A group of local schools, governments and state agencies met last Tuesday to discuss ways to improve a system that helps students with developmental disabilities move from school into full-time jobs.
Stakeholders from Lewis County Public Health and Human Services, Olympic Academy, the Chehalis and Centralia school districts and the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services were among those assembled at the Reliable Enterprises building in Centralia, June 17, for a group training session.
The first of its kind in the area, the event was run by two consultants with the Washington Initiative for Supported Employment, Debra McLean and Emily Harris, who asked the stakeholders to look into the future and picture how they hope their programs can improve the school-to-employment transition.
Each of the groups present at the event is involved in supporting or educating people with developmental disabilities, either in school or in their careers, and play a role in the transition that generally happens between the ages of 16 to 22. The event is meant to improve cooperation and collaboration between each element of the transition and improve the quality of support.
According to Sara Sons, the Lewis County developmental disabilities coordinator, the program has needed improvement for a while, but last week’s event was prompted by increasing demand for services as local schools and other services are doing a better job of engaging and educating students and their families on the resources available.
“I wouldn't say it's new. We’ve had a need to improve transition services, but we are seeing an increase in numbers per students who could be potentially eligible, and there’s also new state services that could become available, so we’re wanting to just better coordinate together in our community,” Sons said. “We’re definitely seeing an increase in numbers.”
The event, while called training, was more a session of in-depth goal setting as people from all sides of a system designed to help people with disabilities become independent shared how they want the system to work in the future and where they see a need for improvement and cooperation.
The event's facilitators, McLean and Harris, began by asking those in the room to share what they want programming to look like in 2028 and then worked backwards. For their vision for 2027 and 2026, people took a similar approach, but with the context of trying to bridge the gap between what services look like currently and what they want them to look like in 2028.
Long term goals highlighted during the session focused largely on communication and cooperation between the different programs as well as with the students and their families.
Ideas ranged from large and generalized ideas such as wanting families to feel supported to more specific goals, such as finding more paid internships or more accessible employers in certain areas.
Ideas were varied as the transition process is often complex and individualized to each person. The work leading up to a transition into a career starts long before the day a student leaves their school. It begins with an individualized education program document that evaluates skills and interests in order to find a job that fits each individual.
During the event, McLean shared how important it is for transitions to be different and tailored to each person.
“They should always be individualized, so you go with what people seem to be interested in and then also think really closely observing the person and collecting information from people who know and care about them,” McLean said during a break in the meeting. “To put anybody in any old job is like giving them a pair of shoes that may or may not fit them.”
While it was the first meeting of its kind, Sons said the county plans to make the exercise a yearly event between the stakeholders to check up on the progress toward the groups’ shared goals and to identify new goals or overcome new challenges.
“This is new but it's something that we will revisit. So, we're setting a vision for the future and we'll probably meet a year from now and say, ‘OK, how are we doing? What have we accomplished?”
