TIP Guidelines for the Development and Operation of a Transition System for Youth and Young Adults with Emotional & Behavioral Difficulties

1. Engage young people through relationship development, person-centered planning, and a focus on their futures.

• Use a strength-based approach with young people, their families, and other informal and formal key players.
• Build relationships and respect young persons' relationships with family members and other informal and formal key players.
• Facilitate futures planning and goal setting.
• Include prevention planning for high-risk behaviors and situations, as necessary.
• Engage young people in positive activities of interest.
• Respect cultural and familial values and young persons' perspectives

2. Tailor services and supports to be accessible, coordinated, appealing, non-stigmatizing, and developmentally-appropriate, building on strengths to enable the young people to pursue their goals across relevant transition domains.

• Facilitate young persons' goal achievement across relevant transition domains
  • Employment and Career
  • Educational Opportunities
  • Living Situation
  • Community Life Functioning
• Tailor services and supports to be developmentally-appropriate, addressing the needs and building on the strengths of young people, their families, and other informal key players.
• Ensure that services and supports are accessible, coordinated, appealing, and non-stigmatizing.
• Balance the transition facilitator's role with that of the young person, their parents, and other informal and formal key players.

3. Acknowledge and develop personal choice and social responsibility with young people.

• Encourage problem-solving methods, decision making, and evaluatioin of impact on self and others.
• Balance one's work with young people between two axioms:
  • Maximize the likelihood of the success of young people
  • Allow young people to contact natural consequences through life experience

4. Ensure that a safety-net of support is provided by a young person's parents, family members, and other informal and formal key players.

• Involve parents, family members, and other informal and formal key players.
• Assist in mediating differences in the perspectives of young people, parents, and other informal and formal key players.
• Facilitate the team with an unconditional commitment to the young person among his/her key players.
• Create an atmosphere of hopefulness, fun, and a future focus.

5. Enhance young persons' competencies to assist them in achieving greater self-sufficiency and confidence.

• Utilize information and data from strength discovery and functional assessment methods.
• Teach meaningful skills relevant to the young people across transition domains.
• Use in-vivo teaching strategies in relevant community settings.
• Develop skills related to self-management, problem-solving, self-advocacy, and self-evaluation of the impact of one's choices and actions on self and others.

6.Maintain an outcome focus in the TIP system at the young person, program, and system levels.

• Focus on a young person's goals and the tracking of his/her progress
• Evaluate the responsiveness and effectiveness of the TIP system
• Use process and outcome measures for continuous TIP system improvement

7. Involve young people, parents, and other community partners in the TIP system at the practice, program, and community levels.

• Maximize the involvement of young people, family members, other informal and formal key players, and relevant community representatives.
• Tap the talents of peers and mentors
  • Hire young adults as peer associates to work with.
  • Assist young people in creating peer support groups and youth leadership opportunities.
  • Use paid and unpaid mentors (e.g., co-worker mentors, college mentors, apartment roommate mentors)
• Partner with young people, parents, and others in the TIP system governance and stewardship
• Advocate for system development, expansion, evaluation, and reform of funcing and policy to facilitate implementation of responsive, effective community transition systems for youth and young adults and their families

Conclusion

The TIP Guidelines provide a framework for the development, expansion, and operation of a TIP system based on research and studies of program values and best practices of transition programs for youth and young adults with emotional and behavioral difficulties. As discussed, the transition system must be value driven, with policies and procedures that provide a framework that supports the practices and efforts of the TIP personnel in facilitating the individual goals of their young people.

The transition period for youth and young adults struggling with emotional/behavioral difficulties is fraught with unique barriers that put this particular population at significantly greater risk for school failure, involvement with correctional authorities and/or dependency on social services. These youth have the highest rates of drop out from secondary school among all disability groups (Marder & D'Amico, 1992). Also, these youth experience the poorest outcomes in later employment, arrests, incarceration, and independent living (Davis & Vander Stoep, 1996; Marder & D'Amico, 1992; Silver, Unger, & Friedman, 1993). The youth that have or are at-risk of emotional/behavioral difficulties range from the adolescent girl who is suffering from severe depression due to previous sexual abuse to the adolescent boy who lives in a "war zone" type neighborhood and has been arrested recently for auto theft. Neither of these youth create a "poster child image" around which to rally support. The transition period for youth and young adults with emotional/behavioral difficulties is complicated further by the lack of coordinated services among children's mental health, child welfare, educational, adult mental health, substance abuse treatment, and rehabilitation sectors (Clark, Unger, & Stewart, 1993; Knitzer, Steinberg, & Fleisch, 1990; Koroloff, 1990; Modrcin & Rutland, 1989; Stroul & Friedman, 1986). The resulting poor outcomes for these youth and young adults are extremely costly on three fronts: the individual and his/her family, security and comfort of the community, and local, state, and federal governmental entities. >> top

The complex challenges of the transition process of these young people and their unique needs poses a major challenge to parents, practitioners, administrators, and policy makers. It also presents a compelling argument for designing transition systems around a solid framework of promising strategies. The purpose of this summary is to provide an overview of a framework for the development and operation of transition systems.

**This summary was adapted from a chapter that was prepared by Clark, Deschênes, and Jones for inclusion in: H.B. Clark and M. Davis, Eds., (April, 2000). Transition of youth and young adults with emotional or behavioral difficulties into adulthood: Handbook for practitioners, educators, parents, and administrators. Baltimore, Maryland: Paul H. Brookes, Company. For additional articles and information contact: Hewitt B. "Rusty" Clark, Ph.D., Department of Child and Family Studies, Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33612. E-mail, clark@fmhi.usf.edu