Scary Realities and Practical Solutions

According to a recent report issued by the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, the labor market, workforce and educational system are undergoing significant changes in the first decade of the 21st century. With widespread unemployment at all levels of education, longer than usual time spent now looking for a job, and declining heath care coverage, it is no surprise that the Heldrich report highlights how very dissatisfied people are with both their personal economic circumstances as well as the country’s.

At the same time, state budgets and state workforces are suffering as well -- teetering on the point of going broke or broken. To respond to taxpayers cries for less government, lower taxes and to keep states from going bankrupt, federal and state law makers are desperately looking for fresh solutions to cutting costs and getting Americans back to work. The jobs crisis and state budget crises demands immediate attention, but need solutions that are practical and evidence based, and that mutually help job seekers and employers.

Jobseekers (including those with disabilities) need solutions that provide them with a paycheck first and foremost, along with a work experience and the ability to acquire skills and education if that paycheck is not from a full time job. Employers need solutions that can get them access to qualified workers at wages and benefits they can afford. As seen in the recent increases in part time and temporary workers, employers continue to remain reluctant to make permanent hires because of doubts about the recovery’s durability, and still remain skittish about the escalating costs of health care and the uncertainty of health care reform.

As for public policy makers charged with creating and implementing solutions, they need strategies that are low cost and high volume; that are easy to implement with a minimum degree of complexity and that promise to yield a moderate degree of success (meaning jobs) for hundreds, if not thousands of people. What state policy makers cannot afford these days are boutique programs, untested initiatives or further policies that research demonstrates don’t yield big results for either the unemployed or employers. They also can’t afford programs that are high cost and low volume; that require lots of complex moving parts to implement, that require low paid front line workers to develop new, higher skills in order to make it work, and where employment is realized for only tens of people, not in the hundreds and thousands needed to make a dent in the unemployment rate.

The $15 billion jobs bill passed by the Senate and the House is sadly likely to be much ado about nothing. The bill, which includes tax breaks to businesses to hire, will have a negligible effect on employment rates – especially among people with disabilities. In fact, evidence from the Work Opportunity and Welfare-to-Work Tax Credits points out that these employer tax breaks for new hires have suffered from poor participation and have not had any meaningful effect on employment rates among the disadvantaged (Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, 2005), despite what is seen as large potential benefits to firms. And for people with disabilities who have been routinely shut out of a robust labor market, much less one in recession, hiring credits are unlikely to yield any benefits at all.

Economists and academics have suggested other solutions that would put ‘jobs’ back in a credible job creation strategy. These include expanding summer youth employment programs, and deploying time-limited employment programs for public purposes in public and nonprofit agencies. These also include transitional job programs such as on-the-job training or OJT in private firms and nonprofits, and paid work experience programs such as through internships and apprenticeships. Other promising strategies, some more complex and longer to implement, include stimulating small business development including seeding and supporting ‘real businesses’ through nonprofits.

Any successful national jobs strategy must provide mutual support to jobseekers need for work and income, and businesses need to stay in business. Only if these two needs are met can communities prosper and our nation thrive. The current job bill falls far short.


Kathy Krepcio
Director, NTAR Leadership Center

Strategies for Growing Jobs Must Include an Economic Recovery for People with Disabilities

In the past several weeks, Governors from California to New York have announced job creation initiatives and strategies that have included helping small businesses stay open and hire new staff; that look to recruit and retain industries vital to they state’s economy; that effect greater diversity in their state economies beyond traditional crucial industries; and that put a new imperative on workforce/education training to develop skilled workers to match industry needs.

While I remain optimistic that our nation’s Governors as well as President Obama have a renewed focus on jobs, it is highly likely that jobseekers with disabilities will remain marginalized when it comes to who benefits from publicly funded job investments. That is, unless there is persistent attention directed at insuring their inclusion in federal and state “Main Street" economic efforts.

For Americans with disabilities, the unemployment numbers over the years speak for themselves - they have never been part of any real economic recovery. What I see is decades of unemployment, underemployment, poverty and significant exclusion from the competitive labor market – in part enabled by out-of-date, exclusionary public policies and labor market practices.

