Law, Health Policy & Disability Center
University of Iowa College of Law
http://disability.law.uiowa.edu/dpn/
and
The Burton Blatt Institute
Syracuse University
http://bbi.syr.edu
One–Stop Toolkit
Resources of the Week Technical Assistance Project E–Mail listserv
14 July 2006
Good morning everyone,
Below please find the web site and publication of the week, as well as other resources that we hope will be useful as you work on systems change activities to help improve employment opportunities for persons with disabilities.
To subscribe and / or view past resources of the week archives, access: www.onestoptoolkit.org and click on the link to "Resources of the Week" on the right hand side of the home page.
To view an indexed list of the resources of the week by subject matter, visit the L.P.H.D.C. web site at http://disability.law.uiowa.edu/lhpdc/resources/wig/default.asp. It currently includes 20 categories, covering over 300 annotated references. Each category opens to a new window with each Resource of the Week which covered material in that area.
Have a good day and weekend!
Laura Farah
Program Associate
Law, Health Policy & Disability Center
University of Iowa College of Law
P: 617–489–0086
F: 617–489–1374
[ E–mail Lgleneck@mail.law.uiowa.edu ]
[ E–mail LFarah8@aol.com ]
[ http://www.onestoptoolkit.org ]
[The full announcement is located under the section heading "Web Site of the Week"
]
Disability Navigators are constantly researching information and resource mapping for workforce development staff, customers with disabilities, and employers. Here’s another tool to add to your ‘Navigator toolbox’ that can help you find additional information and resources on a variety of topics. The DO-IT Knowledge Base (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology) project at the University of Washington has created a comprehensive online database containing over 300 articles. Users can find answers to questions about assistive technology, accessible information technology, college and career transition, universal design of instruction, student services, and other topics, as well as case studies and promising practices. When you cannot find the information you need through usual means, use this database to look-up articles, best practices, and resources on a variety of disability and career-related topics.
[The article is included below in its entirety.]
There are many ways for people with disabilities to give back to their community - many become role models for others. Sharing your experiences with others can make a difference. Two Chicago area navigators are working to make opportunities more tangible for people with disabilities. Jose Mendez has been working at the Chicago's Pilsen One-Stop Employment Center for three years. He is a disability program navigator. "What a navigator does is he or she works with the staff center and tries to teach them how to better work with individuals with disabilities," said Mendez. Born with cerebral palsy, Jose has a master's degree in special education from the University of Illinois Chicago. He is passionate about helping people with disabilities. "I like my job because I feel a sense of importance," said Mendez. "Growing up I struggled a lot, I know what it's like to be poor and I have a job and I see this position as an opportunity for me to give back to the disabled community." Although finding a job was not easy, Jose never felt discouraged. "I went on a few interviews and there were challenges of course with my abilities to speak clearly but I didn't even think of them, I saw them as an opportunity," said Mendez.
At the 47th Street One-Stop Center, Earl Jordan calls himself an advocrat. "It's a mixture between advocate and bureaucrat, our position is kinda weird," said Jordan. "I'm a bureaucrat in the sense that I am within the system but I'm an advocrat in that sense that I advocate within the system." Earl grew up on Chicago's Southside. He has a degree from Southern Illinois University in psychology. He was born with Spina Bifida. He spends most of his time working in the community. "I do outreach through the community to bring people in," said Jordan. He says his biggest challenge is society's attitudes and misconceptions about people with disabilities. "When people don't know about something, they fall back on their stereotypes of a certain disability," he said.
Looking at the success of Earl and Jose, anything is possible. "There are no excuses that I can't do something because of where I came from. It's about choices that you make in your life," said Jordan. "I don't think of negative things, I think about what I can do as opposed to what I can't do, kinda put things in a positive way," said Mendez. One-Stop Center is a primary resource where Chicagoans looking for employment and career counseling can access an array of services, from several city and state agencies.
“By the year 2014 – that’s only eight years away – 36 million people are expected to leave their jobs and will need to be replaced,” Assistant Secretary W. Roy Grizzard, Jr. told a group of human resource and marketing professionals gathered at the Harvard Club in New York City for a two-day workshop. As a keynote speaker for this workshop, titled “Diversity Profit Generation Series: Proving the Financial Business Case for Diversity,” Dr. Grizzard presented the business case for hiring people with disabilities. “There are more educated and better prepared workers with disabilities than ever before,” he said. “Right now businesses have the opportunity to tap into a young and growing talent pool” of more than 1.5 million college students who identify themselves as having one or more disabilities, he told the attendees.
Access the U.R.L. to read the full speech.
| Presenters: |
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| Moderator: | Jennifer McNelly, Director, Business Relations Group |
On July 3, 2006, the Employment and Training Administration (E.T.A.), U.S. Department of Labor (D.O.L.), announced in the Federal Register the availability of approximately $125 million in grant funds for Community-Based Job Training Grants. Funds will be awarded to individual Community College, Community College Districts, State Community College Systems, and One-Stop Career Centers to support or engage in a combination of capacity building and training activities for the purpose of building the capacity of community and technical colleges to train for careers in high-growth / high-demand industries in the local and / or regional economies. For more information about the Community Based Job Training Grants and to read a copy of the solicitation, please visit www.doleta.gov/business/Community-BasedJobTrainingGrants.cfm.
