School leavers
Leaving school without a next step
For thirteen years there was a timetable, a bus and a room to be in. Then there is not.
For families and referrers
The hardest transition we see is not a diagnosis or a plan change. It is the December a participant finishes school.
Up to that point the week builds itself. There is somewhere to be, people to see, and a structure that holds the whole thing together whether or not anyone is thinking about it. Then the last term ends and all of that goes at once.
What usually fills the gap is time at home. Not because anyone chose that, but because nothing else got lined up in time.
What the years after school actually need
Three things, in our experience, and none of them are complicated.
A reason to leave the house on set days. Not an outing when someone is free, a routine that can be relied on. Confidence is built by repetition, and repetition needs a timetable.
Skills practised where they are actually used. Cooking in a kitchen. Catching a bus on the route they will really catch. Ordering their own lunch, in a real cafe, with someone alongside them the first few times and further back each time after that.
A direction to aim at. Work, study, volunteering, living more independently. It does not have to be settled at eighteen. But there is a difference between support with a point and support that fills a Tuesday.
Start before the last term
The families who handle this best start the conversation a good year out, while the school, the therapists and the plan are all still lined up and talking to each other. Waiting until January means rebuilding a structure from scratch at the exact moment everyone is hardest to reach.
If a plan review falls in that final year, that is the moment to talk about what happens after school, not the review after it.
Where EmpwrU fits
Most of the people we support are somewhere between sixteen and forty, and a good number of them came to us in the year either side of leaving school. What we run is one to one, on set days, working towards goals that are written down and reported on.
What we do not do is run a classroom or an employment program. Where a participant needs something we are not the right fit for, we will say so and point you at who is.
“There is a difference between support with a point and support that fills a Tuesday.”
Work with us
Looking for support in the Adelaide Metropolitan Area?
Tell us who you are supporting and what you are trying to build. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.