Adulthood I: Employment for Youth
Part of becoming an adult is being able to support yourself. Adolescents often have an attitude and act as if they know everything. Adolescence is also a time when people are feeling very insecure. They are making a lot of decisions for the very first time and are afraid of failure.
Some very good advice from the 2005 Rehabilitation Service Administration Project Director's conference.
Geri Jewell, who you may remember as the actress with cerebral palsy on the comedy Facts of Life (that part wasn't an act, she really does have cerebral palsy).
"I used my disability to get out of everything I ever thought I would fail in - foreign language, science, sex education."
"You can have a terrific website, you can send out all the email in the world but what we have found really works is that you need a concerned adult to look the youth in the eye and say, "You can do this. You should check this job opportunity out." Haight, de Bremond & Richardson-Crooks.
According to Jennifer Sheehy Keller, in a Rutgers University survey, 32% of employers said that they did not have even one job that could be done by a person with a disability. Further, only 2% of youth with disabilities participate in work-based programs such as mentoring or internship programs.
In summary, youth with disabilities may be afraid to fail, employers generally are not very knowledgable about disability or making accommodations for people to hold jobs, and it is critically important for the adults in their lives to provide support and encouragement. Even more than for youth without disabilities, getting internships or volunteer experience can be important to finding a job. Once a youth with a disability has successfully performed in a job, whether it is in an office, a factory or a store, it is very convincing to respond to an employer who wonders whether a person with a disability can perform a task with, "I know I can because I have done it before."
