Results from a National Randomized CIL Staff Concerns Report Survey on the Top IL Services Likely to Improve Consumers' Community Participation

Much research has been directed toward the process of transition from rehabilitation to the community and the measurement of participation. Recently researchers have been developing participation measures for people with disabilities already living in the community. Centers for Independent living (CILs) are one type of community-based disability organization, whose goal is to help increase community participation for its consumers. Federally funded CILs are required to use four core services (i.e. advocacy, information and referral, peer support and skills training) to assist their consumers to live more independently in the community. In addition to these core services, CILs offer many other services. This presentation will report on a measure of CIL service delivery to identify services for enhancing community participation outcomes for people with disabilities. Using a Community Concerns Report approach, independent living experts and advocates identified CIL services conceptually linked to participation outcomes. The survey instrument includes items about CIL services and agency demographics. Data were collected from 420 CIL staff, representing 61 randomly-selected CILs across the United States. Results show that importance ratings across all items were strongly correlated across urban and rural centers (.88, p< .00). A composite score based on staff satisfaction ratings across the 20 services rated as most important for increasing community participation revealed statistically significant differences between CILs in the top and bottom quartiles (M1st = 2.79, M4th = 2.30; p<.00). Results, which are reflective of the deeply ingrained IL philosophy into Center services, will be discussed as well as future research directions.