Abstract
Performance measurement is important for agencies assisting people with intellectual disabilities in terms of measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency’s service provision. In this chapter we argue that agencies that assist people with intellectual disabilities can use quality of life as one potential measure of performance. This is demonstrated with reference to research conducted by Kober (2006) on the effect of different methods of employment on the quality of life for people with intellectual disabilities. The performance of agencies and/or programs can be assessed based on comparisons of quality of life outcomes under different methods of employment.
This chapter is an updated and edited version of the article Kober and Eggleton (2006). We thank the publisher for granting us permission to edit and update the article for inclusion in this book.
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Notes
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Open employment is where people with intellectual disabilities work alongside people without disabilities in integrated, meaningful employment in a community setting, supported by their employment agency. The alternative terms of competitive employment or supported employment are also often used.
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Sheltered employment refers to the situation where people with intellectual disabilities work alongside other people with a disability in a segregated, specially tailored setting. Typically, in this setting, the only people without disabilities in the workplace with whom people with intellectual disabilities would interact would be their supervisors.
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Functional work ability was measured by the functional assessment inventory (FAI) (Crewe & Athelstan, 1984). The FAI consists of 30 behaviorally anchored rating items, ranging from 0 (no significant impairment) to 3 (severe impairment), which assess a person’s work capabilities and deficiencies, thus giving a theoretical range of 0–90; the higher the score, the lower the person’s functional work ability. Low functional work ability was defined as a score of equal to or greater than 26, with high functional work ability defined as a score of 20 or less. These cut-off scores were selected as they represented approximately the top and bottom 40% of the sample, respectively.
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Kober, R., Eggleton, I.R. (2010). Using Quality of Life to Assess Performance of Agencies Assisting People with Intellectual Disabilities. In: Kober, R. (eds) Enhancing the Quality of Life of People with Intellectual Disabilities. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 41. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9650-0_5
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