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- Federal Resources
Federal Resources
National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability
NCWD/Youth is your source for information about employment and youth with disabilities. Our partners - experts in disability, education, employment, and workforce development - strive to ensure you will be provided with the highest quality, most relevant information available.
Office of Disability Employment Policy, Department of Labor
The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) was authorized by Congress in the Department of Labor's FY 2001 appropriation. ODEP provides information for families, professionals, and communities on transitioning youth with disabilities into training and employment opportunities.
Soft Skills to Pay the Bills: Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success
The Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy released this collection of career development exercises that aim to improve the "soft skills" of young workers, including those with disabilities.
Teaching Soft Skills Through Workplace Simulation in Classroom Settings
The Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy provides a resource focused on how schools and employment opportunities can teach soft skills, specifically for students with disabilities. Relevant soft skills, as mentioned in the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, include: teamwork, problem solving, effective use of resources and effective coommunication.
Healthy Transitions: A Pathway to Employment for Youth with Chronic Health Conditions and Other Disabilities
This brief highlights an ODEP-commissioned study that aimed to improve understanding of the relationship between disability, health and wellness, and transition and employment outcomes for youth with disabilities (PDF, 13 pages), as well as the role health care providers play in establishing employment expectations. The brief also includes recommendations for promoting purposeful health care transition planning for all youth, including those with chronic health conditions and other disabilities.
Share with Youth: Hitting the Open Road After High School
Co-written by teens for teens, this resource can help youth with disabilities (PDF, 16 pages) think about their options for life after high school. It provides information on post-graduation options and guides students in making choices that are right for them, finding activities that can help them get ready now, and accessing supportive services.
Resource: Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP)
This program connects federal and private sector employers with college students and recent graduates with disabilities seeking summer or permanent employment. WRP recruiters from federal agencies conduct personal interviews with interested candidates, who are then included in a searchable database that is available to hiring officials in federal agencies. Colleges and universities can apply to host interviews with WRP recruiters, and students and employers can apply to gain access to the database.
Resource: Mental Health Needs of Youth
This webpage, developed by the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability, provides multiple resources on the mental health needs of youth, especially as they relate to employment. Youth service practitioners can use this information to better understand the needs of youth, and policymakers can utilize it in their work to address system and policy obstacles and improve service delivery systems for youth with mental health needs.
Share with Youth: #ApprenticeshipWorks
These resources promote inclusive apprenticeship program models that meet employer needs by attracting a diverse array of candidates, including people with disabilities. ODEP's #ApprenticeshipWorks Guides introduce youth, educators, service providers, and businesses to the benefits and opportunities of inclusive apprenticeship. The #ApprenticeshipWorks Video Series demonstrates how apprenticeship works for job seekers and employers. These videos feature apprentices with and without disabilities and their apprenticeship sponsors participating in inclusive programs.
A Comparison of Four Restorative Conferencing Models
This Bulletin focuses on four restorative conferencing models: victim-offender mediation, community reparative boards, family group conferencing, and circle sentencing. It first describes each of the four restorative conferencing models, then compares and contrasts.
Behavioral Health Problems, Treatment, and Outcomes in Serious Youthful Offenders
This bulletin from OJJDP summarizes findings from analyses of data from the Pathways to Desistance study, which followed more than 1,300 serious youthful offenders for seven years after their court involvement. These analyses addressed the overlap of behavioral health problems and offending behavior (PDF, 16 pages), the care young people with disorders received while in juvenile justice settings, and the care received in the community upon their release. Implications for juvenile justice practice and policy and potential opportunities for system improvement are discussed.
Amber Alert: Best Practices
“AMBER Alert Best Practices,” published by the Department of Justice, discusses the most effective strategies that AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) partners have provided for recovering missing children. It explains the history of the system, the role each partner plays in child recovery and how to use the resources provided as best as possible.
Balanced and Restorative Justice for Juveniles: A Framework for Juvenile Justice in the 21st Century
This document makes the case for a new mission for juvenile justice known as the "Balanced Approach," and advocates consideration of a new philosophical framework, "Restorative Justice," to guide broader policy development and reform in juvenile justice.
Alaska Native Tribal Courts Gain Right to Protect Women in Domestic Violence Cases
With the repeal of the “Alaska Exemption” from the 2013 Violence Against Women Act, Alaska Native communities will now be able to use their sovereign authority to protect women from domestic violence. This repeal was one of the recommendations in the recently released report, Ending Violence So Children Can Thrive (PDF, 258 pages) developed by the Advisory Committee of the Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence.
Aftercare Services
This Bulletin examines aftercare services that provide youth with comprehensive health, mental health, education, family, and vocational services upon their release from the juvenile justice system.
Changing Lives: Prevention and Intervention to Reduce Serious Offending
This bulletin provides a review of effective early childhood, juvenile, and early adulthood programs that mitigate risk factors for delinquency and have demonstrated measurable impacts on offending (PDF, 8 pages). These programs are grouped by family, school, peers, and community, individual, and employment.
Comprehensive Responses to Youth At Risk: Interim Findings From the SafeFutures Initiative
The SafeFutures initiative joins what we have learned from research about risk and protective factors with what we now know from experience about promising approaches to preventing and controlling delinquency, resulting in a continuum of care that responds to the needs of youth at critical stages in their development. This Summary describes the lessons learned over the initial 3 years of the initiative's implementation in three pilot sites.
Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act establishes the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Council) as an independent body within the executive branch of the federal government. The Council's primary functions are to coordinate federal juvenile delinquency prevention programs, federal programs and activities that detain or care for unaccompanied juveniles, and federal programs related to missing and exploited children.
Disproportionate Minority Contact
This site provides information and resources focused on the disproportionate number of minority youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system
Developmental Sequences of Girls’ Delinquent Behavior
As part of the Girls Study Group series, which was established to guide the development, testing, and implementation of strategies to prevent and intervene in girls’ delinquency, this bulletin synthesizes the methods, findings, and implications from a collaborative analysis of data that the Denver Youth Survey and the Fast Track Project collected on the developmental patterns of girls’ offending from childhood through adolescence.
Criminal Career Patterns
The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed the bulletin, "Criminal Career Patterns" as part of the Justice Research Series. This bulletin describes criminal career patterns in adolescence and adulthood.
Desktop Guide to Quality Practice for Working With Youth in Confinement
This web-based guide offers facility leadership and staff who work with confined youth information on principles, concepts, and practices in use in custody facilities.
Curriculum for Training Educators of Youth in Confinement
To help teachers address issues surrounding youth in confinement, the National Juvenile Detention Association's Center for Research and Professional Development (CRPD) has developed a National Training Curriculum for Educators of Youth in Confinement Facilities (Educator's Curriculum). Topics addressed include behavioral development, mental health, and assessment.
Employment and Training for Court-Involved Youth
This Report represents a compendium of the opinions and concerns of the Task Force members about current conditions that affect court-involved youth and identifies the most promising strategies for connecting court-involved youth to the labor market.
Explanations for Offending
The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed the bulletin, "Explanation for Offending" as part of the Justice Research Series. This bulletin examines various developmental, biological, social, and psychological explanations for offending.