How to Measure Quality of Life for Autistic People

By Travis Breeding

The autism community is often wondering how we can measure quality of life for autistic people. This book argues that a group definition for measuring quality of life is inappropriate as quality of life is not a group-centered thing. Instead, this book argues that quality of life for autistic people is a person-centered definition that requires determining each autistic person's quality of life one by one.

Travis gives some tips and ideas for how you can improve your autistic loved ones quality of life. He also gives strategies on how you can teach your autistic loved one to be a proactive self-advocate who leads the way in improving his or her quality of life. He says we need to value and respect the opinions of autistic people when it comes to their happiness and deciding how good they feel their quality of life is.

In this book, Travis advocates for giving autistic people more of a voice in making decisions for their own lives. When people make their own decisions they feel more respected, loved, valued, and cherished. All those things can lead to a dramatic improvement in your autistic loved one's quality of life.

It is important to let your autistic loved one develop and engage in their own interests. Often times we want to tell autistic people what they should like or what they should be doing. Allowing the autistic person to make choices for themselves will help them create inner happiness that helps them embrace an excellent quality of life.

This book advocates for more freedom for autistic people in making important choices and decisions in their life. It advocates that autistic people be more included in making decisions about their own treatment and support services. Most of all, it advocates that all autistic people are loved, valued, cherished, and respected just as any other human being would be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breeding Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463330180

Travis Breeding

Travis is an author from Huntington Indiana how enjoys entertaining and educating through words. He enjoys telling a story and taking it from his mind to paper. He has authored several books on autism, mental illness, schizophrenia, and disability issues. He continues to write about those issues but also explores some fiction writing as well. Travis has a loving family and enjoys spending time with friends and family. He loves to play bingo and meet new people. One day Travis hopes to start a family of his own and give them so much love. Travis would like to thank his readers for supporting him on his journey of becoming an author. He could not have done it without you. If you would like to get in touch with Travis please email him at tbreedauthoratgmaildotcom,

Book preview

How to Measure Quality of Life for Autistic People

Travis Breeding

Published by Travis Breeding at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 Travis Breeding

All Rights Reserved

Contents

How to Measure Quality of Life for Autistic People

About the Author

How to Measure Quality of Life for Autistic People

We often think of quality of life in the disability community as a disability centered topic. This isn’t necessarily the best outlook when it comes to determine what quality of life means for autistic people.

Quality of life isn’t a disability centered topic. There’s no scientific measurement that says this is what quality of life is for someone. There’s no scientific measurement that says this is what quality of life is for autistic people.

In the state of Indiana, we have the autism waiver. The autism waiver is advertised as being a person-centered program that aims to meet the individual needs of the client on the waiver.

I was on the autism waiver and the program was okay, but it wasn’t person-centered for me. It didn’t provide services I needed or valued for my life and that is okay, but it wasn’t person-centered, it was disability centered.

Somewhere along the lines a group of people sat down and designed the autism waiver for the state of Indiana. This group of people meant well and wanted to help autistic people. However, anytime there is money involved there are policies and, in my opinion, having policies that say this is how we can help someone, and this is how we can’t help someone can get in the way of us helping someone.

Imagine being someone coming to the emergency room in desperate need of care. Something terrible has happened and you need treatment to save your life. If there was some policy involved that prevented the medical staff at the hospital from treating, you for whatever condition was putting your life in danger you might die.

What if you were having a heart attack but the policy at the hospital stated the doctors could only treat your lungs. What would happen? Would you consider that person-centered treatment?

Some states in the United States still have autism waiver services that allow families to receive a budget that they can then spend freely on programs they feel will best meet their autistic child’s needs.

Most states do not allow a free budget anymore because somewhere along the line someone decided it was a bad idea to let families decide what to spend the money on so now the government is making all the decisions on what programs families of autistic people can spend the money on for them.

Imagine a person-centered treatment approach where the decisions on how to best help your autistic son or daughter were made by people sitting in an office somewhere that had never even met your child. How can they have any clue what is best for your child?

They are often coming at the approach of