Quality of Life for People with Intellectual and Other Developmental Disabities

Everyone wants a life of quality and quality of life initiatives are essential to the efforts of professionals in the intellectual disability field. Simply put, this new book from well-established quality of life experts helps you determine what quality of life issues are important in a person's life. It also tells you how to develop services and supports that enhance personal outcomes reflecting the person's hopes and dreams. In this new book, Schalock, Gardner, and Bradley present a data-driven model of quality of life (QOL) based on best practices. The QOL model is aplicable across individuals, organizations, and communities. The book brings you a solid discussion on what quality of life means today in the field of intellectual disability; summarizes literature on quality of life and how it has affected management strategies and leadership; provides examples of how the concept of quality of life can be applied with individuals as well as systems; and shows how quality of life can be used to enhance personal outcomes. Quality of Life moves away from traditional terms and concepts in quality of life measurement such as standards, program-specific requirements, process measurements, and qulaity as compliance to more of a focus on personal outcomes. The book discusses the various issues pertaining to the measurement of personal outcomes, including interview techniques, the use of proxies, meeting psychometric standards, and overcoming issues related to aggregation of individual data within an organization. Service providers, policy makers, people with disabilities, funding agencies, training professionals, and students among other groups will benefit from reading Quality of Life.