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Oliver Lyons

Oliver Lyons, MA, Research Associate. His work focuses on increasing the effectiveness of employment consultants who work with individuals with IDD, and building capacity and supporting community rehabilitation providers with organizational transformation. He is a core member of the community life engagement (CLE) team at the Institute for Community Inclusion, having played a pivotal role in the development and testing of the Community Life Engagement Toolkit which aims to assist providers to improve the quality of their CLE services and has authored many briefs and articles related to the topic. Additionally, in collaboration with the National Center for College Students with Disabilities he has  coordinated the development of an online database of disability resources available at colleges nationwide. Oliver also has many years of experience with both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods.

Bringing Employment First to Scale: Who are Employment Consultants? Characteristics of the workforce that connects jobseekers with intellectual and developmental disabilities to employment

In 1987, the ICI/UMass Boston began a series of surveys aimed at providing a longitudinal description of the characteristics and service delivery provided by Community Rehabilitation Providers (CRPs)(Domin & Butterworth, 2012). Despite direct support staff comprising one of the nation’s largest labor market segments, there has been very little research into the wages and stability of that workforce (Bogenschutz, Hewitt, Nord, & Hepperlen, 2014). Additionally, most of the literature regarding employment consultants has focused on service outcomes of the individuals served.

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