www.okrehabcouncil.org
LETTER CONTENTS:
Quick Facts
About S.
1356, reauthorization of the Workforce and Rehabilitation Acts
·
S,
1356 breaks up programs under the Rehabilitation Act.
·
The
bill takes Vocational Rehabilitation out of the U.S. Department of Education
and puts it in the Labor Department under the Office of Disability Employment
Policy (ODEP), a small agency that has no experience in providing
rehabilitation services.
·
The
Secretary of Labor would write the federal regulations for VR.
·
VR
would be more closely aligned with the One-Stop employment programs for the
general public.
·
VR
would use the same performance measures and standards used for the other
Workforce employment programs for the general public. These standards could be adjusted
state-by-state for populations with employment barriers. However, new data collection and reporting
systems would have to be built at unknown cost to VR agencies.
·
The
bill puts Independent Living programs into the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. Disability and
Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) is also put in HHS. Both programs are placed in the Community
Living division along with Aging and developmental disabilities programs. A new Independent Living Administration would
be created here to oversee IL centers and Part B grants.
·
Vocational
Rehabilitation is de-emphasized throughout S. 1356. The new VR federal program would be called
Disability Employment, Services and Supports Administration. Rehabilitation knowledge and experience would
no longer be required of the VR Commissioner. Research through NIDRR would
focus increasingly on independent living and less on rehabilitation. VR counselor credentials are de-emphasized in
VR agency personnel plans (CSPD) with agency personnel standards opened up to
many employment and business-related fields.
·
The
bill emphasized Transition services. It
makes states set aside 15% of their VR funds for Transition, with most going to
services, not administration. Services
to youth could begin at age 14 and continue to age 24. Each VR office would have to have a separate
Local Transition Coordinator with support staff. VR could provide a broad range of transition
services to youth and students, with emphasis on career exploration, work
experience, training and skills for community participation.
·
VR
could pay for extended services in Supported Employment for 2 years, not just
18 months as currently. VR could pay for
4 years of extended services for youth with significant disabilities.
·
The
bill provides NO NEW FUNDING to pay
for the expanded youth, supported employment and business relations activities
it requires.
·
The
bill requires more collaboration and cooperative agreements with other agencies
such as developmental disabilities programs, Medicaid waiver programs, and
education agencies.
·
Under
an Order of Selection, VR agencies could serve individuals who only need
equipment or limited services in order to keep from losing a job.
·
The
bill promotes VR agency partnerships with employers to increase employment
opportunities, respond employer needs, access in-demand occupations, provide
work experience and internships, and establish stronger, enduring connections
with the employer community.
Quick Messages
About S.
1356, reauthorization of the Workforce and Rehabilitation Acts
TO:
Senator Tom
Coburn MD
202-224-5754;
Fax: 202-224-6008
Senator James
Inhofe
202-224-4721;
Fax: 202-228-0380
Ms. Claudia
Gordon
White House
Public Engagement Advisor for the Disability Community
POINTS TO MAKE
· Do not move VR from a federal agency
that has experience in Rehabilitation to a department that has no experience in
Rehabilitation or track record of serving people with significant disabilities.
· Do not dilute the qualifications for
rehabilitation professionals. The CSPD
section in S. 1356 envisions a wide
variety of VR agency staff but
de-emphasizes staff qualifications in Rehabilitation fields, instead opening up
the field to staff with bachelor degrees and experience (e.g. business,
economics, human resources) that is not related to the Rehabilitation field.
· Do not apply generic Workforce
employment program standards and performance measures to VR, which is a very
different type of program serving a population with unique needs and barriers
to employment.
· Do not require VR to expand services
to youth without providing added funding to pay for it. If VR has to divert funds from serving adults
with disabilities in order to pay for more staff and services for youth, job
placement numbers may decline.
· DO maintain the new focus on
development of partnerships with business and employers. This is the best part of the bill and has the
most promise for improving VR results.
EXAMPLES
Dear
Senator (name),
I am an Oklahoman with a
disability. Despite obstacles, I have
been able to work for a number of years due to assistance from our state’s
Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program.
