The transition to adulthood for youth with disabilities, particularly youth receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or other disability program benefits, can be especially challenging. In addition to the host of issues facing all transition-age youth, young people with disabilities face special issues related to health, social isolation, service needs, and lack of access to supports. These challenges complicate their planning for future education and work, and often lead to poor educational and employment outcomes, high risk of dependency, and a lifetime of poverty. Recognizing the import
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The transition to adulthood for youth with disabilities, particularly youth receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or other disability program benefits, can be especially challenging. In addition to the host of issues facing all transition-age youth, young people with disabilities face special issues related to health, social isolation, service needs, and lack of access to supports. These challenges complicate their planning for future education and work, and often lead to poor educational and employment outcomes, high risk of dependency, and a lifetime of poverty. Recognizing the importance of service intervention at this critical juncture in youths' lives, the Social Security Administration (SSA) initiated the Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) evaluation. SSA is providing funding to develop and rigorously evaluate promising strategies to help youth with disabilities become as economically self-sufficient as possible as they transition from school to work. Hallmark features of the YTD evaluation include (1) strong, policy-relevant demonstration projects that serve relatively large numbers of youth with disabilities compared with other programs, and (2) a rigorous evaluation design based on random assignment. The YTD evaluation provides SSA with a valuable opportunity to identify program components and strategies that can show successful employment and earnings outcomes for youth. The demonstration is doing this by supporting and testing a multisite study with six interventions, all with a strong focus on employment, and with considerable leveraging of community services. The demonstration also includes waivers of certain SSI rules to help youth who work keep more benefits and provide them with incentives to obtain and retain employment. By testing a variety of service delivery models on the target population of youth with disabilities, combined with the provision of SSA waivers, this demonstration provides a unique opportunity to learn about effective interventions to increase employment and earnings for youth with disabilities, and eventually reduce their reliance on SSA disability benefits. This report profiles the six YTD projects that have been selected for rigorous evaluation. The following chapters discuss each of these projects in turn. A profile of each project is provided, focusing on the services provided. Before turning to the project profiles, we briefly describe the conceptual framework underlying the YTD interventions and the process for selecting these projects.
Excerpts from published summary reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.
A related publication is indexed at TD/TNC 95.61.
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