Independent Living for Autistic Adults: A Model That Works with Emily Ricketson

Mike Carr (00:05):

Well, welcome everyone to another episode of Autism Labs. And this week we are talking to an executive director of another cool program in central Texas, actually in the Austin area. And Emily has a very interesting career, has a bachelor of science degree in neuroscience in the University of Texas. And then she spent a number of years since then, a few years because she's not that old obviously, but a few years since then serving the community in a variety of ways. So Emily, if you'd introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background, why you even got into this. I think everybody listening would be interested.

Emily Ricketson (00:37):

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me today, Mike. My name is Emily Ricketson. I am the current and also first executive director of Adults, Independent and Motivated, also known as AIM. We are in the West Austin area and we do... The foundation of our programming is independent living for adults with IDD. But it took me a little bit of a while to get there. As Mike mentioned, I got my bachelor's of science in neuroscience from UT Austin in 2024, so not too long ago. During my time there, I studied neuroscience. I did research on autism spectrum disorder and the Pierce Lab, which was absolutely a great experience. During my time at UT is really when I learned to love the IDD community. I got really involved with different clubs, different programmings, different things outside of the UT community, and I think it's the best community to be in, and I'm just so happy to be here today talking about my experience and talking about AIM.

Mike Carr (01:31):

Why did you even decide to get into this area in the first place? I mean, what drew you to neuroscience at UT?

Emily Ricketson (01:37):

So it's a longer story. So I started off as a nursing major at UT Arlington my very first year. I'm from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and I wanted to do nursing for the IDD population. I had been in a club in high school my senior year called PE Partners, which was reverse physical education with neurotypical students helping out the special education students. I looked forward to that class every single day and I was like, "I want to be with this population." So it was also COVID, it was 2020. I wanted to stay close to home, decided I'm going to commute 45 minutes to UT Arlington. They have a great nursing program. I'm like, "I'm going to do that. I'm going to be an IDD nurse." I think it was one of my first days of nursing class. I went on campus and the head nurse was there and she was like, "I would love to hear what kind of nurses you all want to be in." I was one of the first to raise my hand and I was like, "I want to be an intellectual and developmental disability nurse." She was like, "That's great, but that doesn't really quite exist.

(02:38):

You're going to have a really hard time finding that job." I'm like, "Oh, I think I have to pivot then." I think that's what I really wanted to do was work with that population. I ended up going into... I'm like, "I need to change to something." I changed to biology. I'm like, "Let me just do something sciencey and I'll figure it out later." Fast-forward to 2021, the pandemic's dying down a little bit and I'm ready to go to UT Austin. I'm ready to move away from home, to experience independence on my own for the first time, and I moved there. Again, I'm going down the biology track. I couldn't get into one of my calculus classes, so I'm like, "I'll just take an elective. I'll take neuroscience. It will count towards something." And I absolutely fell in love with neuroscience. I fell in love with learning about the brain, learning about the nervous system, and I was like, "This is what I'm going to do." Through being in the neuroscience program, I found a really cool program called Lifelong Learning with Friends, which is post-secondary education at UT, ran by a neuroscience professor, Dr.

(03:39):

John Pierce, and their executive director, Kaylin Ruben. Kaylin was actually my... When I did research at UT, she was my mentor there and Dr. John Pierce has been a mentor for me in lots of other amazing ways. So the IDD community and the neuroscience community is kind of tied really well together at UT.That's kind of where I was. For a long time, I thought I was going to go into med school with my neuroscience background. I wanted to be a developmental behavioral pediatrician. And fast-forward to 2025, I got accepted to med school and I was planning to move across the country to pursue that. But then I'm like, "You know what? That's going to be around eight years till I get to be with the population I want to be with." I was like, "Ultimately, this is where I am now. This job pops up with AIM and I couldn't be happier for where I am." So it's been a crazy career journey.

(04:28):

It's been kind of a crazy education journey, but I really think everything happens for a reason and I'm so happy to be here.

