Introduction to Supported Employment
Values Associated with Supported Employment
Developing shared values related to employing people with disabilities is the basis for successful supported employment. Why are values so important? Because values and attitudes largely influence directions taken during referral and intake, career planning, job development, design of service supports, crisis response, teaching skills, and just about everything else that happens.
For example, suppose an individual with a severe disability wants a job, and staff disagree over how “ready” the person is, or whether anyone with such a disability can succeed in a community job. These opinions generally have more to do with values than with any objective assessment of the capability of the individual. We know this because there are so many people in supported employment who are now working despite the opinions of some professionals who, in their best objective judgment, claimed they could not. The values of supported employment contradict the values of traditional facility-based programs that focus on readiness training (“train and place”). Studies have shown that most of the individuals in such programs do not ever get jobs, earn on average poor wages, and are perceived primarily by their disability, rather than their strengths. Supported employment focuses on immediate employment and long-term support (“place and train”).
The value base for supported employment began to be developed in the 1970s through the work of visionaries such as Marc Gold, Lou Brown, Wolf Wolfensberger, Tom Bellamy, Burton Blatt and many others. It has been expanded by advocates, self advocates and organizations such as the Association for Persons in Supported Employment (APSE). This has enabled supported employment to avoid becoming “just another jobs program.”
The following value statements are central to the practice of supported employment, and have been endorsed by the Association for Persons in Supported Employment (DiLeo, MacDonald, & Killam, 1991; revised 1997).
Core Values of Supported Employment
Individuality
People receive assistance as unique individuals with varying interests, preferences, and aptitudes. They should not be grouped on the basis of label, functioning level, or convenience of support.
Choice
There are sufficient options related to people’s interests and desires in life in order to exercise control and autonomy over their life’s direction. The choices made by an individual are the result of being fully informed through direct personal experience and/or considering information on potential alternatives.
Respect
Services are always provided in a dignified, age appropriate, and enhancing way.
Participation
People have the opportunity to participate actively in all their chosen pursuits of life.
Competence
Individuals are provided opportunities to develop skills of interest and use in their lives by discovering and expressing gifts and capacities.
Social Inclusion
People have access to diverse individuals in social contexts in order to build friendships, working relationships, and networks of individuals who share interests, settings, or other commonalties.
Community Settings with Minimal Intrusion
Services are designed to support persons in their pursuit of a quality life in natural settings in ways which minimize artificiality or restrictiveness.
Normalization
The concept of normalization recognizes that people who have disabilities are entitled to decide upon options of living that everybody else has in the community. In particular, people should be supported to pursue lifestyles of their choosing that enhance their status.
However, rights do not always become reality. There are numerous obstacles to obtaining a valued lifestyle.
Many people will think of a person with a disability as different in a negative way. Our culture values being productive, skilled, attractive, and affluent. For a number of reasons that have little to do with the people themselves, these attributes are rarely connected to persons with disabilities.
Still, services and attitudes are changing for the better. Part of the reason is a greater awareness of the principles of normalization. We are also learning how to better communicate with and educate the public about the rights of citizens with disabilities. And one of the most powerful ways to change attitudes is for persons to participate successfully in their communities – as good neighbors, good workers, and good friends to those around them.
A big part of our job, then, is to understand how perceptions of persons with disabilities are influenced, and then to support more valued social roles for people. Normalization does not emphasize how people with disabilities are different because of their disability, it focuses on their capacities (see below).
Normalization
• stresses what each person can do rather than can’t do
• places an emphasis on the environment and experiences
• supports people to follow their own interests
• assumes that all people can learn and contribute to their community
• supports people to live, work, and recreate in their local communities
Normalization means the right to make choices about:
• a home
• a career
• recreational pursuits like others in the community
• self-expression in following an individual lifestyle
• friends and family relationships
• access to and participation in community places and events
Support Strategies Influence Perceptions of Disability
With the advent of normalization, schools and service providers began to examine not only the attitudes of people in the community towards people with disabilities, but also how their services contributed to those attitudes. What many agencies discovered was that people with disabilities were viewed not as true members of their community, but rather as objects of charity or pity, or sometimes even as people to be feared. These perceptions are based on an individual having a difference that is seen as negative, or a stigma. Many of these attitudes could be traced to services that seem to make people stand out as “different” and add to stigma: programs and educational services that segregated people; grouping people of like disability together; and supports, jargon, and other trappings of disability.
