David Mank

Employment Outcomes for People With Severe- Disabilities: Opportunities for Improvement

Supported employment began with a focus on those individuals deemed less likely to secure a job in the community: those with severe mental retardation, behavioral challenges, and multiple disabilities. The creation of supported employment resulted, in part, because of demonstrations of the competence and capabilities of these same people previously thought to be unemployable in any meaningful sense of the word. However, as supported employment has unfolded, those with the most severe disabilities appear to be underrepresented in the ranks of those benefitting from supported employment. Although the limited access to supported employment by individuals with such labels appears clear, little is known about how the employment of those with more severe disabilities compares with others in supported employment. This report provides analyses of the employment features, support patterns, and outcomes for persons with more severe disabilities in supported employment.

Supported employment outcomes across a decade: Is there evidence of improvement in the quality of implementation?

There is little question that the strategies used to improve supported employment outcomes, namely higher wages and higher levels of integration, have changed since the mid-1980s. Innovations of natural supports and employer leadership have helped increase the capacity of provider agencies and the business community to include people with disabilities in the workforce. This report is the sixth in a series that focuses on features of natural supports and its relationship to outcomes. Our purpose in this paper is to describe an analysis designed to investigate the features of employment, wage, and integration outcomes of jobs acquired by people with disabilities early in the development of supported employment compared to more recent years.

Impact of Coworker Involvement With Supported Employees on Wage and Integration Outcomes

This report is the fourth in a series on positive relations of typical employment features and coworker involvement with higher wage and integration outcomes for persons in supported employment. Imbedded in the discussion about natural supports in recent years has been the extent and value of coworker participation in the work life of employees with disabilities. Previous studies have illustrated the connection between natural supports and meaningful and satisfying employment outcomes. We investigated specific details associated with coworker training and support and their relation to social and economic outcomes that enable persons with disabilities to succeed economically and socially in inclusive employment.

Direct Support in Supported Employment and Its Relation to Job Typicalness, Coworker Involvement, and Employment Outcomes.

Supported employment is a comprehensive package of strategies continually evolving and designed to successfully employ people with disabilities. The emerging nature of natural support is receiving extensive attention. Understanding and improving natural support strategies is a means to provide uniquely distinctive personalized supports. It is this underlying theme that has driven four previous research reports regarding typical employment features and their relation to employment outcomes for people with disabilities. In this report we investigate the previously raised issue that high levels of direct support are associated with less typicalness, integration, and wages. This study shows that wage and integration outcomes can be increased, even if there is a high level of direct support, if there is coworker training.

Quality in Supported Employment: A New Demonstration of the Capabilities of People with Severe Disabilities.

Supported Employment for people with severe disabilities has resulted in wage and economic outcomes more than triple the wages in segregated settings. Furthermore, supported employees realize far better integration outcomes than their counterparts in segregated settings. Nonetheless, the average supported employment earnings are US

Gender differences in supported employment.

464.00 per person per month, well below the poverty line. The purpose of this paper is to describe a new demonstration of the capabilities of people with severe disabilities in the work place. This paper describes an effort that has resulted in 55 jobs in a single organizational structure, a County government. The wage and benefit outcomes are nearly three times the outcomes of supported employment nationally. These employees with disabilities, who are similar in disability labels and severity of disability to national figures, also receive full employment benefits and have worked an average of nearly 3 years. The results are discussed in the context of the key features that might be replicated in the ongoing implementation of supported employment.

Empirical Evidence of Systems Change in Supported Employment

Questions about gender equity have been asked in many aspects of the disability field and have resulted in findings that women with disabilities have significantly different experiences than do men. We analyzed an existing database of information on supported employment and natural supports to ascertain whether gender plays an important role in the employment of people with mental retardation. The findings suggest that there are several important differences. Although women were perceived as being more socially appropriate on several dimensions, they worked in jobs traditionally stereotyped by gender. Women also typically worked fewer hours than did men and, therefore, earned less money, although not statistically significantly so. The pattern of findings suggests parallels with the broader society.

Employment: Renewed Investments

Supported employment emerged rapidly after the onset of federal incentives for state systems change in 1985. This expansion was influenced by local innovations, policy initiatives, and legislation as well as by fiscal incentives. Nonetheless, states have implemented supported employment with variable success. This article reviews state outcomes in implementing supported employment in order to identify states that have excelled in implementing supported employment and to consider the possible relationship of supported-employment outcomes to economic, sociopolitical, and cultural factors. This initial analysis suggests that a variety of factors influenced the federal systems-change strategies for the implementation of supported employment across states.

Do Social Systems Really Change? Retrospective Interviews with State-Supported Employment Systems-Change Projectors

Abstract Supported employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities emerged in the 1980s, clearly showing the untapped potential of people to work productively in integrated j...

Supported Employment and Social Relationships in the Workplace

Supported employment has grown in 15 years from a few model demonstration programs to nationwide implementation. Nearly every state in the country has had a federally funded systems-change grant to implement supported employment programs for persons with severe disabilities. Despite these initiatives focused on systems change, the dynamics of change and the utility of the tools of systemic change are not well understood. This article describes the results of interviews with 10 former directors of systems-change projects. The results are discussed in the context of the ongoing nature of dynamic change in social systems.