National Technical Assistance and Research Center to Promote Leadership for Increasing Employment and Economic Independence of Adults with Disabilities (NTAR Leadership Center)
The NTAR Leadership Center, housed at the Heldrich Center and established in September 2007, is a collaboration of partners with expertise in workforce development, disability and employment, economic development, financial education and benefits planning, and leadership development. The NTAR Leadership Center's mission is to increase the employment and economic independence of adults with disabilities by promoting engaged and sustained leadership and partnerships within and among states. Key strategies and initiatives to be undertaken by the Center include:
Knowledge Development and Dissemination. The NTAR Leadership Center conducts research driven by the needs of policymakers and practitioners, including topical issue briefs and special topic studies of promising and evidence-based workforce practices and strategies to move adults with disabilities into employment. Beginning in 2010, the Center has focused its research agenda on the disability implications of an aging workforce. This research effort is looking to identify actions that can be undertaken to increase the employment of mature workers with disabilities. Research is identifying what is currently known about the impact of increasing incidences of disability in the labor supply on the policies and practices of the U.S. public workforce system. Through conversations with noted scholars, business leaders, and national experts in the area of disability and aging, the Center is looking to identify how best the workforce system can respond to and serve increasing numbers of mature workers with disabilities with the goal of developing a set of actionable policy, research and technical assistance recommendations.
Technical Assistance to State and Local Policymakers. The NTAR Leadership Center facilitates information exchange, continuous learning, and the sharing of promising practices and strategies to state and local policymakers interested in putting these practices to work. The Center offers a range of technical assistance services such as topical teleconferences and webinars that are available free of charge. Beginning in 2010, the NTAR Leadership Center is focusing its technical assistance services on supporting and initiating stronger and more robust universal design strategies for the public workforce development system – specifically the public One-Stop Career Center system. Through its partner, the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts, the Center is working with a select group of states to create models of physical and programmatic universal design and access within the workforce system and then look to develop and disseminate technical assistance materials and activities nationally.
Knowledge Exchange. The NTAR Leadership Center Web site serves as a vehicle for knowledge exchange and information sharing, and provides a wide array of users with information, research, and learning tools needed to design policies and partnerships that strengthen state and local leadership efforts to improve the employment and economic self-sufficiency of people with disabilities.
Products:
Collaborating and Coordinating with Employers
Disability Implications of an Aging Workforce: Developing an Action Strategy
Entrepreneurship for Veterans with Disabilities: Lessons Learned from the Field
Leading the Way: The First Year of the State Leaders Innovation Institute
Using Labor Market Data to Improve the Job Prospects of People with Disabilities
Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy.