OPTIONS Transitions to Independence

OPTIONS Transitions to Independence (formerly called OPTIONS Program at Brehm) is a comprehensive transitional program that guides young adult students with learning disabilities into independent adulthood and helps them recognize and optimize their full potential.
Students enrolled in OPTIONS come with a variety of challenges to academic, employment, social or emotional success including, but not limited to Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Pervasive Developmental Disorder/Asperger’s Disorder, Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD), Communication Disorders, Auditory Processing Disorders, Processing and Memory Deficits, Tourette Syndrome, Anxiety, and Specific Learning Disability, which is defined as a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.
Our students have graduated from high school, earned their GEDs, or chosen to defer graduation in order to participate in this empowering program.
For more than 20 years, OPTIONS has delivered comprehensive support within a collegiate atmosphere that advances accomplishments and cultivates lifelong learning. As our students transition through three phases of OPTIONS, they develop academically, vocationally, socially, and emotionally, acquiring the crucial tools necessary for independent life.
OPTIONS delivers individualized social, academic, employment, and life skills instruction. This life development program emphasizes independent living, life skills, self-advocacy skills, well-rounded interpersonal skills, community linkages, employability, and career development strategies. With the help of OPTIONS instructors, Independent Living Counselors, and specialized academic coaches, our students are successfully guided through speech and language courses, core academic skills, college preparation and participation, social skills, employment readiness classes, and community-based internships.
OPTIONS offers two different tracks: a College Transition track with our partner – John A. Logan College, and a Certificate of Completion track, which includes a variety of vocational concentrations. Both offer intensive assistance, structured supervision, and supported study hours. Our mission is to empower students with complex learning disabilities and differences to recognize and optimize their potential throughout their lifetime. We advance independence by optimizing our students’ full potential so that they may lead happy, independent, productive lives.
In addition to the two tracks offered by OPTIONS, other areas of focus include:
Accountability for actions
Emotional coping skills
Follow-through and preparedness
Honesty and integrity
Interpersonal communication
Meal planning, shopping, and preparation
Money management, fiscal responsibility and budgeting
Organization
Organization of personal space
Personal hygiene
Safe behavior
Self-advocacy
Self-management
Social strategies
Time management