Welcome back to our installments of Employability Skills and the Local Industry Standards. We will begin looking at standards for Competitive Employment, as it is one of the most common goals among individuals with disabilities seeking employment. According to the Local Industry Standards the definition of Competitive Employment is, “work performed by a person with a disability in an integrated setting at minimum wage or higher and at a rate comparable to non-disabled workers performing the same tasks”.The first section is Physical Abilities and Work Tolerances. It is important to keep in mind when discussing Competitive Employment that accommodations cannot change items in the job description, but make them easier to complete. While accommodations can be provided for individuals who need them for physical needs, the skills noted are common requirements in inclusive employment.
Physical Abilities and Work Tolerances: Independently Navigate the Environment
This skill means an employee can independently move about the worksite without assistance to complete job tasks, locate supplies, take breaks, eat lunch, and use the restroom. While this skill may take some practice over time, and the assistance of a job coach or business mentor, the end goal is complete independence on a normal day.
Family Practice Ideas:
Practice identifying and explaining community and safety signs. (i.e. exit signs) There are MANY resources available to practice this online and many are fun games like memory.
Regularly talk about and use community and safety signs together when you are out in public.This can be done with children as young as potty training age (even if it is delayed) have them point to the restroom sign before entering. Another idea is to follow wall signs to locate a doctor’s suite starting with the lobby directory, hallway signs, and finally the one posted on our near the door.
After talking about and using community signs together allow your child to locate a restroom when needed in public, supporting with as few prompts as possible.
Discuss emergency exits at places you visit frequently like your church, or a therapy office and the importance of knowing them at places your child spends time at.
Demonstrate how to locate “helpers” at community places. For example, at Target locate someone in a red shirt with a name tag to ask for help.
Demonstrate asking for help from “helpers” while out and about and discuss what you did after to reinforce it.
Allow your child to ask for assistance out in a public place after practicing it together. For example, “Excuse me, where is the restroom?”
As they are able, allow them the freedom to navigate places independently with you in the general area to practice.
School Practice Ideas:
Have your child’s team mirror discussions about community and safety signs from home and identify signs that are in the school. Encourage the independent use of them. Staff can make a school scavenger hunt using room numbers leaving a small item to ask for at each location (i.e. a puzzle piece and going to each location completes the puzzle–dollar store 10 piece puzzles are great for this) to practice and encourage independence.
Think about how your child can use a paraprofessional or aid as little as possible when navigating, and why you want to have someone with them when they are navigating. Can you make a tiered plan to grow independence over the school year? Once a new schedule is learned could they fade after a few weeks? You’d be surprised how independence can extinguish behaviors. Frequently, but not always, when interns arrive at my work program, behaviors improve when I tell them, “I’m going to assume you can do this on your own unless you tell me you have questions, or you aren’t able to behave like an adult at work.” Assuming competence goes a long way, AND a school setting is a protected space to practice, so if it doesn’t work out another approach can be tried.
Have staff help your student locate “go-to people”. This can be school staff, and/or peers that they can seek out when confused or they have questions. In a school a front office secretary is a good “go-to” who can transfer to the security guard at the worksite because they typically sit in a similar location to a school secretary. Encouraging peer “go-to people” demonstrates that co-workers can help you and co-workers frequently help each other.
How can you and your individual’s IEP team begin using these ideas now? Check back in the next blog for the next installment of how you can begin supporting your individual now for competitive employment.
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