Welcome to the Toolkit page
AIVRS Program Directors Toolkit: Your First 90 Days
The Directors Toolkit contains helpful hints and resources for AIVRS Directors as they begin their journey into the AIVRS Community. Click below to view or download the toolkit.
AIVRTTAC will make updates and corrections to the material in order to ensure legal sufficiency, accuracy of information, and accessibility.
Employment Development and Placement Handbook
Download the Employment DP Handbook
The purpose of this handbook is to improve AIVRS project staff knowledge of employment development and placement techniques, leading to improved staff performance and an increased number of successful employment outcomes for project participants. The appendix includes several documents, including templates, informational sheets, and how-to guides, that can be used by AIVRS professionals and shared with project participants to assess their own career interests.
AIVRS Projects - A Brief History
Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation began in the 1970’s following successful advocacy at the federal level by the Navajo Nation to obtain funds to develop American Indian Vocational Rehabilitation projects in order to serve tribal people with disabilities.
The Arizona Division of Vocational Rehabilitation awarded the Navajo Nation government a three-year Establishment Grant that required matching funds from the Tribe, to begin serving people with disabilities living on the Navajo Reservation, 1975.
Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 102 required the State Vocational Rehabilitation agency to provide adequate vocational rehabilitation services to American Indian people with disabilities residing in the State, 1978.
The Navajo Nation is the first and only Nation to be awarded an AIVRS grant, 1980-1985. The Northern Cheyenne and Chippewa-Cree Tribes of Montana were next to be funded and the funding changed from a three-year to a five-year funding cycle with a ten-point preference allocated to existing projects, 1985.
The establishment of fourteen AIVRS by 1993, as well as the forming of the Consortia of Administrators for Native American Rehabilitation (CANAR), 1993. CANAR is a membership run organization and acts in the capacity of advocacy and change agent for the AIVRS projects.
Thank you to Marie Parker Strahan and Paula Seanez for their historical data.