Nicholas J. Certo

Seamless Transition and Long-Term Support for Individuals with Severe Intellectual Disabilities

The amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) in 2004 reiterate the significance of producing real postsecondary education, employment, and independent living outcomes. However, current employment data continue to show widespread unemployment and very limited access to inclusive community environments and services for adults with severe intellectual disabilities. On the contrary, data from the Transition Service Integration Model (N. J. Certo et al., 2003) demonstrate that these recalcitrant problems could be attenuated if two changes are implemented: The transition from school to adulthood components of IDEIA be strengthened to explicitly authorize school districts to subcontract with appropriate private agencies at the point of transition to produce direct-hire, individualized employment and adult living outcomes and that the federal government amend the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act to provide an entitlement to long-term support, creating a service system which parallels the functions of IDEIA after school exit.

Changing Jobs: An Essential Part of Career Development

Supported employment, by definition, assumes the need for ongoing support. Despite this, assumptions inherent within regulations and policies of federal and state rehabilitation systems appear to be at variance with this definition: Job placement is viewed as final and support is temporary. Consequently, retraining and replacement services following the termination of a job are an afterthought, job change is equated with failure, and retraining is a reaction to this failure. In contrast, models of career development for the general population assume that changing jobs is an integral part of career development. In this paper we have applied this more normative view of career development to the rehabilitation system and the provision of supported employment.

Transition and employment: Reflections from a 40 year perspective

This article reviews the experiences of the authors in the area of transition from school to work and community living for individuals with severe intellectual disabilities and sets forth a series of recommendations based on these experiences to maintain gains earned through research and demonstration over the years and to lead to further improvements.

To Pay or Not to Pay: Differentiating Employment and Training Relationships through Regulation and Litigation.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (1938), administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, utilizes criteria established in landmark Supreme Court cases to distinguish nonpaid instructional work experiences from paid employment. Special Education teachers involved in developing jobs for students with disabilities should understand this distinction in order to prevent problems that could accrue from providing employment-related instruction without pay, when payment may be required. Recent federal appellate and district court cases have interpreted these earlier Supreme Court cases and regulations, leading the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor to revise their guidelines relating to community-based employment instruction. This paper provides a careful description of the underlying themes and legal parameters within which nonpaid training programs can operate through a review and analysis of this litigation. We also review recent U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Labor guidelines, in order to assist in the design and implementation of instruction that is both programmatically and legally sound.