1. CAPE-Youth Collaboration Study Email

OMB Control No: 1230-0NEW

Expiration Date: XX/XX/20XX

Dear Colleague,

The Center for Advancing Policy on Employment for Youth (CAPE-Youth) is a U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy-funded policy development and technical assistance center supporting the development, implementation, and integration of evidence-based effective practices and policies for improving transition outcomes for youth and young adults with disabilities. This year, as part of the ongoing effort to ascertain the best practices in interagency collaboration among state agencies serving transitioning youth and young adults with disabilities, we are inviting you to voluntarily participate in our Youth and Adult Systems Collaboration Study, a research initiative of CAPE-Youth. The research project will occur from [dates of Phase 1] for Phase 1 and [dates of Phase 2] for Phase 2.

If you choose to be a part of this study, you will be asked to participate in an online questionnaire that will open on [date] and close on [date] during Phase 1 of the study. The questionnaire will take approximately 25-30 minutes to complete and will ask you questions about the levels of interagency collaboration and service coordination with other agencies in your state and/or local area (e.g., vocational rehabilitation, social security, education, mental health agencies, developmental disabilities agencies, juvenile justice, foster care, and other agencies likely to serve youth with one of WIOA’s defined “barriers to employment”) who are also providing services to transitioning youth and young adults with disabilities. Questions will target appropriate collaborations based on your job role as direct service provider or supervisor. The questionnaire will also assess the frequency that your agency engages in certain types of collaborative practices, and your levels of confidence in serving diverse groups of youth with disabilities and coordinating services across agencies. Questionnaire responses will be anonymous, and results of the questionnaire will be stored in secure, encrypted data format, accessed only by study personnel, and reported only in aggregate form.

Additionally, a subset of questionnaire respondents will receive a second outreach during [dates] inviting them to participate in Phase 2 of the study, which entails participation in interviews. The interview questions will assess: (a) transition coordination practices between systems; (b) methods for facilitating external partnerships; (c) understanding of other agencies’ policies, procedures, and eligibility criteria; (d) existing organizational attitudes and experiences; and (e) the frequency and success in serving diverse populations of youth and young adults with disabilities. The interviews will take approximately 1.5 hours to complete. Additionally, one-on-one phone or virtual interviews will be offered in some cases to accommodate participants who cannot make the scheduled sessions. The discussions will be audio recorded and transcribed, but transcription records will be anonymized. Reporting efforts will take steps to ensure that participants are not identifiable during reporting of qualitative findings.

As we extend this invitation, please keep in mind: (a) you are under no obligation to participate; (b) transcriptions and audio recordings will remain private, except for aggregate reporting efforts by the research team; and (c) responses will be used only for the necessary information to include in the Center’s research, technical assistance, and professional development efforts. If you are interested in learning more about CAPE-Youth and Cornell University’s research initiatives to support transitioning youth with disabilities, please contact: Matthew Saleh (mcs378@cornell.edu) or Leslie Shaw (leslie.shaw@cornell.edu). If you are interested in learning more about Cornell’s Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability and the overall efforts of CAPE-Youth, please contact Andrew Karhan (ak2589@cornell.edu).

Regards,

Matthew Saleh, J.D., Ph.D.

Research Associate

Cornell University, ILR School

Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability