Planning the Transition to Employment

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.

• 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.

Dr. David W. Test, Ph.D. Professor of Special Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, teaches courses in single subject research, transition, classroom management, and professional writing.

The majority of Dr. Test's publications have focused on self-determination, transition, community-based training, and supported employment. Along with Dr. Nellie Aspel and Dr. Jane Everson he wrote the first transition methods textbook titled Transition Methods for Youth with Disabilities. Dr. Test currently serves as a Co-Principle Investigator (with Dr. Paula Kohler and Dr. Larry Kortering) of the National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance Center, Co-Director on the North Carolina Indicator 14, Postschool Outcomes Project (with Dr. Claudia Flowers), and the UNC Charlotte Doctoral Leadership Personnel Preparation Program (with Dr. Diane Browder). He and Dr. Bob Algozzine currently serve as co-editors of Career Development for Exceptional Individuals.

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 Dakotaâ (TM)s Center for Disabilities Transition InAction Clinic. He continues to do consulting work in these areas. Dr. Parent-Johnsonâ (TM)s earlier work focused primarily on the iterative design, development, and dissemination of universal curricular products and processes 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.

Dr. Wehman is Professor of Physical Medicine with joint appointments in the Departments of Rehabilitation Counseling and also Special Education and Disability Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. He serves as Chairman of the Division of Rehabilitation Research in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Dr. Wehman has his Ph.D. in Behavioral Disabilities from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As one of the original founders of supported employment, he has worked closely with business and industry since 1980 and has published over 200 articles and authored or edited more than 40 books primarily in transition, severe disabilities, autism, traumatic brain injury and employment for persons with disabilities. He has been the Principal Investigator on 41 million dollars in grants during his career.

As the father of two young adults with disabilities, he brings a strong parental as well as business perspective to his work. He is highly active in speaking to professionals, parents, advocates and businesses on transition and employment for people with autism, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and other developmental disabilities. On a daily basis he works with individuals with disabilities, communicates regularly with professionals in the world of business related to disability and diversity, and is active in teaching and mentoring medical students, residents, and doctoral students in rehabilitation medicine, special education, rehabilitation and psychology. A major focus of Dr. Wehman's work is on expanding the partnerships with businesses of all sizes so that more persons with disabilities can gain entrance into the workplace and retain employment successfully.

He is a recipient of the Kennedy Foundation Award in Mental Retardation in 1990 and President's Committee on Employment for Persons with Disabilities in 1992. Dr. Wehman was recognized as one of the 50 most influential special educators of the millennium by the Remedial and Special Education journal in December, 2000. He is also Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation.

Renee Cameto, Ph.D.
Senior Social Science Researcher
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, California 94025

Teresa Grossi, Ph.D., is Director of the Center on Community Living and Careers at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community at Indiana University.

Barbara Guy
Transition/Work Experience Consultant
Iowa Department of Education
400 East 14th Street
Des Moines, Iowa 50319

Debra Hart is the Director of the Education and Transition Team for the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She serves as the Principal Investigator for the NIDRR funded Center on Postsecondary Education for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities, the ADD funded Consortium on Postsecondary Education for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities and Office of Postsecondary Education funded National Coordinating Center. Debra has over 25 years of experience working with youth and adults with disabilities, their families, faculty, and professionals that support youth in becoming contributing valued members of their community via participation in inclusive secondary and postsecondary education, and competitive employment. Since 1997, Ms. Hart has directed five federal grants designed to create access to postsecondary education for youth with intellectual disabilities.

Peg Lamb, Ph.D.
Director
High School Diploma Completion
Initiative
Lansing Community College
Post Office Box 40010
Lansing, Michigan 48901

Richard L. Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Vocational Counselor
Career Connection
Whittier Union High School District
9401 South Painter Avenue
Whittier, California 90605

Michael L. Wehmeyer, Ph.D. is Professor of Special Education; Director, Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities; and Senior Scientist, Beach Center on Disability, all at the University of Kansas. He has published more than 25 books and 250 scholarly articles and book chapters on topics related to self-determination, special education, intellectual disability, and eugenics. He is s co-author of the widely used textbook Exceptional Lives: Special Education in Today's Schools, published by Merrill/Prentice Hall, now in its 7th Edition. His most recent book, co-authored with J. David Smith, is Good Blood, Bad Blood: Science, Nature, and the Myth of the Kallikaks, published by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD). Dr. Wehmeyer is Past-President (2010-2011) of the Board of Directors for and a Fellow of AAIDD; a past president of the Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Career Development and Transition (DCDT); a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Division (Div. 33); a Fellow of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IASSIDD); and former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Remedial and Special Education. He is a co-author of the AAIDD Supports Intensity Scale, and the 2010 AAIDD Intellectual Disability Terminology, Classification, and Systems of Supports Manual.

Wendy Parent-Johnson 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.