August 13, 2003

Effective Participation of Persons with Disabilities in the One 
Stops and Workforce Development System  

presented by James Schmeling, J.D., Peter Blanck, Ph.D., J.D., 
Alex Kielty and Jim Dowling 

Sponsored by: Disability Law Resource Project (DLRP) and RIIL, 
Research Information for Independent Living.
   

RACHEL: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Web cast on 
effective participation of people with disabilities in the One-
Stops and Workforce Development System. My name is Rachel Kosoy. 
I am with ILRU, a home of the two projects who are sponsoring 
today's event.  Our two sponsors -- well, the first sponsor is 
the Disability Law Resource Project, which is an education 
center on the Americans with Disabilities Act and accessible 
information technology. And you can check us out at 
www.dlrp.org. Our second sponsor is RIIL. That's Research 
Information for Independent Living. They host a database of 
disability related information. It's a huge database and you can 
check it out at www.getRIIL.org. Okay, I will be monitoring 
today's Web cast, which basically means I will be voicing your 
questions to the presenters. We do have a number of presenters 
today. They include Peter Blanck, James Schmeling, Alex Kielty, 
Jim Downing, and during the last half hour of our session, 
Michael Morris will also be joining us. And Peter Blanck will 
give you very good introductions to each of these folks in a 
little bit.  I just want to remind you now that in order to 
submit a question, you can click the submit question button 
which should appear at the bottom of your Real One Player 
screen. Another way is you can just send an e-mail to 
webcast@ilru.org. So please go ahead, send those now or at any 
point during the Web cast and I will pose your questions to the 
presenters as they pause to take questions.   Okay, one other 
thing if anybody has technical difficulties today, you can give 
us a call at 713-520-0232, and we've got some people standing by 
who can give you help.  All right, with all of that out of the 
way, we can move into the Web cast. The topic today is effective 
participation of people with disabilities in the one-stop 
system. You will learn a lot today about the disability program 
navigator initiative, and also some about other efforts to 
improve access to programs and services. You will also learn 
about the finding from two years of work incentives grants, and 
as you can see from the website for today's event, you will be 
given many, many resources as well.  So I'd like to now 
introduce Peter Blanck, and he will introduce our other 
presenters. Dr. Blanck is a professor of law at the University 
of Iowa College of Law. He's also a professor of public health 
and psychology at the University of Iowa. He is the director of 
the University of Iowa's Law, Health Policy and Disability 
Center. Peter obtained his doctorate in social psychology from 
Harvard and his law degree from Stanford Law School. He has had 
multiple fellowships as well as appointments or positions with 
disability and law-related organizations. He has received 
national and international attention for articles and books he's 
written on disability law and health policy. And a last tidbit I 
want to make sure to tell you is that Professor Blanck served as 
counsel to the National Council on Disability in the Americans 
with Disabilities Act case before the United States Supreme 
Court. And I could go on, but I invite you to please visit the 
Web site and read more about Peter and for now I'm going to hand 
it over to you.  

  DR. BLANCK: Thank you, Rachel. My mother likes that 
introduction every time you say it.  

  RACHEL: He didn't pay me anything, I swear.  

  DR. BLANCK: The last part about the Echazabal case is nice, 
but we lost nine to nothing, so I try not to highlight that too 
much.  

  RACHEL: I'll remember that for next time.  

  DR. BLANCK: It is a pleasure to be here with you. I know we 
have a very large turn out on the wire and that in part reflects 
the importance and timeliness of the topic we're going to talk 
about today. I was very fortunate to sit literally five feet 
from President Bush when he announced the New Freedom Initiative 
and rolled out many of the ideas that this administration is 
pursuing with regard to the inclusion and empowerment of persons 
with disabilities in the workforce and elsewhere. Our center 
here, which is the Law, Health Policy and Disability Center has 
been very fortunate to work with a range of folks around the 
country, many of whom are on the phone to study employment 
policy issues through our research and training center, through 
our relationship with the national center on workforce and 
disability which is in Boston and of course through our 
technical assistance provision to the Department of Labor, the 
employment and training administration, which Alex Kielty and 
Jim Downing from ETA will talk about and they, of course, are 
from that division and will be key participants in this Web cast 
later on. Without providing too much introduction, because I 
think most of the folks listening are generally knowledgeable, 
the Workforce Investment Act was signed into law in 1998, and 
its goal was rather straightforward and that was to enhance the 
productivity and competitiveness of our country's economy. And 
one main way to do that was by increasing employment and 
employment opportunities for people with disabilities as well as 
many others who come in contact with the work training and job 
training system. Now, as a result of the Workforce Investment 
Act, there was a concept of the development of a new seamless 
system of service which was basically to pull together a lot of 
existing resources and make it more efficient and friendly -- 
user friendly for persons with disabilities and others and this 
is the so-called one stop delivery system. This one stop 
delivery system is meant to be managed at various levels, local, 
federal, state, and one of the main ideas behind the management 
of these one-stop centers was of course to make them accessible 
to people with disabilities, and that means both 
programmatically, technologically and otherwise. And so the 
Department of Labor -- and Alex and Jim will talk about this -- 
has given out what are called work incentive grants or WIG's and 
has developed a disability program navigator system, which are a 
group of individuals, those are the DPNs who we will be talking 
about, which are designed to help people with disabilities have 
access to this seamless one-stop system.  And we're very 
fortunate today to have two leaders from the administration from 
the Department of Labor who will speak about these issues, James 
Schmeling, one of the researchers and leaders from our center 
who works a lot on these issues and Michael Morris who directs 
our RRTC and would works very closely from our Washington office 
with Alex and Jim and others. Jim Downing, who will speak first, 
has a very interesting and committed background to this area.  
Besides being a Joseph Kennedy foundation fellow and having been 
personally and professionally touched by disability issues, he's 
worked on the hill. He was co-director of a research and 
rehabilitation training center on workforce investment and 
employment policy and now he's a policy specialist at the 
Department of Labor where he's a leader on working on disability 
policy programs for ETA, that is the employment and training 
administration, and he works with Alexandra Kielty who will be 
the speaker after Jim, who is the chief of that division, the 
chief of the division of disability and workforce programs 
within ETA, and she is responsible for ETA's disability 
initiatives, basically to accomplish a lot of the things that I 
was just talking about. She in her administrative role oversees 
millions of dollars which are paid out in grants to state, 
local, and governmental and nonprofit entities to ensure that 
these programs, the DPN program, the navigator program and the 
WIG's, which are progressive grants are managed in such a way so 
as to maximize access by persons with disabilities and to of 
course enhance economic independence and economic empowerment of 
persons with disabilities.  Both Alex and Jim have along history 
of commitment and knowledge and expertise in this area and we're 
very fortunate to have them on this Web cast. James Schmeling 
who will speak after that is law graduate of the University of 
Iowa and who has spent the last several years working with Alex 
and Jim and Michael Morris and others on the implementation, 
evaluation and development of the WIG program and the DPN 
program and Michael Morris who will speak last has for twenty 
plus years worked in this area in a range of positions, ranging 
from Executive Director of United Cerebral Palsy to now the 
associate director of our research center in Washington D.C. and 
heading up efforts in the technical assistance area with Alex 
and Jim. Without further ado, Jim will first discuss the WIG 
program and then Alex will discuss the navigator program. And my 
suggestion Rachel is perhaps after they give their introductory 
remarks, we can take some questions to make this as interactive 
as possible and then we'll move to James. So without further 
ado, Jim Downing we're delighted to have you with us.  

