Employment Resources
Following are resources and links to other webpages that you may find helpful when thinking about employment and preparing for employment.
Gov Markell (Deleware) has released his blueprint for his fellow Governors on increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities. To read the report go to:
http://governor.delaware.gov/docs/NGA_2013_Better_Bottom_Line.pdf
Think College! is a website that provides resources on post-secondary education options for students with an intellectual disability: http://www.thinkcollege.net
There are several United States Department of Justice Settlement Agreements that provide for increases in supported and integrated employment. To read the full text of these Settlement Agreements and others go to:
http://www.ada.gov/olmstead/olmstead_cases_by_issue.htm#sheltered-workshops
U.S. v. Georgia – 10-CV-249 – (N.D. Ga. 2010)
The agreement requires Georgia to expand community services so that individuals with mental illness and developmental disabilities can receive supports in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. Specifically, for individuals with developmental disabilities, the agreement provides that Georgia will cease all admissions to the State-operated institutions; transition all individuals to the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs by July 1, 2015; create more than 1100 home and community-based waivers to serve individuals in the community; serve those receiving waivers in their own home or their family’s home consistent with the individual’s informed choice; and provide family supports, mobile crisis teams, and crisis respite homes.
For individuals with mental illness, the agreement provides that Georgia will serve in the community 9,000 individuals with serious and persistent mental illness who are currently served in State Hospitals; frequently readmitted to State Hospitals; frequently seen in emergency rooms; chronically homeless and/or being released from jails or prisons. Services will be provided through a combination of 22 Assertive Community Treatment teams, 8 Community Support teams, 14 Intensive Case Management teams, 45 Case Management service providers, 6 Crisis Services Centers, 3 additional Crisis Stabilization Programs, community-based psychiatric beds, mobile crisis teams, crisis apartments, a crisis hotline, supported housing, supported employment, and peer support services. The agreement also provides for a State-wide quality management system for community services and names Elizabeth Jones as the Independent Reviewer to assess the State’s compliance with the agreement.
U.S. v. Delaware – 11-CV-591 – (D. Del. 2010)
Pursuant to the Agreement, Delaware will create a comprehensive community crisis system to serve as the front door to the state’s mental health system including a crisis hotline, mobile crisis teams able to reach someone anywhere in the state within one hour, 2 walk-in crisis centers, and short term crisis stabilization units. The agreement also commits the state to providing intensive community-based treatment through 11 Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams, 4 intensive case management teams, and 25 targeted case managers. The State will offer at least 650 housing vouchers or subsidies to allow people to obtain stable, integrated housing. Finally, the State will develop evidence-based supported employment services for 1100 people, rehabilitation services including substance abuse and educational services to 1100 people, and family and peer support services to 1000 people. The Agreement requires Delaware to establish a statewide quality management system reflecting qualitative and quantitative measures and provides for an independent monitor with capacity to hire staff to assist in the implementation and to conduct compliance reviews.
U.S. v. Rhode Island and City of Providence – 1:13-cv-00442 – (D.R.I. 2013)
In 2013, the United States entered a court-enforceable interim settlement agreement with the State of Rhode Island and the City of Providence which resolved the Civil Rights Division’s findings, as part of an ADA Olmstead investigation, that the State and City have unnecessarily segregated individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) in a sheltered workshop and segregated day activity service program, and have placed public school students with I/DD at risk of unnecessary segregation in that same program. The first-of-its-kind agreement will provide relief to approximately 200 Rhode Islanders with I/DD who have received services from the segregated sheltered workshop and day activity service provider Training Thru Placement, Inc. (TTP), and the Harold A. Birch Vocational Program (Birch), a special education program which has run a segregated sheltered workshop inside a Providence high school.
Amanda D., et al. v. Hassan, et al.; United States v. New Hampshire, No. 1:12-CV-53 (SM)
The Agreement requires the State, for the first time, to create mobile crisis teams in the most populated areas of the State and to create crisis apartments to help support team efforts at avoiding hospitalization or institutionalization. The Agreement also requires the State to make enhanced Assertive Community Treatment (“ACT”) team services available statewide, such that the mental health system can provide ACT to at least 1,500 people at any given time. The Agreement requires the State to provide scattered-site, permanent, supported housing to hundreds of additional people throughout the state; the State will also create special residential community settings to address the needs of persons with complex health care issues who have had difficulty accessing sufficient community services in the past. The State will also deliver additional and enhanced supported employment services, consistent with the Dartmouth evidence-based model, to hundreds of new recipients throughout the state.