About this Series
The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) grantees play varied yet important roles in career development and advancement for people with disabilities. Some grantees provide direct job or career coaching, while others fund, convene, and coordinate with service providers and other stakeholders to advance competitive, integrated employment. This episode is part two of the series titled, From Readiness to Results: Career Development Considerations for Job Seekers, Coaches, and Employers. This series will explore a multi-pronged approach to career development and is intended for all AoD grantees, as well as individual job seekers, family members, and employers.
About this Episode
In this episode, DETAC Strategic Advisor Dan Middleton discusses the distinct but complimentary roles of job coaches and career coaches in supporting people with disabilities to achieve competitive integrated employment (CIE). Dan highlights how career coaching can help individuals plan, grow, and advance throughout their working lives while emphasizing the value that both coaching roles bring to employment success. The conversation also explores challenges within current service delivery systems and emerging approaches to strengthening career coaching pathways for coaches and other professionals who support job seekers.
This is the second part of this series. You can find the first part of our interview with Dan Middleton here.
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Presenters
Donald Taylor has been with TASH since 2014, where he is the Manager of Membership & Communications, responsible for membership and chapters, data systems and communication, and collaborates closely with other staff to make sure TASH systems support their work. Donald comes from a background of data systems, operations and business analysis, going back to the 1990s. Donald came to the world of disability while pursuing a degree in history. The history profession is deeply interested in the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century and fellow students studying biomedical systems of oppression inspired in him the desire to make a contribution to this aspect of social justice.
Transcript
Announcer: You are listening to the Disability Employment Technical Assistance Center, or DETAC, Podcast. In this podcast, we share conversations with leaders, practitioners, and advocates who are working to improve competitive integrated employment and economic outcomes for people with disabilities.
This is part two of a series titled “From Readiness to Results: Career Development Considerations for Job Seekers, Coaches, and Employers”. In today’s episode, we’re talking with DETAC strategic advisor, Dan Middleton from the Catalight Research Foundation about job coaching versus career coaching.
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Donald Taylor: Welcome back, Dan. We’re excited to have you with us today on the DETAC Podcast, so let’s get started. First, can you share a little bit about yourself and your coaching experience?
Dan Middleton: Yes. Thank you Donald. I’m Dan Middleton. I work for Catalight Foundation. We’re an organization that serves over 25,000 clients throughout California and Hawaii for behavioral health services. My job is to start developing the employment services over the lifespan of our clients. Since 2005, I’ve gathered certifications for coaching from Corporate Coach U, ICF, BetterUp, to name a few. In the past 10 years at Catalight, I’ve been focused on really translating the person-centered strength-based coaching practices from the corporate world into employment services for people with disabilities, especially where systems haven’t historically supported the long-term career growth.
Donald Taylor: For listeners who may not be familiar, what are the differences between job coaching and career coaching?
Dan Middleton: Well, it is a great question to ask because a lot of people do get job coaching. Job coaching focuses on the onboarding process, learning tasks, routines, navigating the workplace relationships. It’s intentionally a time-focused, a time-based program. And usually they fade out within three to six months. A career coach on the other hand, is someone who works from the very beginning of the job search through all aspects of finding work. They support the full career lifecycle by managing the career process across multiple jobs throughout the person’s career. An example is with some service providers we’ve worked with, they’re looking to expand that direct service professional. Those direct service professionals are the category of which job coaches, case managers, job developers work within that category of profession. They’re training those roles to serve as both like a job coach and a career coach, to enable a longer, more effective relationship with a client. Because in the current job coach specifically job coaching as a short term, when you add career coaching, you expand the timeframe and the opportunities to really help a client through a career.
Donald Taylor: Why are both of these roles important and how do these functions apply to the context and service models for AoD grantees?
Dan Middleton: A job coach is essential for helping those who need assistance learning the job task. While career coaches teach career skills someone can use for a lifetime. Career coaches support people from the initial dream of having a job to building a career. Isn’t that what we want for everybody? Everyone has a dream, whether you have a disability or not. There’s dreams of what you want to be in your career. There’s a few government programs that offer a true coaching and the closest one we’re going to explain here today is the Ticket to Work. Ticket to Work allows the provider to continue coaching the client for three to four years past their initial acceptance of the job. This time gives the client and the coach [time] to make adjustments and even decide to go after different types of jobs. However, many AoD-funded programs serve people who need supports long-term or for a lifetime, and that creates an opportunity for AoD-funded programs to integrate career coaching skills into their existing roles, like job coaches, case managers, and job developers. So, that people aren’t just forced to start over each time they change a job. For example, around 2020, several Centers for Independent Living chose to become Ticket to Work employment network providers because that aligned better with their values. It allowed them to support people, not just in getting a job, but in continuing to advance financially and professionally over time. That longer horizon benefits both the individual and the organization.
