How Do Urban Young Adults with Developmental Disabilities Fare over Time?
by Shelly Botuck , Joel M. Levy , Arie Rimmerman Despite successful placements into community-based supported employment programs, thousands of previously excluded individuals with developmental and psychiatric disabilities find retaining jobs to be a major challenge (Flynn et al., 1991; Kregel et al., 1994; Wehman & Kregel, 1995). The reasons for a job separation are complex and may involve interacting factors in various levels of an individual’s entire social system. Job changes may result from problems related to the family, workplace, provider agency, or community, as well as to external social, political, and economic policies. Job retention can be influenced, for example, by family responsibilities (Lustig & Thomas, 1997), work disincentives such as loss of Medicaid or Medicare health insurance, transportation problems, general turnover rates or economic downturns, social isolation on the job, burnout due to staff shortages and a stressful workplace, low pay, or absence of benefi
