National Transitions to Adulthood Strategy for Young Disabled People - Easy Read

Priority 3: Co-ordination of Support

What this means

Different organisations should work together to support young disabled people by:

• making sure everyone involved in transitions works well together. This should be with the young person to deliver the young person’s plan

• making sure all staff understand their roles and responsibilities

• making sure organisations deliver the right services at the right time to support a smooth transition.

Why this is important

We have heard that children’s and adult services are sometimes not well connected. They do not always communicate well with each other.

Families have said that it is not often clear who is in charge of planning for transitions. This means parents and young people often feel that they must organise things themselves, particularly when leaving school.

What is already happening

The law says education authorities should work with other organisations where needed when planning for a young person leaving school. This planning should happen at least 12 months before a young person leaves school.

The law also says that local councils and health boards should be involved in planning services for children and young people in their area.

They should work together with other organisations to provide the support and services needed. This includes support for transitions.

What else we will do

We will continue to promote the use of these approaches and laws. This will make sure we are working together to support young disabled people who are making the transition to adulthood.

We will also help to make sure staff are supported to work together for good transitions through training and support.

We will keep looking at different ways to give local support to young disabled people who have left school.

This year we will fund the National Development Team for Inclusion to build on their Time to Talk Next Steps Scotland Pilot. You can find out more about this here.