Training and technical assistance prepares vocational rehabilitation agencies and their community partners to empower people with disabilities to enter the vocational rehabilitation process and support them as they progress toward their employment goals.

Why is it needed?

People with disabilities who live in communities with depressed economies face many challenges to finding and maintaining employment, including access to:

• Employment opportunities
• Job search supports and services
• Employability skills training
• Appropriate counseling practices
• Transportation
• Financial Literacy Training
• Work Incentives Benefits Counseling
• Integrated and comprehensive services

Lack of access to these opportunities, supports, and services results in fewer people with disabilities participating in available vocational rehabilitation services that could result in achieving career goals and maintain quality employment.

Training and technical assistance gives agencies and organizations strategies and insights to better deliver appropriate services and comprehensive supports to people with disabilities. Training and technical assistance topics include:

• Service delivery systems
  • Intersection of disability and poverty
  • Integrated resource teams
  • Support system capacity building
  • Transportation consortiums
• Employment opportunities expansion
  • Self-employment
  • Customized employment
  • Individual placement and support
• Evidence-based counseling strategies
  • Motivational interviewing
  • Trauma-informed care
• Employment skills and supports
  • Employability skills training
  • Job clubs
• Money and benefits management
  • Work incentives and benefits counseling
  • Financial literacy and empowerment