HDI means very much to me. I am honored to have been a part of HDI. It is a place of opportunity, where very committed and hard-working people are supported in pursuing creative and effective approaches to fulfilling a challenging and very important mission.
—Malachy Bishop, Ph.D., CRC, Norman L. and Barbara M. Berven Professor of Rehabilitation Psychology in the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education at UW Madison & Past HDI Director of Research and Development
Exploring and Understanding the Advocacy Needs of Kentuckians with Developmental Disabilities
by Chithra Adams, Amanda Corbin, Luke O’Hara, Kathleen Sheppard-Jones, & Malachy Bishop
In this research brief we present the results of a recent needs assessment evaluating the advocacy-based needs for Kentuckians with developmental disabilities and their families. Results highlight the different levels and types of supports needed to build self-advocacy capacity and to inform effective planning and services and the individual, local, and state levels.
Download here.
by Chithra Adams, Harold Kleinert, Kathy Sheppard-Jones, Amanda Corbin & Malachy Bishop
Young adults with disabilities face multiple challenges in obtaining successful post-school employment outcomes. This situation has remained relatively unchanged despite nearly 25 years of federal attention to the issue, including mandated transition services and a series of additional significant legislative responses. Recent research by Carter, Austin, and Trainor (2012) highlighted the severity of the situation, showing that “just 26% of recent graduates with severe disabilities were working for pay in their community up to 2 years after leaving high school” and 43% of those who were employed “held jobs in which most other workers had disabilities” (Carter et al., 2016, p. 398).
KentuckyWorks is a five-year systems change grant project designed to directly impact post-school outcomes for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Kentucky. KentuckyWorks is a collaborative, multi-partner project that aims to impact youth outcomes within each of the state’s 174 school districts, and the target population is defined as all KY transition-age students with the most significant disabilities. The goal is to increase positive post-school outcomes (integrated employment, participation in post-secondary education, or both) for students with the most significant disabilities in the state by 20 percentage points over the five years of this grant.
Read the Research Brief.