|
Many of the children who are part of the increasing frequency of ASD that we have been seeing in recent years or now for many years, are beginning to get older. Many of them are young adults and pretty soon they will be middle aged adults and we will have elderly populations.Communities are beginning to think ahead and families are certainly thinking ahead. Families with means are trying to organize programs for individual children with them while the parents are still available to them. They are worried about what happens when the parents get very old or ill or are no longer available and who the relatives will be and how to set up trusts. Certainly the communities and the states and local and national governments are concerned about those without good resources like those with low incomes or no incomes at all, so we have many families who aren’t able to or won’t be able to plan on an individual basis for their child.
We have moved away, for the chronically mentally ill, from the notion of institutional care and state-run facilities to community based care. But we also read in the newspapers almost on a weekly basis about catastrophes and calamities of poorly run group homes and individuals not on proper medication with chronic mental illness. So we know it’s not easy to provide “community care” or reach the ideal of community care.
The real question is, what should be the guiding principles, and we can consider this from an ethical point of view: what are our ethical obligations for children and young adults and middle aged adults with ASD? How do we provide help to those and help for the families in a truly lifespan approach?
- . To access these audio recordings and transcripts click here.
- By Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., and Henry Mann, M.D. Chapter 26, ICDL Clinical Practice Guidelines
- by Dave Nelson, Director of the Community School (Decatour, GA)
|
|
