Get students with disabilities ready for integrated, competitive employment with this practical guide, the latest book in the Brookes Transition to Adulthood series. A must for transition coordinators, special educators, and employment specialists, this book embraces the widely used "Employment First" approach to career planning, which emphasizes integrated, competitive employment as the first and preferred option for all people, regardless of their disability. You'll find tried-and-true strategies for helping students navigate each step of their transition, from beginning the early stages of career preparation (as young as Grade 7) to exploring job opportunities with local businesses and sustaining employment. And you'll get invaluable tools like the Implementing Transition Action Plan (ITAP) ,a step-by-step quick-guide to help you plan, individualize, and implement the transition process described in the book. With this expertly organized how-to guide, you'll empower your students to pursue the career of their choice—and provide them with the tools they'll need for long-term success in the workplace. LEARN HOW TO: • Put together a "collective impact team" at your school to support students' transition to employment
• Apply four essential recommended practices to help students achieve good employment outcomes
• Implement a person-centered planning process that puts the student in the driver's seat
• Help students identify their passions, preferences, interests, and learning styles
• Support students in exploring careers using online tools and internship opportunities
• Facilitate successful collaboration with adult services agencies
• Work with your local business community to identify job opportunities and connect students with potential employers
• Provide students with the supports they need for success on the job, such as assistive technology, modifications, and social skills training PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Case studies illustrate how to solve common obstacles to finding and keeping a job, and more than a dozen tools and forms—including the ITAP, the Job Observation Assessment Form, and a sample Employment Proposal—help you and your students navigate the road to employment. About the Authors: Wendy Parent, Ph.D., is Research Associate Professor and Assistant Director, Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities, a Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at The University of Kansas. She has more than 25 years of experience in the areas of supported and customized employment and transition from school to work for individuals with severe disabilities. Dr. Parent has published numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles related to transition and supported/customized employment and has coauthored several books on supported employment. In her efforts to build systems capacity and enhance employment and self-employment outcomes, she provides training and technical assistance to teachers, transition coordinators, families, rehabilitation counselors, job coaches, and individuals with disabilities. She is currently the president of the Kansas Rehabilitation Association and Kansas Association for Persons on Supported Employment (APSE): The Network on Employment and serves on the national Boards of the APSE Foundation and the National Rehabilitation Association. She serves on the editorial board of two journals:Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities and the Journal of Rehabilitation.Her areas of interest and research are supported/customized employment and transition from school to work for individuals with severe disabilities, with an emphasis on creative funding and support strategies, individual and family involvement, job-coach training and leadership, interagency collaboration and service delivery issues, and systems change.
Laura A. Owens, Ph.D.,CESP, has over 30 years of experience as a national leader in the transition and disability employment field. She started her career as a teacher (both general and special education) and is currently a professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM) where she coordinates the Graduate Transition Certificate program. She is the president of TransCen, Inc. (TCI), a national organization based in Rockville, Maryland, that provides direct placement services to individuals with disabilities, develops and evaluates new service models through research of evidenced-based practices leading to improved employment outcomes, and provides training and technical assistance to organizations and school districts focusing on the improvement of educational and employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. In 1991, she founded Creative Employment Opportunities, Inc. (CEO) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an employment agency for individuals with disabilities, and ArtWorks for Milwaukee, a nonprofit jobs-training program in the arts for youth with and without disabilities in 2001. Dr. Owens served as the executive director of APSE, a national organization focusing on the advancement of integrated employment for citizens with disabilities based Washington, DC, from 2008 to 2014, and along with Pat Keul and Wendy Parent- Johnson was instrumental in establishing the CESP, a national credential for employment support professionals. Dr.Owens is an internationally known speaker and has published widely on transition and employment topics. Laura earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Richard Parent-Johnson, Ph.D., retired as a senior research associate in the Center for Disabilities in the Sanford School of Medicine, Vermillion, South Dakota. Prior to his position at Sanford, he was a senior research associate in the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas and there held a courtesy appointment in the Department of Special Education. His doctorate is in sociology from the University of Kansas. Dr. Parent-Johnson has been the principal investigator (PI) , co-PI, or project coordinator on multiple state and federal grants. His most recent work has focused on health care transitions for youth/young adults with disabilities as it relates to interprofessional medical education and clinical practice. He codesigned and then led the University of South Dakota's Center for Disabilities Transition In Action Clinic. He continues to do consulting work in these areas. Dr. Parent-Johnson's earlier work focused primarily on the iterative design, development, and dissemination of universal curricular productsandprocesses that serve the individualized transition needs of persons with mild to moderate disabilities (e.g., the Soaring to New Heights curriculum and lesson materials for high-school-age students with disabilities and/or special health care needs. He also taught and served as the learning specialist at Seattle University. Dr. Parent-Johnson is knowledgeable in mixed methods research methodologies with particular expertise in ethnographic research and qualitative analysis.
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