Does my mom really need a Bachelor’s Degree to work autistic children as a career?

The reason most companies specify a certain degree is because that is how most people start getting their experience. It also ensures the person is up to date on the newest techniques, laws and other issues for working in a particular field. I am actually amazed your mother was allowed to work as a social worker for so long without having to obtain a college degree…that is something that simply would never happen now. While your mother seems to have extensive expereience that would make her a strong candidate, you don’t mention if she has any direct expereince in working with autistic children. This is a field that requires a strong working knowledge of childhood development in communication, socialization and cognative areas. She would also need a basic understanding of all the major schools of theraputic thought in the field…TEACH, floor time, behavioral intervention..to help families develop programs and skills to be used in the home. Finally, she would need a strong understanding of IEP’s, state programs, grant applications and the testing and treatment options available. A lot of this is not something she would learn if not exsposed to it directly…college will give her a lot of this information in a realtively short amount of time, The only thing I can suggest is for your mother to contact potential employers and see how they react to her expereice vs. lack of degree. She may find one willing to hire her and help her get the needed certification. Of course, she will , in all likelihood, get less that a person with the required degree when it comes to salary, but would be a way to get her foot in the door (so to speak).

According to federal law, she’d need one to teach autistic children, and according to most insurance companies, she would need one to provide direct services to autistic children. This is for many of the same reasons that were supplied above, such as management, skill development, etc.

There are positions, such as teachers assistants or personal aides, but the pay scale is very low and often there are no benefits or retirement offered. She could provide respite care, if she contacted a local company, OR started her own business providing respite.

I personally feel that often a college experience ruins a person’s intuition as far as helping special needs children (esp for educational settings) and think ideally people with college degrees would be better served by providing services such as your mother has before entering the system. However, there should be some degree of accountability, as parents of children with autism are often scammed by people purporting to know about autism or having experience with autism.

The only thing I would add to Annie’s great answer is,

it depends in what way your Mom wants to work with autistic kids. My child is autistic and is mainstreamed into the regular classroom with a one/one aide.Sometimes the aide’s did have a degree but not always, so I don’t think all school systems require a degree to be an aide.But the pay isn’t great.

If she learns about the feelings of these special humans, she can propably understand a little bit there actions and reactions or why they seem like far away or that they just hear or see or smell more and so on. By understanding she will be able to accept there way of doing and not doing. That will be good. Because she can offer them some help and also let them if they don´t want or what ever. If she doesn´t learn enough on it, maybe she will try to change them, and thats not right! Not her Right. I think it´s allways good to know about. I say it twice: Helpfull is accepting and understanding! And this needs to learn about it!