Achieving community membership through community rehabilitation provider services: are we there yet?

Findings from an analysis of the characteristics and services of community rehabilitation providers (CRPs) in the early years of the 21st century are presented. Services provided by CRPs can be categorized along two dimensions: purpose (work, nonwork) and setting (facility-based, community). The number of individuals with disabilities present provides a third perspective for analysis. The majority of CRPs provided both work and nonwork services, and the majority of those that provide employment services offered both integrated and facility-based employment. Individuals with developmental disabilities were most likely to be supported in facility-based work (41%), followed by nonwork services (33%), and integrated employment (26%). Despite some changes in CRP characteristics, the goal of community membership has not yet been widely achieved.

Pushing the employment agenda: case study research of high performing States in integrated employment.

Organizational variables, including policies, practices, collaborations, and funding mechanisms resulting in high performance in integrated employment, were described through case study research in 3 states. Findings address how contextual factors, system-level strategies, and goals of the system are related as well as how they sustain systems change. Strategies such as flexibility in funding and practices; communication of values through data, rewards, and funding incentives; and innovation diffusion through relationships and training were most successful when they were embedded within the context of a solid values base, a network of dedicated stakeholders, and clarity about systemic goals. Implications are presented with respect to state systems, community rehabilitation providers as partners in planning, and future leadership in the field.

Introduction to theme section on geographies of intellectual disability: 'outside the participatory mainstream'?

This paper introduces the following theme section on Geographies of Intellectual Disability. It outlines the historiography of geographical work on intellectual disability, noting in particular the contributions of Wolpert (Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 5 (1980) 391) and Hall and Kearns (Health and Place 7 (2001) 237), before tracing claims made about both the 'institutional' and 'deinstitutional' eras in the changing geographies confronting and experienced by intellectually disabled people. This account, highlighting the tendency for such people to remain 'outside the participatory mainstream' in almost all circumstances, offers along the way an introduction to the four contributions that follow.

Places of social poverty and service dependency of people with intellectual disabilities: a case study in Baltimore, Maryland.

In the United States, post-asylum geographies of people with intellectual disabilities implicate the condition of service dependency in their social impoverishment, here defined as "isolation from the community and lack of real friendships and relationships" (The importance of income. The Self-Determination National Program Office of the Institute on Disability, University of New Hampshire, Concord, 1998, p. 2). Social historical geographies of people with intellectual disabilities, both general and local to Baltimore, Maryland, contextualize how one voluntary service organization re/created service dependency and social poverty of people with intellectual disabilities through residential location decisions.