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Show U project places severely disabled in jobs while still in school Two University of Utah professors pro-fessors have received a $285,000 grant to develop a program to place severely disabled people, many of whom were once thought unemployable, into "supported" jobs before they depart from high school. The grant, for what will be known as the Community Employment Employ-ment Placement Project, was awarded to Dr. Michael L. Hard-man, Hard-man, professor, and Dr. John McDonnell, associate professor, in the department of special education. Through this new project, Hard-man Hard-man and McDonnell will be integrating in-tegrating 34 young people in the Ogden, Davis and South Sanpete school districts into supported employment before they leave school. The project is part of a larger research re-search effort that has been underway under-way in the U department for several years on how to help disabled people, peo-ple, primarily the mentally retarded, make a transition from public schools to successsful lives, including, in-cluding, if at all possible, paid employment in regular work settings set-tings rather than sheltered workshops. Hardman and McDonnell have received $1.5 million in grants for this transition research. In the early 1970s public schools did not provide education for such severely disabled people, and most were institutionalized in early adolescence. ado-lescence. Then Congress passed public law 94-142 requiring districts to serve such students. However, a few year ago, when the first severely disabled students turned 21 years old and left school programs, it became apparent that post-school services were not in place and that a few years after school, many were being institutionalized, institu-tionalized, their likely fate if they had never attended school. Hardman and McConnell have become nationally known for helping help-ing reform special education curricula, cur-ricula, revise state handicapped assistance procedures, and develop parent education programs, all with the aim of helping the severely disabled make a transition from school to semi-independent living and employment One concept they have advocated is "supported work, where a job coach, a social service worker, trains a disabled person for a job at no cost to the employer and guarantees guar-antees that the job gets done. While gradually withdrawing and turning responsibility over to the disabled person, the worker may be recalled if any problems arise. The worker's role is to sustain the person per-son in employment. |