The Right Fit
Saturday, March 25, 2006 (07:02:44)

Posted by sylvia

TBO News

By Donna Koehn

In the story of the elves and the shoemaker, the little sprites work all night long to produce neat rows of perfect shoes.

Laura Crawford works her magic under the bright fluorescent lights of a Target department store.

Beaded purple high heels, the right discarded a giant's step from the left, are whipped into place in the proper box, proper size, proper shelf. As fast as customers manage to mangle her work, she's a blur of efficiency that fixes the mess without pause.

Until a co-worker approaches.

"Laura, you let me know when those brown boots go on sale; I've just got to have me those boots," the seasoned employee says, smiling down at the slender redhead kneeling by shoe boxes.

Laura freezes, her face empty of expression. She doesn't look up.

"How am I supposed to know? I don't put the price on them."

The co-worker drifts away, and it's time for job coach Mike Chapman to step in.

"She was just asking you, being friendly, like a friend would ask," he says quietly.

"Oh."

And she's back to her charges, those errant shoes the gosh-darn customers keep messing up.

Laura Crawford, 22, has autism. As she strives to navigate a tricky world of social cues and nuances she cannot decipher, job coaches from the TEACCH program encourage the world to give a little back to her.

It's part of the philosophy of the renowned research, education and job training center that began at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 33 years ago.

TEACCH was born when parents united to fight institutionalization of their autistic children in the early 1970s. But those children grew up, and the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children (TEACCH) grew with them.

Now, with nine sites throughout the state of North Carolina, it has helped place hundreds of adults into a variety of jobs -- both menial and cerebral -- that capitalize on their wide range of skills. They drive trucks, work in banks, repair computers and conduct lab research.

Accepting 'Culture Of Autism'

One guiding principle from the beginning has been acceptance of what director Gary Mesibov refers to as "the culture of autism."

"We use this to mean that people with autism are a group distinctive in and of itself," says Mesibov, who joined TEACCH in 1974. "They have common characteristics that are different, but not necessarily inferior, to the rest of us. Some of them have a higher IQ than I do."

Chapman, who left studies in physics to become first a job coach, then director of supported employment for TEACCH, spends 40 to 60 hours assessing each person. He looks for strengths and weaknesses to find the right fit, both on the job and off. The program tries to help clients socialize and have a little fun.

"This doesn't necessarily mean taking our values and putting those on them, but respecting their own," he says.

In Laura's case, it meant convincing management at Target to allow her to concentrate on the shoe department rather than mastering all areas of the store -- what's expected of most other employees. Like those size-9 purple pumps in the size-9 box, Laura needed to find her spot.

"She just can't ignore messes," says Gabe Byars, who studied the evolution of clams at Duke University before shucking that three years ago to become a TEACCH job coach.

"Laura got the job at Target herself. One day, she was shopping there with a friend and just had to start folding the clothes," he says. "A manager came up to her and offered her a job."

Laura's work ethic is never questioned; one day she told her manager she wanted to go ahead and work another six hours so she could have every shoe perfectly placed. A tangle of red rubber flip-flops last summer nearly drove her to distraction.

So, in addition to trying to help her learn how to smile and greet customers -- a tough part of the job for her -- much of Laura's coaching has centered on how to settle for less than perfection.

Compared to the fly-by-night teens who often staff retail, Laura is a manager's dream. The Target store at which she works in Durham has asked TEACCH for more workers. Another already on the payroll does office work.

"They are our most reliable team members," says Laura Smrecek, executive team leader for human resources. "They want to come to work and do their jobs."

Dedication is one of TEACCH's selling points to employers; tax incentives grease the wheels. Sick days go mostly unclaimed. Job coaches for mentally disabled clients learn the jobs along with them and stay at their sides all day, if need be, at no charge to the employer.

But in return, employers have to give a little. Usually, it isn't much.

Problem On The Dish Line

SAS, a business analytics software company in Cary, hired a team of TEACCH clients to wash and sort dishes in its spacious company cafeteria. The dish washers mingle with employees at company picnics, swim alongside them in the SAS pool and work out with busy executives in the weight room.

But team member Ronnie Peterson, 35, had a problem.

From time to time, the TEACCH client would run screaming from the dish room, dashing across the cafeteria, crashing business lunches and startling working parents as they shared a meal with their children from the company day care center.