Mike Carr (04:35):

I think those pivots are so interesting. I think a lot of folks that have been on this journey have had similar pivots. Some of the other executive directors that I've talked to, whether they start out as a lawyer or some other profession, and then a pastor, who knows what, and then they ended up as an executive director serving this community. One of the things you did though that I thought was really interesting is for a year, year and a half, you were a residential caregiver. How did that experience shape you? Was there anything that you found really exciting and interesting, and was there anything you found a bit dismaying or disconcerting?

Emily Ricketson (05:06):

Yeah, so when I was in college during the weekends, I was a PRN RT at Marbridge in South Austin, Manchec, and I really loved my experience there. I worked in their village, which is their most independent living community at Marbridge. It was my first time getting to experience a population of a very wide range of people with IDD from an 18, 19-year-old individual all the way up to maybe someone that's 80, 90 years old. So there was a very, very broad spectrum there. It was my first time getting to experience with TBIs. It was my first time to experience with a lot of different other genetic conditions that I've learned about in the classroom that I've never quite seen act out in an individual. So I really, really loved that experience. I loved being one-on-one. I loved getting to do medications. I loved getting able to take them on community outings.

(05:58):

I loved getting to know their personal stories. It was a really great time and I looked forward to it in college on the weekends when I would go spend some time at Marbridge. A lot of great things, but I think every community has things that work well for some people that might not work well for others. Marbridge is a great community for those that maybe are a little bit less independent, maybe need a little bit of one-on-one help. But overall, I can say my experience at Marbridge was really, really a positive one.

Mike Carr (06:26):

So let's talk about AIM and let's talk about the model that you have there, which is a bit different than what Marbridge, I believe, provides in the way of residential and the level of support you provide at AIM and maybe what you see in the future. So I asked you a lot of stuff there, but give us a high level recap if you would.

Emily Ricketson (06:45):

Yeah. AIM is a niche program. There's only two of us like us in the country. We were modeled after the Kansas City Mission Project up in Kansas City, Missouri. AIM was founded about 12 years ago. Again, there was a group of parents in the Austin area that were like, "I want a level of independence from my child. I want them to live as ordinary of an adult life as possible." And they weren't seeing what was currently here in the Austin area to do that. They learned about the Mission Project and they're like, "I want to do this." So premise of AIM, we are independent living for adults with disabilities. Something that makes us niche is that we are integrated in the community. We do not own any facility. We do not own any campus. Our participants who we call AIMRs, we have 18 coming on, 19 of them AIMRs right now.

(07:31):

They live in an integrative ordinary apartment complex that you or I, Mike, could live in today. So anyone can go in and lease at this apartment. AIM is not a party to the lease, and we are in a very walkable, vibrant area of West Austin, Bee Cave area. In their backyard, they're able to walk to a movie theater. They're able to walk to a grocery store. They're able to walk and go get frozen yogurt together. It is integrated in the community. They are a part of the community. They're not separated from it. So that is kind of what makes AIM a little bit different.

Mike Carr (08:03):

And one of the things that we've learned too at John 13, and we're not as far along as you guys are, but we very much believe philosophically that getting the guys and gals out into the community every day is so important, that we don't want them isolated necessarily on a campus or in a facility that's big and institutional-like where they spend most of their day sitting around tables. Even if they're doing vocational work, what we find is more natural, especially for a lot of the guys that like to move and they won't sit still for more than 15 or 20 minutes, is to get them out at a climbing gym or get them out at a park or do a hike or go bowling or do some vocational activities where they're cleaning and then they take a break and they get to have some fun playing ping pong or who knows what.

