Planning for Life After High School Starts Now
Preparing for adulthood does not begin during a student’s final semester. For students with autism and other neurodivergent needs, meaningful transition planning often starts years before graduation.
August 2026 | Vivos Academy
Every August brings a familiar set of questions for families of high school students. What will the schedule look like? Who will be on my child’s team? How do we ease back into a routine after summer?
Those are important questions. But if your student is in their high school or transition years, there is one more worth adding to the list: what comes after graduation?
It can feel early to ask. It isn’t. The supports and services that will shape your child’s adult life often take years to put into place, and many of them require families to apply, get screened, or join a waiting list long before the need becomes urgent. Beginning the conversation now is what makes real options possible later.
Vivos Academy is a special education high school in Richmond, Virginia, serving students ages 14 to 22 with autism and other neurodivergent needs. Our program is built around what comes next, and transition planning is part of that work from a student’s very first day with us. Whether your family is already part of our community, considering a program for your child, or simply beginning to think about the years ahead, we hope the information below is useful to you.
Why Transition Planning Begins Years in Advance
For students with developmental disabilities, the path into adulthood is built one piece at a time, and several of those pieces move slowly. Waivers have waiting lists. Day programs have limited capacity. Residential placements require applications, funding, and often a wait of their own. Employment and college support programs carry their own timelines and eligibility requirements.
None of this is designed to be difficult, but all of it takes time.
The families who feel most prepared at graduation are almost always the ones who started asking questions when their student was fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, rather than in the spring of their final year. You do not need to have answers yet. You only need to begin.
Years
identify supports
Years
+ practice
day support, independent
or supported living
The Language You Will Hear Along the Way
Transition planning comes with a great deal of terminology, much of it unfamiliar and none of it especially intuitive. Understanding these terms is the first step toward advocating confidently for your child.
DD Waiver (Developmental Disability Waiver)
A Medicaid program that funds long-term supports and services for people with developmental disabilities, including in-home support, day programs, residential care, employment support, and assistive technology. In Virginia, there are three DD waivers offering different levels of support, and eligibility is determined through your local Community Services Board (CSB). Because there is typically a waiting list, being screened and added to it is one of the earliest and most valuable steps a family can take.
Day Support Program
A structured program your child attends during the day, usually on weekdays, returning home in the evening. Depending on the program, day support may focus on life skills, community participation, recreation, therapeutic support, or pre-vocational training. In many ways it is the adult counterpart to a school day, offering consistent structure, staff support, and meaningful connection outside the home.
Residential Program
A setting where an individual lives full time with staff support, most often a licensed group home serving a small number of residents. Staffing levels are matched to individual need, and services typically include support with daily living skills, medical care, and community access. Residential programs are usually funded through a waiver.
Sponsored Residential
A model in which an individual lives in the private home of a trained, licensed caregiver, sometimes called a sponsor family or host family, rather than in a group home. The provider agency screens, trains, and supervises the sponsor family. For students who thrive in a small, family-style environment, this can be an excellent fit. It is less widely known than the group home model, which is precisely why we want families to know it exists.
Supported and Competitive Integrated Employment
Paid work in the community with job coaching support, whether short term while learning a role or ongoing over time. Employment is a realistic option for far more students than families often expect, and it does not have to be all or nothing. Part-time work alongside a day support program is a common and successful combination.
Questions Worth Sitting With
You do not need to decide anything today. These questions are simply the ones that will guide your planning over the coming years, and thinking about them now will make every conversation ahead a little easier.
There are no wrong answers, and your answers are allowed to change. That is exactly why we start early.
Practicing Adulthood, Not Just Talking About It
Preparing students for life beyond the classroom is not something we add on at the end of high school. It is woven through the ordinary rhythm of every school day.
Skills that are practiced in worksheets rarely transfer to real life. Skills that are practiced in real conditions do. That is why we have designed our setting to resemble the adult world as closely as we can, so that the tasks our students master here are the same tasks waiting for them at home, at work, and in their own apartments one day.
Caring for Another Living Thing
Our students share responsibility for Penny, the animal who is part of our school community. They feed her, provide fresh water, help with grooming and clean-up, and learn to read what she needs and respond to it. Pet care teaches routine, gentleness, follow-through, and the understanding that someone else is counting on you. These are the foundations of responsibility, and they are far more meaningful when the animal on the other end is real.
Laundry That Actually Belongs to Them
Rather than practicing on the same set of school towels each week, students bring laundry from home and wash, dry, and fold it here. They sort by color, measure detergent, choose settings, manage the wait time, and carry their clean clothes home again. The task has a genuine beginning and a genuine end, and the outcome matters to the student because the clothes are their own.
Earning, Carrying, and Spending Money
Students carry their own wallets. They apply for and hold school jobs, complete their assigned work, and earn money for it, which they then spend at our school store. Along the way they practice the full sequence that adult life requires: showing up, doing the work, being paid, deciding what to buy, handling cash or a card, counting change, and living with the choice they made. Money management becomes concrete rather than theoretical.
These experiences sit alongside our mock studio apartment, where students practice cooking, cleaning, budgeting, and personal care, and our vocational program, where they explore career paths, earn credentials, and build workplace skills in fields including food service, retail, maintenance, and animal care. Together with individualized academics aligned with Virginia standards, they help students develop the self-advocacy to understand their own needs, use their voices, and direct their lives with dignity.
Because we serve only high school and transition-age students, every part of our program is designed for this stage of life.
This fall, families enrolled at Vivos Academy will receive a brief questionnaire about their student’s life after high school. It is multiple choice, takes only a few minutes, and covers the essentials: waiver status, college plans, living arrangements, and interest in day support. It is not a commitment to anything. It is a starting point, and a way for us to understand where each family stands so we can help identify the right next step.
We are also actively exploring how we can better serve students as they move beyond high school, and what we learn from our families will help shape that work.
If You Do One Thing This Fall
Call your local Community Services Board and ask about a DD waiver screening. If your student is already on the waiting list, confirm that your contact information is current and your screening is up to date.
It is a single phone call, and it is the door that most other options open behind.
We Are Here to Help
If your student attends Vivos Academy, please reach out to their team with any questions. Helping your family navigate this path is part of what we are here for.
If you are exploring options for your child and want to learn more about our program, we would love to hear from you. Schedule a conversation or arrange a visit to learn more about Vivos Academy.