Located in:
- Program-Specific Requirements for Vocational Rehabilitation (Combined or General)
The Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) Services Portion of the Unified or Combined State Plan [13] must include the following descriptions and estimates, as required by section 101(a) of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended by title IV of WIOA:
__________
[13] Sec. 102(b)(2)(D)(iii) of WIOA
j. 3. Include an assessment of the needs of individuals with disabilities for transition career services and pre-employment transition services, and the extent to which such services are coordinated with transition services provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Current Narrative:
Overview
As previously mentioned earlier in section e, IDVR commissioned a Comprehensive Statewide Needs Assessment (CSNA) beginning late summer of 2019, including an assessment of the rehabilitation needs of youth with disabilities in transition and student need for Pre-Employment Transition Services. Detailed information is provided in section e.
The Idaho Division of Vocational Rehabilitation is an agency of the Idaho State Board of Education and partners with other agencies under the Board through coordination and collaboration.
IDVR has strong relationships with Education agencies throughout the state, including formal interagency agreements with a number of Local Education Agencies (LEAs), a comprehensive formal interagency agreement which addresses collaborative service provision with the State Department of Education (SDE), and the Idaho Commission for Blind and Visually Impaired (ICBVI).
IDVR, ICBVI, and the SDE have developed a comprehensive formal interagency agreement which addresses collaborative service provision. This agreement specifies the programmatic and fiscal responsibilities for each agency. LEAs provide different transition services to students with disabilities for various reasons, adequate funding being one of the major reasons. Therefore, the Division needs to understand the types of transition services that are currently provided by each LEA in order to determine what Pre-ETS activities should be considered for students with disabilities at the LEA level.
As a result of that need, IDVR is coordinating with educational officials and other state agencies to provide an annual Transition Institute last held in fall of 2019. The third annual Transition Institute is scheduled for fall 2020.
Districts will bring teams, that will include a VR Counselor to the Institute to develop specific goal directed plans based on district data to improve Pre-ETS and transition focused education based on district need. This will provide IDVR with the specific criteria to determine which agency (IDVR or LEA) has primary responsibility for providing and paying for transition related services for students with disabilities as well as what additional Pre-ETS should be targeted to each LEA.
Lastly, IDVR has partnered with the SDE to implement a Statewide Secondary Transition Plan which correlates to the Division’s Pre-Employment Transition Plan. The goal on the statewide plan is to develop systems for effective collaboration between students, families secondary and post-secondary educators, rehabilitation counselors, and service providers to evaluate the quality and quantity of transition activities and pre-employment transition services.