Rhode Island
This bill requires the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority to convene a coordinating council responsible for meeting the needs of low-income seniors and people with disabilities, which will develop recommendations for the appropriate and sustainable funding of the free-fare program for low-income seniors and people with disabilities.
This bill requires the Department of Children, Youth and Families to work collaboratively with the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals; school districts; and other agencies to create a transition plan for students who are developmentally delayed and under the jurisdiction of Family Court. The plan includes an education plan, available mentors, workforce supports and employment services, a health insurance option and more.
This bill provides that when a child with a disability is enrolled in a postsecondary or transitional education program as part of the services provided to the child by the school committee or local education agency (LEA), and the child reaches age 21 during a school or program year, the school committee or LEA would pay for the child's schooling to the conclusion of the school or program's academic year.
This bill broadens eligibility for the Mary Brennan fellowship fund program, such that young adults with disabilities (not just college students with disabilities) can participate. Fellows engage in a semester-long, part-time placement with the Governor's Commission on Disabilities, working on disability policy and research, meeting with decisionmakers and developing networks with professionals who can assist in career development and future endeavors.
This bill requires the Governor's Workforce Board to expand job and career opportunities for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It also adds representatives from the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals to the advisory committee of the state career pathways systems.
This bill requires transportation network companies to adopt policies and comply with all applicable laws regarding non-discrimination against riders or potential riders on the basis of the rider's physical disability (among other characteristics).
This bill requires that any student with a disability eligible for a Rhode Island Promise Scholarship (which funds associates degrees at the Community College of Rhode Island) be afforded all reasonable accommodations, including enrolling on a part-time basis, attaining a high school diploma/GED by age 21 and taking longer than two years to graduate with an associate's degree.
This bill requires various agencies - including local education agencies and state adult service agencies responsible for providing supports for adults with developmental disabilities - to provide children with disabilities and their parents or guardians with certain notices about rights and benefits available when the child turns 21.
OSCIL provides training in self-advocacy to individuals with disabilities. This includes learning disability rights and learning to effectively communicate individual needs in a variety of circumstances.
Operating Entity: Ocean State Center for Independent Living (OSCIL)
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program enables individuals with disabilities, service providers and others to learn about, access, and acquire assistive technology needed for education, employment, and community living. Services include device demonstrations, reutilization, loans, and financing.
Operating Entity: TechACCESS of Rhode Island
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program trains individuals with disabilities, including transition-age youth with disabilities, in starting businesses. It consists of six classes, focusing on launching, managing, and growing businesses. It then provides technical assistance as individuals with disabilities first start small businesses.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council
Entity Type: Other
The Business Enterprise Program helps people who are blind become food service or vending operators.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rhode Island Office of Rehabilitation Services
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
CAP helps individuals who experience problems when applying for or receiving vocational rehabilitation or independent living services. This includes advising and informing individuals of their rights and providing advocacy services.
Operating Entity: Disability Rights Rhode Island
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program provides services and assistance to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. These services include assistive technology training, financial training, transportation assistance, peer counseling and advocacy services, and employment education services.
Operating Entity: Ocean State Center for Independent Living (OSCIL)
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program provides vocational rehabilitation services to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. This includes vocational counseling and guidance; vocational evaluation to determine skills, abilities, and potential to work; vocational training; purchase of hearing aids and appropriate communications devices; interpreter services for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining employment; job placement assistance; and rehabilitation technology services.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rhode Island Office of Rehabilitation Services
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
This program provides a number of comprehensive trainings and technical assistance opportunities for disability employment service providers. Trainings focus on person centered career planning, assessment strategies, job development and placement, job support, community resources, and systems change and program development.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island College, Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities
Entity Type: College / University
This program provides supported employment services to Rhode Island residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It focuses on providing work readiness training, preparing participants for careers playing to their strengths, developing community ties, counseling participants on career options, and engaging participants in customized training for their selected job.
