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CEHD News people with disabilities

Promoting employment for people with disabilities

July 20, 2017
ICI's Jeffrey Nurick speaking at a conference.
ICI’s Jeffrey Nurick speaking at a conference.

Employment for people with disabilities is a growing trend and researchers and staff from the College’s Institute on Community Integration are spreading the word. For example, on June 19-22, Kelly Nye-Lengerman presented four sessions at the National APSE (Association of People Supporting EmploymentFirst) conference in Portland, Oregon. They were: “Full Speed Ahead: Promoting Youth Readiness for Employment and Education with PROMISE”, “How Are We Doing with Implementing Good Practice in Employment Supports?”, “Power of 5: Moving the Needle: The Words We Use Matter”, and “Bringing Employment First to Scale: State of the Science.” Meanwhile, on June 22, Jeffrey Nurick (pictured) was in Duluth as a panelist on the discussion, “Living the Dream: Employment First in Action,” at the Minnesota Age & Disabilities Odyssey conference.

Hewitt accepts University’s Innovation Award

March 31, 2017
Amy Hewitt, holding the award, accepting it on behalf of the DirectCourse team, who are also in the picture.
Amy Hewitt (fifth from right) accepted the award on behalf of the DirectCourse team (pictured).

Crediting her colleagues at DirectCourse, the Institute on Community Integration’s Amy Hewitt accepted a Committee’s Choice Award at the University of Minnesota’s 2017 Innovation Awards on March 28.

Hosted by the University’s Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office for Technology Commercialization, the event at the McNamara Alumni Center recognized 220 University inventors whose technology had been licensed or patented between July 2014 and June 2016. Hewitt’s award was one of only four Innovation Awards presented, all of which recognize the accomplishments of outstanding University innovators who have demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit, are actively engaged in developing new innovations and transitioning those technologies to the commercial market, and have made an impact on society.

DirectCourse is an online training curriculum designed to empower support and care professionals to help people with intellectual, developmental, physical, and psychiatric disabilities, and older adults, lead meaningful lives within their communities. During last year alone, it provided more than 6 million hours of training to over 500,000 learners in 41 states and abroad.

Hewitt has led the research, development, and management of DirectCourse over the past 15 years, working with a team of staff at ICI, its business partners at Elsevier, and its community roots. “I am delighted that this award recognizes an ‘invention’ that was created by and for the community in alignment with our university’s land grant mission to promote education and collaboration that advances knowledge which benefits communities, the state, and the world,” Hewitt told the gathering. “DirectCourse was not created in a laboratory on campus: the community was its laboratory and this has made all the difference. The learning provided by DirectCourse has had an immediate and lasting effect on hundreds of thousands of direct support professionals and the people with disabilities they support.”

Image of Amy Hewitt in a short video about DirectCourse.
Amy Hewitt speaks about DirectCourse in this short video.

The photograph (at top of post) was taken at the awards ceremony. Pictured, from left to right, are Bill Waibel (Elsevier), Barb Kleist, Jennifer Hall-Lande, Macdonald Metzger, Mark Olson, Barbara Cullen (Elsevier), Merrie Haskins, Susan ONell, Claire Benway, Kelly Nye-Lengerman, Amy Hewitt, Dan Raudenbush (Elsevier), Kristin Dean, David R. Johnson, and Bill Tapp (co-founder). Click here for more information about the awards and a short video.

2016 MN LEND Forum addresses the neurobiology of poverty

April 4, 2016
Dr. Megan Gunnar, University of Minnesota, Institute of Child Development
Dr. Megan Gunnar, University of Minnesota, Institute of Child Development
Researchers increasingly are aware that conditions in the first few years of a child’s life can influence their physical, emotional, and mental health throughout their lifespan. The 2016 MN LEND Forum, “The Neurobiology of Poverty – Children Living in Poverty: Neurodevelopmental and Biological Correlates,” explores what is known about the life-long effects of growing up in poverty via the perspectives of two leading researchers in the field.

 

Dr. Seth Pollak of the University of Wisconsin-Madison will discuss “Child Poverty and the Income-Achievement Gap: Insights from Cognitive Neuroscience” and Dr. Megan Gunnar from the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development will present “Poverty, Allostatic Load and the Stress Neuraxis: A Mechanism or a Bridge Too Far?”

The live Webcast from this sold-out forum at the University of Minnesota will take place on Thursday, April 28, 12:30 – 3:00 p.m. Central Time. For more information and to register for the Webcast see http://lend.umn.edu/misc/povertyforum.asp.

The MN LEND Forum is an annual event sponsored by the Minnesota Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities Program (lend.umn.edu) of the Institute on Community Integration, University of Minnesota. The interdisciplinary MN LEND training program prepares future leaders who will serve children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, other neurodevelopmental and related disabilities, and their families in healthcare, education, human services, and policy settings.

Dr. Seth Pollak, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Seth Pollak, University of Wisconsin-Madison

New national center at ICI examines quality-of-life measurement

November 19, 2015

Are you living where you want, with whom you want? Are you doing the type of work you want to do? Do the services and supports you receive help you achieve your goals in life? These are some of the questions that, when asked of people with disabilities, provide information about their quality of life as seen from their perspectives. Ensuring that information of this type can be gathered in a reliable and valid manner is a key part of the work of the new Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Home and Community Based Services Outcome Measurement (RRTC/OM) at the Institute on Community Integration (ICI).

Federal and state policymakers increasingly speak of the importance of demonstrating the effectiveness (“outcomes”) of public investments in services for persons with disabilities. No longer satisfied with descriptions of money spent, staffing ratios, and movement of people from institutions to the community, they desire more specific information on the quality of life experienced as a result of receiving services and supports. And they desire outcomes information measured in a consistent and accurate manner nationwide.

In response to these needs, ICI has received a five-year, $4.4 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to launch the RRTC/OM. The new center, directed by ICI’s Brian Abery and Amy Hewitt, is a partnership of five organizations: ICI’s Research and Training Center on Community Living, the Research and Training Center on Community Living for People with Psychiatric Disabilities at Temple University, the Research and Training Center on Community Living Policy at the University of California San Francisco, The National Council on Aging, and the Ohio Valley Center for Brain Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation at The Ohio State University.

“The National Quality Forum recently unveiled a draft framework for HCBS outcome measurement for people with disabilities,” says Abery. “We will initially look at that framework to see whether it captures the perspectives of a wide variety of stakeholders, including people with different types of disabilities who are of different ages and from different cultural groups, as well as their family members, service providers, and policymakers. We’ll then recommend modifications to ensure the framework reflects what’s truly important to people with disabilities in terms of service outcomes.”

Five subsequent RRTC/OM studies will identify gaps in measurement areas and best practices in HCBS outcome measurement, refine and develop measures, determine the reliability and validity of measures, and study factors (e.g., age, gender, residential setting) that need to be considered in interpreting results.

Ultimately, the work of the RRTC/OM will result in a set of recommended measures and procedures that can be used for collecting data on whether the HCBS-funded programs do what they’re intended to do in supporting quality-of-life outcomes for individuals with physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities; individuals with traumatic brain injury; and adults with age-related disabilities.

“The U.S. spends nearly $40 billion a year on HCBS-funded services that are used by nearly 1.5 million individuals, yet, we have very little information on the outcomes of these services and supports for most HCBS recipients,” says Hewitt. “We hope this new center will lead to improvement in this area.”

For more information about the RRTC/OM, contact Brian Abery at abery001@umn.edu or 612-625-5592.

Institute staff work with high schoolers from Minnesota and Costa Rica on climate change

August 11, 2014

Costa_Rica_student_groupFor the past three weeks staff from the college’s Institute on Community Integration have been in Costa Rica working with high school students from Minnesota and Costa Rica on student-led Inclusive Service Learning projects addressing climate change. The work was part of the institute project, American Youth Leadership Program: Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn, which pairs high school students with and without disabilities from the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley, with Costa Rican students from Liceo de Poás High School, for a year of inclusive service learning.