  MR. DOWNING: Thank you very much Peter. It's a pleasure to 
speak with all of you this afternoon on this very important 
issue. I'm going to first speak to you about the work incentive 
grants. It's a relatively new project. It's congressionally 
appropriated grant program that is different than formula 
funding in that Congress actually gives us the money directly to 
accomplish our goals with the Workforce Investment Act and the 
one-stop career center. The work incentive grants are currently 
funded at $20 million per year. They were originally funded in 
2001. In that first year, we had 23 work incentive grantees and 
the project in the first year lasted for 30 months. In year 2, 
we had an additional $20 million available to us. We funded an 
additional 23 grants, and those projects are -- will last for 24 
months, and our third round of grants, which were just recently 
awarded, we had $17 million available to us, and we awarded 42 
new grants.   Now, each one of these grants are very different. 
There are no two alike, although there are similarities among 
the projects. Our goal with these projects, of course, is to 
assure fair and equitable access to the Department of Labor 
programs and services for individuals with disabilities. We want 
to provide the greatest opportunity possible for an individual 
with disabilities to access the programs and services available 
through the one-stop system. The goal of these grants although 
are not direct service grants. These dollars are not intended to 
provide the direct services to individuals, but they are to 
provide dollars available at the front door of the one-stop and 
the local workforce investment areas and in some instances even 
the state. But these are infrastructure dollars and capacity 
building.  Our goal is to provide the funding to the one-stop 
that will enable them to purchase assistive technology, provide 
adaptations and accommodations within their facilities to assure 
access, physical access, but in turn also we -- to address 
issues of programmatic accessibility. More than we all know, 
that once that accessibility means more than simply getting in 
the door. We recognize that once somebody with a disability can 
access a facility that there are additional hurdles and barriers 
that they generally encounter. And those we categorize under the 
programmatic area. Many of those have to do with staff, and 
staff knowledge and staff comfort levels and staff ability in 
working with individuals with disabilities. So a lot of our work 
incentive grants focus on staff training and capacity in that 
regard.  A lot of our work incentive grants work on 
collaboration with the existing and mandated partners within the 
one-stop, but they also extend to outside of the one-stop. They 
work with community organizations and others within the area. 
Once again, to better facilitate access to programs and services 
for individuals with disabilities. Peter and James later on will 
be speaking about some of the outcomes that we have from our 
perspective we've been very pleased with our grants. And we're 
very pleased to be moving forward with them.  One additional 
topic that I wanted to mention was the outreach that is -- that 
the work incentive grants are participating in as well. Many of 
them are actively engaged in outreach activities to bring 
individuals with disabilities into the one-stop in a welcoming 
manner, and to increase the knowledge within the disability 
communities within their local areas as to the availability of 
these services. Once again, our goal is to assure, as was stated 
by Peter in the beginning, a seamless service delivery system, 
and in the authorization of the Workforce Investment Act there 
were 7 principals and we focus on the universal access. We want 
to make sure that people with disabilities or anybody that comes 
to a one-stop center receives the services they need to enable 
them to obtain a job or retain a job or to regain employment. 
That's about all I have right now, Peter, and I want to thank 
you for the opportunity. And we will entertain questions after 
Alex speaks about the Navigators. Thank you very much.  

  DR. BLANCK: Thank you, Jim. Alex, we'll turn to you now. Thank 
you. 

