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Caroline Sullivan - 00:00:05: There pretty much is nothing that a manager or a company can do to support somebody on the spectrum that is not going to support your neurotypical team members as well. Right? Because what you're really doing is just making things clear. Dr. Emily King - 00:00:26: Welcome to season two of the Learn with Dr. Emily podcast, where parents and teachers come together for neurodivergent youth. I'm your host, Dr. Emily King, child psychologist and former school psychologist. And I am on a mission to help everyone understand that nurturing neurodivergent children isn't about changing them, but about changing us. This season, I will be bringing you more interviews from some of my favorite colleagues related to neurodiversity, education, mental health, and parenting. You can learn more about my resources for educators and parents at learnwithdremily.com or just keep listening here. So let's get started with today's interview. Caroline Sullivan is the Executive Director of the North Carolina Business Committee for Education, or NCBCE, which is a business-led education and workforce nonprofit in the office of the governor. NCBCE focuses on promoting work-based learning, providing educator professional development opportunities, and closing the homework connectivity gap for students. So prior to this role, Caroline was elected to the Wake County Board of Commissioners in November 2012 and served until 2017. In that capacity, she served as vice chair of the board and several statewide leadership positions, including chair of the Education Committee and the Special Task Force for Mental Health for the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners. Caroline currently serves on the National Board of Education Sciences, the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development's Advisory Board, the Wake Investments and Women's Steering Committee, the Triangle Family Services Board of Advisors, and the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching. But today, we are here to talk about exciting things that the LiNC-IT program is doing for autistic individuals, employers, and businesses in North Carolina. As a North Carolina native, I'm super excited about this conversation. So welcome, Caroline. Caroline - 00:02:20: I'm so happy to be here. Emily - 00:02:21: Okay, so let's first give a description of the LiNC-IT program so everyone knows what we're talking about. So LiNC-IT stands for Linking North Carolina with Innovative Talent. And in 2018, Governor Cooper and NCBCE launched LiNC-it, which leverages the funds from North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to fund job coaches for support for autistic employees and their managers. That's the important part. The LiNC-it Collaborative was created to provide employment experience, paid internships, or on-the-job training for autistic students and professionals, as well as provide employers with a pipeline of talented candidates that bring value to an organization. So I'm really excited about this because it's not just relying on autistic individuals to be trained for work, but also the people who work with them. So how did the LiNC-it program come about? Caroline - 00:03:17: Well, it's a couple of things. So number one, I'm a parent of a child with autism. He was born in 99 when UNC TEACCH Autism Program talked about the autism tsunami. So when more children were getting diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. And so I'd been active in that early intervention community. And my son was able to access great resources, both in Wake County public schools and with outside providers. Is a musician, went to a conservatory and is teaching lessons and doing quite well. We were very lucky. We were very, very fortunate because we were able to tie his natural talent, interest, and abilities with something that could provide him an actual job and a career. What I found is that many individuals with autism, they might be really good at school, but the skills necessary to be successful to get a job and then to keep a job aren't necessarily the same skills that you need to do well in school. Emily - 00:04:27: Right. Caroline - 00:04:28: So, in 2017, Governor Cooper issued an executive order for employment first to make sure that the state government was welcoming individuals with disabilities. But this community needed a little different kind of support. And so, what we were able to do, because NCBCE is an education nonprofit and we've got a lot of, our board is made up of business leaders from across the state, we were able to think through the systems, right? So, voc rehab, if you think about it, was built basically to provide job experiences and support for primarily individuals with intellectual disabilities. That's historically what they've done. We were doing something super disruptive in North Carolina, as we were saying with this program, we need to provide the same kind of support for individuals who might have an advanced degree. And... That was new. Now, I will also say that many states do not cover. Do not allow for individuals without coexisting intellectual disabilities to qualify for all their VR services. But North Carolina is very fortunate, and we do. The other thing that we're fortunate in North Carolina is we have