1. (a) After a consumer has been found eligible, DRS conducts assessments for vocational rehabilitation needs and, if necessary, rehabilitation technology needs for each consumer in order to develop an IPE that is designed to achieve the consumer's vocational goal.
2. (b) If more information is needed to determine the appropriate employment outcome and services required to achieve it, DRS, as appropriate in each case, conducts an assessment of the consumer's unique strengths, resources, priorities, concerns, abilities, capabilities, interests, and needs, including the need for supported employment services, in the most integrated setting possible, consistent with the informed choice of the consumer.

3. (c) The assessment is limited to information that is necessary to identify the rehabilitation needs of the consumer and develop the IPE and may, to the extent needed, include:

   1. (1) an analysis of medical, psychological, vocational, educational, and other related factors that bear on the consumer's impediment to employment and rehabilitation needs. Additional examinations are authorized after services are initiated when conditions arise that jeopardize the consumer's plan for employment;
   2. (2) an analysis of the consumer's personality, career interest, interpersonal skills, intelligence and related functional capacities, educational achievement, work experience, vocational aptitudes, personal and social adjustments, and employment opportunities;
   3. (3) an appraisal of the consumer's patterns of work behavior and services needed to acquire occupational skills and to develop work attitudes, work habits, work tolerance, and social and behavioral patterns suitable for successful job performance; and
   4. (4) an assessment, through provision of rehabilitation technology services, of the consumer's capacities to perform in a work environment, including in an integrated setting, to the maximum extent feasible and consistent with the consumer's informed choice.
4. (d) DRS uses, to the maximum extent possible and appropriate and in accordance with confidentiality requirements, existing information, including information that is provided by the consumer, the family of the consumer, and education agencies.

Source Note:The provisions of this §856.41 adopted to be effective December 10, 2012, 37 TexReg 9651; duplicated effective September 1, 2016, as published in the Texas Register September 2, 2016, 41 TexReg 6773.