Manager Minute-brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management

Join us for an insightful episode of the VRTAC-QM Manager Minute as Brittny MacIver and Sarah Clardy from the VRTAC-QM team share their expertise on case management systems. Brittny, an expert in Program and Performance within our Quality Management team, and Sarah, the Program Director for Fiscal and Resource Management, delve into best practices and the growing trend of states seeking to upgrade their systems. Learn about the nuances of state requests and the RFP process, and gain valuable knowledge to help you decide whether it's time to stay with your current system or make a move.

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Full Transcript:

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Brittny: Avoid over customizing the system. There's a lot of systems out there that are already available in VR agencies, and so if it works for that VR agency, there's a good chance the majority of the processes are going to work for your agency as well.

Sarah: Silos, how do we break down silos? And this process really can be a nice segue to combining program and fiscal together. I know we've said that multiple times, and I don't think we can say it enough. This process really is an opportunity to develop relationships.

Brittny: Be curious. Your agency may have a process that you're unsure why it exists. Some may say that's how it's always been. I think it's good to be curious, figure out the reason behind it, and see if there's a way that you can streamline those processes.

^{Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.}

Carol: Welcome to the Manager Minute. Today I'm thrilled to have two of my esteemed colleagues, Brittny MacIver and Sarah Clardy from the VRTAC-QM, joining me in the studio today. So, Brittny, how's it going for you?

Brittny: It's going great. How about you?

Carol: Awesome. I'm better for seeing your smiling face this morning. And how about you, Miss Clardy? How are you doing?

Sarah: I'm great. Great to kick off a new week.

Carol: Excellent. So for our listeners, Brittny serves on the program and performance side of our QM team. And Sarah is the program director for the fiscal and resource management side of our QM team. And both of these ladies have extensive experience with case management systems. And during one of our regular Core QM Team meetings, I asked the team, I'm like, hey, what are some potential podcast ideas? And Brittny said, you know what? There are a lot of state voc rehab agencies on a quest right now for a new case management system. Either your state is requesting you to do another request for proposal or you're just like, hey, is there something better out there? So with lots of new players that have entered the market, your case management system is a lifeline. And if it's not functioning optimally, it can really lead to some significant issues. So we just wanted to have a conversation today that can help to guide you through this journey with open eyes. So let's dig in. So of course our listeners always like to know, like how did you people get into VR? Everybody wonders, like what's your story? So I want to hear from each of you about kind of your journey into VR. So Sarah, I'm going to kick it off with you.

Sarah: So many of you know Ron Vessell, he's a staple around VR. Ron actually hired me back in the year 2000. I was a very green government accountant just starting out, didn't know what I was getting into, and they took a chance on a new, young professional. And so I did a deep dive early in my career and never looked back.

Carol: Very nice, I love that. How about you, Britt? How did you find your way into VR? You came a little different way.

Brittny: Yeah, I think it was definitely a unique path. I actually worked in criminal justice at the prison system as a counselor for quite some time. They were privatizing the position, which meant we were kind of losing benefits. We're no longer going to be a state employee. So I started looking around for other counseling positions. And at my time at the prison, I found that there was a lot of individuals with disabilities and a lot of obstacles that we had to address and assist with while we were there. And so when I seen the position at VR, I was very interested in it interviewed. And that's where I got my start about 14 years ago.

Carol: And which state was that in? Britt.

Brittny: That was in.Indiana.

Carol: Yeah. That's cool. I think that's great. So you worked with Teresa?

Brittny: Yes.

Carol: Very good.

Brittny: I always joke and say my four years at the prison. And then I have to clarify when I was working.

Carol: I love that. In fact, we had a guest last month that also had come up through the correctional system as well. It was really fun, but that definitely having that skill set behind you coming into VR is super important, really needed. So let's talk a little bit about your work. Both of you do for the QM. Just so our listeners have a little sense. And Britt, I'm going to start with you about that. Like can you give them a little flavor kind of for what you do in this TA world?

Brittny: Yeah, as you mentioned I work on the performance team. So really all things performance. But we help agencies address performance related needs. So this can be anywhere from training on performance measures to data analysis on performance data, reviewing policy procedures, internal controls and sometimes even assessing the system impact around performance and seeing how that impacts the reporting pieces.

Carol: Yeah, I love our performance team, the stuff you guys do, and you're so good at your analysis and really looking at taking that data and really digging in deep as to what's going on. So it's a very, very important piece of what is happening out there for our VR programs as we're delivering that technical assistance. How about you, Sarah?

Sarah: I have the great pleasure of leading the financial arm of the VRTACQM, and understanding that the VR award is the probably the most complex award within the grants management world. It really covers a wide array of skills and knowledge and isn't just financial based, it's also program based. So under the QM, we help agencies sort of manage the grant from the whole life cycle perspective, making sure that all the federal requirements are met, taking a look at individual state requirements, how those two things intersect, and we spend a lot of time, probably the majority of my time is actually spent in the period of performance arena, and specifically as it relates to this topic today with case management service systems.

Carol: Excellent. So, Brittny, you had mentioned the issue of people are looking for a new case management system. And I know as of late it feels like we've had at least a half a dozen folks saying, you know, we're doing a new RFP. We either have to for the state or we're going out for a new system. What advice do you have kind of off the bat for people who are considering venturing into this new RFP process?

Brittny: Yeah, I think before writing the RFP, I think it's important for the state or the agency to do some research on what systems are out there. A lot of agencies are writing an RFP based on what their current system does, and they end up with a very similar system. The process and all the hard work of getting a new system can be really exciting. It could mean new innovative features and easier case management process, which leads to improved efficiency, improve services and outcomes. You could find a system that would help with documentation times. You can reduce that, and then that way the counselor can spend more time with their participants. So I think just seeing what's out there and what's available to help you write that RFP is huge.

Carol: Sarah, how about you? What's your perspective on making sure those fiscal pieces are addressed as they are thinking about RFPing?

Sarah: Oh goodness. There's so many perspectives to consider here. I think first and foremost states need to understand period of performance. I feel like that's a term that we make really complicated. And it's really nothing more than just looking at the funding sources that are available and understanding the timeline that agencies can obligate and expend funds. So I think, first and foremost, understanding period of performance. The second key piece really is understanding state requirements. We have a lot of states that aren't either aware of what their state requires, or there are things that are in place that they think is required by the state. And when we start doing a deep dive into what that looks like, sometimes those things really aren't state requirements. It's something that somebody put into place years ago that everybody just thought was what was required. So I think understanding those two things. And then third, I would say understanding what your end game is when you're working with a fiscal and a case management system, and we're looking at just sheer fund accounting and tracking those funds all the way through and then being able to report at the end of that cycle. And so I oftentimes will tell states, if you kind of look at the end game, look at the reporting that's required at the end, it really kind of establishes the things that are necessary along the way in terms of system adaptations, structure, configuration.

Carol: So definitely I'm going to tie you two together when a state is going out and they're looking at doing the RFP, you want to really think about your complete process so that you've got all the right team members in place from the get go, which can't just be the program side of your house. And I remember us doing this back in Minnesota as we were going through the requirements. It's like, what are those fiscal people doing here? They're all important. Like you need all the pieces together, talking through how this system is going to work, how you're going to connect to your statewide accounting system. So that becomes really important. Now, I know I was on a call, I want to say within the last three, four months and we had a state say, yeah, we're thinking about RFP for a new system to go into place January 1st. And Brittny, I want to kick this to you. What is a realistic time frame if somebody is considering a new case management system, is it really possible to do that in, uh, maybe eight months or so or not? What do you think is a good timeline?

Brittny: I think this really depends on several factors as far as a timeline when considering a new case management system, typically it could take up to six months to develop that RFP. And it's really doing some background homework, seeing what's out there, doing a business process analysis and understanding your own business processes. But typically, I'd say depending on agency size, how many years of converted data you're looking at, converting it into the new system. And I know there's federal requirements, but there's also state requirements that are sometimes even longer than the federal ones. And then also if there's any interfaces. So if you have other systems that are connecting to your current case management system, this is going to make a huge difference, because now you've got a lot of different teams having to help out with the specifications and then also test the system. So you've got to think of their timelines as well. And then lastly just that preparedness piece. So how much work did you do up front on the RFP. How much have you analyzed your business processes. And like Sarah had mentioned, are these things that somebody put into place ten years ago, or are these things that are actually a state policy or a federal policy that you're aligning with? I think the typical timeline that I typically see is around 18 to 24 months for the full implementation once you sign in that contract. But again, that could range short or longer depending on that prep work and then that agency size and things like that.

Carol: So eight months is probably a little aggressive.

Brittny: Yeah very, aggressive yeah. But optimistic I like it.

Carol: I love it. So what are some pitfalls that we want to help our listeners avoid as they're kind of tackling this process? And Sarah, I'm going to kick that to you first.

Sarah: First and foremost. And I think the listeners are probably going to see a recurring theme here, as Brittny said, not just taking current system functionality and developing that into a checklist or using that to develop the specifications. I think really sitting down and outlining what are the requirements, what are the things that we're using right now? Where did that come from? And the possibilities going into this process allows a lot of opportunity to think outside the box and think about what are the things that systems currently aren't doing, or things that are requiring a lot more work right now where we could really get creative and do some really cool things. So I think avoiding the pitfall of just not spending that time up front to understand what it is that agencies need, and then also, again, bringing fiscal and program together to understand the requirements from a physical standpoint. A lot of times that is kicked to the finance folks in the House, we're still seeing in a lot of agencies a breakdown or a gap between program and fiscal, and there's a lot of danger and not bringing those two teams together to understand on both sides of the coin, what is it that we need to do? Oftentimes within that space is where a lot of the creative ideas come out and allow greater efficiencies within the agency and more internal controls.

Carol: Very good. Britt, what do you think about pitfalls? What are some things that we could help our folks avoid?

Brittny: Yeah, I once talked to a chief technology officer and he said the two main reasons why usually a case management system implementation fails is because of fiscal and data validation. So hitting those two pieces very hard, making sure that you're not only converting the data into the system, it's almost like that toy where you've got a round circle and you've got to fit it in the round circle. The data conversion doesn't always work like that, and sometimes you're trying to fit that round circle into a square peg. And that's because the way the systems line up. So making sure that you've got individuals on the front end in different roles, looking at that data and then also testing that RSA 911 to make sure things are mapped correctly and going in correctly before you go into production. At one example I've seen of that is significance of disability. And so one system may calculate significance of disability a little bit differently than another system. And even though they've got everything mapped together, doesn't always go hand in hand and can cause some major issues. The fiscal piece, I think Sarah mentioned that quite a bit, but just making sure that you're doing heavy testing and understanding how the system will work, especially when you go into production. Working in a new system, the biggest ones are dealing with authorizations that already have partial payments on it, draft authorizations, pending payments, amending an authorization, and vendor logic. These are all pieces that may be different in that new system. So making sure you're testing every angle and you're prepared for that transition. I think a third suggestion is just my personal preference would be to avoid over customizing the system. So there's a lot of systems out there that are already available in VR agencies. And so if it works for that VR agency, there's a good chance the majority of the processes are going to work for your agency as well. And sometimes those states like to over customize that system just because they want to have what they've always had. But that ends up being sometimes pretty expensive down the road, because then you're paying for additional testing and maintenance of that customization. So I'd be open minded to changing business processes, or see if you could find your business processes met in a different way and achieving that same result.

Carol: Yeah, I like it. I remember when we had our new case management system and it was built. We went in with all our partners, our WIOA partners, and so we had this kind of groovy new system, but it was supposed to meet all these different needs. Well, it gets complicated, but we couldn't forget about our field people because a lot of those folks in the field. So while you're talking to program, you know, a lot of times it's supervisors and different folks are involved. Having those direct field staff, your VR techs and your counselors who are inputting stuff every day and they're like, hey, this weird thing over here, you know, they may not talk techie, but they can explain the stuff that isn't working so well in getting all of those ideas right from them so they can see, hey, they really can help to impact and influence the system is important.

Brittny: Definitely.

Sarah: You know, Carol, along the lines of what Brittny just shared too, I think there's a caution there in terms of customizations that are in existing systems, whether it's an off the shelf system or a homegrown system. We have a number of agencies that have their own in-house systems. Sometimes there are customizations that work for a particular state or might work for a group of states, but it's not applicable to all states. Again, because we go back to those state requirements. And then sometimes when agencies implement that, it causes some compliance issues because of their own local procurement standards. So asking the question, you know, if they're developing those specifications and not just taking everything from what they're doing or is offered to them currently, but really looking at it with a cursory eye to determine, is this something that we need or we even can use because we're seeing period of performance compliance issues from some system functionalities that are in place that worked for other states that aren't necessarily a one size fits all.

Carol: I think one thing I've noticed too, and I just noticed from the periphery, you know, it's really statewide IT systems and the IT groups have been put together. You know, we see that consolidation happening where you may have had your own IT folks that you were dealing with, and now you have a State Department of IT or something. There's some other consolidated area that has put together different processes or requirements. So I think for some folks, if you're used to maybe the old way when you were entering into this process and maybe doing an RFP and you had more control over everything, you may have a little less because you do have now these sort of statewide IT system requirements. And so it's really important to get hooked up with those folks as well, especially for listeners who may have not done this for a while. Maybe, you know, it's been a long minute since you have looked at your case management system, and you were remembering back a decade ago when it was a little easier. You could just do something a little more at the drop of a dime. But I think the benefit that having those statewide IT groups is they have so much experience. And when they're looking at how they really address putting out an RFP and they can have a lot of their expertise to bring to the table to make sure this gets put together really well. You just want to remember that you may have some other things in play that you didn't have a long time ago. Just a thought. Alright, I know Brittny, when we were talking to you, had some ideas on cool stuff and I love cool stuff. Like, you know, if you're doing your case management system, you said, well, gee, don't, don't just recreate the same old thing like you want to put cool things in place. So do you have ideas like new technology or features or things people could include in their request?

Brittny: Yeah, I've seen dashboards where there's visual dashboards and graphs or pie charts that assist the counselor and case management. So seeing how many individuals they've got enrolled in an education program and how many of those individuals have earned an MSG in the last performance year. And this allows them to check those that haven't and reach out to those participants. I've also seen a central print and mail where the state's just actually the agency put a checkbox in there, and they've got an interface with a local company and that company, they hit the checkbox and everything gets bashed up that night for a letter or anything that they want to mail. And there's a mass every night they mail out all these letters. So that way the counselor could be anywhere. They could be at the school, out in the field, anywhere, mail out a letter, and not have to worry about printing something off and stuffing that envelope. I've also seen invoice payment systems. So systems where vendors can apply to be a vendor, they can document what services agree to terms, things like that. The agency can review them and approve them in there. And then that system can work back and forth with authorizations and payments. So an authorization could be drafted in the case management system could shoot over to this invoice payment system. That vendor can view it, upload documents, invoice against it, put reports and things like that in there, and they can communicate back and forth to one another. I've also seen states exploring various ways to integrate artificial intelligence and case management systems. So I know you did a podcast on one that was kind of outside the case management system, but I'm hearing a lot of states be interested in how to integrate it in the case management system, whether it's in case notes or informed decisions across. So I'm really excited to see what states come up with and how they're able to integrate that within. But I think that's a great idea.

Carol: I love that whole area of artificial intelligence. It was super fun when we did the podcast with Washington General, because they had that really cool piece that was, you know, an add on. It was kind of outside of the system. But boy, the staff love it. But there's a lot of possibilities. I know we were kicking around on the team about ways you could use AI within VR. I mean, when you think about the development of plans, even the way you speak about things, to make it more plain language, and I still I think people are so freaked out a little bit about AI and you go, gosh, it's all over. You know, it is in our whole world. It's when you're talking to Siri or Alexa, you know, every day you go to the airport and you're getting your eyes scanned to get through, Clear whatever you may do. It's just integrated into everything we do. I think that is a really fun, developing new area that has a lot of possibility for the case management systems. Sarah, did you have any ideas too, about any cool possible groovy tools? Maybe fiscally related? I didn't mean to put you on the spot.

Sarah: No, that's okay. We haven't seen as much innovation on the fiscal side, although I think that there are a lot of opportunities. I think, again, in the AI world, I think mapping that out, looking for the possibilities, it goes back to what I said earlier, just being an innovative thinker and looking at what are the challenges and efficiencies that we're battling and what are some of those possibilities that we can use to address that. Staff recruitment retention continues to be a challenge in our VR world and especially in the fiscal arena. And as staff look to bolster their internal controls and the program at large, looking for some of those opportunities. So I don't know that I have as many cool things like Brittny shares, but I'm hoping that we'll see those on the horizon.

Carol: Yeah, me too. I think there's a lot of possibility out there now. I know Sarah, you had developed a tool that coincided with the 2023 spring CSV conference because a lot of folks were asking like, okay, what do I do with my case management system and the fiscal requirements and all of that? Can you talk a little bit about that? Because even though we felt like we widely publicized it, people are still like what? There was a tool. I don't know anything about it.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm still excited about it. So we developed a fiscal technology checklist for case services last year in conjunction with the period of performance training that we offered at the conference. And we found that in our technical assistance to state VR agencies around this topic, there's a gap in communication between either the CMS companies and VR, or even if an agency has their own internal program, a gap in communication between the program and fiscal and whoever those IT experts are. So we took that opportunity to map out all of the areas to consider. And so when we're working with agencies under the VRTAC-QM to analyze their processes and look at how their systems are set up, there's a linear fashion and way of looking at that. For instance, is the system set up on a state fiscal year or a federal fiscal year? There's a lot of agencies that have a system set up on a state year that really doesn't make sense for reporting, and it's causing a lot of challenges on the financial side with producing reports for the RSA 17, for example. And they thought that that's the way they had to have it set up. There's very few states that have very state specific requirements that would necessitate that. So it's not that it never would work, but it involves sort of a deep dive into why do we have our systems set up and is that necessary? The other big piece are the budgets. How are budgets set up within the system? Does it map out to the available fund sources that are available to the agency? And then there's a ton of bells and whistles that act as internal controls in the back of a case management system that really dictate how the system behaves and helps the agency navigate through period of performance. And so it's going through a whole list of considerations to make sure that the agency is well equipped to manage period of performance, manage those different fund sources and make them able to do that reporting at the end. So it's a really good list. And honestly, as states are struggling with that communication piece, particularly with the companies that they work with or through the process to develop a new case management system, it's a very nice way of considering all of those different elements that need to go into either evaluating the current system or looking at a new system to make sure that it's meeting exactly what their state requires while still taking into account those federal requirements. So we're constantly reverting folks back to that list, and hopefully agencies are taking the time to sit down as a team and combining the program and fiscal staff to walk through that, to make sure that they understand all of those elements. And if they have questions, we have a number of trainings that we offer through the VRTAC-QM to assist with that. We've even had some agencies seek out that training before they start developing those lists for their RFPs, to make sure that they both understand from a physical standpoint what all those requirements are. So anyway, it's Fiscal Technology Checklist for Case Services. It is on our website, I'm sure. Carol, you're probably going to mention that and hint, hint it is available to the public. So I know that there's been some current CMS companies that have gone out and looked at that piece also, so that they can better understand and hopefully fill in the gap for that communication gap exists so that everybody's talking the same language and on the same page.

Carol: Yes, of course, I have to make a shameless plug for our lovely website. So you will go to vRTAC-QM.org and we have a top navigation header. You can go right to resources and everything's listed under the CSAVR Spring 2023 Session Recordings and Materials. And it actually was Session Two is where you can find that checklist. But if you scroll through you can actually listen to Sarah's session recording. And then you can see the checklist there as well, as well as all of our other awesome sessions from the 2023 Spring Conference. Oh, thanks for that. So how about other words of wisdom from you fine ladies? Because I think of you both as just like, oh my gosh, such powerhouses in the case management system. Brittny, I'm going to go to you first.

Brittny: I've got a few. I think the first one is to be curious. Your agency may have a process that you're unsure why it exists. Some may say that's how it's always been. So I think it's good to be curious, figure out the reason behind it, and see if there's a way that you can streamline those processes. I would also allocate staff specifically for this project, and I think we mentioned it already a little bit earlier. But looking at those projects subject matter experts and making sure you've got the right people at the table. So this is going to be administration, IT, but also your fiscal people, your front end people. It's really important to make sure that you have some direct service or direct field staff that are knowledgeable and have a long agency history that you can integrate into that project as well, and they can provide feedback. I would also have a designated project manager that could be somebody. You within your department, or that could be somebody that you decide to contract out. But I think it's important that they have that project management experience because it is a giant project, and it is going to take quite some time to get from that RFP contract to implementation.

I'd also weave in changes as much as you can. So during the project, you'll start to have the opportunity to see the differences between the two systems, your current one and your new system. And so if there's any way that you can weave in changes early and often, this will help that transition for staff much, much easier. And then also as you're preparing or updating revising business processes, that also helps with that piece of it. I've seen states do statewide quarterly demos to kind of show staff the new system and help them kind of process that change along the way.

And lastly, I would definitely emphasize not to overlook accessibility. I'd pull in your accessibility users early to begin testing the system, and then also integrating those accessibility terms into training documents. I think one thing I learned is that using language accessibility language is huge. I couldn't imagine trying to learn a new system and somebody saying, use a dropdown box. But yet my system is calling it a combo box. So using that terminology and making this transition much easier for all staff.

Carol: Awesome points. I want to highlight a couple, that be curious. I can't emphasize that enough. There are so many agencies where I'm going to call it urban Legend. You're doing something because everybody always says, RSA said. You have to do that and RSA will come out. I've been in monitoring. They're like, we never told you that. Whatever that is in your system, you made that up like you made that happen. So I love that being curious because you want to ask questions. A lot of times you just go with the flow. You know, somebody put it in play 20 years ago and then you just keep bringing it forward. So I love that. And definitely when you talk about dedicating staff, you want to make sure you dedicate those staff, but you also want to think about all of the other roles that have been assigned to that person. You cannot put them as the project manager of this whole project, and they're still maintaining all their field services duties and doing all the other stuff, because this really is a full time job. And I know I'm going to apologize right here to Natasha Jerde. We had her as a project manager for our new case management system. At the same time, she's, you know, rewriting our policy and procedure manual and doing a million other things because I just had zero clue at how much went into this. And that was really it's really terrible. And I've actually seen some of the staff across the country burn out. We've had people retire early. They're like the case management system process killed me. So when you're dedicating staff, please do give them some time to do it. And don't expect that they're not going to work an 80 hour workweek because that is not so fabulous. But I loved your points, Brittny, those are great. How about you, Sarah? Any words of wisdom?

Sarah: Yes, thank you. I think we constantly hear from state agencies about silos. How do we break down silos? And this process really can be a nice segue to combining program and fiscal together. I know we've said that multiple times in our discussion today, but I don't think we can say it enough. This process really is an opportunity to develop relationships and I know even from the agency that I came from, the introduction that I had to the program side was through a new case management system conversion. And at first I showed up at the table. And Carol, like you said earlier, people were like, who invited her? Why is she here? Does she need to be here? People wouldn't talk and share ideas. And then as we both committed to developing that relationship and understanding one another better, not only did we end up with a quality product, but we had quality services, we had better management and leadership within the agency. So looking at it as an opportunity sort of through that lens, engage the folks in the field as well. Sometimes as leaders, we tackle these types of projects and we think the folks in the field are too busy. And really the best ideas can come from our counselors and those individuals who are supporting in those roles our field staff, our fiscal agents. And I know we have a separate training on that that we offer VR agencies, but engaging them in that process and getting their ideas on, hey, what's working and what's not working? What are the challenges that you're facing so that as you are curious to Brittny's point, you're taking into consideration maybe some of those wins that you can secure on the other side and maybe cut out some process or things while still meeting those requirements and engaging in those efficiencies.

The other thing I would offer, and we're having lots of discussions now about fiscal forecasting and spending strategies within VR agencies, as VR agencies are getting over the hump of Covid and taking a look at what their spending looks like, the case management system really is a system of record. And as we look at the statewide accounting system and in its function, we can't ignore the case management system and the role that it plays in navigating through all those fiscal requirements. And so if we think about the CMS sort of as the VR checkbook, and when we are authorizing for services and obligating funds, not only are there requirements around how to do that and how to capture that, looking at the individual sources of funds that we have available, it really is a way to capture those obligations within a checkbook so that we can take a look at any point in time from a leadership standpoint, what is our financial position? And so being able to look at how much do I have in my 23 carryover checkbook and how much do I have in 24. And plan ahead so that I can make decisions around re-allotment and I can think ahead so that we're not leaving funds on the table and lapsing funds at the back end of our of our award. It really is important that we look at how we capture all of that in the case management system in a way that allows us to continue managing our programs with a strong fiscal focus. So tying all of that in is also important at a higher level, so that we can use the data to make quality financial decisions.

Carol: Well said, well said. So in case our listeners want to get a hold of either of you, would you mind sharing your email address, Brittny?

Brittny: Yes, definitely. My email address is bMacIver So m a c I v e r@sdsu.edu. It's also available on our VRTAC website. If you go to our staff you'll see my email address there as well.

Carol: Excellent. Sarah, how about you.

Sarah: Yes thank you. It's sClardy. so, that's s c l a r d y at Sdsu.Edu.

Carol: Thanks so much I appreciate you both joining me today. Have a great one, you guys.

Brittny: Thanks.

Sarah: Thank you.

