Abstract:

Employment has historically provided a person with value and the ability to live a self-determined and independent life. However, the current state of employment revealed that individuals with disabilities may face a variety of challenges when pursuing employment. In order for a student to be employed in the community, or even the school, a partnership between the service provider and the employer is required. Methods for creating these opportunities require collaboration between organizations and community providers. These can be supported through interagency collaboration among teachers, schools, vocational rehabilitation (VR) counselors, and transition coordinators (Taylor et al., 2016). These stakeholders can work with local businesses to establish relationships and create paid and unpaid employment experiences. Through effective and early collaboration, individuals with disabilities are provided with exposure-based experiences that have been found to be effective at increasing post-secondary employment outcomes.

The importance of interagency collaboration can be found in the Taxonomy for Transition Programming 2.0 (Kohler, 2016). The Taxonomy identifies five areas for creating more effective transition plans:
(1) program structure,
(2) student-focused planning,
(3) student development,
(4) family engagement, and
(5) interagency collaboration.

Each of these areas focuses on the needs of the individual, with the overarching goal being to create a plan that meets the long-term goals/objectives and needs of the individual. Particularly, interagency collaboration plays an important role to connect to the other areas, involving relevant frontline practitioners to provide services for individuals with disabilities. The benefit of interagency collaboration is that it allows the team to work with agencies outside of the school, local support providers and training programs. By inviting these participants to the early planning process, the plan can be better structured and tailored to meet the needs of the individual, which is also highlighted in the taxonomy.

However, there is little research on identifying the needs of the field for collaborations between vocational rehabilitation agency and educational agency. The purpose of this study is to identify perceived barriers in collaboration between educators and VR counselors throughout early transition planning and to identify effective strategies in support of relationship building and collaboration.

This study employed a qualitative approach to better understand the experiences of stakeholders and address the following research question:
1. What are some perceived barriers to collaboration between educators and VR counselors?
2. What are methods of supporting collaboration between educators and VR counselors?

We conducted a series of 8 focus groups in a large state in the United States and identified needs from educators and vocational rehabilitation counselors.

These needs were used to guide regional and statewide trainings to help improve collaborations. This paper will present findings from these focus groups and how these findings can be used others to inform their trainings.

Keywords:

Employment, career education, disabilities, research.