A Paradigm for Improving Transition Planning for Adolescents With Intellectual Developmental Disorder.

Families of children with intellectual and developmental disorder (IDD) face unique challenges while navigating the transition into adulthood, such as finding suitable housing, optimizing independence, fostering meaningful relationships, and identifying a vocation.1-3 Often, the daily struggles of managing the individual's needs overshadow essential long-term preparation. Individuals with IDD and their families need guidance to transition from an entitlement-driven system (special education) to multiple eligibility-driven systems (adult care, postsecondary education services, housing supports, etc). The majority of those currently involved in transition planning are school personnel, followed closely by family members. Few of these planning meetings include the individuals themselves or personnel from outside agencies, such as social services and mental health.2 The complexity of these systems marginalizes this population by creating barriers to accessing necessary support. This is where psychiatrists, especially child and adolescent psychiatrists, can create a bridge.

Not Reinventing the Wheel: Adapting Treatment Foster Care Oregon to Public Mental Health.

Intervention adaptations expand the availability of evidence-based treatments across clinical settings and demographically different populations. These adaptations utilize systematic strategies to preserve core components of an intervention. Intervention adaptations made from one public system to another (e.g., juvenile justice to mental health) reduce the need to invent a new intervention. In this column, the authors discuss the adaptation of Treatment Foster Care Oregon, an evidence-based program for treating youths with serious emotional and behavioral disturbance, to Michigan's public mental health system. Challenges encountered in this adaptation and solutions are presented.