What specific strategies have proven most effective in helping autistic individuals develop social skills and build meaningful relationships in adulthood?

In my case, living in a rehabilitative Christian community for about five years, including a five month live-in program, where there was structure, some social skills training, and counselling where needed.

I moved from “struggling” to “coping”, and went on to establish a career (now just retired after being the IT supervisor at a government agency) and a relationship (now married for over forty years with two grown up children and a grandchild).

When I was going through my diagnostic assessment and talking about my personal history, I commented that I don’t know where I’d be without that five year period of support and development. The psychologist replied, “You’d still be struggling.”

So, for me, this was effective in turning an emotionally and socially struggling, undiagnosed autistic person into a successful, eventually diagnosed autistic person. I suspect that a couple of other autistic people were amongst the many people to pass through the community or the live-in program. It was not focused on autism (no one really knew about it back then), but on anyone who needed that kind of support and environment, including people with mental health issues, or drug or criminal or other backgrounds who were seeking to change.

I am not sure how you replicate it, though. It was something of a one-off community. Some Salvation Army rehabilitative programs, and also GROW, might overlap somewhat with what I experienced — and L’Arche perhaps. My community had informal contact with GROW and L’Arche, as well as with a number of other Christian communities of the seventies and eighties. It was ecumenical, with informal contact with various Protestant and Catholic groups. It grew out of the sacrifice and hard work of a number of people back then.