Patrick Cadigan: 0:00

Welcome; this is the Post Secondary Transition podcast where we have conversations around the ins and outs and everything in between of the transition process for families of students with disabilities. I am one of the hosts. My name is Patrick Cadigan. I am a public school transition coordinator. I have a co-host. Who would that be?

Meghan Smallwood: 0:18

Yes, you do. I'm Meghan Smallwood, and I am also a public school transition coordinator.

Patrick Cadigan: 0:22

All right, so here we are. We had fully intended on having our finishing conversation around what families can expect from senior year. However, we ran into a scheduling snag, but we didn't want to do nothing, so Meghan and I decided to have a quick conversation around a resource that we think families can find useful and valuable. Meghan, you want to clue us in?

Meghan Smallwood: 0:49

Absolutely, I know we've had many conversations around our developmental disability agency for Maryland, DDA, and we wanted to just shine some more light on the developmental disability agencies in general, because remember, every state has one, and they work to provide services and supports to those individuals with developmental disabilities and their families. They are a huge source of funding for after 21 but the primary goal is just to ensure that the necessary resources and opportunities for personal growth, independence and inclusion are there for our friends with disabilities. They do range from state to state, but overall, the general idea of these agencies is that they can provide different things, such as case management, residential and housing options, vocational training, employment services and respite care, just to name a few, it's important to check every state and the local jurisdiction jurisdictions for their eligibility determination, but they are there, and they are a great resource to access. They also collaborate with a number of different agencies and service providers, and they all work together to ensure that each individual is receiving that individualized support that they need for after transition or post secondary transition. So I know that we always refer back to our lovely website, www.postsecondarytransition and at the top you'll see the different icons where you will find resources. And if you scroll down to developmental disabilities agencies, you'll find a nice little summary of this information, as well as a link that will actually bring you to the website for the National Association of State Directors, which actually lists all the different developmental disabilities agencies per state that are out there in our country.

Patrick Cadigan: 2:47

Yeah, they give you the option to surf it in a couple of different ways. Once you open that link and you get to the resource, they have a visual map of the United States, and you can just scroll and hover over the state that you're interested in, and click on it, it will give you that information, or you can continue to scroll down the page, and it will list each state alphabetically. Or right near the top of the page, there is a button for a download that will give you a printable PDF that lists all the agencies alphabetically, and that will give you something that you can take with you. But the point is, is that this is a great resource for families, for anyone, anywhere, as they are looking to do their research, and this could be a valuable tool in that research process.

Meghan Smallwood: 3:44

Yeah, and I think you know a few things to remember is we talk a lot about eligibility versus entitlement. After you leave the school system, all of these agencies are based off of eligibility. So each one has their own application process, their own criteria. So it's important to do the research. If you do plan, or you are planning for the future, for after 21 if you're don't plan on residing in the same state, every state has their own waiting list, which is something else to remember. So even if you are on a waiting list, or you are eligible for services in the state of Maryland, if you were to leave the state of Maryland and go to a different state, it would be starting over. I know I have a lot of conversations with families that plan on retiring in a different state down the road, so it's something to consider and just start looking at as you plan for the future.

Patrick Cadigan: 4:34

All right. And so with that, once again, we are looking forward to getting back to our regularly scheduled programming, but we did want to leave you with something new, so we will talk with you soon.

Meghan Smallwood: 4:46

Thanks for tuning in. As always, you'll find links to the information from our conversations in our show. Notes. We would love for the information from this and all our other discussions to reach as many families as possible, and we need your help to do that. You can find our conversations at www.p2transition.com like, follow, share out the podcast. Our conversations are posted to all the major platforms, including Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and that's just naming a few. So please share and share often.

Patrick Cadigan: 5:28

Please check out our YouTube channel. We've done some of the legwork for you by curating videos of topics that revolve around transition. We have playlists for guardianship, alternatives to guardianship ABLE accounts, and there's more to come, so please be sure to subscribe there as well. And finally, check out our website, which is full of information and links to resources around the transition process. Open your web browser of choice and surf to www dot post secondarytransition.com we thank you so much for the time that you've spent with us, and look forward to talking again soon.