How Lifeworks for Autism is helping adults with autism

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Today at Lifeworks for Autism, families and loved ones gathered to hear and see how Lifeworks for Autism can benefit them.

Lifeworks for Autism is an organization near the campus of WKU helping neurodivergent adults live their most independent lives. Lifeworks offers very important programing to a specific population that it at risk for experiencing a drop-off in help and services as adjusting to a new environment can be challenging after that help fades away.

“That services cliff that families and loved ones experience when they leave high school, when they’re out of public school, all of a sudden they find themselves kind of, adrift, trying to navigate things in a world that maybe doesn’t come naturally to them. So everything that we do is just designed to provide individualized, person-centered supports to help individuals get to where they want to be. We’re all about doing just enough and never overdoing it so that people are practicing independence and, you know, building skills that are going to be transferable and they can maintain long term,” said Hendrix Brakefield ,director of Likeworks for Autism.

Lifeworks has everything that an individual would need to succeed independently. So much so that they have partnered with the Warren County Public Library to house their own branch. Over the years though they’ve been able to install some important technology that has abled them to expand their influence across the state.

“We have a full slate of programing Monday to Friday. That includes everything from classroom instruction. We go to the gym five days a week. We volunteer in the community every week. We provide opportunities for social and interpersonal interactions. And then the other half of that infrastructure is in the form of hardware, software, program materials and curriculum. And so with our hardware specifically, we have the ability to broadcast, the programing that we provide here out to the state. And out to individuals who are operating outside of our four walls here. It’s really been an amazing thing to get to connect people from all over,” Brakefield said.

Lifeworks also thrives on community connection and it always looking for opportunities to bring in professionals for their speaker series, and to help provide scholarship opportunities for the members of their program.