The Warren County Transition Council is a partnership between the Warren County School District, Forest-Warren Human Services, the Office of Vocational Rehab, and other area resources for students with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that focuses on promoting “effective transition for students with disabilities from school to adult life,” and on helping them become “productive citizens within their community,” according to the group’s mission statement.

In an effort to help students with disabilities and their parents get engaged and take an active role in their lives beyond school, Warren County Transition Council will hold its annual Dine and Discuss event from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, at the Allegheny Community Center.

This free catered dinner will feature representatives from community resources on hand to offer information about what services they can provide to students with IEPs during and after high school. Representatives will include Beacon Light Behavioral Health Systems, Forest-Warren Human Services, Warren Forest Higher Education, Goodwill Industries, the Achievement Center, the Warren County Assistance Office, the Office of Vocational Rehab, Bollinger Enterprises, the Warren County Career Center, and the Barber National Institute.

Issues such as learning disabilities, ADHD, physical and emotional disabilities, and more, can make transitioning out of school and into productive, fulfilling work roles challenging for students with disabilities, said Gini Greenwald, CASSP Coordinator at Forest-Warren Human Services. “There is a lot of assistance out there that parents aren’t aware of.”

The idea of Transition Council is to help students start identifying their resources and taking an active role in planning their transition to get things in line so that they can have the most fulfilling life possible when they leave high school. The days of students with disabilities graduating one day and automatically heading to a sheltered workshop the next day are over, said Ruth Dennis, ID Casework Supervisor at Forest-Warren Human Services. The best way for that to happen is for those students with IEPs to start identifying what they’d like to do and collecting the information on what’s available to them starting around age 14, or earlier if possible.

So for students in the Warren County School District who have IEPs, age 14 and up, Dine and Discuss is a great opportunity, said Greenwald, to do just that? Students will be given a “Passport to the Future” on arriving this year, and will have their passports stamped by stopping at each table throughout the evening. The more stamps collected, said Greenwald, the more drawings that student’s name will be entered into for door prizes.

This year’s Dine and Discuss speaker will be David De Notaris, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. “Last year,” according to event literature, “OVR assisted over 5,000 employers and helped 8,800 customers find jobs, returning $54 million in state and federal taxes. David believes that access equals success: when we can help individuals access the same information as their classmates, neighbors, colleagues and peers, they can get the same education, training, opportunities, and jobs.”

Anyone interested in attending this year’s Dine and Discuss event, which is free and open to students transition age 14 and up and their parents, may RSVP by Wednesday, Sept. 28 by calling Tammy Hawk at (814) 726-8406 or emailing hawkt@wc-hs.org.