Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This podcast focuses on the Virginia Commonwealth University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment of Persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities grant-funded project. It features interviews with the project's director, research study leads, and steering committee members discussing the research and training of the project. The new podcast will release episodes on the second Monday of each month over the next five years.
Greetings from Richmond, Virginia. Welcome to this first episode of Zooming Into Focus, a podcast that explores and highlights the research and training developed by the Virginia Commonwealth University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment of Persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Project. I'm your host, Lucian Friel from VCU RRTC. On this episode, we'll be talking with project director Jen McDonough. Jen has been a faculty member at VCU and working in the field of employment for people with disabilities for over twenty eight years.
Lucian:She earned her master of science from the Medical College of Virginia at VCU counseling. Jen is also the director of training at VCU RRTC and serves as the business liaison for the RRTC and assist with building business relationships to improve competitive integrated employment for individuals with disabilities. Welcome to the podcast, Jen.
Jenn:Thank you. I'm very excited. Our first podcast for the RRTC, and I get to be the star. Very excited.
Lucian:Super exciting.
Jenn:I know. We've talked about this for, like, a year, I feel like. And we've talked about the Kelsey brothers, and now Kali Kelsey's got a podcast. And so now it's me and you, Luci, and we get to, you know, be the next stars.
Lucian:Right. I know. I I was looking, into the grant, and I didn't I didn't see that I was gonna be the host of the podcast, but I think I was voluntold that I would be joining, as as the podcast host here. So let's let's get started on this grant. And can you tell us a little bit more about the overall grant and the project itself?
Jenn:Sure. So the grant is funded through what we refer to as NIDILRR or the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. It's a five year grant, and we have five research studies investigating how to better support individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in finding meaningful, competitive, integrated employment in their communities. And in addition to the research that we're gonna be doing, we're also going to be doing things like this, you know, podcast and sharing out what we learn from the research in a variety of ways. So we'll be doing podcasts.
Jenn:We'll be, sharing information on social media through Reels and more typical ways as well, like through journal articles and things like that. But for this particular grant, we have some amazing partners. We have partnered with the University of Wisconsin Madison for one of our research studies, as well as Vanderbilt University and the University of Kansas.
Lucian:Is this a continuation of the last RRTC on IDD project?
Jenn:It's actually not. So we were funded for the last five, almost six years now for a similar project funded by the same agency, but, it is not a continuation. So that funding agency only funds projects for five years at a time. And so our last project ran for five years. We had a an extra year of, of work that they allowed us to do.
Jenn:And on that, we had six research projects. And all of that work had to be completed within the certain time period that they gave us. And at the end of that time period, typically, NIDILRR will put out for a new competition for this particular topic or for whatever topic that the research team is studying. So there's also a rehabilitation research and training center on employer practices, on community living, different topic areas. And so we were just fortunate enough to get the last research and training center on employment for individuals with IDD.
Jenn:And so at the end of that time period, when NIDILRR put out for the new competition, anyone can apply for it, and we submitted an application and won. So we're back at it for another five years.
Lucian:That's that's really exciting. What how do you think this project is gonna impact the field, and particularly people with disabilities?
Jenn:You know, we we hope that this project will lead to an increase in competitive integrated employment for individuals with IDD. Everything that we are doing is to improve outcomes for individuals so that they can find meaningful employment that will allow them to really participate in their communities, that they have a job to go to, that they have the money from their job to go to baseball games and concerts and things like that. When you think about your life, a big part of your life is work. That's where I spend more than forty hours of my week is either at work, thinking about work, talking about work. My kids know what I do.
Jenn:My family knows what I do. And when we meet people in the community, typically, one of the first things they say is, what do you do? And for so many individuals with disabilities, they've not had that opportunity or that experience. So we are looking to change that and figure out what needs to change in order for individuals to have that experience, and we hope to find out through this research.
Lucian:Excellent. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you're getting input, directly from advocates? And why do you think it's important to include people with disabilities when conducting research? I understand that there's a, committee that that's involved, with people with disabilities that are directly involved in the project. Can you tell us the impact of that?
Jenn:Yeah. Absolutely. So we we do have a steering committee that is made up solely of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and that group was actually formed before we wrote the first word or considered the first bit of research on this grant, Well before we submitted our proposal, we brought these team members together and to share with us their perspectives as we developed our proposal for NIDILRR. And once it was funded, these individuals have been active consultants to the entire project. So they came on before we wrote the prod or proposal to give us their input, their experiences, their opinions, so that we could craft the research in a meaningful way that would potentially change the lives of individuals like them.
Jenn:And now that we're funded, they meet as a large group once every quarter. And during that time, they provide input on the overall work we're doing on the project. And then they're also tied to either a research study or to our training and dissemination teams, and they provide their experience, voice, opinion on those specific activities. So they meet with their smaller teams, whether it's one of the research studies or our training team, once per quarter as well. And we in addition to our steering committee, we also have several staff members on the project who experience disability, and they are here at our center and part of our team.
