VCU WEBCAST SELF-DETERMINATION ********** >> MICHAEL WEHMEYER: It's great to be with you this afternoon and have the opportunity to talk about what I think may be one of the most important issues and topics that we need to address in the fields of special education, vocational rehabilitation, supported employment, and other related fields: promoting and enhancing self-determination. In the short time we have together, I'd like to cover a few primary topics. First I'd like to provide a brief overview of how the self-determination construct has been used in education and in rehabilitation so that we have a shared understanding of what I'm referring to when I use the term. And I'd also like to touch on a few misperceptions of what is meant by self-determination. It serves, I think, to limit the opportunities that many people with disabilities have, to become more self determined and seek greater career and job outcomes. Then I'd like to briefly talk a little bit about what we know about the self-determination of people with disabilities and the importance of that outcome to outcomes like employment and independent living. Finally, I'd like to talk about the potential benefits of promoting and enhancing self-determination for vocational employment outcome. I will introduce you to a model we're using to infuse self-determination into the vocational rehabilitation process in our state as a way to just provide an example of the types of activities in which we as professionals and others can be engaged. So, without further in ado, let me talk about what we mean by the term "self-determination." Self-determination has fundamentally two basic meanings. As you can see from this slide, the first refers fundamentally to a personal sense of the construct, the determination of one's own fate or course of action without compulsion. And the second meaning or intent of the construct applies to what I'll call a national political or corporate sense of the term, generally associated with freedom and referring to the rights of people or peoples to self-govern and to determine often their own political status. In the fields of education and psychology and largely in rehabilitation when we use the term "self-determination," we're talking in the personal sense, the sense of enabling people to have greater control over their own fate and their own destinies, as well as, to prepare them to do so in a manner that promotes both skills and knowledge. There is a very vibrant and strong effort in many areas of disability services and supports to promote self-determination through mechanisms such as independent funding and budgeting, person-centered planning, and other mechanisms that enable people to have greater control over funding streams, decisions about their service delivery, and the payment and the delivery of those supports. I think these are complementary efforts. Certainly the system's change efforts have focused to create greater opportunity for people with disabilities. Meanwhile, efforts to promote personal self-determination better enable people to take advantage of those opportunities when they exist. So, I will be focusing primarily, however, on the sense of the term as a personal construct. There is often attempts to come to synonyms to capture what is meant by self-determination. Self-determination can be a relatively complex construct that doesn't have immediately discernible meanings to a lot of people. We tend to fall back on some of the key components of self determined behavior, choice making or decision-making or problem-solving. But I'd like to emphasize I think if we're looking for a synonym for self-determination, it's the idea of enabling people to become self-governing. And you can see from this slide that self-governing has two principal meanings that really overlap with the personal and the corporate or political sense of the term "self-determination." But one of the things that we want to do is to enable people to exercise control over themselves and to be able to implement goal-oriented activities that enable them to achieve longer term outcomes than just looking at immediate gratification. So, one of the things we want to talk about is how do we enable people to be self-governing and to exercise control both over themselves and over their environments and activities that impact their lives. Let me share with you for just very quickly some of the definitions that have sprung up in education, psychology and rehabilitation. Michael Ward, who was with the Department of Education at the time of the initial education self-determination initiative, pointed out that really being self-determined is not only about skills and knowledge enhancement, but it's also about the attitudes and beliefs and perceptions that the person brings to their life. This applies to their world so that we're looking at both attitudes enhancing perceptions of control and autonomy and enabling people to acquire the skills and knowledge that lead them to do things like Dr. Ward indicates, defining goals, goal-oriented actions are central to self-determination and self-determined behavior. Sharon Field and Alan Hoffman similarly define self-determination as ability to define and achieve goals. And again this focuses on the central tea of goal-oriented behavior in self-determined actions, but also on knowing and valuing oneself; that, that people who are self-determined know what they do well, know what they like, know what they don't do well. They try to put themselves in circumstances where they can do what they do well and minimize circumstances where they are not going to be able to succeed. Dennis Smithzog has talked about self-determination as choosing in self interest. I think it's important not to minimize the role of choice-making and self-interest in pursuing self-determined outcomes. Fundamentally most of us prefer certain employment or vocational outcomes and we choose our jobs and our careers based on those preferences. So, it's important that we know what we like, what we don't like, and that we live ways that begin to enact choice and preference in our lives. In our work we've used the term "causal agency" and "causal agent" to define self-determined behavior. People who are self-determined act as the primary causal