Virtual Prospective Applicant Conferences are for community colleges, community college districts, state community college systems, One-Stop Career Centers, and other eligible entities pursuing funding under the Community-Based Job Training Grants (C.B.J.T.G.) Solicitation for Grant Applications (S.G.A. / D.F.A.-P.Y.-05-11).
The Prospective Applicant Conferences, conducted via Webinar, will provide an overview of demand-driven workforce development through strategic partnerships; describe the critical elements of C.B.J.T.Gs; review the eligible applicants, including those in educationally underserved areas with no access to community colleges; and review the grant requirements and evaluation criteria of the Solicitation for Grant Applications. Questions from prospective applicants will be addressed in an interactive / rolling question platform, with questions submitted during the Webinar. Each Webinar will be archived and placed on Workforce3 One to allow conference attendees and other C.B.J.T.G. prospective applicants access to the presentation, as well as questions and answers.
Target Audience: Community and Technical Colleges, Community College Districts, State Community College Systems, One-Stop Career Centers, and other entities eligible to apply under the exception, who are prospective applicants for the Community-Based Job Training Grant Solicitation for Grant Applications. Please note, only one seat per institution will be registered. If multiple individuals from an institution wish to participate, we encourage them to convene in one location for the session. All conference sessions will be archived and available on Workforce3 One.
Registration for the Webinars are limited and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Please click the link below to login to Workforce3 One and register today!
If you are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or have speech disabilities and captioning would facilitate your participation in this Webinar, you can register for captioning service through the Federal Relay Conference Captioning. Please note the Federal Relay Service requires at least 48 hours notice (2 working days) to guarantee coverage. For more information, visit http://www.workforce3one.org/support/webinars.cfm#q5.
Produced by the A.F.B. National Employment Center, A Hire Vision: What Employers Want to Know About Hiring Visually Impaired Workers promotes the benefits of hiring workers who are blind or have low vision, and depicts how visually impaired employees perform their jobs. The video also contains interviews with those employees' supervisors, and explains how A.F.B. can help employers find what they need to recruit, hire, and retain qualified workers with visual impairments.
Today, the unemployment rate among people with severe visual impairments is five to fifteen times greater than that of the general population, and many of the barriers faced by visually impaired individuals stem from employer fears and negative attitudes.
Contrary to popular belief, blind or visually impaired workers are productively employed in a wide range of occupations, including lawyers, artists, accountants, secretaries, astronomers, customer service representatives, food service workers, and financial analysts—just to name a few. Access the following web site to view the video:
http://www.championwebtv.com/media_streams/afb/index.asp
[Excerpted from Attorney General John Ashcroft’s accompanying letter.]
Under President Bush’s New Freedom Initiative, this Administration is committed to full and fair enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act (A.D.A.), which provides people with disabilities an equal opportunity to work and to participate in the mainstream of American life. As part of the President’s initiative, the Department of Justice is providing information to small businesses about the A.D.A. and tax benefits to help them comply with the law. This packet contains information about the disabled access credit that is available for small businesses and the tax deduction that is available for businesses of any size to help offset some of the costs of improving accessibility for customers or employees with disabilities. It also includes the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) form and instructions for claiming the disabled access credit, a list of A.D.A. publications available free from the Department of Justice, and a list of telephone numbers and Internet sites to which you can turn for answers to your A.D.A. questions.
The mission of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (O.E.O.D.) is to ensure that equality, fairness and diversity in employment are realized for all Department of the Treasury employees and applicants for employment. This resource from the U.S. Department of Treasury addresses the following questions.
The Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology (DO-IT) project at the University of Washington has created a comprehensive Web-based “Knowledge Base” database containing over 300 articles. Users can find answers to questions about assistive technology, accessible information technology, college and career transition, universal design of instruction, student services, and other topics, as well as case studies and promising practices.
The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) authorized a significant level of investment — over $52 billion — for federal transit programs. SAFETEA-LU also added new transit programs and made changes to existing programs, including the New Starts and Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) programs. The New Starts program is a discretionary grant program for public transportation capital projects. The JARC program is intended to improve the mobility of low-income individuals seeking work. SAFETEA-LU authorized $8.6 billion for these two programs. The Federal Transit Administration (F.T.A.) manages both of these programs.
This testimony discusses G.A.O.'s preliminary findings on the (1) changes SAFETEA-LU made to the New Starts program, (2) changes SAFETEA-LU made to the JARC program, and (3) issues that may be important as F.T.A. moves forward with implementing the act. To address these objectives, G.A.O. interviewed F.T.A. officials, sponsors of New Starts projects, and representatives from industry associations and reviewed F.T.A.'s guidance on the New Starts and JARC programs and federal statutes, among other things.
The realities of today’s global economy make it imperative that the workforce investment system be demand-driven, providing services that prepare workers to take advantage of new and increasing job opportunities in high growth, high demand and economically critical industries and sectors of the American economy. The foundation of this effort is partnerships that include the public workforce investment system, business and industry, and education and training providers that develop and implement a strategic vision for economic development. To be demand-driven, the partners in an area must be work together to accomplish the joint goals, including:
This report, funded by the United States Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (E.T.A.) and produced by the National Association of Workforce Boards (N.A.W.B.), features the stories of seven local Workforce Investment Boards as they worked with their partners to create workforce solutions. Each “vignette” describes the initiative and highlights the lessons each W.I.B. learned from the experience.