(08:45):

Our difference though, and I'm really interested in your thoughts here because I think you're bringing Emily a perspective given your past work at Marbridge and a couple other places and what you're currently doing at AIM is how do you accommodate folks that have higher levels of need? So the ideal AIMer might be someone that's verbal that can pretty much, as you say, live independently. They need a little extra support. They need a little extra help. We have a population that's probably higher support than that. Some of the guys like our son has a colleague that goes with him throughout the day to these different venues. Do you have anyone like that? And just in your experience in general, where do you see the opportunity for growth? There are a lot of folks that are lower support. What we've found is mixing some of those lower support folks together with higher support folks creates some magic.You almost have that big brother relationship where you have a lower support person who is verbal, but still sort of understands where that higher support person like our son, and together they can do things that no one else can get them to do and they have a lot of fun together.

(09:45):

Share with us your point of view on that or any experiences that you guys have had.

Emily Ricketson (09:48):

Yeah, so kind of touching on your first point about how important it is of being out in the community, we are the exact same way at AIM. Almost all of our AIMers hold jobs and that's really important part of AIM is being able to be a part of the community. Our AIMRs work at HEB, they work at Home Depot, they work at Target. We have a guy that works full-time detailing cars at Enterprise. He works 40 hours a week. We have a girl that owns her own cleaning business and that goes to different places to do that. So it's a very, very important thing for us. When we go out into the community, I know a lot of residential facilities, they call them outings. We call them socials because outings, they're already out and about in the community. They don't have to go do that.

(10:31):

It's very important to us here at AIM as well that they're integrated in the community, they're not separated from it and kind of going into different support needs. We have 18 AIMRs right now. We are growing very rapidly and we're about to be at 19. We were at 16 at the beginning of the year. We have a lot in the pipeline. But again, we have some AIMers that are very independent. Maybe in their apartment, they're cooking, they know how to cook steak for dinner. They know how to cook, they know how to use the stove really well or very verbal. They can hold a full-time job. We have some AIMers that maybe have a little bit difficult holding any job that maybe have a little bit more difficult expressing themselves either verbally or emotionally. Another very important part of AIM is families are still involved in our programming.

(11:15):

So if you have a son or daughter that might be interested in this program, you're not dropping them off saying, "See you, I don't know, in a few months." Families are still actively involved in our programming. Our families have volunteer commitments that they do for this year at 72 hours that families are putting in. They're hosting our socials, a lot of different other reasons for that of just when we have people learning about our program, our families are a very vital part of being spokespeople about what we do here at AIM. But again, we have some families, some AIMRs that maybe only have to see their parents and ask for help from them a few times a month, and we have some AIMers where they require help from their parents maybe around two, three, four times a week. It's a little bit different. Though we don't have anyone at AIM right now that requires one-on-one support and apartment living, we've always been open to maybe someone needs a little bit more support and they want the roommate to be a sister or a brother or a caregiver.

(12:09):

And that's something that we've been open to as well, to not try and put ourselves in a bubble of we can only serve a very small range. We're trying to open it up, but again, still understanding our limits of we are pretty independent living. We don't have onsite staff care. Our families are still involved and there's some behaviors that probably wouldn't be the best. If someone is pretty much able to do their medication routine by themselves, someone that doesn't have aggressive behaviors, things like that. We're a niche program and we want to be open to as many people as possible, but there are some things that maybe we wouldn't be the best fit for everyone and that's okay because there's programs like you guys, there's other programs out there that are going to be better

Mike Carr (12:51):

Fits. Let's talk about costs because this always comes up with every parent you've probably talked to, certainly everyone that we talk to, is there's the private pay model and some programs only accept private pay. Then there are the waiver dollars, whether it's HCS or class waivers, other types of waivers that maybe some parents can administer themselves directly so you as a program don't have to be officially an HCS provider and there are programs out there that are. So in terms of what does it cost, we're wanting to come to you and say, "Hey, I'd love to get my kiddo into the program and we'll pay for the apartment, this and that, but we understand there's going to be some kind of a fee for just the oversight and the management of the program and helping them find a job." And then how much do you have to supplement that with donations?

(13:32):

Because I personally, Emily, have not talked to any program anywhere in the country that can charge enough to cover their operating costs.

Emily Ricketson (13:38):

Absolutely not.

