Transitional Service uses a critical skills model for its training model.  That is, only those skills or those parts of skills that are needed are taught.  Basic tenets of this model are that it is not necessary to do a great deal of readiness training and that if there are adaptive ways of doing things, use them.  The real goal is to get people functioning as completely and quickly as possible.

     TS is also committed to training in the natural environments.  This means that the best place to learn to use the supermarket is to shop at the one you will be using as you move into more independent living.  The best way to learn to cook is when you are hungry.  Natural environments are the times, places, and ways that people normally do things.  TS, as it currently exists, has four basic components.

     TS is an independent living skills (ILS) program.  It is one of the two oldest such programs in Northern California, celebrating its fiftieth year in the summer of 2002.  It is a community-based program, which means that all training is done in the community with a staff to consumer ratio of one to one.

     Each staff member is responsible for a caseload of from ten to twelve consumers.  Staff members assist each consumer in developing her/his own Individual Service Plan (ISP) that outlines the goals the consumer hopes to accomplish, the plan for arriving at these goals, and the timeframe for achieving the goals.  This Individual Service Plan serves as the curriculum for each of the consumers in the program.

     TS provides training in all areas in which a person needs competence in order to live independently in the community.  We teach budgeting, cooking, community access, sexual responsibility, parenting, and all areas in between.  If it is part of human experience, it is potentially part of our curriculum.