What's up with WIOA Podcast Episode 1

What's Up With WIOA podcast – Episode 1

Elizabeth Danner: / Hi there. Welcome to the What's Up With WIOA podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, otherwise known as WIOA. This is a piece of legislation that was passed by Congress in July 2014 to ensure that students with disabilities leave high school with a clear path to opportunities for employment and further education.
Today we are fortunate to have Erin Wilder here to talk about WIOA and its impact for students in Texas. Erin is the statewide transition specialist for the DARS division of rehab services. In her role, she works closely with regional transition specialists and counselors with DARS to understand, plan, brainstorm, troubleshoot, to implement transition services. She does it all.
She also provides training and she'll work with school staff and she does lots and lots of presentations to different organizations to help everyone understand DARS and division of rehab services and opportunities there.
She also serves on a number of state and national transition groups. She's a great resource for what WIOA will mean for Texas. Basically, Erin, welcome. We're going to start with what's up with WIOA.
Erin Wilder: / Hi, thank you. WIOA, for us has significantly changed the way we are required to provide transition services. First, it requires that vocational rehabilitation, or VR spends 15% of its federal dollars on pre-employment transition services.
That's not new money. It's just taking the money that we've always had in our VR budget and designating a specific percentage of it to these services. Specifically, pre-employment transition services, which has a definition in WIOA we'll talk about in a minute.
Pre-ETS, as we like to call them, pre-employment transition services are defined as services in 5 categories, career exploration, work-based learning, counseling on post-secondary training opportunities, job readiness and social skills, and self-advocacy.
We've always known that those were 5 really important areas when it came to working with transition students. Now they have a much greater focus than they've had in the past. We're developing services to help support us in providing those services to consumers.
Those services are specifically designated for anyone who meets WIOA's definition of student with a disability. If we provide services in 1 of those categories to someone meeting that student with a disability definition, then we can count whatever money we spend, whatever time we spend towards that 15% we're required to spend.
Elizabeth Danner: / It makes sense.
Erin Wilder: / To talk a little bit about what student with a disability means, under WIOA and with Texas' interpretation of the WIOA definition, because they allow some room for local laws and consideration of other factors that may come into play in individual states, a student with a disability is an individual age 14 to 22 who's either in school and receiving services under IDEA, or 504, in school and not receiving IDEA or 504 services, but otherwise they meet the eligibility criteria for VR, or they're out of school, but when they were attending, they received services under IDEA, or 504.
You could have someone who's potentially 20 years old, they've already exited high school and they acquired a disability since leaving high school, they will not meet this definition which means we can't count any expenditures towards the 15%, but the services that are available to them are still the same. It's just that it won't count.
Elizabeth Danner: / It's not just for students who are eligible for special ed services? It's ...
Erin Wilder: / That's correct.
Elizabeth Danner: / ... a broader definition.
Erin Wilder: / That's correct. Just to further clarify that point, although the majority of the students we work with, when we're providing transitions services are receiving special ed services. They're not required to do that to meet the eligibility.
There's 1 more thing I want to mention about student with a disability. I work for the division for rehab services. We are defining this as 14 to 22. However, for the division for blind services, it goes a little bit younger than that. They're saying 10 to 22. The reason for that is because they have the blind children's program. They actually move to the transition program at age 10.
If they're providing services in these categories for students 10 to 22 who meet the student with a disability definition, then they can count it towards the 15%.
The other important thing to know about WIOA is that we're still under draft regs. Any of these definitions could change based on what comes out in the final regs, which we're expecting in June.
Elizabeth Danner: / June 2016?
Erin Wilder: / Yes.
Elizabeth Danner: / Good. It's a few months away. There's new definitions. There's new structures. How should educators change the way they think about accessing DARS for their students?
Erin Wilder: / The overall purpose of these changes, under WIOA, is to beef up a student's preparation for successful careers and independence after high school. We also know that research shows that when students have exposure to work and work concepts, while they're in high school, they're more likely to be successful in that area once they leave.
