Project Description:
Summer Work for ME Project (SWFM) is designed to replicate and sustain a successful employment project for youth with developmental disabilities with a range work experiences which will increase their understanding of work as a first step in identifying possible careers, and provide instruction and practice in identifying ones own strengths and interests, setting goals, and identifying the steps necessary to achieve those goals. These strategies will promote self-determination, independence, productivity and integration into community living. Summer Work for ME Project will harness the abilities of multiple organizations including Maine's UCEDD CCIDS, Community Rehabilitation Provider KFI, the Maine Bureau of Rehabilitation Services, and Bangor area school districts. Through collaboration with the local Bureau of Rehabilitation Services office in Bangor we will work with Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) counselors who have transition-aged student caseloads to identify high school students who are currently VR clients or eligible to become VR clients as well as individuals with a developmental disability. Our VR partners will inform the student and his/her family of the project and staff will enroll 6 students into the program.
The project will include a 6 week paid summer work component for enrolled students which will begin Monday July 5th and end August 12th. Students will work four hours per day, four days each week (M-Th) and attend a three hour job skills training workshop provided by project staff and a teacher from the students' school. Evidence-based practices for increasing student levels of self-determination will be incorporated into each of the project components. Total time in the project each week for the students will be 19 hours. An additional collaborative feature of this project includes leveraging funding from Bureau of Rehabilitation Services to Maine Developmental Disabilities Council to provide job coaching for the students at work sites through Vocational Rehabilitation, working closely with transition counselors from Vocational Rehabilitation to examine how the melding of work sites into situational assessments for several students yields them the information needed for assessing clients. The workweek will end for student participants on Thursday and they will attend a 3-hour job skills building workshop each Friday which will reinforce lessons learned at the work site and key job skills. Creating this schedule will enable us to provide "instruction with practice" which current research indicates is good practice. CCIDS will provide overall project coordination including collaboration with Vocational Rehabilitation and school districts to identify and enroll students, provision of coordination and communication between project partners and point of contact for the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council. Community Rehabilitation Provider KFI will be responsible for the development of the work site including negotiating with the employer and hiring and training of job coaches for the summer project. Additionally, certified employment specialist will be responsible to monitor the work day schedules of job coaches and trouble shooting workplace issues should they arise. The employment specialist will also be the point of contact with Vocational Rehabilitation to ensure the information and data collection needs for situational assessments are met at the work site.
Pre-post tests will be administered to each of the participating students to determine the effects of the project on their level of career maturity. Career maturity will be measured using a version of the Vocational Decision-Making Interview (Czerlinsky & Chandler, 1992) that was modified by individuals with disabilities in an earlier CCIDS project to make it more user-friendly for individuals preferring questions that are concrete and ambiguous (Hagner et al., 2012).
Satisfaction surveys will be administered to all project participants after project completion. Each student and at least one guardian will be asked to complete a survey designed to measure overall satisfaction with the process as well as satisfaction with the work and classroom components of the intervention. Satisfaction surveys will also be developed and administered to project participants from the community provider agency, the Maine Bureau of Rehabilitation, participating school districts, and CCIDS. These participants will be asked to indicate their overall satisfaction with the project as well as their satisfaction with the collaborative process. Each participant will also be asked if they have suggestions for improving similar projects in the future.
Target Audience:
Professionals and Para-Professionals, Family Members/Caregivers, Children/Adolescents with Disabilities/SHCN
