RETAIN Grants Supplementary Justification

Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Grants

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the “Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Demonstration Project – Phase 1” solicitation. The Department will announce the availability of approximately $20 million for RETAIN – Phase 1 cooperative agreements. In Phase 1, up to eight state workforce agencies may receive up to $2.5 million to complete planning and start-up activities and conduct a pilot to test the impact of early intervention strategies on stay-at-work/return-to-work (SAW/RTW) outcomes. At the conclusion of Phase 1, a subset of the Phase 1 awardees will be competitively selected to receive funding for Phase 2, Implementation. A separate Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will be published for the RETAIN – Phase 2 competition.

The RETAIN Phase 1 cooperative agreements are funded by the Department’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) and Employment and Training Administration. They are discretionary grants authorized by section 169 subsection (b)(5) of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. The RETAIN Demonstration Projects will test the effects of the provision of comprehensive, coordinated health- and employment-related services and supports to injured or ill workers who have acquired, or are at risk of developing, a work disability. States will create systems changes by developing and implementing partnerships and strategies that better identify individuals as they acquire a potential work disability and then assist them in maintaining a connection to the labor force, preferably through their current or most recent employer.

The primary goals of the RETAIN Demonstration Projects are to: 1) increase employment retention and labor force participation of individuals who acquire, and/or are at risk of developing, work disabilities;¹ and 2) reduce long-term work disability among project participants, including the need for federal disability benefits (i.e., Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income). The ultimate purpose of the demonstration is to validate and bring to scale evidence-based strategies to accomplish these goals.

To accomplish this, states will identify a population of workers in their state who experience injuries or medical conditions that put them at risk of developing a work disability and develop a coordinated, comprehensive strategy to connect these workers to participating health care providers and the project’s RTW coordinators to ultimately return them to work. States have the flexibility to develop projects that respond to their specific demographic and socio-economic situations while satisfying the requirements of the RETAIN Phase 1 FOA.

These grant funds will be awarded to State Departments of Labor, State Workforce Development Agencies, or an equivalent entity with responsibility for labor, employment, and/or workforce development; and entities described in section 166(c) of WIOA relating to Indian and Native American programs.

Applications will include the following information collections: 1) Form SF-424 “Application for Federal Assistance,” separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004; 2) Form SF-424A, separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0006; 3) a Budget Narrative and 4) Project Narrative.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation will be available on the www.grants.gov Web site. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates 100 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This solicitation implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

DOL expects to receive approximately 10 applications from an equal number of respondents. The public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 20 hours per response, including time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

10 applications x 20 hours = 200 hours

To monetize this burden, the Department referenced The Employment Situation—March 2018, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported the average hourly earnings in the professional business services industry at $31.53 per hour. See page 33 of https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf.

200 hours x $31.53 = $6,306

DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection. In addition to the application, each awardee will submit quarterly financial and performance reports to ODEP. Those information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 10 respondents, 10 responses, 200 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

1 For the purposes of this FOA, the term “work disability” is defined as an illness, injury, or medical condition that has the potential to inhibit or prevent continued employment or labor force participation, and “federal disability benefits” refers specifically to the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs. See https://www.ssa.gov/disability/ for more information on SSDI and SSI.

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