Developmental/Intellectual Disabilities

The impact of disability is wide ranging, influencing nearly every aspect of affected individuals’ lives, including how they seek and receive health care, how they process information, and what level of independence and community participation they enjoy. Evidence-based care has potential to improve the lives of American adults with disabilities. This brief presents methodological and design issues for researchers to consider.

Adults with disabilities have diverse, complex, and expensive needs for health care services, costing the health care system $398 billion in 2006. This group, which represented 14 percent of the adult population in 2008, will grow larger in the future. This report discusses study designs and outcome measures that can be used to address different comparative research questions. Policymakers, practitioners, and the public need a better understanding of what works for study designs.

What is meant by person centred approaches, thinking and planning?Review a series of nine videos about person-centered planning. The goal of this project is to provide support for the creation of best practice and its implementation by individuals and agencies. Topics include history of lifestyle planning, training, how to get started and personal stories.

This report describes a national survey developed in conjunction with PACER Center's Family Advocacy and Support Training Project (FAST) to increase understanding of the key information needs, unmet service needs, and service quality for youth and young adults with disabilities in transition from school to adulthood. Review results of a 2010 Internet survey of 2,416 parents or relatives of children and youth ages 11 years to 39 years with disabilities from 54 U.S. states and territories.

In 2010, a national Internet survey aimed to capture the perspectives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) and their family caregivers. The Family and Individual Needs for Disability Supports (FINDS) survey focused on issues including educational, housing, employment and support needs of people with ID/DD and their families. Data analysis was conducted by the Institute's Research and Training Center on Community Living; review the technical report on the survey.

This study explores the perceived value of workplace accommodations from the perspective of the individual users of PAS who had contacted the Job Accommodation Network (JAN). A follow-up survey assessed their perspective on the impact of PAS and other accommodations. The findings indicate that people who have considered or implemented PAS accommodations perception of work ability increases from being "Substantially Limited" with no accommodation to "Not Limited at All" with accommodiation.

Disability measures recently introduced into the U.S. Current Population Survey offer an unprecedented opportunity to track, month by month, the labor force status of working-age adults with disabilities in the midst of a major economic downturn. Over a one-year period, the number of employed workers with disabilities declined at a rate more than three times that of workers without disabilities, and the unemployment rate rose dramatically to levels far exceeding that of other workers.

Review this ground-breaking study of the revolutionary changes in public policy toward persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities over the past fifty years.

How does the state of Virginia measure how financial incentives affect disabled workers' decision to work? To learn more, read this report which features a model used to predict behavior of individuals, budget costs, and related savings of the Virginia Medicaid Works program, along with the well-being of affected individuals. This frame-work will also be used to predict how proposed changes in the Medicaid Works program would affect behavior.

This guide is about creating the opportunity for people with developmental disabilities to have a home and people to share everyday life with. Building on the experiences of states, the guide explains the service system components necessary to develop and sustain shared living. Available in print only.