How Do Families Enhance Employment Opportunities?

From September 11–15, team members from the Institute for Community Inclusion will be leading a discussion on ways to engage people with disabilities, their families, and their services providers in creating employment options. You can download and read the accessible version of this paper here.
How Do Families Enhance Employment Opportunities?

From September 11–15, team members from the Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI) will be leading a discussion on ways to engage people with disabilities, their families, and their services providers in creating employment options.

What we will be doing this week:
•We will discuss what families, service systems, and self-advocates tell us about their experiences right here in IdeaScale.
•We will brainstorm ways to work together more effectively.
•We will prioritize which issues around employment researchers should focus on in the future.

This online conversation is part of the State of the Science initiative, run by the ICI’s Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Advancing Employment for Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

The State of the Science, or SoS, is a chance for the ICI to share our research around employment. It’s also an opportunity for us to learn about the strategies service providers, family members, and self-advocates are using to support people with intellectual and development disabilities to build fulfilling careers.

This four-day open online discussion is the first of three we’ll be running. The theme is “Engaging Families in Employment,” and we’ll be discussing what families, self-advocates with disabilities, and service system staffers tell us about their experiences. We’ll brainstorm ways to work together We will use IdeaScale (https://sos2017.ideascale.com) to gather our feedback and input. Join us as often as you like!

We especially want to get family members on board for this event! Research shows that families shape employment experiences, but family members tell us that they face challenges in navigating services, especially when service providers have low expectations about what people with disabilities can achieve. Let’s talk about innovative solutions.

We look forward to a lively and productive discussion starting on September 11! For this online event, we present you a series of themes that are emerging from our findings. For each event, we ask that you provide your thoughts and opinions based on your personal and professional experience on the following:
1.Does this theme/finding resonate with your experience?
2.What do you disagree with? How is this theme/finding different than your experience?
3.How do we adress this issue? How do we do better in the future?

What is IdeaScale?

When we open up the event on September 11, you will be able to access our discussion on IdeaScale. Here is how IdeaScale works: In this discussion, you can submit ideas, vote on existing ideas, or add comments.
1.To submit an idea, please click the Submit New Idea button at the top of the navigation sidebar. You will then be asked to add a title and choose one of our 3 main topic of interest to provide feedback and comment on. You will also have the option to add tags to the discussion in all three areas.
2.To vote on an topic, simply click the up or down arrows to the right of the idea title/description.
3.And to add a comment, click in the box below the idea.