Disability outcomes practices

Habeck, Hunt, and VanTol (1998), Habeck et al. (1998), Hunt and Habeck (1993), and Hunt et al. (1993)—extending the earlier research of Habeck (1993), Habeck, Leahy, and Hunt (1988), and Habeck et al. (1991)—relate the disability outcomes of 220 Michigan firms to those firms HRM practices. This research is the first serious analysis of how management safety culture affects injury claims. In addition to collecting survey information for the 220 firms, Hunt et al. (1993) held extensive interviews with 32 of the 220 firms and find a qualitative difference in those firms that engage in what the researchers call a participative culture. In other words, they find a qualitative difference between firms that facilitate employee involvement in decision making and those where the employees do not participate in the firm s decision making. 

The UWV is the benefit agency responsible for the shaping of tenders and contracts to get unemployed and disabled from benefit to work. Since 2001 the UWV has gained experience in tendering, thus overcoming its teething troubles. The key payable outcome for providers is retention in unsubsidised employment for at least 6 months. Providers are either paid on a no cure, less pay or a no cure, no pay basis. In practice, employment fees comprise 20% of total fees in the former case and 50% in the latter, the remainder being payments for service inputs. Contracts were first for 12 months only, but later extended to 24 months (Sol 2003 ... 

In practice, of course, even the limited safety incentives inherent in the model are illusory. Workers do not have any satisfactory way of assessing risks and making cost/benefit calculations (Slovic, Fischhoff and Lichtenstein 1985). Indeed, they may be quite unaware of the risks. And if the risks concern matters of health (e.g. cancer), where the costs may have to be borne years later, these costs may be discounted in ways which lead to outcomes which are very far from optimal for the individual worker. Furthermore, the costs will be borne not only by the worker concerned but also by members of his or her family, who may have had no part in the original decision, and by the wider society, which is called upon to provide health services, disability pensions and the like. 

Any investigation of the achievement of students depends on a set of outcome measures against which schools can be held accountable and decisions need to be made about what outcomes are important and how they will be assessed. As we have argued, the selection of these outcome measures enables different stories about the effects of inclusion on the education of all students to be told. Notably, the quality of students social participation is an area of ongoing concern. The one disabled member of staff who herself had attended a mainsiream school raised a number of issues about loneliness and fiiendship and listening to her voice may open up new opportunities for the further development of inclusive practice. 

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