A partnership between Earlywood Educational Services and Aspire Johnson County aims to provide opportunities for students with disabilities to gain employment locally after they leave high school.
The partnership, announced Tuesday, comes from a $551,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Education’s Explore, Engage and Experience (3E) initiative. The money will pay for the salaries of two employees. A Community Employment Coordinator Specialist will work with Earlywood to identify which students might be best for certain job opportunities. A School To Work Specialist, hired by Aspire, will work with local businesses to find opportunities for students with disabilities, said Angela Balsley, Earlywood’s executive director.
The grant will also pay for the Enabled Workforce Initiative, meant to train those businesses on how to support those individuals, according to a news release from Aspire.
Earlywood Educational Services assists 4,540 students with Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs, in six school districts, including Greenwood, Franklin, Indian Creek, Edinburgh, Southwestern and Flat Rock schools. Clark-Pleasant and Center Grove schools have also been invited to take part in the employment initiative, which will continue through Sept. 2023, she said.
“This will take an individualized approach with strengths and interests, preferences and need, and match them with employers and their accommodation needs can be met,” Balsley said. “People with disabilities is the largest underemployed minority group. Maybe someone doesn’t interview well and has poor eye contact and we can help them understand the interview process and rehearse with them. Maybe an employer is hesitant to employ them because they don’t understand the needs of the individuals.”
Aspire will hold training for businesses to work with students with disabilities. While those training sessions haven’t happened yet, the partnership between Earlywood and the local business community will help not only students looking for employment, but businesses that need talented workers, said Christian Maslowski, Aspire’s president and CEO.
“As I was learning about this, I thought about the untapped potential for new workers, employees and interns, that may be overlooked or underutilized right now. Also, this is the right thing to do,” Maslowski said. “When we think about students with disabilities, we’re talking about a broad spectrum of abilities. If a student perhaps has dyslexia or hearing loss, they’re counted as disabled but they’re perfectly capable and able to continue and learn to work.”
As the program continues, it can help serve not only students in high school or a special education Transition to Adulthood program but students in younger grades as well, Balsley said.
“In the younger grades, when you think about soft skills, it’s dependability, reliability and independence,” she said. “You think about those in a developmentally appropriate way in the younger grades, and you can build that by following directions, self-management and communication skills.”
