Improving Skills to Empower Community Access and Increase Independence

Abstract

The current chapter approaches increasing independence and integration in the community for individuals with autism through a lifelong educational process involving ongoing assessment and instruction. Fundamentally, the skills or behaviors one needs to master in order to navigate their community vary based on their environment. As their environments change so should the curricular focus (e.g., a pre-kindergartener's environments are different from adults in many ways). This chapter is organized around an ecological approach to curricular goal selection and provides the readers with sample benchmarks of behaviors that may be appropriate at different ages (e.g., play skills for pre-kindergarteners and sexuality education for high schoolers). We attempt to emphasize broad domains, including communication, academics, and functional life skills among others, across three age bands (pre-kindergarten, elementary school, and middle/high school). Because a book chapter cannot catalog every skill needed for every environment, the chapter instead provides a framework for practitioners to identify and integrate different skills into the curriculum dependent on the learner. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)