Work with support

We call work with support to the job carried out by a person with the physical and/or verbal support of a coach. This concept is used to define labour tasks made by disabled people, and its aim is allowing most of this population to develop productive activities, independently of their disability degree.

Since 1998, and thanks to a project funded by the Employment Department of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and the European Union, Autisme la Garriga carried out a pilot experience concerning the work with support for people with autism.

The conclusions reached after this experience have been as follows:

• Severely affected adults with autism could benefit from a real work with support.
• It is necessary a previous and accurate selection of activities.
• Programmes should include specific methodologies and techniques.
• The development of this sort of programmes increases the motivation of coaches.

These programmes constitute a very efficient therapeutic tool for the treatment of this group of people. Particularly, an improvement of basic working skills and a decrease of behaviour problems associated to the autistic disorder have been proved