Investigating trends in the youth transition service delivery and consumer demographics of Centers for Independent Living

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Recent state funding opportunities have brought about a renewed interest in the value of collaboration with Centers for Independent Living (CILs) to support the positive postschool outcomes of youth with disabilities. While the potential of CILs in this domain of practice has been well described, their engagement in such collaborative efforts has been limited.

OBJECTIVE:

The current study was conducted to better understand the involvement of CILs in supporting transition-age youth with disabilities.

METHODS:

Through an analysis of publicly available CIL administrative data, the authors examined consumer demographics and service categories from 2015 to 2022.

RESULTS:

Their findings indicated that, on the whole, CIL involvement with youth has remained limited and the disability demographics of consumers have changed little over time. Moreover, while there has been a steady increase in consumers receiving support in the category of “youth/transition services,” this upward trend has been slight.

CONCLUSION:

From these results, it can be argued that CIL support of transition-age youth is an issue that merits the ongoing attention of the field. In this article, these findings are discussed alongside implications for the field and future research.

Keywords

Center for independent living WIOA transition collaboration

1 Introduction

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is a critical phase in every young person’s life, marked by newfound responsibilities, self-discovery, and the pursuit of independence. For youth with disabilities, this journey can present complex challenges that go beyond the typical hurdles faced by their peers without disabilities. As a result, there are many agencies striving to improve outcomes for individuals with disabilities. Perhaps one of the most important government agencies who focus on ensuring effective support and resources is The Administration for Community Living (ACL). The ACL functions as the United States’ central agency that focuses on supporting and empowering older adults, people with disabilities, and their caregivers by providing resources, advocating for their needs, offering funding, and promoting collaboration across multiple sectors to ensure comprehensive and effective services. The inception of the ACL occurred on April 18, 2012, under the authority of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Seblius at the time. This momentous decision amalgamated three key entities: The Administration on Aging, the Office of Disability, and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities. Since its establishment, the ACL has undergone significant growth, assuming added responsibilities with each passing year (ACL, 2023b).

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), passed in 2014, facilitated the transfer of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, alongside the Independent Living and Assistive Technology programs (totaling $238 million), from the Department of Education to ACL which occurred in fiscal year 2015. At its core, ACL was founded on the principle that individuals with disabilities or functional limitations, regardless of age, share a common interest in accessing home and community-based support services. These services are pivotal in enabling their full participation in society and their ability to live independently. While the purpose and funding of these programs have remained largely consistent over time, the establishment of the ACL has notably strengthened the collaborative efforts of these programs toward a shared objective of empowering older adults and people with disabilities of all ages to live where and how they prefer, fostering active participation within their communities. The ACL allocates funding to CILs in each state. With these resources, CILs provide a host of services and supports aimed at people with disabilities living within their communities as independently as possible(ACL, 2023b).

CILs can play an important role in empowering youth with disabilities by providing comprehensive support and resources essential to their successful transition into adulthood (Plotner & Walters, 2022). These organizations help foster a sense of self-reliance and offer skill development important to youth with disabilities as they attempt to navigate the complexities of adulthood and live self-determined lives (Wehmeyer & Gragoudas, 2005). To support this work, CILs may collaborate with educational institutions, vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies, and other community organizations to facilitate a seamless transition (Plotner et al., 2017b; Wehmeyer & Gragoudas, 2005; Wilson, 1998).

CILs operate through the expertise of lived experience with disability, and their value and potential impact for transition-age youth has gained increasing attention in recent years (Walters & Plotner, 2023). This recent increase in attention parallels the orientation of the WIOA towards leveraging the whole of public systems in supporting positive employment outcomes (Taylor et al., 2019). With the passage of WIOA in 2014, CILs were recognized as an essential element of the network of services and supports for transition-age youth with disabilities. Specifically, the law shifted the mandates of CILs to include youth transition as a new core service, centering a longtime ambition of CILs “to ensure that youth have choices, advocacy, peer support, and independent living skills needed to transition to adult life” (Hammond et al., 2018, p. 3). This ambition is a clear fit with efforts of CILs to provide a range of independent living services that affirm the principle of consumer control in service delivery. CILs uphold this principle by being consumer-driven organizations, where people with disabilities actively participate in decision-making processes and shaping the services they receive (ACL, 2023a). A recent development in the discretionary spending of the federal government has brought CILs front and center in the national conversation about transition servicedelivery.

