Aidan is one of our wonderful community champions who volunteer their time to keep the community safe, supportive and a great place to be. He is blind and currently work for Wellcome Trust providing disability and access consultancy. He is a Trustee of Sight for Surrey, which provides specialist services for visually-impaired, D/deaf and deafblind people in Surrey and is the board lead for services for children and young people. Today he talks to us about transition and how moving on from school can be a scary and difficult time.
Whenever I’m asked to speak about transition and options
post-school, whether it’s to a group of young people or a room full of parents,
I always emphasise what an exciting opportunity this is. Forget the
clinical-sounding terminology of ‘transition’ and ‘post-16,’ this isn’t about
staging or numbers, it’s about moving on to a new phase of life where, for the
first time, young people actually get to make decisions and choices based on
their own aspirations, hopes and dreams for the future. It’s important that
this is never lost even though this time of life can feel stressful, uncertain
and overwhelming.
All of those feelings can be magnified when a young person
has a disability – for them and their parents. It’s really important that the
impact of a disability is properly managed and thought through to give any
young person every chance to do their best, no matter what they go on to do.
Here are the things that helped me and, whatever the current name for the
statements and assessments of the day, have absolutely stood the test of time
as I now see other young people making this transition.
Be prepared to take the driving seat.
For young people in particular, life
post-16 is the time when you will have to take a lot more responsibility for
shaping the support you receive. You will be expected to actively contribute to
discussions about what help and adjustments are made for you, whatever you go
on to do. This isn’t always easy, so it’s never too early to think about what
would be most helpful to you, be that human support, technology or adjustments
to your work. If you can find buddies or mentors that have done similar things,
that is great. But make sure you have conversations with teachers, parents and
all the key people around you.
Get advice.
If that sounds daunting, one sure way to
make it a lot easier is to get advice. Talk to charities, your school and local
authority: find out as much as you can. Crucially, find out what support is
available where you are going next. Ask about the process, but also about
whether there are things that can help that you didn’t know about. When I went
to university, for example, I had no idea about optical character recognition–
the ability of programmes to attempt to decipher the text from an image. With
OCR scanning, I as a blind person now had the ability to read letters,
leaflets, lecture handouts and, with help, even books. You don’t always know
what’s out there.
A good place to get started on what to do next is the
UK
government website.
Anticipate challenges.
I’ve
had my disability all my life, but as you experience new things you learn new
ways that it impacts your life. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just a
challenge to be aware of. A couple of examples for me: when I went to
university and moved away from home, I realised very quickly that I’d need to get
a lot more comfortable asking for help and accepting that people genuinely
didn’t mind. I had the academic support, but I could have easily had a very
isolating experience. When I moved in to the world of work, I had to learn to
accomplish tasks without the additional time and other allowances that had
supported me through education. Having those conversations with managers,
working with a support worker and swapping tasks around with colleagues were
all things I had to adjust to pretty quickly.
Your
new opportunities will place new requirements on you. It’s important to see how
your disability could impact that and what considerations need to be made.
Bottom
line: the next phase of life post-school is rich with opportunities and the
time when young people take control of their own futures. Having a disability
doesn’t have to stop that. Through every transition I have made, acknowledging
that it has to feature in my thinking and preparation makes it easier to work
with it, rather than fight it. My message to young people is that learning to
be your own advocate, seeking advice and being ready to be challenged, to learn
and grow will stand you in excellent stead for life’s next adventure.
Tell us about your transition experiences. Do you have a question for Aidan? Let us know your thoughts.
