News

SWTCIE Illinois participant awarded Teammate of the Month

SWTCIE Illinois participant Gabby was chosen as Teammate of the Month in July 2025 by the customers at the Schnucks market in Waterloo, Illinois. Selected based on customer survey responses, Gabby was described as friendly, helpful, and very knowledgeable about her job. Since Schnucks also offers online grocery services, the survey responses were from both in-store customers and customers who ordered using their online delivery services.

Gabby has been employed at Schnucks for over a year as a bagger/courtesy clerk and it is her first job. She works between 20 to 30 hours a week, often volunteering to work for others. Gabby has become an important front-line team member. Her natural leadership skills are reflected by the way she offers to help solve problems and her willingness to assist with whatever needs to be done. We are all so proud of how she has grown and how well she has adjusted to working with the public, handling difficult situations, all while providing quality customer service.

Gabby graduated from Valmeyer High School in 2024. She is the eldest of two girls and has a younger sister named Jillian. Additionally, she has two dogs, collects unique pens and loves to draw. She completed the SWTCIE Illinois Competitive Integrated Employment program in June 2025.

SWTCIE Illinois Employment Specialist Michelle Crawford asked Gabby about her feelings upon receiving the Schnucks Teammate of the Month award. “I am honored,” says Gabby. She mentioned that she enjoys her job and that everything is going well. When asked what advice she would give to others in the SWTCIE Illinois program seeking employment, she says, “They should stay friendly and never give up.”

Check out Gabby’s success story

With the support of her family and the SWTCIE program, Gabby transitioned from working part-time to full-time, driving herself to work, and making independent decisions. Her story is a testament to the power of opportunity and the value of dedication and hard work in creating a fulfilling and successful career.

“Gabby is dependable, hard-working, and friendly to all of our customers. It is always a pleasure to see her wonderful smile in the morning. She consistently brings joy to our staff team and is a delight to work with.”

– Scott Pflueger, customer services manager, Schnucks Market, Inc., Waterloo, Illinois

The role of evaluation in advancing Competitive Integrated Employment

The overarching goal of the Subminimum Wage to Competitive Integrated Employment Innovative Model Demonstration Project, known as SWTCIE Illinois, is to increase access to competitive integrated employment (CIE) jobs for people with disabilities. The SWTCIE Illinois project has taken intentional steps toward this effort in its early years, through the hiring of employment specialists across partner agencies, providing training and technical assistance to the agencies and their employees, providing benefits counseling training to community research specialists, and more. These efforts are already yielding rewards, as several SWTCIE Illinois participants have successfully gotten CIE jobs.

One of the key components to the success of SWTCIE Illinois has been the creation of an evaluation team within the Illinois Institute for Rehabilitation and Employment Research (IIRER). The team exists to document the relationship between participant engagement with CIE practices and the strategies implemented by the project in facilitating its key outcomes. The team is composed of Dr. Bryan Austin, director of evaluation; Dr. John Kosciulek, project administrator; Dr. Stuart Rumrill, research evaluation specialist; Dr. Chun-Lung Lee, research evaluation specialist and biostatistician; and Dr. David George Strauser, interagency collaboration specialist.

The team conducts the evaluation process through the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of constituents, including SWTCIE Illinois participants, their parents and families, advocates, guardians, 14(c) certificate holders, state- and community-based agencies, schools, CIE employers and the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) Division of Rehabilitation Services (DRS). The team solicits feedback from these partners and stakeholders and analyzes the collected data. This allows the team to holistically evaluate the SWTCIE Illinois project and the impact that it is making, including its strengths and challenges, in order to refine and implement the project with ever-increasing success. Data and findings yielded by evaluation are utilized not only by the constituents involved in the data collection process, but also by Mathematica, a research and data analytics consultancy working with the Department of Education Rehabilitation Services Administration on the evaluation of the federal initiative across all 13 states.

The team conducts their much-needed research through both instrumental means and direct observation, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, case studies and DRS WebCM case file reviews. Evaluation results are disseminated through an equally varied system of resources, including the SWTCIE Illinois website, social media, peer review journal articles, conference presentations and more. In addition, once the project has concluded, the team will create a SWTCIE Illinois Toolkit for use by any interested parties.

The team’s evaluation process is conducted with six primary constructs of focus in mind: quality of life, interagency collaboration, vocational rehabilitation services, implementation, knowledge translation, and sustainability. The framework is robust in nature and is based upon the SWTCIE Notice Inviting Applications, as well as empirical, policy and practice vocational rehabilitation literature. The team evaluates and measures the project’s performance based on four specific outcomes: optimized participant CIE, increased participant community integration, enhanced participant quality of life, and a sustained innovative and collaborative partnership model.

As the team sees it, the evaluation process offers numerous benefits. The formative evaluation component allows for continuous, time-sensitive improvements in the interventions provided by SWTCIE Illinois. “We aim to understand the effectiveness of the overall SWTCIE intervention and its components in real time,” the team said. “If our evaluations reveal less-than-desirable outcomes, the data helps us identify ‘weak spots’ and determine how to improve specific components.”