(13:40):

Absolutely not. We at AIM, we pride ourselves on being an affordable program, especially compared to a lot of other places in this area or just places anywhere. They can be very expensive, upwards of four or five, 6,000 a month. It's an expensive world to be in the IDD world, but before I want to get into costs, I kind of want to talk about what we provide so you have an understanding of what goes into that cost. A big thing about AIM is we do transportation to and from work. So any AIMRs in our program, they have free and reliable rides to and from work. We have a team of eight drivers that pick up, not necessarily shifts, but rides. We have a fantastic, fabulous team of drivers. I really understand our population as well. That is what your son or child or your son or daughter is going to be getting rides.

(14:22):

We also have a support specialist who works part-time. She leads our weekly, what we call internally Monday night group, but externally it's kind of like independent living skills. They touch on safety, they touch on healthy habits, they touch on different emotional topics. So that every week on Monday nights, aimers are going to that, but our support specialist also does one-on-one individualized support for maybe an aimer is having problems remembering to take their medication at night and they need a little assistance there. Maybe two aimers are having a little dispute between each other that are roommates and they need help kind of having a mediator and figuring out how to resolve conflict. Maybe an aimer had a really bad day at work and needs to talk through of how do I have coping strategies to deal with when this happens at work? We have a fabulous support specialist, Rupa Boyer, and she does an amazing job of helping our AIMers individually and in support groups.

(15:16):

So that's another thing that we provide. We also do a weekly recreation program on Sundays where our AIMers do every single sport imaginable. We're partnering with an amazing facility, Hill Country & Door, and they do soccer, they do volleyball, they do beach volleyball, they do basketball, they do archery, they do bocce ball, every single sport on Sunday evenings, they are doing it.

(15:39):

And it's a great way for them to get active, do team participation with each other. And we also do Special Olympics. We have two basketball teams, we have a bocce ball team. So kind of in the springtime they do practice for Bochi ball. In the springtime, in winter and spring or winter and fall, we're kind of starting right now to do practice for basketball. So we have Special Olympics teams. We're working on adding some more. We do very regular socials. Our socials, they did one last night at All Star Burger. They did, I think, a bunco night. They do game nights, they do a game called Left, right, Center. They do movie nights. They do waterpark things, bowling, laser tag, all these different things. Again, that would be covered in their cost of being an AIMer. Another important thing that might not be a physical thing, but it's an important part of being part of the AIM community is you have access to a community.

(16:32):

With the ID population, once you're 18 or 21 and you're aging out of supports, you have different options. Maybe you can stay at home and live with mom and dad, but you're going to not be part of a community. You're not going to necessarily be living as independently maybe as you want to or as the parents want to. Maybe you're only seeing friends at structured programming times. Then there's a completely other option. Maybe the young adult is fairly independent and they go off and they can live on their own. We've had some AIMRs that do this and ultimately end up at our program, but once they live on their own without the supports, they lack community. They don't really have a friend group to go to. Maybe they go to a facility residential campus and maybe that limits their independence. That's where AIM comes in.

(17:15):

When you come to AIM, our AIMRs, the really beautiful thing is that they're figuring out how they want to live their life. Every single night, AIM doesn't organize this. Our AIMs organized whose apartment are we going to tonight? Where are we watching Harry Potter at? Where are we watching the UT football game? Where are we watching the soccer game? We communicate via Slack and they're the ones that are figuring out whose apartment are we going to? They're the ones organizing it and they're in the driver's seat, which when I talk to a lot of parents who are like, "My child never did that before," and now they're hosting for their friends. Instead of seeing a friend at a structured programming event, they're a few doors down now. And maybe that might be a physical part of AIM of programming that we provide, but that is kind of a secondhand thing we provide.

