Leaving school is one of the biggest transitions in a young person's life. It’s not a single event but a process, involving decisions about further education, employment and independence.
For young people who need additional support, this transition can be complex. As they move towards adulthood, the support they rely on often changes or reduces, just as expectations of independence increase. Families find themselves navigating unfamiliar services and systems at the same time.
For autistic young people, these challenges can be compounded by the disruption to familiar routines and relationships, the uncertainty that comes with change, and the loss of the structure that school can provide.
Research on the transition out of school for autistic young people has grown over the past two decades. The challenge is that it sits across education, health and social care, with different studies and reviews often focusing narrowly on one aspect of transition.
We wanted to know what the evidence tells us when viewed as a whole. To do this, we carried out an umbrella review, bringing together findings from 25 reviews covering 435 studies. This gave us a clearer picture of what is currently known about young people’s transitions and where important gaps remain.
The review was conducted by researchers from University College London and the University of Birmingham, including the Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE) and the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER).
What does the evidence tell us?
Several findings were consistent across different aspects of this transition:
Planning matters. Early, personalised planning was associated with more positive transition experiences. Planning worked best when it started early, well before school leaving age, reflected the autistic young person's own aspirations and continued throughout and beyond the transition.
Key messages for practice include:
- Begin planning early, paced according to the young person’s capabilities, circumstances, and support needs rather than age alone.
- Plan with, not for the young person, keeping strengths, aspirations and support needs at the centre.
- Review and adapt plans regularly as goals, circumstances and support needs change.
Having a genuine say matters. Person-centred planning is now well established in policy and practice, but research suggests there is still a difference between being present and being heard. Across the reviews, autistic young people were often involved in planning meetings, but many did not feel their views genuinely shaped what happened next.
Key messages for practice include:
- Provide information in ways and formats that a young person can use, including clear information about what will change and the options available.
- Create opportunities for the young person to shape decisions before, during and between meetings. This may involve conversation, augmentative and alternative communication tools, creative methods such as drawing, observations or a series of conversations over time, depending on how the young person communicates best.
- Show how the young person’s views have influenced the plan.
Joined-up services matter. Difficulties coordinating education, health and social care are familiar challenges across many transitions, and they appeared repeatedly in the literature. Families often described acting as the link between professionals, which they found stressful.
Key messages for practice include:
- Agree who is responsible for each action and how that information will be shared. Who can the young person or their family contact?
- Share information proactively so young people and their families do not have to repeat their story.
- Recognise families as experts and partners, not as co-ordinators.
None of these findings will surprise many practitioners. What this review shows is how consistently they appear across the autism literature and how closely they align with current policy and practice guidance.
What is the research still missing?
Looking across all 25 reviews also revealed important gaps in the evidence.
Some autistic young people are still missing from research. Autistic young people with intellectual disability were consistently underrepresented. In some reviews it was unclear whether they had been included at all. In others, their experiences were combined with wider groups or not reported separately. This leaves an important gap in our understanding of how to support transitions for all autistic young people.
We know little about inequalities. The evidence also paid little attention to how the transition experiences of autistic young people might differ according to gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic circumstances or additional disabilities. These factors shape access to opportunities and support, yet they remain largely unreported and unexamined in the research.
Social care reviews are absent. Although we searched across education, health and social care, we found no reviews focused specifically on social care transitions. For social care practitioners, this is an important finding. Social care plays a central role in supporting young people and families through adulthood, yet its contribution has received remarkably little attention in review-level research.
This does not mean there is no research. Individual studies and examples of practice almost certainly exist. However, they have not yet been brought together to show what wider evidence tells us.
We know little about longer-term outcomes. Few studies followed young people long enough to understand what happened several years after leaving school.Researchers also rarely considered whether transition interventions might have unintended negative consequences like anxiety or disengagement, making it difficult to judge what works over the longer term.
Are we measuring the right outcomes?
Most studies judged successful transitions using outcomes such as employment, further education or independent living. These are important outcomes, but they tell us only part of the story.
Far less attention was paid to wellbeing, relationships, belonging, community participation or quality of life. Researchers also rarely asked whether autistic young people themselves felt that their transition had been successful.
The outcomes we choose to measure shape how we understand ‘success’. That raises an important question: are we measuring the outcomes that matter most to autistic young people themselves? Understanding this takes time, communication and trusted relationships.
Why does this matter?
Many practitioners will recognise these findings from their own experience. Good transitions depend on early planning, meaningful participation and professionals working together. Our review reinforces the importance of these principles, while also highlighting the need for coordinated support across education, health and social care.
At the same time, the review highlights an important limitation: the evidence base is incomplete. Some autistic young people are missing from research, some aspects of transition receive more attention than others, and success is defined in relatively narrow ways.
That matters because policy and practice are shaped by the evidence available. If some experiences are missing from that evidence, our understanding of what supports good transitions is incomplete.
Looking ahead, future research needs to include a wider range of autistic young people's experiences. That means including autistic young people who have too often been overlooked and better understanding inequalities in transition experiences. It also needs to broaden who helps shape the evidence. We need to work in partnership with autistic young people and their families to help us decide the questions that are asked and the outcomes used to understand what makes a successful transition, which is important for all young people, but especially crucial for autistic young people and their families facing complex or compounded challenges.
Explore the open access paper, Transitions out of school for autistic young people: An Umbrella Review, to read our findings in full.
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