Unveiling the Complexity: Intersectionality of Disability in Multicultural Rehabilitation

Research Objectives: Explore the intersectionality of disability with factors such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic location.
Highlight the need for inclusive practices in rehabilitation services to address the unique challenges marginalized groups face.

Design: Project FIRST (Finding Innovative Rehabilitation Service Training) is an innovative grant from the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) to address the shortage of qualified vocational rehabilitation (VR) counselors.

Setting: Client data included age, race, gender, education, pre-employment status, primary support before VR applications, closure status, and working status at closure.

Participants: Client data were from RSA 911 individual case-reports case reports linked to the participating VR counselors. Client data included age, race, gender, education, pre-employment status, primary support before VR applications, closure status, and working status at closure. 27, 956 VR clients who were not employed at the time of VR application

Interventions: Intersectionality of Disability: Analyzing how race, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic location intersect with disability to shape individuals' experiences.

Main Outcome Measures: Inclusive Rehabilitation Practices: Importance of adopting culturally competent and inclusive approaches in rehabilitation services.
Policy Implications: Implications of intersectionality for policy formulation and public discourse in the field of multicultural rehabilitation.

Results: Those with some college or higher education attainment had a higher employment rate than other groups. The disparities become more complicated when examining race, age, gender, and education. For example, the employment rates were also generally lower among people with other racial groups, and Hispanic people.

Conclusions: Race, gender, education, and other socio-economic status not only have an independent impact on the chance of employment at closure among people with disabilities, but these factors combined had a much larger impact on the employment disparities than each factor alone, indicating the existence of intersectionality among these factors.

Author(s) Disclosures: Chrisann Schiro-Geist, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator).
Dr. Schiro-Geist received her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Northwestern University in 1974. She has been a licensed clinical psychologist and a certified rehabilitation counselor for nearly 40 years. Dr. Schiro-Geist has worked in “transition to work” for persons with disabilities since the early 1980s.