This makes it difficult to perform extended evaluations or comprehensive, longitudinal studies of the successes of employment for persons with developmental disabilities. While State Vocational Rehabilitation agencies keep demographic information by certain disability categories, their data does not specifically discern which individuals served have developmental disabilities. The purpose of this project is to develop nationally-recognized performance and outcome indicators that will enable individual State Developmental Disabilities Services agencies to benchmark performance in comparison with other agencies, as well as to provide longitudinal data to determine performance level from one period to the next. Employment data such as average hourly wages, number of hours worked, and length of time on the job is being considered for the indicator set. The Oregon Office of Developmental Disabilities Services has a contract with the University of Oregon to collect employment data from local job agencies on a semi-annual basis.
Information is monitored for all employment consumers.
Performance measures include type of work, duration of employment, hours worked, and hourly earnings for each recipient. In response to employment performance measures established by ACF in 1997, seven of the nine State Councils have established one or more numerical employment goals. Four of seven States with numerical employment goals respond affirmatively, noting the need to be outcome oriented for success. State Council directors' perspectives are shown in Table 3.