Kyle Demarest was born more than three months premature, weighing just one pound with physical and developmental disabilities.
Despite that, he had been on a pretty stable path, until he turned 21.
But once he turned 21, Kyle, a Montvale resident, graduated out of the special needs programs that he’d been in since he was 3.
“It gets harder when they turn 21,” Kyle’s mother Kathleen said.
Luckily for the Demarests, ECLC, where Kyle had gone to school since 2000, had recently founded the PRIDE program for adults. Kyle says the program has taught him vocational skills like sewing and living skills like comparing prices.
Under a law recently signed by President Barack Obama, the federal government for the first time will study adults like Kyle and the challenges they face transitioning from school-age programs into adulthood. Sen. Robert Menendez, who sponsored the Autism CARES Act, met Kyle and other students of ECLC’s adult program Wednesday in Paramus to tout the law’s passage.
Despite the notorious entrenchment in Congress, “this bill never received a vote in opposition,” Menendez said.
...Continue reading article here.