I oppose S. 1356 because it
transfers the VR program into the U.S. Department of Labor, which has no
experience in running rehabilitation, training or employment programs that are
appropriately specialized for individuals with varied disabilities. So far, even after 15 years since the
Workforce Investment Act was passed, Labor Department employment programs like
the One-Stops have made few advances in addressing disability employment needs
or obstacles.
I believe it would be a serious
mistake to transfer the VR system out of the Education Department and into
Labor. Please do all you can to take
this transfer provision out of S. 1356.
Thank you for listening.
Sincerely,
*****
Dear
Senator (name).
As a rehabilitation
counselor I work closely with individuals who have many types of
disabilities. I have come to understand
the range of obstacles they face to employment, and the many kinds of special
skills and services that are needed in order to remove those obstacles. I am
writing you now because S. 1356 contains a provision that would hurt rather
help our efforts to equip people with disabilities for employment.
S. 1356
would reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act, which contains the
Rehabilitation Act. This bill is focused
on more consolidation and “alignment” of federally funded employment programs. But in its current form, the bill actually tears
disability programs apart, with the potential to make them all less effective. It separates Rehabilitation, Special
Education, Independent Living and Disability Research, putting them into
different federal departments and severing the connections these
disability-focus programs now have within the Department of Education.
Please
amend S. 1356 to keep the Rehabilitation Services Administration in the
Department of Education, where its connection with Special Education is
necessary to address the bill’s new mandates for increased rehabilitation
services for youth transitioning through school and into the world of work. Now is not the time to sever that connection
in favor of an administrative experiment that has not been studied for possible
results or vetted by the disability constituencies affected.
Thanks for
doing what you can to prevent S. 1356 from moving forward without more time to
study it and without significant revision.
Sincerely,
*****
Dear
Senator (name),
I am a
current Vocational Rehabilitation client who is deeply concerned about the
contents of S. 1356, the HELP Committee bill to renew the Workforce Act and
Rehabilitation Act. I strongly OPPOSE these parts of the bill:
1.
It
takes the Rehabilitation program out of the Education Department which knows
rehabilitation and puts it in the Department of Labor which has no experience
in rehabilitation and a poor record of service to job seekers with severe
disabilities.
2.
It
applies the same performance standards to Rehab as to employment programs for
the general public without disabilities. This is nonsensical, and shows
no understanding of the barriers to employment and complex needs of people with
severe disabilities.
3.
It
mandates expansion of Rehab services to youth without providing any added
funding, which means less funding to help adults enter or re-enter the
workforce. The bill puts more demands on the Rehab system for serving
students but does not require more of the Education system.
Please work
to take these harmful provisions out of S. 1356.
Sincerely,
*****
Dear
Senator (name),
I am a
person with a disability who has used the Vocational Rehabilitation system with
success in the past. The VR program
needs to be preserved and strengthened.
It has truly made a positive difference in the lives of millions of
Americans who have disabilities. I have
been a taxpayer for many years because of the employment assistance VR was able
to provide me.
S. 1356 was
recently passed by the HELP Committee to reauthorize the Workforce Act and
Rehab Act. I’ m sure this bill is
well-intentioned, but it does contain many features that I think could hurt job
seekers with severe disabilities. These
provisions now in S. 1356 could be harmful to individuals with disabilities and
the taxpayers:
-
The
bill takes the Rehabilitation program out of an experienced and knowledgeable
agency and puts it into a department without any rehab background or knowledge
(the Labor Department). Please do not
move the Rehabilitation program from its current place in the Education
Department.
-
The
bill requires more Rehabilitation agency service to youth and students but
provides no money for it. Instead, it
diverts funds away from the broad population needing VR services in order to
serve youth. Serving teenagers is
important, but not at the expense of rehabilitation that allows adults with
severe disabilities to obtain or return to work. Any mandate of more services to youth should
be supported with new funding.
-
The
bill would measure the success of Rehabilitation programs by the same standards
used to measure employment programs for the general public. This shows no understanding of what Rehabilitation
is, what is does or why it is needed.
