Asperger's and Autism: Achieving Independence After High School

While in Boston, I also enjoyed a lengthy visit with some new friends at Aspire.  This is a program located in Lexington, Mass at the Lurie Center and is part of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Detailed information about this program can be located at:  www.massgeneral.org/children/aspire The overall mission of Aspire is to provide programs to help children, teens, and adults with high cognitive autism spectrum disorders or related social profiles.  As with other conversations, I focused my time on the adult programs.  In the adult programs, they serve no specific diagnoses but the deficits that each individual presents such as social skills deficits, or emotional issues or executive function issues.  Here again, like AANE, they don't design set programs that clients should fit into but design programs to fit the various strengths and needs of the client.  There are even three separate locations to better meet the needs of clients.  I learned...

A visit to the AANE, located west of Boston, came about because of a meeting with them that took place over nearly a year ago....actually because of our Dinner with Dads program.  Many of our dads (and quite a few mom's who came to the Ladies Night) met Ron Fournier at our Dinner with Dads .  Ron struck a chord with many of us because of his book, entitled, " Love that Boy, What Two Presidents, Eight road Trips AND My Son Taught Me About a Parent's Expectations ".   When the AANE folks decided that they wanted to start a program for fathers, Ron encouraged them to reach out to Hill Top and learn how we got things started.  In talking with them, I became so excited about what they were attempting that I felt I wanted to be there for their first evening program.  I even invited some HTPS dads to join me on this field trip to Boston to join in the festivities.  It was an inspirational evening, to say the least. So that brings us to this post. I ...