The New Hampshire Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation (NHVR) is an agency in the Department of Education (DOE) that “assists eligible New Hampshire citizens with disabilities to secure suitable competitive integrated employment and financial and personal independence by providing rehabilitation services. Over the past several years the BVR has been subject to two independent audits that required corrective Action Plans, continued oversight, and included several repetitive compliance and quality issues across each audit such as internal control, accounting accuracy, lack of standardization, and process timelines impacting customer quality of service.
In February of 2021 the New Hampshire Legislative Budget Assistant (LBA) issued an extensive Performance Audit Report of the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation for the period of time covering State Fiscal Years 2017 through 2019. This audit found 46 Performance Observation audit points and “Other Issues and Concerns”, required responses from BVR, and updates are reviewed quarterly by the Fiscal Committee of the General Court.
Additionally, in 2020 the USDOE Office of Special Education – Rehabilitation Services Administration issued a comprehensive FFY 2019 Monitoring Report on the NH Vocational Rehabilitation and Supported Employment Program that found deficiencies in three key areas of fiscal management requiring a Corrective Action Plan to rectify each found deficiency.
In 2021 DOE and BVR took the leadership action step to address the root cause issues and concerns of the 2021 LBA Performance Audit, as well as prior audits, and issued a public competitive Request for Proposals “to design and implement processes, procedures, internal controls and a comprehensive internal control and quality assurance system for the bureau, principally focused on response to a recent internal audit report.” The Stephen Group was awarded the multi-year contract as a result of the competitive bid process.