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Join us in the studio with Tyler Sadek, Go MN! Project Manager, and Amanda Jensen-Stahl, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Minnesota General, as we explore the transformative efforts of Minnesota's DIF Grant Go MN! This episode delves into innovative strategies designed to transition individuals with disabilities from subminimum wage to competitive, integrated employment.

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^{Amanda: Give them the tools and resources to look at other ways to support employment instead of that 14 (C) certificate.}

^{Tyler: So much great work to be done supporting with individuals with disabilities across the country, and we really need people to help implement those innovative ideas so that we can serve these folks even better. This type of work is extremely important, and if you have a good team, I would dare even call this kind of work fun.}

^{Amanda: Having that support is just so appreciated because there is a lot of pieces to this. And when you know, hey, I can call up Brandi and Iowa and just kind of say, hey, how are you guys dealing with this? That has just been really fantastic as well.}

^{Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.}

^{Carol: Well welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is Tyler Sadek Go Minnesota project manager. And Amanda Jensen-Stahl, director of strategic initiatives with Minnesota General. So Tyler how goes it in Minnesota?}

^{Tyler: Things are going well. I think spring might finally be here, so I'm pretty happy about that.}

^{Carol: Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think we had spring, uh, in February and now we're now we're having winter. It's like what? What is happening?}

^{Tyler: We're gonna give it another shot with spring.}

^{Carol: I know it, it's hysterical. And, Amanda, it's always good to see you. How are you doing?}

^{Amanda: I am good, it's so good to see you, too, Carol.}

^{Carol: Well, we've been delving into the RSA Disability Innovation Fund grants, and this series is focused on the SWTCIE grants, or sub minimum wage to competitive integrated employment. And the purpose of this round of grants is to increase the opportunity for SWTCIE program participants, which includes students and youth with disabilities seeking subminimum wage employment and potential VR program applicants or VR eligible individuals with disabilities who are employed or contemplating employment at sub minimum wage to obtain competitive integrated employment, also known as CIE. Holy smokes, that's a  lot. And I love nothing more than talking with my Minnesota general peeps. You guys always have so much going on. And so for full disclosure for our listeners, before I retired from the state of Minnesota, I was the Assistant commissioner of the Workforce Services, part of the agency. I had the privilege of hiring your director, Dee Torgerson, into her position. And I think the world of Dee and the whole team there. So let's dig in. I'm excited about what you're doing. So, Tyler, I know you had your six month anniversary. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you came to VR.}

^{Tyler: Yeah, so I was working as a restaurant manager, actually, and I volunteered for an organization called Life Track. I'm doing resume reviews, mock interviews, things like that. And then eventually a position opened up in business engagement, and I got hired. And in that role, I was supporting their employment program for people with disabilities as well as their other employment programs. Eventually, from that role, I moved into providing direct services to individuals with disabilities as a placement person, which I really loved. Eventually, another opportunity opened up at an organization called Resource, and I was hired on to help lead a direct appropriation grant for a few years. So I continued to do that, and then eventually I transitioned into an HR position, actually at a construction company called Parsons Electric, where I was responsible for community outreach, including working with VRS and other community organizations, as well as managing a few employee programs at the company. So in that role at Parsons Electric, I got connected to the State Rehabilitation Council, where I served as a representative of business, industry and labor and then eventually served as the chair of that council for a few years. So that was eventually led me to learning about Go MN a little bit. I saw the position opened up, I decided to apply and here I am. It's been quite the journey to this role, but I feel like it's a good culmination of my experience working with employers, doing placement, managing programs and leading others.}

^{Carol: That is so cool. Our listeners always like to hear where people come from. It's like no one's journey in is ever clearly straight. It's a long and winding road and you're a fellow placement person. I used to do placement way back in the day. I have like fondness in my heart for that. So that. Oh, very cool. Amanda, how about you? You know, I've known you, but I didn't know about your journey into VR.}

^{Amanda: Yes. So I went to school to become an English teacher. And then when I got out of college, I had a hard time finding a job. And so I got a job working with a CRP in Saint Paul. Shout out to Goodwill Easter Seals. And I fell in love with the work. I started doing job placement, job coaching and moved into a manager role where I was overseeing our placement team, our extended employment grant. We started an IPS program, so it was just an awesome, awesome experience. And then in 2015, a position became available at VRS for an extended employment specialist. And I thought, hey, I'm going to jump at this opportunity to use my experience on the CRP side and bring it over to VRS and the state of Minnesota. And from there, I've had a lot of great opportunities. You mentioned WIOA, I came in at the kind of ground level of when that was all starting, and got to build our process for career counseling, information and referral. I started working with our interagency partnerships with DHS, our Medicaid agency, and our special education agency, and then moved into overseeing business engagement, interagency partnerships, and now director of strategic initiatives. So it's been such a journey and just really incredible. And I'm grateful for all of those experiences because I think they all, you know, thinking about this dif grant and going, man, it is all serving us very well. This is kind of a culmination of much of that work.}

^{Carol: That is super cool. I didn't know that about your background. Either. And you've done a ton at Minnesota. I always think whenever your name is tied to something, it's going to be stellar. It's going to be terrific. I do, I think the world of you. So, Amanda, can you give us a little snapshot of Minnesota general? Like how many staff do you have in the agency and how many customers do you guys serve? Yes.}

^{Amanda: So we have 429 staff across the entire state, 23 field offices. And when we look at our last program year, so the last full program year of 22, we served about 12,919 individuals. We had over 5000 applications. And I'm really excited about our employment outcome rate is up over the last two years. So we're kind of building back from the pandemic, as I'm sure many folks are doing, and we're seeing the numbers of folks applying for our services go up, as well as those employment outcomes going up. So really happy that we're back to those pre-pandemic levels of people we're serving, which is just great news.}

^{Carol: That is excellent to hear. I know folks really struggled. The pandemic just like crashed our customers. A lot of them, they were afraid to come out. I mean, they didn't want to be exposed to Covid and all of that. And it really decimated what the VR program was looking like. But we're seeing such a good rebound. You guys have also been rebounding in your numbers of staff too, with your staff vacancy rate. So I know does put a lot of initiatives into place. So you're much you know, I think you're at 20 some percent and I know it's much lower than that.}

^{Amanda: Yes, absolutely. Dee and others have done some really great work with our HR department and really being creative and innovative in how we're recruiting staff, retaining staff, looking at all those ways to support staff with onboarding training. And we're really starting to see that dial shift where our vacancy rate is pretty low again. And we're back to kind of that pre-pandemic level. So we're really grateful for all those efforts. And just, you know, really, I know it's something that everyone struggles with, but just really thinking about, okay, how do we make this work and how do we make the state of Minnesota and VR's a really great place to work?}

^{Carol: Excellent. I love to hear that. Now, I know Minnesota, you know, kind of shifting to our diff. You know, Minnesota still has a fair number of people who work at or are paid sub minimum wages. So tell us a little bit about the project and what you're hoping to accomplish. And Tyler I'm going to kick that to you first.}

^{Tyler: Sure. So this is a disability innovation fund. So we are trying to develop innovative ways to serve people with disabilities in the state. So for this project, we're working with the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston, or ICI Boston, to pilot what's called progressive employment. So it's a dual customer model, meaning it's meant to serve both employers and job seekers. And it really is meant for people with limited or no work experience in competitive, integrated employment. So what's different about it is it's really meant to help people explore work, doing things like tours, job shadows, work experience, learning more about what work means for them, what their skills are, what their interests are. And this project is also focused in the growing high demand transportation industry in Minnesota. So the hope is to help those that are either working in Subminimum wage or considering working in Subminimum wage, explore opportunities in that transportation industry, and potentially find competitive, integrated employment that's a fit for them and for the employer. The idea is really that everybody is ready for something, and we just need to meet people where they're at, provide the support needed for them to be successful in the community.}

^{Carol: I love that. Can you talk a little bit more about the transportation industry, like a little more specificity around that? What does that look like? Yeah, so.}

^{Tyler: The transportation industry is huge and it does include transportation and material handling. So we are considering this pretty broadly. But it really I think most people think about, you know, mechanics or drivers, but it's all those positions that support that work as well. So it could be working in an office. It could be working with technology, working with your hands, working with people. But we do think of transportation as very broad. And what's nice about that is for the folks that we're serving, there is a good chance with how broad this industry is that they can find that opportunity that they're looking for. So that was the emphasis in transportation. I know we'll mention Duluth later being a big transportation hub as well.}

^{Carol: Yeah, that makes sense, I get that. Amanda, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?}

^{Amanda: Yeah, I'll just add a little bit more about just subminimum wage in Minnesota. And Minnesota has historically had a very large number of individuals who have been working in subminimum wage employment. And, you know, when we wrote this grant two years ago now, even in the last two years, things have shifted and changed in ways that are so incredible. And I'm so excited about when we wrote it, we were looking at the numbers and looking at things, and it just has changed so much. So the first year back when we started doing the career counseling information referral process, we had almost 12,000 individuals that we saw that first year for this last year that we have data, we're down to about 4500. So that is a huge, huge change. And then when we look at our pilot location, we are down to like less than 100 people in the pilot location, perhaps even less than 50. And part of that is we're seeing providers just move away from that 14 (C) certificate, even though it's technically still allowable in the state and at the federal level. But I think providers are just saying, you know what, we want to move away from this. And this work really dovetails nicely with lots of other transformation initiatives that have been happening in the state over the last few years to help support providers, give them the tools and resources to look at other ways to support employment instead of that 14 (C) certificate. Lots more to do, of course, but it's just been really exciting to see this work that is just happening right before our eyes. And I think for this grant, we've had to certainly adjust and kind of keep up with those changes as well.}

^{Carol: That makes my heart happy because I remember back in the day, more like 14,000 way back when. And I used to actually work at the Department of Human Services, where we did licensing and rate setting and all the different things for the various providers who were day training programs that did use, a lot of them use the 14 (C) certificates. It was kind of the way of life in Minnesota. So that is such a huge move. I had no idea about the numbers. Now that makes my heart really happy. Excellent. Good on you. This is great, you guys. So for our listeners to Minnesota is really a geographically diverse state. I think for some people they think about us. People be like, do you guys have, you know, plumbing and flush toilets? I've had people ask me that. I'm like, seriously, we are not out in the middle of the boondocks, but we do have areas of the state that really are super rural. And from top to bottom, this state, it is hours. It is a long way. If we're going to go from here to International Falls and such. Now, we do have our urban areas and our extremely remote locations, and you guys are taking a really great approach with this project, focusing on northeast Minnesota and spreading out across the state. So how did you guys come to settle on starting up in the Duluth area, and how are those partnerships developed?}

^{Amanda: Great question. One of the requirements when we were applying for the grant is you had to pick a industry, and there were a couple different options. And as Tyler mentioned, we decided on the transportation industry. And the reason we did that is because when we looked at where were people already getting jobs at VRS across the state and transportation and material moving was number one over the last few years. So we thought, okay, people are already getting a lot of jobs in that industry. And so we decided that makes sense. Let's do that. And then looking at Duluth, because it really, for those of you who don't know, Duluth is right on Lake Superior. And it is a transportation material moving hub. You see those kind of ships and barges coming in and trains, and there's just there's a lot happening in the Duluth area, but it's also small enough that it felt manageable for us, that we could really leverage some of the amazing partnerships that we already have established in the Duluth area. The Duluth team is amazing because part of this work is really relying on our field team. So that manager and those staff that are in that office know that area.}

^{They also have previous experience working on a large federal grant from a few years back. We had the SGA grant, the SGA project, and then just those partnerships of not only employers and transportation partners, but our providers, our employment service providers, our relationship with our county, the waiver case managers, and then our centers for Independent living. And really knowing that, okay, we've got something great happening in Duluth and all the pieces were there. And so that's why we decided we're going to start in Duluth. We're going to get this off the ground, and then we can bring that to other parts of the state and really leverage that team to then help mentor as we then go to other parts of the state. And they are also amazing and willing to be flexible, knowing that this is a demonstration model. We're trying some new things. We want to be innovative. And so while we've tried to kind of lay the groundwork, we know that we're going to make changes and adjustments as we go. And they are right there game to do that along with us.}

^{Carol: That makes so much sense now. Why, you know, talking about the transportation history. And then why you picked Duluth? Because Duluth sits on the harbor. It's a lovely location. Like there's major shipping traffic in and out. I hadn't thought about all of that. When you think about the transportation industry, first thing I always come to mind, like semi-trucks, you know, it's the truckers and there you go. But when, as Tyler described it, you know, we're talking so much more broadly. There's a lots of different elements that are all around the transportation industry. That's pretty cool. So I know a lot of our DIF grantees have had struggles and challenges during year one of the grant because, you know, you get notified maybe four days before it's the beginning of the federal fiscal year. And it's like, go and spend all that money right away. And so everybody's been talking about the challenges, and I wanted to find out what kind of challenges you all faced year one and how you have dealt with them and overcome those. And Amanda, I think I'll kick it to you first.}

^{Amanda: Thank you. I did mention this, but it really has had a huge impact on how we've thought about this. But the changes in 14 (C) providers and Subminimum wage work, looking at our pilot location, many of the providers have already in the time we applied and in the time we're planning to get this up and running, have already moved away from it. And so that has been a challenge for us to kind of think about, how do we think about those folks who have historically earned subminimum wages, who might be doing other types of work, but it's still not necessarily integrated? And thinking about kind of that definition of contemplating and working with our RSA liaison to kind of work through that to say, hey, we've got a lot of changes in the landscape of this target population and working really closely with liaison to help, you know, maybe kind of adjust how we maybe thought about the population when we wrote the grant and then really thinking about how this project overlaps with much of the existing work that we've done in Minnesota. I mentioned earlier working with our Medicaid agency and our special education agency, and really thinking about how we serve individuals who are receiving a Medicaid waiver and how we're leveraging those relationships with schools and serving youth with the most significant disabilities. And we've spent a lot of work in how we partner with county case managers, our schools and transition programs. And so being very mindful about how progressive employment and this project fits in with that work, and not duplicating or stepping on toes and then thinking about sustainability. So how we can kind of fit the progressive employment in with much of that work that's happening. So that's a few changes around Subminimum wages. I'll pass it over to Tyler to talk about some of the other challenges we faced.}

^{Tyler: Yeah, I would only really highlight two. One I think a lot of people can relate to is hiring is a challenge. It takes time to find the right people to work through that process. I do think we really have found some great people. I'll talk more about that in a second here. But that was a challenge. It takes time. It's hard to do this work when you don't have the people hired, but then the other one and it relates to this. A lot of these things just take time. As Amanda mentioned, this is a big project. So bringing those partners together, getting contracts in place, just all that groundwork that has to be laid. It just takes time. It's a challenge in the sense we know this work has to be done, but as long as we're patient, as long as we work through the process, as long as we stay determined, we've been able to work through those things, and we are getting very close to being able to get this off the ground.}

^{Carol: I love that, you know, you both talked about groundwork, and I think, Amanda, that groundwork with, you know, the Department of Human Services and the Department of Education, and I know that started years ago, where we were having those monthly meetings, the three organizations and DEED, you know, we're all talking together way back in the day. I was still part of that. And I loved that because we had to really learn to speak each other's language, to start, and then really look at how we could blend and braid and work together. So we weren't duplicating, supplanting all those words, you know, and making sure. So the stage was really set. That is true. And that will help with this whole effort. I think that's great. And even all the groundwork, Tyler, that you guys have laid in the agency with working with HR and all those different processes that have gotten so much better over time, helps for you to onboard and get the people in. So it seems like the stars all aligned and everything is coming together for you guys, I love that. So Tyler, what are some initial wins that you guys have been seeing?}

^{Tyler: Yeah, so building on that theme of groundwork, there's again, a lot that goes into it when I look back at the past. So I know you mentioned my six month anniversary. I think I met about eight months now. Just the things we've been able to accomplish. So there's systems that are necessary to support this work. Customizing Workforce One has taken some time, but I think we've got a good system in place. We're going to be piloting a system called Salesforce. I'm sure many people are familiar with that, but that'll help us with our employer engagement, coordinating and organizing some of those efforts. I mentioned working with ICI Boston that has been bringing them in and working closely with them has definitely been a win. As well as the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota. They're going to be supporting this project as well. So we've just started to meet with them, bringing them into it. And then we also work with Mathematica as part of this project. So just all that groundwork, bringing in all these partners, getting everybody on the same page, I would definitely identify that as one of the biggest wins. And then I just mentioned this, but and maybe I'm a little biased, but I do think we've hired some amazing people on this project. I'm really excited for the work to begin, for them to really, you know, flex their muscles and use their skills. And then just overall, not just the folks that we've hired, all those partners that I mentioned, I think we just have a great team for the project. Everyone is very talented. We have some great team cohesion. Everybody works very hard, so we're all ready to do some good work for the people that we serve.}

^{Carol: Yeah, you have a great foundation. Those groups that you all mentioned, Mathematica, and you've got ICI, and you've got also the UMass Boston people we’re well aware of all those folks and consider them our colleagues. They're great. You guys were smart and kind of pulling the trifecta together to help support the project. So I know you're always looking forward and Duluth is the start. So Amanda, what's your next focus area going to be?}

^{Amanda: We are focused on getting that pilot off the ground. And because of those changes of where Subminimum wage is at in Minnesota, we're really taking a look at in our proposal, we had identified some areas and we're rethinking that and really looking at where do we still have those higher numbers of people earning subminimum wage and looking at targeting those locations. So we have a higher number in kind of central Minnesota as well as southeastern Minnesota. And so looking at kind of the lay of the land there with those 14 (C) providers, that might still be providing that, because we want to make sure that we can leverage this grant to do the most work and do the most good, if you will. And so looking at shifting from where we initially thought we had thought we'd do Metro in southwest Minnesota, but now we're rethinking that and looking at, okay, where are our high numbers of subminimum wage workers? And let's go there.}

^{Carol: So are you thinking then would that be down, like in the Rochester area, sort of as kind of the if you're thinking about the state, I'm trying to think I'm like east West. That was not always my best suit.}

^{Amanda: Yeah. So down in southeast it would be like Rochester and Winona, that area.}

^{Carol: Okay.}

^{Amanda: And then central is kind of Saint Cloudish area. Saint Cloud Willmar, yeah.}

^{Carol: Great. So what have you guys had for some takeaways that you've gained from the project so far. And Tyler I'm going to kick it to you first.}

^{Tyler: First I would say my primary takeaway and I'm still new but a lot goes into this work. There are so many people involved. There are so many processes to follow and they can be very complicated sometimes. So I know I mentioned this before, it just takes time. It takes patience, it takes working together. Determination that has been my prime takeaway is just this is a big project. We just have to kind of, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. But as long as we are focused on really doing our best to serve the people that we want to serve, and we're keeping them at the center of all this work, then I have no doubt when all is said and done, we will be successful. We'll have achieved the mission of this grant. I just have to, for myself, even, just be patient. Take it a day at a time.}

^{Carol: How about you, Amanda?}

^{Amanda: I would say it takes a team. It's a big grant. It's a big project. And so I think that foundation that we've been laying with our internal VRS teams, shout out to the Duluth team and then our partners at ICI Boston and ICI Minnesota, we haven't mentioned it yet, but we have for business outreach, the Transportation Center of Excellence in Minnesota. We have someone there who has been helping us think about outreach to business and kind of tapping into what's happening from an education standpoint and working with them. And then I also want to note, CSAVR has been doing a community of practice with the SWTCIE grant holders. So the states have been coming together on a monthly basis to just talk about how this is working and sharing with each other and learning with each other, and that has been really helpful. And then there's been some other like RSA and Mathematica have also held some meetings. So I think just it's helpful when you're doing something like this and you're kind of in the weeds, it's nice to hear from other people, like you're not alone. Other people might be struggling or having successes, and just having that support is just so appreciated because there is a lot of pieces to this. And, when you know, hey, I can call up Brandi and Iowa and just kind of say, hey, how are you guys dealing with this? That has just been really fantastic as well.}

^{Carol: Well, and speaking of Brandi and Iowa, we just recorded with her last month. And their SWTCIE Grant, which is fun. I had not heard that CSVAR was doing this COP. I love that that is great because I know there's a lot that goes into the DIF just organizationally and administratively because it's a different type of grant, a discretionary grant from the feds. There's different reporting requirements. And so sometimes states are not used to all of that. Like there's a high level of involvement from RSA. And so you've got a lot going on and people are kind of overwhelmed. It's different. And so having that support group is awesome I love that. Well, I know too, that we have different listeners who are on the fence. And we're anticipating another round of DIF grants coming again with the large amount of monies that were relinquished in Re allotment. And so sometimes people, you know, they reach out and they're like, well, like, should we do it or not? And do you all have some advice for them if they're contemplating doing a DIF? Tyler, what would you tell folks about this?}

^{Tyler: I could understand looking at these grants, seeing them as intimidating. But I think to Amanda's point, if you do choose to apply, know that you are not doing it alone. We have definitely leaned on other states who are doing similar work, and it both helps support our work as well as remind us that we are really in this together. So I think that makes a huge difference if you do decide to apply. But really, if you are contemplating applying for a DIF grant, I say go for it. There is so much great work to be done supporting with individuals with disabilities across the country, and we really need people to help implement those innovative ideas so that we can serve these folks even better. So this type of work is extremely important, and if you have a good team, I would dare even call this kind of work fun.}

^{Carol: Hahaha. That is awesome! Well, I could see the fun on both of your faces because you're smiling. Our listeners can't see that, but you're both smiling from ear to ear. And I can tell the passion and you're very excited about what you're doing. I know you're building your website right now, so you may not have that available, but if others wanted to connect with you, what would your email addresses be?}

^{Tyler: Once we get that website up, we'll let you know in case we can incorporate that somehow. But I can be reached at Tyler.Sadek@State.MN.US and I'll spell that really quick, T y l e r dot s a d e k at state dot MN dot US.}

^{Carol: Excellent. And Amanda, how about you?}

^{Amanda: Okay, here's my email. Amanda. A m a n d a dot Jensen, J e n s e n, -Stahl, S t a h l, at State dot MN dot US. Amanda.Jensen-Stahl@State.MN.US}

^{Carol: Excellent. Thank you both. You both have been terrific. I'm really looking forward to connecting with you all again. A little bit down the road, you know, as you get more time under your belt and we see how it's going. But this sounds amazing and really I wish you the best of luck. Thanks for joining me today.}

^{Tyler: Thank you Carol.}

^{Amanda: Thank you Carol.}

^{Music}

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Full Transcript:

{Music}

Brandy: Making sure that we have a focus across the state, that competitive integrated employment is the first and preferred outcome for all individuals with disabilities.

Paul: We want to partner with the CRPs, the school districts, mental health providers, and we want to be able to provide customized employment or ISPY at a much younger age in the high school.

Ashley: Our work group has looked at the direct support professional registered apprenticeship that already exists in the state of Iowa, and that's registered, and we're looking at what can we take from that and really kind of DIF it.

Paul: We're DIF'ing it.

Brandy: who wants to dive in with us and DIF it?

Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.

Carol: Well welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today is Brandi McOmber project director Ashley Banes, counselor specialist, focused on the apprenticeship program, and Paul Fuller, counselor specialist focused on the transition pilot all with Iowa general. So hey, gang, thanks for joining me in the studio today. So a little background for our listeners. I heard this group talk about their DIF project in a recent CSAVR monthly directors meeting, and they were focused on one aspect of the grant that was centered around the IPS project. And in fact, I thought maybe that was the whole thing. And shoot, CSAVR already stole them and stole my thunder. But I learned from talking to the team that there was so much more to their grant to unpack. So we are actually going to not focus on IPS, and we're going to pick up where they left off. Now, I've really enjoyed focusing on the DIF projects from each grant year, and they each have such a unique emphasis, and the ideas that are generated from one state can really be transplanted across the country. So as a reminder to our listeners, this DIF grant series is called the SWTCIE Subminimum Wage to Competitive Integrated Employment. And the purpose of this round of grants is to increase the opportunity for those SWTCIE program participants, which includes students and youth with disabilities seeking subminimum wage employment and potential VR program applicants, or VR eligible individuals with disabilities who are employed or contemplating employment at sub minimum wage to obtain competitive, integrated employment. All right, that was a mouthful. So let's dig in. Now I know our listeners are always super interested about your backgrounds. Like how do people get into VR? How do you even get here? So I'd like to understand each of your journeys into getting into VR. So, Brandy I'm going to start with you.

Brandy: Sure, thanks, Carol. To start out, I've worked with vocational rehabilitation services for 16 years now. Originally, I became interested in VR, as I previously worked at a facility with Transition Youth who were adjudicated as delinquent or CHINA or in other words, Child In Need of Assistance. So these were youth that had, you know, a lot of things to overcome in terms of transitioning into the world of work. So my specific role there was to help them come up with a plan. So in other words, where are they going to work? Where are they going to move out as they age out of the system? And through that process, I was able to interact with vocational rehabilitation in the state of Iowa. And it really got me interested in how much more of an impact I could have. So I applied and they accepted me. And then when I became a VR counselor, I really got interested in the other components of the broader state level work and applied and became a policy resource manager. And that gave me a much broader understanding of where we're at in the system, uniquely as a VR entity. With that coming into the DIF grant that we'll talk about today, it was really kind of the next level or the next step in the journey of moving from just our internal policy to how we can affect systems change throughout the state of Iowa. So that's really kind of my background.

Carol: That's excellent. And that really positioned you well for being project director on this DIF. Very cool. So Ashley, let's go to you. How did you meander into VR.

