What Happens to Profoundly Autistic Adults Aging Out of School? One Texas Village Has an Answer

If you’re a parent of a profoundly autistic adult, you already know the moment I’m talking about. Your kid ages out of school at 22, the routines and support systems that held everything together for two decades just stop and you’re left staring at a very short list of programs willing to take someone with higher support needs. I’ve lived this. My son is nonverbal, communicates through an iPad and I’ve spent years hearing “we’re not really set up for that” from program after program. So when I sat down with Nathan Bryant, executive director of High Point Village in Lubbock, I wanted to know: is there anywhere in this country actually building something for our profoundly autistic adults aging out, instead of just tolerating them? What he told me gave me real hope, and I think it’ll do the same for you.

Key Points

• High Point Village in Lubbock, Texas runs day programs for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including a dedicated program called Dream Big for profoundly autistic adults aging out of the school system with higher support needs.
• The program keeps a 1-to-4 staff ratio, and families can bring their own attendant if a loved one needs 1-to-1 support, meaning “no room” doesn’t have to mean “no.”
• High Point Village isn’t autism-exclusive, it serves people with Down syndrome, traumatic brain injuries, Trisomy 18, and more, which gives staff a wide base of experience with behavior and communication challenges.
• The organization is now building out residential housing, moving toward its full mission of letting adults with IDD live, learn, work and worship in one community.

Why Do So Few Programs Serve Profoundly Autistic Adults Aging Out?

Here’s the hard truth almost every parent in this community already knows: turning 22 is a cliff, not a bridge. School services end and the programs that exist afterward are often built for people who are more independent, more verbal and lower support. Very few organizations in Texas, or anywhere, are prepared to handle the demands of someone who’s higher support needs. That’s not a knock on those programs. It’s just math. Higher support means more staff, more training, more patience, more everything and most nonprofits can’t fund it.

High Point built Dream Big specifically for villagers with more profound needs, and they staffed it with two full-time coordinators for eight villagers, a 1-to-4 ratio. And if someone needs closer to 1-to-1, families can bring an attendant to support the staff that’s already there. Nathan’s answer to “would you take a profoundly autistic young man who needs a lot of support?” wasn’t a hard yes or a hard no, it was “somewhere between we’ll give it a try and yeah, we’ll do it.” Coming from someone running a program, that honesty means more to me than a glossy brochure ever could.

What Does a Day Actually Look Like for Higher Support Villagers?

This is the question every parent actually wants answered, because “day program” can mean anything from meaningful engagement to a room with a TV. At High Point, Dream Big villagers aren’t kept separate from the rest of the community. They join community outings with the Reach High program, and they also do things just as their own group of eight.

Their week has real structure and real purpose:

• Mondays, they run two Meals on Wheels routes. Some villagers have been doing it for 10 or 15 years and have the service pins to prove it.
• Tuesdays are bowling day, a tradition that goes back to the very founding of High Point Village.
• Wednesdays, they serve with Habitat for Humanity.
• They’ve recently added vocational partnerships with local businesses like a car wash chain, an H-E-B grocery store doing curbside deliveries and Old Navy, where employees walk villagers through actual job tasks.
• Even the janitor’s closet gets used; it has a washer and dryer and learning to do laundry is genuinely one of the villagers’ favorite activities.

What I heard in all of this is a philosophy, not just a schedule. Nathan put it in a way I haven’t stopped thinking about: the world wasn’t built for our kids, but High Point was built for them, and the skills they learn there make that outside world a little easier to move through.

Why Is My Autistic Adult Becoming Aggressive or Struggling More After School Ends?

Nathan didn’t dodge the reality that behaviors, coping and attitude often need real work when someone with profound needs first shows up. He said flat out that they’ve seen incredible growth not just in behaviors, but in attitude, skills and coping mechanisms in villagers who didn’t walk in the door with those tools. That growth didn’t come from clinical therapy; High Point doesn’t have therapists on staff right now. It came from relationship, routine, and consistency, applied by staff who’ve often been there for over a decade.

If your adult child is struggling more now that school structure is gone, that tracks with what Nathan described. Structure and belonging aren’t extras for our kids, they’re regulation. When that disappears at 22, behavior often gets worse before it gets better, and it takes a program willing to rebuild that structure to turn it around.

What Can You Do When Services Don’t Exist Where You Live?

