The Southeast TACE wants to help counselors have the information and resources you need to assist your clients in obtaining financial stability. Toward that end, we are producing 30-second trainings and posting them on the Southeast TACE Asset Development Exchange (ADX) webpage. Download this month's PowerPoint, Asset Development: Student Earned Income Exclusion [PowerPoint], and get started today!

The IRS released Where Taxpayers With Disabilities Can Find Online Help from the IRS [Video], a YouTube video that provides information about tax products and other IRS services offered to people with disabilities.

The Southeast TACE Asset Development Exchange offers several user-friendly tax resources to assist clients with their taxes.

The IDEA Partnership at NASDE's Community of Practice on Transition has a workgroup focused on employment opportunities and career development for youth with disabilities. This workgroup is hosting a series of webinars in partnership with the National Post-School Outcomes Center and NSTTAC. "Get the Picture" was held on Wednesday, February 20th. Presenters shared the current national data and family perspectives regarding employment for youth and young adults. "Get in the Picture" will be held on Wednesday, March 27th from 2:00-3:30 PM ET, and will cover current national work including Employment First legislation and initiatives in states. Finally, "Change the Picture" will be offered on Wednesday, April 24th from 2:00-3:30 PM ET.

If you weren't able to attend the 2012 National Transition Conference: College and Careers for Youth with Disabilities, you can now access the online archives! The Institute for Community Inclusion established a website that provides an overview of the conference program, materials provided by presenters and captioned video of both the opening session and the keynote speaker, Ann Wilson Cramer of IBM. Breakout session materials have been organized by theme track.

Iowa's State Department of Education website houses a Matrix for Transition Assessment that includes links to assessment methods and tools. The Matrix also provides a framework for gathering necessary transition planning information focusing on a student's interests and preferences, basic skills, attitudes, habits, self-awareness, and critical thinking and application skills.

Linking Youth Transition Support Services: Results from Two Demonstration Projects presents an overview of two projects in the Social Security Administration's Youth Transition Demonstration: California's Bridges to Youth Self-Sufficiency and Mississippi's Model Youth Transition Innovation. Key outcomes are reported and the successful experiences of one youth in each project are highlighted.

NCWD/Youth recently released their updated Individualized Learning Plan guide, Promoting Quality Individualized Learning Plans: A How-to Guide Focused on the High School Years. This tool is designed for educators and other professionals who assist youth with college and career readiness and transition planning.

Work-Based Learning Opportunities for High School Students [PDF] describes the Year 5 work of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education's Technical Assistance Academy. Recommendations based on the findings from the project include:

• Provide a clear purpose for work-based learning, emphasizing the learning component
• Offer resources and information about components of high-quality programs
• Provide professional development for teachers and coordinators to develop instructional strategies
• Convene meetings with employer associations and labor unions to achieve buy-in
• Provide resources and guidelines for employer mentor selection, training, and continued engagement
• Support teachers to work closely with coordinators and employer mentors to develop detailed student training plans
• Connect work-based learning to classroom learning
• Provide better guidelines for accountability for student learning
• Adequately fund coordinators
• Market work-based learning programs
• Ensure careful consideration of legal issues
• Use consistent definitions and terminology
• Examine ways to leverage various funding sources

On February 26th, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing on "State Leadership and Innovation in Disability Employment." The testimony from witnesses Gov. Jack Markell, D-DE; Jane Boone, consultant, Washington State Employment Leadership Network, Seattle, WA; Mike O'Brien, executive director, Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Services, Oklahoma City; and Don Uchida, executive director, Utah State Office of Rehabilitation, Salt Lake City, can be accessed on the Committee's web site.

The Achieving a Better Life Experience Act of 2013 (ABLE Act; S. 313, H.R. 647) was introduced by Senators Robert Casey, Jr., (D-PA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) in the Senate, and Representatives Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and Pete Sessions (R-TX) in the House of Representatives. The Act would create ABLE savings accounts to allow people with disabilities to save for expenses such as education, community-based supports, housing, assistive technology and transportation. These accounts would be disregarded when determining eligibility for Medicaid, SSI, and other means-tested programs.

Funding Health-Related VR Services: The Potential Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Use of Private Health Insurance and Medicaid to Pay for Health-Related VR Services analyzes the potential impact of the Affordable Care Act on the payment for certain health-related VR services, including physical and mental restoration services, assistive technology devices and services, and personal assistance services.

TEAM Act Reintroduced:

U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) reintroduced the Transition toward Excellence, Achievement and Mobility (TEAM Act), three bills designed to promoting meaningful post-secondary educational and employment opportunities for young adults with intellectual disabilities. The legislation is intended to:

• streamline federal programs and services that support youth with significant disabilities from youth to adulthood, and
• rebalance funding to focus on improved outcomes in post-secondary education and integrated employment.

These three bills (known separately as the TEAM-Education Act, the TEAM-Empowerment Act, and the TEAM-Employment Act) all collectively seek to promote meaningful post-secondary educational and employment opportunities, with an emphasis on the eventual outcome leading to sustained, full-time employment in an integrated setting at a livable wage, long-term career development and growth, and inclusion in the community setting through independent living and social engagement.

The TEAM-Education Act would ensure that schools are provided additional resources to hire transition coordinators to proactively support our kids during their transition years in the public school system. The TEAM-Empowerment Act also creates an adult transition planning process and system of transition supports for youth and their families under the auspices of the state intellectual and developmental disability agencies to ensure that our youth can choose a broker to work with them as they seek to use their public supports to secure a desired post-secondary educational opportunity or employment at a livable wage in an integrated setting. The TEAM-Employment Act seeks to stimulate a national system-change initiative, which will ensure that agencies coordinate services better to produce the desired outcomes of integrated living and employment. This includes incentivizing and rewarding those states who reshape the focus of their current funding streams to promote those services that lead to getting our youngsters fully participating in the community through the general workforce and economic mainstream.

The Virginia Commonwealth University-Autism Center for Excellence recently posted Autism Q&A: Introduction to Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC). This fact sheet introduces AAC devices for individuals with autism spectrum disorder and offers guidance on how to choose and teach the use of the devices.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration has optimized some of its most popular online job search and training tools for smart phone and tablet use.

On February 1st, the American Foundation for the Blind launched the AccessNote, a specialized notetaker for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This is the first note taking app designed for users with vision loss.

The January 2013 Job Accommodation Network E-News includes an article discussing the use of accessibility features of mobiles devices as reasonable accommodations for sensory, motor and cognitive impairments.