Sustainable Collaborations: Connecting State Vision, Local Practice, and Youth & Family Leadership in Secondary Transition

Collaboration in secondary transition is easy to say and hard to sustain. State agencies develop strong policies and improvement plans. Local practitioners work tirelessly to implement them. Youth and families are invited to the table. Yet persistent gaps remain between vision and lived experience.

This interactive 60-minute session brings together cross-level voices including youth leaders from Youth Engagement Transition Initiative (YETI), Parent Training & Information (PTI) representatives, and state and local partners from both special education and vocational rehabilitation (VR) systems to explore how collaboration becomes operationalized across secondary transition services. Participants will examine common breakdowns between state and local implementation, identify where youth and family voice is included but not meaningfully integrated into cross-agency decision-making, and explore how structured Communities of Practice (CoPs), Peer Networks, YETI, and PTIs function as alignment mechanisms that strengthen coordination rather than optional initiatives.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

1. Identify common breakdowns between state vision, local implementation, and youth and family experience in secondary transition systems.
2. Distinguish between informal collaboration efforts and structured infrastructure (e.g., Communities of Practice, Peer Networks, YETI, PTIs) that sustain alignment and shared accountability.
3. Determine which collaboration structures or mechanisms could address a specific gap within their own state or local context.
4. Articulate one concrete structural or leadership move that strengthens cross-agency coordination and elevates authentic youth and family partnership.