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

We're celebrating a major milestone with the return of our very first guests: Kristen Mackey, Director of Arizona Combined, and Natasha Jerde, Director of Minnesota Blind. As Vocational Rehabilitation leaders navigate rising demands, shifting funding, and major structural change, Kristen and Natasha join us again to reflect on the post-pandemic landscape—and how it's testing directors like never before. From managing centralized services to sustaining staffing under fiscal strain, they share the real-world challenges that keep them up at night—and the strategies they're using to adapt. With transparency, persistence, and a mission-first mindset, these leaders dive into: ·       Navigating state and federal priorities ·       Responding to workforce volatility ·       Staying connected to data and purpose Their insights are a must-listen for anyone leading in today's VR environment. Tune in and be inspired to lead with clarity and resilience.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Natasha: Our program income is significantly dropping. The inflation, the cost of services. We've had four and a half and 5.5% salary increases with no additional state appropriations. So all of these things together keep me up every single night.   Kristen: We want job placements, we want employment, we want independence. If somebody's saying increase your job placements, fine, we can do that. It's how do we then take what they're giving us and make it not be a distraction, and we can mold to the thing that they want, but still do it at the base level.   {Music} 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 Kristen Mackey, director of Arizona Combined, and Natasha Jurdi, director of Minnesota Blinds. So how are things going in Minnesota, Natasha?   Natasha: I think the Minnesota word for today is going to be interesting. It's interesting. How about I leave it at that and I'll talk a little bit more as we dive into the questions.   Carol: Awesome. That is interesting. I want to know about that. How about you Kristen? How's it going in Arizona?   Kristen: You know what? I think I might steal Natasha's word. There's so much happening. We're trying to keep managing and keep abreast of all of the changes that come out on the news and everywhere, trying to keep centered and just keep doing what we do to get the work done. It's been a lot of fun.   Carol: Well, I couldn't think of two better people to bring on because this is super exciting. This is actually our 50th episode of The Manager Minute, and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate the milestone than by bringing back my two incredible guests from episode number one in May four years ago. It's so crazy. And back then I just laughed. We were diving into the world of post-pandemic VR. What's it gonna look like? How are we going to navigate all these changes? You guys were working on things like electronic signatures and how you equipped your staff, you know, to work remotely and all of that. So a lot has changed since those early days, and I'm excited to catch up with you both to see how far that you've all come. So just reflecting back to my time as a director, I remember many a sleepless night and Natasha can attest to that. I remember coming to a meeting like, I don't sleep at night and I keep a pad of paper by my bed. And it was so funny. I heard a director tell me they did the same thing. This was a month or so ago. They were like, you know, I keep this pad of paper by my bed because, you know, we were worried about so many things. There was WIOA implementation back then, and we had a less than stellar monitoring report and a financial picture that was super tough and it just wasn't very pretty. And so I kept that notepad because in the middle of the night was always my best thinking I'd wake up, I'm like, oh, I gotta write this down. And so I can remember in the morning. So I know now, four years later, from talking to you all last on the podcast, the pendulum has certainly swung in a new direction, and I'm really eager to see how things have evolved for the both of you. You know, like what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what lessons have you learned? So let's dive in. So, Natasha, will you kick us off and just give our listeners a little snapshot about yourself and the agency that you lead?   Natasha: Sure. So I have worked at State services for the blind since I was a baby intern 2008. I have been a deaf blind counselor, a supervisor, the director of our policy and program administration, and I became the director in August 2019. Our agency, we have about 140 staff across the state. We have a Voc Rehab program, an older blind program, our Randolph-sheppard program. But we also have a communication center where we do braille audio transcription and have a radio reading service. So we have a little bit of everything at State Services for the blind. We've grown a bit since 2019. Yeah, there's a lot of fun.   Carol: It is a lot of fun. Blind agencies are always near and dear to my heart. And since I came from Minnesota blind, Natasha knows that I just love that whole variety and all of the work. It's so fun. Kristen, how about you give our listeners a little snapshot about yourself and the agency that you lead?   