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The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) will expand its
customized employment initiative to increase employment choices and earnings
opportunities for people with disabilities. This initiative provides the
opportunity to bring together in a local area multiple cutting-edge strategies
and promising practices to increase employment for people with significant
disabilities and promote systemic change within the states through the
workforce investment system. Customizing employment is one of many proven
options for increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
Choice-based strategies, forms of person-directed financing, access to personal
budgets, leveraging expertise across multiple systems, and mobilizing resources
in states and local communities are all elements to increasing these
opportunities. As part of this initiative, ODEP will expand its Customized
Employment Grant Initiative which awarded grants to seven states in FY 2001 to
additional states in FY 2002.
The Department of Labor will work to increase participation of
faith-based and community-based organizations in providing customized
employment services and opportunities to individuals with disabilities, and
encourage their role in partnerships with other providers at the local level.
ODEP will work in conjunction with DOL’s Center for Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives, the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), and
the Department of Education’s Rehabilitation Services Administration to
develop technical assistance and training to help these organizations to
increase their capacity, improve their knowledge and use of best practices, and
expand their programs relating to the employment of people with disabilities.
ODEP and ETA will provide information about conversion from segregated to
integrated employment services for organizations that wish to incorporate such
practices. ETA and ODEP will also provide information on effective grant
writing, methods for responding to requests for proposals and solicitations,
and accessing funding opportunities related to employ-ment of people with
disabilities.
ODEP will initiate an Olmstead Community Employment Initiative.
ODEP will develop and implement a coordinated strategy to ensure that all DOL
policies and activities fully address the employment and training needs of
people with disabilities who are at risk of institutionalization, or who are
transitioning from institutions into the workplace and the community. As part
of this initiative, ODEP will award Olmstead Coordination and Action Grants.
These grants will be awarded to states that (1) develop an employment focus for
persons with disabilities in their Olmstead state implementation plans and
activities, and (2) incorporate activities coordinating employment and related
supports at the state and local level. Recipients will be a consortia of
nonprofit advocacy or service agencies and Local Workforce Investment Boards
(Local Boards), which will conduct aggressive and intensive outreach to persons
with significant disabilities who are leaving or have already left
institutions, who are currently in segregated environments, and/or who are at
risk of segregation.
ODEP, working within DOL and with other Federal agencies, will
develop and implement an action plan to promote self-employment and small
business development among people with disabilities, particularly those with
the most significant disabilities. Ten years post-passage of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, entrepreneurship provides a key next step in the full
participation of individuals with disabilities in America’s communities.
As part of this plan, ODEP will work with other relevant agencies, including
the Small Business Administration, the Social Security Administration, the
Treasury Department, and the Department of Education’s Rehabilitation
Services Administration to educate lenders about the viability of small
business owner-ship for people with disabilities.
In addition, the Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) will
conduct bimonthly vendor outreach sessions, periodically targeted to veterans
with service-connected and nonservice-connected disabilities. PRO-Net will be
employed to identify small businesses that are owned by disabled persons and
service-disabled veterans for existing procurement opportunities.
ETA awarded $20 million in Work Incentive Grants. Designed to
enhance the employability, employment, and career advancement of people with
disabilities through enhanced service delivery in the One-Stop delivery system
established under the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA), the Work
Incentive Grant program will fund consortia and/or partnerships of public and
private non-profit entities working in coordination with the One-Stop delivery
system to augment existing programs and services and ensure programmatic access
and streamlined, seamless service delivery for people with disabilities.
ETA awarded $5.6 million to multi-state employment and training
projects serving people with disabilities. This skill-training grant program is
funded using Workforce Investment Act Title I, Section 171 funds and targets
projects providing multi-site training and other employment services to
individuals with disabilities that result in long-term, unsubsidized
employment.
ETA developed a Training and Employment Notice (TEN) on the Ticket
to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act. This TEN provides the workforce
investment system with information on how to prepare for the introduction of
the Ticket by explaining how tickets work generally, and provides guidance for
the early implementation states on what to do when presented with a Ticket.
ODEP, ETA, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for
Administration and Management’s (OASAM’s) Civil Rights Center (CRC),
will conduct disability-focused reviews and evaluations of implementation of
Section 188 of WIA, the nondiscrimination and equal opportunity obligations.
Under the leadership of the CRC, these evaluations will enable the Department
of Labor to identify further areas in which federal training and technical
assistance activities are needed to eliminate barriers and to prevent
disability discrimination in the WIA programs.
The Assistant Secretary of ODEP will participate as a member of
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)-Led Federal Partners Working Group on
the implementation of the Workforce Investment Act. The involvement of the ODEP
will help to ensure that the employment-related needs of people with
disabilities are addressed within the context of the generic workforce
system.
