Braided Funding Series

Person Putting Coin in a Piggy Bank. Photo by maitree rimthong: Pexel

Blended, Braided, and Sequenced Funding for Employment, Equity, and Inclusion Webinars

Demand for workplace talent is high. The flexibilities provided to workers during the COVID-19 pandemic are with us to stay. These conditions are expanding access to workforce activities for people with disabilities. To ensure that workforce programs are ready to meet this demand, leverage new workplace flexibilities and support job seekers and career changers equitably, programs often need to draw on a range of different funding sources. The ability to blend, braid, or sequence one funding source with others becomes an essential ingredient to support employment, equity, and inclusion. Yet, each source of funding usually comes with specific goals, target populations, and performance indicators. In this federal interagency webinar hosted by the LEAD Center, state and local practitioners across the workforce systems supporting people with disabilities, including leadership from the University of Arizona Sonoran Center for Excellence in Disabilities, discussed how they successfully apply innovative, collaborative resource-sharing that benefits both businesses and job seekers with disabilities.

These webinars were presented by the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, along with federal partners at the Employment and Training Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Administration for Community Living, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the Office of Special Education Programs, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Social Security Administration.