Kristen: Sure. Similar to Natasha, I started as a VR counselor in the field transition. That was my first job in first entrance into VR. I moved into policy manager policy and then became the director of the Arizona Combined Unit in 2016. Arizona is combined and we are also under a safety net agency. All of the VR, IL OIB, BEP is in a division. That division is in a department. So our DSA is really rather large and we are kind of shuffled 3 or 4 deep down. So we have enterprise services, shared services, which makes things a little bit more difficult to manage than it was when I started the job, when we didn't have some of those other items. So it's been a learning lesson and trying to figure out how do we get done what we need to get done with all these people involved now.   Carol: Yeah, your structure makes me nuts. I'm just saying, full disclosure, but having gone on site with you and your team several times, I'm like, what? You have to always explain. We had DIRs and we have this other thing and all these different levels. I'm like, oh my Lord, I just don't even know how you do it. So I know there's been a lot of big changes since we spoke last, so I'm going to kick it to you first. Natasha, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in your program since we last spoke?   Natasha: I was actually talking to one of my outreach coordinators, Lisa Larges, and she's like, I think you brought some bad juju because the timing when I started and then everything that happened since I started has just been wild. So since we last met, I've experienced a global pandemic, a civil rights movement that essentially started literally down the street and around the corner from our headquarters. A roller coaster ride of funding at both the federal and state level. We went from having too much to now we don't have enough. We have a new federal administration with very different priorities than we have seen before. We have settled into this new hybrid work, which isn't new anymore. It's kind of our new normal. It's just been, I think you name it, it has changed or it's different or it feels different or it looks different. I think the biggest question right now that we're all faced with is, in light of all of these changes and challenges and opportunities, how do we maintain the integrity of the program, continue to provide high quality services that get people into competitive careers and retain the staff that we have worked so hard to get. While these past few years that's been a focus of a lot of our agencies is how do we recruit? And now with everything happening, is all of that recruitment efforts going to go to waste?   Carol: You know what's kind of funny when you talk about that? Because I look back to when I started at SSB, you know, and so in 2013 I become director. You go at the very end of the year, I was the interim and then made permanent in 14. And you just go, okay, I thought I brought bad juju with me to because WIOA went into play and then we had all this wacky stuff going on. We owed all this money for the case management system. So now, you know, just hearing you, it's like, well, maybe it's just the cycle of the program. Like there is no spot in time where everything is ever just copacetic and all smooth sailing. I think it just continues on.   Kristen: I think that I really feel like that's so good to remember because I think you can in this position, you can take a lot of things like, oh my gosh, am I not doing this right? What skills don't I have? How am I not doing this, that or the other. And it just is a constant. Like it just changes constant. And you have to constantly readjust your focus and your priorities and your strategy. And so it's helpful to remember that our environment is constantly changing at state and federal level. And we just have to be able to manage and navigate and not beat ourselves up over it.   Carol: Oh, that's a super good point. Natasha's going to laugh at this, but I'm actually going to hold up so our listeners won't see it. But I still have my Strengths Finder. So we used to always do strengths Finder at SSB. I still have my top five strengths. And staff used to ask me one of them is adaptability. So my fifth strength was adaptability because people would be like, how can you just roll with the flow? Like you need to just tell like Central Office, we're not going to do that thing that they want for the legislative session. And I'd be like, okay, we're going to pick our battles. That is not the battle we're going to pick right now. We're going to answer the question they need, because the sooner you do that, you get that off your back and then you get back to your business and do your things. And so for me, it's easier because in me is adaptability. I've always been able to kind of go with the flow, whether administration changes or, you know, any of that, where that is more difficult for other people when you want things to be very set and it's hard for you to pivot and make that move. So, Kristen, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in your program in the last four years?   