Unit IV: What Does Your Child Need to Know
Person-Centered Planning
Self Awareness- Understanding oneself
Self Determination- Making choices for oneself
Self Advocacy- Speaking up for oneself
Why Person Centered Planning?
Transition planning reflects the student's preferences, needs, interests and dreams. Students need to begin to understand and make choices about their lives. If students are not aware of their own needs and preferences, they will not be able to establish goals that are meaningful. Planning Transition services cannot be done in isolation but must reach beyond school boundaries and into the community. Planning must also reach beyond a student's limitations to explore the student's strengths, interests, and dreams. Transition planning is to:
How can you help?
1. All children, no matter how significant the disability, should have opportunities
to “feel in control”.
2. You can provide opportunities for your child to make decisions
and choices.
3. You can provide support by facilitating the development of your child's self-determination
skills.
4. You can provide opportunities for your child to explore
employment, housing options, and community recreation programs by accessing
your family's own network of relatives, friends and community service systems.
5. Families can prepare themselves to accept the new evolving role of their child. Allow your adult child to take an active role in the decisions that will determine his/her future...even if it means allowing them to make mistakes.
Remember, you can help prepare your child with disabilities for adulthood by giving them numerous opportunities to make their own decisions.
Parents and educators can help children reach their potential by helping them to understand who they are. Here are some assessment activities for you and your child to work on together. Click on each button to learn more .
Self-determination skills involve knowledge about oneself, being able to articulate one's needs and advocate for oneself. This requires your child to develop knowledge and abilities that include:
self-awareness
To take charge of one's life, your child must be able to:
Activity
Goal Setting Worksheet
The development of self-determination skills is a process that begins in childhood and continues throughout one's life. Self-determination is important for all people, but it is especially important, and often more difficult to learn, for young people with disabilities.
Since self-determination skills are most effectively learned and developed by practice, children with disabilities should be given ample opportunity to use their self-advocacy, decision-making and socialization skills before leaving high school in order to prepare for adult life.
Self-advocacy is a process. It is knowing yourself and learning about your needs and being able to speak up and ask for what you will need in various environments. Self-advocacy enables your child to take charge of his/her life by becoming more independent. In order to self-advocate, children need to know that they can advocate. This is accomplished when the home, school, work and community environments provide the necessary supports and reinforcements for the child's self-advocacy efforts.
Self-advocacy skills require knowledge of how to problem solve and make informed decisions. Children need to be taught how to acquire information that will enable them to make sound decisions.
Activity:
Self Advocacy Checklist
Activity:
Its About Your Life
This Transition planner can help you and your child begin
the Transition process. The objective is for both of you to identify areas of
strengths and areas needing improvement. This is a great way to document your
child's needs, preferences and interests.
Table of Contents-
Overview-
What Does Transition Mean?-
What Do I Need to Know?-
What Does my Child Need to Know?-
Putting it All Together-
Common Terms, Resources & Websites-
DCN
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