Abstract
BACKGROUND: Historically, individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) have been chronically un- and under-employed. To address these poor vocational outcomes, federal law in the United States requires that transition services be provided to special education students by their sixteenth birthday. Part of these services should be the referral to adult service agencies, such as the state-federal vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs.
OBJECTIVE: This research examined the rate at which applicants were referred to VR services by their high schools. It attempted to determine whether the rates of referral of transition-aged youth (ages 17 to 25) with ID were decreasing over a ten-year period (2004 to 2013). It also examined demographic differences between applicants to VR who were referred by high schools and those referred from all other sources.
METHODS: Utilizing the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA). RSA’s Case Service Report (911) database, this study examined the referral source of all 286,663 transition-age youth with ID who had their cases officially closed by VR from 2004 to 2013. Two groups were compared, 158,114 individuals referred by their high schools and 128,548 who were referred by other sources.
RESULTS: Data presented here indicated the rate of referral from high schools decreased steadily from 62.3% in 2004 to 50.0% in 2013 and that this trend was evident in forty-two of the fifty U.S. states. Individuals who were referred to VR by their high schools tended to be younger (18.3 v. 20.9 years old) and less likely to have multiple disabilities (34.0% v. 48.6% ) than individuals referred by any other source.
