[00:00:01] Sarah: Welcome to Shining Through Inspiring Forces of Autism with show host Jennifer Dantzler. My name is Sarah and I have autism. Thank you for taking the time as you learn more about the world of autism. If you enjoy what you hear today, and don't forget to follow this podcast.
[00:00:18] Jennifer Dantzler: Hey, everyone, this is Jennifer Dantzler, and I'm the executive director and founder of Inspire nd, a nonprofit whose mission is to create truly inclusive communities through education and engagement. The goal of this podcast is to shine a light on real people and their stories in hopes of inspiring others who are on this journey of autism. Either themselves, their child, their loved one, their co worker. I truly believe ignorance is not bliss and we cannot be inclusive communities if we do not understand the people in the community. With autism now affecting 1 in 31 people, we need to get louder about this topic. We recognize that autism is a spectrum. There are a lot of people with a lot of different needs, a lot of resources available or none available. And we know that in every episode we can't meet everyone's needs for the specific interest.
However, we hope that in each episode you do gleam some kind of insight as to how you can help your child or yourself be a better advocate. And as we go through our podcasts, our goal really is to address the entire spectrum, the various needs, the various environments that we're going to be in. And we hope that there's something in every episode for each one of you. So let's get started.
Today we have a very special guest. I know I say that about everyone, but she really is a very special guest. Dr. Dorothy Lehrman. I have known her for over 20 years. I know we're both babies, so how could that be possible? But that's what the research says. Okay. Dr. Lehrman is a professor at Behavior Analysis at the University of Houston, Clear Lake, and she chairs the Master's program in Behavior Analysis and serves as the director of the UHCL center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities. She currently oversees several clinical programs there, including a focused intervention program for children with autism, a vocational program for adults with disabilities, a training program for healthcare professionals, and a teacher training program for local school districts. She's also a licensed behavior analyst and a board certified behavior analyst. Dorothy, thank you so much for being here.
[00:02:12] Dorothea Lerman: Well, thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:14] Jennifer Dantzler: Okay, so today's topic, while we could talk about quite a few things with Dr. Lehrman, today we're actually going to talk about vocational training and employment and transitioning into adulthood for our people on the autism spectrum. Dorothy, tell me a little bit about your time doing research in autism and what have been some of your areas of focus.
[00:02:32] Dorothea Lerman: You know, I started out with a focus on severe challenging behavior for people with severe disabilities. I had a faculty position in the school psychology program at Louisiana State University that got me more interested in K12 and training teachers. So I was really focused a lot on that. And when I came to University of Houston, Clearlake and sort of continued some of that work, I started to get people in the community were reaching out and saying, do you have anything for my child who is now transitioning out of high school? And they graduated a couple of years ago and they have been having trouble getting jobs and they're just kind of sitting at home and nobody's happy about that. I received a contact from the Texas Workforce Commission that they had started a new program providing services to their consumers with autism, specifically to help obtain and maintain employment with a focus on job related social skills. The impetus for that was that they had done sort of their own internal review and they discovered that their success rate with their consumers with autism was not good. And so they wanted to do something about that. As studies have been conducted really all over the world, generally 50% or fewer people on the spectrum are successful in obtaining and maintaining employment.
[00:03:58] Jennifer Dantzler: Yeah, I've even heard upwards of 80%. Right. And so, I mean, regardless whether it's 50 to 80%, it's not good.
[00:04:05] Dorothea Lerman: Exactly.
The research, which is really sort of based on interviews with people on the spectrum and employers. But it does seem that some of the barriers are related to their social communication skills. And so that is why we have focused in that area.
[00:04:24] Jennifer Dantzler: What is an example of some of the social communication skills within the world of vocational training?
[00:04:29] Dorothea Lerman: Well, when your supervisor gives you feedback, you need to respond appropriately and correct your mistakes. When you don't know how to do something, you need to seek help and ask appropriately that you need help. You need to also do some things that involve problem solving.
So if you are missing materials, you need to think about how you could maybe look for those materials yourself before asking for help. When you're approaching your supervisor, doing so in a polite way, respectful way. So there are actually a lot of job related social skills, including those that involve interacting with coworkers as well.
[00:05:07] Jennifer Dantzler: All the things you just talked about are not things that we need to start working on when they're looking or getting a job. Right. These are skills that you can be working on from as early as the age 12, even earlier.