   MS. KIELTY: Thank you, and it's a pleasure to have the 
opportunity to talk to your audience about our navigator 
initiative along with the work incentive grants. Just I will 
begin with a broad overview of what we have done to date and 
what the objective of the navigator initiative is. We are 
jointly sponsoring the disability program navigator initiative 
with the Social Security Administration's office of program 
development and research. We are jointly funding and providing 
to 14 states $6 million this year to implement approximately 100 
navigator positions. We will be funding this coming year an 
additional $6 million for approximately 80 to 100 more positions 
to be implemented in either the same states or additional 
states.  Let me go through the 14 states as many of you are 
probably interested in that. They include Arizona, California, 
Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, 
Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Vermont, and 
Wisconsin. There will be approximately four Navigators in some 
of the smaller states and up to about 12 Navigators in some of 
the larger states that are going to be funded under this 
initiative. They will be located in the comprehensive one-stop 
centers within a local workforce investment area that has been 
identified by the state in their proposal. As I mentioned, this 
is a two-year demonstration project. We will be training 
Navigators extensively, working with Peter and Michael Morris 
and James Schmeling on the development of training for the 
navigators on SSA employment support programs as well as one-
stop partner funded programs and many other elements that impact 
the ability of people with disabilities to obtain and retain 
employment. DOL and SSA are working together also to conduct a 
comprehensive evaluation of this initiative, and we will be also 
working on other elements of the implementation process as it 
rolls out.  We do know from our work incentive grants that many 
comprehensive one-stop centers are interested in this kind of 
position as many of our grantees under the work incentive grant 
on their own established similar kinds of navigator type 
positions. We've included and developed a position description 
jointly with the Social Security Administration that is very 
expensive and probably a bit overwhelmingly so, but it is 
designed to be a bit -- to be kind of brought together more at 
the local level to address some of the local area concerns. In 
other words, we have included almost everything that we can 
think of that would impact the ability of a person with 
disabilities who enters a one-stop system to receive seamless 
and comprehensive services and to increase their employment and 
self-sufficiency. We are aiming and intending to facilitate the 
access in a more seamless manner within a one-stop center, and 
we want to particularly foster the linkage to the employer 
community that is available through the one-stop career center 
system. Some of the things that we have in mind in terms of what 
this navigator will be doing, they'll be assisting people with 
disabilities to access and navigate a complex provision of 
various programs that many of you are well aware of that impact 
their ability to gain or obtain employment, including 
transportation, including housing, including food stamps, other 
benefit types of programs, as well as a host of training and 
employment programs that are available under the Workforce 
Investment Act. They will be developing linkages and 
collaborating on an ongoing basis with employers, thereby 
facilitating job placements, facilitating linkages to implement 
assistive technology should that be needed, to identify 
accommodations and facilitate the process for identifying those 
accommodations. And basically as an educator to the employer 
community on disability-related concerns, not taking upon 
themselves the role of an EEO specialist, however, but basically 
providing the linkage to resources that would be able to assist 
employers in accommodating an individual with a disability. They 
would also be facilitating working on the transition of in and 
out of school of youths with disabilities. Social Security 
Administration has a number of special projects that they are 
currently or about to fund within states on youth as well as 
early intervention projects and some other special initiatives 
that they have underway, and we hope that these Navigators will 
be able to link with those special projects. The navigator will 
also be conducting outreach to many agencies and organizations 
that serve people with disabilities. We know that many non-
mandated partners under the Workforce Investment Act such as 
developmental disability councils within states and the whole 
network of mental health, public services and profit services 
within states are not mandated partners and yet there is a 
critical need to reinforce linkage between our system and these 
systems. That's also true for the independent living movement 
and independent living centers, which many of you represent. The 
disability employment navigator will also serve as a resource on 
SSA's work incentives and employment support programs and the 
provision of services through benefits planning, assistance and 
outreach organizations. This service is available through 
protection and advocacy systems as well as SSA's other work 
incentive programs. They will also serve as a resource to the 
workforce investment community. We intend and certainly expect 
that the presence of the disability program navigator will be a 
tremendous boost to those comprehensive one-stop centers and 
workforce investment areas where they are located in terms of 
instilling and reinforcing training that may have already been 
provided on providing comprehensive services to people with 
disabilities, and a host of knowledge and skills that are 
available in terms of effective practices for serving people 
with disabilities. As well ensuring and reinforcing the need for 
fully universal -- universally accessible centers, making sure 
facilities are accessible, making sure people are trained on 
assistive technology that should be available in the centers, et 
cetera. What the navigator is in our view -- and I'll go over 
that very briefly and then I'll close and turn this over to 
Peter and James again -- the navigator, we envision the 
navigator to be a resource, a facilitator, a problem-solver, a 
systems change agent and a relationship builder. What we do not 
envision the navigator to be is that they are not a case 
manager. We are hoping not to put in place a person that is a 
go-to person within a comprehensive one-stop center for people 
with disabilities. What we expect and presume there will be some 
need for intensive one-on-one contacts and communications with 
an individual who enters a center that may have a disability, it 
will not be the navigator's role that they are a case manager 
rsay within a comprehensive one-stop center. What another aspect 
that the navigator is not is a front line staff person in a 
workforce center. They will be doing much broader and more -- I 
guess a broad level of training, of linking with outside 
organizations and doing many, many other things and working as a 
front line person in a comprehensive one-stop center. They are 
also not a BPAO specialist and I know we've gotten a lot of 
questions with regard to that. How is this different? What they 
will be doing is connecting with the BPAO system and the Social 
Security Administration system, facilitating the linkage to the 
proper resources for those people who express a desire to get 
that kind of information or where the disability program 
navigator identifies that this could be a significant benefit to 
the individual. Plus they are also not a vocational 
rehabilitation specialist, and we do not intend or want to 
duplicate in any way skills and delivery of services that are 
already available either through the Workforce Investment Act 
system or through another provider organization. We primarily 
intend that they will be assisting people to access and navigate 
the complex provision that we all know most people with 
disabilities experience as they try and enter the workforce 
system if they have not been in it before or to re-enter it and 
that's primarily the role of this individual. And we hope as 
well that they will be performing an important function with 
regard to youth and linking youth to the workforce system. There 
is a lot of work to be done in that area as well. And with that 
I will close and turn it back to you, Peter. Thank you. 

  DR. BLANCK: Thank you, Alex. You and Jim have provided very 
good and extensive background on the overview of the system. I 
think it might be useful -- we have many people on the line and 
I think these things are very interesting when we get feedback 
from the audience. Rachel, would you be prepared to distill and 
present some of those questions to either Jim or Alex this 
point? 

  RACHEL: Sure. And I actually want to tell you guys, Jim and 
Alex, that you did a very good job because you actually answered 
a number of questions along the way. Okay, Jim, there was a 
couple of questions about WIG's. Are there any efforts planned 
or underway to monitor the access and experience of persons with 
disabilities to one-stop centers? If so, what are they and how 
can that information be accessed? I guess that one could go to 
either one of you. 

  MR. DOWNING: Alex, do you want to take that one? 

  MS. KIELTY: What are we doing to monitor that? I'm not sure 
exactly how to address that except to say that we do ongoing 
monitoring of our grants. We also are -- and Peter will be 
talking to that or I think Michael may be talking to that, the 
process evaluation that we've conducted. We've also worked with 
the office of disability employment policy, and they have been 
developing and finalized along with the center for civil rights 
at the Department of Labor a disability checklist which will be 
utilized by the equal employment specialists in various states 
under the guidance of the CRC to look at the one-stop career 
center system, look at individual one-stops or state level one-
stops in terms of compliance kinds of issues. We are not in our 
role doing compliance monitoring of accessibility standards and 
we do not have the skills and abilities to do that. So we do not 
consider that our role. We are approaching it more from a 
technical assistance standpoint and a facilitation standpoint 
providing incentive funds as well as a tremendous amount of 
technical assistance and support to improve things within the 
one-stop career center system. 

  RACHEL: Okay. I guess two sort of follow-up things to that. 
One, is I just want to let people know -- and I know Peter was 
going to announce it later, but since Alex went ahead and 
mentioned the checklist, I want to let everybody know that on 
Monday, September 8th, Bobby Silverstein who really wrote the 
checklist will host another Web cast and he will go into detail 
with you all about the checklist and answer questions about it. 
So just want to plant that seed for people.  And Alex, I guess 
as a little follow-up to what you said, it seems like the 
audience wants to know if there are any studies about the 
experience of people with disabilities as opposed to coming from 
the direction of studying and monitoring if the one-stop centers 
are complying. 

  MS. KIELTY: Have there been surveys of their experiences? Is 
that what you think they're asking? 

  RACHEL: Uh-huh. 

  MS. KIELTY: No, there hasn't been that I'm aware of other than 
through other organizations. Peter and their group look at the 
policy implementation of the WIA, the Eldridge center at Rutgers 
has done kind of a survey and evaluation of experiences of 
people with disabilities in a one-stop system. So there have 
been a few things like that that have been developed, but there 
hasn't been something completed that I'm aware of internally 
within the Department of Labor. 

  RACHEL: Okay. And Alex, people also want to know how can they 
find out who the navigator in their area is. 

  MS. KIELTY: We -- since this is very, very new, the awards to 
the states were only made effective June 30 of 2003. Individuals 
have not been identified or hired for the most part yet. We 
expect that they will be in place in many areas by the end of 
September, and we will be collecting that information and making 
that available more readily available through our one-stop tool 
kit.org website as well as our DOL ETA disability on line 
website. 

  RACHEL: And those websites, just to let people know, I know 
it's kind of hard to catch them while they're said real quickly, 
so we will make sure to list all of those websites in the 
resource section for you on our website. 

  MS. KIELTY: Great. Thank you. 

  RACHEL: Okay, hang on. I'm looking -- I just got a windfall of 
questions. One here, Alex, is I know you're just emphasizing how 
this round is just getting started. People want to know how 
they'll be informed of the next round of grants. 