Donald Taylor: What is the current system, policy, and program landscape for career coaching?
Dan Middleton: Another great question because we don’t talk about career coaching a lot in this business. Across the country, most employment systems are still designed to drive short term outcomes, and that’s job placement rather than career development. In states like Florida, Texas, California, New York, South Dakota, those are some that I’ve researched recently, we see elements of career coaching, but we see support typically fades six to nine months after they get the job. There’s not that continuous offer of services that are paid through the government programs. This is not a clear career coaching model that those states have. The career coach should be involved from the very beginning of career planning, through getting hired, assisting with the next career transition, without requiring any reevaluation, without requiring a reentry into the system. That’s where things have fallen apart. I’ll give you an example. In California, somebody has to reenter the system once they get another job. They get assigned a case manager, they’re waiting sometimes up to 200 days to talk to somebody. So, you have now been out of work for 200 days and you haven’t been able to talk to anybody about your situation. A career coach is there to help you [with] not only how you exit your job, but how you get the next job. So, now you have somebody to talk to the entire time.
This underscores the need for career coaches to have their own career path so they can stay closer to the client for a longer period of time in their career.
Donald Taylor: What are you and your organization doing to advance career coaching service delivery?
Dan Middleton: Yes. Four years ago we started developing employment services and we developed the Compass-Work tool. We did that without designing a system that was supposed to fit into government systems and government processes. Developing the Compass-Work tool became an idea for creating a career planning and navigation tool that would help people identify strengths, clarify goals, and make realistic career next steps. In addition, we’re also building a certified Compass-Work navigator program for DSPs, so they can grow from an associate to a master level certification without needing a college degree or any other educational requirements. So, what this does is creates a parallel career path. DSPs can advance professionally while helping people with disabilities do the same. We believe that’s the essential for workforce stability and service quality. This is our version of career development in the employment DSP field. DSPs can now pursue their own career dreams as they support people with disabilities.
Here’s an example of what we’re working with. Two service providers. In 2025, we worked with a Ticket to Work provider and partnered with them sharing the Compass-Work tool and how they would use it with their clients throughout their 60 plus service providers around the country. In 2026, we’re working with another service provider, upskilling their job coaches to become more skilled at career coaching. At the end of their training, or later this year, they will become Compass-Work Associates and start their whole program of being certified as a Compass-Work navigator. Those are just two examples of how we’ve piloted with providers similar to the AoD providers.
Donald Taylor: Dan, thank you for your insights today. Do you have any final thoughts or recommendations about career development considerations for coaches?
Dan Middleton: Yes I do. Thanks again for having me. I appreciate having the opportunity to talk about this. My biggest recommendation is this: that we should stop designing all these services and programs around jobs, around finding a job, get a job, get hired, and start designing them around careers. What do you want to do? Ask questions like that. What do you want to do in your life? What do you visualize in your head that you can do that no one else even thinks you can do? That starts the process of career planning, just asking the open-ended question about what somebody really wants to do and not sticking them in systematic processes or standard procedures of how to do the career process. Because the career process is different for everybody, just like everyone is different. People with disabilities change jobs for the same reasons everyone else does. Growth, pay, purpose, relocation, and our systems should make those transitions easier and not harder. Thank you.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the DETAC podcast. For more information related to today’s episode, including tools and resources mentioned by Dan Middleton, visit the DETAC website. Check back soon to join us for future conversations focused on advancing competitive integrated employment and economic outcomes for people with disabilities.
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This discussion was originally recorded on May 7, 2026.
This audio recording and transcript have been lightly edited for content and clarity.
Music for the DETAC podcast is an original composition and performance by Sunny Cefaratti, the Co-Founder and Autistic Self-Advocacy Mentor at the Musical Autist. You can learn more about the Musical Autist at www.themusicalautist.org.