Operating Entity: Easterseals Rhode Island
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program provides assistance for individuals with disabilities seeking home modifications to enable said individual to seek competitive integrated employment. Home modifications are provided free of cost, and include widened doorways, ramps, bathroom modifications, and other functional modifications to meet individualized needs.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rhode Island Office of Rehabilitation Services
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
This program focuses on assisting participants with disabilities in obtaining self-sufficiency in adulthood. Trainings cover social and communication, self-advocacy, and self empowerment skills, as well as mobility and transportation, personal resource management, and general self-care.
Operating Entity: Ocean State Center for Independent Living (OSCIL)
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program provides a range of independent living services to people with disabilities at Centers for Independent Living across the state. Services include help connecting to local services, assistance with job searches, local transit skills training, assistive technology help, peer mentoring support, assistance with school-to-career transitions, self-advocacy help, and more.
Operating Entity: Ocean State Center for Independent Living
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program supports Parent Training and Information Centers and Community Parent Resource Centers in 12 eastern states plus DC and two territories. Services include one-to-one consultations, trainings and webinars, peer-to-peer mentoring, site visits, non-profit management tools, and more.
Operating Entity: Navigating Excellence Parent Center Assistance & Collaboration Team (NE-PACT)
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program provides a variety of direct services for children and youth with disabilities, families, professionals, and other organizations that support them. This includes helping parents participate effectively in their children’s education and development and partnering with professionals and policymakers to improve outcomes for children with disabilities.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Parent Information Network
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
These programs offer students with intellectual disabilities an opportunity to take college classes, engage in career development and independent living activities, and participate in the social life of a college campus.
Operating Entity: --
Entity Type: Multi-Stakeholder Project
Pre-ETS assist students with disabilities in identifying career interests and developing skills to be successful in the workplace. This includes five required activities: job exploration counseling, work-based learning experiences, workplace readiness training, counseling on comprehensive transition or postsecondary educational programs, and instruction in self-advocacy.
Operating Entity: --
Entity Type: Multi-Stakeholder Project
Project SEARCH is a one-year transition-to-work program for students with significant disabilities that includes classroom instruction, career exploration, and internship rotations. It is a collaboration between local businesses, state agencies, local school systems, and other entities, and is offered at several locations.
Operating Entity: --
Entity Type: Multi-Stakeholder Project
This program protects individuals with disabilities by empowering them and advocating on their behalf. This includes providing information and referrals, providing training and technical assistance to service providers, and conducting self-advocacy training.
Operating Entity: Disability Rights Rhode Island
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This program provides technical assistance to educational teams and families who serve learners with deaf-blindness, including around preparing for transition and maximizing a child's independent living.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island College, Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities
Entity Type: College / University
This program enables eligible individuals with disabilities to save money in a tax-exempt account that may be used for qualified disability expenses while keeping their eligibility for federally-funded, means-tested public benefits. Eligible expenses include education, employment training and support, and assistive technology.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
These four centers provide direct technical support, training, and information on transition services to school personnel in each region and assist in the development of statewide training and information activities.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Education
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
This program facilitates the provision of assistive technology for individuals with disabilities through device demonstration, device loaning and re-use, assistive technology training, public awareness promotion, and referral services. It is a partnership between Rhode Island assistive technology organizations, including the Adaptive Telephone Equipment Loan Program (ATEL), East Bay Educational Collaborative (EBEC), Ocean State Center for Independent Living (OSCIL), and TechACCESS of RI.
