Project SEARCH: Opening Doors to Employment for Young People With Disabilities.

DE130B_PDF2.pdf: 1556 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Transforming Disability Policy for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities

DE129B_PDF2.pdf: 842 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Supported Employment: A Best Practice for People with Psychiatric Disabilities

Over the past several decades, research from a variety of fields has presented powerful evidence of the importance of employment to people with psychiatric disabilities. Many of these people want to work and can successfully participate in the labor market in a variety of competitive jobs. Researchers have also shown how employment can alleviate poverty, reduce hospitalization, and improve quality of life. Society also benefits through taxes paid by workers, goods and services they purchase, and reductions in entitlements and the overall cost of care. However, the 1997 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) reports employment rates for people with a wide range of mental disorders to be 37.1 percent (Harris et al., 2005; New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, 2003). Employment rates for people with schizophrenia and related disorders are 22 percent (Jans, et al., 2004). Recently, funding agencies and practitioners have begun to move towards evidence-based practice in serving people with psychiatric disabilities. A number of reviews and meta-analyses of single-site, randomized controlled trials of supported employment for this group have found it to be more effective at establishing competitive employment outcomes than prevocational training or non-vocational community care (Crowther et al., 2001; Twamley et al., 2003; Wewiorski & Fabian, 2004). Still in question at the time of this study\u27s funding, however, was the effectiveness of different models of supported employment, operating in a variety of organizational settings, for consumers with diverse demographic characteristics, in different regions of the country. Therefore, the Employment Intervention Demonstration Program (EIDP) was designed as a multi-site randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of supported employment (SE) for people with psychiatric disabilities in eight locations across the U.S. SE programs use a rapid job search approach to help clients obtain jobs directly (rather than providing lengthy assessment, training, and counseling), and provide them with ongoing support to maintain and improve their earnings after they start work. This policy brief describes the EIDP, presents study findings, and suggests some policy and research implications

Health Insurance Coverage among Youth and Young Adults with Work Limitations

This paper explores health insurance coverage trends for youth (age 15-18) and young adults (age 19-29) with work limitations using data from the Current Population Survey. In 2000 those in the young work-limited population were substantially more likely to have insurance coverage than their counterparts in the not work-limited population. They were much more likely to have public coverage and much less likely to have only private coverage. Insurance coverage for this population increased substantially between 1989 and 2000, in contrast to a decline for the not work-limited population. We discuss the probable contributions of policy reforms and the decline in employment of people with work limitations to these trends

The Health Care Financing Maze for Working-Age People with Disabilities

Much of the research on health care financing for people with disabilities has focused on the Medicaid and Medicare programs. The findings of this research often highlight the inadequacies of those programs in providing appropriate services to address the special needs of people with disabilities. A focus on these large programs, however, obscures the role of other public and private insurers, as well as the role of programs that provide many additional services to this population – all of which add complexity to the system. The purpose of this paper is to describe the health care financing system as a whole, including the large public programs, other public and private insurers, and the many other programs that provide additional services. The description of the system highlights structural problems that need to be addressed in order to substantially improve the delivery of health and related services to people with disabilities. In the next section, we describe each source of health care financing for working-age people with disabilities and highlight its implications for service delivery and quality of life. In the concluding section, we describe the key structural shortcomings of the current financing system, assess the extent to which current reform efforts are addressing these shortcomings, and discuss the implications for broader efforts to reform health care financing system

Dismantling the Poverty Trap: Disability Policy for the Twenty-First Century

Working-age people with disabilities are much more likely than people without disabilities to live in poverty and not be employed or have shared in the economic prosperity of the late 1990s. Today’s disability policies, which remain rooted in paternalism, create a “poverty trap” that recent reforms have not resolved. This discouraging situation will continue unless broad, systemic reforms promoting economic self-sufficiency are implemented, in line with more modern thinking about disability. Indeed, the implementation of such reforms may be the only way to protect people with disabilities from the probable loss of benefits if the federal government cuts funding for entitlement programs. This article suggests some principles to guide reforms and encourage debate and asks whether such comprehensive reforms can be successfully designed and implemented