UNC TEACCH and the Autism Society of North Carolina. And as probably all of your listeners know, they've been around for 50 years. And pretty much. Every quality program I think that I've seen worldwide because I'm on a lot of you know, these panels, somehow we're taught by TEACCH. Emily - 00:06:07: And so NC Voc Rehab is providing the funding, but then the actual employment specialists from UNC TEACCH Autism Center, and Autism Society of North Carolina are providing the training. So tell us more about what that training would look like for an autistic young adult and who would be a good candidate for the LiNC-it program. Caroline - 00:06:32: Well, what we say, most of our participants, we say they're early career autistic professionals. And that's a lot of words. But think of somebody who... Usually does not have co-occurring intellectual disability. Most of our participants did well in school. School was fine. But if you think about the nature of getting a job, it is super social, right? Think about, I mean, everything about... Interviewing for, looking for, getting, and then onboarding. Demands a very high degree of social skills. Emily - 00:07:14: Right. Caroline - 00:07:15: And most of the time, our participants don't have those skills. And so what LiNC-it does is it sort of, think of it as a very specific headhunting service from the employer side. And from the participant side, it is basically being able to go on a career journey with support. Emily - 00:07:37: I love that you said all those details about the interview and onboarding process, because that's one of those things in our culture that I sometimes think about when I'm working with autistic teens and young adults. Like, who made that up? You know, how did that evolve? Like, why do we do it that way? And so are you finding that there are different ways that you can interview that are equally as effective and a better fit for autistic young adults? Caroline - 00:08:03: Oh, yes. And, you know, we've had some participants that... Want to do virtual, which is fine. Post-pandemic, I think that's, you know, standard for a lot of companies. We have some that might want to text, for example, right? Just the vocalization might make them very stressed out. And then they, you know, want to communicate maybe via text. We encourage, if possible, employers to do sort of tests of knowledge and skills and abilities, right? So show me what you can do. Don't tell me what you can do. I modeled this program a little bit after the SAP one, which was sort of just a different way of interviewing, right? You had to, like, they gave you a challenge, and you had a technical challenge, and you had to be successful in that challenge. But what I found is that screens out a lot of candidates still, because then you're still having to go through that social piece at the end. So, you know, what we do when we work with employers is we want to make both sides as successful as possible. We want to make the employer be able to see if the candidate's a fit, and we want to make the candidate feel as comfortable as possible. Because let's face it. In your job, whatever that thing you do in getting the job is not germane to the actual job. And the other thing, if there are employers out here, Why is your job description three pages long? We also tell our employers when you get a job description, what are the five, six things that this person needs to do? Because many of our participants will want to check off every single skill and ability in that job description. And do you really need to be able to lift 60 pounds to write code? Emily - 00:09:58: And I also can imagine some autistic individuals with very concrete literal thinking would see a bullet point on a job description and think, I can't do that. So they would disregard the entire role. Caroline - 00:10:10: Yes. Emily - 00:10:10: Which they're going to be missing out on. Caroline - 00:10:12: Yes. Emily - 00:10:13: Okay. And so, so far, the program has 44 employer partners that have hired LiNC-it talent. And a variety of degrees, including engineering, computer science, English, data science, accounting, library science. So those are all of the... Degrees that autistic young adults are coming in with, right? So what are some of the things that employers are noticing about this talent coming in that might be different from what they're used to? Caroline - 00:10:43: Well, as I'm sure you've said on this podcast, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. And so that. That is true. However, I think... For the most part, employers have found a group of individuals that are very loyal and really good at following procedure, a lot of attention to detail, and many of them have a really great ability to focus. A lot of this is art in what we do. It's making sure that we're matching the right person with the right manager and the right job. But, we are usually, 90% of the time, we're successful, and it is a win-win for both. Emily - 00:11:33: So if somebody's listening to this and they're a parent or an educator and, you know, they have connections in the business world and they've. I can already probably hear people saying, okay, this is a great idea. How could a company or small business become a partner, an employer partner with LiNC-it Caroline - 00:11:52: You just have to reach out to us. You can go