[00:05:18] Dorothea Lerman: You can set up situations where someone is going to need to ask for help and teaching them to ask for help. You can give people feedback and tell them they need to change what they've done and do it differently. You can give people things they don't know how to do. You can actually work on this really, really early. Really the only prerequisites that you need to have to work on these types of skills is to be able to follow at least some instructions as well as having some form of communication. It doesn't even have to be spoken communication.
[00:05:48] Jennifer Dantzler: You know, we started with this part of vocational training because I think so many people think vocational training is teaching them the skill of sorting, shelving, folding stocking, Excel data sheets. But what people don't realize is that's usually not the part that's going to help them be success successful in the job. It's all of these social communication skills that we just don't focus on enough.
[00:06:10] Dorothea Lerman: Most research and most vocational training programs do focus primarily on those job specific skills. And obviously they're important. You need to know how to do different tasks that you could get paid for. What's getting neglected then or just kind of being taught on the side or informally. Are those important job related social skills rather than focusing on those and really teaching those intentionally.
[00:06:34] Jennifer Dantzler: I talk a lot in my trainings about, you know, what some of us call the hidden curriculum, which are those unwritten rules that aren't in the employee handbook, which are if your boss hasn't gone to lunch, you don't go to lunch. When you show up in the morning, even though your contract should show up at 9, you probably need to show up at 8:45. This is all the part of the job that makes the job hard.
[00:06:52] Dorothea Lerman: Exactly. Yeah. There are so many different job related social skills you could focus on.
[00:06:57] Jennifer Dantzler: Okay, so speaking of all that, you recently published a book about vocational training skills. So let's talk talk about that book a little bit. What's it called and what's the area of focus in it?
[00:07:07] Dorothea Lerman: Neurodevelopmental disabilities and helping learners prepare for social demands in the workplace. And I wrote this book because a number of years ago we developed a direct assessment of job related social skills. Because when we first decided we were going to focus in this area, we looked to see what was out there, what kinds of curricula, what kinds of assessment, and we weren't happy or satisfied with what we saw. Most of them were like self report or asking people who knew the learner what they did rather than a direct assessment looking at observable performance so we developed our own assessment that you could do in clinic. You could really do this assessment in any setting, including authentic or real world work settings. So we were doing this assessment. We published a little bit in that area. And then I started obviously working on intervention. And we developed, I call it a response to intervention approach, but I hesitate to use that term because the field of education uses it in a different way. But it's sort of like a hierarchical approach to intervention where you start off with interventions that are the least intrusive, least costly, the ones that supervisors on the job site might be willing to implement. So you start out with those, and then if the learner's not meeting mastery on the skill, then you start adding in additional intervention component. So it's sort of like a hierarchical introduction of intervention. Again, we published in this area and people were starting to ask for more explicit instructions on how to do this. And so I was kind of like typing things up and emailing them out. And then I finally just decided a book would be the easiest way to get it out there. And so the book is really supposed to be for any type of professional to be able to pick up. It's got a lot of data sheets and forms and instructions.
I'm not sure, like, after the book was all said and done, I think it would be a lot easier for behavior analysts to pick up the book and use it. It really is geared toward any professional who is working with learners with autism,
[00:09:07] Jennifer Dantzler: you know, And I think this is so needed because I will meet with parents a lot and they will say, my son has a passion and can tell you anything about the Astros. I want him to go work with the Astros. And I'll say yes.
But he also has real sound sensitivity, doesn't like crowds, doesn't like sudden noises, like maybe when a crowd erupts at a home run or, you know, that kind of thing. So this might not be the best environment for him to work, regardless of maybe he's a great greeter or, you know, something. But you have to incorporate all of the aspects of the job. Think about all the aspects of the job, especially the social and communication part. So I think this is so vitally needed. Do you see that a lot?
[00:09:46] Dorothea Lerman: Oh, yes. Oh, for sure. And I think that's one issue is that people don't have realistic expectations about what their first job might be. And so some of that involves, you know, just sort of education about the purpose of a first job. Is your career goal realistic given what the requirements of the job are, whether it be Getting more education or as you said, some environmental aspects of the job.
[00:10:13] Jennifer Dantzler: You know, I think the other thing that sometimes our families maybe not do quite right is we try to go for gold right out of the chute. And we're trying to get that job with the Astros, but we've not had any other work experience whatsoever. Even if they have maybe a higher level skill set, maybe they do need to go bag groceries at Kroger again to work on all the other aspects of a job and to build their resume.
