Building Capacity with Situational Assessments

By Mike Flaherty
Organizational Consultant, The Rural Institute

FOUR DEMONSTRATION SITES were selected this year to participate in the Montana Rural Employment Initiative (MREI): Flathead Industries in Kalispell, Bitterroot Educational Cooperative in Stevensville, Career Transitions in Bozeman, and Living Independently for Today and Tomorrow (LIFTT) in Billings. All agencies deliver services to sites in communities of fewer than 10,000 people. Sixteen people with severe disabilities benefited from these service agencies’ building capacity through MREI.
The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Rehabilitation Services Administration.

MREI’s goal is to build the employment capacity of rural communities. Building capacity is defined as “extending the possibilities for action. . . outside the usual (traditional or accepted) patterns.” One capacity building tool is the situational assessment. Situational assessments answer the question:

What are the resources, supports, work sites, etc. that can improve an individual’s community employment potential?

All four MREI demonstration sites used the situational assessment to learn more about the employment opportunities in their respective rural communities, and more about the work preferences of each individual they serve. They recognized the value of applying the situational assessment to “fit” the job to the individual, as opposed to fitting the individual to the job.

The Value of the Situational Assessment

Vocational assessments focus on deficits; situational assessments focus on assets. Vocational assessments are a reactive model; situational assessments are responsive. Traditional norm-referenced assessments of individuals with severe disabilities don’t provide enough of the right kind of information to ensure the success of supported employment or school-to-work programs. Standardized testing identifies skills the individual needs to improve on or acquire before employment. This approach focuses on what is missing, as opposed to identifying what is working. This notion that individuals need to be “ready” for work has gained broad support, but it keeps many individuals from realizing their full potential. They end up on the “getting ready” treadmill that prevents people from finding community employment. In this scenario, provider services and workshops become the end rather than the means in assisting people to make their dreams reality.

What is a situational assessment? Employment consultants or placement personnel, families, consumers, and others research the information needed to effectively match an individual with a severe disability to a job in the community. It includes assessing the unique characteristics of each individual in the “job pool,” identifying and analyzing the jobs that exist in the selected community, and comparing the requirements of the jobs and the workplaces with the assets of the individuals, then matching individuals to jobs. If no match exist, job carving and job creation strategies become necessary.

Situational assessments can be tailored to provide the employment consultant or placement specialist with valuable information. Many persons with severe disabilities do not have work histories upon which to base job preferences. The situational assessment provides a unique opportunity for the individual with a disability to experience a variety of jobs within the community while gathering information about individual preferences. The person who clearly understands his/her own preferences has greater potential for job satisfaction. Most important, active participation in the situational assessment helps individuals develop greater self-esteem.

The information collected on jobs and work sites reveals many job possibilities that may have been overlooked. Careful situational assessments can transform an employment consultant’s view of a community as a place with few employment opportunities into a viable source of jobs. Performing the assessment provides job development and placement personnel with new information about the community’s employment capacity.

“Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in a Situational Assessment”

So how do you assess the situation effectively? How is this assessment tool used? What are the specific guidelines? What is really important? When do we get started? Who is responsible?

The assessment includes the following steps:

1. Identify the individual who is the focus of job development activity. What are his/her personal and vocational interests? If you don’t know the answer, start with person-centered planning. In this planning, individuals express dreams, wishes, and interests that become the focus for community job exploration.

2. Investigate the community. Use existing sources of information (newspapers, yellow pages, etc.). Complete a neighborhood and business sector inventory by walking through the town or neighborhood and recording all the possible employment opportunities. Get acquainted with local business and service groups, and network with individuals identified in futures planning meetings. Have coffee and lunch meetings with selected businesses; “interview” the employers, learning all you can about the workplaces and their products or purposes. Provide the employers with direct, clear information about the individual you represent. Schedule dates and times for an on-site assessment.

3. Analyze the job. Gather information about appropriate jobs. Observe and ask questions, identifying the sequences and tasks that are the job. Analyze physical (lifting, sitting, grasping, pulling, walking, hearing, seeing, pace of work, etc.), mental (response to sensory cues, sight, and sound prompts), and social or psychological (social environment) aspects of the job.

4. Conduct the on-site assessment. The employment specialist and the individual with a disability arrive at the scheduled time at the targeted business. The co-workers, with the assistance of the employment specialist, teach the individual the tasks and sequences. This instruction includes the company’s typical (natural) training program augmented by a variety of prompts and demonstrations. The individual performs the job as it is demonstrated. The employment specialist records his/her observations, while answering the questions,

• What is happening?
• Is the teaching method effective?
• Are prompts being used? (How many, how often, what types?)
• What supports are available to help perform of the work?
• Is the surrounding environment (presence of co-workers, lighting, smells, noises, supervision etc.) a distraction or a potential support?

The number of questions depends on the unique circumstances of the individual, the work, and the work site.

5. Evaluate your data. Review the observation information with the individual, employer, family, advocates etc. Ask the individual with the disability: How do you feel about the job, the work place, and the other people in the workplace? The person with the disability must choose the job before any other placement activity can take place. Once a job and its tasks are accepted, the assessment data serves as the basis for directed job development and placement.
The successful situational assessment requires us to fit the job to the individual, always remembering what is possible.

The successful situational assessment requires us to fit the job to the individual, always remembering what is possible.

An Example

Situational assessments were an effective tool in each of the MREI demonstration sites. The assessment has been particularly valuable in the Bitterroot Educational Cooperative site, which serves rural schools in the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana. The four students at this MREI site, Kris, Jillian, Troy, and Chris, had little or no work experience. The primary source of information about jobs in their small communities was “word of mouth.” The traditional model of finding the job, then fitting the student to the job, met with mixed success. Information about employers and potential employment was not readily available and existing information suggested a scarcity of jobs.

The Bitterroot Cooperative site staff and local school representatives took advantage of MREI’s training to learn and implement situational assessments. MREI also offered a substantial amount of technical assistance and the ongoing consulting reinforced the situational assessment’s goal of fitting the job to the student.

The site and school staff spent many hours in the field with students using the assessment guidelines and recording their observations. Staff recorded data that reflected the needs of the selected employer. They then evaluated these data using the questions in Step Four. Each staff member understood the need for following the Five Step guidelines and keeping the wishes of the student as the desired outcome. It was stressed that each student served should have the situational assessment as a specific vocational activity in their Individual Educational Plans (IEP)—the IEP is the primary educational plan for students with special needs.

Conducting situational assessments for the selected students at the Bitterroot Site will be an ongoing activity. This provides opportunities for each to get accurate information and hands-on experience about their communities and the world of work available to them. Situational assessments continue to be an empowering activity for community exploration. These four students are direct beneficiaries of situational assessments. Each has explored many vocational options that will connect them to their communities.

Summary

A situational assessment is only one tool for building greater employment capacity in our rural communities. The information gathered in an assessment can be applied to a number of steps in getting a job. Assessment data is critical in addressing individual work preferences, endurance, communication skills, mobility, and innate capacity to acquire new information on the job site. The information collected from continuing assessments in our demonstration sites will be further evaluated with each individual participant. Jillian, Chris, Troy, and Kris are learning first hand that each of their rural communities can support their dreams!