Each October, during National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), ACL celebrates the value and talent workers with disabilities add to America’s workplaces and economy. During NDEAM, we also celebrate the work being done across our agency and the disability networks to expand employment opportunities for people with disabilities. By funding programs that provide a wide variety of employment-related services and supports, investing in research, and working with partners across federal government to improve the systems that support people with disabilities, ACL works year-round to increase access to the good jobs — at competitive wages — that play an important role in community living.
In today’s blog post, David Jones, who leads the Office of Intellectual and Developmental Disability (I/DD) Programs within ACL’s Administration on Disabilities, talks about how ACL is advancing competitive integrated employment for people with I/DD.
Our annual celebration of NDEAM coincides with our celebration of the anniversary of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (DD Act) that President John F. Kennedy signed into law on October 31, 1963. That’s fitting because the purpose of NDEAM reflects the spirit of the DD Act — ensuring that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else to live independently and fully participate in all aspects of our society. By promoting “Access to Good Jobs for All” (the 2024 NDEAM theme), we can help ensure people with I/DD are able to fully exercise that right.
The 2024 NDEAM poster features a winding road that leads to images of people with a wide range of disabilities working in various inclusive workplaces. At ACL, we are working with the DD network and other partners to establish signposts and to provide the roadmap and the other tools people with I/DD need to successfully navigate that road to careers that fit their interests.
The DD Act established the DD network, which includes University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Education, Research, and Services (UCEDDs), State Councils on Developmental Disabilities (DD councils), and Protection & Advocacy Systems (P&As). These programs work individually and together to identify and remove barriers to inclusion, including barriers to employment, that people with I/DD face in their communities. These examples illustrate a few of the ways the DD network is helping to pave the road to employment for people with I/DD.
- In a rural Texas community, the Texas A&M University UCEDD collaborated with the Texas Workforce Commission’s Vocational Rehabilitation program to develop “I Generate Rural Opportunities for Work” (iGROW). In accordance with the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the program facilitates more seamless access to services under limited resources to better support youth populations in rural communities. iGROW provides career development services to high school students with disabilities ages 14-22, including access to paid work experience, vocational rehabilitation (VR) services, and independent living resources. During the school day, teachers facilitate pre-employment transition (Pre-ETS) instruction, person-centered plan development, and career and college exploration activities. Since 2022, iGROW has been replicated in seven rural communities.
- The Washington, D.C. DD Council hosted its third DC Employment First summit. Employment First is a national systems-change framework centered on the premise that all people, including those with the most significant disabilities, are capable of full participation in competitive integrated employment (CIE) and community life. Under this approach, publicly financed systems are urged to align policies, regulatory guidance, and reimbursement structures to commit to CIE as the priority option with respect to the use of day and employment services for youth and adults with significant disabilities. Since launching the first summit in 2022, the forum has grown to include more advocates, educators, and community leaders to increase their awareness about the power of inclusive hiring. The impact has been empowering people with disabilities and their family members with knowledge about CIE so they can advocate within their communities to secure and retain jobs.
- Disability Rights Connecticut (DRCT) is working to transition people with I/DD from work in sub-minimum wage jobs and other segregated employment situations to CIE. DRCT advocates worked closely with individual clients to illustrate how the transition to CIE can and should work. These individual representations highlight specific issues and barriers to CIE. Building on these success stories, DRCT is working with employment provider agencies and the state attorney general’s office to develop a plan to create systemic change to make CIE and related employment services, including discovery, job exploration, job development, and ongoing job coaching, available to people with I/DD, including individuals with significant disabilities.
In addition, ACL’s Administration on Disabilities (AoD) is funding a variety of other initiatives to advance CIE for youth with I/DD by overcoming barriers to fragmented support systems during the critical period of transition from school to adulthood. For example, the Community Collaborations for Employment (CCE) program funds seven grants to advance the development of models for stakeholder collaborations to facilitate the transition of youth with developmental disabilities between schools and adult life in the community. In North Carolina, the CCE established a statewide network of employers that demonstrate a commitment to employing people with I/DD. The network develops training and other resources and provides mentoring to help employers, service providers, and self-advocates work together to increase employment opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. (You can learn more about the CCE projects in the program’s mid-term grant report.)
Through the Disability Employment Technical Assistance Center (DETAC), ACL also supports the DD networks in advancing CIE. Through DETAC, AoD grantees convened earlier this year in multiple peer e-learning opportunities, called Results and Innovation in Systems Excellence (RISE), to improve economic advancement of people with disabilities. In one of these RISE sessions called "Bring Your Device: Tech Training," a group of AoD grantees got more educated about how emerging smart devices or off-the-shelf assistive technology tools can be used to obtain or retain employment in the workplace. For example, RISE shared strategies on how to use smart devices to develop video resumes for job interviews, as well as accessing recorded videos of job sites to build one’s confidence in advance of the first day on the job.
ACL also funds assistive technology (AT) programs in every state and territory to make AT devices more accessible to individuals and their families. These programs provide a way for people with disabilities to learn about — and try out — different AT devices to determine what works for them. The AT programs also work with partners in their states’ disability networks to improve access. For example, the Tennessee Technology Access Program (TTAP) collaborates with partners to educate community rehabilitation providers about technology tools available within the agriculture industry to help increase job access. In addition, ACL’s National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) is funding 40 active research grants focused on improving employment outcomes for people with disabilities.
ACL also partners with other federal agencies to provide access to CIE. For example, the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) at the U.S. Department of Education has worked to expand funding opportunities to its grantees through the launch of the Pathways to Partnerships Model Demonstration Project (P2P). The grant awarded $199 million in grants to 20 states for five-year projects focused on increasing CIE for transition-age youth. The participating states have done this by building innovative partnerships that foster the establishment of close ties among state VR and state and local education agencies. Through AoD’s recent collaboration with RSA, the grants now require centers for independent living (CILs) that are AoD grantees to be part of these state teams as well. During the first year of the award, approximately 40 CILs have been involved in transforming partnerships with other key state stakeholders that work together to improve the delivery of transition services.
As communicated by the winding road graphic in the 2024 NDEAM poster, people with disabilities must navigate more twists and turns than most people on this path to employment. This is particularly true for people with I/DD. By increasing support for people with disabilities on their employment journey and helping to remove barriers to work in integrated settings at competitive wages, ACL is helping to advance access to good jobs for all and ultimately upholding our commitment to ensuring people with disabilities can live and fully participate in their communities.