Narrative: d. 2. P. i. II.

DRS continues to be successful in achieving the agency’s goals and priorities. However, a high turnover rate of DRS staff, including VR counselors, presents a barrier to the full achievement of all goals and priorities. Because of this barrier, DRS will continue to maintain its goals and priorities relating to CRPs, transportation, and serving youth with disabilities until the desired outcomes are achieved.

The main impact of high turnover is the need to continually train and educate new staff members. Newly hired staff do not have a full understanding of available resources in their local area, including transportation and CRP services. This knowledge gap effects many areas of DRS activities and may unfortunately lead to lower levels of CRP utilization, local transportation options, and consumer satisfaction, especially among youth. However, DRS is working to mitigate these impediments to achieving its goals and priorities.

To address new mandates under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, DRS has restructured its territory assignments for VR counselors. Counselors are now each primarily assigned to serve a specific consumer group: high school students, transitioning youth, or general consumers. With these changes, and the necessary training, DRS will continue to work toward improving consumer satisfaction, especially that of students and transitioning youth.

The high turnover rate, not just among DRS staff, but CRP staff as well, can negatively impact CRP service delivery and capacity across the state. For these reasons, DRS has maintained goals and priorities associated with improving the working relationships between DRS and CRP staff in addition to increasing the availability of CRP services within the community.

To combat transportation issues, DRS has continued its commitment to reduce transportation barriers for consumers with disabilities and its focus on individual transportation solutions (ITS) to satisfy immediate transportation needs. DRS also encourages planning for transportation needs early in the development of the consumer’s rehabilitation program. At application, DRS counselors identify transportation issues and focus on finding solutions to include in the consumer’s Individualized Plan for Employment (IPE). This ensures that the ability of consumers to reach their vocational goal is not impeded by preventable transportation barriers. Transportation issues were also addressed by the standard instrument prescribed for routine use by supervisors and quality assurance staff in case reviews.

DRS is successfully moving forward, despite the barriers faced by the agency, and will continue to work toward successfully achieving all goals and priorities.