ODEP, along with our federal agency partners, will promote
teleworking by identifying current positions that can be relocated or
restructured to provide possible home-based or other off-site working
opportunities. Harnessing the power and potential of new communications and
information technologies, teleworking will allow more people with disabilities
to enter the American workforce. Jobs under consideration for restructuring
include those appropriate for call center operations, and "contact center" work
such as claims processing, loan processing, debt collection, audit resolution,
and a variety of miscellaneous financial transactions and grant/contract
management activity. In addition, ODEP will sponsor three telework pilot
projects.
ODEP will launch a comprehensive and coordinated public awareness
and education campaign to decrease stigma, eliminate attitudinal barriers, and
increase employment opportunities for adults and youth with disabilities. This
multi-faceted campaign will target business and industry, lenders, small
businesses, families, and others. The campaign will also focus on making people
with disabilities aware of mainstream employment-related services available to
them and providing highly-visible role models. Successful entrepreneurs who
have disabilities will also be profiled through a variety of mainstream media
outlets to increase awareness about the self-employment potential of people
with disabilities.
ETA and ODEP will release Building Employment Success for Persons
with Disabilities Under Welfare Reform. This technical assistance guide will
assist the workforce investment system in better serving and working with
individuals who have hidden disabilities (e.g., learning disabilities, mental
retardation, psychiatric disabilities, and addictive disorders).
The Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration (PWBA) will expand
its education campaigns and programs to provide more education and outreach
directed toward Americans with disabilities who are entering the workplace.
Building on its current materials, PWBA will develop new materials addressing
the importance of health benefits coverage and the important choices to be made
about health benefits when entering the workforce, and specific
information/questions relevant to Americans with disabilities. PWBA will also
expand its materials addressing the importance of saving for a secure future
and will provide information on retirement benefit plan rights to assist
American workers with disabilities.
ODEP and PWBA are conducting research on issues related to
retirement savings and asset development for people with disabilities. Among
other things, this research will focus on issues of specific concern to people
with disabilities who receive Supple-mental Security Income (SSI) disability
benefits, such as asset exclusions and limits; the potential of Individual
Development Accounts and other savings/asset development tools; information and
ideas for entrepreneurs and small business owners with disabilities; and ideas
for creating new partnerships with public and private sector organizations.
ODEP will collaborate with the Employment Standards
Administration’s (ESA’s) Wage and Hour Division to provide technical
assistance to employers certified under 14(c). ODEP will work with the Wage and
Hour Division at ESA to distribute training and technical assistance materials
— especially to employers certified under Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor
Standards Act to pay commensurate wages — on successful strategies for
increasing customized employment and productivity of workers with significant
disabilities. The Wage and Hour Division will also monitor compliance with
Section 14(c) requirements by conducting investigation-based compliance surveys
of employers who hold Section 14(c) certificates.
ODEP will work in collaboration with ESA’s Office of Federal
Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) to explore mutual partnerships with
employer organizations like the National Industry Liaison Group (NILG), the
Business Leadership Networks (BLNs), and other employer groups to effectively
promote the employment of people with disabilities. This collaborative effort
with representatives from business, industry, and education may include the
development of combined technical assistance materials, training seminars,
joint conferences and the development of additional public/private partnerships
to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities among Federal
contractors.
ODEP, in conjunction with other appropriate agencies and
departments, will convene a key group of foundation leaders for a foundation
summit. The purpose of the summit will be to examine how government agencies,
businesses, and the foundation sector can work together to facilitate
employment for young people and adults with disabilities. The summit will
provide an opportunity to elevate understanding of the issues related to
employment of people with disabilities, as well as the role that the foundation
community could play in addressing barriers. In addition, it will provide the
opportunity for foundation leaders to integrate initiatives relating to
employment for people with disabilities into existing foundation initiatives
and ensure that such initiatives are accessible to people with
disabilities.
ODEP will work with other federal agencies to promote the full
inclusion of veterans with disabilities in the programs and services governed
by Local Workforce Investment Boards. ODEP will consult with internal DOL
agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Small Business
Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, and other relevant
agencies, as well as stakeholders.
ODEP will collaborate with the Department of Labor’s
International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB), on a variety of mutually agreed-upon
efforts to help ensure that those international labor policies, programs, and
projects over which the ILAB has administrative authority will take into
account the employment-related concerns of people with disabilities. The ODEP
will serve as a technical assistance resource to ILAB in areas such as
international child labor, briefings and tours for foreign labor delegations,
immigration studies, and U.S. labor affairs representation at meetings and
workgroups sponsored/hosted by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Employment
and Social Affairs Directorate of the European Commission, and other
international organizations.
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