State vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies play a critical role in helping transition-age youth with disabilities attain their vocational goals, though there is insufficient knowledge about how agencies serve them. Because of the persistent poor employment outcomes of transition-age youth with disabilities, policymakers and the disability community consider it highly important to ensure successful work-related outcomes for this population. We present new state-level statistics on the outcomes for a cohort of youth who applied for VR services from 2004 through 2006, obtained by merging VR administrative closure data across several years and linking those data to SSA administrative data.

Transition-age youth represent nearly one-third of those seeking VR agency services. States had wide variation in how their VR agencies served this population. Across states, the percentage of transition-age youth applying for VR services ranged from 4 to 14 percent, the percentage of applicants receiving VR services ranged from 31 to 82 percent, and the percentage of youth who received VR services and who closed with an employment outcome ranged from 40 to 70 percent. While youth with SSA disability benefits received services at about the same rates as their peers without disabilities, their employment outcomes were consistently lower. About 1 in 6 youth with SSA benefits had at least one month with a suspension of benefits in the 48 months after they applied for VR services, while about 1 in 10 youth without SSA benefits eventually received SSA benefits within 48 month of their VR application.

The unique vocational and education needs of transition-age youth are one reason why many agencies focus on this population—for example, by having dedicated counselors and vocational programs specifically for youth. If policymakers want to promote the services for transition-age youth, they could develop specific standards and indicators for agencies regarding this population. RSA currently has standards and indicators for the general population that agencies serve. It also includes measures specific to youth as a special population in annual reports. Expanding this focus by setting standards for all agencies for how each should serve youth could have an effect on increasing the number of youth who receive services and, therefore, might obtain better employment outcomes. Such identification of goals and public monitoring of efforts could lead to some agencies changing how they work with youth. The key question, though, is what the agency standards should be. If RSA develops standards for the transition-age population, those measures should account for state characteristics, acknowledge the different types of youth that agencies serve, and be based on cohorts of applicants.