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KTER Center
Scoping Review Findings:
Pre-employment transition services for students with disabilities
Presenter: Jeremy
Rasmussen
A webcast
originally broadcast in May 2020.
Sponsored by
AIR’s Knowledge Translation
For Employment
Research Center (KTER)
Transcript for
audio/video file on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z_IICFsA7ic
ANN OUTLAW: Welcome today to this on demand webcast on the KTER Center's recent scoping review findings. Today, we're here to speak about pre-employment transition services for students with disabilities. Thank you all for tuning in. I'm Ann Outlaw from the Knowledge Translation for Employment Research Center, or the KTER Center. We're housed here at the American Institutes for Research and we're funded by the National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. This webcast is part of a series. And if you're interested in hearing about job-related social communication skills of adults with autism spectrum disorder, please tune into another webcast in this series. You can check out our website for a link to that webcast, accessible presentation materials of both webcasts, and more information about these scoping reviews.
Well first some background. Ultimately, the KTER Center is here to test knowledge translation strategies to help stakeholders use and understand research to help people with disabilities find and keep their jobs. And we start our work by talking to stakeholders. To guide our work, we developed a project technical working group, or as we call it a TWG, on transition-age youth. And that TWG was comprised of NIDILRR grantees in the employment portfolio as well as professionals from the vocational rehabilitation, or VR, lens policy and employment communities. Our TWG helped us to identify the most pressing needs of students with disabilities.
Based on the TWG feedback, we conducted focus groups with VR counselors, or vocational rehabilitation counselors, and also young adults with disabilities. And we discussed some of the challenges that youth faced during those very formative years of high school and some of the ways that they tackle these issues with the support of their VR counselors. Back in the summer of 2018, we published a short webisode that discussed the findings of these focus groups and I've added the link to the webisode at the end of this PowerPoint if you're interested in taking a look.
So here to speak to us today is Jeremy Rasmussen. He is a TA or technical assistant consultant at the American Institutes for Research. And I'm very honored to be working with him. And I appreciate you for being here today Jeremy. Thanks.
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Thank you for having me.
ANN OUTLAW: Let's get started. Let's hear about the scoping review. So what were some of the key findings of this review?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Well, let me first provide some background. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act requires occupational rehabilitation agency to create a minimum of 15% of the federal government to providing pre-employment translation services to students with disabilities. And there are five elements of the pre-employment transition services, including job exploration counseling, workplace learning, counseling on opportunities for enrollment in comprehensive transition or post-secondary educational programs, workplace-readiness training to develop social skills, independent living, and instruction and self-advocacy.
The research revealed several themes related to the pre-employment transition services, that can inform the development of strategies for vocational counselors seeking to help students with disabilities find and maintain employment after high school.
ANN OUTLAW: So let's break this down a bit. For job-exploration counseling, what were the themes there?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Well, the first thing we had was career-goal development-- working with schools as early as possible on assisting in the development of career-related activities, which may include identifying vocational goals, is what we really mean by career-goal development.
Second, we had communicating with families. Families of students with disability can help facilitate employment decisions. Effective family communications strategies were cited as a positive factor in the transition in career-planning process.
Third, we had cultural competence. The needs of culturally-and-linguistically diverse students with disabilities are often wide ranging. VR counselors should consider the environmental-and-situational factors, such as like the home environment, make an impact the employment process. And fourth, we had inter-agency collaboration-- a working relationship between rehabilitation professionals, students with disability's family in the school system is imperative to helping students with disabilities achieve and maintain employment after high school.
ANN OUTLAW: And you've mentioned another thing about work-based learning. So what did the review entail in that regard?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Yeah. So we also had several themes for work-based learning. Previous-or-early work experience, which supports employment for students with disabilities. We had work-based social support, such as mentoring and role modeling. That is also a factor that can lead to successful employment. Social communication, interview skills was another one. Another theme was social-skills training, and transportation and travel independence.
