Tell Me a Story of Deep Delight
John O’Brien
Feb. 2000 New Orleans
This taxonomy abstracts the conditions for offering people with severe disabilities the opportunity to experience a sense of ownership of the process and results of their involvement with services aimed at assisting them to employment.
The taxonomy reflects the learning of four of seven Choice projects funded by the
US Rehabilitation Services Administration to demonstrate a variety of approaches to improving access to employment by increasing the choice available to participants. Within this focus, the four projects differed in sponsorship, design, and participant demographics. However, when project directors met to share the lessons from their work, substantial agreement emerged around the dimensions of change necessary to offer people a meaningful opportunity to direct their employment support services. This taxonomy expresses my understanding of this agreement in an orderly fashion that identifies the set of interrelated, multi-level responsibilities involved in implementing Choice.