In September 2023, the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) announced their awardees for model demonstration grants through the Disability Innovation Fund (DIF) Program. This particular DIF initiative, Pathways to Partnerships (84.421E), invited states to propose projects detailing innovative strategies for increasing competitive integrated employment (CIE) for in-school youth with disabilities. To achieve this aim, states were required to provide a detailed plan for increasing collaboration and service coordination among state VR agencies, education agencies— at the state and local levels–, and CILs. For the RSA, this project represents the largest ever sum of discretionary spending provided to such a competition by the agency. In total, nearly $200 million was awarded across 20 states under the 84.421E DIF program: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wyoming (US Department of Education, 2023).

For states funded through 84.421E grants and other states working towards establishing or maintaining robust collaborative networks, the prospect of meaningfully involving CILs in better serving transition-age youth may present both a unique opportunity and challenge. On one hand, CILs represent the opportunity of engaging a vibrant, disability-led vehicle for service delivery in transition-related efforts. On the other hand, there is some evidence to indicate a history of lacking engagement of CILs in transition service delivery around the country (Plotner et al., 2017a; Plotner et al., 2022). Evidence of this lacking engagement, along with research on CIL involvement in youth transition efforts more generally, has been limited.

Therefore, the aim of this study was to shed light on various trends in service provision of CILs by using CIL administrative data to investigate trends in youth transition service delivery and consumer demographics in the years following the passage of the WIOA. Examining trends in services delivered and the demographics of service recipients is particularly critical to support CILs in improving service quality and equitable service provision. By examining demographic trends, stakeholders can identify disparities in access to services among different groups, such as age, gender, ethnicity, or type of disability. These data can aid in addressing inequalities and ensuring that services are provided equitably to the disability community. Also, by analyzing service delivery trends, we can better understand trends in how CIL services are utilized. The authors of the current study used seven fiscal years of aggregated CIL administrative data to answer the following research questions:

Research question one (RQ1): How have reported data on CIL consumer age and disability demographics changed in the years following the addition of youth transition as a core service?

Research question two (RQ2): How has the proportion of specific services received by CIL consumers changed in the years following the addition of youth transition as a core service?

The manner in which this study was carried out is described in the section that follows.

2 Materials and methods

On an annual basis, CILs are required to submit Program Performance Reports (PPR) to the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Community Living (ACL), the federal agency responsible for their oversight. Aggregated PPR data are made available for public use on the ACL website: https://acl.gov/programs/aging-and-disability-networks/centers-independent-living (see “Annual Performance Data and Outcomes”). At the time this study was conducted, the ACL hosted seven years of CIL PPR data: fiscal year 2015 (FY15; October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016), fiscal year 2016 (FY16; October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017), fiscal year 2017 (FY17; October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2018), fiscal year 2018 (FY18; October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019), fiscal year 2019 (FY19; October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020), fiscal year 2020 (FY20; October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021), and fiscal year 2021 (FY21; October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022). The process used to prepare these data for analysis, a brief description of salient variables, and the analytic process are all described below.

2.1 Preparation and description of data

Aggregated CIL PPR data for each of the seven fiscal years were provided on the ACL website as Excel spreadsheet files. Each spreadsheet contained five tabs corresponding to the major sections of the PPR and 176 total data fields: agency information (three data fields), funding information (22 data fields), board and staff composition (17 data fields), consumer demographics and service outcomes (43 data fields), and individual service areas (91 data fields). Before analyzing PPR data, a master data file was created in Excel to merge PPR data from all seven years for variables of interest: consumer age counts, consumer disability category counts, and counts of services received by consumers by service category. Across all seven years, these variables were reported using the same data fields. Consumer age categories were reported as follows: Under 5 years old, age 5–19, age 20–24, age 25–59, age 60 and older, and age unavailable. Consumer disability categories were reported as follows: Cognitive, mental/emotional, physical, hearing, vision, multiple disabilities, and other. For both age and disability, CILs reported total consumer counts for those fitting each category in a given fiscal year.