Kristen: Wow. Well, as I indicated, the state was kind of in that move and shift to centralized services, you know, some of those shared service models. So, you know, it started with our training department and, you know, but we got to keep our policy and we got to keep our contracts and procurement. And the next thing you know, like air moves out and then, oh, we're going to move out all of your facilities management. And so slowly, piece by piece, the staff that you had working with. You have been now pulled to a different reporting structure and a different requirements to do their job. And so when, you know, we used to have a staff of like 500 people that were fully dedicated on board, directly connected with me, I had direct relationships with them. I was able to really work with them. And over the last five years, I've seen that direct connection and relationship with people fade out because those folks are no longer in those positions. They've graduated or moved to other things. They didn't stay within the agency. So, you know, within our VR program, IOB program, BEP, those program staff super dedicated and want to really fulfill the mission of the work in serving individuals with disabilities. And then we have all of our shared service team dedicated to their job to don't necessarily have the same focus on the mission and the outcome of serving individuals with disabilities. It's been very difficult to try to figure out how to play nice with them, because they got to do stuff for you, right? I need you to manage my budgets. I need you to manage my contract. But I also, you know, don't quite like the way you're doing it or you're not doing it fast enough or you're not following my vision for how that would work. So it's just been a real challenge to see how to grow and manage the different structures that are in play now.   Carol: I think you hit the nail on the head on that with that centralization, because it's happening across the country. I mean, we see it everywhere. Every director like just struggling as your people move out from under you, whether it's the IT, the HR, the whoever you had. And now they're centralized, which Congress allows. It was written in the rehab Act, like you can structure that way. But they lose that connection to the mission and what you're trying to do. So when you're doing that work sort of in isolation of what's the end game and how you impact, you know, the staff person having their computer so they can do the work with the customer. You don't see that urgency in it. So it's like, yeah, so we get to you in two weeks, you know, really need your computer or whatever. It's just hard. It makes the job so much harder. So I know not only those changes have happened, the financial landscape is shifting drastically for the VR program. How has this impacted your ability to serve individuals? And Kristen, I'll send it your way first.   Kristen: We've been fortunate in that Arizona with the formula grant. You know, we still receive a little increases every year. So the not getting the cost of living this last year was not as impactful as it had been to some other agencies. So I do, you know, knock on wood for that a bit. Now if that continues we're going to have another, you know, constantly evolving story there. We have had to take a look at for our cases. How do we spend more money faster. And that's been again the challenge of working with shared service opportunities is, well, they don't have capacity to put these contracts in place that I need in order to be able to spend the money that we have, right? We have been successful in keeping it in the VR bucket, but now we need to spend it on our consumers and our clients. But I need a contract to do that and don't have the resources or the capacity from that team to be able to put that out the door. So it's super challenging to know that you're sitting on money that you could spend and do a lot of good things with, but there's then that external factor of not having the capacity to put all of that together to get that money spent.   Carol: So you're in actually a pretty lucky position. You know, other people listening to this podcast are going, What? Kristen Mackey, you've got all this, you've got all this money. Because almost all the calls I get on a daily basis with my list of people all going on the order of selection, I keep a little sticky note, you know, and everybody calling and just frantic. They are literally like tapped out. There is no money, but yet you're trying to spend your money and you don't have the resources to really help you get some of the plans in place.   Kristen: It is challenging, but I feel fortunate that I'm challenged on that end of the spectrum versus the end, where there's not enough money or capacity or staff resources. One of the other pieces, too, is, you know, in this current landscape, budget wise, can't bring on as many people as we would like to, you know. Can't do all of the support services that we or support staff that we would like to. So downsizing your footprint, right? All of that, those are our major expenditures. And we're asked to shrink that. It creates a really kind of a nightmare for projection and and budgets all of that.   Carol: Oh, 100%. How about you, Natasha? How's the finances looking at SSB?   