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Essay / Key Ethical Issues Related to Disabilities
An increasingly concerning issue facing rehabilitation professionals today concerns transition services. More specifically, young adults are experiencing a transition from high school to the labor market or postsecondary education and potentially another transition from postsecondary education to the labor market. For people with disabilities, these transitions can become more arduous and complex depending on the breadth and depth of accommodations a given person needs to function at a high level in their environment. To make this transition as smooth as possible, many services may need to coordinate their efforts, including the high school system, vocational rehabilitation services, college and university services, employers, counselors, psychologists and medical and rehabilitation professionals. However, this collaboration does not always occur systematically or effectively. In fact, ethical guidelines for counselors and psychologists suggest close collaboration with other professionals to ensure continuity of services during these transitions, but in many cases this does not occur (Corrigan, 1998). In the transition literature, many efforts are made to understand the transition from secondary education to work for people with disabilities, while empirical research on the transition from postsecondary education to work remains nascent but underdeveloped (Fichten et al., 2012). In a study examining the experience of postsecondary graduates with disabilities in transition, Fichten and colleagues (2012) found that while there was little difference in employment rates between graduates with and without disabilities, graduates disabled were less often employed in employment related to ......middle of paper ......yment after graduation. At this point, issues of disability disclosure become paramount. According to Gillies (2012), disclosing one's disability during job interviews is a case-by-case situation in which the disabled person tends to evaluate how their disability may affect the way they are perceived by the employer and their professional function. If the applicant determines that their disability is not relevant or necessary to disclose, they do not disclose it. For people with apparent disabilities or those who need accommodations to perform their jobs, the question arises of when to disclose their information. In Gillies' (2012) qualitative study of 10 graduates transitioning into the workforce, participants described their search for meaningful employment, their experience of discrimination, their concerns about disclosure, and how transition influenced the construction of their identity..