“One thing that I know a lot of school districts are doing is ‘Dine and Discuss’ where they get families to understand the concept of transition and what to expect for their children. They come for dinner and then have all the social service agencies there. And so, it’s sort of like a job fair for the families and their kids. They get a lot of employers to donate gift cards and free meals at some of the restaurants and so forth. So they have a raffle. One thing we found was that when we had our transition meetings, it was all just professionals at the table. And as they started this ‘Dine and Discuss’, they started to get more parents coming to the Transition Council meetings. And because they started to become educated, now they’re more vocal and active.

We’re seeing some of the spin-offs from the career fairs or job fairs; now they’re doing the social service fairs where the agencies will have booths and folks who provide residential support services are there. A lot of the parents were saying we have younger children, so we can’t come. So now, they have set it up where they have a daycare that donates the time.”

Transition-age youth