Programs and services
A three-year college experience for autistic adults, on the Bristol Community College campus in Fall River. Classes in life skills (starting with PEERS®), theatre, and health and wellness, plus enrichment courses students pick themselves. Two full days a week on campus, with your cohort.
Community Autism Resources (CAR) runs it, not the college.
GAP is built around the things nobody teaches you: managing money, living independently, including in someone else's home, getting around, adult social skills, which aren't school social skills, and adult bullying, which happens and which nobody prepares you for.
People come to GAP for different reasons.
These three overlap more than they look. If one sounds like you, or like the person you're reading for, come and see it.
You're finishing high school and nothing after it looks obvious.
Most students arrive right around here. Three years is long enough to try things, get good at some of them, and work out what you want next, instead of deciding it all in the summer after graduation.
You want more independence than you have, and you want to build up to it.
Leaning on a parent at eighteen is normal, not a problem to solve. GAP is a place to practice independence with support close by: a campus, a schedule you keep, enrichments you chose, and staff there all day.
You want a campus, and a few years of being a student.
A campus to walk around, a cafeteria, people to sit with, a schedule that's yours. After three years of being a student, it's easier to name what comes next.
GAP is funded through the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS), so families pay nothing, and there's no way to pay privately.
The funding has to be there
Your DDS service coordinator, the person at DDS who arranges your services, arranges the funding. Without DDS eligibility, GAP isn't an option, however much a family wants it.
The student has to want it
Not the parent, not the school, not the service coordinator. The classes work because everyone in the room picked them, and when that isn't true it shows early. It's the only thing GAP turns anyone down for, and when that happens it's usually a question of timing.
Readiness can come later
Some students aren't ready at eighteen and are at twenty. People have applied, waited a couple of years, applied again and done well. If the answer today is not yet, visit anyway; seeing GAP often helps someone decide.
Admission is rolling, with no deadline, and depends on space. Some years the cohort is full by December, some years there's room in September.
GAP is open to people who live in our service area. The map on our About page shows every town we serve.
If you're not sure where you stand with DDS, call us and we'll find out with you.
Inside the three years
Three core areas run through all three years. Around them, students choose their own enrichments.
The shape of a week
When · Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:00 AM to 3:30 PM. Full days, both days.
Where · The Bristol Community College campus, Fall River.
A day · Five classes: three core, then two enrichments after lunch.
A year · Three 12-week terms, with a five-week break between each.
A class · Fifteen students, with a classroom advisor who stays with the cohort all day.
Three years · More than 1,000 hours of instruction.
Students change classroom and instructor about every hour. The classroom advisor doesn't change: the same person is with the cohort all day, in every class. Each core subject has one instructor who teaches it to all three cohorts, so the person teaching a student in year three taught them in year one, and knows by then how they learn, when to push and when to ease off.
Life skills
Year one · PEERS®, then self-advocacy and self-awareness.
Year two · Independent living, financial management, home economics.
Year three · Work skills, a digital portfolio, a wrap-up term.
PEERS® is an evidence-based social skills curriculum developed at UCLA. How long it runs depends on the group: usually a term or two, longer if the questions keep coming.
Theatre and performing arts
Year one · Performance, monologues, stage movement.
Year two · Singing, scriptwriting, one-act plays.
Year three · A production students write, direct and perform themselves.
Students practice speaking in public, taking part in their community, understanding their own emotions and taking criticism, and most of them simply find it fun.
Health and wellness
All three years · Nutrition, mental and emotional wellness, fitness.
It's taught as adult self-care: reading food labels and learning what macronutrients and micronutrients do, trying different kinds of exercise (if you don't like it, you won't keep doing it), and using a gym safely, in the campus gym a student ID already opens.
Enrichments students choose
Two a day, picked by the student, with all three years in the room together, so students get to know people outside their own cohort. The catalog changes from term to term with what students are interested in, who's available to teach and the season: gardening isn't a winter course, and sports and games run in summer.
Recent enrichments · coding, animal care, photography, entrepreneurship, creative writing, chorus, Dungeons & Dragons, film study, drawing, painting, art history, comic book history, podcasting, cooking, gardening, sustainable farming, dance, Zumba, world building, voice acting, papercrafting, mythology, philosophy, psychology, CPR and first aid, 3D printing and a MakerSpace, among others. When students want something new, it gets added.