High Point Village didn’t exist because a government agency created it. It exists because a handful of parents were sitting at a bowling alley watching their teenagers in a special needs bowling league, looking around at Lubbock, and realizing nothing existed for what came next. So they built it themselves. Eighteen years later, that bowling league is still going, and High Point still starts every Tuesday at that same alley.

I’m not saying every parent needs to found a nonprofit. But if you’re in an area with a gap, know that gap has been closed before, by people no more equipped than you, just parents who refused to accept “there’s nothing here” as a final answer.

What’s Next: Residential Care for Profoundly Autistic Adults Aging Out

High Point’s mission statement is to create a village where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities can live, learn, work and worship. Right now they’ve got learning and worship well covered, and work is expanding fast through new vocational partnerships. Living is the piece they’re building next, a residential program that would let villagers like Nathan’s own son, who has autism, eventually work and live at High Point, not just attend during the day. We’re covering the residential and respite piece in detail in next week’s episode, because I know that’s the question most of you are really here for.

What You’ll Learn

• Why the 22-year cliff hits families of profoundly autistic adults especially hard, and what a program built for higher support actually staffs like
• How a 1-to-4 ratio works in practice, and how families can add their own attendant for closer support
• What a real weekly schedule looks like for adults with profound support needs (Meals on Wheels, bowling, Habitat for Humanity, vocational partnerships)
• Why behavior and coping skills often improve dramatically once structure and relationship are rebuilt after school ends
• How one program grew out of parents refusing to accept their was “nothing here” for their kids
• Why residential care is the next frontier for organizations serving adults with IDD, and what that could look like

Notable Quotes

“Somewhere in between we’ll give it a try and yeah, we’ll do it.” -Nathan Bryant, on taking in a profoundly autistic villager who needs more support (07:44)

“We have actually found incredible success… in working with families and with folks that have profound needs and challenges to see incredible growth and gains, not just in behaviors, but in just attitude and skills and coping mechanisms.” -Nathan Bryant (08:29–09:25)

“One of our core values is celebrating abilities. And so we look at the things that they can do and how do we major on their strengths?” -Nathan Bryant (11:47)

“I’m never going to do something like that. Let’s figure out how we’re going to do it and we’ll make it happen.” -Nathan Bryant (12:26)

“We want to create a village where individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities can live, learn, work, worship and achieve their full potential.” -Nathan Bryant, quoting High Point Village’s mission statement (16:25)

“High Point serves our villagers by giving them the skills that help them really maneuver in a world that wasn’t built for them… High Point is built for them.” -Nathan Bryant (18:34)

“It’s like if we have space, I say bring them on.” -Nathan Bryant, on families with profoundly autistic loved ones seeking a spot (12:26)

Resources & Links

• High Point Village (Lubbock, TX) – Faith-based day programs (Reach High and Dream Big) for adults with IDD, moving toward residential housing.
• Meals on Wheels – National meal-delivery nonprofit; High Point villagers run routes weekly as both service and job skill-building.
• Habitat for Humanity – International housing nonprofit; local Lubbock villagers volunteer weekly through this partnership.
• Texas Workforce Commission – State agency that connects employers with adults who have disabilities for vocational placement.
• Howdy Homemade Ice Cream (Dallas, TX) – Ice cream chain built around employing people with disabilities, referenced as inspiration for High Point’s vocational push.

Timestamped Outline

• 00:05 Introduction to Nathan Bryant and High Point Village
• 00:44 Nathan’s background: West Texas roots, law school, 20 years in ministry
• 04:03 How his son Zeke’s autism diagnosis led him to High Point Village
• 06:32 The core question: will High Point take profoundly autistic adults aging out with higher support needs?
• 08:29 Inside Dream Big, the program for villagers with more profound needs
• 09:25 The wide range of diagnoses High Point serves beyond autism
• 12:29 The “big brother” pairing dynamic between higher and lower support villagers
• 13:46 A real look at the weekly schedule: Meals on Wheels, bowling, Habitat for Humanity
• 17:12 New vocational partnerships: Mighty Wash, H-E-B, Old Navy
• 19:38 Preview of next week’s episode on residential and respite care

FAQ

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Transcription

Mike Carr (00:05): Well, welcome everyone back to another episode of Autism Labs. This week we’re talking to the executive director of High Point Village, all the way up in West Texas in Lubbock. They’re actually doing a lot of things that are very cool. I want Nathan Bryant to introduce himself first and share a little of his background, which I think is very interesting and different from what you often see for an executive director, but for our community, very appropriate. Then we’ll get into what High Point Village is all about, their current programs, and maybe even more excitingly, what they’re planning to do when it comes to residential care. So Nathan, please introduce yourself.