Instead of issuing a pink slip, Ronnie's boss allowed his job coach to analyze the problem. The first solution was to teach him how to better manage stress and give him a place where he could go when he became overwhelmed -- a basement that contained his bellows. The second solution was even easier -- slowing down the dirty dish conveyer belt by just a couple of seconds to ease his frustration.

Now, Ronnie and his co-workers sing and dance to rap music as they spray food from dishes and sort forks and spoons. His "screaming place" has been relabeled the "relaxation place."

"Sometimes it's so simple," says Glenna Osborne, TEACCH program consultant. "Sometimes it seems too simple."

Success may mean recognizing and capitalizing on the autistic clients' unique strengths.

Meredith Daniels, 27, has a flat affect and eyes that hold the gaze just a little too long. A stranger might sense something is wrong but might not guess autism.

A whiz at organization, she types well and enjoys creating graphic designs on the computer. She's also obsessed with rainbows.

Now in her fourth year working at the TEACCH Greensboro office, Meredith combined those into a color-coordinated filing system that is a marvel.

"And she did the whole system unasked," Osborne says.

Thinking Disney Thoughts

Sometimes job coaches use the object of an obsession to provide rewards.

Sara Redmon, 21, works as a janitor at a client day center. The "structured teaching" approach at TEACCH means her daily instructions are explicit, right down to the number of squirts of Windex to use on each mirror. But also spelled out on her clipboard: five minutes to "Take a break and think of DISNEY!"

"Well, I wasn't going to say anything, but yes, I love 'DuckTales' and 'Darkwing Duck' " cartoons, says Sara, as her eyes light up. "If I think of them, I can get through the day."

She also is addicted to anything featuring actors Tim Curry or Patrick Stewart (Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of "Star Trek").

"And, of course, Vincent Price."

Redmon's mother, Barbara, calls her doe-eyed redhead "the light of my life."

"When we lived in Tennessee, it was all about trying to change her," she says. "But that's like trying to put a round peg in a square hole. All they had when she was growing up was behavior modification. When she would blow, she would be punished, but that's what was stressing her to the point of overload."

Sara pipes in: "It's like asking a computer to change its programming."

Debate continues about the best way to reach people with autism, Mesibov says. TEACCH was the result of one man's resistance to common thinking of the day.

Eric Schopler, retired founder, studied with Bruno Bettelheim, the psychologist who theorized decades ago that autism was caused by cold, distant mothers who rejected their children. Treatment required the children to climb on cold, unyielding statues of women so they could better understand what their mothers were really like.

"Eric kind of figured anything would be better than that," Mesibov says.

Schopler instead stressed the need for parents to have an important role in the care of their children. As the parents interacted and their sense of advocacy grew, they brought their children to a breakfast for state legislators, who agreed to fund the program, established under the umbrella of UNC's psychiatry department.

"Folklore is that we brought a kid to the breakfast who liked to dip neckties in grits," Mesibov says.

It's Free To State Residents

TEACCH receives about $5 million from the state and matches that through private donations, grants and training activities. Professionals from throughout the world come to North Carolina to learn about it. The program is free to North Carolinians, and many families have moved to the state for it. That isn't encouraged, as TEACCH clients already face a five-year wait for services.

Although TEACCH also is a hotbed of research into autism, including studies on brain imaging and the search for the specific genetics involved, Mesibov says it sometimes gets a bum rap as "giving up."

He readily admits that no one there is trying to erase autism or hold out hope for a simple answer.

He feels sorry for parents who go broke trying to find the right diet or therapy to rescue their children from the mysterious brain disorder. Although there is no shortage of anecdotal tales of children who have been cured, the empirical data so far are lacking.

"One of the biggest drags on the field of adult autism is that there's 'the' cure," Mesibov says. "So people tend to block the idea from their minds that these kids are going to grow up."

Barbara Redmon sees obvious differences in Sara, who now speaks with animation, hand gestures and a vitality that belies her autism.

"This program has helped me socially, to be more expressive and more open to change," Sara says. "I was very upset, very stressed before."

As all parents do, Barbara once dreamed big for Sara.

"Now, I think of a successful life as one that brings her happiness," she says.

"Sara has never felt understood -- until now. Just to have her understood is so wonderful."