Focusing on key developmental steps helps autistic individuals prepare for full-time employment by addressing essential vocational skills. Effective vocational training must align with the trainee’s skills and abilities, ensuring mastery of job-specific tasks while incorporating communication and life skills. This process begins with a vocational preference inventory to identify personal interests and capabilities. A well-structured pre-vocational training program fosters independence, self-determination, employment readiness, mental well-being, and meaningful relationships. It also teaches crucial workplace behaviors such as distinguishing between work and rest time, maintaining attention, handling non-preferred tasks, following multi-step directions, seeking help when needed, adapting to interruptions, and accepting feedback—all essential for successful employment and integration into the workforce.
Vocational training is training that focuses on the PRACTICAL application of skills learned. Here, job specific technical training is taught to the autistic child with a view that they may gain employment at some point in the future. Vocational training is the link that bridges the gap between the autistic community and the working world. Only 6% of autistic adults hold paid full-time jobs
