Beloved autistic daughter has been working on her MSW for three years now–the last two trying to complete her internship. And her graduate program has been making her life pure hell.

First there was the internship supervisor who would never let her see a single client because she was “too autistic.” Mind you, the clients were themselves autistic and beloved daughter has a long history of working well with this population. But the “expert” supervisor didn’t think she could do it. And the MSW program wouldn’t even acknowledge that this was discriminatory. So that was one year of internship down.

The next supervisor did let her see clients–and lo and behold! She was extremely successful and much loved. That supervisor gave her two stellar evaluations, one in the fall and in the spring. She completed more than the 900 hours of supervised clinical work required for her degree. She had two very positive interviews with what would have been her dream job after graduation. And then the supervisor went off his medication, and literally became manic. Two weeks after giving her a great evaluation in which he said he had “no concerns” about her work, he abruptly fired her. (We think he was not only manic, but jealous because the clients actually preferred working with her to working with him.)

So what did the School of Social Work do? Did they recognize that she had already met all the requirements for her degree, both the 900 hours and the two evaluations, “generalist” and “advanced”? Don’t be silly. They (specifically, the director of field education) refused to count some of her hours, even though they had been approved by the supervisor and registered in the School’s data system. They claimed that her two evaluations didn’t count, because she hadn’t proved she could “sustain” her advanced clinical skills. Instead, they decided that she would have to start over with a third internship.

So, she found yet another internship–working under a guy with a Ph.D. from her very own School of Social Work, who does research at a very prestigious medical center. All the paperwork for recognizing this as her internship was submitted, but has it been approved? Again, don’t be silly. The School is dragging its feet without even offering an excuse. To make things worse, they won’t even let beloved daughter register for the course she needs to take alongside her internship. Again, no reason given.

Why does someone with so much talent and so much to give have to jump over artificial hurdles again and again and again? What is wrong with Schools of Social Work that they cannot recognize the value of and desperate need for autistic social workers?