Ashley: Absolutely. And I think meandering is a great way of honestly describing it. I have worked within the state for about 14 years now, but I actually started within the Department of Corrections, and I hung out there for the first ten years of my career. Within that, the first six years, I ran our domestic violence program and carried a caseload of about 1000 clients when I did that. And the last four years that I was there, I really started focusing on mental health barriers, substance abuse barriers. And so that led me into a very specific program, which was our drug court program, and that is a prison diversion program. So that is the last stop somebody can kind of redeem themselves in before they get sent to prison. And the reason is I got super interested in that. My passion comes from actually very personal experience. And I lost my mom to suicide when I was 18 due to her severe mental health. So when that happened, that really left me asking questions of what supports are out there. And that really opened my eyes to see the lack of said supports in our community and in our state. So I hung out with in drug court for about four years, ran that program, and I started wanting to branch out because I was helping this certain population. And I was like, I know there's more out there. I know that I could be doing more. And I just felt like I was needed in more places. So a Voc Rehab counselor position opened and, the same county actually that I was running our drug court program in so I took a shot and applied for that and was offered that position. And so I jumped on that, I was  a Voc Rehab counselor, just carrying a normal caseload. for about a year, just over a year, and within that year is where I got into the IPS program that you touched on earlier that we already kind of talked about in our monthly meeting that we had. From there, the DIF grant counselor specialist position came up and I was like, this is really a way for me to take what I'm good at and the areas that I don't have a lot of experience in, like for example, being part of a grant was not anything I'd ever done in my life before, but I really wanted to have that experience. So I was like, this is my shot. So I applied for it and I honestly thought in my interview I was like, there's no way I got this. There's no way this is the worst interview of my life. And lo and behold, I got offered the position. So that's really kind of what got me in here. And being able to be kind of part of that top level systems change and being able to provide that support to my coworkers who are struggling with certain areas, that's really what drives me, and being able to take my passion and apply that. So that's how I meandered in here.

Carol: Well, first up, I'm very sorry about your mom.

Ashley: Thank you.

Carol:  In that situation, your background, I can imagine they snatched you up in one second because your background is so uniquely important to VR and having the mental health challenges that many of our customers face, that's been tough for counselors to handle and to work with. So I can see why you've been a valuable add to the team for sure. So, Paul, last but not least, how did you come into VR?

Paul: Meandering might be a good way to say it too, but my passion and my background here really lies in transition. And so I started my transition journey, I guess, in the Waterloo Community Schools here, the local school district, and I worked with individuals with disabilities in a transition program that partnered with Voc Rehab. And so I had 4 or 5 years of experience and then decided to apply. Then with VOC Rehab when a counselor position came open. That's been about ten and a half years ago. Best move I ever made. Love working with Iowa Voc Rehab. My coworkers here and everybody we get to help. So over those ten years, over the past ten years, I actually oversaw two transition programs in the local community where we assisted individuals with disabilities all the way from freshman through their transition into adulthood, all the way up to age 25. That was really interesting and fulfilling to me to see the growth that you would get from students and that you would see them obtain their goals and really achieve milestones for themselves that that were just amazing, watching them grow and learn and become adults, so to speak. And then, like Ashley, I saw the position with the DIF grant come open. Did not think I was going to get it after my interview. You know, those are the type of interviews that you end up getting the job when you think you bombed. But very fortunate to be here, part of a great team. Yeah, about 17 years total in transition, a little over ten here with Voc Rehab. And really looking forward to the things that we have going for us for the DIF grant.

Carol: That's good stuff. I always love understanding how people get into VR, because we often come from a very different journey and then evolve and come into this role. I can see why all three of you are on this grant. That is amazing. Brandy, can you give people a little picture of Iowa General? Like kind of how many staff are in the agency? How many people do you serve? I know Iowa is my neighbor, but I always think of, you know, a lot of cornfields, are there, any big metro areas? What's the lay of the land down there?

Brandy: Iowa, we currently have approximately 250 staff within VR. So decent size, but definitely a lot smaller than, you know, some of our bigger states like Texas, we are obviously a separated state. So we have Iowa General, and then the Iowa Department for the Blind, and we work closely with them in partnership. We do have some metro areas that are around the state, like Des Moines is one of our major metro areas. We also then have very rural areas where we see major needs in terms of a lack of transportation of available providers. So it's really interesting in that, you know, it sounds like it's all rural, but we definitely have a really good mixture of those different urban versus rural areas, which is interesting, but also was perfect for a grant because we can take a look at how we're affecting change in those major areas, and really understanding that we need to have a different approach for different areas in the state of Iowa and in terms of individuals, we serve for Iowa general alone in program year 2022, which would be July 1st, 2022 through June 30th, 2023. We served approximately 7900 potentially eligible students, as well as about 13 almost 14,000 eligible clients, for a total of almost 22,000. So decent numbers, but once again, definitely not as broad as some areas. For transition alone, we served around 14,000, a little over that, which would be a combination of that almost 8000 potentially eligible and, you know, 6500 eligible transition students. So we have a decent amount of clients that we serve. And we're very focused on transition in the state of Iowa. So we like to really push different transition programs. As Paul had mentioned, we have a lot of what we call TAP programs, Transition Alliance Programs that we've spoken nationally about as well, but definitely an emphasis on transition as well. So that's kind of the makeup of our state.

Carol: I like it, it's bigger than I thought. I didn't realize that. So that is good. I know when I was reading your project narrative and you had sent that, now that I know you wrote it in six weeks or less, Holy smokes, it was really good and I can totally see why RSA said, yeah, we're funding this project really well written. And you titled it The Iowa Blueprint for Change. And I was very intrigued by all of the research. You looked at a report that the US Government Accountability Office did, or they often are known as the GAO, and they had written a report back in 21 and submitted it to Congress about the 14(C) programs. I thought that was interesting. And you also had another report that was by the Advisory Committee on Increasing Competitive Integrated Employment. So you wove in these pieces to kind of lay the picture of what was happening in Iowa and how that aligned. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think it's interesting to note what your state is facing regarding sub minimum wage and kind of the lay of the land. We know over the course of many years across the country, some states have now kind of banned sub-minimum wage. And other people, they're all in different places on that. So can you kind of weave that together a little bit?

Brandy: Absolutely. I would preface it to say that, yes, we definitely made a late decision for applying for the grant, but it was absolutely a community effort. We really needed to rely on community members from different agencies and groups and entities to do it, because we decided so late. So I really need to give credit to those community members. That really helped us, because without them, the complexity of what we wanted to do would never be achieved in terms of an application. So there's really a couple of different reasons for the name that we selected for Iowa Blueprint for Change, and the name itself was actually selected by one of the community members that assisted us in writing it, because as we were kind of dumping data into a Google document, that would help us to really outline what every agency that was participating, what their thoughts would be, and what they see as the needs. We really identified that through the reports that you mentioned. It would really give us that blueprint to move forward. And so there's a couple of different reasons. Like I said, for the name, first of all, the report from the Government Accountability Office or GAO, as they're typically known, was really about identifying 32 factors that they had indicated that really influenced the transition of people from different environments like subminimum wage into competitive, integrated employment. So those 32 factors really range from things such as what is the individual's family or their own unique perspective in terms of what could happen.

So what are their fears? What is the information that they know? What state policies are available within the state to kind of have some teeth, if you will, into making sure that employment first, for instance, is a focus. And also what is the local economy looking like. So those factors helped give us that blueprint. And to be honest, many of the factors that they mentioned really hold true in Iowa, where even though we don't have a large number of 14(C) certificate holders or that sub-minimum wage certificate holders, we recognize that we didn't have a lot. We have a handful, maybe five left. But the broader impact or the broader issue that we run into is that when those sub-minimum wage entities shut down, it really just meant a shift for those individuals not into work, but to sitting at home or to attending adult daycare, or the primary reason was going into day habilitation. And so we knew that that was a much, much broader issue, that when we have thousands and thousands of individuals in day habilitation, that some of which have employment, but many of which do not have competitive, integrated employment, we really knew that we needed to utilize that information as a blueprint to affect change systemically. In the state of Iowa, I would say the second reason that we really wanted to utilize the name Iowa Blueprint for Change was because we came across information related to the Collective Impact Forum, and that's really a cross sector framework that has a belief that if you bring a large number of individuals collectively together, they can make a really broad impact and advance equality if they're working together.

So we wanted to utilize that model of collective impact to really focus on what can we have individuals and we're talking individuals from people with lived experience to their parents to parent support groups, educators, community providers, you know, a number of individuals coming together and then separating out the work, saying, how could we get this done in workgroups? So through that, we wanted to create what we would call a blueprint of what do we need to do systemically, like at the policy level, what do we need to do at the agency level? All of those agencies that really have a stake in the game for, or funding employment for individuals with disabilities. What do we need to do at a local, maybe support level, where there's these groups that are specific to people with disabilities, what could they do to affect change and then all the way down to the individual level. So when we come together, we can start to develop that blueprint and say as an individual representing vocational rehabilitation, for instance, I know that we need to commit to if we learn through this grant that, for instance, community providers don't have enough funding, what can we commit to in an actual document that we call our blueprint that would ensure that we have committed to making that change? So we would have these series of blueprints that would really help us to drive and have everyone involved commit to that systems level all the way down to the individual level change.

So that really it was a twofold idea in terms of the blueprint, and it really brought together all of those individuals, like I mentioned, to make sure that they're committed. Because if we go into this, we knew that if we didn't have the support of all those other agencies and individuals and really show the face of the people that this change would impact, then we're going to be kind of dead in the water. We're not going to be able to move forward, if you will. So that's really the name that research. Also, that second report from the advisory committee was really also touching on the current atmosphere in Iowa and contributed to that blueprint, because we have made major strides in Iowa to move towards employment, we still face a number of challenges, like a lack of adequate training and support that can build capacity, professional competence across all levels of service provision. We have a lack of or we really did have a lack of a solid base of employment services grounded in evidence based practices. So all of these things combined were things that we knew we needed to utilize as a blueprint to really move the needle, if you will.

Carol: Yeah, I really enjoyed that part of the narrative, I did. Because it was so interesting and I thought about that kind of the lost group, you know, you think, okay, 14(C)'s are going away, this is great. But then there's a whole group of people, like you said, they're sitting at home. So we're missing the boat because they didn't move on into VR or into employment. They're either at home or they're sitting in day habilitation. So I love that you are focused on these folks for sure. Now, I know Iowa has done a lot of work, like, in fact, you guys have been the beneficiaries of several grants. Grants through ODEP and different initiatives that have really led you to this point. So let's dig into your actual projects. So I know there was the IPS component. Let's talk about what are these other elements of the project that you're trying to accomplish?

Brandy: Absolutely. The purpose, as you had mentioned Carol earlier, the purpose of this particular DIF grant was to focus on that movement from sub minimum wage or those contemplating sub minimum wage into competitive integrated employment. And the intent of those DIF grants in general is to, you know, really support innovative activities. And we really took that to heart is how can we be innovative in what we're doing and not just stop at like, let's say a minimum wage job, but how can we achieve more than that? How can we move into economic security for the individuals that we're focused on? So that's really what we tried to do. We wanted to make sure that we touched on that issue of really the sub minimum wage isn't the issue, but how can we achieve success with all of those others, that lost group? As you mentioned. What I liked about the grant is it gave us the opportunity to define what we mean by contemplating sub minimum wage. So we tried to take a much broader approach. It's not somebody just thinking about going into sub minimum wage, but what we believe is it's any of those individuals that are traditionally maybe kind of pushed or it's suggested to them that maybe volunteering or staying at home or going into adult day care or day habilitation is the right approach for you. And so for our contemplating subminimum wage, we talked about what about students with the greatest need in the schools, individuals or students with Social Security benefits based on their own disability.

We also opened it up to individuals with more severe mental health disabilities, which we mentioned earlier was Ashley's passion, as well as those individuals who are receiving a service such as waiver or whatever it might be, but aren't focused on employment. So that laid the groundwork to say these are all the individuals we want to serve. From there, we developed the goal to advance and improve systems so that Iowans with disabilities have competitive, integrated employment opportunities that lead to economic security. We developed really six primary objectives that would help us get there. And I know later we can dive into the specific activities, but ultimately, we wanted to first use. What I had mentioned before is that collective impact approach. So our first objective was really about engaging a large collective of diverse stakeholders that can really help us to guide the work. So really the change is happening through them. And, they would use those different systems, change models such as collective impact, diversity, equity and inclusion. You know, that type of thing to support individuals with disabilities, move into CIE or competitive integrated employment. The next area that we wanted to focus on is developing an actual registered apprenticeship and quality pre apprenticeship program that would not only increase the number of direct support professionals in the state of Iowa, because through our comprehensive statewide needs assessment and through talking with all these community members, one of the issues that we had is just a lack of available staff to provide job coaching and all those supports.

So not only did we want to increase the number of individuals that could go through a program by creating and serving as an intermediary for an apprenticeship program, but also we wanted to make sure that we try to include and bring individuals with disabilities themselves to serve and to go through those apprenticeship programs. So that was the other objective. The third one is really about making an impact in the transition field because as Paul mentioned, that's his passion and that's my passion too. So how do we do that? What we decided to do is really develop some pilot projects that focus on uninterrupted transition to competitive, integrated employment for youth, especially those youth with the most significant disabilities. So utilizing a combination of technical assistance, grant dollars and training to really start earlier, introduce evidence based practices earlier, and provide training to the educators themselves as to the adult world of support, such as waiver. The fourth thing that we had mentioned that we wanted to do is to really facilitate that increase in individuals with disabilities in the state of Iowa, not only obtaining, but maintaining competitive, integrated employment.

So diving into how do we increase opportunities? The next one was to increase the expectation and demand for CIE. So how do we promote this? How do we squash any misconceptions about what working means? For instance, for people on Social Security benefits, how do we involve parents and individuals with disabilities to serve as mentors themselves? You know, how do we affect change in that area? And finally, we wanted to really align those public policies. So develop an employment first policy. And in a technology and first policy that really puts those teeth into making the change in Iowa, as well as getting together those agencies that once again have the ability to fund employment programs and make sure that we really do a deep dive in, a commitment to increasing that funding, if that's what we learn is necessary so that our provider partners aren't really stuck in what we want to provide these great evidence based practices for instance.. But, they're not really achievable because we lose money. So looking at that issue and then just making sure that we have a focus across the state, that competitive, integrated employment is the first and preferred outcome for all individuals with disabilities. So that's really like a broad overview of what we were hoping to achieve.

Carol: You have bitten off a lot. Like in reading that, when I went through it, I went, oh my gosh, like, is this a five year grant or is this a ten year grant? Because there's a lot you're going to do. But I think with especially this particular subject, the systems change foundation of what your proposal talked about is so important because you can't do this unless you really engage all of the various partners to affect this sort of high level of change. Do you have certain targets, like the number of individuals you're trying to, like, what's the big target for the five year completion of your activities?

Brandy: So that's another area that we really bit off, probably more than we can handle. But we wanted to make sure that for outreach purposes, we provided outreach to every single individual in day habilitation, which is thousands and every, you know, student that has disability benefits or that could really qualify as a as an individual. So we had much broader numbers there. So we're talking thousands. But in terms of breaking it down, the great thing about this grant is they connected a national evaluator, which is Mathematica, that comes in and really dives in with us going, okay, that's a big piece. Now let's go. How many of those do you think? You know, through various pilot projects, through the different components of this, can you actually bring in because, you know, some are going to say, I'm not interested. Some are going to maybe, you know, have a different reason for not participating. So then they helped us to say, that's the goal for outreach. We're going to provide information to all of those individuals and also ensure that every one of those individuals that wants to be part of that broad collective that I talked about can participate and even serve in leadership roles. Then, from the number of individuals will actually serve, we have a little over 300 to say, we want to commit to this number of adults and this number of students to actually do it. Which is a lot of individuals as well. When you're talking only five years, especially since the first year is really about getting contracts ready, figuring out your team, trying to identify what you're doing. So definitely we thought big in that area as well.

Carol: Go big or go home, I like it. So, Ashley, you've been sitting here patiently waiting. You're the counselor specialist focused on the apprenticeship program. Can you tell us more about that? Like what do you do? Like what are you focused on? What's your role like?

Ashley: Absolutely. So really my role is just to support and guide our work group that we have that has volunteered their time to be part of this. So our work group consists of different businesses, educators, community providers, individuals with lived experience that want to build this program to ensure that it's successful. So right now, our work group has looked at the Direct support professional registered apprenticeship that already exists in the state of Iowa, and that's registered. And we're looking at what can we take from that. And really kind of DIF it, if that makes sense. So we want to make sure that we're taking what we're seeing within our need and the lack of the workforce that's currently available for those positions, and open that up again. Just really kind of supporting and guiding them. So that started with we branched out and we've talked to different states about some of their pre apprenticeships and registered apprenticeships that they have in the specific area, being able to kind of get the what went well, what didn't go well with them. So we can maybe avoid some of that and not repeat it. Partnering again we've partnered with everybody that I've listed earlier, but then we also have a couple registered apprenticeship gurus with the Iowa Workforce Development Group that have volunteered their time to be part of our group.

So they're really like a good sounding board for us. So if we get some crazy ideas and we throw them at the two ladies that we have, they're like, yeah, let's do this. One of the great ideas that we have is stackable credentials. So being able to not just create a registered apprenticeship that gives you the ability to be a direct support professional, but also gives you the ability to advance in the career. And so the individuals that we're targeting that we want to be part of our apprenticeship is obviously the individuals that we're targeting within our grant. So individuals that are really interested in helping others, but maybe just haven't been able to find that right area to specialize that in. So if somebody comes into the registered apprenticeship program and they are wanting to be a supervisor eventually, then we can provide the opportunities and the abilities for them to be trained and have the opportunity to do that. The nice thing about our grant too, is then we can also work with the providers and the businesses that are wanting to support our registered apprenticeship and not only support the business, but offer some incentives with them.

So if they're willing to put some teeth behind it, then we'll put some teeth behind it too, because it's going to take all of us working together for this to be successful. Also, the other really cool thing that I think we're building into our registered apprenticeship is specialty areas. So you talked about and Brittany talked about like my specialty area is really mental health. That's something I'm super passionate about. Other individuals have passions with intellectual disabilities, or they have passions with assistive technology areas, just any really area that somebody wants to gain some more knowledge in that they're super interested in, that could benefit them in the workforce, then let's provide them that opportunity. It's a work in progress. Right now we have 24 core competencies that we're reviewing to figure out if we want to leave them as they are, or if we want to alter some of them. And like I said earlier, kind of DIF them. So that's what our work group is doing right now. And again, the beautiful thing about it is we all come from very different backgrounds, so we all bring very different perspectives, which I think is going to make this a very beautiful program at the very end of it.

Carol: Very cool. I like that I haven't heard anybody say that yet, that they're DIF'ing it. And so now we've got it. We've got a new term.

Ashley: Absolutely. Just made that up too. So we're just going to roll with it

Carol: I love it. I like rolling., So Paul, I know you're focused on the transition pilot. Talk a little bit about that. What's going on with that and how's your role with it?

Paul: Yeah, of course, my previous experience, like I had mentioned, was overseeing two transition programs in the schools for the past ten years. After WIOA came out, we did notice, as Brandi had mentioned, students were going to adult daycare, just going home, sitting at home with parents, brother or sister, any kind of family member, and really not getting out in the community and being that competitive, integrated, employed. And so what our goal here is, is that each year for. The next three years, we're actually going to start two pilot projects, and we had created a work group. This would have been last August for the transition piece of the diff. As we say, we're DIF'ing it, of the DIF, the transition work group. And so we have actually been meeting we created a call for interest. And that went out to all CRP's, all AEA's, all LEA's throughout the state. And then we had proposals that were returned to us here over the past month or two. And we actually then took our group, reviewed those proposals and did choose to sites to receive this funding for these pilot programs here this year. We're actually starting those initial meetings with the schools. And so what we want to do is we want to partner with the CRP's, the school districts, mental health providers, and we want to be able to provide customized employment or IPSY at a much younger age in the high school. One thing that I had noticed around the state was that, you know, discovery might start that senior year for a student, that's way too late, way too late. What are you really going to know in the span of a year to make sure that they're going to be successful after their graduation? So what we're really hoping is that we can partner them with the IEP team. Like I mentioned, the mental health providers CRP's the school district teachers and start that discovery process freshman year. Also, some of the outreach where we can have students applying for like waiver services at a much younger age as well too, just because the waiting list right now is 5 or 6 years for some of that. So for additional funding after graduation, we were even talking about going into some of the middle schools to try and make sure that that outreach happens and those services are available, because that's another gap that we saw with students graduating without those waiver services or funding to be available there as that long term support. Also did want to just mention that we want to provide technical assistance to the AEA's and local school districts of one focus for the DIF. As we're DIF'ing it, is assistive technology. And so we want to be able to support job candidates. The school districts, AEA's with our assistive technology funds and how we're able to tie that in, along with the earlier service provision, to have better outcomes at graduation.

Carol: I like it. You're speaking my language with getting at these students younger, because I agree that whole business with senior year too late, too late, too.

Paul: Way too, yeah, way too late.

Carol: You know, getting at kids younger and just it is also and their families to get them exposed to other things. I think about how many of our students never had a job. You know, they aren't babysitting, they aren't mowing the lawn, they aren't doing anything. They don't get any exposure to that. And then all of a sudden, like, you graduate and you're going to go to work, you know, that just it's a foreign thought. And so I really like what you're doing with that and getting at the kids way younger. The IPSY that you said is good stuff. Now, I know as I've talked to grantees, everybody says year one is kind of a bummer because there's always challenges. You got slow starts and stops and all of that. How about any challenges you guys face to your one, or how did you kind of hit those head on?

Brandy: So we absolutely faced obstacles the first year. In fact, I think our motto for the year was that we will always pivot. So in other words, when we were awarded, we had to kind of keep changing the plan a bit to address everything that came our way, if that makes sense. So when we were awarded, the first thing to keep in mind is that typically with these DIF grants, you're notified that you're awarded only a couple of days before the grant year begins. So that is not a lot of preparation and planning time for you to get contracts started, if that makes sense, and to get things rolling. And there's also a really relevant push from RSA to make sure that those funds are expended, that they award you. And that is absolutely not a problem that we have. We'd love to spend the funds to get this rolling. But Iowa is one of, I'm sure, many states that have a very strict procurement process. So one of the things that we ran into right away is that even though we could identify in our grant some of the partners that we wanted to utilize, we still, once we were awarded, had to begin that long process of really making sure that we knew if we had to do an RFP, if we could go to sole source agreements, if we could work with other state entities and get it in faster.

And so we ran into some issues where, you know, for instance, there was a provider that really wanted to work with us, but due to some of those procurement issues and due to us being unable to reach an agreement in terms of things like salary, we really then had to pivot and go, well, that part of the plan isn't going to work. So we had to reach out to the community again and say, who wants to dive in with us and DIF it? As Ashley had mentioned, who wants to get in there and really do this because our original plan wasn't going to work. So that's the tough part to keep in mind is that there's that combination of knowing that the applicant process can be very slow. You know, when you're going through an RFP or procurement combined with RSA, who wants you to spend the money? So that's one of the issues that we ran into. And really the thing to keep in mind is this was a front loaded grant. So that means that you have this big pot of money and you're excited because you can get started with that immediately. However, you need to be aware of your state level rules, because we knew that we'd need a decent amount of staff to make this happen because we had such a broad idea. The other thing that we ran into is securing the full time positions, or the FTEs to do the work was really, really difficult.

So, for instance, as Ashley and Paul would tell you, they didn't begin this at the beginning. They actually didn't come in until July of 2023. So we started October 2022. And the first time our state could say, yep, we think we moved two positions. We kind of had to beg, borrow and steal just to do that same thing with other entities that we're working with. They have a very long process for hiring. So we went from, you know, well, this is something that we want to do October 1st, and then we didn't even get the contract secured. And then they had to go through hiring. So we spent the first year dealing with that. The other thing I think was it really wasn't a major barrier, but one thing that we had to keep in mind is that even though a lot of agencies were really willing to talk, some of them weren't willing to take the leap with us. So we had to do a lot of meetings and discussions and honest conversations and the state to say we are all after the same thing. And that's a focus of people with disabilities moving into competitive integrated employment. Are you willing to jump on board with us? So I would say those are the major issues that we had.

Carol: Yeah, it sounds very familiar with other states. And I think you give good advice with people understanding your own state procurement processes and such so that you keep it in mind, because I know folks want to jump in and then you go, gosh, this whole year flew by and we're doing mostly planning and just trying to get the people on board because, shoot, it took you nine months to get Ashley and Paul going. So that's a big chunk. It's just everybody needs to sort of maybe temper expectations year one. So on a flip side, what would you say have been some initial successes or things you're super excited about that have happened? I know you're early on, but have you had any initial success stories or anything?

Paul: Yeah, I think we've actually had quite a few success stories, surprisingly, as we're DIF'ing it. The creation of our work groups, I would say when we came on in July, the work groups hadn't been created yet. And those are for those six objectives that Brandi had outlined. And so really moving things with like policy and apprenticeships and the transition piece, getting all the stakeholders to come to our collective meetings quarterly and then having them choose a work group to become a part of and then meet with that work group. So with the transition work group, I just use that for an example. We met bi-weekly, and so having stakeholders from around the state come in and really buy into what we were talking about and help develop that call for interest for letters and then get those proposals in. Also, what we've been doing to better understand some of the subminimum wage providers is we've been touring those 14(C) certificate holders to better understand their communities, what their needs are, why are they still providing some minimum wage? How can we support them to move away from Subminimum wage? And from then what we're looking towards is developing a business plan. That way we can do a lot of outreach both to those 14(C) certificate holders, but then also businesses in the community, so we can help them move away from subminimum wage to competitive, integrated employment.

