MIA’S SPACE: Transition – It’s a Trip Are We There Yet?
By Pat Nobbie, PhD, Mia's mom
A few years ago, I gave a keynote talk with this title to a group of educators from the Southeast Regional Resource Center (SERRC) region.
I started the slide show with "My Transition to Transition," in which I spent a little time relating how my work in transition evolved from looking at the world through the lens of Mia's life and possibilities, and then gathering people and resources together to fill in some of the gaps. Along the way I have realized that this journey is never done...we will always be transitioning, and we will always be taking stock and asking, "Are we there yet?"
I'm going to tie the process of transitioning youth from high school to real life to Centers for Medicaid Services' (CMS) final rule for the characteristics of home and community-based settings that was released in January. States will need to assess whether their settings for home and community residential and day services provided under their waivers meet the characteristics of most integrated settings, in turn preventing isolation of individuals with disabilities from the community and other individuals who do not receive these types of services. States will need to craft a transition plan with CMS to move those settings and services to be more characteristically like "real life."
Now, back to high school. In the presentation mentioned above, I talked about Partnerships for Success, and how the opportunities for friendships and a social life and community participation developed naturally, teaching many of us that assumptions we had made about students with disabilities and programming that we had perpetrated with students' 'best interests' in mind had over the years only succeeded in isolating youth from each other. Research demonstrates that a majority of non-disabled high school students are interested in becoming friends with students with disabilities, but are unsure how. When questioned, students felt as though general education classrooms and high school clubs are the best places for these friendships to occur.
Students won't say, "We need to meet in integrated settings!" Without the benefit of rules and regulations-in spite of them at times-students figured out that the best way for them to get to know each other was to hang out with each other, in places where everyone hangs out.
Adult providers would do well to take a lesson from the youth who are transitioning from these experiences. It turns out employment in the community is another way to hang out where everyone hangs out. Most high school students work in jobs somewhere in their community. Currently, most students with disabilities don't have this essential life experience after high school. But while we've got a good core of students from PFS, and ASPIRE and Project SEARCH who have the "hanging out" part down, let's make the supports available that some kids will need so they can continue to thrive in the communities they've become part of.
Mia didn't necessarily get the benefit of anything we designed at the Council. But somehow she intuitively had the hanging out part down, and I tried not to get in her way. She's living and working in places where everyone else comes and goes. Undoubtedly, there are other transitions in our future, but if she has anything to do with it, the hanging out part won't change.
Tags: GCDD, Making a Difference, Mia's Space