Opportunity for Innovation and Expansion Project
2000 Washington, Ste. B
Great Bend, KS
(620) 792-7775

Bruce Linhos, Executive Director
Vicki Richardson, Grant Coordinator

Mission Statement:

To promote youth and adults with disabilities in becoming self-sufficient.

Target Population:

• Youth, 16 years or older that have disabilities that affect their vocational goal
• Family members that have disabilities that affect their vocational goal

The Opportunity for Innovation and Expansion Project is a pilot project for the child welfare contractors in Kansas. The contracts included are: family preservation, adoption and foster care.

The key components of the initiative include:

• to train child welfare staff to be able to identify, screen and make appropriate referrals for vocational rehabilitation services;
• agency-based facilitators will become the identified expert and consultants around issues of services for individuals with disabilities;
• and presentations to social welfare classes at the college level will make certain that social workers entering the child welfare system possess greater assessment and referral skills.

Connect Kansas has identified as one of its' goals that of assisting youth to successfully transition to adulthood. It is estimated that high number of youths being served by the child-welfare system will be candidates for vocational rehabilitation (VR) services to assist them in achieving independence. In addition, identifying family members who are candidates for VR services could minimize the time a child remains in foster care and enhance successful reintegration with his/her family.

Project Facilitators:

Sid Bieber, Kansas Children's Service League
Kathy Barringer, St. Francis Academy

The role of the agency-based facilitator is to:

• train contractor and subcontractor staff concerning making appropriate referrals to VR;
• to become liaisons between the VR staff, the area SRS offices and the child-welfare contractors;
• and act as consultants around issues of services for individuals with disabilities.

This collaboration between child-welfare services and VR will improve services to clients of SRS with disabilities. Currently, there is limited working knowledge on the part of most child-welfare workers about services available through vocational rehabilitation, identification of appropriate clients for vocation services, and the process by which clients can be referred for VR. By bridging the gap between these diverse systems we believe that consumers of our programs will be both better served and more likely to realize their vocational potential.

Disability Related Sites

Rehabilitation Services- KS

Beach Center for Disabilities-KU

Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation

Connect for Kids

Keys for Networking

Families Together Inc.

Rainbows United Inc.

Kansas Commission on Disability Concerns

Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities

National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities

Transition Coalition

U.S. Government

Children with Disabilities- KS

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