A catch-22 is only a trap until someone’s there to catch you.
Each year, thousands of autistic young adults age out of foster care and into a catch-22 of deadlines — set as early as age 22 — that can quietly decide the rest of their lives. This project exists to close that catch: pairing the Foundation’s research and assistive technology with direct, human advocacy to get each of them across in time.
Why “Catch-22”
The name says what we are up against — and what we intend to do about it.
A catch-22 is a rule you cannot win against: you need the thing, but the rule is built so you can’t get it. That is the transition out of foster care for an autistic young adult — a maze of deadlines all but engineered to be missed.
One of those deadlines is age 22. An individual disabled before 22 can qualify for Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefits on a parent’s Social Security record — meaningfully more than the baseline Supplemental Security Income cap. Miss the threshold, and the higher benefit is gone for life.
This project began with one person: Paul. Disabled before adulthood, he crossed that threshold a matter of weeks too late — his lifetime benefits permanently lowered by a date no one told him to watch.
But a catch-22 only holds while no one is there to break it. That is the whole point of this project: to be there in time — with research, technology, and advocacy — so the deadline that caught Paul stops catching anyone else.
The fuller story — of a family of ten, all displaced, and the brother the system lost — is told in Our Story.
When an autistic youth turns 18 — or 21 or 22, depending on the state — federal educational entitlements end completely. Three gaps open at once, and a young adult with the least support is asked to cross all three alone.
I
Securing SSI, Medicaid waivers, and housing assistance demands immense legal and administrative stamina against rigid, unforgiving timelines. Foster youth aging out rarely have a consistent advocate to manage them — which is precisely how the most consequential deadlines get missed.
II
There is a catastrophic shortage of supportive, neuro-inclusive housing. Autistic adults who age out of care face extreme risk of housing instability, couch-surfing, or placement in restrictive institutional settings — simply because semi-independent, community-based options do not exist.
III
Standard vocational-rehab programs are rarely tailored to the sensory, cognitive, and communicative profiles of autistic adults. Without structured, sensory-aligned transition programs, meaningful employment and stable daily routines stay out of reach.
The Project closes this gap from two directions — building its own systemic and technical assets, sharpened by the Foundation’s research, and directing grants to the organizations already meeting the immediate, physical need.
The Project’s own workstreams — benefit-cliff mapping and affect-aware assistive tools — developed with partners and informed by the Foundation’s research, never the other way around.
Benefit-Cliff Mapping
Open data models that map the bureaucratic bottlenecks in welfare, foster-care, and Social Security systems and flag at-risk youth before they pass critical age thresholds like the age-22 SSI/DAC window. We draw on the AI Watch Lab’s systemic-safety methods, and develop our own.
Affect-Aware Assistive Tools
Assistive software and environmental frameworks — built with autistic adults, not merely for them — that help manage sensory overload, scaffold daily living, and navigate workplace communication. We apply affect-aware methods studied in Cogs, on our own terms.
Targeted grants to legal clinics, housing pilots, and transition programs meeting the need on the ground today.
Legal & Administrative Advocacy
Grants to independent legal clinics and social-work networks dedicated to managing transition paperwork — SSI, Medicaid, and DAC applications — for neurodivergent foster youth aged 16 to 23, so no one misses a statutory deadline.
Neuro-Inclusive Housing Blueprints
Sponsorship of architectural and community pilots that design scalable, sensory-safe, semi-independent living micro-communities — an alternative to institutionalization and instability.
Sensory-Aligned Pathways to Work
Support for transition programs built around the sensory and communicative profiles of autistic adults, so that employment and a stable daily routine become realistic, not aspirational.
01
Which bureaucratic deadlines silently decide a disabled person’s lifetime benefits — and can an open model surface them before they pass?
02
What does semi-independent, sensory-safe housing look like when it is designed with autistic adults from the first sketch?
03
How do we build assistive technology that expands a person’s autonomy instead of quietly managing it?
Give to the Catch-22 Project, fund a transition-advocacy pilot, or bring housing, legal, or self-advocacy expertise to the work. Every note is read by a member of the leadership team.