Feedback from partners and stakeholders is particularly essential to the formative evaluation process. The evaluation team takes this feedback and uses it to make intentional change, as necessary. For example, if employment specialists receive training on job accommodation assessment provided by SWTCIE, the evaluation team would speak to those employment specialists to get their thoughts on the usefulness of the training. The team would then use that helpful feedback in determining training strategies for the future, particularly if the feedback sends the message that the current iteration of training needs improving. “We can incorporate [those] suggestions into future trainings or revise the existing ones,” the team said.

Remaining flexible and intentional in the midst of evaluation efforts is vital in a project of this size and scope with its many interested stakeholders, and it can be difficult to track all activities throughout the project. Utilizing their established evaluation framework and seeking out input from partners has been essential in helping the team to successfully implement and evaluate the SWTCIE Illinois project. These strategies have enabled the team to “stay focused and true” in collecting data in the areas that are important to the field.

While their work is vital to the success of the SWTCIE Illinois project, the team acknowledges that the tasks they conduct can seem a bit daunting to participants and other stakeholders. “Even titles as ‘evaluators’ can sometimes be perceived as intimidating,” the team said. They emphasize that they are there to help, not to create unease. “We always strive to emphasize that we are not enforcers or looking to highlight deficiencies. Our goal is to improve the project’s effectiveness and enhance the experience and outcomes for everyone involved … we’re nice guys!”

By Danielle Fields, Ed.D. | contact-iirer@illinois.edu

SWTCIE Illinois paving the way for Dignity in Pay

On May 23, 2024, the Illinois House of Representatives passed House Bill 793 HA1, known as the Dignity in Pay Act, which aims to ensure that individuals with disabilities receive fair compensation. The bill, which had bipartisan support, is expected to reach the Illinois Senate in November, where it will require a three-fifths vote to pass.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 allows organizations with special exemptions to pay subminimum wage to individuals with disabilities. These exemptions come in the form of 14(c) certificates, which permit entities to pay less than minimum wage to individuals whose disabilities impair their productivity. The Dignity in Pay Act would bring an end to these exemptions, eliminating 14(c) certificates and requiring employers to pay individuals with disabilities at least minimum wage by December 31, 2029. Should the Dignity in Pay Act pass the Senate, Illinois would become the 19th state to eliminate subminimum wage for individuals with disabilities.

At present, many individuals with disabilities participate in sheltered work, meaning that work is done in a setting that segregates them from individuals without disabilities and pays them a rate lower than the stated minimum wage. Over the last few decades, there has been a move to transition individuals from sheltered, subminimum wage work to competitive integrated employment.

In competitive integrated employment, individuals with disabilities are compensated at or above minimum wage, at a rate comparable to individuals without disabilities who are performing similar duties. Competitive integrated employment also ensures that individuals with disabilities receive similar benefits to other employees, work in an environment that allows them to interact with individuals without disabilities and are presented with equitable opportunities for advancement. Success is fostered through the assistance of job coaches and employment specialists who offer behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and communication support to individuals with disabilities as they learn to conduct their jobs appropriately. Over time, as the employee’s capacity grows, these additional supports are slowly phased out, and the worker performs the job with supports already existing within the environment.

The adaptation from subminimum wage to competitive integrated employment is not without challenges. Many agencies are reliant upon 14(c) work to help fund their operations, and it will be necessary for some agencies to develop new business models to support the transition to competitive integrated employment. The Subminimum Wage to Competitive Integrated Employment Innovative Model Demonstration Project, otherwise known as SWTCIE Illinois, is one of the projects tasked with bringing the transition from subminimum wage to competitive integrated employment to fruition.

SWTCIE Illinois is part of a 13-state project funded by the federal government and administered by the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), Division of Rehabilitation Services (DRS), in which strategies and best practices are implemented to transition individuals who have been working in a sheltered work environment to competitive integrated employment. SWTCIE Illinois has established partnerships with six agencies — two in Chicagoland, two in northwest Illinois, and two in southern Illinois — that hold 14(c) certificates and is assisting those agencies in addressing the challenges that come with making the transition to competitive integrated employment.

To help administer the project, including the important task of project evaluation, DRS collaborated with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The SWTCIE Illinois project is one of several state and federal grant-funded projects within the Illinois Institute for Rehabilitation and Employment Research (IIRER), housed within the College of Applied Health Sciences at Illinois.

“What we’re working on at SWTCIE is helping agencies build the capacity to deliver supportive employment and providing staff with training that they need to be able to go out and offer supportive employment,” said Dr. David Strauser, IIRER director and professor for the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the U. of I. “Our project is giving a roadmap to help support these agencies, transform their business models, get contracts with the state, and hire and train staff in supportive employment versus subminimum wage or 14(c) employment.”

