When a Parent Suffers Moral Injury

Seven women and one parent were present for a meeting tied to a job coaching program. The parent’s son, 19, autistic with a cognitive disability, had been placed in a part-time gym cleaning job as his first work experience. He had completed online training and was offered a choice between a supermarket and a gym, choosing the gym. The job lasted six sessions, after which the contracting agency paused funding and requested more. The program intended to train him to clean equipment, but the assistant director said training typically lasts only two or three days before the worker is on their own. The parent was shocked because the program had access to his IEP and cognitive test results and still provided limited training.

"There were seven of them and one of me. I knew this firing line and had been in front of it hundreds of times over the two decades since my son was diagnosed with autism. They were all women. There were three from the New Jersey Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services and four from the contracting agency that runs my son's job coaching: a youth employment specialist, her supervisor, two skills trainers, a case manager, the case manager's supervisor, and one DVRS staffer I had not heard of until her name appeared in the CC line."

"The seven of us were here because my son had been fired from a part-time job cleaning equipment at a gym. It was his first job, the kind of bad first job everyone has. He hated it, the way most people hate their first jobs, and that was part of why I wanted him to have it. He is 19. He is autistic. He has a cognitive disability. He is going to be an artist. I can see that clearly. But before he becomes an artist, I wanted him to know what it felt like to clean up after other people for a little more than minimum wage."

"The job program was through the New Jersey Department of Rehabilitation, which contracts out to another agency. He had a couple of months of online training, and the contracting agency gave him the choice of working at a supermarket or a gym. He chose the gym, probably because he had spent years working out with me. My son's job at the gym lasted six sessions, then the contracting agency paused to request more funding. They wanted an assistant to teach him how to clean gym equipment."

""We usually train them maybe two or three days, and then they are on their own," the assistant director told me. I was shocked. Not only did most non-disabled people take more than two or three days to learn a job, but I had been completely transparent, showing them his IEP, his cognitive tests. They knew exactly what he was capable of, and taking only two or three shifts to get the hang of a job was not it."

Read at Psychology Today