I would say another success is that we have chosen those two pilot programs for the Transition Work group, and we actually meet next week with the first school district. And so I'm always a person of action. And so this is really, really exciting for me to finally see these things getting rolling and getting all the stakeholders together and really planning for the students and planning for the future. So with that, what we're planning is, is that service provision for those school districts will start then in August once the school year starts. So that gives us a few months to get everybody on board, hire any staff that needs to be hired and get those pilot programs rolling. And then like I said, we'll be doing two more per year. Also, the high number of individuals, as I mentioned, we have that collective meeting that we do quarterly, but the high number of individuals that have participated in that, we've had upwards of 100 or more in those meetings and there's zoom meetings. So we have people from around the country really, and it's really amazing to see the buy in and the support that the DIF grant and the things that we're doing have.

Carol: That is super cool to hear. I'm really happy for you guys. So if people want to find out more about you, does someone want to throw out your website address that folks can access?

Brandy: We actually have a webpage on our vocational rehabilitation website, so it's IVRS.iowa.gov And from there under the About us section, there's an Iowa Blueprint for Change webpage. We actually provide information there. The sign up for the collectives that anyone can really join but also, then we put a specific contact information for Ashley, Paul, myself,  anyone willing to do the work. So you just reach out, its one door for or many doors, or path, I guess you could say, . You can reach out to any of us and you can get to who you need to get to. But also, if you're interested in, What are we doing with transition and how can we support that? Paul's information is on there as well. As that area focus covering and same with Ashley for what she's doing. So we list that all out there.

Carol: Excellent. 'cause  usually we have folks that do want to reach out, So don't be surprised. And you may get a call like in a year or six months cause people go back and listen to your old episode and they're like, hey, I want to reach out to those Iowa people. Well, I look forward to checking back in with you all as you get further down the road and see how things are rolling. But I'm super excited about your progress and what you're doing today my fellow neighbors. So thanks for joining me today. I hope you have a great day.

Brandy: Thanks, Carol.

Ashley: Thank you.

Paul: Thanks, Carol.

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Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Today, we're thrilled to have Lynn Frith, Education Consultant from the Bureau of Rehabilitation Services at Connecticut General, in the studio. Discover how CTPIE, fueled by the RSA SWITCIE DIF Grant, is revolutionizing disability employment by shifting individuals from subminimum wage to competitive integrated jobs. With a focus on family input and multi-agency collaboration, CTPIE is at the forefront of innovating employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities.

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Full Transcript:

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Lynn:

We ended up branding the SWITCIE Grant here in Connecticut as CTPIE. The Connecticut Pathways to Integrated Employment.

Most importantly, individuals and family members, they have a strong voice in every step of the way that we are taking here in Connecticut.

I love what I do, and I was very in tune with this population. I care a lot about this population. I have always believed competitive integrated employment is the way to go and individuals have that right to be able to work.

Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.

Carol: Well welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today is Lynn Frith, education consultant with the Bureau of Rehabilitation Services in the Aging and Disability Services Department. So for short, that means you're with Connecticut General. So Lynn, how are things going in Connecticut?

Lynn: Well, first of all, thank you, Carol, for inviting me to this podcast. I'm really looking forward to our conversation this morning. Connecticut, we're busy, we're jumping, we're moving in grooving.

Carol: I love it. Yep. You're working with Dave and Kathy and all those guys. I'm like, you are all small but mighty. I love what's going on there. Lynn, just so our listeners know, I've had the good fortune to meet and work with you through some of our other technical assistance work that I do with Connecticut General. And in fact, for full disclosure to our listeners, Lynn and I were chatting the other day about something completely different and this topic of the DIF came up and you were bubbling over with excitement and I'm like, oh my gosh, we have to do a podcast. So for our listeners, I featured several of the Disability Innovation Fund Career Advancement Project grants, and now I'm switching over because each year there's been a different focus. I'm switching over to talk about the DIF subminimum wage to competitive integrated employment projects, or it's called SWITCIE for short. So I know we love our acronyms. RSA’s focus for this round is they want to increase the opportunity for those SWITCIE program participants, students and youth with disabilities seeking subminimum wage employment and potential VR program applicants or VR eligible individuals with disabilities who are employed or contemplating employment at sub minimum wage to obtain competitive integrated employment. And so to achieve that purpose, the projects that were funded under this grants going to create innovative models, and they're hoping to have folks identify strategies for addressing those challenges associated with access to competitive integrated employment. Things like transportation and supports provide integrated services that support competitive integrated employment, support integration into the community, and identify and coordinate those wraparound services. So this is super exciting. I know Connecticut's always on the cutting edge of cool things. So let's dig into your approach.  Now Lynn, why don’t you start out telling our listeners a little bit about your journey into VR, I know folks are always interested, like, how do people come? And I know you have a cool path as well.

Lynn: Well, Carol, It is an interesting story in my opinion. I started dating who is now my current husband back in college, and his parents were both deaf and he refused to interpret any of my conversations with his parents. And he said, you want to date me? You need to learn ASL American Sign Language. So once I graduated with my bachelor's degree, I then took sign language interpreting courses, and I ended up learning the language. I fell in love with the language, and I got my first job at the American School for the Deaf out of college, working in doing placement. And the American School for the Deaf at that time was a vocational community rehabilitation provider for the Bureau of Rehabilitation Services. So once a position at Connecticut, BRS became available for a rehabilitation counselor for the deaf. My co-workers encouraged me to apply. And here we go. 20, almost 24 years later, I've been with Connecticut BRS.

Carol: That is so cool. I love this story. Everybody finds their way and just unusual, umm, places. And I think that is awesome. Can you give us a little bit of an overview as well about Connecticut General, like how many staff are in the agency and how many customers do you generally serve?

Lynn: So we have around 150 staff currently. Just like many other states, we are struggling with getting staff on board and maintaining staff. So that is a current priority for us. And right now we're serving approximately 5500 consumers each year.

Carol: Wow, that sounds good. I know Connecticut too, you know, I was thinking a lot of those East Coast states, you're small, but you are small but mighty and serving a good group of folks with a small group of people. I want to also get a sense of how many people in Connecticut are really kind of covered under that 14C certificate.

Lynn: That number is a little bit harder to be able to get an accurate number on. From what we can tell. And how I came to this number is tracking that annual career counseling and information referral. And we have about 850 individuals still receiving subminimum wage in Connecticut.

Carol: Wow. It's still a pretty significant number of folks. I know Minnesota, where I'm from, had been working on this for a long time, but I think we still have folks more in the thousands. So I'm really glad you guys are tackling this project. So let's talk about your proposal. Can you give us an overview of that grant proposal you all submitted? And I think you guys have a really cute name.

Lynn: So I'll share the name first. Because it tends to get a little bit tongue twisty. We ended up branding the SWITCIE grant here in Connecticut as CTPIE, so that would stand for the Connecticut Pathways to Integrated Employment, and we applied for the SWITCIE grant and were awarded it back in September of 2022. Our planning year began on October 1st of 2022 and we hit the ground running. We developed a partner workgroup, and that workgroup consists of all of our other state agencies who we partner with, as well as the workforce investment boards within the state school systems, community rehabilitation providers. We have some 14C key employers who sit on the partner workgroup, most importantly individuals and family members. They have a strong voice in every step of the way that we are taking here in Connecticut.

Carol: So what are you guys hoping to accomplish with your grant?

Lynn: As you know, this is a demonstration model grant, and we took that first planning year. And from our partner workgroup we then developed four subgroups. Those four subgroups were the pathways and business partners, individualized supports, messaging and outreach, training and TA. And we asked our partner workgroup members to refer members of their agencies, departments, their staff to be able to work with us on those subgroups and those individuals who served. And we met like twice a month for approximately nine months. So they really were committed to this project. They helped us develop, okay, what services should be looking for and how do we get there? We have strong commitments from employers in the state of Connecticut who recognize that hiring individuals with significant developmental and disabilities is the way they want to go. The messaging and outreach group that led us to, okay, we really need to brand what our SWITCIE grant is. So that's how we came up with CTPIE. We came up with a logo. They helped us develop a website. It helps us in terms of our outreach to individuals, outreach to school systems, and how we go about recruiting individuals for CTPIE. Our goal for CTPIE is, and these are the numbers that we stated in our application for our youth, we're hoping to get 356 individuals enrolled in CTPIE so they can be youth who are still in school, receiving special education services, or have recently exited from special education up to and including their 24th year, and they have to be contemplating Subminimum wage for the very first time. So you'll see that that's our larger bucket of individuals that we're hoping to serve under this grant. Our second population that we're looking at serving is 114 individuals who are adults who are currently earning subminimum wage. And that is a little bit more of a tricky population for us to get enrolled in CTPIE. These are individuals that have been in Subminimum wage for probably some period of time. They have developed friendships there. They love their work. They're used to working at that location. They know what's expected of them. Family members, they're viewing this as my loved one has a safe place to go to 35 hours a week. They have the transportation built in, so that's a higher mountain for us to climb, to be able to encourage those individuals to say, hey, come on over to CTPIE and try out competitive integrated employment.

Carol: So how do you address that challenge with the group? And I know that group really well. I used to work in a day training center in Minnesota years ago, and I understand that family deep. They form bonds with the staff and their loved one does, you know, and it's really hard to break through that. So what are you trying to do to kind of help bridge this?

Lynn: So we're very fortunate here in the state of Connecticut. We contracted with the University of Maryland, and they are able to assist us with providing training and technical assistance. So one of the ways that we're outreaching to this population is by contacting 14C key employers who are currently in the process of sunsetting their 14C certificate. We felt that we wanted to really reach out to those employers first because they've already made this decision. So now what? Let's help them transform. Let's help those individuals decide, okay, what's next after this subminimum wage closes, what are the opportunities available to me? And honestly, we have determined has been our best approach. So we've spent most of our time right there. We're still early on in the grant to be enrolling individuals. We just started enrolling folks as of October 1st of 2023. Currently, we only have two adults, but we aren't giving up.

Carol: Well, you got to start somewhere. You know, you start with one and then the second one. But I think you're smart in your approach, especially with the 14C providers that are looking at sunsetting that. Because that's a hurdle too. You know, you can kind of have a little bit of resistance in the backdrop going on, even though maybe face forward, they seem like they're on board with you. They may not be as much as you think. So that is really good. What other challenges have you faced to date? Because I know every grantee that I've talked to talks about that first year, like there's always a ton of challenges and things going on and I'm sure you guys were no different. What kind of challenges have you guys faced this first year?

Lynn: Well, we are having more success with the youth population. We have enrolled 29 youth, and really what we're hoping with that population is to as we move forward, a number of them are already in plan. They're receiving benefits counseling. We're in the process of still developing the specific CTPIE services. We're hoping to develop financial literacy. We're almost ready to go to contract for that.  Family and peer mentoring. Those are the two categories that have presented as our biggest struggles right now, and that is for that youth population as well as the adult population. And we're hoping, right now we're in the process of developing, So all of the individuals who are enrolled in CTPIE, we're going to start reaching out to their family members to get them together, let's get together, What's been successful about CTPIE? We want to develop a grassroots group for them to be able to walk through struggles with other family members. How did you get the funding? What does your DDS budget look like? Here's the VOC rehab and here's what VOC Rehab can do for you. And how can we get these two agencies to be able to work together? We are very fortunate in the state of Connecticut that we have excellent partnerships with our Developmental Disability Services Agency and our state Department of Education, and all three agencies are working very well together to be able to serve this population within this grant.

Carol: I think you couldn't do it if you didn't have that relationship with those other agencies, because all of that funding is so intricately interwoven. And so if you're not all kind of hand in glove working together, it will make it so much harder. So you're taking a great approach with that. I know you also are taking a really cool approach with the counselors that you have dedicated to this project. Talk about that training you're all going through. I really was intrigued by this.

Lynn: So as you mentioned, Connecticut is small but mighty. We have three regions. So we have our north, south and western regions, and we have one CTPIE counselor in each of the regions who will be working with CTPIE consumers. We also have a project coordinator, myself, who is the director of the grant, and we have a vocational rehabilitation supervisor that supervises the CTPIE counselors. We have all gone through Charting the Life course. We have become ambassadors. This, I felt was very important for all of us to be able to go through this training so that we are speaking the same language as our DDS agency. This language will then translate over to the consumers that we're meeting with and the family members. It's very important for us that they feel that sense of identity in terms of, okay, no matter which agency I'm going to, we're going to be talking about the same things. They're going to recognize me as an individual with a significant disability, and we're going to be working on the same things. And that's going to be to promote competitive integrated employment.

Carol: I love that. I think that was super, super smart. And I know we've talked a bit about your, you know, building and leveraging all of these different relationships that you have, which is great. And I think it maybe is almost a little easier in a smaller state as well to build that stronger coalition. How did you build that relationship and get connected with the state special ed directors? Because I know you did some work around that. That has been real helpful to the project. How did you go about that?

Lynn: Well, I have been very fortunate in my career here with the Bureau of Rehabilitation Services, and I've had different focus areas as a staff person working in central office, and I became pretty good friends with one of the contacts in the state Department of Education. She has my position under the Bureau of Special Education. So her and I, as soon as we got the SWITCIE grant, we started talking about, okay, how can we get this information out to the schools? How can we encourage students and families to enroll in CTPIE? And honestly, she's like, Lynn, whatever you need. I'm here to be able to assist you. One of the approaches that we have is that, and I know sending out letters is not the best way to communicate with folks, but we wanted to make sure that folks were getting at least the basic information of CTPIE. So part of our marketing was to develop using the letterhead and the logo, to be able to send out letters to all of the students who are exiting, who are eligible for DDS, that are exiting in June of 2024. So I made sure that my contact at the state Department of Education had those template letters. We emailed them to all of the special ed directors, so they had a copy of the letters that were being sent to students, and those letters were mailed out at the beginning of September.

So we emailed the information out to the special ed directors the third and fourth week of August. So as they were starting their school year, they would get this information. And our hope was because the special ed teachers are the trusted source for the students and the families, once they got this letter at home, they'd be like, huh, what's this? Who's reaching out to me? So the special education teachers would be able to say, great opportunity. We got this as well. And we strongly encourage you to enroll in CTPIE. We also emailed the link to our website and I'll do a little shameless plug here. It is CTPIE.org, and I encourage all of the listeners to be able to click on our link and look at a little bit more about what we're doing here in the state. We also had the ability to work with our marketing company to do some videos. So we did a video specifically for special educators and family members, and we also had one of our DDS, Self-advocates. He did a video encouraging individuals with IDD and their family members to try out competitive integrated employment.

Carol: I liked that I had a chance to go out to your website, so I did watch all the videos and saw how you had structured that site to kind of target different audiences that were going to be impacted by this project. I thought that was really good. So in your work with this marketing team, I know folks nationwide, they're trying different ways. I know you said sending letters, do you have strategies developed, like to use different means of communication technology, whatever. As you're working through this project, what are you guys thinking about?

Lynn: So after we sent the letters to the special educators, we actually did get a number of emails back saying, hey, we want to know more, which was absolutely fabulous. The state of Connecticut, they also do a back to school event in September, and we were invited to set up a table at that event. And when they did their opening remarks, they also did a slide on the PowerPoint to all of the educators in the room about CTPIE with just some bullet points, explaining who we are, what we do, and the fact that we had a table outside. So we had a lot of foot traffic from the schools that attended the back to school event. And so a lot of questions were raised. We were able to take time to be able to walk special educators through who we are and what we do. We also get lists from the Department of Developmental Services for all the students who are exiting each school year, and those lists., it contains the information about where these students attend school. So we're able to reach out to those schools and say, hey, I'm the CTPIE counselor, and I would love to be able to get together with you to speak more about CTPIE. We would love to be able to do an individual and parent night if that would work for your students. So it was a lot easier getting that connection to our schools, the special educators.

Carol: That is good. I was going to ask about that. If the CTPIE counselors were going out to the schools, because I know that boots on the ground is always super important, if you can get at the local teachers and really get them excited and get the administration in all of that on board, you have an easier time to get something set up like a parent night and student night type of thing. That is really awesome.

Lynn: The other huge benefit that we had for our student youth population is for Pre-ETS. In the state of Connecticut, we have branded that Level Up. So our Level Up staff met with our CTPIE counselors and was able to do that introduction to those special education teachers out in the schools. So we really leveraged our Level Up connections. We work with wonderful schools here in the state of Connecticut. We have great relationships with our Level Up staff and that really, really assisted us. And, you know, being able to make that entry into the schools specifically for CTPIE, we also encourage our Level Up students who have that diagnosis of IDD to enroll in CTPIE. And then if we have a student who's coming to us to enroll in CTPIE, if they're not enrolled in Level Up, then we make that introduction to our Level Up staff so they can access our Pre-ETS services.

Carol: That's really cool. I like how that's all coordinating together. I still firmly believe that Pre-ETS is kind of the gift that keeps on giving. I know it really threw the country for a loop when we're switching from our primary focus on adults to these young people. But I think, oh my gosh, this investment in students younger is going to make such a difference in the whole trajectory of what happens in VR. And I think we're getting to a point where we're going to be able to start doing some of those longitudinal studies. So the investments that VR has made with staff and time and efforts in getting. All of that training and exposure and connectedness with the schools. Look at like how you can leverage here. That is perfect. That is really cool. So what advice Lynn would you give, you know, other people, I'm sure a new DIF will come up this year. Again, I know money was returned and there's excess funds sitting there, and I'm sure RSA is working on that as we speak. And we get calls a lot at the TA center. You know, people will be like, oh, I don't know, should I apply for a DIF or not or what? What advice do you have for folks that are maybe on the fence or thinking about, should I do it or not, what would you tell them?

Lynn: I love what I do and I had the opportunity of really working on section 511, so I was very in tune with this population. I care a lot about this population. I have always believed competitive, integrated employment is the way to go and individuals have that right to be able to work. So when this DIF came and it was announced, I was definitely interested in it. I work with a great bunch of staff here in Connecticut that share the same vision, have the same passion as I do, and I think that's the key. That's been the key for me at least. I also have a very, very supportive management team behind me. You know, Dave Doukus, Kathy Marchione, I report directly to both of them and they have been fabulous. They are very supportive for the things that maybe I haven't had that much experience within my role as a consultant with the Bureau working on contracts, probably not my most favorite thing, but I have a team behind me that's able to assist me and teach me. So it's a lot of patience having staff that are passionate about the project and just being able to have that infrastructure, those are the things that I would recommend and if anybody has, you know, if you're thinking about it, questions or concerns. Want to know a little bit more about my experience in Connecticut? Please don't hesitate. Reach out. Give me a call.

Carol: Excellent. Could you give our listeners your email address? Would you mind?

Lynn: Sure. My last name is a little bit of a tongue twister, so I'll go slow here. It's Lynn l y n n dot Frith F as in Frank, r i t h at ct.gov.

Carol: Excellent. Well, I'm really excited about what you're doing there, and I'm looking forward to following up with you later on down the road as you're starting to get, you know, more experience and more people are in and having those really good outcomes happening. But good for you guys. Thanks for taking time today. I really appreciate it, Lynn. Hope you have a great day.

Lynn: Thanks, Carol, for having me. I hope you have a great day as well.

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Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Mark Erlichman is in the studio today, Deputy Director of the VR Employment Division with the California Department of Rehabilitation.

Learn how this DIF Grant innovates by aligning services with industry needs, not location, and creating targeted support in tech and more. They also combined the Career Index Plus with the artificial intelligence program SARA to create customized Individualized Plan for Employment (IPE) portfolios. Operational in just three months! #Innovation #DisabilityEmployment #SectorStrategy.

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Full Transcript:

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Mark: You know, we can continue to complain about all the additional reports and data, but if the payoff is worth it because it's something you want and need it to do, it becomes a much easier grant to write and a much easier effort to justify and support.

I think the counselors and their staff should drive the program. They're the ones that work with the consumers in our businesses. They're the ones who understand what's going on way better than I would sitting in my office on the third floor in Sacramento.

I'm happy to be a conduit and connect people or anybody or has any questions at all about our project.

We know collectively, the VR program is so much smarter than any one individual State.

Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.

Carol: Welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is Mark Erlichman, Deputy director, VR Employment Division with California Department of Rehabilitation. That is a mouthful. So welcome Mark. How are things going in California?

Mark: Well it's going well as always. We have interesting times when the state budget comes out. So we're looking forward to the next week. But all in all, I think we're very proud of the work that we're doing. And I think we're really where we need to be as a program.

Carol: Well of course, and you're working with Joe and I love Joe, but Joe is like, go, go, go, go, go. So I'm sure you guys are running on that treadmill at top speed.

Mark: Yes, you know him very well, and it's exciting to work with Joe because it's never a dull moment. And the more progressive we can get, the more supportive he tends to be. So it does give us an awful lot of incentive to continue to be creative and push the envelope.

Carol:  That's very cool. Well, I want to give you a little nugget of what has happened since February of 22, when you recorded a podcast with me. It was our very first one we did in the series on Rapid Engagement, and I have to tell you, it was our most downloaded podcast we've ever done by like triple. It was wild, and I feel like that podcast was the beginning of a little bit of a revolution. On the rapid engagement topic. I was super excited about that, and so I wanted to let you know that when I think about California VR, I always think about how innovative you guys are. And I'm really excited to talk about the Disability Innovation Fund Career Advancement Project. And so in the fall, I did a series of three with three of the other programs, and I couldn't get you. I kept trying, and Karen Grandin, project officer at RSA, is like, have you talked to California yet? I've said, I'm trying to get Mark, so thanks for being on. I really appreciate it. I just want to give a little recap to our listeners, because they may have forgotten a little bit about kind of why this particular DIF grant came about. And the grant activity here for the Career advancement is geared to support innovative activities aimed to improve the outcomes of individuals with disability. And these were funded back in 2021, and they were intended to identify and demonstrate practices supported by evidence to assist VR eligible individuals with disabilities, including previously served VR participants in employment who reenter the VR program to do the following things. They were looking at advancing in high demand high quality careers like science, technology, engineering and math. All that STEM stuff. Entering career pathways and industry driven sectors through pre apprenticeships and registered apprenticeships, improving and maximizing competitive integrated employment and reducing reliance on public benefits. And I remember at that time too looking at when they published the announcement, they had some really kind of disturbing data on what was happening with our VR program. So the timing was perfect. And of course, you all jumped right on the bandwagon and put something in. So let's just dig in and talk about your grant. So, Mark, would you remind our listeners about your story and how you came to VR? People are always interested, like, where'd you come from and what's your role there?

Mark: Thank you. And I appreciate the summary of the innovation grant. So we did see these as a phenomenal opportunity to look at work we wanted to do and then just expand on it. And it really was up my alley. I actually started my career back in the mid 90s, 1994 to be exact, as a rehab counselor, and I worked as a rehabilitation counselor in a fairly rural area working with migrant farm workers with the transition age, population supported employment and individuals that were exiting the prison system and were still justice involved. And I really got the opportunity to learn to love my job and to recognize and realize how complicated and how wonderfully difficult doing this job correctly can be, but how rewarding it is, particularly when you see individuals who did not believe in themselves, begin to believe in themselves, and to really build themselves up and move themselves forward. So as I moved up, for some reason, I kept getting other opportunities and got promoted a couple of times and worked my way up within the Department of Rehabilitation here in California. Since 1994, I think I've had nine different jobs, most recently June of 2019. So six months, kind of before Covid was even a thing, I took on the role of the Deputy Director responsible over our field operations. So I work with our 13 regional districts, and we work with all individuals, with the exception of the blind/visually impaired who were served out of a different division. But everyone else, including our business services and our student services, are served out of our division here and very fortunate to have this opportunity. And like you mentioned, lots and lots of pressure, both from above and from below. I have about 1400 staff who have really done a remarkable job in continuing programs and services. Even through the Covid pandemic. We actually served over 134,000 people last year, which is 30,000 more than we served even before Covid. So people came back. And our staff have done a remarkable job in serving them. And then pressure from above, with Joe really saying, if we don't step up, if we don't do a better job in customer service, and serving the public, then we don't really deserve to exist as a program. And so we take that seriously as well. So I've been very fortunate that I've had a good career here in the department, but I'm also very grateful to work with the teams that I've been able to work with.

Carol: It's very cool. I always knew you guys were part of the big four, because I always think about California and Texas, Florida and New York as the four biggest VR programs out of the 78, so there's a lot of added pressure to that. The numbers are just exponentially so much bigger. That is wild. But I think your experience leads you to what you did with writing this grant. So give us a little bit of overview about the grant, the proposal you wrote, and what you were hoping to accomplish.

