Project Prepares Special-Needs Students for Workplace

Many high school students have the opportunity to work while still in school, and employers are generally willing to hire them. But for students with autism or other special needs, the job outlook isn’t necessarily stellar.

That scenario is changing because of a federally funded project through Texas Tech’s College of Education in partnership with Lubbock and Lubbock-Cooper Independent School Districts and the Texas Workforce Commission.

According to Robin Lock, a professor of special education in the college and director of the project, the Wagner-Peyser grant – federal money given to each state and dispersed through the office of the governor – netted her program $1.5 million over three years.

“The first year (2009), we specifically looked at students with autism and also added in the idea that social skill development for them would make a difference for them in their ability to maintain employment,” Lock said.

Serving Many

In the second year Lock said they decided to add intellectual and developmental disabilities because they had so much overlap there.

“We thought there were students really needing to be served – there were students with autism who had both autism and intellectual disabilities; and then there were students with just developmental disabilities who needed to find jobs and be successful in the workplace; and that we could really serve a larger population.

“So we added specific components – beyond social skills training – job training for those students that year. We also added more specific information for the employers about how to accommodate individuals with autism, with intellectual disabilities and with developmental disabilities in the workplace,” Lock said.

In 2011, the final year of that grant, Lock said they looked at a model of what makes a workplace successful.

“What makes it successful from the students’ perspective, from the parents’ perspective, from the teachers’ perspective and from the employer’s perspective,” Lock said. “We’ve maintained all of the original intent of the grant – we just added different research projects as we went along.”

The three-year project has included about 150-175 students; and it has been a winning proposition for everyone involved, said Mike May, director at the LISD Vocational Transition Center (VTC).

Employment is Ultimate Goal

The VTC allows students to do different types of tasks over the time they visit, from a two-hour period to an entire morning, depending on their high school’s schedule.

“We’re trying to make sure that there are more vocational opportunities available for our students post-high school,” May said. “We are striving for them to have the best job, the best opportunity that they can have. We want everyone to be competitively employed, but it may be that some students are in a sheltered workshop. If we can get them into a sheltered work environment where they are receiving money for their work, that’s positive. To see them competitively employed is our ultimate goal.”

Lubbock Cooper’s involvement was a little different, in that they had one high school, so the training occurred where the students went to high school.

Lock said there are up to 90 employers in the Lubbock County area who have gone through the training over the course of three years, and more than half of them – probably 60 – have employed students over the course of 2011.

“Some employers, for example, United Supermarkets, really do a great job employing a good number of individuals with disabilities, and they’ve been very supportive,” Lock said. “There are just a whole bunch of businesses across the city that have been very helpful.”

Lock said different organizations can apply through the governor’s office for the federal flow-through money from the Department of Labor. The opportunity for a project to be funded is dependent on how the governor feels it will impact not only that part of the state, but the state as a whole.  

“One of the things the state has been most pleased with is that we’ve been able to come up with a picture, a model of what a workplace looks like that is positive for individuals with autism, intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities, that people can use and be distributed to other businesses and other types of entities in the state,” Lock said.

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