With those 2 things in mind, we are charged with collaborating with the schools earlier and really looking at what's already being provided in the schools, what the student's needs are in terms of preparation for employment, and working together to provide services that support and enhance what the school is already providing.
We have typically bee thought of as a provider that catches students on their way out of high school. This will change us from catching them when they're seniors, maybe juniors, maybe even right after they've graduated to working with them earlier.
We can take referrals anywhere from 14 to 22. That doesn't mean that every 14 year old should be referred any more than every 16 year old, or 17 year old. It is absolutely with consideration for the individual and their needs.
The first thing the counselor's going to do is talk to them about what some of those needs are, and talk to you, and talk to the parents, and talk to other people who've been involved with that student, and think about what the appropriate timing of that is and how we can work together to help them prepare.
Elizabeth Danner: / You mentioned DARS counselors. That's my other question. How are DARS counselors changing the way they provide services for students? Some of the things that we've heard in the past is DARS counselors saying they won't take students til their senior year, or things like that. Are those services changing? Is the approach that the DARS counselors take to supporting the students in schools changing?
Erin Wilder: / We're definitely moving towards working with students earlier. We're very much in an adjustment period right now. If you think about what counselors have from the last couple of years, they're going to have, usually, a caseload that's made up of older students. Now they're working their way backwards. That doesn't mean that they skip over the current seniors and go straight to the freshmen or sophomores. They're also working with the seniors and juniors and working their way backward.
Eventually, what I envision happening is they will have a caseload that's made up of younger students and maybe our average age will be 16 instead of 18, or something like that. Then they'll be catching them before they ever get to be juniors or seniors.
Also, we're providing more services aimed at preparation for work rather than depending on schools to do that part. There've been a lot of questions about, "What do I do with a 14 or 15 year old, because the school is already providing the services that they need?"
We absolutely recognize that great services are being provided in schools. Our goal is to help support those services, so we know that if a student is working on social skills during the year, then maybe there's a sub-advocacy piece that we could work on that goes hand-in-hand with that.
Maybe we could be working on job readiness and more focused on soft skills in conjunction with that work they're doing on social skills, so that when you put those 2 together, what you have is a student that's that much more well-rounded in terms of job readiness.
We, also, are working on a number of partnerships with other organizations and our providers to put together summer work opportunities and camps that are aimed at those 5 pre-ETS areas that we talked about and just looking at opportunities we haven't necessarily, during times that we haven't necessarily done those things in the past, to work on those skills and continue building on what the schools provided over the course of the year; also, hopefully prevent that backslide that can happen sometimes in the summer when it comes to academic and vocational skills.
Elizabeth Danner: / Losing skills. That'd definitely a concern for educators, I know. Speaking of concerns, we're talking about a lot of changes here which a lot the things that you talked about sound great. It's really an exciting time for students and for schools. It sounds really exciting. Change is always anxiety-provoking. There's a lot of questions about like, "We're getting a sense of changing. We know it's services moving to younger age students and expanding and there's funding involved." What has not changed about DARS services?
Erin Wilder: / We still have the same eligibility criteria that have to be met in order for a person to receive services. The VR process itself is the same. The eligibility criteria are that we're able to establish a mental or physical impairment. It doesn't have to be on a specific list of impairments, or either physical, or mental. It can be 1 or the other, or both. We do have to be able to establish that impairment. We have to be able to show that it constitutes a substantial impediment to employment.
We're going to be looking at how that condition affects them in terms of work. Does it affect them in terms of preparation for work? Does affect them in terms of obtaining, or maintaining work, or any of the list of a whole lot of different things that intersect with going to work?
The third one is that they require vocational rehab services to participate in 1 of those activities related to work, so preparation for work, going to work, maintaining a job, those kind of things.
The fourth one is that they're capable of achieving an employment outcome. If we have questions about that, there's a process we can go through that helps us assess whether or not the person is able to go to work. That's really the exception and not the rule.
The eligibility criteria are the same. The VR process itself is the same. The counselor is generally going to make an initial contact either by phone, or in person. With the transition students, it's usually at the school.
From there, they will make an appointment to take the application for services. Again, with the transition that's usually at the school, that is the document they go through with the student and usually the family to gather all the information we need to get it in our system in order to start that process.