A total of 23 service categories were reported. Each CIL reported on the number of consumers that requested and received each of these service categories in a given fiscal year. For this study, researchers only examined counts for services received across all categories and not service categories requested by consumers. The service categories examined were as follows: Advocacy/Legal Services; Assistive Technology; Children’s Services; Communication Services; Counseling And Related Services; Family Services; Housing, Home Modifications, And Shelter Services; Il Skills Training And Life Skills Training; Information And Referral Services; Mental Restoration Services; Mobility Training; Peer Counseling Services; Personal Assistance Services; Physical Restoration Services; Preventive Services; Prostheses, Orthotics, And Other Appliances; Recreational Services; Rehabilitation Technology Services; Therapeutic Treatment; Transportation Services; Youth/Transition Services; Vocational Services; And Other Services.

2.2 CIL PPR data analytic procedures

Using Excel, age, disability, and service category counts were totaled for each of the seven reporting years. The number of CIL PPRs included in each year was variable. In FY15, 346 CILs were included, 350 in FY16, 354 in FY17, 351 in FY18, 350 in FY19, 351 in FY20, and 353 in FY21. Given this variability, proportions were calculated for all age categories, disability categories, and service categories for each fiscal year. These proportions, represented as percentages, were graphed for age, disability, and service categories to visually analyze trends in the data over time. For each age, disability, and service category in a single fiscal year, the minimum percentage was subtracted from the maximum percentage to aid in describing these trends. The results of this analysis are described in the section that follows.

3 Results

The authors of this study set out to answer two main research questions using seven years of aggregated administrative data for CILs. Findings associated with each question are presented here through narrative, tables, and figures.

RQ1: How have reported data on CIL consumer age and disability demographics changed in the years following the addition of youth transition as a core service?

Table 1 provides, across all seven fiscal years, total counts for each CIL consumer age category and the proportion of each category’s count to total consumers (represented as a percentage). Over time, little change was observed in the proportion of consumers under 5 years old, consumers between the ages of 5 and 19, consumers between the ages of 20 and 24, and consumers for whom an age was unavailable. Figure 1 shows these four groups of consumers clustered towards the bottom of the figure. Year over year, each of these categories had a variation within two percentage points.

Table 1
Age category counts and percentages from FY15 to FY21

FY15 FY16 FY17 FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21

Under 5 2,286 2,265 1,777 1,694 1,587 1688 1654

1.02% 0.95% 0.75% 0.70% 0.67% 0.71% 0.67%

5–19 20,574 22,260 24,117 24,770 22,582 20,719 21,421

9.18% 9.42% 10.18% 10.37% 9.61% 8.74% 8.74%

20–24 15,008 15,412 14,680 13,974 13,911 14,173 13,275

6.69% 6.52% 6.20% 5.85% 5.92% 5.98% 5.41%

25–59 103,588 107,001 105,039 101,908 99,290 97,890 100,080

46.24% 45.32% 44.36% 42.69% 42.27% 41.32% 40.84%

60 and Older 80,998 87,323 89,779 93,231 95,395 100,328 106,993

36.15% 36.99% 37.92% 39.05% 40.61% 42.35% 43.66%

Age Unavailable 1,560 1,808 1,351 3,124 2,110 2,083 1,601

00.69% 0.76% 0.57% 0.13% 0.89% 0.87% 0.65%

	FY15	FY16	FY17	FY18	FY19	FY20	FY21
Under 5	2,286	2,265	1,777	1,694	1,587	1688	1654
	1.02%	0.95%	0.75%	0.70%	0.67%	0.71%	0.67%
5–19	20,574	22,260	24,117	24,770	22,582	20,719	21,421
	9.18%	9.42%	10.18%	10.37%	9.61%	8.74%	8.74%
20–24	15,008	15,412	14,680	13,974	13,911	14,173	13,275
	6.69%	6.52%	6.20%	5.85%	5.92%	5.98%	5.41%
25–59	103,588	107,001	105,039	101,908	99,290	97,890	100,080
	46.24%	45.32%	44.36%	42.69%	42.27%	41.32%	40.84%
60 and Older	80,998	87,323	89,779	93,231	95,395	100,328	106,993
	36.15%	36.99%	37.92%	39.05%	40.61%	42.35%	43.66%
Age Unavailable	1,560	1,808	1,351	3,124	2,110	2,083	1,601
	00.69%	0.76%	0.57%	0.13%	0.89%	0.87%	0.65%

As Fig. 1 also depicts, more variability was observed for those that can be thought of as older adult consumers (ages 25–59 and ages 60 and older). Within these age categories, percentages varied between 5.4 and 7.5 percentage points. An upward trend was observed for consumers aged 60 and older while a downward trend was observed for consumers with ages between 25 and 59.

