Project focusing on helping young people with intellectual disabilities to start work

We suggest a service where the day centre is the doorway to preparing people with intellectual disabilities for the working world. The service is considerate of individual with intellectual disability’s professional interests & capabilities and tries to ensure that everyone has the the opportunity to find work outside the support system.

InnArbeid is an innovation project with a focus on helping young people with intellectual disabilities to start working.

10 weeks; Done for InnArbeid through the Oslo School of Architecture & Design; Team: Raoul Koreman, Tord Stenstadvold

Challenges

The project entirely relied on secondary research and previously done primary research within the larger project. Not being able to meet the users made it challenging to build in an understanding “into our spines” to design with. The team was thrown into a wicked problem which was connected with funding bottlenecks, privacy constraints, municipality structures, and a struggling system. This was the first time the team was working with a “systemic-service design” lens.

Research process

Working with hard to reach users was a new and different experience. The team got acquainted to the long process of data anonymity, trying out new ways of representing insights and findings. We leaned heavily on secondary research, experts and interviews done previously through InnArbeid. We conducted workshop sessions with experts from private and public sector experts to get feedback on our concepts and to help refine them.

1. On the same page
A digital tool for ease of collaboration across support network

A digital platform that follows the user throughout their journey navigating between different supporting actors.

It serves as a talking point for the surrounding actors to orient themselves about the users life, goals and progress through professional life, and as a facilitator for the other interventions in this concept. A digital platform that is administered by professionals surrounding the user ensures structured and continuous updates tailored to the individual users.

Key finding: Coordination between actors can be difficult

“I siste sekund så kommer ikke legen som jeg egentlig burde ha med, NAV melder avbud for det passet ikke den dagen [...] til slutt så sitter jeg der med verge og mor og bruker og så en representant fra skolen. Det er liksom de.” — From Innarbeid research

2. Setting the trail
Goal setting for personal & academic achievements

The addition of a goal setting intervention early in the students career.

This intervention is intended to help people with intellectual disabilities reach higher levels of self- advocacy by teaching them to set goals and work towards them, with support from their support network. While goal setting is a part of Individual Plan, considering the limitations of Individual Planning, we suggest to re-introduce goal setting with a focus on professional interests and finding work.

Key finding: Goal setting yields positive results

Goal setting has been shown to increase academic achievements as well as becoming more organised, less stressed and feeling more confident
— Veerle Garrels (2017)

3. A fork in the road: The day centre as a portal towards finding work

Young people with intellectual disability who can work often get stuck within the existing system due to the lack of reevaluation of skills over a time period.

We suggest to channel young high school graduates with intellectual disability to the Day Centre. The Centre can conduct a ‘professional evaluation’ which can determine whether a person can work or needs to be further trained before being referred to a work training centre. This suggestion might help ensure that the system encourages people with intellectual disability into ordinary work rather than staying stuck within the system.

Key finding: Faith depends on one single person

Where you [person with ID] end up [WTC, DC, Home, etc.] depends on who you happen to talk to, and what they think you can do — Paraphrased from interview w. Nordpolen

3. A fork in the road: The day centre as a portal towards finding work

Young people with intellectual disability who can work often get stuck within the existing system due to the lack of reevaluation of skills over a time period.

We suggest to channel young high school graduates with intellectual disability to the Day Centre. The Centre can conduct a ‘professional evaluation’ which can determine whether a person can work or needs to be further trained before being referred to a work training centre. This suggestion might help ensure that the system encourages people with intellectual disability into ordinary work rather than staying stuck within the system.

Key finding: Where you [person with ID] end up [WTC, DC, Home, etc.] depends on who you happen to talk to, and what they think you can do — Paraphrased from interview w. Nordpolen

4. Learning by doing: Helping people with ID build a career based on professional interests

Creating a distinction between professional and personal interests might help people with intellectual disabilities build a career rather than trying to force their personal interests into a profession.

We suggest re-positioning the work opportunities available in the centre as ‘tracks’. Each young person with intellectual disabilities can try out different ‘tracks’ as a formalized way to understand what they might enjoy doing professionally, and acquire a job based on skills learned in their chosen track.

Key finding: Jobs are often acquired through personal networks. For this reason users with less resourceful parents are more often passed over for jobs.