Who is this resource for?
The resource has been developed for Year 9 - 12 students with an intellectual disability who intend to work in open employment.[1] It was also developed for use by these young people's families, schools and community supports.
Time stops for no one
"The fog comes on little feet"
Like a cat, fog moves quietly, slowly, and almost without notice. Then, there it is, right in front of you! This can so often be said of the future. We are all so consumed with the activities and demands of daily life that we sometimes lose sight of the future. But the future has a way of "suddenly" appearing and catching us off guard.[2]
Whether we are prepared for it or not, time waits for no one. Before we know it the years of childhood have passed and we find ourselves facing life as an adult.
Let's be upfront about it - the transition to adult life isn't straight-forward for any young person and becomes even more complicated if you happen to be a young person with an intellectual disability. Becoming an adult is one of the most significant journeys we undertake in our lives. It can be exciting, challenging, surprising, stressful, frustrating and intimidating for the young person as well as their family and supports. There are also many important and complex decisions and choices to make about what you want your future to look like. As such, it is important to take the time and effort to think through your options and plan for this transition.
This resource has been developed to assist young people with an intellectual disability with this journey to the future - transitioning from the relatively protective environment that school can offer to face the world as adults with adult rights, responsibilities and desires. It includes information about how to identify and prioritise life goals and how you might use the resources available to work toward these goals. We have also tried to highlight issues that young people, their families, schools and support agencies have identified as having the capacity to improve transition outcomes.
There are no one size fits all answers for transition planning and the information included in this resource is provided as a guide only. All decisions made should be based upon each individual's needs, interests and values.
Why start transition planning in Year 9?
Life planning does not happen over night, nor is it achieved in the space of a year.
As each year passes, school subjects become more specialised and we select and focus on skills to best equip ourselves to achieve our learning and life goals. This resource starts in Year 9 as this is the year when young people in the ACT are expected to take a more active role on deciding what, when and how they will learn through Student Pathways Planning. Year 9 is also the first year when students are able to take Vocational Education and Training courses and other workplace learning options.
Resource contents
The resource comprised of the following sections:
1. Transitioning to Adult Life Themes Poster
The poster includes images that represent roles, rights, responsibilities and activities commonly associated with adult life to encourage teenagers to explore what life as an adult means to them. The areas identified may not be relevant to all teenagers but are intended to promote discussion and provide opportunities for teenagers to identify their goals and the possible skill sets required to attain them - at home, at home, at work and in the community.
The poster is designed to be explored over time rather than in one sitting and should be placed somewhere that allows for reflection and review (such as a bedroom wall or the toilet door).
2. Student Introduction to Transition Planning
If a young person is unable to identify what they want their future to look like - their goals and aspirations - it is makes it hard to get all the different people and agencies together to support them to achieve it. This section has been written for young people to introduce them to transition planning and to encourage them to take an active role in planning for their future.
This person-centred planning section is further supported through the inclusion of a set of symbol format workbooks developed by the Tasmanian Department of Education (with permission) to assist young people to think about what they want to achieve now and in the future, set goals and develop action plans to achieve them.
3. Transition Planning and school processes
In the broadest terms, the goal of education is to prepare the individual to live, participate and contribute to society - but how does this actually work in practice?
This section attempts to help demystify some of the school processes so that we are better able to make them work for us rather than against us. It includes information and suggestions about how to get the most out of the Individual Learning Plan process, curriculum framework and teaching strategies.
The Ministry of Education, British Columbia, Canada also allowed us to include a set of case studies they developed that look at two very different student with diverse needs and how they were supported through their Individual Learning Plans. (See Appendix 5)
4. Life Domain Checklists, information & advice
As we have implied already - a plan is pretty useless without goals. This section includes functional skill checklists and associated information and advice to help individuals to "inventory" the skills they already possess and identify what life skills and goals they want to achieve. The checklists are divided into the following 8 life-domains:
- Personal Presentation & Personal Hygiene
- Physical Health & Wellbeing
- Independent Travel
- Financial Independence / Money Management
- Work Skills & Career Competencies
- Home Life Skills
- Social Networks & Life in the Community
- Self-Determination
The checklist layout was designed to help individuals to prioritise skills and goals important to them and includes space to identify when a skill might be focused on.
At the top of each checklist are the "big scary questions" associated with each life domain - the overarching goals and issues that are known to send shivers up and down our spines. We felt that it was important to include these larger themes so that we keep our eye on the prize as it were. However, these big scary questions, when left on their own, can seem unachievable. The functional skill checklists allows us to re-focus on the practical skills that we can develop that will assist us to achieve our long term goals.
The functional skills checklists were not intended to be comprehensive, but we have tried to include the more common skills and activities that young people will experience. Not all skills will be applicable and space has been left to include other skills sets. We have separated some skill sets down into small subsets, to provide examples of how a skill may be acquired over time, by breaking a larger skill or long-term goal into smaller parts.
We are grateful to the Western Australian Disability Services Commission for agreeing to allow us to intertwine sections from their superbly written web-based resource for parents and carers of teenagers with a disability, "Transitions: Moving forward with your teenage child".
[1] For the purpose of this resource, "Open Employment" is defined as full-time or part-time employment in the open labour market where an individual is paid the relevant minimum wage. This does not include employment in a Business Service (formerly known as a sheltered workshop) where an individual may require one-to-one or very high levels ongoing support and assistance to maintain employment.
[2] Gillman, D & Schlicht B 2005, Transition to Adult Health Care: A Training Guide in Two Parts , Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, p5. Based upon a line of poetry by Carl Sandburg. Accessed 10/8/2006
www.waisman.wisc.edu/hrtw/Adult_Teen.pdf
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