Fig. 1

Plotted percentages of consumers by age category over time.

Table 2 provides total counts for CIL consumer disability category and the proportion of each category’s count to total consumers (represented as a percentage). Across the seven years, change in the proportions of consumer disability categories was relatively minimal and stayed within roughly three percentage points. These trends over time are depicted visually by Fig. 2. The least variation in consumer disability was observed for the categories of cognitive, mental/emotional, vision, and mental emotional. Of all categories, physical was observed to have the most variability and trended upward over time to account for a mean percentage of 38.06% of the CIL consumer base.

Table 2

Disability category counts and percentages from FY15 to FY21

	FY15	FY16	FY17	FY18	FY19	FY20	FY21
Cognitive	35,237	36,455	39,439	38,544	34,858	33,328	35,466
	14.65%	14.80%	15.64%	15.24%	14.84%	14.07%	14.47%
Mental/Emotional	30,420	29,409	30,180	30,312	27,168	26,852	27,707
	12.65%	11.94%	11.97%	11.98%	11.57%	11.34%	11.31%
Physical	89,025	92,902	94,392	92,579	90,025	93,836	97,264
	37.01%	37.73%	37.44%	36.60%	38.33%	39.61%	39.70%
Hearing	14,119	12,252	11,701	9,540	8,000	8,796	7,504
	5.87%	4.98%	4.64%	3.77%	3.41%	3.71%	3.06%
Vision	9,935	10,141	9,155	9,507	8,683	8,954	8,649
	4.13%	4.12%	3.63%	3.76%	3.70%	3.78%	3.53%
Multiple Disabilities	51,084	53,669	52,953	58,974	53,929	53,665	51,588
	21.24%	21.80%	21.00%	23.32%	22.96%	22.65%	21.05%
Other	10,741	11,411	14,290	13,474	12,205	11,450	16,846
	4.46%	4.63%	5.67%	5.33%	5.20%	4.83%	6.88%

Fig. 2

Plotted percentages of consumers by disability category over time.

RQ2: How has the proportion of specific services received by CIL consumers changed in the years following the addition of youth transition as a core service?

Minimal change was the prevailing pattern observed in the proportion of consumers receiving services within a given service category over time. Table 3 provides total counts for each consumer receiving support in a particular service category alongside the proportion of those counts to the total number of services provided (represented as a percentage) in a single reporting year. Eleven of the 23 service categories each accounted for less than 2% of the service categories represented across all seven reporting years that were analyzed (Children’s Services; Communication Services; Counseling and Related Services; Family Services; Mental Restoration Services; Mobility Training; Physical Restoration Services; Prostheses, Orthotics, and Other Appliances; Recreational Services; Rehabilitation Technology Services; and Therapeutic Treatment). These services tended to vary no more than one half percentage point.