to the website. You know, Emily can share my information in the show notes. Just reach out and we'll talk. We have never had an employer. That had to make any sort of adjustments or changes for an individual on the spectrum that has not thought that was a good idea and continued. There is no... I think I can pretty much make this as a blanket statement. There pretty much is nothing that a manager or a company can do to support somebody on the spectrum that is not going to support your neurotypical team members as well. Right? Because what you're really doing is just making things clear. For example, we've had sometimes our job coaches will go through training, you know, to look at what training. This is for we've had a couple of advanced manufacturing companies and including Caterpillar, which is what they're great. And just going through a training process. Thinking through how this can support somebody with autism makes it great for everybody else. I think sometimes, managers think, oh, my God, well, if I hire somebody who thinks differently, it's just going to change everything. And it really doesn't. It just forces you to be a better communicator. EY Consulting did a study on the Dandelion Program, which I modeled this a little bit out of that, out of New Zealand, where the government was hiring cohorts of individuals with ASD to work in different government jobs. And they found that the managers actually scored better, who were, upon their management performance. Their performances for all of their folks that they managed because they were managing somebody on the spectrum because they had to be more intentional. Because let's face it, y'all. Most managers, myself included, are managers just because it's a promotion. Like, you get more responsibility, and so they make you a manager. But nobody ever really taught you how to be a manager. Emily - 00:14:09: Right. I love this point because what you're describing is pretty much what happens in education, too, right? So all the work that I do in training educators and talking to teachers about teaching autistic students, all of that is also good for everyone else. Even if that particular strategy doesn't work for every person because there is no one strategy that works for every person, it's the mindset shift of you've just got to stay open to finding the strategy that works. And it's not that different from another strategy that you're doing with someone else. It's just a different way of getting in and helping them access what's going on. So part of this work, I feel like, is parallel to education and the whole mindset shift we're making of it's not that. Much of an ask, right? So let's talk about how it's working, how it's going. So as of October 2023, 100 autistic employees had been successfully placed. Caroline - 00:15:04: We're at like 130 now. Emily - 00:15:05: You're at 130 now. Awesome. In the LiNC-it program. And then last year, Harvard's Project on Workforce Development wrote an evaluation of the program. Stating that findings from qualitative and quantitative data suggested that LiNC-it had a noteworthy positive impact on both employers and autistic early career professionals. For employers, the partnership with the innovative led to comprehensive talent acquisition and inclusive recruitment strategies, as well as improvement in organizational needs assessments, which you were just mentioning, and managerial capacities for mentorship. And then for the interns and the job coaching that they received, that was associated with various positive outcomes, including increases in financial independence, opportunities for professional development and long-term employment, and just general satisfaction in life. So a little bit of time has passed since that was written. You know, how would you describe the success that you're seeing? Caroline - 00:16:03: It just keeps building. And, you know, as we've expanded, we've also expanded our sort of LiNC-it team. Basically, we meet monthly with Voc Rehab and the, Teach in ASNC and some of our higher ed partners. We've also included some of our former participants that have now. Continued on through their career journey. And I'll... I'll make one point about that. One of our first LiNC-it participants, and I think there's a video on this on our website. Here's the thing. A lot of—let me start with this. A lot— of our folks. Well-meaning parents and folks around them sometimes undershoot the job, right? It is, oh, my kid has a disability. I've been advocating for them my whole life. A higher-level job might cause them more stress. Perhaps we should look for a lower-skilled job. That is not a good idea. Emily - 00:17:16: Tell me why. Caroline - 00:17:17: Oftentimes, especially for many folks on the spectrum, those low-skilled jobs are very social. Emily - 00:17:26: Right. Right. So defining kind of low skill is like these are more like- Caroline - 00:17:30: Customer service type jobs. Emily - 00:17:32: Customer service in lots of stores. Caroline - 00:17:34: Stores, restaurants. You know, many folks on the spectrum, when they're doing that kind of work, they have to mask, and it makes them very tired. Emily - 00:17:44: Mm-hmm. Caroline - 00:17:45: If they are doing a job that is, quote, high skilled. For a neurotypical, that might be exhausting because your brain is having to work really hard to do