The importance of developing skills

One thing that can really improve an asperger person's life is teaching them skills.  This includes hygine, cooking (a very expansive area), and so many other things.  When someone sees that they can do something they feel better about themselves.  They will believe in themselves and be able to acheive so much more.

This can help a person with Aspergers get a job.  Who is more likely to get a job a person with a disability or a someone without?  The answer is simple the person without a disability.  But what if the person with a disability knows something like selling on ebay, ironing clothes, or with other skills, and the person without a disability doesn't know anything about that area.  It changes the situation.

More choices an advantage of customized employment

With a lot of places that try to help people with disabilities they restrict themselves to what jobs the assesment mentions.  There are so many other jobs that are not mentioned in an assesment.  Some examples are human service field, ebay/amazon, and locksmith.

Customized employment focuses on a person's strengths, and what they are interested in.  Most importantly it doesn't have people with disabilities competing with non disabled people.

Advantages of Customized employment

Having looked at going the mainstream way of getting a job, I can understand how for peolpe with aspergers or other disabilities stand very little chance of a job when they look for a job that way (because they are going against everyone else and seem to have less to offer).

Supportive employment does a little bit better by making it so that there doesn't need to be competition from everyone else for the disabled indiviual.  The indiviual and family may need to rely on people who are very nice or an organization.  Unfortunately not everyone has all those things going for them.  One other disadvantage is that you have only a limited amount of oppurtunities to do (a lot of jobs are not for everyone, and if you hate your job it's not a fun thing).

Then there is what I teach people.  Customized employment.  I help people find out their intrests, teach them how to go about finding a job you will like, a job that the indiviual does not have to compete against neurotypicals (or "normal" people), and them be able to do this again in the future if they need to.

You decide which one is the best

This method does involve work on your part (as I likely do not live where you do), but from this work you will be able to find yourself a job you can do (and in the future as well).  This is why I say I can work with anyone in the world (who speaks a language I understand).

A thought on why a lot of jobs that are good for people with aspergers are not so well known

I have a few ideas why people may not think about so many of the careers I am putting on my blog.

1.PEOPLE UNDERESTIMATE US: Just because we don't have the greatest social skills doesn't mean that there are only a few jobs that we can do.

2.PEOPLE DON'T INTERACT MUCH WITH THESE JOBS: Part of why people don't think of these jobs is because they don't interact with these jobs much (if you don't talk to those people, and social skills is the big weakness of someone with aspergers couldn't that be the answer?)

3.PEOPLE WITH ASPERGERS FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH THE JOBS WE GIVE THEM: I very much admit this with myself and have seen it in many people with Aspergers that we can be very easily be conteted.  My current roommate marvels how very simple food keeps me very satisfied, and one of the people I am working with is doing a very simple job right now (which doesn't bother him (although I am happy to say he has hopes that he will get more complicated work)).