Neurodistinct™

nonPareil, Autistic Employment Through Workplace & Skill Training

 I had the enjoyable time of chatting with Stacey Ford from nonPareil https://npusa.org/ about their program to teach autistic individuals the social and hard skills needed for career jobs. We also discussed the more general topic of autistic employment, company run programs, and differences in outcomes between those who were late diagnosed versus those diagnosed early and brought up through a system of special services and accommodations.

We found there was so much to talk about that it became 2 episodes of my podcast podcast.timgoldstein.com While much of the focus in employment for autistic individuals has been on programs run by individual companies and organizations such as those in the Neurodiversity at Work Employers Roundtable We are seeing many of those programs facing challenges in scaling beyond pilot programs, giving individuals hired through the programs the same opportunities for career growth as the companies other programs, and the programs being subject to funding fluctuations. nonPareil and other groups instead use an approach of training the autistic individual to have the workplace social skills and job skills to gain career jobs without relying on a company having an autism/neurodiversity hiring program.

Check out the podcasts as Stacey shares so great knowledge.