Due to the complexity of their impairments and the challenging behaviour persons with ASD often develop, a significant number of them routinely experience segregation in exhausted families during adolescence and adulthood or in institutions for most of their lives. It is therefore crucial to develop policies and provisions combining the mainstreaming concept of disability with specific actions aimed to ensure equal opportunities for persons with ASD to develop their individual potential, choice and control over their everyday life by means of adapted lifelong support.
In segregating settings, the very services that are supposed to provide care to persons with ASD sometimes neglect their individual rights and needs or generate unacceptable practices. Whilst people with ASD are unfortunately not the only ones to suffer from adverse treatment in institutions, they are at greater risk because for them it is difficult, or indeed impossible, to say what has happened to them and express their feelings about it. Moreover, institutionalisation in large residential services is still the rule for persons with severe communication and learning impairments after the death of their parents.
Adapted care is a central issue, indeed it is a pre-condition to allow persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorders to lead a dignified life and be included in the community. It also encompasses various aspects such as: ageing, de-institutionalization and community living. It goes hand in hand with the issue of the quality and availability of services for persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorders.
Autism-Europe is a founding member of the ECCL. The European Coalition for Community Living (ECCL) is a Europe-wide initiative, working towards the social inclusion of people with disabilities by promoting the provision of comprehensive, quality community-based services as an alternative to institutionalisation.
