United States Department of Labor

NTAR Leadership Center

To develop and influence disability employment-related policies and practices, ODEP sponsors four research and technical assistance resources. One of these is the National Technical Assistance and Research Center to Promote Leadership for Increasing the Employment and Economic Independence of Adults with Disabilities (NTAR Leadership Center), which conducts research, analysis and demonstration initiatives to increase employment and training opportunities for adults with disabilities through policy development focused on public and private workforce systems.

Recent NTAR Leadership Center activities and areas of focus include:

• Final Report of the State Leaders Innovation Institute — The NTAR Leadership Center launched the State Leaders Innovation Institute (SLII), a pilot project designed to improve inter-agency coordination on policy, program, and service delivery for people with disabilities in 2008. For the pilot, the NTAR Leadership Center selected three states (Connecticut, Maryland, and Minnesota) interested in pursuing cross-agency policy changes and developing new practices to foster a more integrated "to work" system for adults with disabilities. This final report offers sections on state profiles, challenges, opportunities, other lessons learned, and reflections on what the federal government can do to encourage and support state systems change efforts and state leaders."
• Using Braided Funding Strategies to Advance Employer Hiring Initiatives that Include People with Disabilities — The NTAR Leadership Center published this report to help local policymakers and administrators better understand the relationship between model programs for hiring people with disabilities and braided funding strategies. This report profiles four employer-responsive models that have gained increasing national attention. Braiding funding, for purposes of this report, means the access to and coordination of multiple sources of funding to provide services and supports needed by people with disabilities to obtain and retain a job."
• Using Medicaid Funding to Support the Employment of People with Disabilities: A Federal Framework — State Medicaid agencies fund a multitude of supports and services for individuals with disabilities. As national public policy has recognized and emphasized the ability of individuals with disabilities to work, states have begun to integrate employment supports into the continuum of long-term care in Medicaid. This NTAR Leadership Center brief discusses the federal legislative and regulatory framework for funding employment supports in Medicaid, and highlights examples of state innovations and best practices for using Medicaid to promote positive employment outcomes.
• Moving TANF Recipients with Disabilities to Work: Examples of State Strategies
  This brief explores the opportunities and challenges to state governments in crafting supports and services, as well as glimpses at some strategies and approaches used by state TANF agencies to help recipients with a disability to secure and retain employment.
• Ready and Able: Addressing Labor Market Needs and Building Productive Careers for People with Disabilities Through Collaborative Approaches
  Research shows that people with disabilities can work and want to work, and workers with disabilities meet or exceed the job performance of co-workers without disabilities.  To support this, the NTAR Leadership Center drafted case studies for 13 diverse examples of employer-workforce intermediary partnerships with a successful track record of helping employers recruit, hire, train and retain employees with disabilities.