  MS. KIELTY: We will have both -- we will have another round of 
work incentive grants. It's best to kind of watch out on our 
website. I don't think we will be issuing a solicitation until 
early winter. Likewise, we will be working with the Social 
Security Administration to identify how we are going to approach 
the second round of navigator states, of how we approach the 
implementation of additional navigators, but with regard to the 
work incentive grants, there will be at least -- I'm sorry -- 14 
million that will be made available for work incentive grants 
within the next -- within the coming program year. So it will 
probably be announced as I mentioned in the early winter or in 
January or so. 

  RACHEL: Okay. All right, two other questions I'll kind of give 
you together, Alex, and then Peter, let me know when you're 
ready to jump in and move along. We can maybe hold some of these 
other questions for later. 

  DR. BLANCK: No, keep going, this is good stuff. 

  RACHEL: Okay, people are asking for clarity about what is the 
BPAO system, and then after that, there is also some interest -- 
I'm paraphrasing some questions here -- about how the navigator 
will work with vocational rehabilitation and it seems generally 
that people are looking for some clarity on how it will actually 
work. 

  MS. KIELTY: Okay. Let me respond to the BPAO. That's the 
benefits, planning and outreach specialists that have been 
implemented by the Social Security Administration. That was part 
of and included in the Ticket to Work and work incentive 
improvement act of 1999. The BPAO's -- it was required that 
social security implement BPAO specialists throughout the nation 
providing complete geographic coverage across the country. I 
think there are 23 grants. I'm sorry, I may not be recalling 
that correctly, but I think there is 23 million that is directed 
toward the BPAO program in each annual year. That has been 
underway for a couple of years now. Those individuals -- and I 
can't directly speak to it since I'm not part of the Social 
Security Administration, and I don't -- and I simply can't 
directly speak to it, but they are providing a more intensive 
information on the impact of an individual's benefits, if they 
should return to work providing much more support with regard to 
SSA benefits, and once again, it's a system that has been 
established for the Social Security Administration SSI and SSDI 
beneficiaries. 

  RACHEL: Okay, great. 

  MS. KIELTY: I didn't respond to the other one yet. The 
question with regard to the VR to how they would interact. 
Primarily, I think in our experience to date we have found that 
similar type positions in the one-stop center has really helped 
VR a lot in terms of being able to provide more effective 
referrals of eligible individuals with disabilities to the 
vocation and rehabilitation system. As most of you know, 
vocational rehabilitation services are a mandated program within 
the Workforce Investment Act and the navigator would be working 
in concert with the vocational rehabilitation program. They 
would be facilitating linkages to them and hopefully they would 
be a tremendous asset in additional benefit to those programs -- 
to the vocational rehabilitation specialists. 

  RACHEL: Okay, I have one other question I'd like to squeeze in 
here before we move on. And this one might be more for Jim, but 
can the WIG grantees use some of their funds to help employers 
pay to have reasonable accommodations made for employees with 
disabilities, or do the employers really have to rely on the 
disabled access credit, VR, IRS credits, et cetera? 

  MR. DOWNING: Ok well, that type of accommodation recognizing 
that there are resources --  

  RACHEL: I'm sorry Jim. It's really hard to hear you. 

  MR. DOWNING: I'm sorry. Let me try this again. Recognizing 
that there is a significant need for resources to be available 
to employers to provide reasonable accommodations. With that 
said, these grants are not a direct service grant, that type of 
an accommodation would be considered to be a direct service. Our 
intention with these, as far as employers would be concerned 
with the work incentive grants, would be to provide an 
opportunity for employer involvement within the one-stop, 
outreach type of activities, information sharing, awareness, 
things of that nature with the employers. As far as the actual 
accommodations, these grants are not designed nor intended to 
actually provide an employer the appropriate accommodations 
needed by an individual or employee with disabilities. There are 
other programs available through the Workforce Investment Act 
that can provide some level of accommodation, but it varies as 
far as commitment in the system as to what actually is 
available. That is one of the areas of interest that we have 
been looking at and hopefully in the future we will be able to 
address that issue better. 

  RACHEL: Okay, great. And I guess -- well, it's indirectly 
related. I have another question and I promise this is the last 
one -- about resources. This question comes from somebody who is 
in a three county system. They have a lot of what they call 
virtual sites that are located throughout the very rural area of 
these counties. And some of the satellite sites consist of 
computer access to the workforce system and some are located in 
schools or libraries or even small stores. And so this person 
who is from one of the centers for independent living is 
concerned with getting every site accessible architecturally and 
programmatically and is looking for any suggestions you might 
throw their way. 

  MR. DOWNING: Okay, as far as the accessibility of the 
satellite centers, with the authorization initial authorization 
of the Workforce Investment Act, there is a section within the 
Workforce Investment Act called Section 188 in the 
nondiscrimination regulations. The regulations that have been 
put in place around Section 188 are probably some of the 
strongest nondiscrimination regulations in federal government. 
That aspect of it, and the compliance aspect as far as 
accessibility is concerned is actually charged to the Civil 
Rights Center here at the U.S. Department of Labor. They are the 
ones responsible for the monitoring and assurance of compliance 
from a federal perspective. In the implementation of the Section 
188 regulations, each state, and in turn each governor and in 
turn the local areas, have a specific responsibility to assure 
that their facilities are accessible. That said, we recognize 
that not all facilities are accessible. We are working on 
providing technical assistance through our work incentive grants 
and through other avenues that we have underway to assist with 
this accessibility. However, our unit is not charged with 
responsibility of compliance. Once again, that is handled by the 
Civil Rights Center. I think when you hear the presentation on 
the Section 188 checklist by Bobby Silverstein, that some of 
this will become more clear to you as to how the compliance and 
accessibility and the assurance of compliance and accessibility 
requirements are handled. Okay, thank you. 

  RACHEL: Okay, great. Okay, Peter, I'm going to turn it back to 
you now. 

  DR. BLANCK: Thanks, Rachel. Very interesting discussion. I 
know we have more comments waiting I'm sure. I'm going to turn 
to James Schmeling now for some more overview comments. He'll 
speak for maybe five or ten minutes as well and then we'll 
probably get Michael Morris on the line and after James speaks 
for maybe five or seven minutes or so, we will take some more 
questions. So great job so far, guys, and James, why don't you 
give us a few insights for the next couple of minutes? 

  MR. SCHMELING: Thank you, Peter. Thanks, Jim and Alex. The 
information has been very informative and I'm glad to see that 
there is this much interaction with questions from the audience. 
That's always terrific. Also I think Rachel will probably note 
at the end of the call as well is that other questions may be 
forthcoming afterwards and to the extent that we can answer 
those we're always glad to that as well. Alex mentioned earlier 
that the disability program navigators have not yet been hired 
in the various grantee locations. And one of the topics which we 
addressed last week in a meeting in Washington D.C. with the 
project leaders was where are some of the sources of people who 
they can be recruiting to serve as disability program 
navigators? And that's one of the areas where I think your 
audience will be particularly interested in because they are 
going to be looking in part to centers for independent living in 
their local areas for people who have experience and knowledge 
with all of the disability programs and services which are in 
the job position description. And I'm not sure if that position 
description is available on line to everybody or not. I don't 
have a link for it, but I'm sure that we can probably get that 
out to folks fairly soon. 

