Supporting Transition-to-Work for People with Disabilities
Over the past 25 years, Project SEARCH has had a transformative impact on how young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities transition to the workforce. Instead of piecemealing how people receive services—through school instruction, vocational rehabilitation and follow-along supports—the program brings together all three components to streamline the service delivery system.
Now that the model is being replicated worldwide, we’re working to capture its employment and quality-of-life outcomes.
Project SEARCH
Erin Riehle and Susie Rutkowski started the transition-to-work program at Cincinnati Children’s in 1996. It was born out of the idea that because people with disabilities make up a significant portion of our patient population, they should be better represented in our workforce.
Through the program, young people learn work skills and receive hands-on training in a series of internships in host businesses at various sites so they can find competitive employment.
By the Numbers
Today, Project SEARCH is the largest transition-to-employment program in the world. It’s represented at 770 host businesses across 11 countries (550 businesses in the U.S.).
Around 70% of the sites are hospitals, which helps increase expectations that people with disabilities can and should work. This influences clinicians, families, and people with disabilities themselves when they come to a hospital for care.
Each year, Project SEARCH supports nearly 5,000 interns in a variety of industries. At Cincinnati Children’s, we support 80 employees who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Our Research
The research arm of Project SEARCH focuses on how to best support people with disabilities through training and in employment settings. Much of that revolves around how to match individuals to internships—and then graduates to jobs—in ways that play to their strengths.
We have an expansive database that tracks Project SEARCH interns and graduates. We test, refine, and expand the Project SEARCH model at host businesses worldwide. Our goal is to encourage the hiring of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and change the organizational culture to facilitate their inclusion.
Through research based on surveys and focus groups, we learn answers to questions about how people perform, accounting for variables such as:
- Access to technology
- Geography
- Workplace supports
We also look at whether there are differences in outcomes based on gender, race, and ethnicity. And we measure the impact of a person’s employment on their quality of life.
In addition, we’re interested in how services are provided in different states and countries. Because government controls the types of services it funds and at what level it will fund them, we ask questions to see how services may influence employment outcomes.
Finally, because we have a Project SEARCH curriculum, we study the impact of its use on employment.
Our Research Outcomes
Disability services researchers and creators at Cincinnati Children’s have developed assessments and adapted learning modules and tools to consistently provide employment outcomes for Project SEARCH graduates that are three times the national average.
On average, Project SEARCH graduates are employed at a rate of 70% to 75% annually. That’s compared to 25% of young adults with disabilities who go through a non-Project SEARCH process, such as special education and vocational rehabilitation.
Another significant finding is that people with disabilities who go through Project SEARCH to find jobs have better overall health, better social connections, and a better quality of life.
Other Project SEARCH developments include CPR Basics, an adaptive CPR training kit to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities learn and pass CPR classes, as well as the Vocational Fit Assessment, a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded assessment and job-matching tool.
Our Research Funding
Our research is funded by grants from:
- NIH
- Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities
- Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation
