“Young disabled people often face additional barriers in their transition to adulthood created by a failure of different agencies to work together, the fragmentation of their needs across different programmes and budgets, and little support for developing self-determination. Such barriers are particularly acute for young disabled people with complex health and support needs, many of whom have been placed out of the authority in residential placements.” Moving into adulthood - Joseph Rowntree Foundation (June 2002)

A further study on the education and employment of disabled young people, in 2005, “concluded that poverty of aspiration is not the main barrier for young people with physical or sensory impairments. Rather than advice and encouragement, the main effort should focus on transforming the actual opportunities available to disabled young people, for example through: ensuring continuity of support (including funding, equipment and personnel), especially in the transition from secondary to further education; opportunities to return to education, focusing on acquiring higher qualifications, not just basic skills; work placements related to each young person’s expressed interests, with support from Access to Work. “

Transferring from School to Post-16 generally means a change of funding streams for the use and support of equipment from Local Authority or Board to Further Education (FE).  Privately purchased assistive technologies and communication aids can obviously stay with the student as he or she moves to a college but items loaned from a school usually have to be returned.  A new set of needs assessments will be undertaken to evaluate the type of support required in the new setting.  

Additional learning support (ALS) or Additional Support Needs for Learning (Scotland) is “any activity that provides direct support for learning to individual learners, over and above that which is normally provided in a standard learning programme that leads to their learning goal. ALS is required to help learners gain access to, progress towards and successfully achieve their learning goals. The need for additional learning support may arise from a learning difficulty and/or disability, or from literacy, numeracy or language support requirements.” LSC definition