ACCES-VR Services for Adults in New York

We start by getting to know you: your education, the work you have done, what you are good at, and what genuinely interests you. Over the assessment we use career interest tools, skill assessments, structured exploration activities, and conversation to build a clear picture of your strengths, the supports that help you work well, and the kind of work that would fit.

You finish with a written report and concrete recommendations: career pathways, what the job market for them looks like in your area, potential training and support services, and what it will take to get hired and stay hired. If you are exploring career options or looking for guidance about how to reach a career goal, this assessment can help you develop a plan.

This is where you build the skills that transfer to any workplace. We work on your resume, on how workplaces actually run and what tends to be expected day to day, and on the professional and social side of a job: how people communicate, what good working relationships look like, and how to handle the situations that come up.

We also spend time on the practical things that make steady work possible, such as planning your transportation, managing the routines around your day, and understanding your own strengths and the accommodations that help you work well. If you want to feel prepared before you start looking rather than figuring it out on the job, this is a good place to begin.

Self-advocacy starts with knowing yourself: your strengths and talents, the strategies you already use to work around things, and the people and supports in your life who help you succeed. We also look at the full range of employment options open to you, so the goals you set are yours and not somebody else’s idea of what you should do.

From there we cover the practical side. What reasonable accommodations are and how to figure out which ones you need. Your rights under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Whether, when, and how to tell an employer about your disability, which is always your decision to make. And how to actually ask for what you need in the moment.

By the end you should be able to name what you want, name what you need, and advocate for both as you move through hiring and into a job.

Once your IPE is in place, this is individualized support for the step you are actually taking: a college or training program, an internship, or another activity that moves you toward your employment goal.

What it looks like depends on you. It might be staying on top of a course load, working out what an internship expects and how to meet it, or pulling together the financial and education documentation ACCES-VR needs from you. It runs for a set period rather than open-ended, and the point is to carry you through the stretch where regular one-to-one support makes the difference.

This is regular, usually weekly, one-to-one support for navigating the parts of school and work that are rarely written down anywhere. It is designed for people whose disability affects communication, including many autistic adults, and it is also there for people whose education was interrupted or never really got started.

In a college or training program, that can mean getting oriented to campus before the semester begins, handling registration and housing, and making sense of expectations nobody states out loud: how a department is organized, how a given instructor works, and what is actually being asked of you in a course.

At work, it can mean walking the job site before your first day, sorting out HR paperwork and how breaks and lunch work, and learning the difference between the stated rules and the real ones. We also work on conversation itself: small talk, taking turns, reading a room, and finding your footing when a conversation gets stressful.

Running through all of it, we work on planning and flexible problem solving, managing the demands a day puts on your attention and memory, staying regulated when things get hard, building genuine relationships with peers and mentors, and knowing your accommodations and how to ask for them. Your Communication Support Specialist stays in contact with your ACCES-VR counselor so everyone is working from the same picture.

Job coaching begins once you have the job. We can work with you on site or away from it, whichever helps more, and the focus is on getting established and staying established.

Early on that often means learning the specific tasks of your role, getting oriented to the place and the people, and working out your route and transportation so getting there is one less thing to think about. As you settle in it shifts to whatever the job asks of you next: adjusting when your duties change, working something through with a supervisor, or talking with your employer so expectations stay clear on both sides.

If it helps, we can coordinate with your family, your residence, or other agencies supporting you. How long job coaching runs is set by your ACCES-VR counselor in your IPE.