Vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs provide critical support for individual with disabilities in obtaining employment. To expand opportunities and reduce barriers for VR customers, it is essential that VR programs offer a full range of employment options, including self-employment. Vocational rehabilitation counselors (VRC) must have sufficient knowledge, skills, and support to be effective in offering the self-employment option.

For the policy study, researchers gathered and summarized self-employment policies from 73 state VR agencies representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia The report found that broad differences in policies and implementation strategies among VR agencies have led to unequal barriers to access to critical services needed to create economic self-sufficiency for people with disabilities.

This information brief provides a snapshot of the Vocational Rehabilitation recipients who exited services in PY 2018 and PY 2019. Specifically, the brief provides information on the characteristics of recipients who are receiving services and their employment outcomes (earnings, hours worked, etc.). Follow-up briefs will present information on state outcomes for recipients exiting in self-employment.

This information brief provides a snapshot of VR recipients from selected states who successfully exited in self-employment in PY 2018 and PY 2019. The brief is intended to provide a baseline that can be used in subsequent years to compare progress in self-employment as well as to design future research activities.

Vocational Rehabilitation professionals from 29 states responded to a request to complete an online needs assessment on their training needs in self-employment. This information brief reports on what they identified as the essential training topics. Although caution should be taken when generalizing the results to all VR professionals due to the small sample size, the information provides a snapshot as to what VR professionals report as important self-employment training topics.

This brief focuses on the self-reported training needs of VR professionals for assisting clients whose employment goal is self-employment. Participants were also asked their opinions on various statements about self-employment for individuals with disabilities. Overall, the respondents had positive perceptions of individuals with disabilities being able to pursue self-employment as a vocational goal.

In order to begin to understand what may be limiting the number of individuals exiting services in self-employment, the National Center on Self-employment, Business Ownership, and Telecommuting conducted focus groups with VR counselors. The goal was to learn what VR counselors believe are the barriers and facilitators to self-employment as well as the training needs of VR counselors. This brief presents information on barriers to self-employment as reported by the participants of these focus groups.

Self-employment is a critical component of any successful approach to employment supports for people with disabilities. In fact, we have already seen tremendous pockets of success while, on average, most systems treat entrepreneurship as a distant, unlikely possibility. From the Center On Self-Employment we know that in 2018 and 2019 only 1.7% of successful Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) closures for all VR agencies were among individuals exiting in self-employment. This brief explores the benefits of self-employment, the resources available for people with significant disabilities, and examples of self-employment success.

Self-Employment is an option that can help people who have a disability meet professional and financial goals by overcoming challenges that they may face with traditional employment. Self-employment offers people the choice to customize their work and to design a work environment that optimizes flexibility, offers accommodations and builds upon strengths and interests.