The Adult Transition Program (ATP) is a satellite site for the Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD). ATP serves students who have been recommended by their Individualized Education Program (IEP) team to ensure educational benefits as described in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Although we would love to provide services to anyone who wanted them, we can only accept students who meet the criteria under IDEA, live within the HBUHSD boundaries, and are recommended by their IEP team.
If you are a student who recently moved into the HBUHSD boundaries with an IEP and you have not earned a regular diploma and have not aged out of IDEA provisions at 22 years of age, please contact the Huntington Beach Union High School District at (714) 903-7000 and ask for Special Education Services for determination of appropriate placement within the continuum of special education placements.
If you were referred to ATP Quest by an HBUHSD school, we are very excited to meet you! Please find various links on this webpage for basic information about our program. We are also available to you in person, on the phone, or via email. As a young adult with an IEP, you can also formally request an IEP meeting to be held within 30 days of your request (preferably in writing). For individuals who are conserved with the power of educational decisions granted to the parent or another caring adult, those rights would extend to that conservator.
We understand that this is a new stage in parenting for you. Your child is now an adult who may hold their own rights. In order to protect your adult child's rights, we will need to ask for formal permission from your adult child to reveal any educational, IEP, or counseling information to you. Even when your adult child gives formal permission to exchange information with you, there will still be some aspects of their time at ATP that will be up to your child to reveal to you if they choose to do so. These include possible personal communications with staff and counseling session communications. If you have any concerns regarding your adult child's right to privacy, please contact our school psychologist at (714) 903-7000 x49504.
For parents that have obtained conservatorship, we will work with you to answer any questions and arrive at appropriate IEP decisions. Please consider that even when we make formal decisions for your adult child for which you grant consent, the adult still has the right to assent or dissent. In other words, if we decide as an IEP team that an adult who is conserved should receive a particular service, they can still refuse. In this case, we will behave ethically within our profession and will not attempt to force this matter on the student. However, we will try to schedule another meeting to address the young adult's refusal while considering the determined unique need.
We do realize how important you are in your adult child's life. We also hope that we can partner with you to achieve the greatest level of independence possible for your adult child. We are very open and available to our parents, and we look forward to working with you.
Sometimes students enter ATP Quest after having a greater level of support in their high school setting than is provided here. If the student's unique needs were deemed to be appropriate for ATP Quest to support, we will attempt to move greater responsibility to the adult student. We see this movement into a more adult setting as an opportunity to develop more independence. Please know that it is common for students to have some issues when they start a new program, and generally, if the student is placed correctly, these issues dissolve rather quickly.
In this same vein, we generally ask students to take responsibility for their own communication with their parents. This includes calendars, daily schedules, and communication about other aspects of the program. This does not mean that we, as staff, are refusing to share information, rather we want the young adult to develop these important skills of adult living. We believe these skills transfer to communication with employers as well as possible roommates, life partners, or others.
Generally, when a parent contacts us about scheduling or calendars, we will refer the parent back to the student. If the student is conserved, then we will directly respond to the parent.
Thank you for allowing us to be part of your lives. We love working with our families and are honored to guide our students and families through the Adult Transition Program, setting students up for success!