Pre-vocational programming in a pediatric skilled care facility

This article describes a pre-vocational program that was developed in a private residential skilled care pediatric facility, under the guidance of an occupational therapy consultant. This "Special Training Program" was designed to meet the needs of the few higher functioning adolescents and young adults residing within the facility who did not participate in daily community school programs. This paper presents the philosophical issues related to developing a pre-vocational program; the criteria for selecting program participants; the program structure (implementation details, work sample selection, production rate data records, program supervision, participant remuneration, physical set-up and start-up costs); and an evaluation of the benefits and disadvantages of the program following one year of the Special Training Program's initiation date.