Cross Agency Training

When workers or job seekers cannot get answers to their planning questions, complex program rules can become barriers to employment for people with disabilities. The Disability Benefits 101 Cross Agency Training model builds and supports local service networks armed with real-world knowledge about work, disability, healthcare and other benefits. The target trainee audience includes staff from diverse public, private and non-profit direct service organizations who work with each other through local networks.

The goal of cross agency training is to achieve a solid awareness level knowledge of healthcare and other essential supports youth and adults with disabilities can access while working. The training spans public and private health, benefit and employment programs and protections, introduces trainees to DB101 benefits planning calculators and provides strategies to improve interaction with benefit program staff. In addition, participants from diverse agencies get to know each other and create or improve networks that last well beyond training events.

The California Health Incentive Improvement Project (CHIIP) sponsors expert trainers from DB101 Information Services at the World Institute on Disability to respond to the need for information and resources at a local level.

Local steering committees comprised of independent living center staff, county program staff from health and rehabilitation agencies, employment services, employer human resource departments and others work together and provide leadership to help produce these training events. You can help design this model for your local area by contacting Rachel Stewart at CHIIP, (916) 552-9491, or by email.

The California Health Incentives Improvement Project is funded under a Medicaid Infrastructure Grant from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services grant number 11-P-92339-9/03.

Major current funders of DB101 Information Services include CHIIP, the California Endowment and the Social Security Administration.