Life Skill Assessment Services in Indiana

Our occupational therapy practitioners are able to perform an Adolescent Life Skill Assessment to identify if a young person has the potential to learn to drive. The intent of the evaluation is to provide the parents/caregivers with tools to help the young person work on and enhance the skills, particularly cognitive skills, needed to become a new driver.

Young adults who do not possess a learners' permit may participate in a behind-the-wheel evaluation as a passenger. Our driving specialist will operate the vehicle while the new driver will ask to comment on the driving environment. This allows the specialist to gather information on a young person's ability to handle the demands of vehicle operation and driving by studying and observing their skills in the following areas:

• recognize and understand the meaning of road signs and road markings
• level of knowledge of road rules
• ability to see the big picture of the driving environment
• ability to attend, focus and have quick thinking skills in a multiple stimulus environment
• ability to process information quickly and identify the most important information to attend to
• ability to have dynamic visual-perceptual abilities and time management skills in a moving environment
• ability to identify risk factors in the traffic environment
• ability to use anticipatory or predictive thinking and quick problem solving and planning
• ability to interpret verbal and non-verbal communication
• ability to determine the best execution

Following this time, the driving specialist can provide the family with strategies and recommendations to work on with their young adult for development of pre-driving skills and life skills that relate to driving. Examples are:

• working on the young person crossing the street and negotiating traffic control devices and making independent decisions when it is safe to go
• working on sequencing skills in putting together a recipe to prepare a meal
• planning a week's schedule to include school, work and other activites
• understanding how to handle a fire emergency at home
• verbalizing a route to a destination frequented
• locating parking space in crowded parking lot