[00:10:38] Dorothea Lerman: Exactly. And we do try to really emphasize what are the benefits of just any job and how important important it is to get started in those kinds of jobs. The tasks might be easy so you don't have that demand so that you can then eat more easily, focus on those other important aspects of doing well at a job.
[00:10:57] Jennifer Dantzler: And I know at a lot of our better day programs, at least in the Houston area, when possible we will go back and work on the skills needed for the job in our day program. But the part that we can't really train for is again, when they're on the job and their supervisor is absent that day and it's a new supervisor they've never worked with, and that supervisor doesn't know to write down the schedule or whatever the things are that's worked for them, and then it becomes very hard.
[00:11:21] Dorothea Lerman: Yeah.
[00:11:21] Jennifer Dantzler: What do you think are some of the gaps you see? As you said, you know, we're somewhere between 50 and 80% of our guys are unemployed or underemployed. Why do you think that is? Like, what are some of the gaps in the community when it comes to hiring?
[00:11:34] Dorothea Lerman: I really do think a lot of it is employers willingness to hire people with disabilities.
I hate to say that, but I think a lot of employers are reluctant and nervous about that. And so that makes it easier, even harder. They may not want to put in place the accommodations that that person will need or have the flexibility to maybe tailor the job to their strengths. And so I think that's almost an even larger barrier than the barriers of the person with a disability.
[00:12:08] Jennifer Dantzler: And I see that a lot in our neurodiversity in the workplace training, where when we go in, first of all, the interview process is often set up. Not neurodiverse, friendly. They ask a lot of these behavioral questions which aren't really relevant to the job. I try to talk about this to employers all the time. If you're asking behavioral questions like if you could have any animals legs, what would they be and why? I did a training for one company where they asked, if you could be any part of the car, would you be the front bumper or back bumper? You know, so of course our guys are like, you can't be a bumper in a car. So why are you asking me that question?
[00:12:39] Dorothea Lerman: That's crazy.
[00:12:41] Jennifer Dantzler: It is. But then, you know, then what do you know? They don't get a second interview because they didn't answer the question correctly. So, you know, I agree with you that a lot of it is. And I think these stigmas. Right. And they think that these accommodations have to be this really grandiose thing. And sometimes it's just about, can we have a checklist up on the wall?
[00:12:59] Dorothea Lerman: Yeah.
[00:12:59] Jennifer Dantzler: If a business wants to be more neurodiverse and hire people with a range of abilities, what do you think are some of the most important supports that businesses should have in place?
[00:13:09] Dorothea Lerman: Having a mentor that you know, so someone else who works for the company who agrees to sort of serve as that person's mentor, particularly when they're first starting the job, Someone to be there to answer questions, check on them. I think that that can be really, really important.
Expectations needs to be really clear. Providing that kind of support with your new employees.
Maybe having to spell out things that you wouldn't normally think you had to with your employees about what do they do when they need more materials or there's a change in the schedule, or there's a more urgent task that needs to be done than the one they're working on. A lot of people just assume everyone knows these things, but they really are going to need to spell out exactly what's expected and then ask the person with autism what would help them.
[00:14:03] Jennifer Dantzler: I think that's so important because, you know, employers will say, well, how do I support them? And I'm like, here's a very complicated answer. Just ask them, right? Just. Just ask them. What supports do you need now that you've done the job for a couple days? What do you find easy? What do you find hard? What do you find confusing? But also, when I work with employers, I'm astounded as to how many employers, just in general, who support neurodiverse or not, don't even have clear job descriptions for their employees. So a lot of the tools that I often give are the ones that would help them just be a better employer. If everyone understood the hidden curriculum or what's not written in the employee handbook, or even maybe have it written in the employee handbook or in the job description, I think it would help everyone in the company.
[00:14:43] Dorothea Lerman: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Jennifer Dantzler: Exactly how do we change the statistics? The number of people with autism that are unemployed or underemployed. Like, if you have listeners right now, like, what's something. Whether you're a parent, a professional, someone in business, like, what's something we can do right now to start to move this needle?
