Project Description:
A strong workforce depends on employers having skilled employees who meet the moment to achieve businesses' goals. An often overlooked aspect of this imperative is a talent pool that includes people with disabilities. Rehabilitation professionals can be a powerful bridge between employers and qualified employees with disabilities. As such, developing knowledge and skills of rehabilitation professionals through evidence-based and novel training across accessible learning modalities is essential if we are to improve the quality of vocational rehabilitation (VR) services and employment outcomes. This requires a dual-customer focus to engage employers in making employment opportunities and the workplace fully accessible. It also requires involving an array of stakeholders that are engaged on the demand-side of employment. The Training Innovation Project (TIP): Demand-Side Employer Engagement Strategies in Vocational Rehabilitation focuses on the target population of state VR agency staff, community rehabilitation provider (CRP) staff, employers and future professionals. The TIP emphasizes demand-side employer engagement issues, emerging information technology and disability trends. Our goal is to build capacity of rehabilitation and aspiring professionals to serve VR customers and engage with employers through innovative training and resources. Primary activities are: training and enrichment activities including immersive, simulated environments using virtual reality and video self-modeling; a Disability Hiring and Retention Academy, an Employer Engaged Professional credential, Employer Engagement Lunch and Learns with continuing education units, peer learning through Employer Engagement Community of Practice and Office Hours, and an undergraduate Workforce Engagement Certificate. The TIP will amplify partnerships to create and share project content. All project materials (including videos, toolkits, guides, modules, and plain language information sheets), will be accessible via our AI-enabled National Innovative Training Hub and shared through an aggressive dissemination campaign. Our National Advisory Panel of distinguished VR professionals, employers, and people with lived disability experience will guide all TIP activities. Our Marketing, Sustainability and Replication Playbook will provide a roadmap for replication and sustainability across communities. An annual convening will build community and capacity, culminating in a Year 5 National Workforce & Employer Engagement Summit. Continuous quality improvement and ongoing evaluation using advanced technology will identify innovations and adapt to evolving trainee needs. We will nurture bold, groundbreaking learning to inform policy and practice around the country, strengthen VR systems, grow healthy workforces, and build economic self-sufficiency for people with disabilities. TIP outcomes will include 10,600 learners trained and 250 diverse products emphasizing the breadth and depth of innovation, partnerships and resources that enhance VR capacity and strengthen connections to employers, workforce development, and everyone with a role to play in economic vitality and employment success for people with disabilities.
