Striking disparities exist in higher education and employment rates between young adults with disabilities and their non-disabled peers. This qualitative study examined the lived experiences of nine young adults ages 24-35 with neuromuscular disease and how their use of personal assistance services (PAS) impacted their pursuit of higher education and employment. Participants overall had positive college experiences and reported the easiest time coordinating PAS was during college. Families of participants expected college attendance, but the lack of experience with PAS prior to college impacted higher education; the need for PAS influenced choice of college. Participants used consumer-driven and agency based models, experienced great stress coordinating PAS, experienced low quality and high turnover of staff, were restricted in their ability to be spontaneous, and at times limited their needs to avoid asking for assistance. A significant amount of informal caregiving from family and friends was used to support higher education and employment. Participants speculated that societal stereotypes and low expectations of people with disabilities contribute to low rates of employment and higher education, and reported negative interactions with vocational rehabilitation counselors. Eligibility criteria for federal and state PAS programs limited income and created work disincentives, were complex to understand and navigate, and discouraged both advancement in their careers and the willingness to pursue advanced degrees. Young adults with neuromuscular disease are willing, wanting, and capable to participate in higher education and gainful employment and could not do so without access to reliable quality PAS. Efforts to prepare families and youth to fund and coordinate PAS, eliminate work disincentives, and coordinate transition planning between multiple support agencies could help break the cycle of poverty in the disability community and encourage employment.

This diploma thesis deals with the process of individual planning focusing on the care in the organization providing domiciliary services and care services. The theoretical section devoted attention to the development of social services in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, it specifies care services as well as personal assistance services. According to the Act 108/2006 Coll., on social services, providers of social services are obligated to draw up quality standards of social services and to respect them. In the theoretical section, there are briefly described all quality standards of social services. The thesis is focused mainly on quality standard No. 5 (The Individual Planning in Social Services). The public notice No. 505/2006 Coll. defines the criteria, which are obligatory to be respected by providers of social services. The aim of the thesis was to find out, how are the criteria of the quality standard No. 5 ensured by providers of personal assistance and care services. A partial aim of the work was to outline, to which users makes the individual planning the biggest difficulties. H1: Difficulty of meeting quality standard No. 5 declines with the increasing number of activities, required from the user of the social service. I?ve chosen a qualitative research to test the hypothesis and for achievement of the objectives. The relevant qualitative research relied on the questioning method. Questions in the first part of the questionnaire are directed to the main objective of the thesis, questions in the second part to the stopover and to the testing of the hypothesis. For the selected questions, I carried out a statistical analysis of dependence in the cross tabulations and an analysis based on the uncertainty coefficient by using the SPSS program. As part of my research, I approached provider of the care and personal assistance in the South Bohemian Region via e-mail. 167 completed questionnaires returned back. After summarizing of these results, we can conclude that the criteria of the quality standard No. 5 are reflected by the vast majority of providers. The providers have a written methodology for individual planning and they practice it. They plan together with the user, taking into account his personal target and they evaluate the plan collectively. They have a written system for the transmission of information about an individual users? planning and the staff follows it. Individual planning makes the greatest difficulties to the providers with users using only a small scale care. This fact is confirmed by the results of statistical analysis. Based on respondents' answers, the hypothesis that the difficulty of meeting the quality of standard No. 5 decreases with increasing number of required activities by the user of social services, can be consider as valid.

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