Ecological Approaches to Transition Planning for Students with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome

Abstract

This article presents a compelling case for the increased role of social workers in work with individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome in secondary school settings, specifically in transition planning for postsecondary educational pursuits. Social work education prepares social workers to address micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice while utilizing the ecological perspective. Students with autism and Asperger's syndrome transitioning from high school to college have unique needs that require the specialized training and assistance social workers can provide. This article calls for school social workers to play an integral role in transition planning to assist students with skills and resource acquisitions. It outlines the changing expectations that high school students face in college; discusses characteristics and unique challenges for students with autism; identifies changing legal protections, resources, and roles of college students; highlights academic and social demands of college; and discusses transition preparation and interventions needed. Concepts from ecological systems theory (social environment, person-in-environment, transactions, energy, input, output, interface, adaptations, coping, and interdependence) are linked to potential social work interventions to identify ways that ecological approaches can inform social work advocacy on behalf of students.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 66 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.