Nathan Bryant (00:44): Awesome. Mike, thank you for the invitation. This is super cool. As you mentioned, I’m the executive director at High Point Village in Lubbock, Texas. Those of us who love it here say it’s the closest thing to heaven on earth; I don’t know that everybody agrees with us. A little about me: I have West Texas roots, but I also love big cities in Texas, and that comes from my story. I was born about 30 minutes down the road from Lubbock, in Littlefield, Texas, a very small town. My parents met in college at Texas Tech and were both public school teachers; their first jobs were in Sudan, an even smaller town down the road from Littlefield, though the hospital was in Littlefield. As the firstborn, I was born there, then spent the first six years of my life in another small West Texas town called Lamesa, closer to the Midland area.

(01:23): After kindergarten, my family relocated to Katy, Texas, a huge suburb on the west side of Houston. So when I think about home, I think about Houston and Katy but I’ve still got West Texas roots, since my grandparents lived in other West Texas towns and I spent a lot of time up here. I returned after graduating from Katy High School to attend Texas Tech in the late ’90s. I had a great experience there, loved it, but told myself when I graduated that I didn’t want to stay right away though I’d love to come back someday with a family of my own. That dream came true 25 years after graduation, when I was given the opportunity to come back to Lubbock and serve as executive director at High Point.

(02:04): How I ended up here is an interesting journey with a few detours, like everyone’s story. Graduating from college, I felt a call to ministry my senior year at Texas Tech. I moved back home not knowing exactly what that meant, lived with my parents for a couple of years while interning at a couple of churches in the Houston area, then took a big detour. I stayed in Houston, met the woman who became my wife, a student at the University of Houston and decided to go to law school. So I stayed in Houston and attended the University of Houston Law Center, a three-year commitment on top of what I’d already done at Texas Tech.

(02:43): The whole time, I assumed I was going to be a lawyer. That’s why you go to law school. I didn’t know what kind of law I wanted to practice. I still had a strong passion for young people from my youth ministry internship, so I considered juvenile law. I’d grown up watching Matlock and Perry Mason, so I thought maybe criminal law was something that put me in a courtroom. Long story short, I worked at firms in Houston, clerked at a great firm in Dallas, and could never quite find the right fit for something that fulfilled what I felt was a deeper purpose. Spiritually, I believe God led me to law school, and looking back, I know he did not become a lawyer, but to grow me up and prepare me for what was down the road.

(03:21): When I finished law school, I turned back to the ministry. I graduated, passed the bar, did everything required to practice law, but never actually practiced. I jumped straight into a 20-year career working for churches, starting as a youth minister, then doing some worship leading, leading a campus of a large multi-site church in Houston for about four years, and finishing as a senior pastor in Jackson, Mississippi. When we were ready to move back to Texas, I saw my chance to get to Lubbock and happened to find High Point Village.

(04:03): High Point Village became attractive to me because, along the way, I married, starting a family. My firstborn son Zeke was diagnosed with autism. That introduced me to this entire world, and opened up this opportunity in Lubbock. I figured there’s a church on every corner in Lubbock, surely somebody needs a worship leader or pastor. Instead, I found this faith-based organization that had chosen to serve families like mine, and it happened to be looking for an executive director. I reached out to the board president and told him I wasn’t sure I had the experience they were looking for. I’d never run an organization specifically geared toward families like mine. The churches I’d served were intentional about serving special needs families, and I had led staff and managed budgets, so some things translated, but I was honest about my uncertainty. He said, “Well, we’re interested too.” That led to a series of conversations, and a few months later, I ended up here in April 2024. We’re coming up on two and a half years now. My son actually graduated high school this past May; he’s still in an adult program in the school district, but we dream of him eventually working and living at High Point too. It’s been an incredible journey.