  RACHEL: James, this is Rachel. I just want to jump in that we 
are getting a number of questions -- it sounds like people are 
interested in applying for the position and kind of keeping up 
to date with things. So if we can, you know, if we know what 
those websites are now, we can say them, but I promise that 
we'll collect those from all of you and then make them available 
on our website once this Web cast is archived. 

  MS. KIELTY: Rachel, this is Alex. I don't want to jump in too 
much, but I know we have gotten in the past many, many questions 
about -- about people interested in applying for those 
positions, and I just wanted to make sure that they're aware 
that those positions are being -- the people are being hired at 
the state or local level. So that individuals interested in 
those positions should be getting in touch with their own local 
workforce investment area and state; but of course it will be 
very helpful if they know what workforce investment area is 
where that's occurring. That's it from here. Sorry. 

  MR. SCHMELING: And this is James Schmeling again. And I will 
add there was a list on the resources for this Web cast of where 
the disability program navigator grantees are. That is not the 
same as the list of where those disability program navigators 
will be within the state. It's a list of the grantee agencies. 
You may be able to contact those for information about where the 
positions will be advertised and when they will be hired and how 
to go about applying for those as well. The next things that I 
want to turn to very briefly are the resources which were made 
available on the Web site. And I'm not going to give the Web 
site addresses again because they're actually on your Web cast 
site; but the first resource is the one-stop tool kit for 
serving people with disabilities. And the Web site as is noted 
provides accessible and comprehensive tools and information for 
ETA grantees, but there are a variety of pieces of information, 
including conference information and information which people 
with disabilities, advocates and others may find useful in their 
day to day jobs and living. The other area that I want to 
highlight is the one-stop tool kit resource of the week, which 
is available through a subscription on the one-stop toolkit. All 
you need to do is sign up for that and once a week our staff, 
Laura Pharman in particular, puts together an E-mail list-serv 
publication, it could be a website or new grant announcements 
and all of these sorts of things that come out every week and 
are very useful to grantees and also to the general public, and 
I think that that's been a very good resource. The third one I 
want to touch on very briefly is there is a course which is 
offered by the Southeast DBTAC which is called at your service, 
welcoming customers with disabilities, and this, of course, is 
being offered to one-stop staff and partners around the country 
and many, many people have taken those courses and it may be of 
interest to see what those course materials look like and who 
has -- what resources are being offered through that course. 
That course is free. All you have to do is register and take it. 
And the last of course is the Section 188 disability checklist. 
There is a link to that on the Web site so you can take a look 
at that in advance of Bobby discussion so you can be informed. 
Also on the resources is the disability program navigator 
initiative fact sheet which Department of Labor and Social 
Security Administration together put out, and that has a lot of 
details on what the disability program navigator positions will 
do, and I think that's a helpful reference as well. Next thing 
then that I want to turn to are findings from the work incentive 
grantees. 

  DR. BLANCK: Before we do that let's see if we can take some 
questions so we don't get a back log going and then we'll switch 
to the next topic as well. 

  RACHEL: I have to tell you you guys are answering the 
questions as you can go along. You actually just answered about 
four questions that have come in. 

  MR. SCHMELING: Super. So there is some method to the madness. 

  RACHEL: Yes so I actually think it would be great to continue 
on and then take questions. 

  MR. SCHMELING: Well keep on James excellent job and then we'll 
see if our friend Michael Morris is on the phone and if not 
we'll take more questions. 

  MR. SCHMELING: The next thing I want to talk about is 
something that Michael has really been very involved in and if 
he were here would be presenting on this and hopefully he'll be 
able to join us because then he can answer questions on the 
topic. One of the things we spent some time doing over the last 
two years is working with the work incentive grantees on 
something called a process evaluation. And that process 
evaluation I'm going to take you through very briefly what it 
covers over all and then I'll talk very briefly about some of 
the findings of the two years of the work incentive grantees. 
And this is from the first round grantees who have just finished 
up their work and does not cover the process evaluation from the 
second round of grantees and of course the third are just 
getting started. This process evaluation asks our grantees to 
respond to about 76 questions. And those questions really 
provide a snapshot of what the activities are that they're 
conducting, what the challenges to access and meaningful 
participation are, what their enhanced policy and practices are 
which are going to be in place after the end of the grant. They 
define the outcomes and level of system impact which are 
achieved, and they describe the experiences of at least one job 
seeker with disabilities and it goes through all of these things 
really to understand how the work incentive grantees are doing 
their work, what changes are being made, what outcomes are being 
achieved, and what barriers and challenges still need to be 
addressed. And then the findings from these are shared with the 
other grantees and others who are interested in the performance 
of the workforce investment system and then those things can be 
reply indicated into other One-Stops as times goes by. One of 
the first findings was one-stop accessibility and one of the 
things that the grantees have done is use the funds to purchase 
and install assistive technology gained resource rooms. These 
are there to remove barriers s to computer access and use. And 
the purchase of these accessible technologies is typically 
accompanied by training and technical assistance with frontline 
workforce development staff in the One-Stops. This improves 
their understanding and use of assistive technologies and helps 
to eliminate barriers to program accessibility that others might 
encounter in a service delivery system that is often based on 
self-service or computer technology. Additionally, the majority 
of these projects have developed and used accessibility 
checklists and survey tools which they're using to evaluate 
their current physical and program access barriers and to 
provide assistance to reduce and eliminate those barriers. One 
of the second outcome areas is the coordination with employers. 
Many of these work incentive grantees have been developing 
multiple strategies to market and conduct outreach to the 
business community. These include opportunities to interview and 
hire job seekers with disabilities and includes such initiatives 
such as job fairs and the creation and support of the business 
leadership networks in their local area as well. A third is 
training and education, and many of the work incentive grantees 
have conducted and written self-paced electronic instructional 
materials, and they provide regularly scheduled training 
activities and these are intended to build the capacity of the 
one-stop centers and their staff in order to identify and assist 
customers with disabilities where such services might be 
appropriate. They do marketing and outreach to people with 
Disabilities, to centers for independent living, for mental 
health and mental retardation day support programs and other 
disability-related organizations in the community. Because often 
one of the barriers to the use of the one-stop system is simply 
a lack of knowledge about the one-stop system, that it exist, 
what services it performs and what activities are available 
through them. The other, and last, of these major out comes from 
our executive summary is service coordination. And this outcome 
is very related to the disability program navigator in terms of 
the activities and the accomplishments which they're achieving. 
Many of the projects created a customer support specialist 
position which both assists job seekers with disabilities to 
navigate all of the multiple service delivery systems and 
improves the collaboration and resource -- the support between 
the mandated partners and other permissive partners. I think 
it's probably important to highlight that there is a list of the 
mandated partners and the permissive partners which is available 
from the DOLETA website as well and we'll make sure we get that 
up as a resource because there are many, many required partners 
as well as the optional partners. And then the last area that 
the executive summary covers is the five major challenges which 
still exist in the work incentive grantees as they note through 
their process evaluation. The first is that there are different 
philosophies and organizational beliefs in the organizations and 
in the agencies which are in the one-stop system. And they need 
to address that through one-stop directors and through 
management of the one-stops to ensure that these service 
delivery systems are coordinated. The second is staff turnover 
in that a large amount of staff turnover sometimes occurs which 
reduces the effectiveness of the training and on the assistive 
technology for instance or in other areas of programs. And some 
of this is being monitored by the self-directed or self-paced 
training. The next is service coordination and resource sharing, 
and one of the issues which they addressed is that there were a 
limited period of time -- 30 months -- in order to build these 
sustainable relationships with the other mandated partner 
agencies. However, work incentive grantees that created a 
position which was responsible for this collaboration and 
coordination have been more successful. Another one was employer 
interest and investment and making sure that they have employers 
involved in the system and interested and that happens many 
times through the workforce investment boards , which we can 
talk about later if there is time for that.  Peter. 