Table 3

Service category counts and percentages over time

	FY15	FY16	FY17	FY18	FY19	FY20	FY21
Advocacy/Legal Services	61,937	54,729	53,651	58,926	52,440	56,730	54,837
	5.61%	4.84%	4.74%	4.95%	4.54%	4.72%	4.30%
Assistive Technology	36,244	36,955	32,961	36,241	31,270	37,715	40,934
	3.28%	3.27%	2.91%	3.04%	2.71%	3.14%	3.21%
Children’s Services	2,638	2,891	2,885	2,950	2,572	2,136	1,967
	0.24%	0.26%	0.25%	0.25%	0.22%	0.18%	0.15%
Communication Services	15,235	16,024	19,344	17,603	20,844	20,843	21,863
	1.38%	1.42%	1.71%	1.48%	1.80%	1.73%	1.71%
Counseling and Related Services	11,757	11,784	10,765	16,539	15,242	19,860	19,398
	1.07%	1.04%	0.95%	1.39%	1.32%	1.65%	1.52%
Family Services	5,849	5,719	4,454	4,601	5,235	5,253	8,121
	0.53%	0.51%	0.39%	0.39%	0.45%	0.44%	0.64%
Housing, Home Modifications, and Shelter Services	41,183	44,941	41,002	50,197	49,011	53,080	50,838
	3.73%	3.98%	3.62%	4.21%	4.24%	4.41%	3.98%
IL Skills Training and Life Skills Training	68,010	68,838	72,640	73,262	72,623	77,373	86,353
	6.16%	6.09%	6.41%	6.15%	6.28%	6.43%	6.77%
Information and Referral Services	64,4992	65,6358	644307	610020	575699	573977	646976
	58.46%	58.09%	56.90%	51.22%	49.82%	47.72%	50.69%
Mental Restoration Services	604	554	1621	1054	776	1581	1134
	0.05%	0.05%	0.14%	0.09%	0.07%	0.13%	0.09%
Mobility Training	4480	4500	3936	4003	3308	2793	3703
	0.41%	0.40%	0.35%	0.34%	0.29%	0.23%	0.29%
Peer Counseling Services	41411	42569	39290	41353	42355	50899	51657
	3.75%	3.77%	3.47%	3.47%	3.67%	4.23%	4.05%
Personal Assistance Services	39021	44083	44718	49444	62193	65661	48579
	3.54%	3.90%	3.95%	4.15%	5.38%	5.46%	3.81%
Physical Restoration Services	2362	1425	1941	2349	3353	3442	3056
	0.21%	0.13%	0.17%	0.20%	0.29%	0.29%	0.24%
Preventive Services	14716	9023	17014	22169	28685	22893	20970
	1.33%	0.80%	1.50%	1.86%	2.48%	1.90%	1.64%
Prostheses, Orthotics, and Other Appliances	562	756	789	445	741	1644	957
	0.05%	0.07%	0.07%	0.04%	0.06%	0.14%	0.07%
Recreational Services	15601	13889	14465	17414	11171	18492	17625
	1.41%	1.23%	1.28%	1.46%	0.97%	1.54%	1.38%
Rehabilitation Technology Services	2140	2478	1670	1682	1086	1648	1768
	0.19%	0.22%	0.15%	0.14%	0.09%	0.14%	0.14%
Therapeutic Treatment	1272	887	1333	1056	830	772	1269
	0.12%	0.08%	0.12%	0.09%	0.07%	0.06%	0.10%
Transportation Services	17722	17107	16906	60855	51143	49223	50879
	1.61%	1.51%	1.49%	5.11%	4.43%	4.09%	3.99%
Youth/Transition Services	18518	20774	24195	28134	27081	30501	40552
	1.68%	1.84%	2.14%	2.36%	2.34%	2.54%	3.18%
Vocational Services	20226	25045	30361	34731	28304	24825	32335
	1.83%	2.22%	2.68%	2.92%	2.45%	2.06%	2.53%
Other Services	36913	48514	52160	56014	69598	81425	70579
	3.35%	4.29%	4.61%	4.70%	6.02%	6.77%	5.53%

Another 11 service categories reported each accounted for two to seven percent of the service categories represented across the reporting years analyzed (Advocacy/Legal Services; Assistive Technology; Housing, Home Modifications, and Shelter Services; IL Skills Training and Life Skills Training; Peer Counseling Services; Personal Assistance Services; Preventive Services; Transportation Services; Youth/Transition Services; Vocational Services; and Other Services). With the exception of two categories, Transportation Services and Other Services, this group of service categories varied less than 2% over time. Another service category, “Youth/Transition Services,” is of particular importance. Figure 3 shows the change in the proportion of this service category to other categories reported over time. Between FY15 and FY21, this service category steadily climbed 1.5 percentage points from 1.68% to 3.18%. Finally, the remaining service category, “Information and Referral Services,” varied more than ten percentage points over time from a high in FY15 of 58.46% to a low in FY21 of 47.72%, as illustrated in Table 3. This range of proportions with a downward trend over time for Information and Referral Services is the only service category of 23 with percentages in the double digits.

Fig. 3

Plotted percentages of consumers receiving “youth/tran-sition services” over time.

4 Discussion

The passage of WIOA in 2014 marked a major shift in the landscape of transition service delivery for youth with disabilities. Not only did this legislative action affirm prior calls to interagency collaboration through policies like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it also introduced its own for VR agencies, CILs, and others (Taylor et al., 2019). One such call to interagency collaboration is embedded within the requirement of CILs to provide youth transition services. To provide these services necessitates that CILs themselves become an important part of the transition service delivery landscape, working together with VR and education professionals to coordinate services. With 20 new 84.421E grantees, such collaboration is an expectation that many states are now learning to navigate. With the expectation of collaborative transition service delivery that includes CILs, it is important to understand CIL service provision as it relates to transition. To this end, the current study surveyed some of the areas of CIL administrative reporting that one might expect to have shifted since the WIOA went into effect.