Jenn:And to your point about why we do this, we think that it's important to include individuals with lived experiences on our team so that they drive the bus, if you will. They're telling us what we need to be doing and how we should do it. There's a saying, not about us without us, and we feel really strongly that individuals with disabilities are key to this project and all the work that we do at our center. And so we try to keep that at the forefront as we're doing any project.
Lucian:That's awesome. Hopefully, we can get some members of the steering committee on this, this podcast. I'm looking forward to
Lucian:that Yeah.
Lucian:As well as members of the staff as well that we, have planned, for future episodes. So could you tell me you've talked a lot about the importance of competitive integrated employment. What's the importance of this project, do you think, overall on society?
Jenn:I think that this research will help individuals with disabilities be fully included in society. I've been here at the center for twenty eight years. I started as a job coach or an employment specialist. And when I think back to when I started here and I was going out and looking for jobs for folks with disabilities, most of them were hired for either cleaning or food service. So there wasn't much choice.
Jenn:And if you didn't like either of those options, then either you didn't work or you worked and hated your job, which that really stinks. Now people with disabilities are doing all kinds of jobs, and we have people stocking supplies in hospitals. They are working in office positions in the energy field just down the street. They are in tech positions in Chicago. There's a huge variety of jobs, and so we hope to grow that work and increase opportunities and options for people with disabilities.
Lucian:Are you enjoying this podcast? Do you wanna learn more about the project? Head over to idd.vcurrtc.org to learn more about the five studies of the project and get access to all the latest resources such as webcasts, journal articles, infographics, research highlights, and more. So what are what are you and the team looking forward to the most during this project?
Jenn:I think we're really excited, and this may sound crazy, but we're really excited to begin collecting the data on each of these projects, and to see if what we think is going to happen will actually happen, to see if the hypotheses that we've put out there are correct, and to answer all of our research questions. You know, we're we're just excited about the beginning of this project. We have to go through a lot of steps in order to conduct the research and approval from the university and approval from the other universities. And so we are at that point where we've gotten all of that approval and are really starting to begin working with individuals. And so we're excited to to see what happens.
Jenn:I think one thing that is going to be really exciting is what is going on on each of these projects and each of these research studies. And so we have one project that will partner individuals who are lurk looking for work with individuals who are already working so that they can mentor the job seeker through that process as a peer rather than a service provider. So people with disabilities who are looking for work already have a number of service providers that they're connected to. This research study is going to pair them with a peer who also has a disability, who has been through this process before. So when they're nervous about something or they're excited about something or they have questions, they have a peer that they can ask.
Jenn:What was this like for you? We have another project where we will be connecting individuals with employment opportunities and then studying how their life changes as a result of that work. Are they more connected in their community? Do they go out with friends more often? Things like that.
Jenn:Are are they, happier in their day to day activities as a result of being engaged in work? Another project will be connecting youth who are leaving high school with technology training and tech careers. We're also working with colleges to improve employment opportunities for people, who have intellectual and developmental disabilities who are college students. And then lastly, we'll be working to determine the best practices for individuals with IDD in finding employment and then training service providers on that model. So I'm really excited about that last one because I I work so much with job coaches and employment specialists, and and they need that training.
Jenn:And so I'm excited for us to determine exactly what those best practices are, what exactly, job coaches need to focus on, and then providing that training to them.
Lucian:That's awesome. This really seems like an all encompassing project for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Coming up on the next podcast, we'll be talking with Ben Schwartzman, who's the study one director. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I know we talked you talked a little bit about the parent and peer mentoring thing.
Lucian:What do we got to look forward to talking to Ben?
Jenn:He is doing some great work, and he will be sharing more. They did some initial work with parent mentoring. And so pairing a parent of a job seeker with a parent who has had a child with a disability become employed. And so now taking that to that next level and pairing peer to peer of job seeker and employed individual. And so he'll be sharing what that process is going to be like over the next five years as well as potentially he might share a little bit of what he did in the last five year project.
Jenn:So it's he's got a lot of great information, and they're doing that in a number of states. So, you don't have to be close to Vanderbilt to see that. You you might even be able to be on the West Coast, just a little teaser there for that. So
Lucian:That's awesome. It's so, incredible to see, you know, these universities come together for this this great research Yeah. And and working together on this. Well, Jen, you've helped us zoom into focus on the overall project. Thank you for jumping on and telling us all about it, and we are looking forward, to, you know, jumping on maybe again later on down the road for another podcast episode.
Lucian:Would you like that?
Jenn:Absolutely. Anything for you, Lucian. Well,
Lucian:thank you so much.
Jenn:Thank you.
Lucian:And thank you all for joining us today. The contents of this podcast were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. NIDILRR grant number 90RTEM0013. NIDILRR is a center within the Administration for Community Living, the ACL, Department of Health and Human Services, HHS. The contents of this podcast do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government.
Lucian:Again, thank you for joining us.