  DR. BLANCK: Good job, James. Thank you. Very comprehensive. 
Keeping this interactive, let's go to the phones or the E-mails, 
Rachel. 

  RACHEL: I feel like we're on a talk radio show here. Let's go 
to the phones. 

  DR. BLANCK: Can we have a traffic report first? 

  RACHEL: (Laughter) I'm in Houston and I don't think you want 
to know what goes on on our freeways. 

  DR. BLANCK: In Iowa city we don't have many freeways so ok. 
We're clear here. 

  RACHEL: Let's see, we do have a couple of questions that 
actually are directed right at you, James.  One is, is there an 
emphasis that's being made to the WIG grantees to purchase 
accessible information technology in addition to they're 
obviously purchasing some AT , which is assistive technology? 

  DR. BLANCK: Jim or Alex-- if you would like to answer that 
first, that would be great. 

  MS. KIELTY: We tried to go in that direction somewhat during 
the first round and found that really nobody was -- nobody 
seemed to be aware of what we were referring to or interested in 
pursuing that side of things. So we really haven't emphasized it 
and that's pretty much where we are right now still. 

  RACHEL: Okay. Then there is also some interest in some of the 
tools that you were talking about, James, that have been 
developed by different grantees and people want to know if there 
is a way that they can access those tools and use them? 

  MR. SCHMELING: Sure. Many of those tools are available through 
the one-stop toolkit site, which is referenced on the resources 
section. And they can take a look at those and see which tools 
were available from a variety of work incentive grantees, and 
see which ones are adapted and many times they can talk to the 
work incentive grantees to get some assistance with those or 
understanding of how and why they were developed.  

  MS. KIELTY: Just to add on, if they are under the state and 
local resources. So you do have to kind of go through one by 
one. We are currently in the process of updating many of these 
products. In other words, identifying additional ones that are 
being electronically scanned if they need to be to be put up 
there, and we are also looking at indexing them in a duplicate 
way so that they might be by topical area or product area. 

  RACHEL: Okay. So then all the things that are being developed 
by WIG grantees then should be made available to everybody else? 

  MS. KIELTY: Right. 

  RACHEL: Okay. And also if you could just repeat for people 
when more WIG's will be announced. 

  MS. KIELTY: We hope to have a solicitation out some time in 
December or January. 

  RACHEL: Okay. Switching gears a little, there are some 
questions about the navigators. One of the questions has to do 
with what kind of training are you providing and are there 
training resources that are currently available to help train 
the navigators? 

  MS. KIELTY: We are working with the University of Iowa and 
Michael Morris and the research rehabilitation and training 
center to develop a broad curriculum for the navigators. We plan 
on providing training at a conference that will be held in early 
November, and we will be providing training on a monthly basis 
on topical areas throughout the year. The training involved in 
this is very, very extensive. In other words, we're covering 
many, many different areas including such things as the host of 
programs in the employment and training area as well as 
information on tax incentives, Department of Transportation, 
public and paratransit systems, reverse commute opportunities, 
rural economic development activities, housing and choice 
vouchers, fair housing requirements, individual retirement 
accounts, earned income tax credits, so just a host of different 
things. And so many of those, to the extent that we can, we will 
be putting those into an electronic format that would be 
available to others similar to the one-stop -- excuse me -- the 
self-paced tutorial at your service that James mentioned, which 
we worked on with the DBTACs to establish that which provides 
frontline staff basic one on one information on working with 
people with disabilities. We hope to expand more on line 
information such as services in a more intensive environment 
within a workforce investment system, and there will probably be 
other things that could be adapted into an electronic format; 
but for the most part, this will be a fairly intensive one on 
one kinds of-- I don't know if I'd say it's one on one direct 
training that would be provided and may not be available in 
general to the public at large so to speak. It would be provided 
through our grant program. 

  RACHEL: I see. Well, maybe down the line if some of it is 
available electronically, I can see that there would be a huge 
interest from the DBTACs and the CIL's to access that kind of 
training so that might be something that could happen in the 
future. And also just so people know, we keep using the term 
DBTAC, and in case anybody doesn't know, those are the 
disability and business technical assistance centers which are 
basically -- well, actually the Disability Law Resource Project, 
one of the sponsors of today's program is one of the ten DBTACs 
around the country. And there are ten regional DBTACs around the 
country, and all of them provide training and technical 
assistance and materials about the Americans with Disabilities 
Act. Additionally, they all provide technical assistance and the 
like on accessible information technology. So just want to -- 
there was one question about that, what is a DBTAC? Okay, Alex, 
you just talked about the very beginning of the process, and now 
I have a question that came in about the end of the process with 
the program navigators. Somebody wants to know what are the 
plans for the navigators at the end of the two-year award? The 
role certainly seems to be large and important and, you know, 
will the states who have been funded in this first round be 
required to have plans for sustainability? 

  MS. KIELTY: Those are very important questions and I can't say 
that I have an answer to it -- to them. We certainly will be 
looking at how we can approach the sustainability. I think it's 
a critical question. 

  RACHEL: Okay, one for the Web cast you'll do down the line, 
right? 

  MS. KIELTY: Right. 

  RACHEL: I got two questions that are very similar. They have 
to do with the concern that some people with certain kinds of 
disabilities and specifically one that is are perceived as 
difficult or severe will be less likely to serve -- to be served 
as a one-stop centers. And either referred back to VR or, you 
know, not included in the one-stop system. So there was a 
question about can you or how will you determine that all 
disabilities are being served equally? And just to throw this in 
because one of the questions on this topic that was submitted 
was quite long, so I want to make sure that some of his thoughts 
are expressed here. He talks about how one-stop funding is 
directly tied to the achievement of the -- of performance 
outcomes and so he wonders if we're sort of subconsciously 
creating a practice here where we in services are being limited 
to people with severe barriers so that the centers can meet 
their expected outcomes. 

