Greetings:

Did you know that young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are less likely to find work than almost any other disability group? In fact, a 2009 study* of children who had received special education services found that only 32.5% of young adults with ASD were working for pay. Only one other disability group had a lower rate of employment.

According to the Center for Disease Control, ASD affects 1 in every 88 children in the United States. That means many thousands of children and adults may never be able to support themselves and could depend on their families and government services for the rest of their lives.  

The Austin Dog Alliance is working to change that for the special-needs young adults in our area.  

Over the last couple years, we have heard over and over again from the parents of our K9 Club-Autism program students how our program has given them hope that their child might be able to find employment in a dog-related field. As a natural progression, we are working toward a job skill program for our students with ASD. Our new Forever Home will have a job skills lab that will allow us to teach students the skills needed for careers as groomers, kennel assistants, veterinarian technician assistants and dog trainers. Our plans also include training special-need young adults to work in our retail store and working with Leander ISD as a job training site for students in their special-education department.      

Cassie Russell, a young women with high functioning autism, is one of our success stories and an inspiration for expanding our social skill program into a social and job skills program for students 17 - 25.  Cassie started working with us as part of the Leander ISD's job sampling program.  Since Cassie loves dogs and we always have an abundance of dogs in our facility, Cassie fit right in.  Eventually, she joined our K9 Club-Autism program where she further developed her ability to work with dogs.  When she aged out of our program, we reached out to Dr. Raymond Bouloy, the very generous and kind hearted veterinarian/owner of Cypress Pet Care.  He agreed to have Cassie join his office under a work study program sponsored by the local college.  Fast forward two years to the Fall of 2012 when Cassie will have a paid position with Cypress Pet Care.  We are very proud of Cassie and honored to have been part of a community that has come together to make a difference in a young life.  

We are so excited about offering job skills programming that starting in August, Austin Dog Alliance will provide a pilot job skills development class at the Texas School for the Deaf. This program is being funded by the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) and is an extension of the curriculum we have been providing for our older group of K9 Club-Autism students. Big thank you to our Program Director, Carolyn Honish for leading this effort.  

Update on our Forever Home - The permit package for our buildings will be submitted by O'Connell Robertson (Big THANK YOU) to the City of Cedar Park tomorrow. We are scheduled to close on the land on August 30th. Ground breaking and volunteer work days will start just after Labor Day.  

We have naming opportunities available for families and businesses interested in helping to build our job skills lab.  By investing in the education of the special-need learners in our community, we are providing hope and the opportunity for these young adults to become self-sufficient.  

 Sincerely,

Debi Krakar

Founder and Executive Director

Austin Dog Alliance

* National Autism Resource and Information Center