Summer Hard Exchange Newsletter
Inside this Issue:
Working with VR Services
Employment First Report Forthcoming
From the Executive Director
WIOA Reauthorization
MPAS Celebrates Website Anniversary
Update on Special Education Reports
Restraint and Seclusion Room in Marquette
From the Employment Team
Working with Vocational Rehabilitation Services
Michigan is a very unique state having two separate state agencies with vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs. The Department of Human Services provides VR services through Michigan Rehabilitation Services (MRS), and the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) provides VR services through the Bureau of Services for Blind Persons (BSBP). Each program is designed to assist and work with individuals with disabilities to prepare for, and obtain, competitive employment including possible self-employment or owning a small business.
The goal of both BSBP and MRS is to help find competitive employment, and to assist in this area there are many steps and services available to help an individual reach their goal. These steps and services include:
1. Applying for services- This is the process of completing an application for assistance with a goal of employment.
2. Eligibility determination- This is the process to figure out if the individual's disability is preventing them from getting or keeping a job and if VR services would be required to reach an employment goal.
3. Development of an Individualized Planfor Employment (IPE)-The IPE is an outline of the individual's goals and the services they will receive.
4. Execution of the IPE-The process and coordination of services developed in the IPE to reach the Individual's goal of employment.
5. Employment - Case closure-The individual's case will remain open for at least 90 days after their employment goal has been reached.
Throughout each of these steps it is essential that both the individual and their VR counselor work effectively together to reach the goal of employment. Both parties have important duties and responsibilities to complete during each step and need to stay in contact throughout the process.
If someone encounters problems while applying for or receiving services from their VR program, they may request assistance from the Client Assistance Program (CAP). CAP is a federally mandated program that provides information and assistance to individuals seeking or receiving vocational rehabilitation services under the Rehabilitation Act. All discussions with CAP will be kept confidential. Permission must be granted for CAP staff to discuss any situation with VR personnel. CAP can be reached by calling Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service, Inc. (MPAS) at (800) 288-5923.
Finding a job is hard work. Along with the assistance of VR, individuals should spend a lot of their own time on their job search and explore as many avenues as possible. Researching organizations such as Michigan Works or a local college career center may help in finding out who is hiring.
To find the nearest BSBP, MRS or Michigan Works office visit
Employment Trends for People with Disabilities in Michigan
In Michigan, 81 percent of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) are unemployed compared to 9 percent of individuals without disabilities. This is despite individuals with disabilities having marketable skills and a true desire to work. In fact, the National Core Indicators Adult Consumer Survey (NCI) shows that 60 percent of individuals with disabilities in Michigan want a job in their community; however, only 17 percent of them have one.
Many vocational rehabilitation service providers fail to provide adequate training that results in meaningful community-based employment. As a result, many Michiganders with disabilities who are “employed” are perpetually limited to work in sheltered workshops that segregate individuals with disabilities from individuals without disabilities. Moreover, the options of the type of employment are predominately limited to piece work and/or contract work, often paying wages below the minimum and/or prevailing wage. Currently, there are over 70 non-profit Community Rehabilitation Programs operating sheltered workshops (located in 39 Michigan counties) paying their workers with disabilities significantly less than minimum wage. These sheltered workshops account for over 8,000 individuals with disabilities being compensated an average wage of $2.75/hour. This is a practice allowed through a 14(c) waiver to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Individuals with disabilities are maintained in these positions for years without the proper supports and job matching techniques which would facilitate advancement and community employment. Therefore, many individuals with disabilities are working and earning far below their real potential in segregated facilities.
Please read our letter from the Executive Director in this Exchange to see what MPAS is doing to address these issues.
From the Executive Director
Real Employment for Real Pay in Real Communities
For People with Disabilities, the Progress Will Not Stop
Along with our sister agencies, the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council and the University Center of Excellence - Developmental Disabilities Institute at Wayne State University, MPAS will soon issue a paper on integrated community employment for people with disabilities. Although many will find the paper exciting and challenging - creating a pathway to a better economic future for people with disabilities, others will find it threatening.
Both reactions are intended.