(17:58):

So now going into the cost, again, our families pay for their own apartments. Again, it's a typical apartment complex and usually the rent can be anywhere from 800 if you're sharing a two bedroom room with another AIMer, maybe up to 15, 1600, maybe 1700 depending on when you are renting, if you want a one bedroom to live by yourself. Our complex has one and two bedroom options, but most of our AIMers have roommates. For the cost of the apartment, a lot of our AIMers, again, pretty much all of them work and the cost of what they get for the working is able to kind of offset the apartment cost. A lot of them, they're able to use their SSI, SSDI to cover the cost of their apartment. Maybe if there's a little bit left, there's also parent support in there. And what AIM charges, we do annual family volunteering requirements and annual give get requirements.

(18:47):

So volunteering this year at 72 hours that our families are putting in for the organization. They're serving on committees, they're hosting socials. Our parents, again, they're a vital part of the organization. And for the fundraising requirement, we call it Give Get. So you can either give the requirement or you can get AKA fundraise the requirement. For 2026, it is $3,000 of what it costs to be an AIMer. We also do events, Amplify Austin in the spring, Fun Run in the fall. Say a family for a Fun Run, they solicit a sponsorship maybe from their work, maybe from a neighbor, maybe they go out and ask for it. Maybe they solicit in $1,000 sponsorship for the Fun Run. That would go towards their annual $3,000 requirement to be in AIM. A lot of our families, we do big pushes on fundraising. So a lot of them, while they're still giving to the organizations, there's options for families out there that may not have $3,000 or whatever it is to give per year.

(19:39):

They're able to go out and fundraise it through neighbors, through families who just asking. So we have different options there.

Mike Carr (19:47):

So how do you see the program growing and changing and evolving over time? For instance, if you had enough folks that wanted to join, would you ever entertain the entire apartment complex is our crew, and while that isn't quite as integrated into the community, it gives us advantages in terms of everyone knows everyone that's living there, or would you say, no, we always want to have some neurotypical folks, folks that have no support needs mixed in. Instead of having one apartment complex, we might go out and find a second location. Any thoughts about that?

Emily Ricketson (20:17):

Yeah. I think there's something really beautiful about being integrated in the community. When I'm at the apartment complex, we have an office in there now that is brand new to us, office as in a two bedroom apartment that we've converted into an office. I see residents of the apartment complex that are not associated with AIM, and they're always talking to me about one of our AIMR neighbors is doing this and it's telling me about all the good and amazing things and how they love being part of this community as well. So that decision is more than just up to me, but I really think there's something beautiful of being integrated in the community and having neighbors with and without disabilities and getting for them to really experience what we like to say a lot at AIM is ordinary adult life. We have a lot of interest in our program.

(21:02):

We have a pipeline called Perspective AIMRs that are in the process of learning about our program. So anyone that is interested in joining AIM, it's at least a 12-month process to get there to make sure you're a right fit for our community. You're coming to our socials, you're getting to know our current families, maybe you're trying to find a roommate, but we have quite a few in the pipeline. With our current AIMRs and all of our perspectives right now, we would be of a population over 30, which is very, very big. We have two vans right now. We would need more vans. We would need more staff support. We're already in the process right now of thinking of we want to be strategic and careful about how we are growing. Conversations that we've had as executive team is figuring out what's going to be that number that once we hit here, we have a lot of interest up in the North Austin area.

(21:50):

We have interest in Houston, we have interest in Dallas, and I'm sure there's a lot of other places that could use a place like AIM. Again, that's ordinary adult life where a son or daughter is getting to experience work, is getting to experience friendships, community, just with the right supports there in place. We have conversations of if we're going to replicate, if maybe we're going to be a place that instead of replicates that we're going to teach other people how to create AIMS and create blueprints to do that. So we're not quite there yet of quite understanding what that's going to look like, but in the next three to five years, it's something that we're trying to figure out for strategic planning, again, because there's a lot of interest in our program and we want to be careful, but also strategic about how we're going about that growth.

Mike Carr (22:38):

How do you find and retain staff? I mean, one of the challenges that I think almost everybody in this space has is finding the folks that have the calling, the right mindset, the desire, and then bringing them on board. And I'm not talking necessarily about volunteers, although if you want to address that, that would be great. But folks that this is actually their part-time job or their full-time job, do you have any secrets there to share with anyone that's wondering about that?

