Our oldest son Joshua has severe autism and needs a special needs aide.
The person that will do best in the job is someone who is physically energetic and can take Joshua outside as he is overweight and needs to exercise and basically hang out with a buddy.
The pay is $29 an hour, and you would need to be comfortable with helping him with basically everything — toileting, changing clothes, learning how to do basic care, basic laundry/dishes, go to a store, go on outings, take BART etc.
We live in Lafayette and you would need to be cool with driving here and going on outings — we would pay for gas and mileage of course.
We have had both males and females as aides and as long as someone is physically strong and hearty and knows that he is not going to hang out indoors and do puzzles and the like (you would be surprised how many aides only wanted to do that) but is going to want to go out and experience the outdoors, walk, explore, and experience basic things like shopping for food or other items and the like, they work fine.
We decided to do this position search on our own because the agencies seem to only send out aides who are used to elderly people in wheelchairs.
That is definitely not Joshua.
He is an incredibly sweet young adult who has a beautiful smile and laugh and is very personable, but who can occasionally get frustrated and stim/rub his head when really frustrated.
You have to know how to deal with typical autistic behaviors and not get frustrated yourself.
It is challenging.
It takes time, but he is worth it! (Yeah, I am not biased at all!)
So this position(s) doesn’t necessarily need a lot of special needs experience, but that is always desirable, so let us know if you have experience with tall/large special needs people, and just some basics about your desired schedule.
We just need to get him to lose weight and get healthy and not just be hanging out in front of screens or the house.
Please be a decent, kind human being.
We look forward to talking to you!
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