In anticipation of new and promising definitions of honest integrated community employment opportunities for people with disabilities, the three disability agencies conducted a study of the facts related to employment for people with disabilities across the country as well as here in Michigan. As the MPAS Employment Firstreportwill show, the facts conclude that there are far too many people with disabilities who want to work but are either unemployed or working in Community Rehabilitation Programs (CRP) (sometimes referred to as "sheltered workshops"). The report also shows that the people who are employed earn wages either below the federal minimum wage or below the prevailing wage paid to people without disabilities.
Change is already here:
Employment First.
If you haven't already, you will soon hear the term "Employment First". It is a conceptual approach to full inclusion of people with disabilities in the community workplace. Within this approach, community-based, integrated employment is the first priority and the preferred outcome for people with disabilities. Integrated employment refers to a job held by an individual with a disability in a typical workplace setting where the majority of employees do not have disabilities. These integrated employment options are paid directly by the employer at the minimum or prevailing wage, whichever is higher.
Employment First seeks to establish a clear and uncompromising definition of "integrated employment" which focuses on real jobs and real wages in real business settings.
Managing change is always difficult and it is even more difficult when the advocates that had brought about change over the past 40 years to create jobs for people with disabilities are now challenged to modernize their own 40 year old ideas of progress.
It is undeniable that with a series of recent litigation challenging segregated work placements, state legislation and gubernatorial Executive Orders to promote Employment First, and increasingly restricted use of federal dollars to segregate people with disabilities in housing and employment, Community Rehabilitation Programs, as we know them today, will not exist in the near future.
As I have mentioned to my friends within the community rehabilitation networks, federal funding (Specifically Medicaid and vocational rehabilitation) will no longer be allowed to be used to segregate people because of their disability.
In addition, the use of a 14(c) waiver allowing employers to pay workers with disabilities a wage below the minimum or prevailing wage, will be closely scrutinized, and in many cases, restricted or outright prohibited.
It is time we get serious about working toward an outcome of real work, in real communities for real pay and there are some very promising and exciting new approaches to assist people with disabilities to obtain and retain careers.
Jewish Vocational Services (JVS) in Detroit, in concert with Michigan Rehabilitation Services (MRS) and SourceAmerica are moving aggressively in the direction of matching an individual's skills, interests and talents with fully integrated community employment.
Their progress and ultimate success will be a game changer for generations to come.
We need to do more to support people with disabilities to be as productive as possible in careers they choose and we need to offer community employers the valued, dependable and productive employees they seek. We need to calculate the long-term return on investment of promoting strategies that allow people with disabilities to reduce their lifelong dependency on government subsidies.
Progress will not stop because it makes some people uncomfortable. Attempts to halt progress will always fail and we may not be satisfied with the outcomes if we simply decide to sit by and watch progress unfold.
MPAS wants to help design the inevitable future. We want to be at the table to challenge even our own assumptions about what is possible and we want to continue to work for a brighter economic future for all people with disabilities.
Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, Inc. (MPAS) Applauds Successful Reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA)
The bipartisan backed H.R. 803, better know as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), was signed into law by President Obama on July 22, 2014.
"The president's signature on the reauthorization by Congress of WIOA is a momentous step forward in increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities in our country and in our state," said Elmer L. Cerano, Executive Director of MPAS. "In Michigan, a staggering 81 percent of persons with disabilities are unemployed. As the designated organization in Michigan which protects the rights of people with disabilities, MPAS is well aware of the unemployment and underemployment facing Michiganders with disabilities, despite their sincere desire to work."
Chiefly, the bill would prohibit individuals with disabilities age 24 and younger from working in jobs paying less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour unless they are first provided certain vocational rehabilitation services, among other requirements. There are exceptions, however, for those already working for what’s known as subminimum wage and in cases where individuals are deemed ineligible for vocational rehabilitation.
Beyond limiting who can work for less than minimum wage, the legislation also mandates that state vocational rehabilitation agencies work with schools to provide “pre-employment transition services” to all students with disabilities. What’s more, the agencies must dedicate at least 15 percent of their federal funding to help those with disabilities transition from school to meaningful work.