An analysis of the proportions of CIL consumer age categories between 2015 and 2022 showed that the only steadily increasing age demographic was consumers aged 60 and older. Consumers between the ages of 25 and 59 steadily declined yet remained one of the largest consumer demographics served by CILs. During this same time, proportions of consumer age categories for all those under the age of 25 changed little and collectively represented just 15% of the CIL consumer base. Despite what might be assumed as an age of increased support from CILs to transition-age youth, administrative data on consumer age categories depicts CILs on the whole remain primarily focused on older adults in consumer services.

It might also have served to reason that, with a new core service like youth transition services brought on by the WIOA, the disability demographics of CIL consumers might have shifted over time. All but one disability category, physical, showed little sign of increase or decline over time. As a demographic, those with a physical disability represented the largest group in the CIL consumer base, a year over year average of 38% of CIL consumers. Such findings highlight questions about the degree to which CILs are prepared to take on consumers with disabilities that more closely resemble the needs of a given state. Like consumer disability and age, one might expect to see change over time in the service categories of services received by CIL consumers. There was a modest increase in the provision of services in the category of Youth/Transition Services, an increase of 1.5 percentage points from FY15 to FY21. This finding, however, taken together with CIL consumer age data, does little to support the idea that CILs have broadly taken on the mandate of serving transition-age youth.

4.1 Implications for practice and research

It is well understood that a major purpose of the WIOA was to increase the contributions of VR agencies to the positive postschool outcomes of youth with disabilities. By serving potentially eligible students through Pre-Employment Transition Services, VR agencies are now situated to engage a broader base of people with disabilities using their services (Carlson et al., 2020). Through such engagement in Pre-Employment Transition Services, VR agencies also are in a better position to engage youth in more traditional VR services as clients with an Individualized Plan for Employment (Honeycutt et al., 2017). VR agencies around the country are operationalizing this orientation to supporting transition-age youth in different ways, and their reporting requirements have helped to ensure transparency around the nature and impact of their efforts(Miller et al., 2018).

Unlike VR agencies, CIL mandates to provide youth transition services came with no fiscal requirements for their expenditures to support such services. There is also a striking ambiguity around that which would constitute success in service provision. Further, the addition of youth transition as a core service for CILs came with a definition of transition-age youth that focuses on youth that have exited school. In specific terms, the CIL mandate to provide youth transition services was delimited to youth that: (a) are ages 14 to 24, (b) have significant disabilities, (c) were eligible for individualized education programs, and (d) have completed or exited from their secondary education (Hammond et al., 2018). To provide impactful youth transition services, however, it is understood that CILs should engage youth at ages aligned with those in which “schools and vocational rehabilitation begin their youth services” (Hammond et al., 2018, p. 4). In general, CIL and school collaboration to support transition-age youth has been highly limited (Plotner et al., 2017a; Plotner et al., 2022). Plotner and colleagues (2022) recently studied the perceptions of 581 CIL- and school-based professionals around the country on collaboration to support transition-age youth. While they found that 83% of respondents believed transition service coordination between these two entities to be extremely important, 75% of CIL respondents reported weak or no collaboration with their school-based counterparts. In places where CILs have been engaged in robust collaborative relationships with schools, a dynamic picture of what is working in such relationshipshas emerged.

In 2022, Plotner and Walters published a study documenting eight interviews with CIL professionals that had (a) dedicated youth transition funding (b) dedicated youth transition staff, (c) active collaboration with outside agencies to provide youth transition services, and (d) five or more years of involvement in delivering youth transition services. From these interviews, the authors learned of a host of transition services these CILs are providing. In total, 23 transition services across three domains of practice were documented. These services included things like the facilitation of work-based learning in community settings, career assessments, and independent living skill building. An important feature of the transition service delivery of these high performing CILs was the non-negotiable CIL professional values that drove their work. These value-based principles dictated the provision of “(a) of empowerment-, autonomy-, and independence-based services; (b) strengths-based and goal-driven services; (c) youth-led and individualized services; (d) the focus on peer-based and disability-pride-driven services; and (e) ensuring services are available and accessible” (Plotner & Walters, 2022, p. 98).