Mark: The premise of the grant really was that expertise in careers and understanding sectors can be just as valuable as their expertise in disability and in other areas. As a counselor, one of the things I mentioned, I have a variety of consumers that I work with and a variety of ages, disabilities, ethnicity, gender. There are a lot of variability. The main thing they had in common was their zip code. They all lived in the proximal area that was near my office, and that's how I got to work with them. And I began to notice is that being able to work with a lot of different individuals, with a lot of different vocational goals, I had to start learning about how a teacher or a butcher or a nurse got a job, which is widely different. How a teacher gets a job is nothing like how a butcher gets a job. So each time I had to try to figure out, well, how do I get information? This is pre-internet, but I think it's still applicable now. I actually had to go talk to teachers and talk to nurses. And I went to talk to a butcher at a grocery store because the only butchers I knew were at the grocery store, and they told me, no, don't have your consumer come here, apply for jobs here. So 60 miles away, we have something called Harris Ranch, which is one of the largest beef providers in the country, and they hire somewhere between 50 and 60 new butchers every year. And if you get a job there and you get trained there, you can really work anywhere else. And I go, wow, if I wouldn't have asked, I wouldn't have known. And the other thing that I realized is I had two consumers who wanted to be teachers, forget their disability, they had way more in common with each other because of their vocational goal and their career goal. Then somebody with the same disability, same age and same zip code. And so it really made sense. So it maybe makes sense to align our expertise and our caseloads based on something other than proximity. So the premise behind our grant application was, let's align our caseloads and have staff and dedicated teams that are specific to industry sectors that can work with individuals regardless of where they are in the state, regardless of their zip code, regardless of their disability, but that have the same vocational goal because those counselors in those teams, they can work with the industries and understand how industry hire and recruit and retain people and help our consumers mentor them and support them in getting jobs in that area.

The other reason behind the application was the feedback we got from our businesses, and I don't know how many of our VR programs have had business satisfaction surveys for our business customers, but the feedback we've gotten regularly and that we had three in-person sessions, focus groups with our business partners, and we have an employer or business survey.

Almost universally what we hear, we hear two things. One, you don't understand our business, and two, you're not sending us consumers that are ready for employment. And so understanding that we can align other than by zip code, and we need to better understand our businesses. That's how we arrived at the premise for this grant. And really the grant application that we work with our partners at San Diego State to put together what apparently turned out to be a competitive application was that we were going to create sector specialist teams that included a counselor and a business sector consultant that would be located in areas where there's a high concentration of that sector, for example, information technology in the San Francisco Bay area, biotechnology in the Los Angeles area. And so they would have contact with those industries and work with those business leaders and go to industry events, learn how those industries hire people, and then come back and provide that information and support to individuals that are seeking careers in those fields. We have five teams that are supporting six different sectors. They're working with people all over the state. So we have a lot of remote work with our consumers. We use Zoom and other technologies to keep in touch with our consumers. We use local resources because we still have local offices, but their primary counseling and guidance comes from people who really, really, truly understand the needs of the industry and how people get jobs in those industries.

Carol: I love this idea. In fact, Jeff, my producer for the podcast, we talked after we visited with you yesterday a little bit and we went, this is cool because when you think about that, and I never was a counselor, but I could empathize with our counselors. They would talk about it. You know, you have to understand all of these occupations. And it's difficult because there's all these nuanced things that you aren't going to necessarily always remember, because maybe you place somebody in that industry a year ago, so you're not remembering all the little fine points to it. But if you keep within those sectors, I would think that people could really feel good about it. And I was curious how your staff are feeling about these sector specific teams, because I would think for me, you'd have a rich level of knowledge, you'd feel super competent, you would really have this great perspective and ability to help people in a very deep way. So how are your staff responding to it?

Mark: They're thrilled. There's 1400 staff that work in our division, and we have very small cohort working on this. So we have five counselors. We have three business sector specialists and a manager. And they push the envelope. They ask for things that I wouldn't even have thought of a year ago that based on their experience, they want to try out. This team is so enthusiastic about their jobs that I'm hearing from business leaders that are saying, we're so glad they think that the counselor that they're working with is not just a resource, but they feel like that's somebody that they want to steal away from us because of the conversation and the understanding. They get to go to industry events. And we went to a biotechnology conference and everybody's wondering why we were there. And by the end of the conference, the stack of business cards and business contacts that are business specialists and the counselor came back with was incredible. The opportunity to create work experience, work sites and internships, do some career exploration, and some informational interviews for our consumers. It's almost unique. I think every one of our consumers has an opportunity to do a paid work experience, because the businesses are saying yes to us, because we're asking them based on a personal relationship that these business consultants are developing. They're really enthusiastic and energetic, and it's so much fun to talk with them because, like having a conversation with our director, Joe, they push me and they push us to think differently and to move in a different direction, which is, I think, the way it should be. I think the counselors and their staff should drive the program. They're the ones that work with the consumers in our businesses. They're the ones who understand what's going on way better than I would sitting in my office on the third floor in Sacramento.

Carol: Yeah, I love that. I have to back up, though. I want to ask you a question about I know when you approached this grant, you've written another DIF grant before. So you've been around the block a little bit. I know when I talk to our other folks from the other states, everybody seemed to struggle with year one. You know, RSA is like spend the money, you know, and everybody says, oh, I'm trying to hire and I'm trying to do all these things. You were smart, though. What did you do differently with this DIF grant than you did before that helped you with that year one start?

Mark: I don't know if it's smart or if it's experience based on experiencing the same problems. I think we do learn from past efforts when we wrote this grant. So part of the grant, and I think many of the grants that were written and that were awarded included staffing. So you wanted to hire staff and put staff on this effort and have dedicated staff to work with the consumers and to run the project. So and we did. We got eight I think, we got nine allocated positions to manage and to implement this project. So what we did was we identified what skills and talents we were looking for and what experiences we were looking for in those nine staff. We went out and talked to our district administrators and some of our managers and said, okay, which one of your existing staff have this experience and this knowledge? And we just assigned existing staff, incumbent staff, who were well trained, had demonstrated knowledge and skills in that area and were enthusiastic and energetic. We assign them to this grant, and we just use the funds and the resources that we got from the grant to hire nine new staff to backfill. Whether they were regular generals, counselor, or they're a counselor for the deaf, we just backfill behind them. We didn't have a runway. We just started right from mid-flight. And that made a huge difference because we didn't have to train people to be counselors. And we didn't have to recruit. We didn't have to wait for announcements or advertisements. So we actually started working with consumers. I think almost three months in, we already had started enrolling consumers.

Carol: That is awesome because I know every single other group I talked to this long lead time for getting people on. And so year one kind of ends up being a little bit of a bust. You hate to say it quite that way, but. And it depends your state processes, it can take you almost nine months to get the people on board, and especially training them and doing all of that. So I thought that was super brilliant. Can you remind us of all the sectors you talked about a couple, what are they?

Mark: Yeah. So we have six sectors within five teams because we kind of split up our advanced manufacturing and transportation. There's a lot of money that's going into infrastructure around transportation, and some of it is different than advanced manufacturing. So those two sectors, advanced manufacturing and transportation were kind of combined. But we also have biotechnology. That's another one of our sectors. It's very well paid and things that you wouldn't think of like phlebotomy lab. That's Biotechnology, Genetic engineering is Biotechnology, manufacturing medications is Biotechnology. That was one of our sectors, another one of our sectors. Health care, and that's predominant in all of our local planning areas in California. So health care is another one. And our information technology communications is the other sector. And so those are five. The sixth sector actually is our green industries. There's a lot of effort, particularly in some of our regions in California around green industries, green energy. So those are our six sectors split among our five sector specialist teams.

Carol: I think that's pretty cool. And it's diverse. It's like a diverse type of work. So you're crossing all of it. I know there was another piece too, in your application where you talked about you were going to link Career Index plus that labor market tool. So for folks that may not be aware of it, it's awesome. And I love the Career Index Plus. We used it when I was in Minnesota. I think very highly of it. But you were going to pair that with Sarah to create, which is another AI tool that people use, but you're going to use it to create customized and comprehensive IP portfolios. Talk a little bit about that. Like what are you doing with that?

Mark: Well, we were very fortunate we actually wrote that into the grant. And you know, to bring those experts into the conversation and to help us adapt the TCI Plus for California and for what we were looking for. And the same thing with SARA. SARA is like a digital assistant where you can program it to send reminders and messages to consumers and then get messages back from consumers and have that information uploaded to our case management system. And we're in an aware state. So we actually had APIs created that allowed us. So when SARA sends a note out or we get a response that actually becomes kind of automates that, communication chain into case notes in our system and TCI Plus as well. We worked with TCI Plus that actually can upload information into our plans. But for us, what I think is the beauty and really the fortunate part about having us incorporate this as part of the grant was that our staff and I mentioned this, you know, the really, really creative and very enthusiastic staff, those staff helped inform the design and the contact and the connections and what was needed. It really was a very good partnership that allowed the staff to work in the way they needed and wanted to work based on what they were learning from the businesses and what they were learning from our consumers and what our consumers needed. And the best results are when the people on the ground, the boots on the ground, the staff that are working can influence and help design the tools that they're going to be using themselves to support our consumers.

Carol: Do you think some of the work that you guys did with this part of the project can be replicated for those other states that also use SARA, and they may use Career Index Plus? Do you think there's some things that are transferable to other folks that might be interested?

Mark: I absolutely think so. If nothing else, having a conversation with the staff that are using these and how these were adapted, including the TCI Plus staff and the SARA team and those conversations, there isn't anything that really reinforced in this grant and or other grant as well. There's nothing that we've done or design in here that we can't continue to do after the grant period ends. For me, the most unfortunate thing and a hint or a tip from somebody working on these grants is make sure that if you're doing something that turns out to be really valuable or a tool that becomes really, really useful, that it doesn't expire, that you can then continue it, because the worst and most unfortunate thing you can do is find out something is great, and then have to stop doing it, even if down the road you can bring it back. And so that's how we design in our work with TCI Plus and SARA really was designed in the fact that this can then be scalable up across our whole organization once it's proved efficacious, and once the design and the systems are in place that work for our consumers and staff.

Carol: See, I like that about the DIF grants because they are the gift that can keep on giving. Somebody does it. You know, you're trying out this stuff in your state and then you can get this out to other people and they start going, oh, we can do something like that here, because there's nothing that would prevent them from trying a sector specific strategy right now. For some of the other folks, it just gives you that like, oh, that's a different way to think about it. I really like it. And since you're talking about tips, do you have any other tips for our folks that may be wanting to apply for a DIF? You know, sometimes people are on the fence. They're like, ah, is it going to be too much work? I don't know if I want to do it. We get a lot of calls. People are like, what should we do? It's like, well, you got to decide that. But do you have any advice for folks?

Mark: The way we approached these last two and we applied for two of the last three, we identified things that we wanted to do and we would likely would do anyway had we had the resources to do so. So I would start with, what are some things that you had put on the table that you weren't able to do in the past? Because almost always what you've been working on or what you want to do is almost always designed or thought of to address an existing problem or take advantage of an opportunity. And so when we look at the DIF grant opportunities, we know we read what was in there. And in there it talks about, you know, preferences and what the interests of the grantor in this case are saying. We want to focus on careers or the next on subminimum wage. It's more flexible than you think it is. And what the tip is, look at what you wanted to do anyway. Look at the priority in the grant and say, okay, how does this align with what we want to do? And then write a grant for something you want to do anyway, and you would do anyway, but that this gives you the resources to do that. It's much easier to write that way, and you get a lot more organizational, institutional buy in, because these are things that people have either been pitching or been trying to do all along. And now this is an opportunity to do that. We hear a lot about administrative burden, and there's a lot of reporting, and we provide feedback that there's a lot of reports, a lot of meetings, a lot, but in perspective, the value that you get from it, and, you know, we can continue to complain about all the additional reports and data. But if the payoff is worth it because it's something you want and needed to do, it becomes a much easier grant to write and much easier effort to justify and support.

Carol: That's an awesome tip. I love that because I have not heard that yet. And I just think that is really, really smart. So what are you guys seeing for results? Because I think, aren't we going into year three of this.

Mark: Yeah, we're just in the very beginning of year three.

Carol: Yeah. So what are you starting to see like what's happening.

Mark: So we applied for and we got $18.33 million for the five year period of performance. And like we mentioned like I mentioned earlier, when we're talking about we were able to start pretty much in the beginning or towards the beginning of year one. And we'd split up the funds over five years. And one of the things that really comes up is, are you expending your funds and RSA they really interested, you know, don't send anything back. So we're actually we're well on our way to expanding our funds. And it's not because we're frugal or not frugal, it's because we actually have enrolled over 615 participants already. And so our goal is 1400 over the five years, and we're actually able to enroll people even in year five because of the extension that we're able to get. So yeah, we are right on track to enroll the 1400, even though a lot of people are just starting, as you noted, our sectors, they're all high wage. Almost all of them are in STEM occupations. They are in highly skilled jobs. These are jobs that we believe lead into careers and into long-term, family sustaining wage employment. And that is because even though we're just starting year three, so and people are most of them are in college or in some type of technical training or vocational training.

Already seen 52 people go to work. So we've had 17 closed successfully. So the not only do they go to work, they spend the 90 plus days they were satisfied with their employment and they were closed successfully. We have 11 more that are just have gotten their career placement. So it's not a job placement we have, we're doing 52 placements. We're not considering a job placement to be an employment outcome unless it's in their final terminal career position, because almost all of these participants are offered paid work experience along the way and when they needed, we do some interim employment because people also need to support themselves. And so we have 24 of our consumers are working in their field, but not in their terminal job. But what we're really proud of is out of those 52 people that are working their average wage at the time that they started work, or at the time that they were, their case was closed for the 17, their average wage is $29.76 an hour.

Carol: So it's a little higher than the average we usually see on the chart. You know, RSA comes and they show the chart across the country. And what is it like 12 bucks or something that people are making or maybe 13. So it's significantly more.

Mark: Yeah. And for those that are not still in school or in training, I think that our average hours worked, which is another thing that comes up. It's not just how much are you making, it’s, you working full time? Do you have benefits? I think our average hours work weekly for those individuals in their career was over 40 hours a week.

Carol: Wow!

Mark: So when you multiply full time plus about $30 an hour, that's family sustaining wage. And I think that's what's really, really exciting about this is individuals are successfully employed in a career that can support themselves, even in California, which is really a high cost state.

Carol: But your participants in this, it's a wide variety. You know, people think, oh, what's the characteristics of the population that you're serving?

Mark: Yeah. When we wrote the grant, we wanted to make sure that individuals from underrepresented communities, and when we're talking about underrepresented, not just individuals from brown or black communities, but individuals who historically aren't directed into STEM occupations or high wage occupations. And we do that where there are individuals, have an intellectual developmental disability, behavioral health, disability, and women are not directed or encouraged to get into engineering or STEM occupations either. We wanted to make sure that we're not just directing people who are going to ask for these careers or are directed these careers anyway. We want to make sure that individuals that were Hispanic, African American or Black Native American individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities and women that we were focusing in on our recruitment and directing and writing plans for these high wage, high skilled jobs. And so right now, even though we're still kind of early on, of the 650 consumers, 70% of the participants are either Hispanic or Black, African American or Native American. And so that's 70%. 43% of our participants are female. We want to get to at least 50%. But when we look historically in these occupations, if you're looking at IT typically we are seeing, if you're lucky, if you approach 20%. So we really are proud of the efforts to make sure that we're fully inclusive and we're not leaving anybody behind. These jobs, these careers, they should be available to everyone.

Carol: This is super exciting. I'm always excited about what you guys are doing, but I love being able to share with our listeners across the country because I don't know when you all get a chance to speak at CSAVR and say all your really great things you're doing, but I like getting those seeds out to people early because it's cool stuff. So are you willing? I know you've been in the past. I know what the Rapid Engagement and number of people said, Oh, I reached out to Mark, I felt really bad. But again, if there's folks that are interested in reaching out about what you guys are doing on this, are you willing again to take an email or something? Or how should people best contact you?

Mark: Probably email would be the best because that way I will definitely see it. I think I probably spend 80% of my time staring at a screen, so the email probably be best. I try to get back to people right away. Any information, or if somebody wants to be connected with our business specialist or one of our partners, we actually have some really, really exciting partners that are working with us on us as well, and I'd love to connect people with them as well. We have our Stanford Neurodiversity Project is helping us in ensuring the individuals that are neurodiverse get the services and supports that they need, and the businesses that are employing them get the training so that the same thing with our UCLA Targin center, they're working with us to make sure individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities can benefit from the training and the supports that are available. And we also working with San Diego State University and like you mentioned, TCI Plus and SARA. So I'm happy to be a conduit and connect people. Or if anybody has any questions at all about our project or want to share some other, again, if people have ideas or you have other sector strategies out there also, we'd love to hear that because we're absolutely willing to steal and to take other people's ideas and incorporate them into our projects, because we know collectively, the VR program is so much smarter than any one individual State.

Carol: Very cool. So could you give us your email address?

Mark: Sure. It's. Mark dot erlichman e r l i c h m a n at d o r dot ca.gov again. So that's Mark.Erlichman@DOR.CA.gov.

Carol: Awesome. Mark, I really appreciate your time. I know you're one busy guy. I was so glad to get you for a few minutes. I really appreciate it and I'm hoping to circle back with you all, you know, closer to the end of the project. I'd really love to get an update and I'm sure you'll be like, we are like 1800 people and I know you guys, you're going to blow it out of the park. So I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Mark: And we appreciate the compliments, appreciate the confidence, and as always, we really love your podcast. Love the resources and supports that you provide out to all of us. And I'm looking forward to hearing about the other projects as well. So thank you.

Carol: Well thanks Mark. Talk to you later.

Mark: Take care. Bye, Carol.

{Music}

Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

In the studio today are Cassie Villegas, Outgoing Interim Director of Washington General, and Sven Akerman Jr, a contractor from Outlook Insight with Washington General.

You can find out how Washington General empowers staff with an integrated AI tool that does the heavy lifting when researching policies, regulations, and RSA requirements, freeing staff to focus on providing quality services.

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Full Transcript:

{Music}

Sven: Our team was presented with a challenge from DVR. They had a 767 page customer service manual, but it was really kind of difficult to find answers quickly.

Cassie: You can go right in and find your answer, and I found it in 0.2 seconds rather than two hours. Coming through all of the different policies or regulations.

Sven: I see this more as enablement capabilities as opposed to replacement capabilities to where, like Cassie was saying, get back to focusing on what you really want to do, not what you have to do.

Cassie: Now, I don't think our staff could live without it. If we tried to pull it back now, there'd probably be mayhem.

Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.

Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today is Cassie Villegas, outgoing interim director Washington general, and Sven Ackerman, junior contractor from Outlook Insight who is working with Washington General. So thanks for being here, you guys. Sven, how is it going in Washington?

Sven: Well, things are fantastic heating up and, uh, well, not heating up. It's actually getting wetter. But it's a beautiful time to be in business for Washington.

Carol: Excellent. And, Cassie, how are you doing? I know you're the outgoing interim director. Hopefully you're going somewhere good.

Cassie: Yeah, absolutely. Things are winding down here for me in terms of VR, but starting to wind up for the next step. So yeah, pretty excited.

Carol: Good for you. Good for you. Well, thanks for joining me. We are going to have a very interesting conversation today about artificial intelligence or AI as it is commonly known. And artificial intelligence has been all over the news this summer and fall. I think about the Hollywood SAG-AFTRA strike. CEO Sam Altman with OpenAI. And in a nutshell, artificial intelligence is a simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. And so when I was preparing for the podcast, I started making a list of AI in my life. I'm like, okay, what things are considered AI and it really is all around us. And I know we think it's this other big thing there, but it's here, it's everywhere right now. And I thought about my virtual assistants Siri and Alexa, the facial recognition when I go to the airport, I use CLEAR. So they're looking at my eyeballs to, you know, get my identity spam filters. You think about the algorithms in your Google search, driving my car with driver assisted technology and so many more. And I think there's a tendency for people to kind of go to that dark place. They conjure up all the dark things I could do. And you think about machines are becoming humans, and you look back at movies like The Terminator or War Games, Space Odyssey, and there are definitely valid concerns. You know, we've heard in the news as of late where individuals are cloning your voice, you know, and they're sending it to your grandma and asking for a ransom note or something like that. So as with all things that are new, you know, there's always this balance. And so when I think of AI, I always think of things like it being really cutting edge, which, sorry to say, I'm not always associating with VR, you know? And much to my surprise, I come across this article about how you guys are using this in Washington. So we have to dig in. I'm super excited. So, Cassie, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background and how did you come to VR?

Cassie: Yeah, so I'm currently, as you said, outgoing interim director. I've been the interim director for Washington General since July of 2023. Prior to that, I've been our deputy director. I've worked with our community rehab programs, their CRP's. I've been a tribal liaison. I've done some of the DEI work. And prior to coming to Voc Rehab, I worked for the Independent Living Council for the State of Washington. So I got my foot in the door with VR through Independent Living. But before that, I've worked in trio programs with students trying to help them obtain education, higher education, and that career exploration piece that's very similar to what we do in VR. So I've been around not very long. And of course, like you stated, I am outgoing. I'm leaving. We have a new interim director that I've handed some power over to or transitioning right now. So yeah, good things on the horizon for me, but also for VR.

Carol: Very cool. It's always fun to find people's pathway into VR. We always have our foot in somehow. So that's cool that you came in through the IL world. So also, can you tell us a little bit about Washington General and how many staff the agency has and like how many consumers you all serve?

Cassie: Yeah, absolutely. So in the state of Washington, we have 39 counties. Our state is broken up into three regions. We have about 41 offices across the state, and we have about 340 staff in the last year on cases, we've served just over 7000 customers. That does not include youth and students who are not on caseloads through those like group services, through pre-employment transition services. But that would probably well over double that 7000 number if we included them in that count.

Carol: Well, absolutely. And I have two brothers that are out in Washington, so I know about the complexity geographically of your state it is very different. And while something may seem like it is an hour away, it really is not as you're hitting the mountains or which way you're going. And big, big differences in very rural areas of the state, a lot of geographic complexity. So, Sven, let's go to you. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and the company that you work for.

Sven: Sure. Well, I'm the founder and chief executive for Outlook Insight. We're a social services focused company that leverages modern technology, really helping those who help others. We're proudly celebrating our 25th anniversary here on December 22nd. So just four days away from 25 years old, my background is in technology management and implementation, with a focus really on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 solutions. But I've been working with vocational rehabilitation agencies since 2009, when I started working at a company that built VR case management software, and since then, I've been proud to have delivered well I've been part of the implementation of over 26 VR case management systems and had the pleasure of traveling all over the country, meeting with executives and staff from VR agencies, kind of understanding the mission, what they do, how our technology helps them, and then branched out onto our own kind of rekindling the fire of the entrepreneurial spirit in 2019. And since then, we've been working with a variety of different agencies, including Washington DVR, Washington DSB, DSHs at large, and others, really helping them drive new technology capabilities to streamline their operation as we go along.

Carol: Very cool. So you bring a very unique perspective. You can see technologically some of the gaps that we have to as a system for sure. So how did you get into this AI space?

Sven: Well, you know, it was just a curiosity back in like December of 2022, you know, as the OpenAI ChatGPT conversation started to explode, we started looking at new ways to automate, you know, just some of the routine work we absolutely fell in love with generative AI. It's really, really spent that first quarter of the year just understanding the myriad of different open source, fee based, large language models, how to use them. And over time, we really kind of settled back into our roots a bit and decided that the Microsoft Azure platform was going to be the one that we wanted to focus on, really just kind of recognizing that's where our background and experience in technology is most prominent. And then the advanced capabilities offered a lot in terms of what we could do with it. Well, not to mention that it's generally acceptable by most state agencies to be working in Azure. So with that, it was interesting. Two things really happened agency related at about the same time. The first thing that happened was our team was presented with a challenge from DVR. They had a 767 page customer service manual, and it's a really a vast collection of guidance, policies, procedures. But it was really kind of difficult to find answers quickly in there. So they asked if there was a way to better access that content, make it more accessible and available to folks. So we accepted that challenge, and we decided to take some of our AI curiosities and apply it to this space. And we loaded a model along with their customer service manual. We also loaded it full of the RCWs and wax of Washington State law. We threw in there all the RSA policy directives and TAC publications as well as the federal statutes, and that really established a full corpus of data.

Sven: And then we started to ask questions, kind of refining the prompts to optimize the responses. And that's when it all started to come together in terms of forming great answers for Washington DVR related to their customer service manual. But the second thing that happened was really interesting. You know, working in technology, I help a variety of folks, especially as people are onboarding, sharing knowledge where I can. And one of the newer staff person who was hired to take over the technical roles of someone else who's going to be retiring, came up to me and they had a technology policy question, and I was like, well, don't trust me on this answer. Let's go find the authoritative source. Let's go out to the Washington OCIO policy website and see if we can find the answer there. And I got to tell you, you know, after 20 minutes of searching, we were coming up empty handed. And eventually we wound up finding the answer that we were looking for in one of the sub sites there. And I thought, man, this is just too hard. I mean, how can a new worker be expected to remain compliant when the compliance guidance comes from so many places? So that was frustrating enough for us to take all of the OCIO policies in Washington state, load them into a model on our own, and see can we get to those answers much more quickly? And we were just thrilled and delighted with the approach. It really helped that new employee get to answers very quickly, and we have since been kind of socializing that experience with others. So there's how we got in there.

Carol: Tell us a little more about this technology. How does it really like, how does this all work?

Sven: Well there’s not a ton of mystery to it, although we're not going to get into any of the complexity about how AI and machine learning works. But really the intent of this solution is really to. Help workers find information to make the most productive with their compliance driven environments. So ultimately, what we're intending to do is to drive them to authoritative content based off of just human language prompts and questions. Kind of like you would ask a coworker a question or have a discussion with them. And so the way that it works is, you know, at the agency level, the content that is of interest for exposure through this model is compiled together, and we pull that data into a search index. So we index all of that content in a way that we can then do what's called a semantic search across it, basically finding answers based off of intent of the question, not just keywords. And that delivers back a very rich response in terms of the authoritative content that comes back. And then we take those results, and then that's where we start to leverage the large language model, the Azure Open AI large language model, and we summarize the content of that search.