ANN OUTLAW: Excellent. So WIOA, or the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, also talked about the importance of self-advocacy. Did you have any findings related to that?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Yes. We had three themes around self-advocacy-- self-determination skills. These are skills linked to an individual's quality of life and can lead to increasing satisfaction, company's productivity, empowerment, independence, and social belonging. Disclosure, which plays a big factor in employment-- students who disclose their disability are more likely to remain employed post-school. And a third theme we had was workplace accommodations. So students with disabilities need to be engaged in advocacy activities, that help them identify potential accommodations to support their goal of gainful employment.
ANN OUTLAW: Very interesting, especially the finding that students who disclosed their disability are more likely to remain employed post-school. Excellent. I just wanted to highlight that once again. And finally, there was a fifth element of WIOA, which was about counseling opportunities. Did you review that?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Well, our review only covers those first four that we discussed We didn't cover counseling on opportunities for enrollment in comprehensive transition or post-secondary educational programs because of its post-secondary focus. Though helping students with disabilities transition into secondary programs is extremely important, this review, we really only focused on findings related to maintaining employment.
ANN OUTLAW: Got it. So what type of studies were included in this review?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Well, we reviewed research articles and research-based products, such as toolkits and training materials, between 1998 and 2017. This date range was selected because the Workforce Investment Act was introduced in 1998, which provided states and local workforce investment activities to increase employment, including for people with disabilities. Thus, in order to filter out less-relevant research, the third strategy included only published and graded literature from 1998 to February 2017. Two independent reviewers reviewed all abstract titles of the search results for relevance. Once a list of included studies was determined, a full-text review was performed and relevant information was extracted.
ANN OUTLAW: Excellent. And so of the interventions that you extracted, how do you know that those worked?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Well, when reviewing the literature, we focus on themes-- which means, how many times did a particular strategy, such as job interview skill, for example, pop up across the literature? Though there is no guarantee that these interventions will work for everyone in every situation, it is promising that multiple studies using different methodologies came to relatively similar conclusions on their effectiveness.
ANN OUTLAW: Excellent. Thank you. And were there any limitations of this scoping review?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Yes. We did not assess the quality of each study included in this review. We instead assessed study's conclusions, implications, recommendations, as they're related to individuals' disabilities and employment. Also, only studies in English were used. There may have been appropriate articles written in other languages, but they were not considered for this review.
ANN OUTLAW: Got it. And what were the key implications for policy and practice that you found in this scoping review?
JEREMY RASMUSSEN: Well, I think it's important for VR counselors and VR professionals to consider these strategies when thinking through ways to provide pre-employment transition services. They may even consider using 15% of those federal funds from pre-employment transition services to develop training for VR counselors on how to leverage these strategies and put them into practice.
ANN OUTLAW: Excellent. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for taking time out to talk to us about this scoping review. We're really happy to hear what you've mentioned-- hear the results of the scoping review. And we look forward to reading it in full.
A few of the resources that were mentioned today are available here. We talked about the transition focus groups that were done in the summer of 2018. And the tech brief and webisodes on those findings are on our website, along with more information about who the stakeholders are-- who helped us develop the focus groups and the questions for our work with transition-aged youth. And the technical working group is housed at this link online.
I wanted to thank you. Thank you, Jeremy, for taking time out to talk to us. And none of this could happen without our wonderful tech guru, Shoshana Rabinovsky. So thank you, Shoshana. She's behind the scenes, but very much valued. And also, thank you though all of you who tuned in today for your support and for listening to this webcast. If you wouldn't mind, we'd appreciate if you'd fill out a brief evaluation. It should just take about five minutes or so. This link is on our website, at KTER.org. And it also will be emailed to all who register for today's webcast.
And finally, I'd like to thank NIDILRR as well-- the National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research-- for their support for this webcast. And if any of you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at KTER@air.org. All right, thanks, everybody.