Supported employment: a decade of rapid growth and impact

American Rehabilitation,  Spring, 1998  by Paul Wehman,  Grant Revell,  John Kregel

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Supported employment was initiated through the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986 specifically to assist persons with the most significant disabilities to successfully achieve and retain competitive employment. This study reports the results of a 10-year effort to chart the growth of supported employment in areas such as the number and disability profile of participants, consumer outcomes, funding mechanisms, and program expenditures. The costs and outcomes for supported employment and sheltered employment are also compared. Strategies are presented to expand the utilization of supported employment and thereby increase employment opportunities available for persons with the most significant disabilities.

In recent years, the unemployment levels of persons with disabilities have received increased attention. A number of federal agencies, public policy makers, consumer groups, and professionals have focused significant attention on why the unemployment rate of people with disabilities remains so high. This unemployment rate has consistently hovered in the 60-70 percent area for decades despite increased innovations in rehabilitation and newer laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (P.L. 101-336). Innovations such as assistive technology, job coaches, and new training techniques along with progressive laws designed to ease the entry of persons with disabilities into the competitive workplace have not resulted in a noticeable improvement in their level of employment.

For example, the most frequently cited poll in recent years has been by Louis Harris and Associates (1994), which presents a rather discouraging view of the work outcomes achieved by persons with disabilities. Louis Harris and Associates found that two-thirds of Americans with disabilities between the ages of 16 and 64 are not working, with only 20 percent working full time and 11 percent working part time. They also found that 84 percent of unemployed people with disabilities say they want to work, an overwhelming majority that has actually risen by 13 percentage points from an earlier poll taken by Louis Harris in 1986.

In addition, the number of working age people with disabilities who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits from the Social Security Administration increased from 4 million in 1985 to 6.3 million in 1994 (General Accounting Office, June 1996). These figures are dramatic indeed because of the enormous expenditures associated with long-term retention on Social Security cash benefits. For example, in 1994 the Social Security Administration reports that the SSDI and SSI programs provided $52.9 billion in cash benefits to the 6.3 million working age beneficiaries (General Accounting Office, June 1996). Yet, the Louis Harris Poll indicates that the majority of individuals with disabilities want to work. Considering the substantive advances in assistive technology, rehabilitation technology, and medicine, it is reasonable to ask: What employment strategies have demonstrated success in overcoming the perplexing problem of extremely high unemployment among persons with disabilities?

Supported employment is one program specifically designed to assist persons with the most significant disabilities to achieve competitive level, community integrated employment. Supported employment first received public funding through the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986. It has enjoyed steadily increasing popularity since its inception and has achieved carefully documented positive outcomes (Mank, O'Neill, & Jensen, in press; Revell, Wehman, Kregel, West, & Rayfield, 1994). The major premise of a supported employment program is that many persons with significant disabilities need some additional support at the jobsite to work successfully. Through the use of employment specialists, mentors, coworkers and employers, the impediments to employment faced by prospective workers are reduced, and their abilities and work potentials are emphasized through supports designed at the workplace. Despite the demonstrated success and value of this model and research that confirms its efficacy (e.g., Bond, Dietzen, McGrew, & Miller, 1995; Drake, McHugo, Becker, Anthony, & Clark, 1996; Coker, Osgood, & Clouse, 1995), supported employment has not yet been fully utilized to impact the thousands of people with disabilities who remain unemployed.

The ability to be employed is important for many reasons. First, working in competitive employment provides an opportunity to receive wages and benefits that may lead to greater independence and mobility in the community at large. Second, being productive on a daily basis in a meaningful vocation is critically important to one's self-esteem and dignity. Third, establishing new friendships and networks of social support in the community is almost always facilitated by having a job within a career path. And finally, as described above, the extraordinary costs associated with maintaining persons with disabilities on Social Security disability rolls are a highly nonproductive and inefficient use of human potential that are now reaching an unacceptable level in this country. This high level of entitlement leads to greater federal deficits and ultimately fosters the incorrect perception among society that people with disabilities must be dependent on public support and are not capable of active lives that include competitive employment.