Sven: Okay. So we searched the content that the agency knows we have a result set. We summarize that in just a human readable form. We present that back to the user. And then we also include in their citations back to the original document that was uploaded and ingested. By doing it that way, we're able to quickly show the user. Here is a summary of what has been discovered with some context and understanding around it. Let them drill into the authoritative content to really see you know, what are the specific words that are of legal authority. But then we take it a little bit farther in that since it's not just a search retrieval system, using that large language model, we expose the ability to do things like drafting emails based off of the context of the conversation you're having, or explaining things in new ways, like through telling stories or simplifying concepts down to perhaps a more easily understandable level for folks you're trying to communicate with.

Carol: I thought the storytelling was kind of hysterical because for disclosure to our listeners, Sven shared the link with me to access. So I'm in there asking it questions, and then it says, do you want this presented in another form? So obviously, you know, I put in like, hey, how many days do I have to determine eligibility? And so of course, then this whole thing comes back, it links to all of the policies. It gives you any RSA guidance on it. It's got the regulatory citation. And then I'm like, tell me the story. You can click the button. You know, tell me a story about this. And so then it's like, oh, then there's the story about Bill or whatever. And it does this whole thing about to put that in the context, I thought that was pretty cool. I am like, I've never seen anything like that. Now. The story got a little wild there for a bit as it goes through it, but it was pretty fun. I thought that was super interesting way to think about it. So, Cassie, I know Terry Redman started this initiative with Sven and his company. How were you involved in all of this?

Cassie: Yeah, so as the deputy under Terry, I was hearing a lot of really cool things from Terry, from Sven hints that something big was coming. We're working on this AI tool. It was really excited when Terry decided to step away, and I got to bump up into interim to get the full picture and to, like, really know what was going on behind the scenes. Just personally, I'm excited by innovation and technology. I am a millennial. I've, you know, had a computer in front of me my entire life, basically. So I'm like, let's use new tools. So I inherited the project, was really excited when I got to finally see the demo from Sven. And I'm like, let's go, let's get this out there to our staff as fast as we can. And that's what we did. We kept it moving. We added to the list of to-do's, but this was the top of that to do list. And here we are. We've got this really great tool.

Carol: So when did this all roll out?

Cassie: So we soft launched it in early October just to get hands on it from some of our like program managers. And then we had the hard launch the full as available to everyone. At the end of October of 2023, we had an all staff in-service event for two days. We brought Sven and his team in to introduce it to all of our staff, to train them on how to use it, to kind of give them that background on the purpose and how to ask appropriate and meaningful questions, how to check the sources and just start easing people into using it. So we've had it up for about two months or so now. So yeah, we had a really quick timeline and our staff are using it daily now.

Carol: So how is that rollout going? What's the reaction from the staff?

Cassie: I think now it's pretty positive. There's still people that are discovering it. You have new folks or people who maybe just they didn't think it pertained to them. We had a program manager in our headquarters office. I think it was just what last week Sven at our holiday party, they pulled you aside and you left the party to go show them how to use the tool, because they just didn't have a need for it until someone said something and they were excited to see how it worked. But at first I think there was a lot of nerves around it. I, like you, kicked us off at this conversation as scary to some, so there was a little bit of convincing, hey, this is a really beneficial tool for your day to day. It did take a little bit of show and tell, demonstrating the tool, showing the benefits, reinforcing the benefits to everybody. Why it’s a good thing? But now I don't think our staff could live without it. If we tried to pull it back now, there'd probably be mayhem.

Carol: Well I can imagine I think about all the new counselors coming in, new techs, you know, all the different staff coming in and you get your orientation and, you know, you're reading policies and procedures and it's just all so much. There's so many dates and all these, you must do this and this and this. I think this would be fabulous because everybody gets assigned a mentor. You have a way that you're getting trained, but you don't want to 40 times a day, go back and ask them like, oh gosh, I forgot. Like what was the requirement around this? If you could just type your question in and you get the answer. I find for me at least, that helps me remember for the next time, you know, because I've done that research, I've gone in and seen it then and I'm able to like, retain that even better. So I'm sure. Are you hearing that like from new staff especially? I would think this would be like an amazing tool for them.

Cassie: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's many benefits to the tool. So like you said, new staff coming in, maybe not embarrassed. They don't want to ask the same question four times. Sometimes you need the context to retain it. Maybe you hear the old tropes from staff who've been around. You know, we've got the MythBusters kind of thing that needs to happen. Sometimes you can go right in and jump in, find your answer, and make sure to share it with your peers. Actually, that's a myth. This is what policy says. And I found it in point two seconds rather than two hours coming through all of the different policies or regulations that we have to work within. So there's benefits there. There's also benefits when it comes to talking to our customers. If we don't have a clear understanding of our own practices or policies, it's a challenge to explain the why to each other, but also to our customers. So there's a benefit that it's right there in front of your fingertips. Really easy to access when you're in meetings with customers to explain the why. And then like you've talked about already, the storytelling piece. So storytelling helps us learn. It's helping us as VR professionals learn, but it also helps our customers have a clearer understanding of services and the whys. And I think that sometimes the work that we do is really hard. So we get a little bit of cognitive fatigue, or if we're constantly having to think differently to explain things to our customers, it can take away some of the brainpower we need for the more challenging parts of our day to day. So you just go into this AI tool and say, tell me a story about this particular policy, and I can explain it to the person sitting in front of me in a way that they're going to understand, and I'm keeping that cognitive load off of me and just using the tools so I can redirect that where it's actually needed, where maybe the tool doesn't have the ability to help me with that actual direct customer service.

Carol: I know folks have that tendency to always go to the dark place, you know, like, did you have staff feel like you guys are just trying to get rid of us? Like, now we got this and you aren't going to need us anymore?

Cassie: Yes. And you know, I did have a call from a labor representative saying, tell me about this tool. How does it impact the day to day? We don't want you to replace VR counselors. And we're like, absolutely not. This is a tool to enhance critical thinking and professional judgment and to make the day to day work of our counselors easier so they can get back to what they're here for, which is that direct vocational rehabilitation counseling. We know that there has been a lot of changes over the years, WIOA and others that have put an extra burden on staff who feel that maybe they're being removed from that direct service that don't appreciate it. So this is just another tool to allow them to spend their time where it really needs to be spent. And that's with our customers. So instead of spending hours looking through the regs, trying to figure out, can I do this, can't I do this, why they can go directly to it, type in their questions, take something that maybe used to take hours, complete it in a few minutes, and then move on to, you know, the true meaning of vocational rehabilitation.

Carol: Yeah, I want to put a big exclamation point on that, because I know we have a lot of our listeners that keep going, like, what are other states doing? How can we get counselors back to counseling and not having to do all this other stuff? This just seems like another tool in the toolbox that could be super amazing for your colleagues across the country. So, Sven, I want to ask you, a lot of times when you're developing some kind of new technology or a new way of doing something, it can take a long time. How long did this take from kind of start to finish? When Terry approaches you with the idea for you to deliver the final product.

Sven: So again, we started we started our research about a year ago, and once we kind of cut our teeth on just what was real, what was not where we were, and we're not going to focus, that was one of the bigger decisions that we had to make. We wanted to choose something that would be most impactful, but also most acceptable by everyone. We had started to build the base platform for delivery of this generative AI solution, like, say, the middle of Q1 last year. And by like the middle of May, we actually took it on a road show at a conference here locally and showed it to a group of peers, a couple hundred people at a tech conference. And so we already had kind of the foundation in place. But that foundation was guided heavily because the conversations I started having with Terry were well before that. I mean, it was probably September or October of last year, you know, marinate on it a little bit and then. And come around December. It's like, let's see what we can do with AI on it. So we took it on as a personal company endeavor to bring a product into the space that could quickly and easily be onboarded for state agencies. And so by the time we got the go ahead from Cassie and her team, I think let me see. That was a Thursday. And by Monday we had the model fully loaded up and available for that soft launch she was talking about. So it only took a few days. And since then we've continued to refine that process. We can deploy now, you know, typically within 24 hours of having an order have the solution in place and at least core knowledge there to start to inspect and to do QA on.

Carol: That is crazy. I'm like shaking my head. I know our listeners can't see it, but I'm like, that was quick. Like, you did this all really fast.

Sven: You know, It's been a bit of a whirlwind and I can't tell you that. It's been with a great sleeping nights. Um, so there's been a lot of nights and weekends. I know we're still working full time other jobs, but even just time slicing it in, it's been a passion. When Cassie talks about the need for counselors to be delivering the services that they were really hired to deliver, I can speak directly to that. My brother in law's developmentally disabled here in Washington state. He benefits from DVA and other services, and I know how important it is for those counselors, those people who are serving the community to get the mundane, hard stuff out of the way so they can do the actual brain work and really focus on that service delivery and mission. Because for every minute that I can help save through technology, that might be one more minute for my brother in law. So it's been really kind of cool to think about it from that perspective. And as we've been going through, you know, it's really led to other things like our absolute commitment to total accessibility. We're currently undergoing a WCAG2.2 AA certification audit, and we're hoping to have that wrapped up probably in early January. It's accessible right now, but it's going to be unbelievably accessible here. Once we wrap up a couple of issues that they've identified, it's gone quick. But it's been long. It's been a good kind of long, but it's certainly been rewarding.

Carol: Good on you. I think that's really cool. And I'm super glad you're really focused in on that accessibility. That will also help the colleagues across the country be able to access that. Now, Cassie, I know you've talked about some really nice benefits for your staff. Have you seen any other ways that's making your program better? I know lots of states are really interested in rapid engagement or if you've seen any impact. I know it's only been two months, but is there seeming to be some impact on your processes?

Cassie: Yeah, I think so. Right now it's all anecdotal and I wouldn't have like very hard concrete data with just the timeline that we're in. But I do think that it is having a positive impact. If we look at the amount of time alone, not even direct customer service, but the time it's taking our staff to find answers to their questions, we're a large program were spread all over the state. We've had a lot of turnover. So people that are maybe in the field don't always know who to contact at headquarters with their questions. So if you're looking at just the amount of hands a question can go through before there's an answer, in addition to having an FTE sitting in like a policy position expected to respond to all of the questions that they're getting, I mean, we're saving full FTEs on this tool. Our policy manager used to basically do this nonstop. They would just be responding to emails all day. It didn't give them the opportunity to dive deep into the real, meaningful work that they needed to do to improve process and policy for our program. It was just simply answering questions to staff in the field, and we've already seen that decrease significantly. We do know that customers that their questions are getting answered quicker, our staff are able, like I said earlier, to provide simple terms, plain talk for some of those answers that probably would have gone back and forth multiple times with customers. So we are seeing an increase there. I do think it does tie really nicely into this focus in rapid engagement that we're seeing across the country.

Carol: That is super cool.

Sven: Tying into that Cassie, one thing I can share from the back end is, first of all, when this rolled out, this is a voluntary use tool. It was just a resource that was made available. Nothing was taken away. Their SharePoint is still there, their customer service manual is still available for them to use as they have, but just through organic adoption. Since we soft launched this on October 10th, there have been over 10,000 request and response cycles that have gone through our system. Over 20 million AI tokens have been used up from an organic growth perspective. That's one of the leading indicators of something that's useful for folks.

Carol: That is super cool. Holy cow. I know Sven too you had a really interesting perspective about what's happening with the whole knowledge base over this next seven, eight years or so. You want to talk about that?

Sven:  Yeah, one of the things we were looking at, I mean, anytime you're looking at a product, you're looking at the market and the market going forward. Right. And I found it curious, looking at some of the data that came from the Office of Financial Management, O.F.M., where their calculations, just based off of the age of the current population of state workers, some 25 to 40% of the staff in Washington state are going to retire over the next 4 to 7 years. They're just reaching that age and it's going to happen. So what that's going to do is it's twofold. One, it's going to have a direct impact on availability of senior folks who have been around for a long time and know so much they're going to walk out the door and their knowledge is going to walk with them. So you have that compounded by a whole new crop of new folks coming in. Right. And where are they going to go to get those answers? And how are they going to maintain the mission in the absence of having that the proverbial shoulder to tap, if you will? That was one of the things that we were looking at, thinking, oh my gosh, this is actually a huge problem not just in Washington state. This is a national problem. It's the baby boomer generation is reaching retirement age. And it's like, okay, holistically, I think in terms of just government continuity, I think solutions like this need to be made available to folks. And with any luck, we'll be able to keep the service levels where they are or even improve on them as we go forward. But I don't think it's going to be an accident. I think it's going to have to be purposeful.

Carol: Absolutely. Yeah, Cassie?

Cassie: Yeah, I was going to also add, just as a little story piece, our incoming interim director was in voc rehab a long time ago. It's been a while. So she's being reintroduced to VR and she's been here all of maybe a week now, maybe two weeks. And she told me I've been using the tool every time I'm in a meeting, and I need to know a definition of something, or I'm not really sure of the answer. I just like, can hop in a virtual meeting, open it on my second screen and find the answer. So I think being spend to what you're saying about new folks coming in, it is absolutely a game changer for the transition of generations in and out new staff. VR is very complex, we all know, and it's just a tool that has a solution that's now that we're using. It seems so simple for all of these really complex problems. We're solving really complex problems with an AI knowledge interpreter tool.

Carol: Yeah, I thought it was absolutely amazing. I just know as I went in and played around just a little bit, I'm like, oh my gosh, within five seconds you have this whole array directly to your policies, procedures, any of the RSA sub-reg guidance, all of the, you know, citations that you needed. Here it is. And then you can get it laid out for you in a very understandable way, which is super helpful for the work. I know if our listeners are going to be interested in this and getting some more information, so what would be the best way for them to do that? So Sven, do you have some contact information?

Sven: We do. We're just now starting to build out a website with more details. So organic conversational growth is happening in real time. So it's like okay we can't just keep answering them live. We have set up a page, up until now, remember, our focus has been on delivering the value of the tool itself. But we have a new marketing director and a team that's actually starting to work on these things. So we do have a website put up its outlookInsight.AI. And if you go there, you'll find some information about the tool, an ability to contact us. We have a contact us link. And we're starting to publish webinars that will be available for folks to register for. If they want to sit in on a demo and get more information that way. It's not fancy, it's in its infancy, but it's a start, and it's better than having to answer emails and phone calls the whole time.

Carol: Yeah, very cool. And Cassie, is there anybody that would be good for someone to reach out to at Washington General?

Cassie: Yeah, we could give you the contact information of Jack Fruitman, our IT director, and his email would be Jack j a c k dot period dot fruitman fruit man@DSHS.WA.gov.

Carol: Excellent. I really appreciate that. And was there any other last things either of you wanted to share?

Cassie: I mean, I just want to plug that these types of tools can have a really positive impact in really simple ways. Like I just said, it seems really complex now that we're using it, Sven, it's complex, more complex for you than it is for me on the technical side of things. But for me, it's a really simple tool that does solve a lot of large issues. So I think it's really important that we're all just embracing the advancement of technology, and we're accepting of these innovative solutions. You know, it can be scary. It can be dark, but we can also use it to our benefit, and we can use it in a way that helps us really support those who need our services the most. And we can get back to true VR counseling with this tool. And I hope to keep adopting and seeing the adoption of tools like this in the future, especially for VR.

Sven: I'm going to echo that. The application of AI, it really is, for all intents and purposes, in its infancy. Machine language has been around for a long time. A lot of the foundational components have been in use for decades. But all of these pieces coming together now with these language models is novel. It really does promise the power to simplify our lives and really improve the quality of what we do. I see this more as enablement capabilities as opposed to replacement capabilities to where, like Cassie was saying, get back to focusing on what you really want to do, not what you have to do to make that happen. And, you know, there sure are some unresolved concerns. And, you know, those can't be ignored. But what the right application to the right use cases, technology really doesn't have to be scary. It can be super awesome, and it can really empower your teams really from day one.

Carol: Very cool. Thanks for being with me. And Cassie, best wishes to you. And Sven, Thank you, I'm sure you're going to hear some folks reaching out to you. So thanks to both of you, I hope you have great holidays.

Cassie: Yeah. Thank you, you too.

Sven: Thank you so much, Carol.

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Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Diane Dalmasse, Director of HireAbility Vermont, is in the studio today. Diane is the longest-serving director nationally in the VR program and has a lot to say about culture in the workplace and the changes Vermont made to retain and attract employees from across the nation. Learn about how hiring an organizational consultant back in the 90s continues to prove its worth today.

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Full Transcript:

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Diane: I think that everyone should have their voices heard and have some ownership in how we move forward as an organization. I think it has enabled us to set a very high bar for staff. All in all, our career ladders, our leadership development are supporting professional growth and development in any way we can has really contributed to staff morale and staff retention. They are owning where we're going and actually driving how we get there.

Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.

Carol: Well welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today is Diane Dalmasse director of Higher Ability Vermont. Now Diane Vermont's been in the news this fall that crazy flooding you had and other things. How are things going for you?

Diane: Things are actually fine in most places in Vermont, the flooding was very localized to central Vermont, with Montpelier really suffering, as I'm sure everyone watched on the news. It was devastating and still is in Montpelier. They're really working hard to come back.

Carol: I remember seeing the images. It was so incredible. I was down on my treadmill right away. I emailed you guys. I'm like, are you all okay? Are your staff okay? And your customers? I was just, it looked insane, I couldn't even believe it.

Diane: Yeah. There was a lot of housing lost, particularly lower income housing in central Vermont, which really just has made an already crisis situation much worse.

Carol: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, I'm hoping with the winter coming and I saw you have awesome weather that'll be happening out on the coast, you know, that that isn't going to impact people so much, especially with this housing situation. Well, I'm excited about the discussion we're going to have about culture. I know in my TA work, I get asked all the time. And our listeners, you know, are those folks there going, hey, who's got a good culture? And, you know, that's a really tricky question. And a lot of agencies are struggling with this right now, really have been for some time. And on the side, one of my things I've been passionate about looking at is the turnover in directors, you know, nationwide. And I'm up to 134 changes in the last decade out of the 78 SVRAs. And you just go, holy smokes. And you can see this trajectory, you know, WIOA hit and the pandemic hit, and you just see the chart going up, up, up and the great resignation. And so I think people are feeling kind of tired and worn out. And we have a lot of new directors coming in who are coming in from outside of VR.

And so people reach out and they go, hey, who's got something good going on? And the funny thing is, everybody and maybe not so funny, but everybody says, gosh, you got to talk to Diane in Vermont. And so I was super excited. I get to see your staff, James and Amanda at CSAVR. And I'm like, Amanda. She was sitting next to me. I said, I really want to talk about your culture. You have to talk to Diane. Like, Amanda was so excited. She goes, you absolutely have to talk to Diane. So I am super excited to unpack this today. I do like the Peter Drucker quote. He said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And I know sometimes people like to say culture eats strategy for lunch, whichever meal it is. He really was on the pulse with something. So let's dig into this. So, I know Vermont is a smaller state. Can you give our listeners a little picture of your agency, like how many staff and customers do you have? And if you have any particular like geographical challenges?

Diane: We are a small but very mighty state, Carol, and we have applied for multiple federal grants over the years. And I think that reviewers or whoever views us as a laboratory for trying different strategies and different ways of working. And so, yes, we're small. We have a staff of about 150 employees, and we have a contractor, our CRP, our primary CRP that does most of our employment work. They are staff are co-located in our offices. So we have about 200 people that are working in our 12 offices spread across the state, and we serve around 6000 people a year. We are small, but I think we're on the cutting edge of many things.

Carol: I know I love that because, you know, you're on the East Coast, you're nestled in there, you're not a huge state, but there's always so many cool things coming out from your program. And I think your staff are just so smart, and they're always looking out and finding out what cool things are going on. And just they're such great thinkers. I think you all are. And not only just thinking it, you take it and apply it and make it your own and figure things out. And you really are on the cutting edge of doing things in a different way. And I really appreciate that about you. I'm sure our listeners are also interested, Diane, I always like to talk to people a little bit about like, how did you get into VR and how long have you been at the agency?

Diane: Well, I have been at the agency forever, essentially. I became director in 1991, so I've been here over 30 years and I have yet to be bored. Every day is a new challenge. We are not tired and worn out here in Vermont. We are excited about the work that we do every day and the impact it has. We make a difference in people's lives all the time, which is just amazing. I worked previous to my VR work in Human Services doing child welfare work and psychiatric social work. But I came to VR as a supervisor and never left and really felt that I'd found a home here. Work is absolutely transformational for people and I love my job well.

Carol: I think it's amazing. You are the longest standing director now in the country out of the 78 programs, I'm like, good for you and good on your agency. I think that that will be it's super helpful to you as we're going to have this culture talk. So I know when you walked into the situation that you did, you know, 32 years ago, you walked into some different challenges. And I appreciate we all have done that. I walked into challenges. I think any time you take over from somebody else, can you talk a little bit about those beginning years and kind of how you approached that, what you were facing and what you did?

Diane: Yes, I had been working in Central Office as a field operations director for 3 or 4 years, I think, before I was promoted to director. So I had an opportunity to see firsthand how things were being done and I wasn't happy. And my predecessor, really, he was not dedicated to the mission and goals of the agency, in my opinion. So when I came into the job, I really I pulled together critical people in the disability community and said to them, we are going to turn this agency around. We are going to take everything and try to determine what is value added for the customer and what we do for the convenience of the agency, or because we perceive that federal regulations require us to do those things. And we did. We changed many, many things and we innovated in many different ways. We had a Consumer Choice Grant for those that remember back to the mid 90s, which was a five year grant that provided us with many resources to focus on change. And we did just that.

Carol: Well, I think, you know, you were super smart about this with that Choice Grant, and you talked to me about this with hiring that organizational consultant. And I've been really thinking about that since you and I chatted the other day, which would have been amazing. I wish I would have thought of that. You know, coming into Minnesota, can you talk more about how that has helped you having that organizational consultant and kind of doing that all these years?

Diane: I certainly can. I think that is one of the major educational tools for me as a director. And lessons learned in terms of moving your agency forward is organizational development specialists. People who do this for a living can be invaluable in terms of helping you from an outside, more objective place. Look at your agency in terms of what's working well and what isn't organizationally. And so I used a big chunk of the resources from that initial consumer choice grant to hire organizational development people. Then we had a team that went into each of our 12 offices and looked at how we did business and what was working and what wasn't. And out of that came a strategic plan, and our kind of vision for the future, which really moved us along. And to this day, I have organizational development people on contract, because I have found that early intervention and getting that sort of outside specialist view can be the key to unblocking and moving forward in so many ways.

Carol: Yeah, I think that was really brilliant. How did you go about finding the people you found? You know, back in the day? I don't think there was Google. It's like, how can folks find them?

Diane: Well, we put out a request for proposals and I think early on it was we really believe in involving staff in almost everything we do. And so we had quite a large committee with staff present, and we interviewed oh, 5 or 6 different vendors who provide these services in order to make a selection of someone that we thought shared our values and our vision for the organization. And we stayed with that consultant and her team for years. Eventually we moved on. And as I said, we are always working with someone either on leadership development, professional coaching, conflict management, all those things that any agency runs into.

Carol: I love that you included all these different staff in that, and that is the one thing I hear about you with, you know, staff throughout the organization really feeling a part of things, you know, and that is a great tip for your colleagues across the country as well. So it isn't just you and Amanda and James deciding, here's the person we're picking.

Diane: Right, I have two strategic themes really values that I think drive how we do business. One is valuing and empowering employees. I think that when you value and empower employees, employees treat their customers to the degree they're treated. So if employees are treated really well, they're going to provide a high level of service to your customer. And the opposite is also true. And then I think that everyone should have their voices heard and have some ownership in how we move forward as an organization. And so I like to think that I set the direction. But then I say to the people who do the work on the front lines, how best can we move in that direction? How best can we attain that vision that I think we all share? And I think it has enabled us to set a very high bar for staff, because they are owning where we're going and actually driving how we get there.

Carol: That is really good. And I know it's simple advice, you know, but we don't always think to go, let's ask the people who are doing the work how we could do this better or more effectively or what do you see, you know, or sometimes we'll ask, but we don't do anything with it. You know, we don't act on what they're telling us. I love that that is great advice. Now, I know WIOA really threw a wrench into things for everyone. It threw a wrench for me. I was a really brand new director. I mean, I literally came in in 2013 and then July 22nd, 2014, this whole deal went down and everybody kept telling me, oh, don't worry about it. You'll have a couple of years. They'll write implementing regs. And, you know, the difference was they said the day that Barack Obama signed that it went into effect. And that was the difference. And so we're all running around trying to do something and we didn't know what we're doing. How did you approach that time? Because I know my staff just thought this was insane. And somehow I'd made all this up like this. All could not possibly be true. How'd you do it?

