Transition Services

Transition Services for Special Education Students

A Life-Span Path to Independency and Self-Empowerment

Abstract

This study examined the issues on life-span transition services for special education students . By exploring the existing approaches to transition services and analyzing outcomes they provide for the disabled persons the study tried to find out the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches as well as to define the future trends able to enhance transition programs designed to increase the likelihood that the disabled person will be able to secure and maintain employment , function independently in

the community , and ultimately become a satisfied and productive member of society

The results of the study demonstrated that to be successful transition services have to be transdisciplinary in nature . Besides , the use of collaborative teaming among professionals , agencies , the student , and family members , the use of the curriculum that focuses on the interactions between the student and his /her environments as well as the establishment and use of interagency linkages to facilitate the smooth transfer of support and training from the school to adult and community agencies when the student exits public schools are the most important components of successful life-span transition programs

Transition Services for Special Education Students

A Life-Span Path to Independency and Self-Empowerment

A few decades ago the society faced disturbing outcome data of the students with disabilities (Repetto , 1995 ,

. 128 ) and fully realized that due to little concern given to vocational and transition programs for these students the latter experienced increased school dropout and unemployment rates as statistics showed . Those students have often graduated from the school lacking the skills essential to live or function autonomously in the community , and often failing to find and keep job (Levinson , 1998 ,

. 29 . It is evident such state of things has been costly for both financial and personal considerations . On the one hand , the society was to provide social security for these persons , and on the other hand , the person himself was not satisfied with job career and own dependence . The necessity to change this state of affairs has led to growing concentration upon enhancing transition services for the persons with disabilities within the past one and a half decade . Three factors contributed to this process : adoption of federal legislation supporting and promoting transition services availability of state federal , and local funds invested in their development (Shapiro Rich 1999 ,

.51 and a number of scientific and empirical studies on effective transition practices (Kohler Field , 2003 ,

. 174

The purpose of this study is to explore how life-span transition services can ensure smooth integration of the special needs students into the community and provide them with the skills sufficient for successful career development . Toward this end we will scrutinize prevailing approaches to transition services , discuss their advantages and shortcomings analyze the components making transition programs implementation successful and make the conclusions as to the ways of these programs improvement

Definition of Transition Services

Transition services were defined in by the law as

A coordinated set of...