First half of session

Background

When Thorkil Sonne’s son was diagnosed with Infantile Autism 8 years ago – the Sonne family had to rethink their plans for the future. Thorkil was elected president of a local branch of Autism Denmark. During the three years presidency Thorkil learned, that despite the special skills of persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) they do not stand a chance in the labor market – as they do not meet the expectations of social skills.

Thorkil also realised that changes will not come from within the existing welfare system. So – Thorkil quit his position as technical director in an IT-company and established SPECIALISTERNE (meaning ‘The Specialists’).

The company is based on a mortgage in the family’s house – no external funding has been provided.

The concept

The mission of SPECIALISTERNE is to take advantage of the autism characteristics in a positive way solving valuable tasks for the corporate sector at market terms.

The vision of SPECIALISTERNE:

• SPECIALISTERNE will give people with ASD the opportunity to use and develop their special skills based on their own qualifications, strengths and ambitions.

• SPECIALISTERNE will offer new special skills to the business community in niche areas which demand insight, precision and regularity.

• SPECIALISTERNE will prove to society that people with ASD can be equal contributors to the development of our society.

• SPECIALISTERNE will compete on market terms and open offices nationally and internationally so as many people as possible with ASD will have the opportunity to realise their employment ambitions.

The concept consist of

Enabling Centres for training candidates with ASD.

We provide a 5 month training program to cope with the fact that candidates mostly do not have IT-relevant education certificates or positive job references.

After the training SPECIALISTERNE offers employment to close to 2 out of every 3 candidates.

Business Centres for solving valuable tasks for the corporate customers at market terms.

We find the niches in the market, where we can provide a higher quality because of the skills derived from the ASD characteristics.

The Business Centres provides at market terms services like software test, quality control and data conversions for customers like CSC, Oracle, Microsoft and leading Danish IT companies within the telco, finance and IT markets.

Academy as a knowledge base for education, training, methods, best practises across location and borders

The organization

SPECIALISTERNE is a private owned Danish based Social Firm with offices in the two largest cities in Denmark with 50 employees (75% with ASD).

SPECIALISTERNE was awarded ‘Best Large Social Firm Europe 2006’

The first international SPECIALISTERNE office is expected to be established in the UK first half of 2008.

SPECIALISTERNE intents to become a global company in order to give as many people as possible the chance of using their special skills as competitive assets in the labor market.

The second half of the session

ASD is an international phenomenon – and the requirements of the business sector for specialist resources are the same internationally.

Only the cultures and the welfare systems differ.

We believe that if we work together, the knowledge and know-how of SPECIALISTERNE can be used in the US to create hundreds of employment opportunities in the US.

However – it will never become a success without the non-financial support of the ASD community.

The last part of the session will be a dialogue of the opportunities and threads to a transfer of the concept and the know-how of SPECIALISTERNE to create hundreds of employment opportunities in the US.