Diane: Well, I think that we were in disbelief as well and sort of ignored it or ran from it. I think particularly the Pre-ETS piece. We couldn't believe they really meant it. We like James, my deputy, and I was like, it's not going to happen. They're going to change their minds. They're going to undo this. Right? But we really came to our senses in a few months. I mean, it wasn't as if we said, oh, we won't do anything until they write the regs we like realized that this was statute. This was not something that was easily changed, that Congress had indicated this was how they wanted us to do business and they fund us. And so we decided that we needed to figure it out and move forward, and that waiting was not going to help us. And so with both Pre-ETS and then the other very significant change in WIOA that we looked at was the real change from our old federal standards and indicators, which were gone, replaced by the common performance measures. And we were number one in the nation for years in terms of per capita placements and rehabilitations and employment outcomes. And we knew how to do this. And when we looked at the common performance measures, they weren't about quantity. They weren't about how many people can we get a job for any job. They were about the quality of that employment. They were about retention, earnings, credential attainment, employer satisfaction, measurable skills gains. And so we said, whoa, this is like the biggest change in our service delivery that I've ever seen. And I've lived through a few reauthorizations. So in both cases, we look to staff in varying ways to help us figure this out. And with the shift from quantity to quality, early on we went on a two day management retreat and we said, let's do a SWOT analysis of this. Let's take a look at what are the opportunities here. What are the threats here, how do we want to proceed. And I think with Pre-ETS, we set sort of a values based approach in that what we felt Congress was telling us was serve those students earlier. Early intervention leads to better outcomes. And for our shift from quantity to quality, it was like, of course this is what we should be doing. You know, we don't want to help people get into five entry level jobs. We want to help that person obtain a credential, move into a meaningful job that they will stay in and grow in. And so I think by having a values based approach and both those major, major changes in how VR did business, we were able to. And gave staff and staff, owned it with us and shared our vision for the future.

Carol: That is super smart. I know I keep saying that, but the way you approached it, I think was super helpful. I know I took more of an approach like this. These are our compliance pieces. You know, we have to do this and probably missed the boat really. On how you engage folks early on. I was more like we needed to do it. And that didn't always go over as well and did talk a lot about having family, sustaining wages. That was always extremely important to me. I didn't want people to just get a job and food, filth and flowers. Not that that work isn't important. And if someone did want to do that, that's fine. And how can we find the best version of that job possible? But I didn't want that to be the fallback. I didn't want people to think that's the only thing they could do. And I wanted people to not be in poverty and all of that. But your approach has really served you well because you've been able to really recruit and retain your staff. And so I think kind of that having that even keel and leadership and people within your agency has been super helpful. I know you have done some things specifically to really help you with recruiting and retaining staff. What are some of those initiatives you've taken on for years to help really build your culture? And now one that we know you are in support of your staff all the time?

Diane: Yeah. I again fall back on valued and empowered employees. I think people want to come work for us because other people tell them what a great place to work we are and how supportive we are of employees. And so that word of mouth travels well and beyond Vermont in many ways. We've had people come from all over the country to work for us. Yes, I think post-pandemic, we had no idea how successful we could be in terms of remote work and in really serving clients in ways that they want to be served, rather than making them drive to the office, come into our offices and worry about gas money or child care or whatever other issues they have. And I think we have helped people have a much better work life balance with a hybrid environment, which we don't intend to end. We think that we attract top talent, and we keep people by offering them that hybrid environment and that work life balance. So I think that's been very important. We've also tried to have our compensation keep up. And so we've worked at getting people upgraded and increasing their pay. But I think the environment and the culture are as or more important than the compensation in many ways.

Carol: Yeah. The work life balance really came to light during the pandemic. And I know in some cases, states, the governors have gone back to some of our VR programs been impacted because the governor's gone. All right. We know you did remote work, but now we don't want you to do that anymore. You have to come back in 100%, and they're just losing staff in droves. It has been terrible, absolutely terrible. And so keeping that flexibility is super important to people more than money a lot of times. So that has been great. I know you've also been very supportive of your staff with just trying to promote that professional development within within your agency, what are the things you do to help support each of them professionally? You know, to grow?

Diane: We've done a number of things. We've built a career ladder for counselors, which we have had to do is when we cannot find a master's level candidate that is the best person for the job, we will hire someone with a bachelor's degree, with the understanding that they will obtain a master's at our expense within four years. And so we've broadened the recruitment pool, and then we have a rehab associate. We have a counselor one, a counselor two, a senior counselor one, a senior counselor two. We've really created a career ladder of sorts. And recently we created an associate senior counselor two and a senior counselor two. In our world, it's a first line supervisor. And so because of to the degree that we've experienced turnover, like every other agency across the country post pandemic, I think we've still been able to attract really quality people because of who we are. And we realized that we need to be even more focused on succession planning and leadership development. And so we created this associate senior counselor so that people who hadn't obtained that master's, people who weren't quite qualified to step into a full supervisory position, could get a vote of confidence and on a career track to make that move when they finish the master's degree and had the experiential requirement to make that leap. So I think all in all, our career ladders our leadership development are supporting professional growth and development in any way we can has really contributed to staff morale and staff retention.

Carol: That has been an issue for others. You know, people have been striving to try to do some sort of succession planning, but they've been just struggling to figure it out. And sometimes with the state, you know, the hiring systems and the requirements, you want to get that first supervisory job, but you're supposed to have some supervisory experience. And people are like, how do I get that? So that's a very cool approach that you've got. So people have kind of that entry level and can keep moving up, get exposure and experience. That is great. I think that is really, really smart. Now, I know you also have prided yourself on I saw it during your reviews, so when you had your last monitoring review and I was helping you prep and you really talked about kind of balancing between you wanted staff exposed, but you didn't want them to get into all that. Some of it gets to be a lot, and you didn't want them to feel kind of the pressure of all that negativity or whatever may go on. But it has been very important to you to have your employees involved in things and to get feedback from them. How do you go about doing that intentionally, like getting that feedback from everyone. And so people's voices are heard and all of that.

Diane: We have many ways. I have a pulse team that meets quarterly. It is a representative from each of the 12 offices who is not a supervisor or a manager. And we pose, oh, usually three questions ahead of time that we want to take the pulse of the organization about. It could be about our diversity, equity and inclusion work we've been doing. It could be how's the hybrid work environment going? It could be about professional growth and development. So we posed three questions. And they literally poll their offices on those three questions. And they get responses anonymous responses. And we come together and there's no it's myself and our quality assurance manager. And we have a half day of hearing from each of the offices about the questions we posed, and then really encourage them to bring anything they want us to know about, good, bad or indifferent. That has been, I think, maybe more valuable to me than them.  I'm not always sure, but I've heard things I would never otherwise hear and have been able to intervene and act on those things. So that's really been wonderful. We also have an implementation team, which is again a cross representative group of different staff categories and different offices, and we generally use that group as a sounding board so that if we're going to try something, you know, like we moved to paid work experiences where we compensate customers for work experiences at minimum wage. And so we lay that out to the I-Team and we said, tell us how you think that's going to go, what are going to be the challenges? What are the opportunities here, what should we watch out for or whatever? And that has been an amazing thing. And so we've gotten frontline input into things before we actually implement it and gotten thoughts and ideas from that group. So those are just two examples. But really it goes on all the time in different ways.

Carol: I'm taking notes. I love this. The pulse team. I wish I would have talked to you, Diane, like ten years ago, when I was at Minnesota Blind, you could have help me with a lot of things. I think these are great, great ideas. I know a lot of your colleagues are coming in from across the country. You know, I said we've had 134 changes in a decade. They're coming in from outside of VR. And so I know folks, for one, they're trying to learn this completely foreign language of VR with all our acronyms and our different things, and then trying to deal with political issues and the staffing issues and all of it. Do you have any advice for all these new folks coming in and how to start and how to be kind of get your same enthusiasm? I know you love this program so much. How can we help instill some of you across the country?

Diane: Oh, I don't know, Carol, I came from outside when I started as a supervisor in VR, and I went into a learning mode, and I think if I had come in from the outside as director, you want to just sort of soak it all up and learn it. And VR is not rocket science. It's really not. And being a leader is not rocket science either. But I think learning the system, listening to people, really figuring out who are your really go to leaders and staff and cultivating those people. Again, I think putting forth a values based approach to this work. Is what we need to be doing everywhere, that this is social justice work. This is about assisting people with disabilities move out of poverty. And we are transformational when we do this, right?

Carol: Oh, amen to that. Do you have some go tos, Like I know everybody has different books that they like, or authors you like to read, or things you like to look at or do to help you learn and grow yourself. Do you have any go tos that you could share?

Diane: Well, it's funny because I have a manager who loves this stuff, and so I have to say that I more depend upon him to come talk to me or talk to us about what he's been reading and what he's been learning. And he frequently will remind me about Covey's work. And being that most of us live in the whirlwind, that we could spend all our time in the whirlwind, putting out fires and dealing with the crisis of the moment, and that we cannot do that if we hope to move forward and improve and serve people more effectively, we have to look at our wigs, which are wildly important goals. And so we have to identify those wildly important goals, and we have to make time to focus on them. Because if we stay in the whirlwind, we'll always be in the whirlwind.

Carol: That is a great ending quote for sure, because VR has been a bit of a whirlwind and we have to move past staying in that. Diane, I sure appreciate you joining me today. I really love what you're doing in Vermont because I just think you guys are incredible. Thanks so much.

Diane: You're welcome.

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Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

In the studio today is Kendra Farrow, Project Director with the Older Individuals Who Are Blind – Technical Assistance Center at the National Research & Training Center on Blindness & Low Vision Mississippi State University.

Kendra and Carol discuss the question, “Why not ask the Older Individuals who are Blind right up front if they want to work?" Are we missing the boat with these talented individuals who are commonly not given the option for VR services that can benefit them? Whether it’s training, job development and placement, or job retention, VR services in conjunction with IL services, can lead to successful employment outcomes for Older Individuals who are Blind and contribute to their sense of purpose and meaning.

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Full Transcript:

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Kendra: When somebody who is 55 or older loses vision and they call about services and they say, well, how old are you? And if they're over 55, they're just pushing them into the older individuals who are blind program. They aren't necessarily then offered the services that they could benefit from. We're cutting ourselves short, and it's a very easy closure once the person has regained their confidence with the older blind program and learning some skills, once they start seeing I can do these things, maybe I want to go back to work now that I have some confidence again.

Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.

Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is Kendra Farrell, Project Director with the Older Individuals who are Blind. Technical Assistance Center that is housed at the National Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision at Mississippi State University. Holy moly. That's a mouthful. So, Kendra, how are things going in Mississippi?

Kendra: Oh they're good.

Carol: Awesome. Thanks for joining me today. So for our listeners, I want to give a little background. The Technical Assistance Centers that are funded by RSA, we hold a regular TAC collaborative meeting so we can leverage resources and keep each other informed so we can serve all of you better. And in a recent collaborative meeting, I asked the group for any possible ideas where we could collaborate on a podcast. And sure enough, Kendra brought up an interesting conversation that she had with a group of experts that was talking about eligibility for the OIB program, and that led to a deeper discussion about a place where VR might be missing the boat on serving a very important group of people. So, of course, my background as a former director of a blind agency, it really resonated with me, and I wanted to let our listeners in on the conversation. So let's dig in. So, Kendra, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you came to be the director of the OIB TAC?

Kendra: Yeah, I started out my career working in direct services, providing vision rehab therapy services to individuals of all ages at a nonprofit agency. And after doing that for 14 years, I saw a job posting with the National Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision. We call it the NRTC for short, and they gave me a job. I was hired on a research grant related to employment for people who are blind or have low vision. And once we got started with that a little bit, there was the opportunity to apply for the grant to have the Technical Assistance Center for Older Blind services. And my colleague and I said that we kind of felt like maybe we were doing a disservice to the field if we didn't apply because we have a long history at the NRTC of doing like some external program evaluations for older blind programs. I think we had conducted program evaluations for, I think it's over 25 of the states over the years. Since I've been here, we've only worked with maybe 5 or 6, so not as many. But, you know, we have that background and we've had publications and done different things related to the older blind services back when it was a discretionary grant in the 90s. Before it was a formula grant, only a couple of states had it.

So we were kind of like the place where the information was stored, like collected. What is currently collected on the annual 7OB report that is provided to RSA by all of the programs we collected that data. I don't know if it went to RSA too, but we collected that data and then published on it to establish the importance of the services that were being provided. So we do have a long history, long before I came here in 2015, when the opportunity to apply to be the Technical Assistance Center, my colleague and I decided that we should try to get the grant. So it's completely changed my job with the NRTC, I was working my colleague was the project director for a number of years until she retired, and then we had some other directors in between. And so, because I have the historical knowledge, and when the most recent director left, I decided that it was time to just step up and direct the project, because it's the hard thing to have a national perspective on the older blind services. It's not something that's easy to find. You know, we tried to post and hire somebody, and there's just not a lot of people that can come and hit the ground running with having that national perspective.

Carol: Yeah, you nailed that for sure, because I know when I was at Minnesota Blind, we always relied on the NRTC and the resources. You guys had such amazing curriculum. We would have staff go through and take your courses. You were the go to people. So you're definitely the right people. And you're right, there isn't a lot of folks that have that nationwide perspective that you all had. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the mission of the OIB TAC? What is your focus?

Kendra: According to RSA and the grant and the cooperative agreement that we work under, we provide technical assistance and training, and we provide that on four different topic areas, which include community outreach, promising practices in service delivery, financial and management practices, and data collection and analysis, including program performance kinds of things.

Carol: I love it because I had the opportunity you brought me in. We were able to collaborate on a state and that was super fun to watch you and your team, and to see how we could do a little collaboration between the and you. And I really appreciated that. I know you also have had some personal experience with VR. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Kendra: Yeah, I have always been legally blind. I was a high partial when I was young and grew up just doing the best I could with what I had, and had a few services as a child in three school, large print books. You know, I wasn't really considered in my mind to be blind. But then when I got to college, you know, the reading is harder and everything, and I started working with VR. They provided some assistive technology that I needed to be successful in college, and my vision did start to go downhill. And so I needed more services. And I have kind of been in and out just through my various jobs and different challenges with technology through the years, trying to keep myself up to date and able to do the things that I do to be employed.

Carol: Thanks for sharing that, because I think it's always interesting when you come from working in the system, you can see some things maybe differently. You have a different viewpoint about VR and some of the things that what was working and what doesn't work.

Kendra: One of the unique things is that I have received VR services in three different states, and so just the differences between the states is very interesting to observe. And, you know, the separate versus a combined agency, you know, how that feels different and that kind of thing is very interesting to think about.

Carol: That I did not know that about you. So that is very interesting because people always say there are 78 VR programs and there are 78 ways of doing everything.

Kendra: I've only seen three.

Carol: Let's talk about this conversation you had with a group of experts around disabilities that is going to lead to our conversation today. What is the opportunity that VR is missing?

Kendra: Well, individuals who lose vision later in life. Often people think, what would I do in those circumstances? And so we go on some of our preconceived ideas about blindness or vision impairment. That is going to be hard to work. And the truth is that many of those people, when they're in the situation of losing their vision, they're in their 40s, 50s, 60s, a lot of times they are planning to work until they're maybe like 69 or 70, because you get higher rates on your Social Security retirement account, your payments, if you work until you're older and they usually are planning to do that. And so to take an early retirement is putting them in a financial disadvantage that they weren't planning on. And also people want to be busy. They want to contribute. It makes you feel good to work and to contribute. And so when somebody who is 55 or older loses vision and they call about services and they say, well, how old are you? And if they're over 55, they're just pushing them into the older individuals who are blind program, which eligibility begins at age 55. So they aren't necessarily then offered VR services that they could benefit from. And these are people with decades of experience that have job skills. And we have such a need right now for people to fill positions that are open. You know, we've had this mass wave of retirement and we don't want to see more people retire if possible. You know, I think employers really want people to stay in their jobs, especially those that are experienced and have lots to give yet to their fields. And even if they can't stay within the job that they were in, it's not outside the scope of imagination to think that they could still go back to school and learn a different profession and apply some of their job skills in a different field.

Carol: I know you have hit the nail on the head with this. It really made me think back to my time at SSB in Minnesota, because I thought about our folks coming into the older blind program and how we, you know, you just funnel them in. Oh, you're not going to still want to work. And anywhere you go today, you go to the grocery store, any place you are, you're shopping, you're out and about. You see a lot of older individuals that are back at work. People may have retired and they're like, you know, I want to do a little something or they're working still full time because you are right. I just got my Social Security statement the other day, and there is a significant difference between collecting at 62 and collecting at 70, like substantially different. And so you want to prolong that as long as you can. So your end days you aren't just living in complete poverty. I think that is super smart. I know when you and I were chatting about this, we were thinking, some of this comes down to just that. Overall, in our society, some of the ageism, I know I have felt that turning 60 this last year and. People going, oh, you're 60 now. When are you going to retire Retire? Because I retired from the state of Minnesota when I was 57, because I'd started working during high school, and I knew I was going to go into this TA world and was really excited about that. I had never intended on retiring- retiring. I was going into this other work, but now people are like, you turn 60 and it's like, when are you going to retire? And I'm thinking, well, not yet. I don't want to yet. And even going to my doctor's office, I was there to get a shot. And they're like, well, you know, you're of a certain age now. You need the RSV shot, too. And I feel like, wow, stuff has changed. And I know you felt like you've had that. I believe you turned 50 recently.

Kendra: I did, and even before that, like, I don't know, maybe nine months or a year ago, somebody said to me, just out of the blue, when are you going to retire? And I'm like, hello, I'm not even 50 yet. What are you talking about?

Carol: I know it's kind of hilarious. You go, what's up? And why are we putting that, you know, on our customers that are coming in the door because they're 55 years old. It's like all of a sudden you have no value to work.

Kendra: Well, let me just say this, that after we had our initial conversation about making this a podcast topic, I said to myself, is there a way I can kind of test this theory about people wanting to work? So we get technical assistance calls, you know, sometimes from consumers. And so I've had three individuals call me since we had that conversation, and I determined that I would not ask them their age, that I would simply ask them as the first question out of my mouth was, would you like to work? And out of all three of those technical assistance calls, all three said yes. And after the conversation, none of them actually told me their age. But one did tell me that he was 70 and another lady, that she was like, well, can I work? I said, sure you can. Do you want to work? She said, yes. I said, okay, here's the number, call them and make sure you tell them when you're asking about services that you want to work. I said, that's the key. You need to tell them that right up front. That's my little story.

Carol: Yeah. You've got your research going. I think that's cool. I think you and I chatted about just those misconceptions, you know, what are some of those misconceptions about blindness being the most difficult disability to get individuals into employment? Because I sure didn't think that coming to SSB, I had worked in some other agencies with different sort of disability groups, and I'm going, gosh, I felt like this group would be like the easiest group to get into employment, but I know people have a lot of misconceptions. What are some of those?

Kendra: Well, they think that there's higher liability to the employer if you're thinking about something more industrial moving around, that there's safety concerns. And I think there's a huge thing about safety concerns that the rest of the team is going to feel like that employee is a burden, like they have to help them, like you're going to have to help the person use their computer or use the photocopier. And yeah, you might have to help with little things, but the Blind employee can totally contribute in just the same way as any other employee, and is going to have strengths and weaknesses like any other employee. You know, not all sighted employees are good with their computer, and co-workers help each other with their computers all the time. Just getting ready to do the podcast. Today, my coworker had to come in here and help me set up the microphone, and that's okay. I mean, that's a normal thing that coworkers do for each other. You know, it's just the way the workplace goes. So it's not that we don't help each other, but everybody helps each other.

Carol: That is such a great way to put it, because I'm thinking this boomer generation, it's hysterical. You know, you're working with some of the younger folks and they're doing cool new things and you're like, oh, how do I do? How do I do that on the on the computer? We do all help each other all the time. But why is it that if a person is blind or visually impaired somehow that that help seems like, oh, like that's extra. You know, it's an extra thing when it isn't if it's anybody else.

Kendra: Right. I don't understand why that is. And maybe they, I don't know, I'm just guessing, but they just think that the productivity might be less too. And it's true that we do things differently. But I can tell you that there are certain things I can do faster than my sighted colleagues because I use keystrokes. And, you know, I could show them how to use the keystrokes to their Windows, keystrokes, anybody can use them. And so a Blind employee can actually be helping their coworkers become more efficient because they do things in a different way. And it also makes the world better because the things that are sometimes inaccessible to me, the sighted employees are telling me, we hate that too. It doesn't work well, and I think if they would update that system, if they would make it so that it would be accessible for me, it would probably be nicer for the sighted employees too. So having those diverse members of an employment team is really good, because what's good for the blind employee, or helps them to be more effective in their role, is going to help the entire team. I was just having a conversation yesterday with a couple of my coworkers. We have some virtual employees and we have in-person employees, and the hybrid team is, you know, we were talking about when we have a meeting that it would be good if we went around and had like a little introduction slash icebreaker, even though we all know each other, but to know who's in the room to make sure how the microphone are picking up somebody's voice, if they're virtual to the meeting, you know, because then they'll know, oh, the person who sounds really far away, that's Jennifer over there in the corner, you know, because she's introduced herself. You heard and she says, oh, yeah, for Thanksgiving, I had my daughter and my husband with me, you know, or whatever, you know, just a little sentence icebreaker conversation to hear the voice and to remind yourself, because we don't meet every week and or even every day. And we have a big team. There's like, I don't know, like 16 of us and some are always virtual and some are here in person and some are on different teams so they don't interact, except that one meeting every month. So anyway. But that would be good for everybody. It's not just, it's not just the blind employees, but it's something that would be really helpful for those of us who depend on listening to identify who people are as they're talking during the meeting.

Carol: That makes perfect sense. I love that you talked about keystrokes. Dave Andrews back at SSB, he was teaching me keystrokes. I still use him today because it's much quicker when I'm doing different things. Yeah, that resonated with me. So what do you think OIB staff should say to those customers periodically?

Kendra:  In the conversation we had with the experts back in the original conversation that got me thinking on this topic altogether, they were suggesting that it should be offered right at the beginning, as we're making somebody eligible to ask them if they're interested in employment and then again later once they start building up their confidence and their skills. Because sometimes when people suddenly or even not so suddenly lose vision, it's a real hit to their confidence level. And they're like, I can't even pick out a pair of pants and a top that match each other. How am I going to go to work? I can't even warm up soup on my stove and not burn myself, or feel like I'm going to make a mess all over the place when I pour it into the bowl. How can I go to work if I can't even do basic things to take care of myself? It's so important that they can build up that confidence first, because it's hard to think I can use a computer if you can't even make yourself a bowl of soup. So doing those independent living goals and being able to build up that confidence once they start seeing I can do these things for myself. I don't have to ask my husband to always come in here and pour the soup into the bowl. I can do that myself. I can pick out my own clothes. I have a labeling system that helps me know that I match, and I can put on my makeup, and I can look appropriate to go out of the house. Okay, I have that confidence. Well, now maybe I want to go back to work now that I have some confidence again.

Carol: That is so true. I saw that over and over, just that building of confidence with the young people that came in that had lost their sight are older individuals who are blind, that had been losing their vision and getting that confidence back. It helped throughout everything in your life, you know, and not feeling like I can only stay in my house. I can't go out and travel. I don't know how to use the bus. I can't get anywhere, I don't have cane skills, or I haven't learned to use a guide dog or whatever it may be, and even how I'm using JAWS or whatever mechanism to read and do all of that. You see, as those skills get built, that you just see the person completely change. Like it was the most incredible thing for me in the agency, to watch folks in their journey and go from where they were to where they wanted to be, and it's pretty cool. I think the other thing that might be missing, you know, people think about even later on in life, so you're 70 and you want to go back to work. Everybody doesn't want to necessarily work full time. Like some of the people I would like to work part time. I want to work 20 hours a week or whatever. I think we always think this is an all or nothing type of thing.

Kendra: Yeah, definitely. I see a lot of people that would like to work a little bit, even if they're not going to work full time. And so that's still a successful  VR closure. Those people can contribute, and the employers do want to fill those positions that are open, even if they have to hire a couple of part time people to fill a full time position that's open, I think they'd be willing to consider it. You know, we're cutting ourselves short, and it's a very easy closure once the person has regained their confidence with the older blind program and learning some skills, or if they come in there and they still are working and don't want to give it up, I mean, that's the thing that always killed me when I was working in Direct Services, people would call me up on the phone and they said, yesterday was my last day of work because I lost my vision, I quit my job, and now I need to know how to become a blind person. You need to help me with that now. And I'm like, why did you quit your job? Why didn't you call me yesterday? I could have helped you keep going with what you were. You know, it's in society's mind that it's hard to work. But before people lose vision and before they're connected and know about services, it's a thought in their head, too. So that's why they get funneled into these programs and why they allow it, because we're just reinforcing those misconceptions about blindness.

Carol: So, Kendra, what suggestions do you have for VR and OIB to help make a dent in this?

Kendra: Well, I think just being aware first that it could be happening and then talking with our teams and really encouraging the staff that are working within the OIB programs to make sure that they're asking, do you want to go to work? And then the counselors need to understand when you get a referral for somebody over 55, don't look at that as a hard person to work with. This should be an easy person to work with, you know, compared to like maybe a transition student, that is. And I'm not implying that they're, you know, some people are really good at working with that population. But just in comparison, like this person comes with the soft skills, they know how to have professional conversations. They've had years of working experience. You don't have to teach them the soft skills. They just need to know, how can I adapt the things that I used to do visually to doing them non visually? That's all they need to know. And then they need that, you know, your assistance to make sure that they have the equipment and the training to use that equipment, and they should be able to be successful in employment. It should not be hard to get a successful closure out of that.