those skills. But if you're on the spectrum, you're not having to mask because you're doing what you're good at. Emily - 00:18:00: Right. Caroline - 00:18:01: And you can come home actually less exhausted. So it's sort of – it becomes a big mind shift. So, you know, we've had people who have gone from very low-skilled jobs to really, really high-skilled jobs. And one of the women who is now on our – LiNC-it team, advisory team. She then came up with an idea. She had been successful at her job and was interested in a promotion, a different kind of job. The system, the program that we have and Voc Rehab isn't really built for promotions because let's think about it. I mean, Emily - 00:18:41: What we Caroline - 00:18:41: found by, you know, including our LiNC-it participants in, you know, what we do monthly to talk about the program is... Sometimes folks need support, you know, when they've, to advance their career, right? Equity is not. Just getting in the door and getting the first job, right? Equity is supporting folks along their career journey. Equity is giving folks the opportunity, regardless of their disability. To be able to engage in continuing off their career. And so she called this to our attention, and we were like, yeah, there should be some job coaching. Y'all, the state of North Carolina is the only employer, I think, in the country. That provides five hours of job coaching to state employees on the spectrum to be able to get another job in state government or get a promotion to just help them with their careers. We have a press release on our site, but it is an incredibly innovative, supportive, great way to look at how you support folks that think differently. Emily - 00:19:55: I love that. And that's why it keeps growing because the longer autistic individuals are in these roles, I assume this person on your advisory board is autistic. Caroline - 00:20:03: Oh, yes. Emily - 00:20:03: Yes. So that perspective was so helpful because the neurotypical people at the table are kind of not thinking about that, but she was able to bring this to your attention that the longer we're in these roles, we're going to want maybe something different like everybody else. Our skills are going to grow and we're going to want to do something different and that will take a different level of training. So what have you noticed over time are the must-haves? Like these things have to happen for this to work. And I'm sure there's some on the employee side, some on the employer side. I assume some on the HR side, some on the parent side, of things, what has to happen to make this gel? Caroline - 00:20:42: Well, the most successful thing is we need to have a manager who wants to do it. Emily - 00:20:47: Okay. Caroline - 00:20:49: And sometimes we'll have, you know, an executive who's really excited about it, but it needs to be that manager who's going to be managing the participant. So, you know, that's number one. It isn't job skills. Emily - 00:21:06: Right. Caroline - 00:21:06: It isn't a kind of job. It's just that person. Emily - 00:21:10: It's a relationship. Caroline - 00:21:11: It is somebody who's interested in doing this and wants to do it. Had a great conversation yesterday with a small advanced manufacturer in Burlington. They were like, no, we'd like to hire two. And it just ends up that they were very interested, and one of them had a background in education and wanted to do it. So it's just that willingness from the participant side. I think sometimes, especially kids that have not needed to disclose to everybody because they were doing fine academically, it is a very good idea to disclose. Emily - 00:21:51: To self-advocate and be able to identify that you're autistic. Caroline - 00:21:54: Yes, because sometimes if you do not, employers do not understand the way your brain works. Right. And. Sometimes they are not successful. And if everyone goes into this knowing that the individual is on the spectrum, It is way more successful. The employment numbers for college-educated autistic individuals is abysmal. Emily - 00:22:28: I know. Caroline - 00:22:28: And I think some of that is this disconnect. And that's what LiNC-it is trying to do. Emily - 00:22:36: Yeah. Caroline - 00:22:36: It's... We're trying to solve for that. Emily - 00:22:39: Well, and what that is is just similar to what goes on in communities and our culture of even though you're autistic, you need to fit into this neurotypical box. And that's exhausting and people have to mask. That's why I love this program so much. And I think it can be a model for so many things outside of just jobs. It can be a model for education or any type of, you know, church communities or things like that, where if you just are open about your skills and then helping other people understand that you think you know what autism is, but you don't because every single person you meet with autism is different. And so those are all things that we need to just open everyone's eyes too. So that's why I just love this so much. Caroline - 00:23:24: And, in NCBCE, we believe we always practice what we preach. And so we've had six. Probably. Six, seven, LiNC-it participants working with us. We always do internships. We're a small nonprofit, and we want folks to continue on their career journey. So it's usually we've got one full-time person, two full-time