Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program, Implementation ...

85• Several ENs decide whether to serve potential clients on the basis of proximityand reliable transportation. Some ENs serve only clients in a particular area.Others reject people who do not have transportation out of concern that theywill miss job interviews or fail to meet a work schedule.• Some ENs will not serve candidates with certain types of disabilities, preferringinstead to work with people similar to their existing clients or with people whosedisabilities make job placement or retention extraordinarily difficult (asmentioned, examples include psychiatric disabilities and vision impairment).The closely related issue of whether ENs are basing a service decision on whichdisability program beneficiaries are in—SSI or DI—almost never arose in ourinterviews, and when it did, it did not appear that type of benefit was being usedas a hard-and-fast criterion for Ticket acceptance decisions. One EN officialsaid she generally believes SSI-only beneficiaries are not good candidates forTTW because their typically limited employment history may be associated withlower skill levels, yet she had not rejected anyone based on their participation inSSI; indeed, her sole assigned Ticket was for an SSI beneficiary.Although the preceding screening factors were among the most common, they were byno means the only factors cited. Several other screening criteria were mentioned by just oneor two EN officials. For example, some ENs will serve only Ticket holders who are alreadyan agency client receiving agency services under other programs; do not need potentiallyexpensive equipment such as assistive technology; are capable of working independentlywithout EN follow-up support services or other assistance from EN staff; are complyingwith a regimen prescribed by their mental health treatment program; have a telephoneanswering machine or voicemail; or are independent enough to go on job interviews alone soas not to create the impression that they will need an on-the-job assistant.Ticket Assignments. Beneficiaries who meet an EN’s screening criteria are typicallyinvited to assign their Tickets, yet many ENs found that relatively few beneficiaries weregood candidates for Ticket assignment. (This is consistent with findings from earlierinterviews.) Even screenings of many beneficiaries yielded few Ticket assignments, asillustrated by the following anecdotes.• After initially screening many callers by telephone, one EN sent applications to47 beneficiaries; only two of them returned the forms, and the EN acceptedboth Tickets.• Another EN conducted “mini-intake” interviews with about 300 callers bytelephone; about 25 or 30 of these individuals later came into the office for afull, one-hour intake interview; those who were still interested then met with abenefits counselor; at the time of our interview, the EN had taken a total ofthree Tickets.V: EN Participation in Ticket to Work