Mary Korpi, Guiding Your Teenager with Special Needs Through the Transition from School to Adult Life: Tools for Parents

In facing the daunting task of planning for the future of an adult child with a disability, even parents who are wellseasoned advocates for their children can experience feelings of fear and helplessness. In response, Guiding Your Teenager with Special Needs through the Transition from School to Adult Life offers a comforting, get-down-tobusiness perspective on navigating the uncertainty of adult services that is at once informative and empowering. Make no mistake about it, there’s lots of work ahead, but the short time you spend reading this book will pay great dividends in the inspiration it provides and the practical solutions it offers. Drawing from a career supporting and educating individuals with disabilities and their families as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor, Mary Korpi provides a compassionate and thorough instruction manual full of the nuts and bolts parents will need to effectively prepare and guide their teenage children through this important stage of life. Parents and professionals alike will benefit from the cogent way Korpi integrates a broad understanding of adult-service systems with practical guidelines for building opportunities for independent functioning into daily home, school, and community routines. Widely considered one of the most critical times in the education of children with disabilities, the transition out of the school system into adulthood presents significant challenges to families and professionals. In terms of the heavy demands on parent advocacy skills, Korpi likens this transition to the early intervention period, when stress is often high as families cope with a new diagnosis and with the urgency of implementing appropriate interventions. Parents who have worked for well over a decade to become effective advocates for their children within school systems face new challenges as their children transition into the unknown world of adult services. Particularly when children have already struggled significantly to meet the academic and social demands of childhood, families often worry how to incorporate new goals for independence and functional skills. Korpi responds to this concern. With an understanding of state-of-the-art techniques for working with individuals with disabilities, Korpi draws upon positive behavioral strategies that are philosophically strengths-based and person-centered. Emphasis is placed on involving the individual teenager in taking responsibility for decisionmaking, while also calling on all those who have a stake in that individual’s development to find creative ways to promote independent functioning. To me, the greatest asset of this book is the plethora of techniques that can be employed throughout adolescence to effectively prepare the teenager for adult living. In fact, though this book is certainly relevant to families of older adolescents and young adults, it would also be a highly appropriate recommendation for families of children in their early teens to help them think about priorities for supporting their children throughout adolescence. Next, Korpi attacks the issue of service access for adults with disabilities. Her book is a timely contribution in light of growing national concern in this area. In fact, over the last several years increased media attention to the ‘‘autism epidemic’’ and the experiences of families coping with this disability has shone a spotlight on the struggles encountered by all families of children with disabilities as these children transition to adulthood. Called a national crisis by the Autism Society of America (ASA 2007) and similarly G. W. Gengoux (&) Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: grace.gengoux@yale.edu