How students are assessed, and how they assess back
Nine soft skills, scored every term in every class · communication and interpersonal skills, work ethic, problem solving, initiative, professionalism, adaptability, teamwork, quality of work, time management.
At the start of the next term the student and staff sit down with the scores, and the student picks one skill to work on. Instructors leave comments, and an administrator adds one that captures what they're all seeing. The written feedback is personal, not a form.
Every term, students evaluate the course, the instructor and the classroom advisor.
The visit comes first
Somewhere to be
A campus, a cafeteria, people to walk with. Five times a day the whole cohort is up and moving.
Questions people actually ask
GAP is a three-year college experience for autistic adults on the Bristol Community College campus in Fall River, run by Community Autism Resources (CAR), not by the college. Students take classes in three core areas, life skills (starting with PEERS®), theatre, and health and wellness, plus enrichment courses they choose themselves. It isn't a degree program. It's a real campus experience built around the things people are expected to know and are rarely taught.
Autistic adults who live in our service area, are eligible for services from the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS), and have a DDS service coordinator, who starts the referral and approves the funding. View our service area map for every town we serve. Most students start around the time they leave high school. If you're not sure where you stand with DDS, call us and we'll find out with you.
Nothing to the student or the family. GAP is funded through DDS as part of a person's approved services. There's no tuition and no way to pay privately, so without DDS eligibility GAP isn't an option. CAR also provides all school supplies, binders, paper and pencils included.
Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:00 AM to 3:30 PM, on the Bristol Community College campus in Fall River. GAP runs three 12-week terms a year, with a five-week break between each, and students are on campus the full day both days.
Three core areas run through all three years: life skills, which opens with PEERS®, an evidence-based social skills curriculum developed at UCLA; theatre and performing arts; and health and wellness. Students also choose enrichment courses, which change with interest, the season and who's available to teach. Recent ones include coding, animal care, photography, entrepreneurship, creative writing, chorus and Dungeons & Dragons. Underneath all of it are the things you're expected to know after high school and rarely get taught: managing money, living independently, getting around, adult social skills and adult bullying.
Five classes: three core classes, lunch, then two enrichments. Students change classroom and instructor about every hour, on purpose, because moving between rooms and teachers is part of what makes a regular campus manageable later. Classes have up to 15 students, and each cohort has a classroom advisor who stays with them all day, so there's a familiar person in every room.
No. GAP is non-credit. Classes are held on a college campus and students use campus spaces, but students earn a Certificate of Completion from CAR, not a degree or college credit. What GAP offers is the campus, the schedule, the coursework and the social life of college, at a size and pace that works.
Start with a conversation, and a visit, before any paperwork. GAP requires that the student wants to be there: the classes work because everyone chose them, and when the decision was really a parent's, it shows early. CAR has turned applicants down for this, but it isn't a permanent no. Students have applied, not been accepted, come back a couple of years later and done well. If the answer right now is not yet, a visit is still worth it.
Start with a visit, before any forms. Contact us to see the campus and the classes. Some parents tour on their own first, and your service coordinator often comes along, since their referral depends on seeing the student there. The visit is also the interview. After that: a short first page of the application, the coordinator's referral, a writing sample about why the student wants to attend, an optional trial day, then a review and a decision. Orientation is the week before term starts. Admission is rolling and depends on space, but DDS eligibility and a service coordinator have to be in place first, so start that early.
In the third year, students build a digital portfolio, write, direct and perform their own production, and can complete a 20-hour internship in one of CAR's own settings or, where it can be arranged, somewhere that fits their interests.
Students don't have to leave CAR after GAP. College Navigation runs during GAP and after it, so a student taking a single Bristol Community College course can have support with it. Many students go on to Individualized Support, one-to-one help with daily-life goals they set themselves. Each CAR program has its own approval from DDS. Tell your service coordinator what you'd like to try next. Because DDS already knows you through CAR, that's usually a short conversation, and we handle the rest.
Individualized Support
One-to-one work on the daily-life goals you set yourself, for adults with DDS support. A lot of students go here next.
Healthy Relationships & PEERS®
Year one covers PEERS® here, and the course keeps running for adults after GAP.
Plan the next step before you finish
Moving to another CAR program is planned with you well before you finish. Each CAR program has its own approval from DDS. Tell your service coordinator what you'd like to try next. Because DDS already knows you through CAR, that's usually a short conversation, and we handle the rest.
