Planning for Successful Employment Part 2 of 4
Guest Blogger: Deanna Heuring, Ed.S.
Welcome back to our installments of Employability Skills and the Local Industry Standards. We will begin looking at standards for Competitive Employment, as it is one of the most common goals among individuals with disabilities seeking employment. According to the Local Industry Standards, Competitive Employment is “work performed by a person with a disability in an integrated setting at minimum wage or higher and a rate comparable to non-disabled workers performing the same tasks.”The first section is Physical Abilities and Work Tolerances. It is crucial to keep in mind when discussing Competitive Employment that accommodations cannot change items in the job description but make them easier to complete. While accommodations can be provided for individuals who need them for physical needs, the skills noted are standard requirements in inclusive employment.
Physical Abilities and Work Tolerances: Independently Navigate the Environment
This skill means an employee can independently move about the worksite without assistance to complete job tasks, locate supplies, take breaks, eat lunch, and use the restroom. While this skill may take some practice over time and the assistance of a job coach or business mentor, the end goal is complete independence on a typical day.
Family Practice Ideas:
Practice identifying and explaining community and safety signs. (i.e., exit signs) Many resources are available to practice this online, and many are fun games like memory.
Regularly talk about and use community and safety signs together when you are out in public. Start with children as young as potty training age and have them point to the restroom sign before entering. Another idea is to follow wall signs to locate a doctor’s suite, starting with the lobby directory, hallway signs, and the one posted on or near the door.
After talking about and using community signs together, allow your child to locate a restroom when needed in public, supporting with as few prompts as possible.
Discuss emergency exits at places you visit frequently, like your church or a therapy office, and the importance of knowing them at locations where your child spends time.
Demonstrate how to locate “helpers” at community places. For example, at Target, find someone in a red shirt with a name tag to ask for help.
Demonstrate asking for help from “helpers” while out and about and discuss what you did after to reinforce it.
After practicing it together, allow your child to ask for assistance in a public place. For example, “Excuse me, where is the restroom?”
As they can, allow them the freedom to navigate places independently with you in the general area to practice.
School Practice Ideas:
Have your child’s team mirror discussions about community and safety signs from home and identify signs in the school. Encourage the independent use of them. Staff can make a school scavenger hunt using room numbers, leaving a small item to ask for at each location (i.e., a puzzle piece and going to each place completes the puzzle–dollar store ten-piece puzzles are great for this) to practice and encourage independence.
Think about how your child can use a paraprofessional or aid as little as possible when navigating and why you want to have someone with them when they are navigating. Can you make a tiered plan to grow independence over the school year? Once a new schedule is memorized, could the aid fade after a few weeks? You’d be surprised how independence can extinguish dependent behaviors. The goal of successful employment programs is independence in the workplace. Frequently, but not always, when interns arrive at my work program, behaviors improve when I tell them, “I’m going to assume you can do this on your own unless you have questions or tell me you need help or you aren’t able to behave like an adult at work.” Assuming competence goes a long way, AND a school setting is a protected space to practice, another approach can be tried if it doesn’t work out.
Have staff help your student locate “go-to people.” Go-to people can be school staff and peers they can seek out when confused or have questions. In a school, a front office secretary is a good “go-to” who can transfer to the security guard at the worksite because they typically sit in a similar location to a school secretary. Encouraging peer “go-to people” demonstrates that co-workers can help you and frequently help each other.
How can you and your individual IEP team begin using these ideas now? Check back in the next blog for the next installment on how to start supporting your individual for competitive employment.
Deanna Heuring, Ed. S. owns Graceful Transition, LLC. Helping others navigate through areas of employment, college, and elder transition. Deanna has been an educator for over 15 years, focusing on individuals with disabilities. She currently teaches in a job skills training program based in the St. Louis community. With a long focus on the "transition" period of education, she set out to provide assistance to families at all stages of life. Transition Education in Missouri, and most states is considered the time period between the ages of 16-21. It refers to planning for life after graduation from K-12 education. Deanna believes families can prepare for "transition" long before age 16, which is the basis of the creation of Life Transition Services for Individuals with Disabilities.
https://sites.google.com/view/graceful-transitions-llc/home?authuser=0
