Youth Transition Learning Collaborative

Information about Youth Transition Learning Collaborative:

Families, when have you had time to listen to other professionals as they talk about the work that they do for youth with special needs?

Providers and advocates, when have you had time to listen to families talk about what could be better for their youth?

When have you been given an organized review of promising ideas that could help your community

And finally, when have you had time to study what could really work in your community to improve the youth transition to adulthood?

We live in a complex world. Solutions for collaboration and successful transition are hard to find, especially those that meet each person's need. There are no recipes or blueprints for our communities. Time and time again, research has proven that knowledge and learning of a whole team is greater than those ideas of each individual. Adult learning that includes time for talking and trying out ideas with participants who have the backing of their leaders makes sense. Teams figuring out the details of how a change would truly benefit youth is needed.

The learning collaborative model adapted from the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI) provides this kind of adult learning in teams and seeks to find out best practices. In learning collaborative, site teams not only learn from each other, they learn from the other sites that are committed to the learning collaborative.

For our Youth Transition Learning Collaborative, we have communicated with system leaders at the state level and formed a faculty of national and local leaders, provided written and verbal information about promising practices and instructed teams in a improvement model tested by IHI. We have recruited teams of providers most interested in successful transition and families who want to see a difference. For more information about the youth transition learning collaborative, contact Barb Dworschak, , 503-494-6208.