people now. We want them to get the work experience and understanding what you do in an office, basically, things like that. But the support and the way we manage all of these individuals has been different. The clarity. Never changes. Say what you mean. But some of the things, there's some individuals who like some accommodations. Most of them don't love fluorescent lights, but neither do I. Emily - 00:24:24: Yeah. Caroline - 00:24:24: Most of our folks really like hybrid and remote work. But then, you know, everything else, accommodations are different, and many don't need accommodations at all. Emily - 00:24:38: Mm-hmm. So let's talk about a few extensions of this program as it grows. So tell us about the Higher Education Collaborative and how you're extending resources to staff at community college and four-year institutions. Caroline - 00:24:51: So the autism tsunami happened in 1999, the year that my son was born. That's the beginning of it. Emily - 00:24:58: And tell us more about what you mean by that. Caroline - 00:24:59: Okay, so the prevalence numbers increased substantially starting in 99. Maybe some of it was diagnosing earlier. Maybe some of it was diagnosing more. But there were way more students with autism in the 90s and the 2000s and 10s. Well, they're out of school. They're coming out of school. And so K-12, has done a good job, right? They've adjusted to that. You know, when you're... You know, if you're a mom and you go into your kid's third grade class, the chances are really good the teacher is not going to be like, I've never taught a kid on the spectrum. Emily - 00:25:43: Right. Right. Caroline - 00:25:43: So that's great. However, higher ed hasn't caught up. And... They don't quite know where these kids fit in. And when we started this, there was a, when we started LiNC-it our first university partner was State. And they had a program called Students Moving Forward, which was in the career services, which is where this work needs to be. And it was just supporting autistic students at State. They had like five. Which made me laugh. Emily - 00:26:20: Five autistic students at all of North Carolina State University. Caroline - 00:26:24: Okay. They were the ones who disclosed, right? Sure. And it was like they were the only ones who wanted to do it. Once we started, I think our first year, we had internships at Credit Suisse and SAS in UNC Health Care. Then, like, immediately you had 15 kits who were coming. Because – Because they see no reason to disclose, right? Why do I need to tell you on the spectrum I'm doing great in school? But you do need to disclose because the point of this schooling thing is what you're going to do with your future. So we started working with state. We did a career fair that first year. We had it at state. It was for all students across all community college and college students across the state. And we had like 100. Students show up, which is a lot, considering we've never done anything like this before. And we continue that. We've continued every year. The last two years, Duke has hosted. So, you know, the first thing we've done is we need a college fair for folks who are on the spectrum, where everybody knows. What's going on, right? But then we also were starting to notice. A lot of these colleges... These students are kind of not lost, but they're not fitting neatly into a system. They might not be at student services because they might not need any help academically. And they're not showing up at career services either, either because the student might not see the reason for going to career services. Um, sometimes I think, and I am a mother and this is not. I do it. But, you know, we try so hard to advocate and protect our children. You can't do that when they're getting a job. You have to find other ways to help them be successful. A little anecdote, at our first career fair, there were moms who were going around with their engineering students to the different booths to talk to recruiters. We can't do that. The next year, I had like a mom-only session, so parent-only session. Solved that problem. But it's a problem. And many College students on the spectrum don't have the same sorts of internships as neurotypicals do. A lot of it is because, again, moms and students might be like, I need a break. College is hard, and I hear all of that, but it puts you at a huge disadvantage. So, you know, as we're trying to expand that. The colleges need to know where these kids are. And so we started having every other month meeting of our higher ed collaborative. And we're just inviting. All the community colleges and the colleges in the state, we're like targeting career services and student services. Accessibility, like whoever might know where these students are, to try to help them do a better job. Because they understand that they could do better serving these students, but there's just not a system to help them. Emily - 00:29:37: And I think we're probably at the very beginning stages of what you're describing as kind of who's in charge of helping these young adults. So I think the— The parents sometimes over-function at those ages for their kids because they're so used to it. They're anxious about it. They haven't. Pulled back and felt that success of their child yet. So some of those things, you know, I work with lots of autistic teens and