Jorge just turned 18. He is nonverbal, uses a tablet to communicate, and relies on strict routines to stay calm — but under Nevada law, his 18th birthday instantly stripped his mother of the legal authority to make a single phone call on his behalf. For Ivonne Agiss, that meant scrambling through family court just to keep her son's therapy and services intact.
Agiss, who speaks Spanish as her first language, told KLAS 8 News Now that she could not obtain services for Jorge without guardianship paperwork in hand. Jorge was diagnosed with autism at age 2, and he has received occupational therapy, speech therapy, and Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA, over the years — therapies his mother says he still needs to continue. Under Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 159, an individual automatically gains full legal rights upon turning 18, which meant Agiss had to petition the court for adult guardianship just to keep making medical, educational, and financial decisions for her son, according to the Eighth Judicial District Court of Nevada.
She eventually secured that guardianship, along with continued therapy for Jorge, but she described the process of navigating adult programs after leaving school as walking on nails, per the station's report. Jorge panics when something changes and becomes frustrated when he cannot understand or express something, which is why routine and continued therapy matter so much to his day-to-day stability.
A System Built Around Childhood, Not Adulthood
Fadia Salman, a board certified behavior analyst who owns Watch Me Grow ABA Clinic in Henderson, told the outlet that ABA helps people build communication, social interaction, and daily living skills — but that she was unable to treat Jorge at her own clinic due to insurance barriers and other circumstances. Salman said she has observed insurance and access problems among other families as well, and she believes opportunities for autistic adults should be expanded rather than concentrated on the earliest years of a diagnosis.
Agiss said the programs she has encountered appear focused mainly on early childhood, leaving families like hers with fewer options once a child ages into adulthood. Jorge currently attends high school, and under Nevada Revised Statutes Section 388.5223, pupils with disabilities are entitled to public special education through age 21, meaning Jorge may remain in public school until that age if he has not yet earned a standard diploma, according to Justia Law. The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guarantees tailored special education and support services for eligible students, but that guarantee has a hard expiration date built into it.
Insurance Gaps Widen After High School
The gap Salman and Agiss describe is baked into Nevada's own laws. Nevada enacted Senate Bill 191 in September 2023, expanding Medicaid coverage for ABA therapy to autistic individuals up to age 27 — extending access well beyond the federal Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment age limit of 21, according to the Nevada Independent. But families relying on commercial insurance face a much tighter ceiling: under Nevada Assembly Bill 162, state-regulated commercial plans are only required to cover ABA therapy for people with autism under age 18, or up to age 22 if still enrolled in high school, and even then coverage is capped at $72,000 a year, per the Nevada Autism Center.
That mismatch between Medicaid's extended benefit and commercial insurance's narrower mandate leaves privately insured families like Jorge's searching for alternative funding or facing a halt in therapy right as their children become adults. Once Jorge and others like him leave school, families often encounter long waitlists for programs and calls to service providers that go unreturned, according to 8 News Now. The state's own workforce arm, the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, offers workforce development programs, but autistic adults still lack sufficient workforce assistance overall, the report notes.
Waitlists Stack Up Statewide
The bottleneck isn't unique to one family. Nevada's Aging and Disability Services Division reported in 2025 that more than 1,300 people were on state waitlists for developmental respite care, with hundreds more waiting for Home and Community-Based Services waivers, according to Nevada Current. Opportunity Village, a community service available across the Las Vegas Valley, is one of the resources families turn to, though it operates within the same strained system.
The scale of the challenge is only growing. Research from the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute estimates that between 70,000 and 110,000 autistic youth turn 18 and exit high school every year nationwide, with more than half remaining unengaged in employment or higher education during the two years after graduation. Updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates from April 2025 show autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 31 eight-year-old children in the United States, a rate that points to an even larger wave of young adults aging into a support system that families like the Agisses say is already stretched thin.
Families of autistic adults hope that speaking publicly about cases like Jorge's will raise awareness of the need for lifelong support, not just services concentrated around early diagnosis and childhood. For Agiss, that means continuing to push for therapy, workforce opportunities, and stability for her son — one guardianship hearing and one unreturned phone call at a time.