agent in their life. They make choices and decisions that impact their quality of life free from undue external influence or interference. I think the term causal agency captures, to a large degree, what we really mean when we talk about self-determined people and self-determination. A causal agent is someone who makes or causes things to happen in his or her own life. And so, as I'll talk about in a moment, we have misperceptions about what self-determination is. And many people with disabilities are often limited in their opportunity to both learn skills that will enable them to be more self-determined, but also in having experiences and engaging in activities that enable them to exert greater control over their life. This is because, primarily, other people assume that the severity or type of disability limits the number of activities in which they can engage and that if someone can't do something completely independently, that they're not able do it. And the fact of the matter is that most of us rely on others and other systems to do things for us that enhance the quality of our lives. It's really not about doing those things ourselves, but it's about making those things happen. We can do that by expressing our preferences, by participating in decisions that impact our lives, and by establishing goals to govern aspects of our life like job and career development, that it's not about doing everything for oneself. It's about making things happen in one's life, and that virtually every person -- in fact, I would argue every person has the capacity to have that kind of impact and to make things happen in his or her life even if it's as simple as voicing an opinion or a preference about a particular activity or action. Let me continue a little bit on some of what I'll call misperceptions of self-determination. I believe that in many cases people with disabilities are denied opportunities to excerpt greater control in their lives because of these issues and because of these misperceptions, as I've mentioned. One of the most common misperceptions about self-determined behavior and self-determination is that it means doing it yourself, that self-determination is equated with independent performance of certain and often complex behaviors and that if you're not able to make, for example, a complex medical decision, that you are not in fact able to be self-determined. And I think again, as I've emphasized, self-determination is about making things happen in your life, you don't have to be able to solve the most complex problems or make complex decisions. A colleague of mine provided an example of how exerting control and making things happen in one's life and independent performance of behaviors and doing it yourself are decoupled. And she tells the story of a sculptor who has multiple physical limitations. And she sculpts by giving precise instructions to her assistants who in essence serve as her hands. And while it's tempting to think that her assistants are the true artists, she is in fact the sculptor in charge. When she has given the same directions to two assistants who have had no contact with one another, they both produce identical pieces of sculpture. Through the experience of disability this woman has learned to articulate her vision and her needs in direct and specific ways, so much so that she gets precisely the help and type of assistance that she needs in ways that are replicable. The fact that she cannot manipulate the clay on her own is irrelevant. So, people who are self-determined are people who make things happen. They are causal agents in their lives, independent of whether they actually perform the action or not. Another misperception is that self-determination is about absolute control when in fact other synonyms for self-determination might include "direct" and "manage." People can have a greater role in directing aspects of clear placement and decision-making and other activities that are involved in getting people real, meaningful jobs and supporting them to do that. So, it's not about absolute control, it's about managing and directing aspects of lives. It's also not strictly about self-reliance and self-sufficiency. We want people to be more self-reliant and more self-sufficient, but in truth we all get by with a little help from our friends, as it were. A person who needs personal support through an attendant or a job coach or other forms of supports can still be self-determined even if they are not completely self-sufficient. And then a final note is that self-determination is not about a way of providing services or doing planning or any of those things. It is often the fact that people think self-determination is simply a student-directed planning meeting or a particular way of budgeting when in fact it is about enabling people to be causal agents in their lives and to be actors in their lives instead of being acted upon. Do you recall the television commercial that ran a year or so ago advertising an Internet-based job search firm in which young children stand before the camera and make statements such as, "When I grow up, I want to be down-sized" and "I want to work in a dull, boring job for the rest of my life and retire to a meager pension"? The point of that ad is, of course, that nobody wants a bad or a boring job and that nobody should have to settle for such a job. Yet we find ourselves even today in the circumstance where thousands of Americans with disabilities continue to earn sub-minimum wages in sheltered environments with no promise or hope for a promotion or chance for inclusion into the mainstream of American society. And despite the really impressive growth of supported employed over the last decade and decade and a half, we find that even when our economy is booming and the employment rate was at all-time lows, people with disabilities still experienced depressingly high rates of unemployment. So, we have to ask our self what more can we do other than what we already have been doing, which has certainly had impact. And I think one of the solutions, one of the things that we can and should be doing is to enable people to become their own support and to focus on issues of self-determination. This is not only my opinion, but it's also, I think, validated