INCOME: A Culturally Inclusive and Disability-Sensitive Framework for Organizing Career Development Concepts and Interventions

This article demonstrates how the INCOME model (S. Beveridge, S. Heller Craddock, J. Liesener, M. Stapleton, & D. Hershenson, 2002; D. Hershenson & J. Liesener, 2003), developed with special reference to persons with disabilities and from diverse backgrounds, provides a framework for organizing, selecting, and implementing concepts from career theories and career intervention practices. Rather than using stages or processes typical of existing career development theories, this framework uses J. E. Helms's (1995) multicultural construct of statuses, which may occur or recur in any order or combination. The 6 career statuses in the INCOME framework, which occur across demographic and cultural groups, are Imagining, iNforming, Choosing, Obtaining, Maintaining, and Exiting. Currently, almost a century after being identified as a domain of counseling by Frank Parsons (1909), the career area encompasses a broad range of theories of career development and a wide array of facilitative and remedial career interventions (Liptak, 2001; Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2005). Unfortunately, these theories and interventions emerged, for the most part, from different historical roots (career theories from personality theory and career interventions from applied counseling practice) and so are not consistently coordinated with each other (Hershenson & Liesener, 2003; Savickas & Walsh, 1996). Furthermore, questions have been raised about the applicability of many career theories and interventions to diverse segments of the population (based on gender, race, cultural background, sexual orientation, disability status) that were not included in the development of these theories or interventions (Arbona, 1996; Curnow, 1989; Fitzgerald & Betz, 1994; Leong, 1996; Pope, 1995; Szymanski, Enright, Hershenson, & Ettinger, 2003). Finally, it has been observed that no existing career development theory is a complete theory, let alone a comprehensive model of the career development process (Savickas & Lent, 1994). In reality, there will probably never be a single, unified, comprehensive theory of career development and intervention, because the career development process is too complex, too dependent on the idiosyncratic interaction of personal and environmental variables, and too contextually determined. Nevertheless, a common framework within which to fit both career theory constructs and interventions that have been empirically validated (e.g., S. D. Brown & Ryan Krane, 2000) could be helpful in systematizing the field and in determining where lacunae exist. Moreover, to be useful with today's clientele, the framework must be applicable to a diverse population. This article proposes that the INCOME framework can fill this role. This framework was originally developed to conceptualize the career development of persons with disabilities (Beveridge, Heller Craddock, Liesener, Stapleton, & Hershenson, 2002) and subsequently expanded in scope to make it applicable to career counseling with diverse populations (Hershenson & Liesener, 2003). As Hershenson and Liesener indicated, "INCOME is intended as neither a theory of career development nor a model of career counseling, but rather as an inclusive framework to assist career counselors in responding systematically to the great heterogeneity among those with whom they work" (p. 306). The framework aims to be inclusive by (a) including concepts from as wide a range of career development theories as possible, (b) including both career development and career intervention considerations in a common universe of discourse, and (c) seeking to be applicable to diverse population groups. This article seeks to demonstrate the applicability and utility of the INCOME framework for career counseling practice. Career Statuses The INCOME framework uses the concept of career statuses (Beveridge et al., 2002). To understand the utility of this concept, one must examine existing approaches to career development. …