Mike Carr (05:31): That’s great, and I think the things you cited make it really interesting when you consider all the hats an executive director wears. The youth ministry and ministry background the spiritual side, helping families navigate tough journeys, especially with Zeke’s autism that has to be helpful. And even though you’ve never practiced law, I’d think a law degree helps you navigate the rules, regulations, and constant changes in this field. One thing I wanted to ask about: a lot of the parents who watch this podcast have profoundly autistic or higher support needs older teens and young adults. They’ve aged out of school at 22 and are very interested in what’s next. Very few, if any, programs in Texas or the country are prepared to handle the demands of a higher support need individual.

(06:32): We were a little dismayed until we talked to the guys at Howdy Homemade in Dallas that’s a chain of ice cream stores. Tom, the founder, kept using a word I kept pushing him on: I asked who he hires, how verbal they need to be, what skill set is required. He said their vision is to provide employment for all kinds of people with challenges and special needs. Even though they don’t yet have a lot of high-support staff, the key word was “yet.” He kept saying “yet” there’s always that possibility, that dream, that aspiration.

(07:35): So when you think about High Point Village’s day program and where you’re headed with residential, how comfortable would you be telling a parent, “Bring us your profoundly autistic son more support needs than Zeke, probably more than a lot of your villagers but you have the resources and are willing to help with staffing”? Is that “we’ll give it a challenging try,” “no problem, we can do it,” or “not a chance”? Where do you land on that spectrum?

Nathan Bryant (07:44): Somewhere between “we’ll give it a try” and “yeah, we’ll do it.” I’ve been here two and a half years; High Point has run programs for 17. I don’t know the full organizational history, but I’m learning it. Our longest-tenured employee has been on staff almost 15 years, so there are good people to ask, “How have we handled this in the past?” We still have an original board member who’s served most of our 18 years, so I can pick the brains of people who were there from the very beginning.

We run two day programs. One, Reach High, and one, Dream Big, which serves villagers with more profound needs. We’ve had villagers who fit the exact profile you’re describing come with their own attendant, supporting the staff we already have. Right now, Dream Big is staffed by two full-time coordinators serving eight villagers at a one-to-four ratio. Someone who needs closer to one-to-one would bring an attendant to help.

(08:29): In just the last two years that I’ve had eyes on the program, we’ve seen incredible success working with families and individuals who have profound needs for real growth not just in behaviors, but in attitude, skills, and coping mechanisms. One thing that’s unique about High Point is we’re not exclusive to autism. The spectrum of challenges our villagers have is as broad as anywhere I’ve seen. When people ask who we serve, the overwhelming majority have either an autism or Down syndrome diagnosis; those are the two big ones, but we serve about six other categories too, everything from Trisomy 18 to traumatic brain injury.

(09:25): One of my favorite stories: we have a villager, a man in his mid-30s, who was a neurotypical college freshman at Texas Tech when he was in a traffic accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He’s with us Monday through Thursday. He’s brilliant, speaks multiple languages, has deep conversations, but faces challenges with impulse control and mobility, and things don’t always add up the way they did before his accident. 

(10:11): My younger brother, ten years younger than me, visited after I started working here and recognized him. It turned out my brother had known him from a college retreat before the accident, and this young man still remembered him. 

(11:04): He’s just one of our 70 day program villagers, and every one has a unique story and a unique set of challenges. One of our core values is celebrating abilities. We look at what they can do and major on their strengths, while addressing the things that make life hard. 

(11:47): We don’t provide therapy here; we have space for therapy, and historically there’s been some speech and music therapy, but right now we don’t have therapists on staff. So there are limits to what we can do. But with a relational approach, we’ve seen villagers with profound challenges succeed in amazing ways. My two staff who lead Dream Big are exceptional. So I’d say bring them on if we have room. We have a waiting list for Reach High, and I believe one for Dream Big too. 

(12:26): It becomes a leadership question: could we take three more villagers in Dream Big and hire another staff member while keeping the right ratio? But I’m not a “never going to do something” kind of guy. Let’s figure out how we’re going to make it happen.

Mike Carr (12:29) : Let’s dig into a couple of things you mentioned. Dream Big has two staff, eight villagers and a one-to-four ratio. Our program, john13.org in Austin, runs the same ratio, and we also have a lot of higher support folks. What we’ve discovered is almost a “big brother” pairing dynamic: someone lower support gets paired with someone higher support, like our son who’s nonverbal but communicates through an iPad, and they develop this almost symbiotic relationship. 