their parents about doing that a little earlier at, um, in high school and practicing those things. And whereas we may pull back with neurotypical kids in middle school, we are pulling back with autistic students often more in high school. But there's a dynamic of anxiety and I don't know my kids' skills and I'm worried about what's going to happen. But then that's met with this cultural feeling of, you know, they're on their own after high school. Well, not necessarily, but how can we structure that not being necessarily the parent, but possibly. Someone at career services or someone on a college campus that could provide an appropriate level of support that makes that teen or young adult feel more independent because it's not a parent. So I love all these ideas, and I think that we can only learn more as we keep going. Caroline - 00:30:54: And it's things like... You know, if you have a diagnosis of autism, you can go ahead and sign up for Voc Rehab. You might not ever need to use it, but you can go ahead and sign up. You know, when my children had transition meetings in high school, a lot of it is, okay, what are you going to do in college? But I also think, starting those conversations earlier in high school, like, okay, because you're going to go to this conservatory and you want to be a musician. But there is something beyond that. And so I think, you know. Teachers out there, when you're doing transition meetings into higher ed, also think about you know. You need to bring your IEP to student support services, but I'd like you to go to career services too. You know, you have two stops of places you need to go when you get to that university, and it would be good for you to take advantage of those services. Emily - 00:31:58: And just for everybody listening, student support services is going to be more like accommodations on exams and note-taking and studying, whereas career services is going to be planning for your future. So I think my last question is just what is next for LiNC-it? I know that we've talked a little bit about high school internships, which gets me excited. So tell us more about where you see LiNC-it going next. Caroline - 00:32:24: Yes. So, again, back to my point about, you know, we need to start this process earlier. We got a grant to develop apprenticeship pathways for high school students with autism. An apprenticeship is simply... Paid work-based learning, a wage that progresses, an aligned curriculum, and some mentorship, right? So traditionally, people think about apprenticeships in advanced manufacturing or in skilled trades. But you can apprentice anything, basically. Our service providers think that this pathway might be super helpful for many individuals with autism because you have that relevancy to their curriculum right there. So think of if it is a biotech apprentice program. You were taking the classes at the community college, but you're working at the manufacturer. So you're taking what you learn in the class and you're immediately using it at your job, right? Because some of our folks have difficulty generalizing. Emily - 00:33:41: Right. Caroline - 00:33:41: So you're not trying to generalize a concept. You're actually putting it right to use. And then you see relevance, and it means more to you. So we're starting a program this summer. We're piloting in, primarily Durham, Johnston County, but, you know, we're flexible. We're just starting to pilot this thing. To give students these experiences. A couple of different models. Johnston County is looking at doing a couple of weeks in the summer, letting the students get some. Classes and credentials from the community college. Some of them are employability credentials, which is super important, and doing some hands-on work and doing some career awareness activities in the biotech sector because that's one of their primary focuses. Durham Tech is interested in doing something a little, Durham Public Schools and Durham Tech and Orange and Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools. Something similar but, maybe open to other sorts of sectors. We're also, if there are individuals out there that are in high school that are interested in doing something like that, we could, you know, think about trying to match them with an employer and seeing what we can do. This is really new. Emily - 00:35:11: You're building the plane as you fly it. Caroline - 00:35:13: Yeah. I think I even have to go to the Fed to ask about can we change the rules to support VR doing apprenticeships. But I'm sure they will because why would they? But it's just like everything else. People have never, people undershoot talent. Drives me crazy. You know, I hear employers all the time complaining about their talent needs. And here is a whole group of people that has the education and the ability to be the answer to your HR problems. And you just have to do things a little differently. The other thing employers... You know, I love the different resource groups, and I think that is great. But this initiative needs to be driven by your HR and your managers. Emily - 00:36:03: Mm-hmm. They need to be interested in it and understand the value because it's added. Caroline - 00:36:08: You know, the best way to support DEI is to hire people, right? Don't talk about it. Hire people. Emily - 00:36:20: And I love what you said a minute