Spotlight on research. Leveraging data to deliver quality employment services:

Ensuring that job seekers with disabilities receive high-quality supported and customized employment services is key for increasing their chances of achieving their career goals. This paper describes the findings from piloting ES-Coach with nine employment programs in Minnesota and Massachusetts. ES-Coach is a tool designed to help teams of employment consultants visualize their employment support practices and leverage that information to reflect, set goals, and take action for continuous quality improvement

Getting to know job seekers

Getting to know job seekers is one of the five elements of the comprehensive model of employment supports. But why is it so crucial for career success

Building trust

In this brief, you’ll find tips about building trust with job seekers as a first step toward finding the optimal job match

Support after hire

Employment support doesn’t end when a job seeker finds work. This brief shares strategies for supporting an individual after hire

Finding tasks and jobs

Finding tasks and jobs is a core element of the comprehensive model of employment supports. Learn more about how to make this happen

Data Note: Employment rates in the general population and VR Rehabilitation rates

The Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program plays a critical role in assisting people with disabilities gaining integrated employment. In 2006, for instance, 48,876 people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (ID/DD) exited the VR program after receiving services, with 56% of those who received services finding jobs in integrated employment. This percentage, known as the VR Rehabilitation Rate, varied from 42% in Hawaii to 77% in Maryland, if excluding the figure in Oklahoma where the VR rehabilitation rate was 22%

Supports planning

Supports planning is one of the five elements of the comprehensive model of employment supports. Learn exactly what it means and how to do it

The Percentage of People who Receive VR Services Varies Greatly across States

Receiving vocational rehabilitation services is a key step toward employment. However, the percentage of job seekers with intellectual disabilities who receive #VocRehab services varies greatly across states, from 93% in Vermont to 34% in Nebraska. Check out this new DataNote to see how your state compare

Boundary element method application to numerical solving of linear boundary-value problems in domains with strongly segmented boundary

В настоящей работе метод граничных элементов был применен к решению краевых задач для уравнения Лапласа в плоской области с сильно сегментированной границей. Особое внимание было уделено точности численного решения, которая исследовалась путем численного эксперимента на специально подобранных тестовых задачах, имеющих аналитические решения в квадратурах. Было реализовано два алгоритма метода граничных элементов: традиционный с решением системы линейных алгебраических уравнений методами гауссовского исключения, и итерационный, при этом в итерационном алгоритме использовались функции Грина или их вычислительные аналоги. Результаты работы могут быть использованы при создании специализированного программного обеспечения соответствующего назначения.One of the most serious problems of modern numerical analysis is boundary-value problem solution in domains of complex geometrical shapes. Such problems are proved especially difficult for the domains with strongly segmented boundary, which meansthat the boundary is divided into isolated pieces. Such situations are specific for heterogeneous media. In such situations local approximation methods have to deal with the insuperable difficulties such as constructing computational grid and subsequent solving rather sophisticated systems of linear algebraic equations. The methods of global approximations and, first of all, methods of computational potential theory do not have similar difficulties, nevertheless they have to overcome a lot of problems. Boundary element method is applied in thepresent work to solve boundary-value problems for Laplace equations in plane domain with strongly segmented boundary. Special attention in the work was paid to accuracy of numerical solutions. The accuracy is investigated by a numerical experiment using specially selected test problems, which have the known analytical solutions in quadrature. Two boundary element algorithms are implemented. The first one is the traditional approach with Gauss elimination algorithm for solving linear algebraic equation system. The second one is an iterative approach with possible using of Green’s functions or their computational analogs in the iterative procedure. The results obtained in the work can be applied for creating specialized software of corresponding purposes

Partnerships in Employment: Benchmarking Toolkit

Policy shifts over the past 20 years have created an agenda that calls for a sustained commitment to integrated employment for individuals with disabilities. But despite these clear intentions, unemployment of individuals with disabilities continues to be a major public policy issue. For people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), the disparity in labor market participation grows. Data suggest only 14.7% of individuals who receive supports from state IDD agencies work in either individual or group integrated employment, and 19% of individuals who receive day services from a state IDD agency participate in a service designed to support integrated employment (Butterworth, Hall, Smith, Migliore, Winsor, Domin, & Sulewski, 2013; Human Services Research Institute, 2012). At the same time, participation in sheltered or facility-based employment and non-work services has grown steadily, suggesting that employment services continue to be viewed as an add-on service rather than a systemic change (Butterworth et al., 2013; Mank, Cioffi, & Yovanoff, 2003). Data on the state of employment for individuals with disabilities (as briefly synthesized above) is available through a myriad of data collection systems. A growing emphasis on government accountability at the state and federal levels has increased interest in the collection and use of data on employment outcomes. However, many disability data systems are only loosely coordinated across various agencies, and many state service systems have fragmented and incomplete data systems in place. Stapleton & Thornton (2009, p.4) note that “(a)lthough the challenges to improving the data are substantial, they pale in comparison to the likely consequences of failing to do so, both for people with disabilities and for taxpayers.” This toolkit is designed to provide guidance on how to use currently available national and state-level aggregate data sets to weave together a picture of the employment outcomes of transition-age youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Data sets are grouped by the type of data they report: agencylevel data, and general employment trend data