Effective transition programming is a crucial component in ensuring that individuals with disabilities receive an appropriate education. The current study addressed transition practices as viewed by special education lead teachers and district-level transition personnel in South Carolina. These individuals reported their various responsibilities. They also reported that teacher, parent, and student participation in transition planning meetings ranged from 82% to 89% and that the majority of schools offered school-based work experiences as well as an array of other school-based functional learning opportunities. Transition personnel rated their district's transition services better than the lead teachers did. The study also found that schools addressed certain areas of the transition process better than others. Several areas of transition services were not adequately addressed and need to be strengthened, including supported employment, advocacy and legal services, medical services management, community residential life, and approaches to providing life skills and functional skills instruction in relationship to state standards.
BACKGROUND: Locally-based and collaborative interagency transition teams have long been considered to be a "best practice" in the delivery of high school-to-adult life transition services for young adults with disabilities. Nevertheless, very little research exists assessing the specific team development and collaboration activities that these teams undertake in their efforts to improve outcomes for youth residing in their communities. As a result, although we believe local interagency teams are an effective vehicle for planning and delivering transition services, we know very little about the specific characteristics and activities of these teams. This is problematic for technical assistance (TA) providers, as well as for local team leaders, as we have limited guidance to offer teams in their initiation and membership struggles, goal setting and attainment activities, action planning models, or processes for reaching consensus. We have even less guidance to offer teams for their specific collaborative and interagency activities such as evaluating the viability of interagency agreements, the impact of joint personnel and service funding, or guidelines for making policy and procedural revisions. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this report is to explore these issues with local interagency teams in South Carolina by summarizing self-reported data on team development and collaboration interagency activities from 22 local interagency teams followed by the Transition Alliance of South Carolina (TASC) between September 2015 and September 2016. This report will also suggest TA activities for providers to focus upon as well as team leadership activities for local team leaders to use to initiate and lead teams in their local communities.
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