In the last ten years or so, agencies began to experiment with less intrusive and artificial services. As teachers and professionals used less jargon, labels, and unusual treatment programs, people with disabilities had more success “fitting in.” And when programs began to try to use more natural ways of teaching in more regular settings, people with disabilities made further progress in realizing a quality life.
Social Perceptions of Disability and Stigma
Perception of disability is related to how the individual varies from what is commonly experienced.
The greater the difference and the less it is valued, the less likely a peer relationship of support.
Differences can be magnified by grouping people of the difference together, by segregating people, or by introducing artificiality around people.
The greater the perceived competency and commonality, the more likely a peer relationship of support.
Competency and commonality can be enhanced by minimizing grouping, segregation, and artificiality; maximizing the use of the same rituals, norms, traditions, and supports others use; and performing what you prefer to do and what you do best.
Choosing Support Strategies
Since supports can be intrusive or add to stigma, one needs to be sensitive when choosing how to support and individual. Determine each support:
• individually
• based on strengths and needs
• minimally intrusive
• natural validity
• personal choice of the individual
• availability
• effectiveness
• cost
Individual Versus Group Employment
People with disabilities are vulnerable to being placed in settings where their time is wasted. With this in mind, the best way we now know to build a career is for someone to get a real job with the needed support to make it work.
What do we mean by a real job? A real job doesn’t offer “practice work.” It provides pay for work that is necessary. Wages should reflect what the person gets done and are the same as what others make for doing the same type of work. An employee with a real job is respected for his or her contribution as part of a work team.
Some agencies try to accomplish this by offering “group placements.” Two examples of these are “work crews” and “enclaves.”
In an enclave, a small group of up to eight individuals with disabilities work for a business at its community location. In the work crew, a small business consisting of people with disabilities does cleaning or landscaping work. Although enclaves and crews offer more potential for better wages, real work and access to different kinds of people than segregated work programs, they also have disadvantages.
One disadvantage is that the work is seldom tailored to each individual’s career plans. Another is that a group usually arrives, takes breaks and leaves together. This grouping of people with disabilities tends to magnify what the group shares in common, the disability, rather than the individual strengths or personalities of each person. Coworkers typically view the enclave or crew as its own unit, rather than as their peers. This cuts down on the potential to meet other people and be seen as an individual. And work crews have the added difficulty of working during times when businesses are empty so they can be efficiently cleaned. This limits the crew members meeting new kinds of people.
Crews and enclaves are models that have let people build work experiences in various settings and have a history of earning wages. But they do not easily fulfill one’s need to explore a satisfying career.
In a real job, there shouldn’t be an unnatural grouping of people with disabilities working together just to make support or supervision easier. In the last few years, employees with all kinds of disabilities have proven to be valuable workers in individualized jobs. This manual will focus on this type of approach – finding the best job that fits the interests and skills of the job seeker and the needs of an employer, with whatever support is necessary for the worker to succeed.
Disadvantages to Group Employment
• The work is seldom tailored to each individual’s career plans.
•Grouping of people with disabilities tends to magnify what the group shares in common, the disability, rather than individual strengths.
•Coworkers view the enclave or crew as its own unit, rather than as their peers.
•Research has demonstrated poorer outcomes in integration.
•Group models of employment typically are not freely chosen by job seekers with disabilities among a range of job options, but are generally offered as the only job option.
Defining Supported Employment
The field of supported employment is evolving so rapidly that much of what was considered appropriate a short time ago is now obsolete. Values have changed, technology has improved, and approaches used to plan careers, find jobs, and support people in doing their jobs and socializing in their workplace have developed.
Supported employment is a simple concept. It refers to a process whereby people traditionally denied career opportunities due to the perceived severity of their disability are placed in jobs and provided long-term, ongoing support for as long as needed. Despite its simplicity in concept, providing effective supported employment can be challenging.
Supported employment has expanded the scope of traditional human services, embracing the business community, families, local communities, and, most importantly, the job seeker as the forces that drive the service.
The Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986 and 1992 (with revisions in 1994), define supported employment. Key aspects of this definition are listed below. The definition also includes “transitional employment for persons who are individuals with severe disabilities due to mental illness.” While this may be a strict definition, there are as many ways of providing supported employment as there are people who could benefit from it.