Operating Entity: --
Entity Type: Multi-Stakeholder Project
This program provides vocational rehabilitation and independent living services to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Services include vocational counseling and guidance, career assessments, job placement and training, and more.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rhode Island Office of Rehabilitation Services
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
This program helps individuals with particularly significant disabilities find and maintain employment. Services include job preparation services, work training opportunities, work interest assessments, job placement services, job coaching and retention services, and general assistance finding competitive employment.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rhode Island Office of Rehabilitation Services
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
This program provides long-term technical support for parents of individuals with disabilities, including in the areas of employment, financial management, transportation, community resources, and more.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island College, Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities
Entity Type: College / University
This program provides trainings for disability employment service providers, including around vocational assessment provision, employment law, job retention, training, and coaching. Participants can earn up to three certifications representing improved skills in disability employment.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island College, Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities
Entity Type: College / University
This program represents a collaboration of educators and service providers of students who share resources and experiences across a range of transition areas. This includes designing and managing transition programs, facilitating community and work-based instruction, coordinating services with adult agencies, and identifying best practices and overcoming disability-related barriers. It is run by the Rhode Island Secondary Transition and Employment First
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Education
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
This graduate-level program prepares students to implement effective, research-based transition practices to improve transition outcomes for youth with exceptionalities. The certificate requires 15 credit hours of work over two years, and provides transition service workers for the state of Rhode Island.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island College, Department of Special Education
Entity Type: College / University
This program helps individuals with disabilities choose, prepare for, obtain and maintain employment. It involves personalized employment counseling and creating an employment plan, the provision of assistive technology, vocational training, housing and vehicle modification, and post-employment services.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rhode Island Office of Rehabilitation Services
Entity Type: State Agency / Office
This program help out-of-school and in-school youth with one or more barriers to employment (including having a disability) prepare for and secure employment and postsecondary education opportunities. Services include tutoring; work experiences; occupational skills training; leadership development opportunities; and postsecondary education and training preparation activities.
Operating Entity: --
Entity Type: Multi-Stakeholder Project
This program provides consultation and information for those receiving disability benefits, who need help understanding eligibility and the impact work may have on their benefits.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island College, Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities
Entity Type: College / University
This program helps individuals with disabilities who are receiving Social Security Disability benefits make informed choices about work and make a successful transition to self-sufficiency.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island College, Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities
Entity Type: College / University
OSCIL provides assistance to help 11th and 12th grade students with disabilities successfully enter the post- high school world. Services include trainings on independent living, self-advocacy, job skills, interviewing, and financial management, as well as peer support and advocacy, job shadowing, transportation assistance, and college visits.
Operating Entity: Ocean State Center for Independent Living (OSCIL)
Entity Type: Non-Profit / Community Organization
This guide provides suggestions on how to support students' mental health as they return to school.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Education
Topic(s): Mental Health
Rhode Island created a comprehensive webpage with resources for teachers, families, and paraprofessionals. The website includes extensive instructions for teachers providing virtual instruction for students, as well as guidelines for assisting students with disabilities who return to in-person learning. It also lists additional assistive technology accommodations for students with disabilities participating in distance learning, and provides resources for families participating in their special education student's distance learning experience. It also lists extensive communication methods for parents of children with disabilities.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Education
As part of its spending of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund resources, the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued sub-grants to help local education agencies respond to the pandemic. Allowable uses for funding include providing mental health services and supports.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Topic(s): Mental Health
This document lists a variety of resources for parents helping with their child's distance learning experience. It provides resources guiding parents attempting to talk to their child about COVID-19, and both videos and interactive websites to help parents engage their child in educational resources.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Education
This document provides guidelines for school counselors providing school mental health resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides counselors a three stage required reopening process, and lists best practices and requirements for both in-person and tele counseling mental health services. It also requires Rhode Island school counselors to provide transition age students with online career counseling and application services.
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Education
This document lists various tips for parents to mitigate the negative mental health effects brought about by COVID-19. It also lists extensive resources for mental health crises, community resources, and mental health resources specifically for children
Operating Entity: Rhode Island Department of Health
Topic(s): Mental Health
This article discusses the neurologic symptoms of COVID-19 and what can be done to relieve symptoms and get treatment.
Operating Entity: Lifespan
Topic(s): Long-COVID