Milton Tyree, PhD
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Biography
Milton Tyree’s work is centered on people with disabilities having access to participation in valued aspects of everyday life. A particular area of interest over the last 40 plus years has been the ongoing struggle around people with disabilities having good employment. He is a retired project director of the University of Kentucky’s Human Development Institute where his focus was on supported/open employment leadership development in Kentucky. Most of Milton’s career has been within his home state of Kentucky, but includes additional consulting opportunities in other US states, Canada, Ireland, India, Australia, and New Zealand.
His SRV background includes serving as a PASSING report writer and team leader, as well as an SRV co-presenter, and group leader. He’s written about SRV's implications for employment services and developed an SRV derived supported employment leadership event. His employment efforts have also been strongly influenced by the work of the late Marc Gold, and he’s an associate with Marc Gold & Associates.
Unpacking the valued yet elusive role of employee through an SRV lens: Why is this role so hard for people with disabilities to attain, and what can be done about it?
Despite decades disability vocational service effort, rates of unemployment remain embarrassingly high for people with disabilities. To a significant degree, congregated and segregated vocational approaches developed in the ‘50s and ‘60s have been replaced with increasingly personalized service methods. It’s fair to say that evolving services have generally been responsive to learning and adjusting to what didn’t work as planned in earlier service models. No doubt, there are more examples of people with disabilities successfully working today than there were in the ‘50s.
However, examples of the ‘50s era vocational services are still alive and well, along with almost every service variation developed since. Old ideas die hard. Additionally, there are new versions of service models flooding the landscape that have the same inherent flaws of congregation and segregation (euphemistically called “integrated,” and “community-based”).
It doesn’t have to be this way. Looking at people’s needs and service approaches through an SRV lens will identify benefits of taking a certain course of action as well as the trade-offs, setting the stage for people with disabilities working in fitting, challenging, socially valued jobs.