The Farmstead Setting

Bittersweet Farms is a residential and vocational setting for adults with autism. Residents live in a fifteen-bed dwelling, and a five-bed co-op home on the eighty-acre farmstead. Vocational and educational services are offered to day students as well. Programming at Bittersweet Farms is comprehensive: self-care, activities of daily living (ADL), and the behavioral, social, communicative and vocational needs of each individual are addressed through a carefully designed and individualized program plan (IPP, United States Government Printing Office, 1988). The farmstead offers work in areas of horticulture, greenhouse management, woodworking, animal care, landscaping and homemaking. Those with autism work along with staff at tasks relevant to the care and maintenance of the homes and the farm. There is a ration of 1 staff person for every 2 to 3 program participants.

For adults with autism who had no viable vocational skills prior to Bittersweet, new possibilities emerge, not rehabilitation in the usual sense. Rather, in this context is habilitation of integrated personal, social and vocational skills that are targeted.

This paper is a descriptive view of the program practices at Bittersweet Farms, empirically based on interviews with staff. It illustrates objective lessons based on data collection and analysis, as well as more subjective lessons gleaned from personal involvement and observation during twelve years of living and working with the farm participants. It will focus on the characteristics of autism in adulthood, symptoms that interfere with optimal functioning and techniques useful for habilitation training programs.

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