How some students with disabilities avoid the ‘transition cliff’ after high school

For the past 10 months, Toronto student Danial Young rose at 6 a.m. on weekdays to attend a program vastly different from what he’d known, leaving friends and familiar teachers behind as he ventured into new spaces and was challenged to develop new skills. 

Yet on a sweltering day in late June, as the 20-year-old turned the page on high school, you couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. 

“It’s been very important to learn here, because you’re moving into the real world. You’re now evolving into this whole different person,” he said ahead of graduating from Project Search, a program that transitions young people with intellectual or developmental disabilities to the working world. 

“It’s been a really great experience.”

As they move through secondary school, most teens are busy learning, training for and planning their futures. Yet students with disabilities have vastly fewer opportunities. A patchwork of programs helps some transition into adulthood, but experts want more of these offerings to be accessible to everyone who needs them. 

Leaving high school is “a time of big change and big decisions, but also it’s potentially a time of crisis,” said Eddie Bartnik, an international consultant advising the Nova Scotia government on disability services. 

Without a strong, dedicated program planning for life after graduation, youths with disabilities can lose the valuable relationships and social connections they’ve built during their schooling, he says.

It can also leave families feeling adrift as, after school-related supports end, some young people languish at home.

Sometimes “one parent has to give up work,” Bartnik said, an option that is “very anxiety-provoking.”  

Transition programs are generally considered a responsibility of schools, according to Rachelle Hole, a UBC Okanagan professor of social work and co-director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship.

However, since they’re not mandated by every province or territory’s Ministry of Education, such efforts are often “left up to the individual school districts or perhaps inclusive education teachers,” she said.

Limited funding means some programs can only take on so many participants and, given what she calls “a patchwork approach” across regions, many families can face a “transition cliff” if they’re unable to access aid to bridge the gap.

Still, Hole praises the “pockets of excellence” across Canada, where different organizations, community groups and champions are successfully helping youth with disabilities tackle this milestone.

‘The right mix of ingredients’

Come September, eight new Project Search locations in Ontario will join the existing 22 across the province plus P.E.I. and Manitoba. 

The immersive model, followed by hundreds of branches worldwide, is designed to give participants enough time, space, clear instruction and support to build their technical and soft skills for workplaces, says Carolyn McDougall, the program’s Ontario-Canada co-ordinator. 

Locations typically receive funding and support from participating businesses, school boards, disability organizations and charities, employment agencies, private donors and foundations.

“Individuals with significant disabilities are capable of complex and systematic work when they have the right kind of components in their training,” said McDougall, who’s also manager of employment pathway programs at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. “You just need the right mix of ingredients.”

Young people with disabilities don’t often get a chance at the experiential learning — co-ops, volunteering or part-time jobs, for instance — that their peers do.

That means less direction after high school, says McDougall, but also “a heck of a lot less on your resumé and… so programs like this are so essential.”

For instance, Young — a fan of ’90s-era Jim Carrey movies — says he’s learned to rein in the jokes and be more professional at work. With practice, he’s also learned to make eye contact, about the importance of body language and tips for talking to new people, as well as learning workplace hazards systems and how to complete paperwork. 

“I’ve learned how to be confident and really adapt… how to not rush a task that was given,” he said.

He’s also tried jobs he never knew about, like being a hospital porter. “I didn’t think working in a hospital would be an environment I could join.”  

Project Search reports a nearly 68 per cent employment rate for graduates in Canada which, McDougall notes, is more than double the national employment rate (about 27 per cent) for individuals with a significant disability. 

Starting early

Hole, the UBC professor, has developed a free, online, transition-planning program for school districts that’s set to debut this fall. She says having transition programs in the final year of high school is helpful, but that evidence from the U.S. shows that starting earlier gets even better results.

It’s also vital for these programs to have co-ordinated funding from various ministries of the provincial and territorial governments, she says: education, but also health, labour, accessibility, social development and family services.

That’s “really key for the transition process to be experienced in a fluid kind of way.”  

In September, Nova Scotia will kick off its School Leavers Program, connecting 100 students with disabilities with local specialists to develop post-graduation plans. It’s part of a broader reform, following a landmark legal battle between the province and Nova Scotians with disabilities.

The program includes flexible, individualized funding, which might go to hiring support for workplace training, enrolling in a special swim class or transportation for a particular community offering, says Scott Armstrong, Nova Scotia’s minister of opportunities and social development.

“We’ve taken the best practices we’ve seen in other places and put them into the program,” he said. “We really think we’re on the right track.”

Armstrong anticipates the second cohort will double to 200 students and the program could eventually begin earlier. “Fifteen years old is a good time to start planning,” said the former school principal.

Jordan O’Neal, a Project Search alumnus, returned for this year’s graduation as a speaker. The program got him pondering the future: how to further his interest in computers, get his own place and be more independent.

One achievement his mother, Brendora Paul, is especially proud of is the 22-year-old taking public transit solo when he’d previously only travelled by school bus or with his parents. 

“[Before] it was out of the question for him to travel alone,” she said, whereas today he travels from home in the eastern suburb of Scarborough to his clothing retail job in downtown Toronto.  “Now we’re confident… he can get from point A to point B.”