need advice how to help adult brother take care of himself

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Hi everyone
I'm still pretty new at Wrong Planet, and haven't posted in this forum yet, so I'll do a little background introduction - I'm 42, female, youngest of six kids, married with kids of my own, "officially" diagnosed with Asperger's just last month. My parents are both dead, and my brothers live all around the US. There are at least five close extended family members, myself included, who've been diagnosed across the whole range of the ASD spectrum and I think at least one of my brothers is an Aspie like me. I think he's quite a lot more severely affected by it at this time than I am due to him having lived all alone for well over ten years and working on his computer, self-employed, and hermitted. He doesn't leave home hardly at all but has nobody to help him. I didn't realize how bad things were getting for him until recently.

First I will go back and say that he's 50 and has no particularly close family or friends any where other than us siblings, and the two closest of us live about 2 hours away from him. He has no car, his only ID is an expired drivers license from 1995. He had a heart attack several years ago and another one more recently and so has gotten medicaid with the help of some social workers at the hospital a number of months ago. He does not have food stamps or public assistance, though he had food stamps awhile back and has assured me tonight that he knows how to get them again and will call about that tomorrow. But he doesn't qualify for public assistance/cash assistance because his rent is too high. They told him a long time ago that he would have to move to a cheaper place before they'd help with that. He can't manage all that a move entails for a lot of reasons, and right now he owes nearly $1000 in back rent and all of his other services are shut off or being shut off very soon due to money problems that haven't really been dealt with for years and which are snowballing now. So he doesn't have money to move somewhere cheaper even if he knew how to make that all happen. (I did tell him how to start the process to get a free phone through one of those government programs and we made him a goal of him filling out the online form by the end of the day tomorrow which I will help him with via online chat tomorrow, so the phone situation is sort of solved.. ish. Which is good.)

He knows what asperger's is, and when i told him I was just diagnosed and told him that I think that he would very easily be diagnosed as well, and could then maybe get some help with his life skills and managing his needs and whatever, he very quickly agreed and just asked who he would see to do that. I think he's known for a long time that this applied to him. Now that I know about it I understand his struggles so much easier and I feel bad for wondering for some time why he couldn't seem to get these things worked out in his life. My asperger's is not the same as his, and the things I"ve learned to do are not the ones he's learned to do. I get it now. But I'm too far away to help him that much except in giving advice and making calls for him when I can and whatnot.. so my understanding still doesn't help him that much right now.

I've done what I could tonight as far as helping him to set some goals and accomplish a couple of them while we spoke for a couple of hours and we made some more goals for tomorrow as well but he has no money for cabs or bus, doesn't know how to ride a bus and says he would need someone to show him, has nobody to help him get anywhere.. I feel like he needs to get an ID as soon as possible since he can't do anything in live without photo ID.. but I guess it's just all too big right now for me to know how to help him and he's even more lost in himself right now so I was thinking if I put it all down here and then kept a running sort of log of what we're trying to figure out how to accomplish, and goals, and accomplishments, and stuff then maybe you lovely people might be willing and able to give feedback and suggestions about what I can do, and how he can do certain things, and what kinds of help he might be able to get in his area and things like that.

I hope this isn't too rambly and disjointed.. I just am trying to sort out my own aspie-brain so I can figure out how to help without running myself into burnout mode, because I'm already dealing with some big-time life issues of my own. *sigh*

I guess I dont even know what my question is right now. I just don't know how to do all of this. How to help him with everything. Like he said he's on a busline and so for a $70 a month bus pass or whatever the cost is he should be able to solve his transportation problem. but doesn't know how to do the whole bus thing. neither do i and I dont live where he does. I almost wonder if I can set him up on a blind aspie friend date with someone from here who lives in his area and could help him with that. oh I don't know. I guess people can just read this and ignore it and it will fall back some pages and die a natural death and I'll feel better for have gotten it off my chest. Or if anyone has suggestions or anything I'll at least get something out of it. For now my brain basically jsut said "enough" and shut off though so I can't even think of what my questions were. Hope this isn't an annoying post now because of that. But I really want to help my brother so.. yeah. Thanks for listening.

I think it's great that you're helping your brother with this stuff. (I suspect I'd be about at his level of functioning, if I hadn't had my husband to support me most of my life!)

At this point I'm getting divorced and trying to improve my own level of functioning, and I would suggest working on one thing at a time. Baby steps. For me, I'm facing my fear of using the phone, and just the other day I took my first bus ride in 15 years, and I feel much more confident about that!

Trying to tackle everything all at once is overwhelming, but maybe he could pick ONE tiny goal, to accomplish over the next couple of weeks. And maybe you could help him by looking up where to get bus passes and such. (If you google the name of the city and what you're looking for, you can usually find it!)

Good luck and remember to take care of yourself as well!

Thanks Ashariel for the feedback. I kind of wish I was in your shoes.. I think I will be at that point sooner or later of divorce and figuring things out on my own, and I can't even comprehend how that works. For now I'm just keeping my head down and mouth shut and trying to keep on getting by day by day.

My brother has to figure out a way to get his expenses paid for, so there's a bit of a time limit on each baby step we have to take, but I don't know where to start just now. But for tonight he got one stressful phone call out of the way while I hung out online talking to him and we got a plan in place for his phone situation (his phone was just shut off so that was a prioity). We got him a plan for getting food stamps squared away tomorrow, and he will hopefully get that phone application turned in tomorrow too. So those are good.

He would like his photo ID to be a learner's permit, when he gets an ID (which I think needs to happen fast), but a permit is kind of expensive and a Sheriff's ID should be under $20 I think, so that's what I think he should get first. But he doesn't have any way to get wherever that is, to get one. He also says he needs an eye exam ASAP and some glasses. Since he has medicaid, he says he can get a free ride to en eye doctor and back. I said he should try to find an eye doctor that takes medicaid and is located near the sheriff dept.. that way maybe he could get the free taxi ride to the eye doctor, have his appointment, then walk to get his ID, then walk back and get picked up by the free taxi again. Not sure if that might work.

But for now that's as far as I've gotten with making goals for him. *phew*

exhausting.. he's been so stressed that he says he's had only a couple of hours of sleep all week.

hope we can get him all squared away one way or another sooner than later but the last time I tried to help a couple of years ago he got overloaded quickly and gave up. *sigh*

Hi LivingInParentheses -

Have you checked out the resources Autism Speaks has on their Adults page? There's a lot there with links to different community services that you may be able to link your brother with to help him become more self-sufficient.

Might also suggest to check out the Asperger Syndrome Training and Employment Partnership and their resources, again because it has lots of links to vocational and training services that could of help to your brother.

-Melody

I think the kindest thing you could do for your brother, given the geographical distance, is hook him up with a social worker who can do all these things with him/for him. You said he got overwhelmed and gave up, a couple of years ago. I would worry that the same will happen now. A local social worker also knows much more about the agencies and benefits that he might qualify for in that area, than you could possibly know about.

Could he perhaps go back to the social workers at the hospital who helped him before, and get a referral to a local social services organization? The hospital social workers can't keep working with him, but they probably know the best agencies to help him.

If that doesn't seem fruitful, you could perhaps call the mental health center or disability resource center for his city and get some advice on helping him. For his initial meeting, perhaps setting up a conference call will allow you to make suggestions of what seems to be priority items, and you could also "attend" remotely on follow-up visits.

It is very good of you to take this interest and take the initiative, but don't attempt more than you can reasonably accomplish. I can sense you are already feeling overwhelmed, yourself.