Content Outline Glossary
This glossary is for reference only and is not intended to be an instructional tool to prepare candidates for the examination. The content outline glossary provides clarification of terms and titles between practice settings.
Benefits Counseling and Benefits Analysis: Services provided to assist an individual in understanding the options and possibilities in order to make an informed choice about going to work. These services result in a report that reviews a person’s assets and income to make an informed choice about employment.
Business Proposals (Job Carving): The process of listing the key components of jobs and employment needs to develop a written proposal for an employer on how those needs can be met. A proposal typically includes language identifying job tasks for increased work efficiencies and the matching of an individual’s skills with workplace needs. This process can result in either job restructuring or job creation.
Job Seeker Portfolio: A job-hunting tool that can be developed to provide employers with a complete picture of the job seeker’s experience, education, accomplishments, skill sets, and potential. Examples can include but are not limited to video resume, photos, recommendations, etc.
Community Living Supports: Services provided by direct support professionals to support people with disabilities to become more independent in their homes and communities.
Community Support Professional: A paid professional who supports individuals in the community doing daily activities, not in the workplace. Includes residential supports, day habilitation, respite, etc.
Customized Employment: Individualizing the employment relationship between employees and employers in ways that meet the needs of both. It is based on an individualized determination of the strengths, needs, and interests of the person with a disability, and is also designed to meet the specific needs of the employer.
Direct Support Professional: Paid professionals who work directly with people with disabilities to support becoming integrated in his/her community in the least restrictive environment.
Employment First: The philosophy that presumes employability of all people in the community regardless of disability. Components include:
- Being the first and preferred outcome for working-age youth and adults with disabilities, including those with complex and significant disabilities, for whom working in the past has been limited, or has not traditionally occurred,
- Using typical or customized employment techniques to find and maintain employment
- Paid directly by employers or are self-employed business owners earning the greater of minimum or prevailing wages with commensurate benefits, and is preferably engaged full-time.
- The employee has opportunities for advancement and job mobility.
- And where typical opportunities exist for integration and interactions with co-workers without disabilities, with customers, and/or the general public.
Job Analysis: The collaborative effort between an employment support professional and business to outline the employer’s job expectations for a specific job.
Natural Supports: Support from supervisors and co-workers occurring in the workplace to assist employees with disabilities to perform their jobs, including supports already provided by employers for all employees. These natural supports may be both formal and informal, and include mentoring, supervision (ongoing feedback on job performance), training (learning a new job skill with a co-worker) and co-workers socializing with employees with disabilities at breaks or after work.
Person-Centered Planning: This collaborative group process is led by a facilitator to help an individual with disabilities plan for their future and develop a blueprint for a positive possible future.
People First Language: People First Language highlights the individual before a diagnosis or disability. It conveys respect by emphasizing the fact that people with disabilities are first and foremost just that—people.
Prevocational Services: Services that prepare people with disabilities for jobs with competitive pay and help them achieve greater independence in their community. Prevocational services teach general work skills and concepts rather than specific work skills for a particular job.
Sheltered Workshops: Also referred to as work centers, sheltered workshops are segregated facilities that exclusively or primarily employ persons with disabilities that can be paid at a sub minimum wage.
Supported Employment: A system of support for people with disabilities who require assistance to achieve and maintain employment in integrated settings.
Systematic Instruction: Materials and instruction for employment supports are organized to adjust for the job seeker/employee based on individual learning styles. The sequence of the instruction proceeds methodically from the easiest and most basic elements to more difficult and complex material.
Task Analysis: The process of breaking down a job into smaller steps for the purpose of teaching the job tasks to an employee in achievable parts over time.
Vocational/Career Assessment: Formal and informal processes used to explore an individual’s interests, abilities, and aptitudes in order to identify vocational assets, barriers, support needs and career potential.
Workplace Culture: Workplace culture can be defined as the “way of life” for those in a particular workplace. This has many elements including: laws, language, fashion, authorities, power relationships, conventions, conflict management and dispute resolution processes.