That's also where we get permission to request records from the school, where we get permission to request records from any doctors, or psychologists that are out there that have records already. If we can't get the information we need for eligibility from that, we can also send someone for evaluations. We cover the cost of that.
Once someone is determined eligible, the next step is to do some assessing and planning. That's where we're really determining what is an appropriate goal, what are the things we need to address in order to eliminate barriers and help this person be successful on a path to work? After the plan is in place and everybody's in agreement, the goal and the plan services, that's when we actually begin to provide those services.
Elizabeth Danner: / There are some things that are staying the same, that will be consistent from the way that DARS services have been for what schools have been seeing. Speaking of what schools have been seeing, I, in my work, I talk with a lot of educators, and families, and students. I hear a lot of different things about what DARS can and cannot do, what DARS does.
If you ask 100 different people outside of DARS, "What does DARS do?" You might get 100 different answers. I know in our collaboration, it looks like me fact checking and saying, "Hey, I heard this. Somebody said that their DARS counselor told them that DARS won't do this, or DARS doesn't serve a student with that significance of disability and support needs, that type of support need."
I'll fact check with you. A lot of times, it's maybe a different story. I'm wondering are there any myths about DARS that you'd like to debunk for our listeners while we're talking DARS?
Erin Wilder: / I think the number 1 that comes up and this is more important that ever to debunk this because of WIOA is that we can't work with students while they're in high school, or that we can't work with them until they're about to graduate. That is just simply not the case. It's always been the case that the application for services and the services we provided were intended to be individualized. That includes when we take the referral. It includes what services we provide.
Everything about this process is very individualized. We can have 2 people that maybe even look similar on paper, but they have different goals, and they're disability-related barriers to employment are different, and the services they receive will be different.
Another myth that sometimes comes up is that we can't work with life skills students. That's not true. Really, it doesn't matter if a student is in 1 particular class or another, if they're receiving special ed services, or not, or 504 services or not, or even if they have a particular disability.
The only thing that comes into play when we're considering whether or not a person can receive vocational rehab services is whether or not they meet those eligibility criteria. For instance, occasionally, I'll hear someone in a school say, "I was told that you couldn't work with people with intellectual disabilities." That's absolutely not true. We work with lots and lots of people with intellectual disabilities.
It also comes up in relation to life skills students. There may be some life skills students for which this isn't the most appropriate service. That could be the case with really any class. Whether or not they're in life skills doesn't influence their eligibility for VR services at all.
The 1 thing that we can't do is provide services that are the school's responsibility under IDEA. However, the examples of that that come up are very rarely black and white. For instance, if a school comes to us and they're referring a student because they need a piece of assistive technology, or they need something that's clearly needed for the classroom and basically accessing FAPE, then that really is the school's responsibility.
However, even in that case, for instance, if it's something like hearing aids, if a student comes to us, and they want to apply for vocational rehab services, and we know that their need for hearing aids extends into their time at school, but the need is much broader than just school, and we can certainly relate that to work, then those are things that we can still consider.
Technically, under IDEA, there's a piece of that need that probably should be covered by the school. As long as we can tie it to work, because all of our services have to be tied to work, and we can show that there is a need, beyond just classroom, then we're usually okay.
We've also had lots of instances come up where a school was already providing something, but for instance they needed that service to continue over the summer and didn't have the resources to provide it.
Elizabeth Danner: / Probably the student didn't qualify for ESY, extended school year because they didn't have the regression recoupment.
Erin Wilder: / A good example of that is 18 plus services, or vocational type services where the school is doing vocational preparation. They're going out with the students and helping them find jobs, paid or unpaid, but then the supports that the school's been providing all year long are not available over the summer.
We've had several districts come to us and say, "We have these students that have jobs. They have this level of support. We're providing it during the school year. We don't have the ability to provide it during the summer. Is that something that DARS could help with?"
We recognize that it's not in the best interest of the student to keep them from having those supports over the summer. The school is already providing really 3/4s of the support for that student in terms of that job. Those are the kind of things that we can certainly talk about.