[00:15:00] Dorothea Lerman: I'm not sure what we can do right now because there are so many variables that are related to this. So, like, one thing that we even talked about is Social Security benefits. So, you know, someone's benefits could be impacted by working. There's a lot of policies that need to be changed in terms of maybe what we could do now is talking more to potential employers, trying to educate them better, trying to. To the ones that are at least open to. And it sounds like this is the kind of work you're doing. If they're open to hiring more neurodiverse employees, going in and seeing, well, what kinds of jobs might be available for them and how might they modify their interview process and that kind of thing. But it sounds like it's exactly the work that you're doing, trying to.
[00:15:50] Jennifer Dantzler: Anyway, I know. And again, for our listeners out there who maybe do work for a business and aren't quite sure what it entails, there is a wonderful publication out there called Autism at Work, and it was published in 2021 and then I think a revision in 2023. And it's really a how to manual that's free to download for employers, like to just get started on how to use as far as, like, you know, like Dorothy, like you said, the mentor support circles, you know, all of those things again, which I think if we had support circles and especially our large companies in general, all employees would feel more supported. And, you know, neurodiversity affects one in four people now. Right. So I will talk to employers and they'll say, oh, we don't have anyone who's neurodiverse. I'm like, well, if you have more than four employees, then chances are you do. You're just maybe not supporting them to the, to their maximum ability.
[00:16:37] Dorothea Lerman: Yeah.
[00:16:37] Jennifer Dantzler: What do you think we need to do? I know you've done some of the research, but if you have some people from universities listening or those who can do research, what kind of research do you think we need to do? Meaning what don't we know about how to support our people on the spectrum in the workplace? Like, what kind of research do we need to be doing?
[00:16:53] Dorothea Lerman: Because we don't really know hardly anything. And that's the issue. I mean, There's a lot of research on vocational training programs. There are a few programs where they study a model where people have internships at companies. Specifically, a lot of it is focused on hospitals because there's a lot of different jobs. And the assumption is that if the person does reasonably well in the internship, they'll be hired. And when you have that kind of commitment, you then see more success in terms of employment outcomes that people are employed. But that's because the business made that commitment in advance and they said, yes, we want people to be placed here as interns and as long as they do well, we will hire them at the end of their internship. So that's the limit, I think, of our knowledge about how to increase the employability of people on the spectrum.
[00:17:45] Jennifer Dantzler: Yeah, so we have a long way to go. So you can't retire yet or anything, Dr. Lehrman, because you're the one, you're the master of research in Houston. So you have.
[00:17:53] Dorothea Lerman: That's a really, that's a really hard thing to research.
[00:17:56] Jennifer Dantzler: It is because you also have to get the employer and the employee's willingness to participate. And then there's so many variables, as you say, I mean, depending on the industry, depending on the size of the company and all of those things. Right. If you have parents listening right now, what, which they are, what's a piece of advice you would give them if they're helping their adolescent or young adult start thinking about workplace employment?
[00:18:20] Dorothea Lerman: Yeah, well, I would say starting to work on some of those job related social skills, you could set that up in the home by, you know, giving them chores to do where they might need help or they might run out of materials or you're going to be giving them feedback, I think talking with them about encouraging them to look for those initial part time jobs that are going to be beneficial in ways that aren't necessarily directly related to the work itself, but the benefits of actually having a job and learning how to go get the job on time and getting that paycheck and working and interacting with co workers, helping your child set appropriate expectations for employment and what that might look like. And the benefits of those initial, you know, part time jobs I think can be really helpful.
Helping them get volunteer jobs, that's a great way to start out. Is doing volunteer work another one I
[00:19:18] Jennifer Dantzler: see a lot of that I really encourage parents and self advocates to do is time on task. Right. We do a lot. And I think especially even in the world of aba, one of our risks or could be downfalls is that we do we'll work for 15, 30, 45 minutes and take a break. 30 minutes, take a break. Right. But in the job force, that's not the reality. Like, you have to, for the most part, go to work for at least four hour shifts, if not six or eight hour shifts.
[00:19:43] Dorothea Lerman: That's a good point. So starting to give them tasks that take longer and longer to do the
[00:19:49] Jennifer Dantzler: time fatigue is what I see a lot of where they can't handle working for a long enough period of time, which I know again is hard to program for. But I mean, I do think that, to your point, it's realistic in the home. I mean, you could be giving them a chore list, a checklist, a schedule, what have you that could be four hours long. And if anything, that might give mom or dad a little bit time back in their life.