ago about the relevancy of the work being in the, because I see this all the time with all children, all students who are like, when am I going to use trigonometry? When, you know? But especially with autistic students who really struggle with motivation, they really struggle with external motivation because that people pleasing or working to please or working to get. Any type of social feedback is usually not what they work for. They work for intrinsic motivation and they work for this is relevant or I'm creating something or I'm fixing something or I'm doing something. And so I love this putting the apprenticeship closer to the classroom and time frame because, again, it goes back to like, well, why do we do school this way? Who made up the whole 12-grade thing and four years for college? Like, how did we get here? So much of the work I do is challenging those time frames and making it more individualized. And this is such a great example of that. Caroline - 00:37:21: And North Carolina really is on the cutting edge of this. I was asked to testify before the House Financial Services Subcommittee, and it was just about employing individuals with disabilities. I was the only one who came with a solution. Right. Yeah, I think a lot of places are still stuck in the, we should do this, but we need to get to the how. Like, I think everybody agrees on the why, but you've got to actually do it. I will share one story with one of our first LiNC-it interns. Young man had talked to his job coach. And said that, I think I'm going to get fired, so I want to quit. Job coach said, why do you think you're going to get fired? He was like, well, because I finished the work and they're not giving me more work. And the job coach says, have you asked for more work? And he goes, no, but obviously they don't need me anymore because there's not enough work. And then the job coaches went to the manager and was like. Hey, can he have some more work? And the manager was like, okay, well, this is way more work than anybody else is doing. And if he wants more work, that's great. But you see how bad... Emily - 00:38:37: Right. Caroline - 00:38:37: Was one little thing. Emily - 00:38:39: Tiny thing. Caroline - 00:38:40: But the disability, that young man was getting ready to quit. And so I think what we try to do is just be intentional about setting up everyone for success. I will also give the shout out to UNC and the Autism Society because North Carolina is able to do this better than other states too because they're our providers. Emily - 00:39:00: Yes. Caroline - 00:39:01: Because everywhere else that I've talked to across the country, they don't have them and they have. I'm sure great job coaches, but they don't just do autism. And especially for these jobs that are higher level, you need to have somebody who really understands the disability. And a lot of our participants have been working with TEACCH and ASNC for really long. So they know these students. So employers out there. We're going to give you people who we know will fit. Emily - 00:39:36: Well, how can parents and employers learn more? Caroline - 00:39:39: Go to the site. If you're a student or if you are out of school and you have autism, you can sign up for LinkedIn on the website. On that website, we'll also have the information about when we do the career fair again. So that would be another good thing to do. Employers, reach out. We can do a call. A lot of times what we do is we have an introductory call, and then we'll do another one, bring in the service providers to just talk about, you know, what is this job, tell me what it looks like, what kind of things does this person need to do. And then we'll bring you candidates and help you through the interview process, help you through the onboarding process. And it's not like. Most of our participants need job coaching, right? They know how to do a job. It's just that extra resource, right? It's that extra support for both the participant and for the manager. Like the manager can say, I'm not 100% what's going on. Can you try to help? Or are there any ways I could make this person be more successful? And then for the participant, just another person to ask a question. Emily - 00:40:51: Well, Caroline, thank you so much for joining the podcast today to explain all of this. And I hope this has been helpful for the North Carolinians who are listening, but also anyone in any other state who is starting to brainstorm how to make something like this happen in their state. Caroline - 00:41:06: Well, thank you so much for having me. And employers, we've got people for you. And parents. Get starting on that career journey early. Emily - 00:41:20: This has been the Learn with Dr. Emily podcast. For more resources, including parent workshops and professional development for teachers, visit learnwithdremily.com or subscribe to my Substack at learnwithdremily.substack.com. Also, please make sure you're subscribed to the podcast by pressing the follow button on whatever podcast app you're using right now. This podcast is edited by Earfluence. All information discussed on the podcast is for educational purposes only. If you have any immediate concerns about your child or a student, please reach out to a mental health or medical professional. I'm Dr. Emily King. 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