Supported Employment is defined as:
Competitive work in an integrated work setting for individuals with the most severe disabilities –
• for whom competitive employment has not traditionally occurred
• or for whom competitive employment has been interrupted or intermittent as a result of a severe disability and
• who, because of the nature and severity of their disability, need intensive supported employment services and extended services after transition in order to perform such work
Does Supported Employment Work?
Yes. Supported employment has found jobs for many people previously labeled unemployable. How does supported employment get jobs for people with disabilities, including those with the most severe disabilities, where other programs have historically failed?
• It assumes everyone is ready to work right now.
• It provides for jobs based on individual strengths and interests.
• It provides the needed support to succeed for as long as necessary.
A Closer Look at the Terms Used in Supported Employment
In an effort to further clarify what is meant by some of the terms in the definition, the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in the U.S. Department of Education, developed regulations concerning supported employment. Key definitions are provided below and at right. There has continued to be controversy and discussion around many of these definitions and policies, and it is anticipated that they will continue to change over time to reflect new thinking and learning.
Competitive work involves ...
• paid work consistent with the abilities, capabilities, and interests of the individual of at least minimum wage* and consistent with wages paid to nondisabled workers with similar job functions.
• full or part-time schedules determined on an individual basis.
Integrated work settings ...
• means a setting typically found in the community in which applicants or eligible individuals interact with non-disabled individuals, other than non-disabled individuals who are providing services to those applicants or eligible individuals, to the same extent that non-disabled individuals in comparable positions interact with other persons.
Workers with severe disabilities are ...
• workers with a history of intermittent or interrupted employment.
• workers who are unable to gain and maintain employment without support.
• workers who, because of their disability, need ongoing support.
Ongoing support services include ...
•individualized supports such as transportation, job site training, family support, or any services necessary to maintain job stability.
•twice monthly monitoring at the worksite or elsewhere.
•services throughout the term of employment.
Transition services mean...
•a coordinated set of activities for a student designed within an outcome-oriented process that promotes movement from school to post-school activities, including postsecondary education, vocational training, integrated employment (including supported employment), continuing and adult education, adult services, independent living, or community participation.
•The coordinated set of activities must be based upon the individual student’s needs, taking into account the student’s preferences and interests, and must include activities in the areas of instruction, related services, community experiences, the development of employment and other post-school adult living objectives, and, if appropriate, acquisition of daily living skills and functional vocational evaluation.
•Transition services must promote or facilitate the achievement of the post-school outcome identified in the student’s Transitional Individual Education Plan and his or her Individual Plan for Employment.
Transitional employment means...
•a series of temporary job placements in competitive work in integrated settings with ongoing support services for individuals with the most significant disabilities due to mental illness.
•the provision of ongoing support services must include continuing sequential job placements until job permanency is achieved.
The Process of Supported Employment
The process of providing supported employment services includes some basic steps that flow from one to another. The best place to begin is to consider who is eligible for supported employment. The answer is that supported employment, by definition, is for those people who have historically had difficulty gaining employment due to the severity or nature of their disability. This means that a program or funding agency should not dismiss a referral simply because a person is considered “too disabled” to work. In fact, funding for supported employment is generally limited to those people for whom employment would not be a likely outcome without ongoing support.
Once a person is accepted into a supported employment program, staff will begin a process, called career planning, to discover who the person really is, what he or she is good at and likes to do, and what type of career he or she wishes to have. This is followed by job development activities to secure a job that matches the career planning goals of the individual. Once a job has been found, job training and support strategies must be developed and implemented to help the person succeed. Next, efforts must be made to help the person stabilize and perform the job as independently as possible, with whatever follow-up is needed. Finally, the job isn’t the end of the career process, but the beginning. Continual efforts are made to support the person in career advancement, as well as coordinating all of the needed life supports off-the-job to help make the job be a part of a quality life.
At all times, the individual receiving supports is the central driving force in the development of options and decisions. In designing supported employment services, professionals have a responsibility to reflect the principles listed below and on the next pages to promote services consistent with best practices.
Career Planning
Employment should be an option for any person interested in working, regardless of disability label or perceived functioning level.
Job seekers (or at their invitation, family, friends, or co-workers) are the best source to personally convey information of their personal interests, preferences, skills, aptitudes, and life goals. These considerations are the basis for choices in employment opportunity, rather than program or agency considerations.