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New private-public partnership seeks to find work for people with disabilities

The neuro-diverse are getting more work opportunities with the state of Delaware.

The three-year old Wilmington-based IT company the Precisionists Inc. almost exclusively employs people with disabilities. Its goal is to employ 10,000 people with disabilities in the US by 2025. 

The benefits corporation recently announced a pilot program which has its workforce of adults with autism doing consultant work for Delaware state agencies. The program started several months ago at the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services’ (DHSS) Audit and Recovery Management Services Unit (ARMS)—which works to identify fraud in state programs.   

Precisionists CEO Ernie Dianastasis says his staff is helping with paperwork. 

“What we do is help with the document preparation then we scan the fraud paperwork,” he said. “We scan it and then we take that information and we index it in the Audit Recovery Management system which is known as ARMS.”  

Dianastasis adds he believes his company's mission is aligned with that of DHSS.

“So I think they’re going to also be real advocates to all the other agencies to get them to step up and also participate in this program,” he said.      

Dianistasis says the Delaware Department of Finance and two other state agencies are in preliminary talks to participate in the program. 

The Precisionists recruit people with disabilities through a list of avenues including the state’s Division of Vocational Rehabilittion, and then trains the new workers at a Wilmington innovation technology center in a four-week training program.

Dianistasis says 80 percent of people with autism in the country are either unemployed or underemployed.

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