Youth Transition
Summit is proud to offer a wide range of youth transition and school oriented programs. These youth focused programs are designed to equip young people with disabilities with the skills and confidence needed for adulthood, focusing on career preparation, independent living skills, and education planning.
- Independent Living Skills Training: This includes a wide range of practical life skills such as budgeting, meal planning, transportation, communication, and organization.
- Employment and Career Preparation: Summit offers offers assistance with enhancing soft skills that promote job readiness and self-sufficiency, navigating the employment process as a person with a disability, and connecting with appropriate resources to help young people enter the workforce.
- Education and Planning: Services can include IEP advocacy to help ensure high school completion, college readiness, and help with creating personalized transitional plans for future educational and vocational goals.
- Peer Support and Advocacy: Summit provide peer support from individuals with disabilities and offer individual and systems advocacy to champion the rights and needs of youth.
- Community Integration: Summit help young people connect with community resources and participate fully in their communities, promoting a sense of independence and self-determination.
These youth oriented programs promote inclusive learning environments, assist youth with disabilities in understanding their own situations and prepare them to take the lead in their own lives, as well as help them make sense of the world around them so that they can successfully reach for their dreams and navigate the complexities of transitioning from youth into adulthood. The goal is to help youth achieve self-sufficiency, live with dignity, and participate fully in society.
Youth Services
We are available to come to your IEP to provide information on community resources that may help for a successful transition.
In order to run your IEP, it is important to have people there who make you feel comfortable speaking up for yourself and who can be good support if you need help making sure that your needs are being heard. If you don’t know who else to invite, you can call us, and we will help you prepare for your meeting, and be able to be there to help you be successful in communicating your goals.
Disability Culture is different than other cultures in that you cannot always learn it from your parents because they may not have disabilities. Learning disability history, culture, and your rights and responsibilities can help students with disabilities feel proud as a person. It can help them understand disability does not make you unable to accomplish your dreams, it just means you may have to go for them in a different way than someone else might. We want to help students understand some different ways to accomplish them, and help them to speak up for their rights and take responsibilities for their future by knowing themselves, what kinds of accommodations they need, why they may need them, and how to run their IEP so that they know you and your team are working towards what they, THE STUDENT, wants.
Building Advocacy and Learning Leadership Skills is a class that is taught directly in the school. Demand is high so make sure you get us scheduled.
Summit works with people of all ages with all types of disabilities on finding resources in the community to help them live as independently as possible. For a student in the transition process this may include:
- Finding accessible/affordable housing,
- Applying for Social Security, Social Security Disability Insurance, or Medicaid programs,
- Understanding your benefits and how employment may affect them,
- Applying for or setting up personal care assistance in your home,
- Learning how to manage finances or medical records,
- Independent Living Skills training such as Living Well in the Community – focusing on goal setting, wellness, and living on your own, and
- Information and Referral – if we don’t do it here, we will give you the information of someone who can help.
We understand that the best person to work with a young person with a disability on a barrier or transition issue is another young person with a disability who has been there and done that! YODA is a group of 13-30(ish) young people with disabilities who meet once or twice a month and use each other as resources and work together as a team.
If you join YODA you can expect to.
- Meet other young people with disabilities
- Discover a community and learn about disability culture
- Have food and fun!
- Serve others and improve yourself
- Join a group run by young people for young people
Come check us out, figure out what we do, and be a part of a community!! Join us in breaking down barriers for people with disabilities while having fun in the process!
For more information about YODA, please contact Summit or check out our calendar of events to find out when the next YODA meeting is and come join us!
Did you know that people with disabilities hold the record for the longest take-over of any federal building? They invaded the Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) offices in order to get section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act implemented.
Summit is happy to be able to offer disability history and culture presentations and materials to schools to teach students about disability history and how disability is a civil rights movement. We can gear our presentations towards any audience you want us to present to…whether they have a disability, don’t have a disability, or are a combination of the two. Summit has experience doing presentations for the entire student body, history and government classes, as well as students with disabilities.
Summit offers the same kinds of in-services for teachers as we do for students. Learn about resources, disability history and culture, and how to include your students in their IEP process and ensure they can be successful in transitioning from high-school to adulthood.
Summit offers panel presentations consisting of people with different types of disabilities to talk a little bit about their personal experiences living with a disability. These panels give students the opportunity to ask questions of people with disabilities so that they can better understand the lives of people with disabilities and help students realize that people with disabilities aren’t all that different from them.
Contact a Summit office near you to inquire about any of our youth focused services or to talk to someone about scheduling a class or presentation in your school.
Check Out Our Other Programs
BASE
BASE is an all-ages, all-abilities social and activity center that’s a safe place to explore the arts, learn self-advocacy, and hone other skills we all need to navigate the world around us.
