Transitioning Together: Health promotion strategies for pre-employment skill building for young adults with disabilities

Mentoring programs have recently been developed in a variety of contexts, such as youth development programs and education of professionals, as well as leadership development in industry. Youth development mentoring aims to promote positive growth in life skills by enabling young people to transition to community independent living and employment(DuBois, Holloway, Valentine, & Cooper, 2002). Noted by some as the most important aspect of positive youth development in communities, effective, high-quality mentoring programs allow youth to engage in productive social relations, better academic achievement, and improved self-efficacy (Rhoades, Spencer, Keller, Liang, & Noam, 2006). While the literature supports the use self-efficacy building as a means for improving physical activity (Peterson, Lowe, Peterson, Nothwehr, Janz, & Lobas, 2008), no known research explores health promotion mentoring of individuals with disabilities. Likewise, a paucity of research exists comparing physical fitness with job-skill readiness. Drum et al. (2009) suggest that very few theoretical models of health behavior have been evaluated among individuals with disabilities. This study has been conducted to investigate the effect of pre-employment skill-building mentoring in farm/animal husbandry environments on physical activity and physical fitness compared to mentoring of physical activity in traditional recreation settings on young adults with disabilities on the Autism Spectrum. Preliminary data demonstrates that youth with disabilities significantly increase fine-motor skill, flexibility, and strenth during pre-employment skill building activities in farm/animal activities. The result of this research addressing mentoring, physical activity, physical fitness, and pre-employment job-training will be discussed in greater detail.