  MS. KIELTY: I can speak to the latter part and I think maybe 
Jim might be better at addressing the first part of the 
question. But let me start with the performance aspect of it. We 
have heard anecdotally quite a bit about the impact of the 
performance measurement system in driving behaviors in terms of 
access to training, services and intensive services within the 
one-stop center system for people with disabilities, including 
those with more significant disabilities. It is an ongoing 
concern. We are moving at a national level towards common 
measures across programs, including all of the WIA partner 
programs and there is significant attention being paid to how to 
address effectively individuals with more significant barriers 
that performance measures may discourage in terms of the 
availability of services to them. I can really only say that 
from our standpoint, we recognize there is an issue. We keep 
trying to press and we have established goals for our work 
incentive grants in terms of service delivery through the 
workforce investment system in the areas which are receiving 
these grants and we are moving and pressing more in terms of 
direct service delivery and increasing services and hopefully 
that will further emphasize the need to pay attention to the 
elements that are being raised in those questions. 

  RACHEL: Okay, Jim, did you want to add anything there? 

  MR. DOWNING: Well, I was trying to -- I  think it is important 
that it be recognized that here at the Department of Labor that 
we do recognize that there are issues in one-stops as far as 
serving individuals with disabilities and we're trying to find 
the most appropriate and expedient manner in dealing with it 
from a compliance assistance standpoint. I think it's important 
to note that an individual with very significant disabilities 
who comes into a one-stop should have access to programs and 
services that will meet their needs. Now, that being said, how 
do we assure that? At this time, the mechanism that is in place 
for the assurance of accessibility within the one-stop and 
access to programs and services is the methods of 
administration, which are drafted by the state, and are signed 
off on by the Department of Labor around the accessibility 
issues and I think once again this is one of those issue that 
will probably be better served in the discussion around the 
Section 188 checklist, because this is one of the issues that 
the Civil Rights Center is very attuned to and very involved in 
at this point and one of their attempts at trying to assure 
access to programs and services is the utilization of the 
Section 188 checklist. 

  RACHEL: Okay. It's interesting actually as you were talking, 
another question or comment came in saying there has not been a 
mention today of the customized employment grants that were 
awarded through ODEP and these projects were working with the 
one-stop centers in serving people with significant 
disabilities. And then as a follow-up, a question is is there 
any effort being made to coordinate these various grants? 

  MS. KIELTY: Yes, in fact there is. We work pretty regularly 
with ODEP, and we are sponsoring a joint conference that we are 
working on together for late October for all of our grantees for 
both the ODEP and work incentive and -- work incentive grantees 
and our disability employment grants and our disability IT 
grants that we have in ETA as well as the other ODEP grants. 
They have a number of grant initiatives. So we are trying to 
coordinate. We are also looking at doing a matrix, a geographic, 
clickable matrix -- state map where you can go into a state and 
be able to pull up each of the different grants that are located 
in that state and who the contact points are. We're all trying 
to deal with a number of grant initiatives and how we work 
together. So appreciate the question. 

  RACHEL: Okay, great.  

 DR. BLANCK: Peter just asked me to check and see if Michael 
Morris has joined us yet. I guess the answer to that is no. 

  DR. BLANCK: Let's keep taking more questions. What do we have, 
Rachel, about another 14 minutes? 

  RACHEL: Yes. Well, minus one because I need to do a wrap up. 
So maybe 13 minutes. I do have a handful of additional 
questions. So if it's okay with you guys, why don't we just 
proceed with the questions? 

  DR. BLANCK: Please. 

  RACHEL: Okay, there is another question about are there any 
studies showing that people who use the BPAO services have 
better employment outcomes? And, let's see, the end of this says 
and provide technical assistance to VR programs to help them in 
strategy planning. So I'm not sure exactly what that part of the 
question means. 

 DR. BLANCK: I can begin the first part and maybe Alex and 
others will jump in. 

  RACHEL: That Peter? 

  DR. BLANCK: Yeah. Obviously the ultimate policy question is 
the extent to which these programs improve the economic 
independence and employment rate and potential of persons with 
disabilities. And of course there is another Web cast in how 
we're going to measure that and study it and try to do it in a 
most effective way, but the short answer is much of what we're 
doing here through the evaluation process is to try to begin to 
address those questions; that is, how can we assess the extent 
to which different types of navigators and related programs 
impact people with disabilities and their families and translate 
into improved employment outcomes, however you might measure 
that for the moment, and of course the 50-dollar question orthe 
64-dollar question is how you compare outcomes across 
navigators, across regions with different economic pressures and 
different economic and employment opportunities, how you can 
measure that in a generalizable way so that we can identify best 
practices and perhaps use that as a training and outreach 
vehicle as well. What sorts of individuals with different types 
of disabilities and who have been involved in different types of 
governmental programs, social security programs, workers' 
compensation programs, state programs use the navigators and how 
their outcomes might vary is a function of these prior 
experiences with the workforce systems, say vocational 
rehabilitation, perhaps. We will attempt to address many of 
these questions, although as I always say and my colleagues 
know, no single study is definitive, but we will attempt to 
address those questions and to try to do it in a way that 
engages the relevant community so that this sort of action 
research can both be informative to the Department of Labor, the 
policymakers and its leaders and also of course most importantly 
to the community of people with disabilities so that they can be 
involved in addressing such questions. So that's kind of a long-
winded answer to that question; but probably Alex is the subject 
of another Web cast down the road because we're spending a lot 
of time working with policymakers, DOL and the disability 
community as well as of course the navigators and WIGs to 
address that exact question. 

  MR. SCHMELING: Rachel, this is James. Can clarify one thing. 
That question you just asked was addressed to the BPAO grantees, 
right? 

  RACHEL: Well, actually the person who asked the question did 
ask about both BPAO and navigator. 

  MR. SCHMELING: And we're of course not involved with the BPAO 
initiative so we can't speak to those evaluations at all. 

  DR. BLANCK: The same concept applies. The ultimate question 
is, to what extent do these initiatives translate into economic 
changes and employment changes for the relative community and 
that's a tough question to address and one I hope we can begin 
to address through best practices, through case studies, through 
interviews and triangulation of a whole host of information 
which will help us better understand the efficacy of such 
programs. Alex, I think -- Alex is the major force behind 
helping us conceptualize such an endeavor. Would you agree with 
that comment? 

  MS. KIELTY: Yeah, I definitely would. I definitely would. And 
also appreciate the clarification on the BPAO that, you know, 
that that is being -- that one would need to access another 
entity, the social security administration in order to get that 
kind of information on their effectiveness, but yes, definitely 
agree, Peter thank you. 

  DR. BLANCK: That really goes to the heart of the matter, 
Rachel, and it's a very astute question. 

  RACHEL: Okay, well I'm glad we spent some time on that because 
there were a couple of questions about that. Okay, more about 
the navigator positions and I just want to let you guys know 
that we're still getting a number of questions about a job 
description, how do they apply, where do they go? So I might 
impose on one of you to help us just put together a paragraph 
that can summarize what you guys have said on this Web cast 
about if people are interested in the position, what to do. 

