Transcript

Interviewer: In your opinion, what are the significant issues and events that have facilitated the employment of individuals with disabilities?

Michael Callahan: This is a very, very interesting question. This is probably a terribly important question for us to reflect on. I'll try to keep my comments in a way that doesn't get us off kind of the essentialness, because I'd love to digress on this question. There’s plenty of information to do that. For me the very first awareness, like number one was the concept brought in from the 70's of a training technology that allowed us to imagine people with disabilities being able to perform. So we credit all the giants. And for me, Marc Gold stands among those who really offered us a technology that allowed us to imagine that we could teach, and people could learn.

I can almost remember the day in the early 80's when, at a TASH conference, Lou Brown articulated the notion that supports could follow the person. And, once we disassociated or disconnected supports from a building, we were free then to take those supports wherever a person needed them. That was a huge concept, because I think we had only been toying with that issue broadly. So, as supported employment began to evolve and emerge, we needed somebody to clearly articulate that.
Also, I think “pre” means never: the mantra of the early 80's where we really understood that people needed to learn and perform in the places where they would actually be living their lives, especially as adults. It's not to say that schools are not appropriate and important, but for adults, they needed to go ahead and live a life. That was another one of those little concepts.

I think the whole issue of person-centeredness is one of those events that make this all happen. We weren't just seeing people with disabilities as unemployed members of the labor force, which is a powerful enough image, but also as unique individuals. We do count gross numbers of people with disabilities, but our field has an “I” in from of its “P”, and so therefore we're interested in every individual. You don't see that “I” in front of the “P” in US Labor Law, so that distinguishes us, I think, in supported employment and very importantly in our endeavors to try to customize opportunities for people.

I think the beginnings of what we're now calling choice and self-determination are absolutely critical features here. We're really beginning to ask the question that shouldn't services not only follow the individual, but also have the person at the center. Actually directed by the individual, and we even, of course in the 90's, began to look at the public resources that had been set aside to offer those services being under the direct control of the person. That will continue to be an important concept within supported employment.

And then the last topic that I would bring up, there obviously are many, many more we could talk about, but this entire concept of customization of the kind of the ultimate individualizing of the employment relationship. It really takes that first "I" that existed in the IWRP in the '73 Rehab Act, now 30 years later. We actually have a way of thinking about truly individualizing employment, not just the plan, but employment. And so those to me would be kind of the large events that stick out that really have facilitated employment of people with disabilities in the community.