Providing quality employment services to people living with asthma in the vocational rehabilitation program: A model for meeting the needs of an emerging clientele

BACKGROUND

With incidence and prevalence rates of asthma diagnoses steadily increasing in the United States and worldwide over the past 30 years, people with asthma are an emerging vocational rehabilitation (VR) consumer population.

OBJECTIVE

This article describes the job acquisition and return to work considerations facing employees with asthma.

METHOD

Following an overview of the etiology, incidence, prevalence, and career development implications of this chronic respiratory disease, the authors present career preparatory and return to work recommendations to meet the needs of Americans with asthma across the phases of the VR process.

RESULTS

The importance of access to quality healthcare, lifestyle and environmental modifications to promote respiratory health, employer consultation, workplace accommodations and universal design, and interface with medical and mental health professionals is emphasized throughout the article.

CONCLUSION

Asthma is an emerging disability that disproportionally affects people of color and people who live in poverty. Rehabilitation professionals must be prepared to meet the needs of this growing and diverse clientele as people with asthma seek assistance from the VR program in acquiring, maintaining, and advancing in meaningful, satisfying employment.

A "win-win" perspective on workplace accommodations: RETAIN Kentucky's self-advocacy guide to promote successful return to work and stay at work outcomes for workers with disabilities

BACKGROUND

Research has long documented the low cost and effectiveness of most workplace accommodations to enable qualified people with disabilities to seek, secure, and maintain employment.

OBJECTIVE AND METHOD

RETAIN Kentucky's return to work and stay at work intervention involves focused training for participants on requesting needed accommodations from their employers.

RESULTS

In this article, we describe the win-win approach to reasonable accommodations, which serves as the basis for helping Kentuckians with disabilities identify and request on-the-job supports to aid in their efforts to remain in the workforce.

CONCLUSIONS

Workers with disabilities are more likely to stay in the workforce and continue making valuable contributions to the national and global economies if they have effective accommodations and other employment supports available to them.

Return to work considerations in the lingering COVID-19 Era: Long COVID, multiple chemical sensitivity, and universal design

This article discusses how COVID-19 has impacted the American workforce, symptoms of Long COVID syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and ways to avoid triggering its symptoms when sanitizing the workplace and using Universal Design practices to increase accessibility and decrease transmission of COVID-19 among workers. Interface with healthcare providers, rehabilitation professionals, and employers is emphasized.

Reframing workplace inclusion through the lens of universal design: Considerations for vocational rehabilitation professionals in the wake of COVID-19

BACKGROUND: The experience of disability and of how work is conducted in the American economy is undergoing new shifts in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This unique space in time provides an opportunity to re-examine the importance of universal design (UD) as a way to respond to a workforce that is growing more diverse and living longer with disabilities. UD is a set of strategies that creates places and resources that are accessible to all and considers the needs and wants of people from the outset. Through the use of UD, work environments can be more accessible and useable to all employees. OBJECTIVE: This article describes the changes in the experience of disability within the context of COVID-19 and defines UD and UD for learning principles. We then consider how UD reduces stigma and reduces the need for individual accommodations while promoting inclusivity and improving productivity in the workplace. CONCLUSION: We offer strategies for embedding UD into vocational rehabilitation from pre-professional training to practice, all with a new sense of urgency and opportunity that is present as a result of COVID-19.

Implications of the Opioid Crisis for the American Disability Community

Purpose

The profession of rehabilitation counseling has long been responsive to emerging disabilities. To date, however, the profession's attention and response to the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States has been incommensurate with the scope and detriment of opioids and opioid use disorder (OUD) on Americans with disabilities. The opioid crisis, including the overuse, abuse, and overdose rates associated with prescription and illegal opioids, affects people of all ages and backgrounds. However, people with disabilities are at increased risk for developing OUDs, and they experience greater barriers to OUD treatment than people without disabilities.

Method

This article describes the origins and development of this crisis, the relationship between disability and increased risk for OUD, and the barriers to treatment that exist. We then evaluate the role of rehabilitation counseling, including the need for further action in advocacy, research, education, and policy.

Results and Conclusions

Throughout this article, we encourage a more urgent and concerted response than seems to be the case presently.

Life Outcomes and Higher Education: The Need for Longitudinal Research Using a Broad Range of Quality of Life Indicators

Higher education is increasingly becoming an option for young adults with intellectual disability (ID). Although initial evaluations of postsecondary education for this population have been promising, a broader "quality of life" framework needs to be adopted in order to truly understand the impact of these programs. Moreover, researchers and program evaluators must collect longitudinal data that follows former students for multiple years and uses multiple measures. We conducted a pilot evaluation of the life outcomes of students who had attended at least two semesters in Kentucky's supported higher education program for students with ID, collecting data on life status and experiences using measures from the National Core Indicators-Adult Consumer Survey. The findings from this pilot study show better outcomes for young adults who participated in a postsecondary education program compared to young adults who did not, but these findings need to be considered in light of several limitations. In many respects, our data provided more new questions than answers. Recommendations for collecting and evaluating broad-based, longitudinal data to gain insight into the potential benefits of postsecondary education for people with intellectual disability are discussed.

Congregational Participation of a National Sample of Adults With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) to thrive requires careful consideration of multiple avenues of community involvement. Yet little attention has focused on the place of faith community participation in the lives of adults with IDD. We examined attendance at religious services using National Core Indicator data for a sample of 12,706 adults with IDD residing in 24 states. Almost half of adults (48.3%) reported attending a religious service in the past month, and more than one third (34.6%) attended 3 or more times. Religious involvement varied considerably based on a variety of individual (e.g., race, disability type, behavioral support needs, communication mode) and contextual factors (e.g., geographic locale, residential type). Moreover, monthly involvement in religious activities was much less common than participation in other community activities (i.e., exercise, entertainment, eating out, shopping). We offer recommendations for supporting the spiritual lives of adults with IDD, as well as highlight areas for future research and practice.

Students with intellectual disability in higher education: adult service provider perspectives

Postsecondary education (PSE) is increasingly becoming an option for students with intellectual disability (ID; Grigal & Hart, 2012 ). Postsecondary education offers the promise of pursuing a valued social role (that of college student), enhanced social networks, and, most significantly, increased employment options. To date, research and practice in the area of transition to PSE for students with ID has focused primarily upon the sending (public school systems) and receiving (colleges or universities) agencies ( Oertle & Bragg, 2014 ; Thoma et al., 2011 ). Yet adults with ID often require ongoing supports through state and federally funded developmental disability waivers, and agency providers of waiver services have, for the most part, not been part of this vital conversation. This study represents an exploratory study of directors of developmental disability provider agencies in one midwestern state to assess their knowledge of PSE for individuals with ID. A total of 87 directors responded; quantitative results are presented and, based on these findings, we provide implications for the future.

Using research evidence to inform public policy decisions

The application of scientific data in the development and implementation of sound public policy is a well-established practice, but there appears to be less consensus on the nature of the strategies that can and should be used to incorporate research data into policy decisions. This paper describes the promise and the challenges of using research evidence to inform public policy. Most specifically, we demonstrate how the application of a large-scale data set, the National Core Indicators (NCI), can be systematically used to drive state-level policy decisions, and we describe a case example of one state's application of NCI data to make significant changes to its Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities waiver. The need for continued research in this area is highlighted.