Frequently Asked Questions

What are Transition Skills?

The law (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act -WIOA) requires vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies to provide pre-employment transition services to students with Disabilities. These transition skills are designed to prepare students for work, higher education and further training, or independent living as they transition out of high school.

Transition Skills are:

• Job exploration counseling

• Work-based learning experiences (Like in-school or after school opportunities, experiences outside of the traditional school setting, and/or internships)

• Counseling on opportunities for enrollment in comprehensive transition or postsecondary educational programs

• Workplace readiness training to develop social skills and independent living

• Instruction in self-advocacy

Our self paced classes focus on building a foundation of those last three services, Counseling on postsecondary options, workplace readiness training, and self advocacy.

Able SC is a Center for Independent Living (CIL), an organization not about “helping” people with disabilities, but built on the central concept of self-empowerment. It’s a consumer-controlled, community-based, cross-disability nonprofit that provides an array of independent living services. We do everything it takes to empower people with disabilities to live active, self-determined lives including advocacy, services, and support. More than half of our staff are persons with disabilities, as are over half of our Board of Directors. We didn’t just learn this– we live it!

We provide one-on-one or class skill-building support in areas like college and career planning, self-advocacy, disability rights, and financial literacy; youth peer mentoring; leadership development; in-class skill building for SC elementary, middle, and high school students; professional trainings; and more!

To adapt with school closures during the COVID-19 outbreak, the SC Department of Education has funded Able SC to provide an array of virtual youth support services, including: self-paced lessons for high school students, lessons for students exiting high school, social-emotional learning for elementary students, online peer mentoring, yoga and mindfulness, and one-on-one support.

Are Transition Skills (Pre-ETS) Mandatory?

Yes.

If your school is receiving any kind of Title IX funding you are required to provide Pre-ETS to students with disabilities under the South Carolina WIOA State Plan. This means you should be covering these skills within your curriculum or working with your local South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation office and their transition counselor or an agency that partners with SCVRD like Able SC. Utilizing these self paced classes does fulfill that requirement.

What if my students have high support needs?

Our self-paced online classes are designed to be accessible to any student regardless of their support needs. Each curricula is written in plain language and created focusing on principles of universal design and to accommodate all learning styles. All lessons are also designed to work with assistive technology such as screen readers and high contrast settings. Some specific lessons are designed to provide additional content.

If your school does not use Google Classroom or runs into technical problems that prevents students from accessing our online materials, we encourage you to reach out to the Able South Carolina Youth Team via email so we can work with you to provide resources in another format. Email us at youththeam@able-sc.org