You Already Know Which Students are Falling Through the Cracks.

We take the referrals that are hard to place, and we get you the paperwork on time. No wait lists!

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Refer a Student Today

Open the Path is the Pre-Employment Transition Services and Out of School Youth program from Open the Lid, a statewide DVRS-approved vendor.

Logo for New Jersey Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services featuring the initials "dvrs" in yellow and blue text.

48 Hours From your voucher to our first call with the student.

  • Statewide Refer from any county in New Jersey.
  • No Wait List Nobody waits for a teacher.
  • English, Spanish, ASL In whatever language the student uses.
  • Decades of Experience Most of our teachers have taught 20 years or more.
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  • You hear from us before the units run out.

    A short note on where the student is, in time for you to authorize without a gap in services.

  • Reports arrive when the voucher closes.

    Dates of service and a professional report, not a line-by-line record of who said what.

  • You hear about challenges from us first.

    If a student is cancelling, arriving late, or doing something you need to know about, we tell you.

What You Can Count On

  1. Self-Advocacy Instruction

    This is where we start with almost everyone. Students work out who they are and how to ask for what they need.

    • Self-awareness and identity
    • Requesting accommodations and supports
    • Leadership skills

  2. Workplace Readiness Training

    The skills that keep a job once someone has one.

    • Social skills and communication
    • Time management
    • Independent living skills for employment

  3. Job Exploration Counseling

    Working out what a student is genuinely interested in, including careers they have never heard of.

    • Career awareness and industry exposure
    • Discovering strengths and interests

  4. Counseling on Post-Secondary Opportunities

    Everything between deciding on more school and actually getting there.

    • College and training program exploration
    • FAFSA and applications
    • Micro-credentials
    • Disability services coordination

Why We Don’t Do Work-Based Learning

The simple facts

We’re statewide and online, with no physical offices, so we can’t put a person alongside a student on a job site.

Our future plans include becoming providers for online work-based learning. Currently, we’re building up the other four cores.

What we do instead

We help students figure out what kind of internship or paid work experience they actually want.

Then we teach them how to ask for it.

Without that step, they end up in a placement that creates discouragement. Others perceive them as unemployable. Not because they can’t work, but because they haven’t been connected with an experience that aligns with who they are and what they want to grow into.

If a school already provides pre-vocational training

We lean into the cores most in-school prevocational programs skip: self-advocacy and workplace readiness.

We supplement around what you’ve already done.

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Teaching the Unwritten Rules

Students on the spectrum often do well in school, where the structure is explicit, and then struggle at work, where it isn't.

One of our students had learned from his mother that compliments make friends. He told a colleague he liked her shirt and was fired for sexual harassment. Nobody had ever taught him the context. So we teach it directly.

  • Communication boundaries.

  • Reading social cues.

  • Conflict response.

  • Workplace norms, written down if needed.

  • Online safety.

  • And how to show interest in someone without it reading as stalking.

Refer a Student

What This Looks Like When it Works

  • He was told he needed more supervision.

    No job coach was available.

    So instead of letting the placement fail, he started his own business installing doorknobs and light switches.

    He hired a handyman as support staff. The handyman helps run the business.

  • His family treated the laundry as a behavior.

    A non-speaking autistic student kept putting clean clothes back in the hamper, because once a week wasn’t enough.

    We built a business around it instead.

    He does laundry for people in his building now, and gets paid through an app.

  • His mother wanted him to get a job.

    He had one.

    He streams on Twitch, on a schedule he builds around his own sleep, his seizure activity, and what his intrusive thoughts are doing that day.

    He never has to call a boss and say he can’t come in.

    Our job was to take what he was already doing, and make it bigger.

None of these three would have placed into a traditional job. All three are working.

Our founder, Lydia Dolch, was a special education teacher who couldn’t return to a classroom after a head injury, and had to build work that fit her own sensory and scheduling needs while still using what she was good at. That’s why creative employment stays on the table here instead of being the thing we try last.

What Happens Next

  1. We usually start with 10 units of self-advocacy instruction.

    A lot of providers start with job exploration. We build the foundation first: who the student is, what they need, and how to ask for it. If that’s wrong for this student, tell us and we’ll start somewhere else.

  2. We learn how the student works, then match them.

    Pace, interests, energy, how they communicate, what a good day looks like. Then we pick the teacher who fits, rather than whoever is free.

  3. Sessions begin.

    The frequency and timing is up to the individual. We have teachers who work during the days, evenings, and weekends.

Send Students to Us When…

Getting into a building is the problem

  • School avoidance or suspension

  • Sensory overwhelm or anxiety

  • No reliable transportation

They aren't in a school right now

  • Homeschooling

  • Unstable housing or foster care

  • Moving between districts

They communicate differently

  • Non-speaking students and AAC users

  • Deaf and hard of hearing students

  • Spanish-speaking students and families

Nobody has flagged them yet

  • No full IEP, but they still qualify

  • Young parents

  • Court involvement

A student who moves counties keeps the same teacher.

So does a student who starts college and no longer has a child study team behind them.

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Who’s On Our Team

We don't run a building, so funding goes to staffing.

  • Special education teachers, including a retired district special education chair

  • A school psychologist

  • A social worker

  • Bilingual Spanish-speaking & Latine teachers who share the culture of the families they work with

  • AAC specialists, including head switch and icon-based communication

  • LGBTQIA+ teachers

  • Team members with a deep understanding of the foster care system.

For a lot of our students, whether a workplace is safe is the most important thing on their minds. That's why who's on the team matters as much as what we teach.

Connect With Us

Collaborating With You

We show up for child study team meetings, annual reviews, transition planning, DDD coordination, transition fairs, and family nights.

We help families through the DVR application when we meet them at a resource fair. We help with FAFSA. We help students who will qualify for DDD start that paperwork at 18 and 19, so it's done before they need it.

Lydia and her team love to build custom presentations for your office and your schools. They also love to be invited to visit your schools.

Let's Connect
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Ready to Refer?

Send vouchers to outreach@openthelid.com

Call or text 973-250-8892