Emily Ricketson (23:01):

Yeah, so I am the only full-time employee right now at AIM. We have a part-time support specialist. We have a part-time social media and transportation coordinator. We have a part-time administrative coordinator, and we have a team of around eight to 10 drivers. And I just want to say we have a fantastic team of individuals. I think it helps that we don't have any residential caregivers, and I know those can be extremely hard positions to fund and also keep. Our team is... They all love this community very, very, very much. And we are just so lucky to have a great community. Our support specialist, she comes from Rupa Boyer. She comes from Alberta, Canada, and she has a myriad of experience working with the IDD population. She is fantastic. Our transportation and social media coordinator, Morgan Adams, she is a sister of one of our AIMers, and she's very social media tech savvy, so she's able to create a lot of really cool stuff for us on social media.

(24:00):

We have a team of drivers that, again, they usually have their own jobs, but they love our organization so much that they come and pick up shifts for us. A lot of times our drivers, maybe they get to see our AIMers more than parents see their AIMRs. They're taking them to work every day. They develop really, really good relationships with our AIMers.

(24:19):

In my time, the driver team has stayed the same, but only kind of grown as we're having more AIMers. We have been extremely lucky to have people that care about our population, that understand our population. Again, I think it goes into the part where we have a smaller staff right now, and we don't have any direct care because those positions can be really hard to keep. But volunteers, it's something, our volunteer base, we're working to continuously grow. I think it's a little harder because we're out of the way of UT, which is a big college students wanting to volunteer. We're kind of in the very West Austin area, and right now we're trying to figure out how to get some more volunteers for the programming as we're adding a lot of programming right now. We're adding cooking classes, we're adding independent living skills workshops that are also going to be open to the outside community.

(25:07):

So if anyone's interested in those, keep a look on our website and social medias for those, which is very exciting for us. But again, we're just very lucky. We have a fantastic staff base, and then we're working on the volunteers. We have a group of five, six, seven consistent volunteers that really do love this organization, but they're fantastic. But again, they're five, six, seven people. We want a whole bunch more of like them, so we've just been very lucky.

Mike Carr (25:35):

What about technology? I mean, there are a couple of things that are going on in Austin and outside of Austin, but one of them is I've started to see the cyber cabs, and maybe you have too. They're the smaller Teslas that I guess they're two seaters, there's no steering wheel, and they show up and one or two people could get in the car and take them to the job. While they're not yet "available to purchase," one of the things that we were talking about, just sort of pie in the sky was, well, maybe we should buy one for our nonprofit and then offer that as a service, that it's a commercial service where some of our guys and gals could perhaps ride from place to place without our drivers or mom and dad having to be involved. And then the other technology that we've been looking at, which may not be as important to you guys, Emily, is a wearable, right?

(26:16):

So that it's an Apple Watch or something like an Apple Watch, but one of the things it would give mom and dad in your program, the parents, is where is my guy right now? And it might even send them an alert, "Oh, the heart rate's really elevated. Are they having a fun time someplace or is it something I should be concerned about?" Or you guys as a team, your support coordinator on an outing or something might have a little app on his or her phone where all the biometrics are connected and if there is anything that's abnormal in terms of pulse rate or heart rate or respiration, they might get an alert. Now that's down the road, but I didn't know if you guys have any appetite for either the cyber cab stuff, the wearable, or something else that you've talked about where technology could supplement and improve what you're able to offer.

Emily Ricketson (27:00):

Yeah, it's actually funny. It's a conversation a few months ago with one of our board members and parents was these... I think they got into Waymo and they're like, "This is the coolest thing ever. How do we get one of these at AIM?" Again, we do have a team of amazing drivers. We have two vans, one of them donated by the Rotary Club of Lakeway, Lake Travis. Our AIMers have named them Thunder and Sparky. We have fantastic vans, but it's an interesting thought. I haven't quite thought of that. We're not quite there the advanced technology way. I think right now we're the technology of trying to understand AI and improve our internal systems. At least for me, for our transportation system, we do sheets right now of who's going to this ride and we write it down on Google Sheets and very old-fashioned way, and we're just now getting started with different technology that can do it in a more automated way and incorporate apps.