Natasha: It's getting tight. It's getting tight. We were on the other side of that a few years ago. We had more money than we could spend, and we used that as an opportunity to do things that we've always wanted to do or needed to do, and we never had the funding to do it, but we always did things that we could course correct quickly on them or aren't forever. So we didn't make a lot of permanent decisions with that money because the writing was on the wall. We knew that once the pandemic shifted, we were going to see an influx in applications. Inflation was already on the wall that prices were increasing. So we made some, I think, pretty strategic and smart decisions with the money we had and how we spent it. However, it's still tight because we are getting an increase in applications. The cost of services is increasing. We ended our order of selection September 2021. I have no desire to go back there for me. I don't even want to speak it out loud. I know it's an option. I know I may need to use it one day. I can't say never, but I don't think that is the best direction for us because people need our services just as much as before, if not more. And for individuals who are blind or low vision or deaf blind, there really aren't any comparable options available, at least in Minnesota. And we're here for a very specific reason. And so I have always said it's my responsibility to ensure that we can continue doing what we are here for. That may mean that services are going to take a little bit longer to get started. We are increasing our supervisory oversight. We have a ton of financial reports, which I'll talk about in another question that have helped us get ahead of sudden spikes that we're seeing so we can do those course corrections. This also may mean that we're not backfilling or we're freezing some of those positions for a little bit that aren't essential. I'm using the term we're going to freeze, flick or fill, and every position that's our litmus test will freeze it, meaning we don't need it right now. It's not essential for service delivery. We'll revisit this. Flick means you know what? This position really isn't serving its purpose anymore. Let's figure out a different way of doing the work or fill. And we've prioritized counselors and VR techs and anyone doing direct service provision. But it's also all of this is going to force us and continues to force us to find new ways of doing things, which I don't think is a bad thing. One of the goals I've put in place this year is that all of the extra noise. You know, that can happen when you're working in a state government agency. Things that pretty much distract you from what you're supposed to be doing. My goal is we don't do those things if it doesn't stem back to our mission and actually help people get jobs or live independently, we're not going to do it. And I told that to the commissioner's office. You can ask me all day long to do all of this extra stuff, but it's not serving a purpose for us. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it. And they've been okay with it so far.   Carol: That's awesome. Until you get a legislative request that they need you to answer in ten minutes and analyze.   Natasha: Yeah, I can't say no to those. Yeah, all these extra work groups and task forces and let's do this and that. We got other things we gotta do.   Carol: So what's the biggest thing, Natasha, that's keeping you up at night right now? Because I know there's always something, something is niggling somewhere. What would you say is the biggest thing keeping you up at night?   Natasha: Well, I have a few, but the biggest one is that. So we're not a combined agency. We have a separate general agency and that separate general agency is an incredibly tight budgetary situation. I would go so far as to say they're in a budgetary crisis, and because match maintenance of effort and carry forward determinations are at the state level, not agency, it is very possible that their constraints will impact our funding. And specifically I am very worried are Carryforward is in jeopardy. And we had a scare where we had a very high chance of losing all of our carryforward this last end of the federal fiscal year. Because of those budgetary constraints, the general agency is doing workforce reductions and doing layoffs, and they have the same type of staff classifications that we do. And we are a union state, which means bumping, which means my staff are in jeopardy. And so I'm up every night between 2 and 3 a.m. thinking of ways that we can help in any way possible. Our program income is significantly dropping. I think I've heard other states experience something similar. The inflation, the cost of services. We've had four and a half and 5.5% salary increases with no additional state appropriations. So all of these things together keep me up every single night trying to figure out how do we sustain.   Carol: Now they're going to keep me up at night, too, because of course, I worry about you all. And of course, I really worry about SSB. So I always hold that near and dear to my heart. But oh man, that is a lot. But I know you instituted some things, though, between you and the general agency, just to make sure you guys were communicating better about those financial reports and such, didn't you? Like, what did you do?   