Brittany Powers

Self-directed transportation services can help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) overcome one of the biggest barriers to competitive integrated employment: getting to work. Drawing on interviews with individuals with IDD, family members, and support brokers, this research to practice brief highlights how flexible transportation options can increase independence, expand career opportunities, and strengthen community participation, while offering practical strategies for choosing and planning transportation that meets individual needs.

Washington State has built a strong culture of competitive integrated employment by embedding community participation values into employment trainings for professionals supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Through a longstanding partnership between DDCS, DVR, and the Washington Initiative for Supported Employment (WISE), the state delivers consistent, values-driven training statewide. Self-advocates and families play a central role in shaping and delivering trainings, helping create person-centered services grounded in connection, relationships, and respect.

This brief highlights promising practices identified across five community rehabilitation providers (CRPs) in Washington, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In the past four years, these CRPs have implemented new and creative strategies to overcome staffing shortages. This brief draws findings from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with leaders and staff of the agencies. We present the promising practices these CRPs used as well as suggestions for other service CRPs to replicate these strategies. Read the brief.

Training Support Employment, Inc. (TSE), a nonprofit service provider in Minnesota, implemented recruitment strategies that leveraged community connections and targeted a wide-range of potential hires. This promising practice describes how hiring practices led TSE to enact a robust staff training and development program that supports a positive work culture, and rewards a job well done to turn new hires into long-term and highly skilled employees. Read the promising practice here.

This promising practice describes how Advance Opportunities, an employment provider in Minnesota, implemented a multi-faceted approach to address a staffing shortage that was made worse by COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. These approaches included investing in a dedicated HR staff member, changing recruitment methods, starting a mentorship program for new staff, creating a friendly work environment, optimizing their workflows to improve efficiency, and providing financial incentives. As a result, Advance was able to recruit and retain talented employment staff.