(27:52):

And that's kind of where we are with technology. Another kind of important thing to mention about that as you're talking about that is for our AIMers, AIM kind of stops at the front door. So inside of our AIMers apartments, we have no say of what happens, of what rules that may or may not be in place. For example, some AIMers, their parents might have rules of curfew is at 10:00 PM, make sure you're in your apartment. There could be a rule of if there's someone of the opposite sex in the room, make sure to have your roommate there or someone also of the same sex in the room with you. AIM has no control over those rules. The rules could be involved in the kitchen of no sharp objects, no using the stove, no using the oven. There might be their family wants to have a ring camera, their family wants to have cameras throughout the apartment to be able to check in.

(28:37):

All the families have different rules there. So I think going into the technology part, I think it would ultimately be up to the families. We try to keep a very kind of autonomous group of what our aimers are, what they're doing in their personal lives, in their own apartments. AIM kind of provides the supports to make independent living possible, the community, the transportation, the socials, the recreation, all those different things, but kind of going into personal decisions where it's wearing an Apple Watch or doing something, that would kind of be up to the families there.

Mike Carr (29:06):

So anyone watching this, if they want to get ahold of you to find out more about the program, should they email you directly? Should they go to their website? What would you offer as, "Hey, if you want to contact us, here are one or two places to go take a look at."

Emily Ricketson (29:19):

Yeah, so I would go to our website, www.aimtx.org. There's a contact us button, and I'm always checking that email, and I would be more than happy to get in contact with you to share more about our program, to share more about the timeline, to know more about what we offer, and to see if it may be a good fit. That will come to my personal email, so I would be more than happy to answer any questions.

Mike Carr (29:40):

Awesome. So just in closing, Emily, are there any words of advice or guidance or hope or optimism that you would want to leave with any parent who's not yet have an independent living arrangement made for their son or daughter, and a lot of what you've said is exciting or maybe they don't feel like they're quite the right fit or maybe they're Not in Texas or Austin, Texas, but you just like to say, "Hey, if you're going to do anything, be sure and think about this or whatever you want to offer."

Emily Ricketson (30:08):

I would just say that there's a lot of different places and it's okay to not be a right fit somewhere and to keep asking. This community is very great. When you're talking to someone that might not be a good fit, see what they know. See if they have any recommendations because we're talking to each other, we're trying to learn from each other's programs to be able to give better recommendations to each other. And just one more thing I want to say about AIM for families that might be struggling is a lot of our families coming in our program, they were knowing that they were going to find a community for their son or daughter, but they weren't quite knowing that they were going to find a community for themselves. Our parents are getting to understand and be happy with and cry with other parents and have someone that understands what their son or daughter is going through.

(30:52):

So there's a community out there for you. There's a community out there for your son or daughter. Don't be discouraged if you kind of haven't found the right one yet, or maybe if right now isn't the right time for independent living, that is completely okay too. Independent living looks different for everyone, whether you have a disability or you don't have a disability. And it will come in the right time. And as long as you're working on those things at home and you're doing the research, it will all work out in the end.

Mike Carr (31:17):

Emily, you've been great. And I want to end for anyone that's watching with what Emily sort of concluded with too, is this is about not just planning for and taking care of your son or daughter, but also the care that you yourselves need as a parent. And this fact that there are these community of parents out there that have similar needs and you can visit with them, you can call them, you build relationships with them. It's just hugely important. We've seen that at John 13. Emily's obviously seen that at AIM. And that's certainly one of the benefits of trying to find a community that works for your son or daughter. So for the rest of the week, please be sure and give that son or daughter of yours a call if they are living in an independent setting or if they're still at home, give them a big hug.

(31:54):

And of course, please take care of yourself. Have a great week. We'll talk to you next week. See you.