For Americans with disabilities, gaining any significant job opportunities from the President’s first stimulus package or new gubernatorial strategies remains to be seen. A scan of grantees receiving green jobs training funds shows that less than a handful identified people with disabilities as a target population for training. A scan of state plans outlining new job creation strategies mention special initiatives to create job pathways for welfare recipients, youth, food stamp recipients and laid off workers, but with the exception of disabled veterans, no mention of insuring that all Americans have equal access to these opportunities.

In order to insure that Americans with disabilities, who want to work, can benefit from these new state and federal job creation investments, we should not be afraid to let our White House and our State Houses know that a jobs program for all should mean all. And that means improving who gets access to new publicly financed skills training, education, and jobs. Much more can be accomplished in new job creation strategies than just putting some people back to work. Federal and state officials have a tremendous opportunity to create, along with jobs, new policies and practices that removes barriers to work, and creates better access to jobs so that people with disabilities can truly participate in an economic recovery.

Kathy Krepcio
Director, NTAR Leadership Center

Preparation and Promise and the Importance of Being Relevant

I sit down to write this as the New Year begins. January is always a month of reflection for me, and this year is no different. Thinking back on 2009, working with state leaders through a still struggling economy, continued rising unemployment, renewed terrorist threats, and now the devastation in Haiti. It is a lot to take in. Yet, I am approaching 2010 optimistic about the future and our ability – as individuals and as organizations - to make some headway into what seems to be the intractable problem of unemployment and underemployment of people with disabilities. And I believe, as always, our solutions lie within us - as persevering people - to continue to plow through but perhaps with a more single minded focus, and a notion that we have to make the preparation for work, and the promise of jobs a mantra.

Preparation and promise. For me, this means continuing to talk about the importance of preparing all of our young people and adults, especially those with disabilities, for a world of work and inclusion in our nation’s economic prosperity. Good or great things just don’t always happen by luck or circumstance in our lives – they happen because many of us (and our parents, friends and family – maybe even our public policy makers) understand the importance of preparation. Promise is about opportunity and the promise of potential new jobs and new opportunities that await those who are prepared. This may be my optimism or perhaps my advancing age, but economies like play sets always have swings. There will be jobs in the future, but they just might not be the jobs in place today, and they just won’t appear without any concerted, focused effort to create them. As such, it is vitally important that we internalize the importance of making our systems change efforts relevant. That is, if there is going to be any progress, our efforts must be relevant to employers so that job training is based on jobs that employers foresee needing to fill. If there is going to be any progress, our efforts must be relevant to governors and public officials who will be focusing on creating jobs and supporting business development. And, if there is going to be any progress, our efforts must be relevant to every person with a disability who would like to leave dependency on government programs behind and get a job.

Kathy Krepcio
Director, NTAR Leadership Center

Conversations with Leaders

For the past several weeks, I have traveling around the country talking with state officials, business leaders and others about the work they are doing in the disability and employment area, listening to speeches and presentations, and observing the work of very dedicated people trying to figure out how they can crack the employment problem. While traveling, I have had so many interesting conversations, and listened to some presentations that were really thought provoking – I wanted to share a few with you.

My conversation with Terry Donovan who works on Pathways to Employment in Minnesota about the ‘diffusion of innovation’ theory and strategies for effectively moving pilot projects to national implementation successfully. We also talked about how to inculcate piloted local and state practices from their research and development phase into new ways of doing business. Terry and all the other folks in Minnesota we work with through our Center give me so many ‘aha’ moments when we talk that I always want to stay in Minnesota (except for that winter thing they have going there).

My talk with Michelle Martin (a women with enormous creative energy who has her own blog called ‘The Bamboo Project’ and who is assisting New Jersey with their disability employment efforts) was about the need to look at, and work with, jobseekers in terms of their ‘employment readiness’ versus some stereotype or silo like ‘disability’, ‘low income’, ‘TANF recipient’, or ‘dislocated worker’. Michelle is a rockstar! and is teaching me a lot about Web 2.0 technology and communications and all that energy – wow!