by research. Research shows unequivocally that self-determined youth achieve more positive adult outcomes. Research we have conducted looking at the impact of self-determination for young people with intellectual disabilities has shown that being self-determined is an important contributor to more positive adult outcomes, particularly employment and wage-related outcomes. In this research young people with cognitive disabilities who were self-determined were more than twice as likely to be employed for pay one year after high school and were earning on the average more than $2 per hour more than their peers, who were equivalent as a group in educational experiences and level of ability, but who were not self-determined. Three years after graduation, students who were self-determined were significantly more likely to have a job that provided benefits, such as paid vacation, health care and sick leave. Not surprisingly, I think these self-determined young people also were more likely to live independently by three years post-graduation and to have and maintain a checking account and do other things independently. Not surprising, because working, after all, provides the obvious benefit of having money which allows one to do many other things that enhance one's quality of life. There is another line of research that provides really overwhelming evidence that adolescents and adults with disabilities can learn a number of strategies, like antecedent cue regulation, picture cue strategies, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation, all which increase independence and productivity in work situations. We know we can increase the independence and self-direction and self-management in people with disabilities in work environment through a number of the self-directed learning strategies. What are some of the benefits of promoting self-determination in vocational employment settings? Well, there are a number. First of all, self-determined people set employment and career goals based on their own abilities, interests and preferences. So, we minimize the possibility that young people and adults are placed in employment situations that are not a good match with their abilities, interests and preferences. Self-determined people can solve problems that arise in work environments and barriers to obtaining desired jobs. We know that one particular barrier relates to holding and maintaining employment for people once they have been successfully achieved a job. In that case it's often the case that there are problems that arise, sometimes social in nature, sometimes work-related, that the person might rely on somebody else to solve if they have not had adequate experience and opportunity to learn how to solve those problems themselves. Another benefit is that by enabling people to become more self-determined, we enable them to advocate on their own behalf for better jobs or for better job conditions. And we don't rely on that coming from other people who may not be around or as knowledge ability as the person him or herself. And also to be able to identify the supports of natural and other in accommodations that the person needs to succeed. So, those are all important aspects of why we should be focusing on promoting an enhancing self-determination, particularly within employment and rehabilitation settings. There's also considerable emphasis on self-determination in federal legislation across the board governing policy and practice for the delivery of supports to people with disabilities. The Rehabilitation Act includes in the findings from Congress that the goals of the nation are rightly intended to support and promote self-determination. And of course, the Rehabilitation Act also includes language around informed choice in selecting employment outcomes, specific vocational services to be provided and providing vocational rehabilitation plans. So, we are charged throughout the rehabilitation and employment processes to focusing on enabling people to self-regulate processes that lead them to greater employment outcomes. I would take a look at some of the activities that might suggest that an agency is providing supports that are consistent with enhancing and promoting self-determination. You might look at whether your agency provides systematic supports to enable employees to set long and short-term employment and career goals. Is there a mechanism that is set to work towards those goals? Does an agency provide support to enable employees to identify and communicate their unique vocational and career interests and preferences? We often overlook the fact that it's the person him or herself who is the best source of information about career and job preferences and interests. Does your agency implement persons in their planning processes and provide support to enable supported employees to serve as equal partners in his or her planning, habilitation and otherwise planning? Does the agency provides supports to enable supported employees to make informed decisions about employment and clear options? And does it provide a sufficient number of employment options related to the supported employee's preferences? Can, for example, supported employees select and change job coaches if they're dissatisfied with their current circumstance? Does the agency have a systematic process to inform supported employees about their work and civil rights protections and responsibilities? And do you provide services that enable supported employees and other to assume leadership roles and participate meaningfully in decision-making bodies in the work setting as well as the agency? I'd like to close by sharing with you an example of some of the work that we've been doing within the context of the vocational rehabilitation system in our state. We have with funding from the Rehab Services Administration developed a career development model that enables folks to self-regulate the problem-solving to support their involvement in the process of getting a job and hopefully establishing a career. There are three phases in their self-determined career development model. Each phase has a problem to solve, which I'll talk about in just a minute. And in each phase consumers solve the problem by answering four questions. And the solution