Glossary of Terms
[A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z]
Access
Refers to the ability to find, manipulate, and use information, an object, a place, a service or a program in an efficient and comprehensive manner.
Adult Services
Services needed for people when they reach adulthood; these services often include (but are not limited to), assistance in finding a job, assistance in the home, assistance at work, and the provision of various community supports.
Assistive Technology
Technology that assists individuals to participate in activities as independently as possible. This can include low-tech items (i.e., timers, organizational tools, calculators) as well as more advanced technology (i.e., wheelchairs, computers, talkers).
Autonomy
The ability and opportunity to operate independently.
Benefits Planning
Benefits’ planning helps people with disabilities to navigate through benefit programs while minimizing disincentives and barriers that exist for them to prepare for, obtain, advance in, retain, leave, and regain employment.
Career Development
The discovery of specific vocational pathways that meet the person's interests, aptitudes, and opportunities.
Centre for Independent Living (CIL)
Community-based, not-for-profit, non-residential organizations that provide advocacy, peer counselling, independent living skills training, and information and referral to persons of any age with any disability.
Clubhouse Program
A psycho-social rehabilitation program for individuals who have psychiatric disabilities, with an emphasis on participant control, working in conjunction with paid staff. Clubhouses often provide assistance with employment.
Consumer/Client
Terms typically used when referring to individuals who receive services from human service providers and agencies.
Communication
Refers to the accurate and efficient transmission and/or reception of information, either verbally (spoken or written) or non-verbally.
Compensatory Strategies
Strategies that build skills in individuals by focusing on processes, techniques, and practices that lessen the effects of a disability.
Customized Employment
A process for individualizing the employment relationship between a job seeker or an employee and an employer in ways that meet the needs of both. It is based on a match between the unique strengths, needs, and interests of the job candidate with a disability, and the identified business needs of the employer or the self-employment business chosen by the candidate.
Disclosure
The act of opening up, revealing, or telling. With regard to individuals with disabilities, it refers to the act of informing someone that an individual has a disability, including self-disclosure. It is often associated with a person's need to request accommodations.
Education and Training
Education and Training is formal instruction and supervised practice in an academic subjects, skills, trade, or profession leading to a generally recognized credential or certificate.
Eligibility
Criteria or requirements which determine a right to participate in a particular activity, service, or program.
Employment
Regular engagement in skilled or unskilled labour or service activities for payment.
Employment Services Offices
Employment Services Offices have listings of available jobs and provides assistance to job seekers.
Employment Specialist
A staff member from a community agency who helps people with disabilities obtain employment. This term is sometimes used interchangeably with the term job coach.
Entitlement
A right to benefits specified especially by law or contract; funds supporting or distributed by such a program.
Essential Functions of the Job
These are tasks that are fundamental and necessary to perform a given position. They do not include marginal duties.
Family involvement
The support for the social, emotional, physical, academic, and occupational growth of the person that is provided by parents and/or other family, either independently or in collaboration with professionals.
Functional-Life Skills
Basic skills in the context of real world situations; the variety of skills that are frequently demanded in domestic, vocational, and community environments.
Functional Vocational Assessment
Identifies an individual’s vocational interests and skills through the performance of job tasks in a variety of actual work environments in the community. Also known as a situational assessment.
Guidance
An umbrella term encompassing many services aimed at personal and career development.
Independent Living Program (ILP)
Purpose is to maximize the leadership, empowerment, independence, and productivity of individuals with disabilities and to integrate these individuals into the mainstream of society.
Individualized Planning
Is the process of assessing a person's strengths, skills, resources, interests and limitations as they apply to the achievement of a specific goal, and then using that information to develop a plan that lays out the steps that need to be taken for that person to accomplish that goal.
Informed Choice
The process by which an individual arrives at a decision. It is a process that is based upon access to, and full understanding of, all necessary information from the individual's perspective. The process should result in a free and informed decision by the individual about what he or she needs.
Instrumental Activities of Daily Living
These life activities include personal hygiene, light housework, laundry, meal preparation, transportation, grocery shopping, using the telephone, medication management, and money management.
Integrated Setting
Integrated setting refers to a setting in which individuals interact with non-disabled individuals other than those who may be providing services to that person. With respect to an integrated employment setting, it refers to a setting typically found in the community in which individuals interact with non-disabled individuals, other than those who are providing services to that person, to the same extent that non-disabled individuals in comparable positions interact with other persons.
Interpersonal Skills
The ability to communicate with another individual or group on a social or professional basis. Level of aptitude is based on ease and comfort of all parties involved.
