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Interviewer: Today we are very fortunate to have with us Michael
Callahan, and he is going to be talking about customized employment.
Mike, thank you for agreeing to this interview today, and we're glad
to have you here.
Michael Callahan: Glad to be here.
Interviewer: Great. Well we're just going to jump in and get started.
So, the first question that I'd like to ask you is: How did the term-customized
employment evolve?
Michael Callahan: Different people might reach the answer that I'm
about to give you in different ways. Let me tell you how I perceive
the evolution, or how the term evolved. I have the clearest lineage
back to what we have called in the supported employment field, individualized
supported employment. People started doing [individualized supported
employment] as an alternative or maybe as a focus better said, to
the more group based forms of employment.
However, individualized supported employment was not always customized.
Often, we would just be talking about one individual at a time. For
those of us in the field that were working with people who had more
significant disabilities starting probably in the late 80's through
the 90's, we realized that the employment relationship had to be negotiated,
had to be amended and adapted for each individual that we're going
to employ. And though we didn't use the term, we were using job restructuring
concepts and job carving and other labels that had been given to what
I would refer to now as customized employment.
The actual coining of the term seems to have occurred following a
speech that our current Secretary of Labor, Elaine Choa, made just
after her acceptance of her position upon being confirmed by the U.S.
Senate back in 2001. I guess, right after the elections. In that speech,
Ms. Choa referred to customization as a trend in the labor market.
Within 6 months of her speech, folks at the Office of Disability Employment
Policy, a new office within the U.S. Department of Labor, put forth
in the Federal Register, a major initiative from the U.S. Department
of Labor. They termed that initiative “Customized Employment”.
At the time I frankly thought that the term might be confusing, because
the Workforce Investment Act already contains a concept called “Customized
Training”. And I felt that it might be fairly easy to confuse
the two terms. As it turns out, I think customized employment has
emerged as a useful concept to describe the individualized concepts
that we were exploring in the 80's and 90's with the opportunity to
customize the employment relationship in a way that I think is necessary
for people with more significant disabilities.
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