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Gloucester County One-Stop Project: results of staff training on customer satisfaction and employment outcomes for persons with disabilities.

Article Excerpt
The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) mandated a comprehensive reform of Federal job training programs (Public Law: 105-220, 29 USC 2801). WIA legislation created partnerships between the State Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) system, the State Employment Service (ES), the State Unemployment Insurance service (UI), and county-run employment and training services previously funded under the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). The new bureaucratic entity developed by WIA, referred to as the 'One-Stop System' is intended to provide all Americans with a 'seamless' continuum of employment and training services delivered by state, county and local employment and training providers.

Despite the WIA 'vision' of a unified system of employment and training services, Government audits and other independent evaluations consistently report that most One-Stops continue to provide fragmented, stand-alone services, even in situations where partners are co-located (Berkowitz & Rosa, 2002). Thus, the much heralded, customer-friendly, consumer-driven One-Stop Center environment called for by WIA has yet to materialize for most Americans. To facilitate the systems change and organizational re-engineering mandated by WIA, the United States Department of Labor and other funding sources are providing demonstration and system change grants to One-Stop Systems throughout the country in an attempt to rectify existing deficiencies (Department of Labor-ETA Federal Register Notice, Work Incentive Grant, 5/25/2000). Funding to enhance services for persons with disabilities within the One-Stop System is a high priority (DOL-ODEP, 2002; 2003).

In 2001, the New Jersey Council on Development Disabilities (NJCDD) released a Request for Proposal for New Jersey's Workforce Investment Boards to help build capacity within the One-Stop system to serve persons with severe disabilities. The Council was concerned that persons with 'visible' or 'severe' disabilities were not being adequately served by mainstream services within the WIA system. More specifically, the concern was that the 'One-Stop system' might be triaging persons with disabilities to the State Office of Vocational Rehabilitation instead of treating this population within the mainstream service components (ES, WIA) of the One-Stop system.

The Gloucester County Workforce Investment Board in collaboration with the Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) and the Institute of Community Inclusion (ICI) in Boston were awarded the NJCDD contract (Gervey, Gao & Rizzo, 2004). The Gloucester One-Stop Project was designed to unfold in three phases, a baseline data collection phase designed to assess access and quality of services to persons with disabilities, a staff-training intervention phase to enhance access and quality of services, and a post-intervention phase. The results of the Gloucester County One-Stop Center baseline study revealed a surprisingly high prevalence rate of persons with disabilities within the One-Stop system. Approximately 21% of One-Stop customers (446/2072) reported having a significant disability, half of which claimed to have a severe emotional problem (Gervey et al., 2004). Persons with disabilities reported significantly less satisfaction with services compared to persons without disabilities (Gervey et al., 2004). Moreover, persons with disabilities were less likely to be engaged in a career-oriented activity (e.g., enrolled in job training, employed) over the 3-month, follow-along period (Gervey et al., 2004).

This paper describes the second phase of the Gloucester County One-Stop Project which is designed to examine the impact of staff training on customer satisfaction, and employment and training outcomes of One-Stop customers with disabilities in comparison to customers without disabilities.

Method

Study Design

The project uses a quasi-experimental, time-series design to study the impact of staff training on the quality of services delivered to persons with disabilities within the One-Stop Center. Two cohorts of One-Stop customers were recruited. One cohort received services prior to the initiation of any staff training within the One-Stop Center (baseline cohort). The second cohort received services during the period in which One-Stop staff received customer service training (intervention cohort). Half of each cohort was comprised of persons with disabilities. The other half were persons without disabilities matched to persons with disabilities based on gender, age, and level of education.

Subjects were administered a customer satisfaction questionnaire after their initial visit to the One-Stop Center and then contacted weekly for a period of 12 weeks to assess participation in the One-Stop Center and to record all employment and/or training-related activities.

Subject Recruitment

Individuals with severe disabilities were recruited by members of the Gloucester County One-Stop Project Advisory Board. The Advisory Board comprised of state and local representatives from various disability-specific and consumer advocate organizations, elicited the help of local community provider agencies to identify potential subjects. Informed consent interviews preceded subject enrollment in the study. Subjects were offered up to $100 for their participation in the research.

One-Stop customers without disabilities were recruited through announcements made by One-Stop Center staff at the Reemployment Orientation (RO). The RO is a mandated meeting for all new enrollees in the state unemployment insurance program and is designed to encourage individuals to seek assistance...

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