Job Accommodations
Modification or adjustments specific to the work environment, or to the manner of circumstances under which the position held or desired is customarily performed, that enable a qualified individual with a disability to perform the essential functions of that job.
Job Analysis
Job analysis is the systematic gathering, documenting, and analysing of information about employees acting to perform the tasks incumbent to their jobs within any kind of a work setting. Analysis deals with job content, job requirements as well as the context of the entire work organization. Among the purposes for which job analysis information is used are job descriptions, job evaluation and classification, performance appraisal, training design, work design and selection/promotion systems.
Job Carving
Creation of a job description based on tasks derived from a single traditional job in an employment setting. The carved job description contains one or more, but not all, of the tasks from the original job description.
Job Coach
A person hired by the placement agency or provided through the employer to furnish specialized on-site training to assist and employee with a disability in learning and performing a job and adjusting to the work environment.
Job Sampling
Job sampling provides individuals with practical work experiences in various occupations and workplaces as part of their vocational exploration and helps people to make clear and realistic employment choices. Through detailed observations during the job sampling period, the individuals’ should learn to identify and define skills, capabilities, and interests.
Job Shadowing
Job shadowing is designed to give the person a closer, more in-depth look at the world of work. During a job shadow experience, the person accompanies an employee as his/her work is performed in order to learn about a specific occupation or industry.
Learning Styles
Different ways of or approaches to learning including: visual, auditory, or kinesthetic/tactile
Lifelong Learning
The interest and skill to maintain education, formal or informal, beyond the basic requirements for academic achievement or vocational attainment.
Natural Supports
Natural, supportive relationships that are fostered and developed among individuals with disabilities and non-disabled co-workers. An emphasis in recent years in the disability field has been on using these relationships to support an individual with a disability.
Open Labour Market Employment
Open Labour Market employment is a job where an individual is working for pay in an individual, community-based job where the individual is paid directly by the employer.
Opportunities
Chances for individuals to learn, to explore, express, earn, belong and influence. Opportunities give people the chance to test ideas and behaviours and to experiment with different roles. It is important to note that people learn best through active participation and that learning occurs in all types of settings and situations.
Person-Centered Planning
A planning process that focuses on the individual and his/her interests, strengths, and needs. Emphasis is placed on the planning process being controlled by the individual with a disability, with involvement by individuals of their choice from their personal network.
Reasonable Accommodation
Change in an environment to meet the access needs of an individual in accordance with Equality legislation, which includes the Employment Equality Act 1998 & 2004 and the Equal Status Act 2000 to 2004.
Supported Employment
Supported employment means competitive employment in an integrated setting, or employment in integrated work settings in which individuals with the most significant disabilities are provided ongoing support services. Supported employment provides assistance such as job coaches, transportation, assistive technology, specialized job training, and individually tailored support.
Supported Living
Often involves partnerships between individuals with disabilities, their families, and professionals in making decisions about where or how the person wishes to live. People in supported living may need little or no services from professionals, or they may need 24-hour personal care. The kind and amount of supports are tailored to the individual's needs.
Self-Determination
The right and ability of all persons to direct their own lives, as well as the responsibility to accept the consequences of their own choices. Some of the skills that make someone self-determined or a successful self-advocate are the following: knowledge of one's strengths and limitations; belief in one's ability to achieve goals; ability to start and complete tasks; ability to assertively assert one's wants, needs, and concerns; and the ability to make decisions and see other options.
Soft Skills
The skills, traits, work habits, and attitudes that all workers across all occupations must have in order to obtain, maintain, and progress in employment. These include being dependable, responsible, punctual, adaptable, honest, honourable, well-mannered, positive toward work, and appropriately dressed/groomed. Soft skills also refer to such attributes as ability to get along with others, work in teams, attend to tasks, work independently, and provide excellent customer service, both within the company and externally.
Transition
The period of time when adolescents are moving into adulthood and is often concerned with planning for postsecondary education or careers.
Work-Based Learning
A supervised program sponsored by an education or training organization that links knowledge gained at the work site with a planned program of study. Experiences range in intensity, structure, and scope and include activities as diverse as site visits, job shadowing, paid and unpaid internships, structured on-the-job training, and the more formal work status as apprentice or employee.
Work-Readiness Skills
The ability to make the educational and vocational decisions and perform the kinds of educational and vocational tasks that are expected by schools and the workplace. Work-readiness skills include soft skills, computer literacy, and job seeking skills.
With thanks to NCWD and Coryell Autism Centre for assistance with this glossary of supported employment terms.