Pre-Employment Transition and Vocational Rehabilitation Services: Experiences in Response to Vermont’s Work-Based Learning Program

Background

State vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies offer pre-employment transition services (pre-ETS) and other VR services to high school students, but the literature has not documented differences in pre-ETS use by individual characteristics or across individual services.

Objective

We describe variation in how high school students used services from the Vermont VR agency and how a demonstration program emphasizing work-based learning experiences affected that use.

Method

The study uses a descriptive approach to explore patterns in youth’s pre-ETS and VR services and outcomes two years after enrolling in a demonstration program. It compares youth with access to demonstration services (the treatment group) to those using usual services (the control group).

Results

Among all control group youth, more than half only used pre-ETS during a 24-month period, while about one-quarter used VR services and the remainder used no services from the VR agency. In contrast, nearly all treatment group youth used some VR services, with a majority (59 percent) using both VR services and pre-ETS. Control group youth who used pre-ETS and VR services differed from those who did not use these services by gender, disability type, employment, and service receipt characteristics; treatment group youth had fewer such differences. Earnings outcomes did not vary in consistent or interpretable ways.

Conclusion

The findings demonstrate how an intervention designed to promote work-based learning experiences increased pre-ETS and VR use and decreased subgroup differences in service utilization. VR administrators might consider collecting information on potentially eligible students to increase access to and use of services.