Generic employment and training programs are vastly different from the
VR program which removes complex barriers to employment by providing
specialized and individualized services.
Generic standards applied to the Rehab program will only pressure the
system toward quick job placements in low level jobs.
-
The
bill fails to recognize the proven value of specialized rehabilitation services
in making employment and career advancement possible for many individuals who
have very significant barriers to employment.
Rehabilitation expertise is de-emphasized in this bill. I am very worried that this shows an intent
to merge Rehabilitation into the generic Workforce system which has NEVER been
effective for individuals with severe disabilities.
The
employment rate for people with severe disabilities is low because of the
extraordinary barriers they encounter to working. These include negative employer attitudes,
lack of transportation (a major barrier), disincentives in current benefit
programs, the cost of assistive technology devices and training, inaccessible
workplaces and the lack of needed job accommodations. Vocational Rehabilitation addresses these
barriers for individuals to the extent it can within funding limitations. S. 1356 does promote VR and business
interaction and this will be helpful as long as we keep Rehabilitation within
the Education Department where there is established expertise in this field.
Thank you
for doing whatever you can to remove damaging provisions from S. 1356. If the provisions noted above remain the
bill, I urge you to oppose it.
Respectfully,
*****
Dear
Senator (name),
Please do
not move the Rehabilitation program for people with disabilities out of the
Education Department and into the Labor Department.
As many
people with disabilities (like myself) have experienced, the employment service
programs for the general public through Labor are mostly ineffective in getting
us jobs. Many of the one-stop centers
are not even accessible. The staff may
be pleasant but they are not knowledgeable about accessibility and their system
is not set up to help us deal with the problems associated with having a
disability and trying to work. Moving
Rehab to the Labor Department would be a bad deal for everyone.
Keep
Voc-Rehab where the administration and staff know something about disabilities
and what specialized services are needed to make employment happen when there
are so many obstacles in the way.
S. 1356
moves Rehab to the Labor Department.
Please oppose it unless this part is taken out of the bill.
I am proud
to have been working and paying taxes for many years thanks to the Rehab
program. This is a valuable
program. We need to keep it where it is,
not move it to an agency that has already shown it is not prepared to help
people with severe disabilities get good jobs.
Thanks
for doing what you can about this.
Sincerely,
*****
Dear
Senator (name)
I am a
Certified Rehabilitation Counselor and one of your constituents. I work with individuals who have disabilities
and significant barriers to employment.
This involves understanding the effects of many types of disabilities,
and knowledge of the array of resources that could help the person prepare for
and obtain employment.
Last year
in Oklahoma the Vocational Rehabilitation program was able to put almost 3,000
people with disabilities to work – most of these people had significant
disabilities.
You will
soon be considering S. 1356, a bill to reauthorize the Workforce and
Rehabilitation Acts. As now written, S.
1356 contains some troubling provisions that could negatively affect the
quality and availability of rehabilitation services for Oklahomans with
disabilities.
Specifically,
S. 1356 moves the Rehab program out of the Education Department, where it has
been for decades, into the Labor Department.
I believe this is a bad move because ED is experiences in disability and
rehabilitation, but the Labor Department actually has a record of generally
poor accessibility in its one-stop programs, as well as a record of not even
serving people who have severe disabilities such as blindness or deafness.
S. 1356
also contains an unfunded mandate by requiring Rehabilitation to expand
services to youth in school, serve them in the early teen years and for longer
periods of time, but the bill provides no added funding for doing this. Simply put, this means that VR agencies will
have to take money away from helping adults with significant disabilities get
jobs and become taxpayers, in order to pay for services to youth that will not
be entering the job marker for years to come.
The Oklahoma VR agency currently serves thousands of teenagers with
disabilities and we want to continue doing that, but Congress needs to fund it
if it wants to require expansion in this area.
In short, I
hope you will oppose this bill as it is now, or work to remove the damaging
provisions from it.
My sincere
thanks for your interest in Oklahomans with disabilities.
(Your name
and address)
