Making it Happen

“Let's think about really what is going to make you happy. What is going to make you excited to get out and work every day and go, maybe even when it's like 10 below.“ That’s how Wendy Druckemiller describes how she approached one aspect of her work in mental health as an employment consultant. Before supported employment came to the fore, Roberta Stafford says her role as a vocational rehabilitation counselor had been to tell clients, "You have this disability. Here's the kind of job you can have." In the new model however, "they're the person driving the process."

Supports vary with the needs of the individual and their stage in the job-seeking process. Interviewees explain their work as entailing a broad range of services, from skills assessment, to job development, to resumes and interviewing, to using the bus system, behind-the-scenes job coaching, and facilitating communication between individual and employer.

In the 1990s, Karen Scherer says businesses were receptive to job development due to low unemployment rates and, because of the new Americans with Disabilities Act, you could “talk to employers about restructuring and about accommodations and essential functions of the job.” “It was very successful, very successful at that time.”

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