The transcript for this presentation was edited for ease of reading. The intent 
of the original content was not changed by these edits.

Brooks-Lane #1

As Ron indicated, my name is Nancy Brooks-Lane, and I work for the Cobb Douglas 
Counties Community Services Board in Georgia.  Ron did an excellent job of 
providing an overview of the complications of the funding system for supporting 
individuals with developmental disabilities.  I'm going to focus on consumer 
funding choices that hopefully compliment what Ron has said, looking at it from 
a broad systems prospective and then looking at it from an individual funding 
source.

I really can't talk about the funding choices that consumers have without 
introducing the Workforce Investment system.  The Workforce Investment Act was 
passed by Congress in 1998, but did not become fully effective until July 1, 
2000.  It was the first major reform of the nation’s job training system in 15 
years.  It was designed to build a Workforce Investment system that respects 
individual choices and results in increased employment retention and earnings.  
It's much easier as a result of this to develop partnerships to blend funds and 
resources, expertise, and of course we want to get the most we can from funding 
by creating alliances, challenging myths and questioning policy interpretations 
that may not be accurate or may be based on myth.

The One-Stop Career Center is the focal of the workforce system, supporting 
employment and human resource needs.  The Workforce Investment system must 
integrate all workers into the workforce and ensure that no worker is left 
behind and that does include individuals with disabilities.  Integrating all 
workers into the workforce through universal access and capacity building will 
require significant resources, including benefits analysis, understanding the 
interplay of various social programs, working in partnership with organizations 
and services and businesses, maximizing resources by blending funds.  There is a 
website that you can reference for more information about this.

Consumer funding options really are under the categories of individual training 
accounts, Vocation Rehabilitation funding, and Social Security Work Incentives.  
Individual training accounts are flexible funding to support the customer in 
their employment choices and those are available through the One Stops.  
Vocation Rehabilitation funding is funding to purchase support services for wage 
employment and self-employment. Then the Social Security Work Incentives are 
tools to really maximize consumer resources.  I'm going to talk a little bit 
more in detail about each of those.  

As I said, the individual training account, or you may hear it as ITA, is 
funding that's available through the One Stops.  It's used to support consumers 
in their employment endeavors.  That funding is always coordinated with 
available supports through Vocational Rehabilitation and then the Social 
Security Work Incentives.  The individual training account may also provide 
supports in such categories as business supplies, business equipment, 
professional and consultation services, training, emergency financial 
assistance, dependent care, and transportation.  What's important to know is 
that though One Stops systems around the country are very different. Part of the 
federal initiatives are to look at trying to standardize what's available 
through the One Stop system.