(13:41): Together they do amazing things, and you see the real person blossom through the responsibility, fulfillment, excitement, and energy. With 70 villagers over 17 years, it sounds like you’ve seen this too, the group under Dream Big becoming almost like a big family. Talk about that, and also tell us what they actually do during the day.

Nathan Bryant (13:41): We believe in a lot of the same things when it comes to community integration. Dream Big has its own designated space, the most recently completed space at High Point, built to give them more room and opportunities but there’s a lot of daily integration with Reach High. Dream Big villagers aren’t kept separate from Reach High programming, including community outings. Sometimes Dream Big does its own outing, just the eight villagers and two staff; other times they join the Reach High vans. Day to day, it’s a combination of life skills, social skills, and practical living skills, especially as we move toward residential and try to build more independence. We don’t have the biggest building, but our janitor’s closet has a washer and dryer, and our Dream Big villagers love learning to do laundry sorting, moving things back and forth, and folding.

(14:32): We like getting into the community. We’ve run two Meals on Wheels routes for 15 years; some villagers have their 10-year or 15-year pin from delivering meals that long. Dream Big villagers often want to be on that route. There’s nothing better than receiving your meal from one of our villagers. We also serve at the local Ronald McDonald House, which supports families receiving medical care at one of our two hospital systems.

(15:10): Tuesdays are a fun day bowling. High Point has deep roots in bowling: the very first conversations between the parents who became our original board happened on a Sunday afternoon at a local bowling alley, during a special needs bowling league that still exists today, with many of our villagers still participating. 

(15:51): Those parents were watching their kids, who were in high school at the time, and asking each other, “What are they going to do after high school? What are they going to do when they graduate?” They looked around Lubbock and felt there was nothing they’d be comfortable putting their kids into so they decided to create something themselves. It was really the foresight and vision of those families. With those roots, we go back to that same bowling alley every Tuesday morning. We’re limited by the number of vans we have right now about 46 out of our 70 villagers can go bowling each week, so we rotate. We’ve talked about buying a bus, though not everyone wants to bowl every week anyway.

(16:25): Wednesdays we serve with Habitat for Humanity. We partner with other local nonprofits too Lubbock Impact, which runs a kitchen and clothing closet, and an organization called Found, many of them also faith-based. We’re always looking for more community opportunities. Most recently, in the last month and a half, we’ve leaned hard into our mission statement: we want to create a village where individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities can live, learn, work, worship, and achieve their full potential. We feel good about learning. We worship daily and hold a monthly chapel service, inviting local churches to join us; Bible study and worship are part of our daily routine. The “work” piece has always meant different things to different people. Is it earning a paycheck, or doing something productive? Community service has filled part of that, but some villagers want actual jobs.

(17:12): We hired back a young woman who was a longtime staffer, left to work at another organization in Austin, and came back to Lubbock. In her words, Lubbock is better than Austin, though I love Austin too. She gained great experience running a vocational program there, and now she’s finding community partners interested in employing adults with IDD. The Texas Workforce Commission works with employers on this too, but we’re looking specifically for partners who already buy into High Point’s vision. We’ve connected with a car wash chain called Mighty Wash with locations around town. They’ve done car washes here, and now they’re taking it on the road to work at Mighty Wash itself. H-E-B grocery store has invited villagers to do curbside deliveries and pull groceries. Old Navy brought employees in at nearly a one-to-one ratio to show villagers everything involved in opening the store stocking, folding, and more. 

(17:52): So on top of community service and volunteering, we’re now building legitimate vocational job skills through these partnerships.

(18:34): To me and I don’t know where I first heard this framed this way High Point serves our villagers by giving them skills to maneuver in a world that wasn’t built for them, to interact with and succeed in a world that isn’t built for them. High Point is built for them. We’ve taken their needs and challenges into account so we can accommodate the unique things that make them who they are. The rest of the world doesn’t do that. I’d love for the world to become more accessible, but in the meantime, my staff can help villagers learn skills that make the world easier to live in, work in, and travel through. 

(19:24): That community integration works both ways. It makes Lubbock more beautiful when our villagers are out in public spaces, and it helps our villagers function better in a world that doesn’t naturally take their needs into consideration.

Mike Carr (19:38): Hey everyone, we’re going to stop our conversation with Nathan here for this week. We’ll come back next week and continue diving into residential and respite care. Please join us next week as Nathan, up at High Point Village in Lubbock, talks to us about his journey there.