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They become autistic adults who may or may not require supports and services.We’re currently working with an adult services care manager to develop a personalized, multi-modal support plan our 17 year-old son can access when he turns 21 and leaves school.Most (if not all) states provide state and federally funded adult services to help folks on the spectrum become as independent as possible.

I take this question to be a legal inquiry: Are you legally required to financially support and/or care for an adult child with a disability? The answer to that question depends on the law in the state or country in which you live. Some American states do impose lifelong obligations on parents of individuals who are unable to care for themselves because of disabilities that manifested while those individuals were still minors. Others do not.Some writers have responded that there are “places” available for people like your daughter. They should learn about wait lists for adult services: Adults With Autism: Scarce Funds & Wait Lists. Then, they should learn that nearly all service providers are private, and that private providers have a great deal of latitude in deciding what types of individual (in terms of type and severity of symptoms, not just in terms of diagnosis) they accept into their programs.I am extremely angry that some have criticized you, assuming you do not wish to be responsible for your daughter. I am furious about one person having said she hoped you have had had your tubes tied.I am a parent like you. One of my adult children is in a group home. If he lived with me, either his sister or I might be permanently crippled or dead by now, because he is very strong and aggressive and does not know what he is doing. If he is ever without round the clock care, there is every chance that he will not survive even for twenty-four hours. My other adult child can stay with me forever, but what will happen to her when I am gone?Here is what I have to say to people who judge you for being unable to care for your daughter:When a group of trained employees of a residential facility cannot cope with an individual as a team, how is a person (who may be of retirement age by now!) supposed to do so alone, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?There was a time when parents like us were told that there were “places” for people like our children, that we should put them away where the community would not have to be exposed to them, that we had no business imposing our offspring on normal, decent people.Today, we are told that we have no business expecting the public (you know— those “normal, decent” people who simply do not to be the parents of individuals with serious medical conditions) to bear the financial burden of our children. That is OUR responsibility! Among us, and personally known to me, are people in their 70s whose adult children with severe, nonverbal autism are still on the “wait lists” for adult services. Or, rather, on the wait lists to become “eligible” for such services. It is still up to the parents to find people who will actually perform care for the lousy salaries (without benefits) that most are paid through the government programs. I personally know parents who have had strokes, and continue as the only caregivers. I know one woman whose doctors made sure she remained conscious through a thyroid surgery while her adult daughter with autism was in the operating room— because there no one else was available to take care of that daughter, even for a few hours. That woman considers herself very fortunate, because she expected to be forced to do without a necessary surgery. I personally know a woman who has lost vision in one eye because her severely autistic adult son has injured her, without even understanding the implications of what happened. I know a woman who continued to care for her “forever child” even after hospice arrived to care for her during the last few weeks of her life.I personally know hundreds of parents of adults with autism who know that after they have remained “responsible” until the day they die, their children may or may not be cared for properly, if at all. That in a system where there aren’t enough spots in residential facilities and where residential facilities have the discretion to reject or expel anyone who is too “difficult,” they will end up, as one person wrote, “fending for themselves, possibly on the streets, possibly a victim of abuse, physical and sexual.”We KNOW this! WE KNOW THIS!!! The horror of our children’s lives once we are gone is the horror of our lives while we are still here.Once, we were despised when we tried to keep our children in our homes and care for them. Now, we are despised when we cannot manage to do so.We don’t care whether people despise us. In fact, we know that the ones who are truly despised are our children. That terrifies us. All we care about is what will happen to our children once we are gone. When my friends with “lifelong dependents” and I discuss this, we laugh sadly about how the only way to keep our children safe throughout their lives will be to outlive them by exactly one minute.If society no longer finds it intolerable to know of the existence of people like my son and daughter, if society no longer wants them hidden away, society still demands that it not be inconvenienced by them. So, when I or one of my fellow-parents reveals the inconvenient truth that we cannot meet our children’s needs on our own forever, we are accused of being uncaring, of being unfit parents, of being those who should have been sterilized.Please, please, could such people find it in their heart to despise us to their hearts’ content, but spare compassion for our children? For our children, when they outlive us? And for our children, when they outlive our ability to care for them, even if that time comes years before our deaths?Parents usually dream of their children going through school, of finding partners and jobs, of starting families of their own, of them being there to help their aging parents in turn.We dream of seeing our children in safe places, of being able to find them such places, of being able to help them transition and adapt to those places while we are still healthy enough to be involved. We dream so humbly. Think of the smallness of our dreams before you despise our children for the greatness of their needs.

In the United States, the "Turning 22" law was enacted in 1984 to provide a planning process for young adults with severe disabilities as they leave special education and transition into the adult service system. (us.gov)If mentally challenged youths still require services when they turn 22, those services will no longer be provided through the education system but through the adult service system.