Alliance for Full Participation

Recruitment strategies:

Goals and Objectives:

• Defining significant, early-onset disabilities and ascertaining specifics about why this group has not had more access to employment opportunities.
• Transition from school to adult life with two secondary themes:
o Involving families in the process as soon as possible in order to raise their expectations to create a work culture.
o Create State-wide improvement in the transition process with access to career development.
• Understanding the needs of Business relative to their employment needs and relating that back to a need for non-profits to utilize Marketing, changing the mind-set of job development in particular to being employer driven.
• Assisting DDD with formulating its employment policy with a general consensus that there needs to be further examination of the current employment systems we are accustomed to and finding ways to either augment those systems with different practices or creating new systems. There was recognition by the group that it is less likely there will be funding for any systems changes.
• Developing "soft skills" for workers with disabilities. The consensus of the group is people with significant disabilities may have far better "soft skills" and as such may be far better employees then typical youth.
• A need to educate and involve self advocates.

Accomplishments:

We had a very successful first meeting of a larger AFP group, solidifying the goals and objectives moving forward. This meeting created a lively and informative discussion from a very diverse stakeholders group with a strong, passionate commitment towards increasing employment opportunities. We were also able to establish a working framework for the NJ AFP to serve as an employment think tank with the overarching goal of answering the question, what do people with significant, early-onset disabilities need to work in New Jersey?

Challenges:

How can national AFP assist your state’s team?

This is directly related to challenge we faced. It would be helpful for the national AFP to create a framework for AFP sponsored events that we on the state level could implement. One question that continues to be raised; what is the eventual outcome of AFP, not from a philosophical perspective, but from a tangible one. Creating such events would in fact give stakeholders the tangible piece for which they are looking for.

(This material was picked up from the AFP Facebook site).