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Esther Kamau

Using Self-Directed Transportation Services to Support Competitive Integrated Employment

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: Centering the Value of Community in Employment Trainings

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.

Planning and Budgeting for Life on Their Terms: Managing Self-Directed Services

Managing self-directed services takes planning, budgeting, and support—but it also creates opportunities for greater choice and independence. This brief highlights how people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families manage services to build personalized supports that help them pursue employment and community life.

Using Self-Directed Services to Achieve Competitive Integrated Employment and Enhance Community Life Engagement

Self-directed services give people with intellectual and developmental disabilities greater choice and control over the supports they use to pursue employment and community life. This research brief highlights real stories and practical strategies showing how self-direction can improve independence, build strong support networks, and expand opportunities for competitive integrated employment.

Kansas Employment First Policy Analysis and Recommendations: Final Report

The Kansas Employment First Policy Analysis and Recommendations report reviews implementation of the 2011 Kansas Employment First Initiative Act, which prioritizes competitive integrated employment (CIE) for people with disabilities. It finds limited progress and identifies gaps in leadership, funding, coordination, training, data systems, and equitable access. Stakeholders prioritized three actions: establish a strong operational leadership group, embed employment across service systems, and implement a sustainable funding strategy to expand high-quality CIE outcomes statewide.

How Service Providers Can Promote Staffing Recruitment and Retention

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.

Addressing Staffing Shortages: Lessons from Advance Opportunities

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.

Rise: A Data-Driven Approach to Hire and Retain Staff

Rise, a Minnesota-based nonprofit, implemented new hiring and retention practices to target potential employees in untapped applicant pools. Rise used internal data to better identify promising job candidates and track employee activities to better allocate pay raises. With the creation of employee metrics, Rise was able to define clear paths for professional development and promotions into higher paying positions while rewarding good results. Learn more!

How Udac Changed its Culture to Support Staff Recruitment and Retention Strategies

This promising practice describes how Udac, a Minnesota-based provider, stopped providing facility-based 14(c) special subminimum wage employment services and moved toward community-based programs that support individuals to work in integrated settings and engage in their communities. During the transformation process, Udac implemented several strategies aimed at hiring and retaining high-quality employees and supporting them to acquire the necessary skills.
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