September 2023
Each year the Disability Employment Technical Assistance Center, looks back on its accomplishments and progress toward outcomes through a summative evaluation. Key areas of interest this year include financial independence; leveraging assistive technology; cultural competency and diversity, equity, and inclusion; knowledge translation and diffusion; and employer engagement. Artificial intelligence (AI) was also identified as an emerging area of interest, which led the TA Center to engage with federal partners, grantees, and private industry to offer a webinar exploring key considerations for AI in supporting disability employment.
The TA Center facilitates activities focused on systems change, innovation, and collaboration across its five channels: National Community of Practice, Results & Innovation in Systems Excellence (RISE) Peer Action e-Learning Communities, On-Demand TA, Resource Development, and Website and Resource Clearinghouse. TA provision is an evolving process that consists of identification of needs, partnering with experts for delivery, and making data driven decisions, with stakeholder engagement present throughout. Highlights include:
- An average of 438 people attended each of 10 webinars, an increase of 18% compared to the prior year, with 96% satisfaction
- Over 20 subject matter experts engaged in TA activities
- 39,922 website views, an increase of 4% compared to the prior year
- 7 RISE communities with 96% satisfaction
- Facilitated sessions at two national conferences: Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living (APRIL) Conference 2022 and 2022 TASH Conference.
The TA Center demonstrated progress toward outcomes in areas such as increased knowledge and capacity to implement evidence-based practices, commitment to implement new strategies to advance competitive, integrated employment (CIE), collaboration with partners, including Vocational Rehabilitation (VR), public policy reform and systems change, and commitment to share learnings with colleagues. For example:
- 92% of webinar and RISE participants committed to implement one or more key learnings to advance competitive integrated employment
- 96% of webinar participants and 92% of RISE participants committed to share information learned with colleagues
Looking forward, the TA Center will continue its momentum into the 2023-2024 year by expanding the reach of RISE eLearning communities and increasing its in-person presence at conference and events.
The full evaluation report is available here.
