Ability Central is providing the 2025 Communication Access Grants Program for Developing and training healthcare professionals in strategies and tools that improve access to care for people with communication disabilities.
Donor Name: Ability Central
State: California
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 09/13/2024
Size of the Grant: Not Available
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
The Ability Central is looking for projects to develop, train, and implement resources and programmatic models for people with disabilities who communicate and access information via methods such as braille, screen readers, American Sign Language (ASL), tactile interpreters, co-navigators, and/or Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).
Funding Categories
- Developing and training healthcare professionals in strategies and tools that improve access to care for people with communication disabilities.
- Ability Central is looking for projects to develop, train, and implement resources and programmatic models for people with disabilities who communicate and access information via methods such as braille, screen readers, American Sign Language (ASL), tactile interpreters, co-navigators, and/or Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).
- This project is intended to train and equip healthcare professionals and healthcare systems with the knowledge, accessible resources, and multi-modal communication partner strategies to improve culturally responsive care for patients with communication disabilities and their care teams. These projects should be replicable and include people with disabilities in the planning, training, and implementation.
- Ability Central encourages projects that incorporate these elements:
- Person-Centered Approach: Successful culturally responsive healthcare training projects for people with communication disabilities should prioritize a person-centered approach. This means that the training should focus on the individual needs and preferences of the person, and the training should empower the person to be an active participant in their healthcare decisions.
- Communication Access: Successful projects should prioritize and understand access needs. This includes accommodations such as sign language interpreters, captioning, assistive technology, etc., that allow individuals to communicate effectively with healthcare providers.
- Collaboration: Healthcare training projects should involve multidisciplinary collaboration to ensure that all aspects of a person’s health needs are addressed. This could include collaborating with healthcare administration, front line staff such as doctors, nurses, medical assistants, behavioral health therapists, social workers, occupational therapists, appointment schedulers, and/or other professionals whose interactions impact the medical care of individuals with communication disabilities.
- Ongoing Evaluation: Successful projects should include ongoing evaluation to ensure that the training is effective and meets the needs of individuals with communication disabilities. This includes collecting feedback from both healthcare providers and individuals with communication disabilities to identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to the training.
- Career and leadership development projects for people with communication disabilities.
- Ability Central is seeking strong, scalable, and replicable projects that provide supportive and fairly-compensated career training opportunities for people with communication disabilities.
- Ability Central seeks projects that:
- Demonstrate understanding of the unique challenges faced by people with communication disabilities in accessing career and leadership development opportunities.
- Prepare people with communication disabilities for career advancement, going beyond entry-level, customer service-based work. While also considering preparations on the employer’s behalf to ensure an accessible and inclusive work environment.
- Utilize innovative and effective strategies for providing support to participants with communication disabilities throughout the career training process.
- Have or will establish partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including self-advocates, disability organizations, employers, colleges, and/or training institutes.
- Include accommodations (interpreters, screen reader-friendly documents, AAC, etc.) and project staff/mentors who are familiar with them to enhance accessibility and participation.
- Incorporate a person-centered approach, considering the individual strengths, preferences, and goals of participants with communication disabilities.
- Measure outcomes and evaluation methods to assess the effectiveness of the career training program and its impact on participants’ employment outcomes. Plan for sustainability beyond the grant period, including strategies for long-term funding, partnerships, and ongoing support for participants.
- Describe the project’s scalability, indicating the potential for expansion and replication in other settings or regions.
- Commit to a disability inclusion framework within their organization.
Eligibility Criteria
- Ability Central only funds organizations with a 501(c)3 status that are headquartered in California.
- Ability Central does not fund individuals, events, religious organizations, or political and religious work. Nor does it support the purchase of vehicles, land, or oversized equipment. Finally, Ability Central does not fund organizations that discriminate based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity and expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, sexual orientation, or veteran status.
For more information, visit Ability Central.