Although the current study found evidence that CILs have not broadly increased their capacity for supporting transition-age youth, to assume limitations in the transition services that CILs can provide would be an unfortunate mistake. As Plotner and Walters (2022) detailed in their earlier study, in the proper collaborative climate, CILs are providing services that are highly impactful to youth with disabilities. Taken together, findings from the current study and earlier work demonstrating the capacity of CILs in transition affirm an imperative to engage CILs more actively in the delivery of transition service by leveraging their unique strengthsand values.

Adding to what was learned about the values guiding the youth transition programming of high performing CILs and the services they provide, Walters and Plotner (2023) documented the salient features of CIL and school collaboratives. They characterized these collaborative relationships as three different models: the limited collaboration model, the semi-collaborative model, and the collaborative model. The limited collaboration model was characterized by CILs providing transition services (a) outside of the school day only, (b) through a single source of funding, and (c) school involvement limited to support in outreach. In the semi-collaborative model, CILs are still providing transition services through a single funding source (e.g., Pre-Employment Transition Services), but they are coordinating with schools to provide these services during the school day and with flexibility in programmatic offerings. The collaborative model is based on braided or blended funding between CILs, LEAs, and/or VR and robust coordination between CILs and schools to determine both the nature and the scope of the services provided. Like the semi-collaborative model, service provided in the collaborative model are typically provided during the school day. Understanding CIL and school collaboration through the lens of a continuum of possible collaborative arrangements is essential for assessing the health of current efforts and those which may be aspired to.

As an area of scholarly inquiry, the characteristics and impact of CIL youth transition service delivery has been significantly under researched. As newly funded 84.421E states create, implement, and evaluate collaborative models for service coordination, a new horizon for empirical evidence in this domain has been created. While studies such as the one described in this article are important for recognizing youth transition as a growth area for CILs on the whole, true change will likely come from applied research and effectively translating that knowledge for the field (Rogers et al., 2009). Previous research has demonstrated a linkage between CILs providing transition services and their inclusion within collaborative structures (Plotner et al., 2017) can be impactful. However, more research is needed to understand the full scope of what works within such structures, especially as they relate to coordinated transition service delivery.

Another important area of inquiry may involve replications and expansions of this current study that use CIL administrative data to promote transparency in national trends. Finally, while the expertise of lived experience with disability is understood to be an important aspect of CIL professional orientations to service delivery, little is known about the specific training and experience of CIL professionals that promote consumer success. Considering consumer disability demographics have changed little since 2015, it may be worthwhile to investigate the preparation of CIL professionals to fulfill their responsibility to support people with disabilities across the continuum of variables that characterize their lives.

4.2 Limitations

This study acknowledges inherent limitations in utilizing aggregated CIL administrative data, emphasizing the need to carefully consider any conclusions drawn from their analysis. First, aggregated administrative data pose challenges to the conclusions one can safely draw from their analysis when specific consumer data fields are collapsed into broad categories. For instance, looking at consumer trends through the lens of broad age categories may inadvertently mute more subtle trends that might be observed if CIL consumer data were disaggregated by specific ages. Additionally, examining trends over time within specific service categories through aggregated data does little for understanding the services that specific sub-groups of CIL consumers are receiving. In future studies, disaggregated administrative data would allow for more meaningful statistical inference and increased confidence in the findings of such work. This is especially true in future examinations of CIL transition services to youth and young adults with disabilities.

5 Conclusion

For the 20 states recently funded to facilitate model demonstration projects through the latest RSA DIF grant, Pathways to Partnerships (84.421E), collaboration with CILs is a critical topic. Given the importance of interagency collaboration in supporting the positive postschool outcomes of youth with disabilities and the potential of CILs as collaborative partners, these projects stand to impact the field in a large way. For these model demonstrations and others with a state-level interest in collaboration, proceeding effectively necessitates a clear understanding of where the field has been, where it is, and where it could go in this regard. To maximize the positive postschool outcomes of youth with disabilities, there is both a pragmatic and ethical responsibility to consider all available resources funded at the public’s expense. It is this responsibility that calls disability services fields to account for the harm that youth with disabilities face as a result of a fragmented service delivery system. In a landscape of publicly-funded, and often poorly coordinated services, CILs merit serious and ongoing consideration from the broader field of professionals supporting transition-age youth.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors do not have any acknowledgements for this manuscript.

Conflict of interest

Dr. Anthony Plotner is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation. The authors do not have any other conflicts of interest to declare.

Funding

The authors have no sources of funding to declare.

Informed consent

Not applicable.

Ethical approval

Not applicable.

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