Reclaiming Employment: Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship for Peers

People with mental health challenges often face the additional challenge of finding and keeping sustainable work opportunities. Self-employment is an option that people consider on their recovery journey, but supports for self-employment are limited. Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) is constrained in their assistance for entrepreneurship, and at the same time, SCORE and other mainstream business startup services aren’t sure how to work with people with disabilities, trauma, and neurodivergence. Using participatory action research and curriculum co-development approaches, the Live & Learn, Inc. team created Reclaiming Employment – an interactive online business startup program. Reclaiming Employment provides peer business coaching, courses, workbooks, a community forum for mutual support. Currently it is available at no cost to users via a research trial. Project Director Laysha Ostrow, PhD will discuss opportunities in self-employment for people with mental health challenges around work, and present more information about Reclaiming Employment program and how you (or the people you work with) can join the upcoming trial. Learning Objectives: - List at least 3 ways self-employment can empower people with mental health challenges through entrepreneurship. - Identify at least 3 common concerns and challenges in self-employment, and methods for addressing them. - Learn about field study on business training.