Improving the educational and employment outcomes of youth with disabilities—and reducing their dependence on Supplemental Security Income (SSI)—are high priorities for federal policymakers. To address these issues, the U.S. Department of Education, the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Labor launched a joint initiative known as Promoting Readiness of Minors in SSI (PROMISE). The PROMISE initiative funds and evaluates model demonstration projects that promote positive changes for SSI youth, starting at ages 14 through 16, and their families.

In this report, we use information collected as part of the national evaluation of PROMISE to assess the role of PROMISE in the landscape of federal programs targeting youth with disabilities. First, we present the landscape of federal programs for youth with disabilities and explore how the PROMISE projects interact with federal programs. Second, we describe the challenges that youth and families face in accessing and using those programs and the ways that the PROMISE projects attempt to address them. Finally, we document the important changes to the federal service environment prompted by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and the lessons from PROMISE that can inform WIOA implementation.

The experiences of the PROMISE projects in delivering services to SSI youth and their families can guide federal, state, and local programs in their delivery of transition services and responses to WIOA. Each PROMISE project works within state and local transition environments to affect systems change efforts, facilitate a wide range of services to a population facing numerous challenges in transition, and focus on postsecondary employment and education outcomes at a relatively early age for youth. Policymakers can draw on these experiences to help make decisions about serving transition-age youth with disabilities.