[00:20:07] Dorothea Lerman: Yeah, yeah. Particularly on the weekends. There's more time for that.
[00:20:11] Jennifer Dantzler: Yeah, really good point. And for our listeners too, who aren't aware, there are programs like Dorothy mentioned, like Texas Workforce Commission that will assess and try to get people placed. But even Texas Workforce Commission is a great example for employers where if you become a TWC employer, someone comes to work for you, has a job coach, TWC pays you and the employee gets paid. It's hard to access TWC money and not everyone's necessarily appropriate for that program, but it's still a program out there that's not accessed nearly enough.
[00:20:41] Dorothea Lerman: I definitely would agree with that. And it's also important to consider that you have to be very patient with the Texas Workforce Commission.
The case managers generally have a lot on their plate. And so, you know, if they don't get to you right away, call them back, contact them, reach out to them a bit. Don't get too frustrated, Be a little bit patient.
[00:21:02] Jennifer Dantzler: Okay. And don't wait until May of their 22nd birthday of the last year before they age out of school. Start the process.
[00:21:09] Dorothea Lerman: Yeah, you can start the process as early as I think the age of 14.
[00:21:12] Jennifer Dantzler: Right. And then they're at least, quote, in the system. Right. And doing some of their appropriate things. Okay, Dr. Lehrman, what's next for you in the world of research?
[00:21:21] Dorothea Lerman: I'm sort of coming to the end of my research career a little bit and I really like my students to guide the research and what their interests are. And most recently, my students have been interested in looking closely at co worker relationships, looking at ways to streamline our assessment process. Most recently, what we're planning to do, and I don't know why I just thought of this is we're going to develop a training program for behavior analysts who are interested in learning more about how to implement this assessment and intervention model that we have. The idea is that they would come to our center for a particular period of time and complete particular tasks, acquire competencies in this area. And so that's kind of our next step. And obviously we might do some research on that as we're doing that as well. So I think in vocational, I think that's sort of our next plan.
[00:22:17] Jennifer Dantzler: Okay, that sounds wonderful. And very, very needed resource. Okay, so if people wanted to find you, you know, whether it's to be able to participate in some of these. These programs, where can they find you?
[00:22:26] Dorothea Lerman: Welcome to send an email either to me, which is my last name, Lerman L.
Or our vocational program email, which is cadvoke caddvochcl.edu. so either email address would work fine.
[00:22:48] Jennifer Dantzler: Okay, and tell me again the name of your book.
[00:22:50] Dorothea Lerman: Neurodevelopmental Disabilities and Helping Learners Prepare for Social Demands in the Workplace.
[00:22:57] Jennifer Dantzler: And where can they purchase that?
[00:22:59] Dorothea Lerman: Well, if they Google it, they'll find it on Amazon or you can get it directly from the publisher. I can't remember the price, but I think it's under $30.
[00:23:07] Jennifer Dantzler: Okay, well, that's certainly a steal. All of the professionals out there, especially who don't have like continuing at allowance, really appreciate that. One last question. Not in the area of vocational training that I ask all of my podcast guests. If you had one piece of advice for a parent of a newly diagnosed child, what would that advice be?
[00:23:26] Dorothea Lerman: Don't panic. Maybe not spending a whole lot of time on social media reading about things, because that can be very confusing. Consult professionals instead of of looking at social media.
[00:23:36] Jennifer Dantzler: Very well said. Don't panic. Don't use social media as your go to find the qualified professionals and whatever types of services that you're looking for.
[00:23:46] Dorothea Lerman: Yes.
[00:23:47] Jennifer Dantzler: Okay. Well, Dr. Lehrman, we so appreciate you being here. We work together many different facets over the last 20 years, and I'm so grateful that you took the time to be on this podcast.
[00:23:56] Dorothea Lerman: Of course. And I'm delighted to have been invited and I think this podcast is great.
[00:24:00] Jennifer Dantzler: Thank you. If you need help or resources, whether you're a parent, someone on the spectrum, a business or a community organization who want to know more or need help or want to share resources, please reach out to
[email protected] thanks for joining us on Shining Through.
[00:24:18] Dorothea Lerman: Inspiring for the Subaltis. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow us. Leave a review and share it with others who want to celebrate neurodiversity. Until next time, keep shining.