Strauser noted that a multidimensional paradigm shift will be necessary for the efforts of SWTCIE Illinois to be successful. “It’s a full-blown educational, attitudinal change. There needs to be systemic change to support what’s happening here. It’s going to change business for both state and community agencies,” he said. “There’s a lot of red tape, and it’s a hard process, or at least that’s the perception. As a result, [community] agencies don’t always have access to the resources that will allow them to provide supportive employment. And state agencies also need to change and transform themselves to better support the [community] agencies serving individuals so that they’re better able to reach the groups they’re trying to serve and don’t become barriers themselves.”

Family education is also an important component of the project. “We’re trying to give families resources to support them,” Strauser said. “Some parents worry about integrating their older children into the community for fear that it is not safe. Other parents are afraid their children will lose Social Security benefits if they work too much. There needs to be education on how [this transition] looks and how it works, so that we can try to address their fears.”

Strauser emphasized that while the project is focused on transitioning from subminimum wage to competitive integrated employment, the key is ensuring that the needs of individuals with disabilities are met appropriately and in a way that recognizes their dignity. “For those who don’t or can’t work, there will be other programming available to them, such as day rehabilitation programs. What we’re trying to do is not to eliminate those programs, but to let people into the community and to maximize and provide the best opportunities for the ones who want to work,” he said. “We want people to have access to good, competitive jobs that are paid at a respectable, dignified wage.”

Learn more about the Dignity in Pay Act | Learn more about the SWTCIE Illinois project

By Danielle Fields, Ed.D. | contact-iirer@illinois.edu

SWTCIE Illinois Project helps individuals get jobs

As subminimum wage employment is becoming a thing of the past, individuals are finding new employment opportunities in the community with help from local entities participating in the Subminimum Wage to Competitive Integrated Employment (SWTCIE) Illinois Project.

This project, administered by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, takes individuals who work at agencies with 14(c) certificates, in subminimum wage environments, and helps them get placed in competitive working environments in the community doing jobs that pay at least minimum wage.

Six locations, including The Workshop, were selected to be included in this project. These geographical representatives can be found in Galena, Dixon, Aurora, Crestwood, Waterloo and West Frankfort.

These locations went through an application process before being selected out of the few dozen applicants.

Jim Knauf, project manager, said this project funds agencies to help get “individuals that have been largely underserved when it comes to the VR (vocational rehabilitation) program” into a competitive working environment.

This includes not just those who work for subminimum wage agencies, but also transitional-age youth, so they enter into competitive working environments.

To help individuals get jobs, Cindy Foley and Kathy Thimmesch, employment specialists at The Workshop, work with people to help them figure out what they are interested in doing and what skills they have. Individuals visit businesses to practice skills in the work world. Foley and Thimmesch listen to their goals and dreams.

They also work with the businesses to learn their mission and business needs to better match people with businesses. Employers can create jobs or hire individuals for existing jobs. Alissa Brooke, who helps with supported and customized employment in Virginia, has been a consultant with The Workshop and Kreider Services. Brooke has experience helping write job descriptions for needs businesses might not have realized they had.*

She said these people are valuable employees in a business relationship, not charity.

The jobs that Foley and Thimmesch are helping people get are at least minimum or commensurate wage for all people with similar experience and education.

Knauf clarified that “This is meant to be meaningful work and real work and they’re contributing to whatever business or organization or company that they happen to be working with … we’re placing people into positions that are making a difference and fulfilling a need in the community and providing that, but then providing the business, the workplace with the diversity that it deserves.”

Once on the job, Foley and Thimmesch help with training and support for the individual.

Brooke said 14(c) agencies were supposed to do training before employment in the community, but then individuals didn’t make that transition. Now they get trained while they are at work.

So far, Foley and Thimmesch have been able to help get individuals placed at Blaum Bros., Piggly Wiggly, Signcraft, Midwest Medical Associates and Culver’s.

Thimmesch said that the community is supportive and interested in this project.

The impact that being employed out in the community has on individuals is already starting to show. Thimmesch said that families are seeing more confidence, happiness and self-esteem after the individual starts working.

Foley recalled how an individual smiled and had a “twinkle in his eyes” and was excited for work again the next day after she picked him up at the end of his shift.

Foley said it’s a hard job but rewarding.

Knauf said that Foley and Thimmesch’s job is hard because changing the culture and placing people is difficult, but Brooke said, “They’re doing outstanding.”

“So they’re not only working with their people they support but then the businesses to let them know, yeah, they can and they (the individuals) can bring a lot to the table and to your company by just being in that workplace ….” Sharon Bergfeld, liaison and data collector for the project, said.

The Workshop had a goal of starting eight individuals in this process and has already met that goal months before the July benchmark. Five people have been employed in the community while others are still exploring.

Knauf said the state’s goal is to have 288 people in the project before October 2027.

This is a five-year project and The Workshop is already on year two. Bergfeld said the goal is for this process to be sustainable.

“We want to really create change that’s going to really impact (the) future and employers in the community, all in a positive way,” she said.

By Murphy Obershaw | murphy.obershaw@galgazette.com

This article was originally published in April 2 issue of The Galena Gazette. Republished with permission.