The ACED Toolkit is the heart of this project. It is designed to provide guidance to workers with episodic disabilities, as well as their employers, managers, supervisors, human resources personnel, union representatives, disability and vocational rehabilitation professionals and others to address two main workplace challenges for people with chronic, episodic health conditions:
- Should I say something about my health or support needs at work?
- What can be done to help someone struggling at work due to their health?
DCIDE: Decision-Support for Communicating about Invisible Disabilities that are Episodic
People living with episodic health conditions often grapple with the complex decision of whether or not to tell their employer about their disability. For most people, it means thinking about not just their health and any difficulties they may be having at work, but also their goals, their personal preferences - and what their workplace is like when it comes to supporting workers with personal needs.
There isn't one right answer, and only the person living with a chronic health condition can make the choice that is best for them.
The DCIDE tool has been designed to help you consider some of the key issues for you in making this decision by asking you to respond to questions in five different areas that are often important when deciding whether to share some personal health information with others at work.
- Your Needs: Why are you thinking about whether to share some personal health information at work? What is happening now that is making you think about sharing?
- Your Goals: What goals are important to you when working with a health condition? Do you feel that sharing personal information with others would help you meet your goals?
- Your Communication Preferences: How comfortable are you sharing information about your health with others? What benefits or downsides do you think might result from your sharing?
- Your Work Supports: Does your workplace have benefits, sick days or other policies that can provide support to you?
- Your Work Culture: How supportive are others in your workplace? Are there benefits or downsides to sharing personal information with others at work?
DCIDE summarizes your responses to the questions and provides you with tailored advice to help you think about whether or not to disclose.
JDAPT: the Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool
The Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool (JDAPT) is a free tool that helps workers with chronic and episodic conditions—and the workplace parties who support them—identify supports and accommodations tailored to diverse job demands so that workers can successfully remain in their jobs.
The JDAPT asks people to think about the demands of a job and how they relate to episodic health conditions in four key areas:
- the physical tasks required to do the job (called “physical demands")
- the mental or “thinking” tasks required to do the job (called “cognitive demands”)
- the tasks related to working with others that are required to do the job (called “social demands”), and
- the tasks related to working conditions required to do the job (called “environmental and organizational demands”).
The JDAPT helps the user to identify the parts of a job that may be difficult due to an episodic health condition or conditions. Once these have been identified, the JDAPT will suggest a variety of strategies, supports and workplace accommodations tailored to the user's needs. As such, the JDAPT can help workers with episodic health conditions and the workplace parties who support them understand if supports or change may be needed at work and, if so, what kind of support or changes would help those with episodic health conditions work comfortably, safely and productively.
There are three versions of the JDAPT:
- The JDAPT for workers is designed to used by a person experiencing difficulties at work due to their health who is looking for practical supports and accommodation ideas tailored to their specific job demands.
- Two versions of the JDAPT have been developed for supervisors, human resources practitioners, disability case managers, and worker advocates and representatives who are looking for tailored accommodation ideas that will help them support workers with chronic conditions:
- The JDAPT to support a worker is designed to help identify potential strategies and accommodations for a specific worker experiencing difficulties with their job demands
- The JDAPT for a job can be used to identify the important job demands for a position and how those different job tasks might be made more flexible, supportive, and inclusive for workers in general.
Free and confidential
All ACED tools are available free of charge and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. That means this tool can be used and shared as long as IWH is credited as the source, the information is not modified, and the information is used for non-commercial purposes. Read more here.
All information entered into the ACED tools is anonymous and confidential. We do not collect IP addresses or ask for identifying information such as names or emails. The responses to DCIDE or the JDAPT are stored anonymously for three days to allow for users to save a draft and return within that time. The responses are not accessed or saved and are automatically deleted after 72 hours.
Want to get involved or keep up?
To keep up on the development and release of the various tools to be included in the ACED toolkit, sign up for the ACED newsletter.