Carol: That is so well said. You know, you look across the country and I've seen what's happened during the pandemic and the kind of the drop in numbers of individuals that are in VR and people going, gosh, we're looking for customers. You know, we're looking for people to come in that want to go to work. And here's a group that's there and we're missing the boat on that. So I think your advice is super well-timed and important. It's a really important message for VR to hear. So I know we'll hear from you in the future, because you have a whole host of ideas for some other future podcasts, and I really look forward to talking to you about those. So thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Kendra: Sure, thank you for the opportunity.

{Music}

Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

In the studio today are Joan Phillips, Assistant Commissioner at the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, and Michelle Banks, DIF Strategic Director for MRC.

Find out how MRC is turning VR on its head. What would they do differently in the first year, and what results would they see after year 2? Learn about the success of the job certification program, and how they are meeting the "NextGen-ers" where they are at.

Hear how  Joan and Michelle encourage others to take on a DIF Grant to help bring more innovation and creative ideas to VR.

Learn more about the NextGen Initiative.

Listen Here

Full Transcript:

{Music}

Joan: If you are committed to this field, please apply for a DIF grant. Bring your ideas forward so we can infuse the future of VR with new energy and achieve more outcomes for individuals with disabilities who come to us, really depending on us, to help them make life changing decisions.

Michelle: We're moving more and more young adults into trainings. We've developed training partnerships in technology, in health care. We're trying to forge our way into biotech.

Joan: I'm always challenging staff. What else? How else?

Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.

Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today are Joan Phillips, assistant commissioner at the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, and Michelle Banks, DIF strategic director for MRC. So, Joan, how are things going at MRC?

Joan: Things are going really well. We are extremely busy working hard to ensure that the individuals who come to us seeking employment have every opportunity to get the training and to be upskilled and to gain employment. We are very, very busy but very happy.

Carol: Well, and of course, under Tony, she keeps you very busy because Tony's got a lot of great ideas. I love that.

Joan: She's got a lot of energy, more than all of us, that's for sure.

Carol: How about you, Michelle? How are things going for you?

Michelle: Good, busy is the word. Our project is well underway. Got a lot of participants. We've got a lot of interested folks and a lot of optimism for what we're about to achieve here. So it's going well.

Carol: I'm super excited to dig into this because I know our listeners have been really excited. And so this is the third podcast in a series focused on the Disability Innovation Fund career advancement projects. And I want to just do a little quick recap for our listeners about this particular round of the Disability Innovation Fund grants. So grant activities are geared to support innovative activities aimed at improving the outcomes of individuals with disabilities. And the Career Advancement Initiative model demonstrations funded back in 2021 were intended to identify and demonstrate practices that are supported by evidence to assist VR eligible individuals with disabilities, including previously served VR participants in employment who reenter the program to do the following. And it was to advance in high demand, high quality careers like science, technology, engineering, and math or those STEM careers, to enter career pathways in industry driven sectors through pre apprenticeships, registered apprenticeships and industry recognized apprenticeship programs to improve and maximize the competitive integrated outcomes, economic self-sufficiency, independence and inclusion in society and reduce reliance on public benefits like SSI, SSDI and or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and any state or local benefits. Also, when we think back, Congress made career pathways a necessary, if not foundational, part of WIOA's workforce reforms and states, for example, are required to include career pathways and workforce development systems. They're required to have them in their local plans that they have. So it's been really fun because each of the other agencies that we featured to date has taken a really uniquely Different approach, and I'm excited to unpack what's happening with you all. So, Joan, I'm going to start with you. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into VR.

Joan: I actually have a master's degree in rehabilitation, but spent a significant amount of my career working in the private sector. I feel that those experiences really informed my positions that I've held at MRC. I came in as a director of one of our local offices, and four years later I was promoted to Assistant Commissioner. So that's a little glimpse into my journey. I have significant experience in Workforce Development, disability determination to determine eligibility for disability benefits, working with young adults with disabilities, individuals with severe physical disabilities. And I'm very fortunate to be in this career.

Carol: Well, it's always fun to see how people make their way to VR. We all get here some way. It can be a long and winding road sometimes, or a very direct path in. So Michelle, how about you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Michelle: Sure, mine might reflect a long, winding part when it comes to Vocational Rehabilitation, but I've spent my career working with young adults. I started in the health care sector and then moved to juvenile justice. And then spent about 20 years in public child welfare, and I was the director of Adolescent and Young Adult Services for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, where I was helping the agency pursue transition related outcomes, one of them being employment with a group of young adults who were going to leave the public child welfare system without returning home or being adopted. So they had their lives, were calling for an enormous amount of independence, saw a lot of inequity when it came to economic stability, and could see a lot of pathways in things that could be done differently. I had worked with MRC a bit in that role and saw what they were doing, and when I realized that they got this funding to help young adults in particular, really try to have gratifying career pathways that were going to help them achieve economic stability in ways that many of their peers have the opportunity to do. I jumped right on it. So that's how I landed with MRC and have been excited to be working in this role ever since.

Carol: Very cool. So you're well positioned for the role you're in now. That is great. So, Joan, can you paint us a picture of MRC? Like how many staff do you have? How many people do you serve? A little bit more about what it's like in Massachusetts.

Joan: Yeah. So the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission provides services that break down barriers and empower people with disabilities to live life on their own terms. Our programs focus on career services, home and community life, and disability determination for federal benefit programs. We like to say that we're change agents and community builders, and we put the people we serve at the heart of everything we do. I'm the Assistant Commissioner of the Vocational Rehabilitation Division. That division serves over 15,000 individuals annually. We have over 300 staff, which includes directors of our local offices, regional managers, statewide managers, vocational rehabilitation counselors, placement and employment specialists, counselors for the deaf and hard of hearing, various clerical positions, supervisors. And hopefully I haven't missed anyone. The NextGen initiative, which you'll hear about, has some broad and some interesting staffing positions that we hope will inform VR moving forward in the future, and you'll hear more about that later.

Carol: So just a side note, I wondered, how are you guys faring kind of coming out of the pandemic? Are you seeing an upswing in the number of people that you're serving?

Joan: Absolutely. The numbers are increasing in terms of the numbers being served and also the numbers of individuals who are getting employment. We had a downswing during the pandemic, but now it's moving in the right direction and we're really excited to see that.

Carol: Good, that's good to hear. Been kind of hearing that trend across the country and I'm super happy about that. Well, I know your commissioner, Tony Wolf. I think she's amazing. She's done a lot of very cool things. She comes with a whole interesting background as well. And I know she's been super supportive and I feel like is always on the cutting edge of improving services. Talk about the support you've received from Tony and kind of throughout your agency for this project.

Joan: Her vision is really to modernize our organization, to modernize the Voc rehab divisions, to be relevant to this generation and future generations of individuals with disabilities. So we're all aligning ourselves. I said earlier, she's got much more energy than all of us combined. So we're trying to keep up with her and her ideas and moving forward.

Carol: Very cool. So, Michelle, big picture. Let's break down the grant. What do you propose to do with this grant? And what are you hoping to accomplish?

Michelle: So in this grant cycle we are looking to get 1000 NextGen-ers. So young adults 18 to 30 years old with disabilities into career pathways that are STEM related. We're going to do that in a few different ways, but our goal is to really open their minds to see how they can be successful in STEM careers, help them develop the tools that they're going to need to make the right career decision for them, understand how they can be successful and happy, and really achieve that economic stability that you were talking about and I was talking about earlier. It's an Innovation grant. So we're doing things differently than they've been done in the past. One of the things that we're doing is we have a learning experience that we provide to all of our NextGen-ers, and it's called Self CARES. Self CARES is an acronym, stands for Self-capacity self-advocacy, self-realization and Self Sufficiency. So it's really understanding. Ending who you are as a worker, what you want out of that, what your strengths and limitations are, what you're going to need to advocate for yourself once you become someone's employee and how you can work independently. And in NextGen, we don't see independence as being alone. We see it as accessing, first of all, having access to services, being able to access them, and harnessing the things that are available in your life to help you be successful at work. So that's our learning experience, Self CARES. And we also have these really creatively built teams looking at success in other sectors and within vocational rehabilitation itself that we've developed these roles within these teams. They include a peer mentor for every NextGener.

The moment that they walk into our doors, we actually walk through their doors because we're community based, which is another innovative component. We have family partners, so the families of all of our NextGen-ers have a partner available to them on our team to ensure that their voice is NextGen-ers life and how they can contribute to a successful career. We also have employment success specialists, we have career counselors. We have specialty counselors for our NextGen-ers with sensory disabilities. We have a specialty counselor for blind low vision, NextGen-ers, and deaf hard of hearing NextGen-ers. And we have regional supervisors because we are based in these communities. We have three communities in the Commonwealth that we're serving right now as part of the grant. What's really different is these teams hold the NextGen-ers together, so it's not a 1 to 1 relationship. For example, with a counselor we're testing out, what is it like when you have these multi disciplines in they're all available to you. And we know that young adults like choice. So they choose who in this team is their team lead who they want to talk to, who they're going to return the text from. You know, who can get them where they want to be. But the rest of the team doesn't go away. They stay right there at the table to bring what they're disciplined forward and help move the young adult into work. Those are the main components of our program. I always look to Joan for a moment because she can fill in what I may have forgotten.

Joan: So NextGen is about quick wins. You know, we really want to help the young adults focus on those certificate programs and apprenticeships that are short term. They're not. We're not talking about putting people into a degree program, but a certificate program where there is a demand in the market sector for those skills and that they have a high probability of obtaining employment, making higher wages.

Carol: I love that you're doing that, that focus on, you know, everybody always was thinking, you have to have this four year degree or you got to get your master's, you got to get your doctorate. You know, all that. That is not for everyone. And there are so many good careers out there where you just need this little bit, like this certificate or you do the apprenticeship. Lots of people learn better, hands on. I remember my son, one of his friends in high school is an apprentice to be a plumber. I'm like, Chase, he's going to make more money than everybody because everybody needs plumbers. And that was his thing. He doesn't want to go to school and do the book learning. He learns so much better via hands on. So I like that approach because everybody doesn't want to go to college.

Joan: Yeah, you know what's really interesting is that right now, because of employers being unable to fill so many positions, everybody is looking at their entrance requirements to say, do we really need somebody with a degree? Is this something that somebody could learn on the job? Is this something if they got a certificate in this particular area, would that be sufficient? So I think we're on the cutting edge. We're on the cutting edge of preparing young adults to meet the demands of the labor market. And we're really excited about this. The good news is that if somebody completes a certificate program, gets a job and decides they want a degree, many employers are paying for those degrees. So the young person doesn't have these huge debts that they need to pay back. So that's one of the exciting things about NextGen. And that's one of the things that we inform the participants about that you can get a degree later if you decide that that's a path that you want to take.

Carol: Well, your timing couldn't be more perfect. I mean, I really feel like the pandemic sort of set all this up where people kind of flipped employment on its ear, and people are starting to see that not everybody needs to go to college, and there's lots of different ways to achieve that kind of ultimate career goal that you want to get to. There's a lot of ways to get there. So I think your timing is spot on. So let's talk about the first year. What kind of struggles did you guys encounter? Because I've heard it from the other DIF grantees. They're like, you know, that first year we had some problems, but what kind of struggles did you encounter in year one and what would you have done differently?

Michelle: I think that we used the analogy building the plane as you're flying it a lot. We are very optimistic about reaching our goals. Five years is a very short time to pursue some of these things. So Joan was the crafter of the implementation strategy really, and implementing, you know, building the program, opening the program, staffing the program, delivering the service at the same time is a very rapid pace. So I think that the biggest challenge would be the pace. At the same time, we're asking our NextGen-ers to work really hard in a short period of time to get a big outcome. So we've got to be doing the same thing.

Joan: You know, it's really funny when you write something on paper. It looks so beautiful and. And somewhat easy you know. But then reality hits that you have to, you know, this is a program that's serving people and you need to be strategic around implementation. And how are you going to deliver what it is that you've promised your funders that you're going to deliver? You know, if there was one thing that I could, we spent a lot of time drafting job descriptions, hiring staff, training staff, setting up infrastructure. If there was one thing that I could change as we rolled into year two and began to do outreach and recruitment, I looked back and said, I wish we had done outreach and recruitment in the first year, with a timeline set as to when the program would start. You know, took us a while to get the momentum going for recruitment. We're actually exceeding recruitment goals right now, but it was very stressful in the beginning thinking we weren't going to meet that number.

Carol: So that's a really good tip because I know folks have said the first year is sort of a drag because of the government processes. You have to write your position description and get it approved, and then you've got to post and then you're going to hire. And so you're waiting, waiting, waiting to kind of get going with the program. And then year two, It's like, holy cow, pedal to the metal really quickly, where I love that idea of ramping up and making people aware of what's going on as you're getting these things done. So it isn't quite that just huge forcefulness that needs to happen right away in year two. That makes really good sense. So since you're saying your outreach is going really well, I was going to ask you, I know you guys have a really I call it a groovy way of talking, so I may date myself, but I love how you guys talk about this program because it's exciting. You know, I love your NextGen-ers. I like when you were talking about employee success specialists. Like, I want to be one of those, you know, that kind of cool stuff that you're doing. So how are you connecting with your potential customers? And I'm going to shoot that to you, Michelle.

Michelle: Yeah, we have had a really dynamic and exciting outreach and marketing campaign. I have to talk first about our digital and print collateral, because when we were at CSAVR last year, it just flew off the shelf. They were so impressed with it. They wanted it to take it back to their state and see how they could replicate it. Marketing to young adults. Young adults get marketed to a lot, right? They are exposed to things that new ideas and people that want their presence, their money, their time. So you have a lot of competition out there, and you have to think about what's going to get their attention. So we had a digital and print media campaign in multiple languages. We want to ensure that we are serving young adults that have been under engaged in the past, and that includes specific racial and ethnic demographics. So we needed to make sure that the imagery on this collateral looked like them, look like the people we wanted to come into our program with. So diverse representation, they're young adults. Some had visual disabilities in the print collateral. They were living their lives, you know, so that folks could see that and really see themselves represented. And then also in their languages as well. We have multiple languages, and then everything from like the colors that we use to the background we used. We lifted that from other media campaigns that were for young adults specifically that we knew were successful.

So real intentionality in a lot of time was put into that and a great partnership with our coms team. They were there before I got to the table and were so excited to do this work, and it really came through and what they were able to produce. We also went to social media. We launched social media campaigns. On Tik Tok reached close to 1500 views on that. We went to Facebook and Instagram, but we knew our demographic was really on Instagram and TikTok, so that was our area of focus. We did dynamic reels for them, and then we also just did what you would call like a flat still photograph, you know, using our digital media. So we're able to reach a lot of people that way. Then we went out every time we hired somebody and they were trained on the program, we put them out into the community to go find young adults, families and the systems that serve them. So we established partnerships with health and human service sister agencies serving our demographic as well as high schools were a great partner for us. We used some contracted services so that we could harness other relationships that were in the community. Cultural brokers, any type of neighborhood event, community event we were out at trying to we knew that the power wasn't speaking directly to young adults and directly to families, so that was always our focus. And multilingual capacity is really important there as well.

Carol: Yeah, I remember your materials flying off the table. People were like, holy cow, it is, it's like you've brought this whole fresh perspective into VR.

Michelle: Just one more thing. If anybody's listening that was of a huge assistance to us was a QR code on our print material. I just wanted to share that our potential NextGen-ers or their families could scan the QR code came directly to our landing page in a one page inquiry sheet.

Carol: You would now be proud of me because I saw that I was like, so we now have QR codes we're using on everything. So we do if we're doing evaluations, we go anywhere. We use a QR code instead of like, we're sending you this paper evaluation. We're just like we do the QR code. In fact, at our table coming up at the conference, I have QR codes that folks can just scan to get to our resources instead of like, dragging a bunch of paper along. So you're starting a revolution, you guys. It's awesome, I love it. So what kind of results are you seeing now that year two is completed? I think Michelle go to you first.

Michelle: We're moving more and more young adults into trainings. We've developed training partnerships in technology, in health care. We're trying to forge our way into biotech. So our NextGen-ers are coming in at the younger side around 22. So a lot of them do not have significant work history and have never heard of these fields before. They didn't get a lot of exposure to that in their high school experience. So we're doing a lot of career exploration and helping them into these trainings. We're doing some cohort trainings with some partners. So these are just NextGen-ers that we're able to hold together, serve as a group, give them peer support, give them support outside of the training or academics that are happening for them. And we're getting a lot of feedback on how to do that effectively with them. They don't like to meet in the morning. They don't want to meet after dinner. You've lost them permanently. But and they like individualized support. So as they're in these trainings, it's great and very helpful to them to meet as groups and peers. But they also want to be able to privately ask a question if they're struggling with any material, or maybe not quite sure this is a good fit for them. So needing to be really available to really understand what these trainings are, what is being asked of them, and then being able to provide that support. And if we can't provide it, connecting with the training provider to help them understand what the student experience is as well. And we've got some young adults moving into work as well. We again needed to open their minds to STEM careers. And sometimes when you've had no career or no job, you need to start somewhere. So we are looking a lot at some folks that are heading to work in. Our work is nowhere near done, right? They're getting their first job and they're learning what they like and what they don't like there. But the idea is to move more towards a career focused pathway.

Carol: Yeah. Very cool. That's the thing about demonstration projects you learn along the way, which I love, like you're learning little nuances, especially when you're working with that age group. Like, yeah, like after dinner you can and not too early in the morning. You're like all those different pieces, the ways you think you have it set up, and then you go, well, that didn't work so well. We're going to pivot. Joan, did you have some thoughts on that too?

Joan: Yeah, I was just going to say one exciting thing for me is employers engaging with us differently. For example, we have Red River who really stepped up and said we would love to offer an IT training for some of your participants who are interested in that field and their staff delivering the training for these young adults. And the hope is that, you know, many of them will get employment with Red River and other organizations. They brought Cisco and others to the table. And, you know, the opportunities. You know, if these individuals succeed in this area, it's wide. It's wide, wide open. Employer engagement. Also involves coming to talk to the young adults about different jobs in STEM, what it's like to work for their organizations, and etcetera. So it's beautiful to see the employers engaging at that level and who else to give relevant information but the employers.

Carol: Yeah, that's brilliant.

Joan: I walked into one of our conference rooms the other day, and there were 20 young people just focused on taking computers apart, and they didn't even notice me walking in the room. They were so engaged in the process. It was just, just beautiful. Just beautiful.

Carol: I think that's super smart, you know, because we can do it. You sit there and you go, well, you've got your counselors and they're talking about different jobs, but nothing better than people in that field. That particular company. And those companies are smart for hooking up with you guys too, because they have such a need for staff. And so that partnership, like the partnerships you're developing all the way through this, that's amazing. It's very cool. Joan, now I know you talk to me too, about your philosophy when it comes to VR. Can you share that with our listeners? You have some very cool perspective, and I know I can't, I can't say it like you say it.

Joan: Yeah, I've been in the field for a really, really long time, and my greatest desire is to see individuals with disabilities in high level, higher paying jobs. It's time for us to move out of retail flowers and filth. And I can't remember the other half, but, you know,

Carole: Food.

Joan:  and food services. Yes. It's time for us to move there. And I'm extremely excited to see where these NextGen-ers end up as we focus them on potentially jobs and careers that they've never heard of. You know, it's about exposing them to that. I'm always challenging staff. What else? How else? When I came to Mass Rehab, I was very surprised that our organization had been around for about 50 years and that the business community didn't know about us. I'm saying to myself, how are we getting people to work? And the types of jobs that people were getting really demonstrated that we were not connected to the business community. So it was my vision to drive that connection, to hire staff specifically focused on building relationships with the business community, nurturing those relationships, bringing information back to the counselors who are giving the advice around careers, and really developing a feeder system by having individuals who are managing business accounts, who speak their language, you know, who understand their culture and can help us to become much more innovative in preparing the individuals we serve and building the talent pipeline for the employers.

Carol: Good on you. I love that you speak to my heart. I know back when I was at State Services for the Blind in Minnesota and we were trying to expose our Pre-ETS students, that's why we started podcasts. Back then. We wanted to expose students to other kinds of work out there, because a lot of times our young folks who were blind or visually impaired, they just thought, I'm going to be a Walmart greeter. I can't do anything else. And it's like they had no idea I would cry, literally when we would do these student interviews and when people would kind of sell themselves short. It really hit my heart. And so the world is wide open. There's so many awesome opportunities that our folks can fill, you know, and you champion that I think is just brilliant.

Joan: Yeah, I mean, young adults with disabilities need to know that individuals with disabilities are CEOs. They are CFOs. They are IT professionals. You know, they're in the medical field. They're doctors, nurses, firemen. I mean, they're in every business sector. And I really believe that it is our job as VR professionals to expose those individuals to those careers and to really help them to think about their abilities. And, you know, what they have to bring to the table and how can we help them? Our job is to help them make informed decisions. Right? So we need to be informed about the labor market so that the information that we're transferring to these young adults is relevant to the current labor market. I think the NextGeneration of individuals with disabilities are not going to put up with working in a supermarket, bagging groceries. They want to be doing things that give them a great salary and offer them career ladder opportunities. And we're starting with NextGen.

Carol: They're going to be running that grocery store. They're not just bagging the groceries.

Joan: There you go.

Carol: They're going to own it. They're going to own that store. I love that. So, Joan, I know you also talked about the support you've had from RSA. Can you describe that for the listeners with this grant that there's been just really great support?

Joan: Doug Ziou has been an incredible supporter and a great cheerleader of MRC. I mean, everything we bring to the table, he's just. Yes. Do it. Yes. Do it. Very, very supportive, asking great questions, challenging us in ways that we need to be challenged but extremely, extremely supportive. And we're truly grateful that we have Doug on our side.

Carol: Yeah, I've heard that with all the project officers, I mean, like, they are super excited and really invested in these grants. It's almost like it's their babies or something. And they just love this so much. I'm really glad to hear that. Michelle, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?

Michelle: No, I was nodding. I realized this is a podcast, but I was just nodding furiously as Joan was talking. Working with Doug has just been such a pleasure, and you never get off a call with him without just feeling completely pumped about what you're about to go do and see all the possibility in it, because, you know, he does.

Carol: Yeah, I like that. They really cheerlead for that. So for those listeners that would like to apply for a DIF grant but have been afraid to do so, what advice would you give to others? Michelle. I'm going to hit you up with that first.

Michelle: I think that engaging potential employer partners, stakeholders, families are critical in not just the design and implementation phase, but hanging on to those partners, remembering what they told you in the beginning, revisiting that to give them a feedback loop on how you're incorporating their ideas to keep their partnership going, even when it's like, hey, remember you said that maybe you thought you could take on a few NextGen-ers in your organization? We're there now, keeping in contact, revisiting conversations. You know, I think that in a lot of grants, we bring our stakeholders to the table when we're applying for the funding and maybe even right when we first get it. And then we let them go away a little bit. So keep them there, keep them in the conversation. Update them on how things are progressing. Continue to ask questions. The world is different than it was two years ago, so our questions should be different as well. So that we're staying current in that partnership is staying current. And I can't stress family engagement enough and how powerful it is with young adults. Most family engagement models were born to serve children, and our young adults continue to have the bulk of their support come from their family members. I think everybody through the life course has the bulk of their support come through their family members. So why would you not have their voice at the table? Why would you not have their ideas? Why would you not consult with them on the course that you're setting with the NextGener, or because they have a lot of insight to share, they have a lot of resources to offer. So continuing that conversation in as well with that very unique set of stakeholders I would recommend.

Carol: Yeah, well said. Joan, any advice you have for our listeners?

Joan: Yeah. I mean, if you are nervous about applying for a grant, this is what I say. Are you an innovative thinker? Are you tired of VR the way it is and you would like to see change? Then I say go for it. VR needs some inspiration, some new strategies to move to the next level. If you are committed to this field, please apply for a DIF grant. Bring your ideas forward so we can infuse the future of VR with new energy and achieve more outcomes for individuals with disabilities who come to us, really depending on us, to help them make life changing decisions. I just want to share a story of a young adult who worked with MRC. He came to us, he was working in a pizza establishment, and he heard about our job driven training in cybersecurity. He applied even though he wasn't sure that that's an area that he could succeed in, graduated the top of the class, and is now earning over $80,000 a year. We want to replicate that 1000 times over with NextGen, and I would love for VR nationally to replicate that story. We want people to make wages that they can live on, that they can support a family on, that they can purchase a home or a car or, you know, live in a nice apartment. We want people to get off of Social Security disability benefits. That is buying into a lifetime of poverty. So we're depending on people with innovative and creative ideas to make that change. Don't be afraid of a DIF, grant. Jump in with both feet and let's make change happen for voc rehab.

Carol: Hear hear, you guys are going to turn VR on its head for sure, I love it. So Michelle, what would be the best way for our listeners to contact you if they wanted to follow up with any questions or like to see any information?

Michelle: Absolutely, we have a landing page. It's very impressive. I think it has this component where you can see videos of all of our NextGen staff. We did that for young adults to be able to check us out in the way that they like to check people out before they engage with them. It's https://www.mass.gov/nextgen-careers and anybody could email me any time MichelleBanks2, the number two, @mass.gov.

Carol: Excellent. You guys have been awesome. I'm so excited and I'm really hoping to check back in with you in a couple of years. As you get further along in the journey, maybe we can do a little repeat podcast and go like, hey, everybody is making they're not making 80,000 Joan. People are making 100 grand and these guys are living their best life. It is happening, I love it. Thank you both so much for participating in this podcast today. Appreciate it.

Joan: Thank you so much.

Michelle: Thank you.

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