my daughter and another developmentally disabled young woman now work side-by-side one day a week at a local laundromat, and then we all fold the linens together in my home. We have one corporate account, a sweet businesswoman who sees the beauty in what we are trying to achieve.
But what I dreamed of—a meaningful job and a paycheck—hasn’t panned out. The profit margin on the business is extremely low, and to the extent I could possibly grow the business, new federal bills, the Raise the Wage Act, and the Transformation to Competitive Employment Act, (Raise the Wage has already passed the house) would put an end to non-competitive employment, a change that would hit the severely disabled particularly hard. The reality is that despite the accommodations we have made (like a special folding table to help her) she still needs lots of assistance to fold anything. Under the new laws, I would have to pay all of our developmentally disabled workers minimum wage, whether it takes 15 minutes to finish, or in my daughter’s case, two hours. And that’s in addition to paying job coaches and supervisors (so far we’ve all been volunteers). It is simply not financially feasible to pay a person with low productivity minimum wage on such a low-margin business, even if she is my own daughter. That’s the heartbreaking reality.
Under the new bills, only the high-functioning would be employable, making a mockery of our tagline. Now our focus is to put our business income into starting an adult daycare center with some volunteer employment training focus. It’s not the shiny happy story I aspired to a few years ago.
Jobs without income can bring some benefits, like the feeling of accomplishing a task, being a part of a team, and having friends she looks forward to seeing. But it denies our children the right to real work, and to income that could help them and their businesses. Non-competitive employment must be a fully accepted and flourishing option for the severely disabled. It’s heartbreaking and nonsensical to crush the hope that “everyone is employable.”
Kim Christensen is the founder of Pathways to Employment, and lives in Granite Bay, CA.