The WIOA reauthorization, previously known in the House as the SKILLS Act, will improve upon the original Act's purpose in the following key ways:
- To maximize opportunities for individuals with disabilities, including individuals with significant disabilities, for competitive integrated employment;
- To increase employment opportunities and employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities, including through encouraging meaningful input by employers and vocational rehabilitation service providers on successful and prospective employment and placement strategies; and
- To ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that youth with disabilities and students with disabilities who are transitioning from receipt of special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1400 et. seq.) and receipt of services under section 504 of this Act are either continuing their education or employed in competitive integrated employment independently.
"This long-overdue reauthorization indicates that Congress is finally recognizing, and starting to sincerely appreciate, the valuable assets that people with disabilities bring to the American workforce," continued Cerano. "WIOA reauthorization is a firm step in the right direction toward making sure that people with disabilities are being provided the appropriate job training in an area of their interest, resulting in competitive integrated employment in their community. MPAS will be an active participant in ensuring that the newly created provisions under this Act are implemented in Michigan."
MPAS Celebrates the One Year Anniversary of our New and Improved Website
In July of 2013, MPAS launched its new and improved website. As the world changes, more and more people with disabilities and their families are turning to the internet for information, guidance, and assistance. Many of the more than 8,000 calls MPAS' Information, Referral and Education department receive annually are calls that can now be more readily assisted through an updated and user-friendly MPAS website.
Our new website has received nearly 600 web-based inquiries for assistance and 23,000 unique visitors in the first year! We have had people visit our website for information from every state in the U.S as well as from the United Kingdom and Canada. The majority of our website visitors come from urban areas in the state with Lansing, Detroit, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids residents visiting our site the most.
While we continue to be excited about the performance of the new website and the ability of this new medium to help us assist more people with disabilities and their families, we firmly recognize that there is still work to be done and improvements that can be made. That being said, we want to know what you think of our website and welcome any suggestions you may have on how to make it more user-friendly and/or more informative. Please visit our "contact MPAS" page, select "website suggestions" under "I have a question about" and let us know what you think!
Updates to Special Education
Federal Regulators Use Outcome Data to Measure Educational Success
by Mark McWilliams, MPAS Director of Information, Referral and Education
2014 may be viewed as a watershed year in the educational lives of children with disabilities. 2014 saw the release and, for the first time, use of comprehensive public data describing the educational outcomes and the civil rights status of children with disabilities to evaluate states on how they meet federal mandates.
In June 2014, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) introduced "Results-Driven Accountability," including for the first time state performance on some of the results indicators in its reporting on state compliance with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Reports are based on 2012 data. Under the new measure, OSEP assigned 50% of its rating of states to performance on compliance indicators and 50% on selected results indicators from scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The outcomes reported were bracing, as most states that had been found in compliance with the procedural aspects of IDEA found themselves labeled as needing some level of federal support. Michigan met 95% of its goals in the compliance indicators and 45% of its goals in the results indicators, earning a "needs assistance" rating (the second highest rating) along with 23 other states. Eighteen states and territories were rated as meeting requirements.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released the results of its Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The CRDC is a self-report by nearly all schools in the nation on a variety of civil rights measurements, ranging from participation in school programs to discipline to use of restraint and seclusion. Reports are based on 2009 data.
Michigan schools reported over 15,000 students with IEPs subjected to one or more in-school suspension, over 13,000 students with one out of school suspension, over 16,000 students with more than one out of school suspension, and over 600 students expelled. Over 1,300 students with IEPs were referred to law enforcement. Students with disabilities were more than twice as likely to receive out of school suspension (13%) than students without disabilities (6%). Students with disabilities represented a quarter of students arrested and referred to law enforcement, even though they are only 12% of the student population. 58% of students placed in seclusion and 75% of students physically restrained were students with disabilities.
No doubt we will see more use of outcome measures to gauge educational success. For more information, please contact MPAS.
MPAS Against New Seclusion Room at a Marquette Middle School
The following is an editorial by Mark McWilliams, Director of Information, Referral and Education Services at Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, Inc.It was originally published in the Mining Journal on June 22, 2014.
MPAS is disappointed to learn that the Marquette Public Schools is spending tax dollars to build a "seclusion room" in a middle school (Mining Journal, May 21). Seclusion in schools is a dangerous and unregulated practice that puts children at risk of harm. We write in hopes of providing more information to the community about seclusion in school and to help reduce and eliminate its use.