Natasha: We have an amazing relationship. We review our federal reports together. I sat closely with the VA's fiscal team, walking through what I know about the fiscal processes, the federal regulations. That's something that Carol taught me very well. I understand it quite well. So we worked hand in hand. We've been doing that since October.   Carol: That's good. Good stuff. How about you, Kristen? What's keeping you up at night?   Kristen: We had a recent monitoring that monitoring. We get through it, Right? And, you know, you haven't always have an inkling of things that need to be fixed and things that we should address, right? And sometimes those get shuffled because priority is whatever. So we had the monitoring very much highlighted certain areas that we need to address and take care of. And one of those was our fiscal management and continue as managed outside of my direct staff and even two and three layers above me. So it's one of those concerns of like, I wonder what's going to happen next. I never quite know what the fiscal situation is going to be. Emails flying around, you know, I'll get an email at the end of the day and it's I need more information. What is this about? How did you come to this conclusion? Who was involved in making this decision? It's kind of just a plethora of items that, you know, any given night, and mine is usually between 3 and 4. Like, oh, wake up and go like, oh, shoot, that sticky note fell off the roster somewhere. I need to go and send that email or this project. We started it, but now it's like kind of hanging, languishing. I need to poke somebody about getting that back on the roll again. I don't know that it's one specific thing, but it's just kind of just the size of the job is not a 40 hour a week job. It is a all encompassing. I dream about work. I it wakes me up at night, you know.   Carol: Well, my newest trick with not having my notepad beside my bed, but I actually been waking up more just because I've had so many more phone calls. Things have been really crazy lately with our fiscal team and people just reaching out. And so maybe end of the day or, you know, people's time change, you could get a call from Guam. You know, it's a way different time. So people are calling all the time. So now at night when I wake up, I text myself, you know, a note like, just so I remember, like remember to get back to so and so tomorrow. So now I just am picking up my phone. I don't have the pad there anymore, but I had two messages from last night for today that I didn't want to forget.   Kristen: I sent texts because I don't put my work phone by my side, but I have my personal. So my work cell phone is embedded in my personal and I just send text to myself.   Carol: Yeah, my work and my personal are all together, so it makes it a little challenging. So I know we're going through an administration change on the federal level right now. And a lot of state administration, you know, that changes every four years to with governors, sometimes you keep a governor twice in a row, but a lot of times not. And it will bring these shifts in priorities and just all of this change. How do you guys navigate and adapt to those changes, whether it's on the state level or federal level, when you're approaching your work? And I'm going to kick that to you, Natasha, first.   Natasha: I think the biggest thing, at least for us, has been a lot of communication and transparency, not only with our staff, but our customers, our community partners and stakeholders in the face of unknowns. People look to steadiness and information even if you don't have a lot to share. The absence of information often speaks very loudly, and people will fill in the blanks, sometimes not in a way you want them to. So we are communicating frequently, even if we don't have information. People look to me, am I panicked or am I calm? And know if I am panicked, it will not be good. People feed off of that and so I am always calm. I am always just. I can't guarantee or promise anything, but I can say we're in this together and I remind everyone why we're here. We have a mission. As Carol knows, the mission is on the wall. We look at it frequently and nothing has changed. No matter what happens federally or at the state level, that mission has not changed. We have proved that during a global pandemic. VR agencies are adaptable, creative for us in Minnesota, SSB was one of the first agencies, if not the first, allowed to go back into people's homes and provide services. That's because we know how to do things quickly and strategically to respond to whatever comes our way. We don't wait for people to tell us what to do or how to do it. We take charge and we lead the way. And I feel that is how VR is across the country. We tend to be leaders in faces of crisis and urgency. We tend to step up when others don't.   Carol: Yeah, good advice. That's all good advice. Kristen, how about you? Because you've had major shifts. I mean, you've already alluded to this, this whole like take away your people. And that's been all shifts in the structure within the state government and such. You know we've got the federal different priorities. So how do you navigate and adapt to those changes in your work and for yourself, even, like how are you taking care of yourself through all this.   