Montana was chosen as a targeted community through the Vocational Rehabilitation Technical Assistance Center: Targeted Communities (VR-TAC-TC) or Project E3. Project E3 partnered with State VR Agencies and local community partners to improve outreach and employment-related services to underserved people with disabilities in this community.

Montana's beautiful landscape includes forests, prairies, highlands, and valleys. It includes the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide in the western part of the state and rolling plains in the eastern part of the state. Two-thirds of Montana is in the Great Plains.

Montana's economy is primarily based on agriculture, including ranching and cereal grain farming. Other significant economic activities include oil, gas, coal and hard rock mining, lumber, and the fastest-growing sector, tourism. Health care, service, and government sectors are also significant to the state's economy. In 2011, Montana ranked third in the nation in number of craft breweries per capita.

The population in Montana is distributed over a large geographic area. Montanans living in rural areas face unique challenges to both accessing services and finding employment. These challenges are compounded for those living with disability and poverty.

The state-federal vocational rehabilitation system in Montana faced many challenges as it strove to serve people with significant disabilities and promote competitive integrated employment. Project E3 provided intensive technical assistance to two regions of the state:

Native American Population

Blackfeet Indian Reservation

Poverty Rate

Unemployment

Disability Rate

VR Case Closure

College Graduates

Within the targeted communities, Project E3 focused on improving vocational rehabilitation service outcomes for these populations:

These populations were characterized as:

The combination of the challenges above and other factors created significant barriers for persons with disabilities living in Montana, including:

Following are some of the key strategies developed and implemented to address the targeted populations' challenges and barriers to employment.

Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR): To understand a community’s issues and concerns, one needs data and information both supplied by common data sources and interpreted by the community to better understand their issues and possible solutions to those issues.  CBPR’s methodology is predicated on deep and extensive community involvement in the identification of issues and concerns and in the resolution of those issues and concerns.

Motivational Interviewing: The Crow Agency identified MI as a key strategy for their staff working with persons with disabilities.  This was supplemented with training on Impression Management.

Impression Management Training Tools

• Outline: Impression Management Workshop
• Presentation: Impression Management Workshop
• Handout: Commonly Used Impression Management Techniques
• Exercise: Impression Management Techniques

Motivational Interviewing

• Native American Motivational Interviewing: Weaving Native American and Western Practices - A Manual for Counselors in Native American Communities

Download the Montana Overview Presentation (PowerPoint)