  DR. BLANCK: Alex, is it possible for you to provide the 
position description electronically to them and then that would 
be a good start and then we should reiterate again that they're 
being hired at the local level and so we can't answer that 
question, but we're glad to facilitate getting access to the 
position description and to the list of grantees. 

  MS. KIELTY: I do need to point out that this position 
description is only a recommended or suggested position 
description that was provided in the solicitation to the states. 
So we don't -- it does not -- it's not a required -- it doesn't 
-- not everything there is required. 

  DR. BLANCK: Okay, Rachel, you've got seven  minutes. 

  RACHEL: Okay. But once again, just to remind people that this 
is -- if you're interested in the position, you need to look 
locally, not to Alex. She's been a sport and answered a lot of 
questions, but I don't think she wants everybody e-mailing her 
applying for this position. 

  MS. KIELTY: I should mention that personally from our 
standpoint at the Department of Labor, I personally have had a 
strong interest in seeing more involvement of the independent 
living center individuals and the centers themselves involved in 
the workforce investment system, and I do hope -- and we had 
included it in earlier iterations that there be outreach to the 
independent living centers for individuals to be navigators 
within this project. We hope to see more representation of 
individuals with disabilities as navigators within the one-stop 
and certainly view the independent living centers as an 
important resource for much of the work that will be involved in 
this activity. 

  DR. BLANCK: That's an excellent point, Alex. And in the 
interest of time, I point you guys on the phone and on the Web 
cast to our website where we have a number of initiatives we've 
undertaken with regard to working with the CIL's around the 
country and local advocates and members of the disability 
community to help them become more savvy about assessing such 
employment opportunities here. We have a program called the 
community-based resource center, which is to help local CIL's 
and researchers and members of the disability community to 
better assess exactly these sorts of policy initiatives. I think 
that's a very well taken point, Alex. 

  RACHEL: Okay. And just a specific question having to do with 
what you were just talking about, Alex, is there a quota, in 
quotes as to how many navigators should have disabilities or is 
there a requirement that they have disabilities? 

  MS. KIELTY: No, we can't do that and we can't impose that. So, 
no, we are not doing that. We're trying to encourage it and hope 
that that will -- there will be a number of people hired who 
have disabilities or family members of a person with a 
disability. 

  RACHEL: Okay. 

  DR. BLANCK: As with any system, Rachel I would think, we would 
hope that the navigators be representative of the local 
communities and would be -- you know, would embrace a range of 
individuals with a range of backgrounds. 

  MS. KIELTY: I think part of our thinking is that many of the -
- many people with disabilities would be much more familiar and 
have more of the skills and knowledge from having worked with 
the system and, therefore, may be in a better position to 
provide those services as a peer to peer within our one-stop 
system. 

  DR. BLANCK: We may have time, Rachel, for a couple more 
questions and then you may need to wrap up. 

  RACHEL: Okay. I just want to ask if you guys want to expand 
any more on additional roles for CIL's or other nonprofits in 
their relationship with navigators? There have been some more 
questions about that. Just want to see if there is more you want 
to say about it. 

  DR. BLANCK: Alex, do you want to talk about what came out of 
some of the focus group discussions in regard to the 
relationships with the CIL's from the Colorado project and from 
others, for instance? 

  MS. KIELTY: I knew that where we do have these kind of 
positions there is a lot of interrelationship and in some cases 
there is a contracting out to a CIL to provide these services 
within the one-stop career centers. So that has happened to some 
extent. I think we're all in a bit of a learning process at the 
same time and I think it will be very interesting and 
informative to see how we can facilitate the linkages on a 
systemic basis with the CIL's. So James, you may have more to 
add to that. 

  MR. SCHMELING: I think the only thing I would add to that is 
that there have been a couple of other projects in the work 
incentive grantees who noted that they had hired people away 
from CIL's and brought them into the one-stop centers as 
employees of the state agency which was providing the services. 
There have been others where they've contracted with an 
individual, who is also a CIL employee, and there have been 
still others where they have contracted with the center for 
independent living and it was a CIL employee who then provided 
the services and there have been a mix and match of where and 
how those services were provided. So there wasn't any one answer 
as to the best way to provide these services and it varied 
tremendously, but there were opportunities for linkages in many 
of these projects.  

  MS. KIELTY: That's great. Thank you. 

  RACHEL: Okay, one for Jim. Jim mentioned that there are other 
programs available that can provide employers with assistance or 
resources for accommodations. Can you please provide additional 
information on those? 

  MR. DOWNING: I'm sorry, once again the last part of that? 

  RACHEL: Somebody is interested in the resources for employers 
to provide accommodations and so can you provide additional 
information about that. 

  MR. DOWNING: Well, of course vocational rehabilitation is a 
mandated partner and I don't always want to put things off on 
vocational rehabilitation programs, but that is one avenue for 
accommodation in the workplace. There are certain provisions 
under the Workforce Investment Act that in certain situations 
that services can be provided to an individual that would be 
considered an accommodation that can follow them into the 
workplace. It would be better that an individual with an 
interest in this regard contact their local -- because of the 
nature of the Workforce Investment Act and the autonomy that is 
provided to the locals, it would be best that an individual 
contact their local and then present a request to them as far as 
what might be available. One of the things I'm looking at are 
the individual training accounts. There is a possibility that 
under an individual training account and as a supportive service 
that an accommodation may be provided, but once again, that 
would be a decision between the individual themselves and the 
individual local one-stop. 

  DR. BLANCK: Rachel, I know we're running out of time. I want 
to just quickly say a very strong thank you to all the 
participants. I know I learned some things every time I 
participate in these things and there is never enough time. I 
hope -- 

  RACHEL: That's true. There is not enough time. But I want to 
thank you, Peter, and then each of you, James, Alex, and Jim. I 
think everybody has learned a lot today and I think you can tell 
from how many questions we've gotten and we didn't get to all of 
them that there is a lot of interest in these topics. So this 
Web cast will be archived. I understand that a link or two on 
our site are not working, but those will be corrected. Any 
additional resources will be put up on the archived website as 
well. And I also would like to -- in addition to our fabulous 
presenters who really gave a lot of themselves today, I would 
like to acknowledge NIDRR who funds both of the programs which 
are hosting today's event. Those are the Disability Law Resource 
Project and RIIL. And before I sign off, I want to thank -- 
there are some others who really have worked hard to make today 
possible. They include people here at ILRU, Marj Gordon, Sharon 
Finney and Dawn Heinsohn, our technical partner is Rob Dickehuth 
and of course this wouldn't have happened without Marie Bryant, 
who is our real-time captioner. So, Peter, anything before we 
sign off? 

  DR. BLANCK: No, thank you very much, Rachel, as well and it's 
always a pleasure to learn with all you guys. 

  RACHEL: Okay, great. Thanks everybody. Have a good afternoon.