Costa_Rica_mural

The Minnesota students spent the past three weeks in Costa Rica partnering with the Costa Rican students on a number of projects. These included presenting a series of lessons on climate change, the local watershed, and recycling to over 250 elementary school students and 50 members of a community center for senior citizens; working with the city of San Rafael to increase awareness of a new recycling program through community education; and creating community art designed to attract attention to the issues associated with climate change.

Costa_Rica_classroom

The program gives students an opportunity to meet community needs while also developing leadership skills, expanding their cross-cultural knowledge, and overcoming social barriers that often separate students with and without disabilities. To learn more see http://aylp-costarica.org or contact Brian Abery (abery001@umn.edu) or Renata Ticha (tich0018@umn.edu).

Hewitt begins as president of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

July 16, 2014

Hewitt_Amy_print_quality_photoAmy Hewitt, director of the Research and Training Center on Community Living in the college’s Institute on Community Integration, began her term as president of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) on July 1, 2014. With over 5,000 members, AAIDD promotes progressive policies, sound research, effective practices, and universal human rights for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

ICI Tells the History of Transition Planning for Minnesota’s Youth with Disabilities

March 14, 2014

Before 1980, an estimated 70% of adults with disabilities nationwide were unemployed. The employment opportunities that were available were most often related to arts, crafts, and cleaning. They also were most often gender based, that is, women could cook and clean and men could make bird houses, stools and other wooden crafts to be sold for funding to continue future programs, not for individual income. This began changing in Minnesota in 1980 when the Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning, and the Minnesota Department of Economic Security, began addressing transition issues – those issues related to the movement of students with disabilities from high school into the workplace and postsecondary education. Because of transition-related policy initiatives implemented in Minnesota in 1984-87, the rate of employment of young adults with disabilities in the state greatly increased, surpassing the national average, and the type of employment options began to expand. Those changes, and the stories of some of the key people involved with them, are the subject of a new oral history project at the College’s Institute on Community Integration (ICI) titled, “Transition from School to Work for Minnesota’s Youth with Disabilities.”

The 14-month project, which began in April 2013 with a $6,925 grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, will create an oral history sharing the experiences of eight leaders in special education, vocational education, and vocational rehabilitation who were instrumental in bringing about four successful policy and service initiatives supporting the transition of youth with disabilities from secondary education to postsecondary life. The initiatives, which were formalized into state legislation in 1984-87, were: (1) requiring that transition objectives be included in each student’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) beginning at age 14; (2) creating the Interagency Office on Transition Services within the Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning; (3) creating local Community Transition Interagency Committees statewide; and (4) formally creating the State Transition Interagency Committee. These initiatives not only changed expectations and opportunities for Minnesota youth with disabilities, they influenced policy and practice nationwide, for example when Minnesota’s requirement that transition objectives be included in each student’s IEP was also incorporated into the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The project is led by David R. Johnson, ICI’s director, and consultant Norena Hale. ICI is also part of the story. In the 1980s, numerous ICI staff and others from the University of Minnesota were involved in leading and implementing Minnesota’s efforts in the transition from school to work. For example, ICI trained and evaluated local Community Transition Interagency Committees around the state, and also created a wide range of transition-related best practice resources for use by Minnesota schools and agencies.

“This project provides a remarkable opportunity to document and share with future educators the stories of those persons who, in the 1980s, changed the way schools plan for youth with disabilities to evolve into successful adult citizens,” Norena said.

When completed, the oral histories will be available to the public through the Minnesota Historical Society. FFI on this project, contact Norena at norena.hale@gmail.com.

Kristin Dean appointed to NADSP board

October 17, 2012

In August, Kristin Dean of the Institute on Community Integration was appointed to the board of the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals and to the Alliance’s Education, Training and Workforce Development Committee. The Alliance’s mission is to promote the development of a highly competent human services workforce that supports people with disabilities in achieving their life goals.