“Maybe I Should've Said This, Maybe I Could've Contributed More": Exploring Employment Training and Experiences for Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities aspire to work. Legislative initiatives and policies aim to provide training and support for adults with IDD to work. With all of that, however employment and job retention rates remain low. Research from the perspectives of others (e.g., educators, vocational rehabilitation counselors, job coaches, and family members/care givers) about individuals with IDD in relation to employment provides an insight into some of the facilitators and barriers to employment faced by adults with IDD suggesting deficits in social skills attribute to low employment rates. Few studies include the voice of the employee with IDD. The purpose of this dissertation was to understand ways to improve employment opportunities for adults with IDD. This was achieved through conducting two studies. The first study was a scoping review to see how interventions fostering communication skills in vocational settings for adults with IDD were represented in the literature. Within this review I focused on this important, complex, and highly desired employment social skill of communication. This review organized the interventions fostering communication skills for adults with IDD into types of communication skills (form, purpose, and function), instructional approaches for teaching the communication skills, and locations of where the intervention took place. The second article used qualitative inquiry to understand the work experiences of adults with IDD from the perspectives of adults with IDD.