to each problem in each phase leads intuitively to the next problem that needs to be solved. And throughout the process participants learn employment support strategies that they need to answer the questions. And so, we provide an opportunity for people to learn new skills like goal-setting and problem-solving in the context of a self-directed process. The first phase of this process, the problem to solve, is what are my career and job goals? And as I mentioned, there are four questions in each phase that consumers answer in order to solve the problem of career and job goals. The first one is what career and job do I want? So, what we enable people to explore preferences and interests, to look at career awareness issues and to really look at what career and job they might want. The second question is what do I know about it now? So, once someone has narrowed down the scope and sequence of the types of jobs they might prefer and narrowed it hopefully to a particular job, they look at what they know about it now. What do they need to know more about? Perhaps they need to learn a little bit more, and so we would engage in an exploration process, or perhaps even doing an internship so that the person could maximize what they learn about the process. The third question in the first phase is what must change for me to get the job and career I want? The person -- we've enabled the person to discover what it is that they need to achieve the job. And so, now we take a look at that as the goal, and we take a look at where the current -- the person's current status is and identify what needs to be changed. And sometimes those barriers or those things that need to be changed refer to external aspects. Perhaps the person needs transportation or child care. And that's the only barrier or thing that needs to change. Other times perhaps the person will need to learn specific job-d related skills or social or organizational skills. And then the final step, the final question that the person is supported to answer, is what can I do to make this happen? And the intent of this question, in answering this question the person is to set a goal that is based on the exploration they have done. I would note that we work with people who have less complex verbal and cognitive skills and that the person is kept as the causal agent in the process whether they can independently answer each question or not. That is done through our roles as facilitators. The employment support strategies that will be implemented to enable people to answer these questions will include a number -- and I won't deal with any of them extensively -- but communication instruction, awareness training, enabling someone to self-assess job and career preferences and abilities, career and job exploration activities. Perhaps the person hasn't had opportunities for job shadowing and sampling and needs to go back to that step to better understand. Organizational skills training and problem-solving instruction, those are all supports that are intended to enable the person to answer the questions in that first phase, as well as choice-making, decision-making and goal-setting instruction. The second phase, the problem to solve is what is my plan? So, participants come out of the first phase with a specific goal that has been set and self-set. The problem to solve is what is my plan? And the questions that person has addressed to solve that problem include "what actions can I take to reach my career or employment goal", "What could keep me from taking action", "What barriers exist to my taking action," What can I do to remove these barriers? So, what will need to happen? And then, when will I take action? And as part of this final process we ask participants to set up a self-monitoring process to enable them to track their progress toward their goal. Employment support strategies in this phase include exploration of community resources and supports, problem-solving instruction, self-scheduling training, self-instruction training, antecedent cue regulation, decision-making instruction, and things generally geared toward enabling people to self-regulate and self-direct the process of monitoring and implementing the activities, including assertiveness training and self-monitoring. And the final phase of the process, the problem to solve, is what have I achieved? And to solve that problem participants answer the questions what actions have I taken? What barriers have been removed? What has changed to enable me to get the job and career I want? And what have I achieved -- or have I achieved what I want to achieve? So, we're looking at enabling people, particularly with the final question, to take a look at whether they are where they wanted to be. And if they're not, they have several courses of action that they consider. The first is to just keep working at it. Maybe they haven't worked long enough. The second is to modify their action plan. Perhaps they aren't working at it enough and their action plan requires some modification. So, they would go back to phase 2 and work through that process to modify it again. And then the third option is whether their goal was appropriate. If their action plan is appropriate, then perhaps the goal was inappropriate. And this is particularly important I think because in many cases we find ourselves in circumstances where we have to be dream killers and we have to tell people that we don't believe that a particular goal is appropriate or reasonable. And this process enables people to make decisions about their goal and the reasonableness and the appropriateness of it with us as allies and advocates and not having to be in the form of a regulator. So, I wanted to use that to illustrate the types of activities. Obviously we're using a process that enables adults to as much as possible self-regulate learning and not putting them in a position where they would simply be in a classroom or in a role of authority under a teacher, but to support people through the active process. There are a lot of things, and I certainly couldn't touch on them in the 30 minutes we've had that we can continue to do, though. And I hope that some of the activities that I've indicated provide at least a touch on some of the activities that we can engage in.