Northwest Center

Mission

Northwest Center started the inclusion revolution. We were founded by Seattle mothers of kids with disabilities who opened their own schools and employment programs and wrote the first laws in the U.S. to guarantee ALL children an education.

Today, our mission is to promote the growth, development, and independence of people with disabilities through programs of therapy, education, and work opportunity.

Description

Northwest Center provides therapy, education, and employment services for people with disabilities from birth through career. We lead in inclusion by example:
• 40% of the children at our preschools have a disability.
• 40% of our workforce, including our Social Enterprise of owned businesses, is made up of people with a documented disability.
• We partner with more than 1,000 businesses across the state to employ adults with disabilities. At Amazon, more than 180 people with a disability have found work through Northwest Center since 2015, and the program is now expanding nationwide.
• Employees placed at Amazon have a productivity rate 98 percent of the average while achieving 37 percent better quality work than the general population, and with a perfect safety record, compared with a 1.1 percent warehouse incident rate. They also have better attendance.

Including people with disabilities is not "the right thing to do." It provides richer and more effective school and workplace environments, just like diversity of race and culture.