Building a Life After High School for Adults with Developmental Disabilities | Miami Autism Dad | CNEWS TV#

Miami Autism Dad Victor Antunez interviews Arlene Peterson, Executive Director of The WOW Center in Kendall, an Adult Day Training center that has spent 54 years building a life after high school for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The conversation starts in 1972, when a group of Miami parents watched their kids approach graduation with nothing waiting on the other side, no programs, no options, and decided to build around what their children could do instead of the list of what they couldn’t. That decision grew into a center serving over 200 adults, from their early 20s into their 70s. Arlene breaks down the cliff families hit the day school services end, why the system pours everything into early intervention and goes quiet at 22, and what a meaningful day looks like when a program is designed for growth instead of supervision: culinary training, digital literacy, the arts, music therapy, Special Olympics, and WOW Workforce, the employment side that gets adults into internships, job coaching, and real jobs. Arlene also answers the question every parent in this audience carries: what happens to my child when I’m gone, and how a place like WOW changes the answer.

Connect with Arlene at The WOW Center:

Online: https://www.wowcentermiami.org/

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