My discussions with folks in New Mexico about the necessity, if not the imperative, of objectively evaluating our employment programs and practices. My colleague at the Heldrich Center, Bill Mabe, and I recently presented at the Southwest Conference on Disability about what you need to know to structure an effective, user friendly evaluation (the presentation can be found on the Heldrich Center website www.heldrich.rutgers.edu). I can’t say enough about the need to really know if the services and supports everyone is working on really are making a difference, or whether we are so emotionally attached to what we are doing that we can’t objectively see that some things just are not working very well.

Finally, I was recently presenting with Dana Egretsky from the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce (who also runs the New Jersey Business Leadership Network) in Atlantic City at a state conference on autism. Dana and I were scheduled to discuss the New Jersey economy, what employers are looking for, and how to best prepare for the world of work. We both realized that the presentation we were about to give was, most likely, going to be somewhat depressing given the poor employment outlook and how difficult it is to be upbeat when the reality of the job market is a bit bleak. What can you say except get a skill, stay in school, be positive and slog through it? Clearly, there are not a lot of easy answers for jobseekers right now. Yet conversations like these continue to make me realize how there are great people out in the field who are thinking about how to make changes, who want to have an honest dialogue about the status quo and challenges to real change, and who sincerely want to make a difference.


Kathy Krepcio

Director, NTAR Leadership Center

Seeding Change and Policymaking

Greetings, and welcome to the NTAR Leadership Center's new blog called "Seeding Change".

Why seeding change? Because I feel the work we are doing through the Center is about introducing people to new ideas, concepts, knowledge, and most importantly, other people from diverse fields. Our hope is that these 'seeds' will result in fostering new or different approaches -- approaches that will ultimately create jobs and better economic outcomes for adults with disabilities.

I also like the concept of seeding change because I like to garden, and I find that the “systems change” work that we all do is very organic and a lot like gardening. For example, in public policymaking, it is important to have an idea of what you want to accomplish. In gardening, it also helps to start out with a plan and a layout of what you want to grow. Yet, in either case, there’s no guarantee that what you end up with will look anything like what you planned. That is a given. In my garden, I am amazed that every year I approach it in the same way -- I plan it, plant it, prune it, weed it, water it -- and every year it ends up looking different!

I could, of course, rip it all out if what I wanted doesn't work out -- or I can embrace the unexpected, because it may be just as good or better than what I thought would grow. In my garden, I find doing a little bit of both helps. The perennial phlox that I planted several years ago decided to seed itself all over my yard and now comes up in the most unexpected of places. I could dig it up -- but I like its brazenness. On the other hand, my husband and I waged a relentless fight against the potato blight that threatened my Jersey tomatoes this past summer (potato blight and tomatoes? Who knew?). The point is: in gardening, I need to strike a balance between the things I have the power (and desire) to change -- and my willingness to live with the consequences of my actions or inactions. The same is true in making public policy!

When it comes to working in the trenches to reform a system, as many of you are doing, I have come to realize how important it is to be vigilant and pay attention to it every day. While I must admit I am not able to be in my garden on a daily basis weeding, watering, or fertilizing, I recognize that to neglect it for even one day means something is going to run amok. Last year, I somewhat ignored my garden (o.k., really ignored it), and I learned one valuable lesson -- the power of those plants that I do not nurture to take over. In this case, I underestimated the power of Creeping Charlie to take over the yard. And, as many of you who have worked in public policy know, trying to undo what has “taken over” while you weren’t looking is back-breaking, difficult work.

Finally, in both gardening and policymaking, I have found that new ideas can come from unexpected places. Inspiration for my garden can come from anywhere -- the farmers market, talking to friends, or looking at endless magazines. You never know where the muse is. The same goes for changing systems and creating opportunities: inspiration to change -- or to try something new -- can come from the most surprising sources.

Recently, I was talking to my colleague Mary Alice Mowry from Minnesota. Mary Alice was telling me that she had gone to a workshop at the Milwaukee APSE conference in early summer and it really energized her. She said the workshop asked the participants three simple questions. Number one: What time is it? Number two: What do you need to learn, unlearn, and relearn? And Number three: What is your next bold move?

So, as we launch this new blog, I invite each of you to become an active participant in the two-way “conversations” our guest authors will lead every week in this space. In the spirit of change and inspiration, please share your comments and insights, and tell us:

What do YOU need to learn and relearn? What is YOUR next bold move?

Kathy Krepcio

Director, NTAR Leadership Center