Transition for youth with autism and/or epilepsy demonstration projects - university of minnesota's (UMN) institute on community integration (ICI) is partnering with UMN medical school, minnesota's…

Transition for youth with autism and/or epilepsy demonstration projects - university of minnesota's (UMN) institute on community integration (ICI) is partnering with UMN medical school, minnesota's department of education, department of health, department of employment and economic development, gillette children's hospital, epilepsy foundation of minnesota, pacer, and independent school district (ISD) 288 to address the GAP in service access and coordination across education, healthcare and vocational rehabilitation for transition-age youth and young adults with epilepsy and CO-occurring autism, intellectual disability or cerebral palsy who have extensive support and medical needs. We are building this project on existing initiatives on transition in minnesota at the state, regional and district levels by focusing on improving the coordination and communication among services for this population with special attention to family engagement and sensitivity to diversity and equity of services using the social-ecological model of adolescent and young adult readiness for transition to promote health equity (smart-e). We will utilize the community-based participatory approach (CBP) to gather information about the state of transition services for the target population in minnesota (phase i) and to develop, implement and evaluate a model of successful transition based on stakeholder input (phase II), guided by a person-centered lifecourse approach to service pathways for individual youth and their families. We will work closely with ISD 288 with 11 member and eight associate member district of ISD 288, including urban, suburban and rural areas of minnesota as our main catchment area, gillette children's hospital's transition program, epilepsy foundation seizure smart program, and pacer's family outreach initiative.