Kristen: Being able to adapt the work that we do? Natasha says that we have a mission. We have a very clear outcome that we have whatever side, whoever's telling you what they want to do or how they want to do it. You need to be able to mold what that strategy looks like so you can speak to it. And I always talk about it. It's a spin. I don't like the terminology of spinning, you know, for the sake of trying to hoodwink anybody or not be transparent. But at the end of the day, we want job placements, we want employment, we want independence. So if somebody's saying increase your job placements, fine, that we can do that. It's how do we then take what they're giving us and make it not be a distraction and we can mold, you know, whatever we're measuring to the thing that they want, but still do what we are doing at the base level. And so I do feel like that's really part of our job as leaders is to and Natasha spoke to this earlier is take that noise and then see how we can like get it to stop with us and push it back in a way that still supports the work we're doing, whatever comes to us in terms of work group where you need to measure this, or we want some kind of change in X, Y, or Z. Okay. I can give you this back that will meet your needs. And it doesn't change or distract from what I'm doing in our department or in our programs. I think it's just being flexible in your thinking, being able to not have to have a certain way of approaching things, because you got to understand what that landscape is. You got to speak the words that they're speaking in order to get them to listen to you and kind of play with you so that we can all get to the same end goal.   Carol: One thing I've seen from you, Kristen, just working with you these past years in my TA capacity is I'm like, I love your persistence because you've had to navigate this really tough, internal, weird structure. It just is weird. And you are super persistent in messaging. Okay. Like you send a message to this person, oh, I'm not the person. Okay, then who is the person? Okay, I'm going to go to this person and you will not let it go till you find till the end the little trail of crumbs you get to and you're like, all right, I'm finally getting to the person because I have to get this thing answered. Some people just give up. They're like, oh, I don't know. And then staff ask and you're like, well, I don't know. We don't know who's doing what. Oh not you, you. You don't let that happen.   Kristen: That is one piece of advice I give to people when they come on. This is a state government, federal government, there are all sorts of red tape, barriers, hoops. Everything will get in your way if you let it. You're going to have to be persistent. Don't get jaded with it. Don't give up. Just know that you're going to have to be persistent with getting to the thing that you want to get done.   Carol: So switching a little bit. There's a lot of different structures in hiring VR agency leaders. I mean, you can be a political appointee. You can be more of a career professional where maybe you have some protections, maybe it's not a full blown union, but you got something. And we've had 14 new directors in the last less than ten months. Again, 14 new directors in VR. You know, people don't always realize like, how does that and each of you represents a different bucket here. How does that distinction, whether you're a political appointee or you have a little more protection influence your agency. Kind of how you approach the operations and your decision making. And I'll ask you first, Natasha.   Natasha: I am a career professional. I'm the highest level you can go before you start hitting the politically appointed positions. So that means I get the privilege of bringing some stability to the agency. Granted, that doesn't mean I can't get fired or laid off, but I am not politically appointed. So when the administration changes, I don't change with it. So that means staff can expect some consistency, and they don't have to wonder who's going to be coming in now to shake things up with their own ideas and views. They know what my priorities and goals are. They know how I work and they know what to expect. And so I have the luxury of time to create a culture that will sustain anything that comes our way. I have the time to develop that succession plan, offer professional development and mentorship opportunities. But when I was thinking of this, I can see the value of Having fresh new faces, coming in with different perspectives and experiences, and that they may have a better idea for how we do things. You know, we talk about people who have been in the position for 30, 40 years. Is there some value to having that new life coming into an agency? So I recognize that being a career professional could also be a limitation of mine, which means that I really need to surround myself with people who think differently from me, and I can't get stagnant.   Carol: Yeah, that's a really good point. Although there are very few 30 year or 40 year career leaders in the VR program anymore, I think we got Diane Delmas out in Vermont and Greg Trapp, those are the two I always think of. Otherwise, boy, people have been coming and going pretty fast, but that is good advice because you can get a little stuck. Now, Kristen, you're on the other end of the spectrum because you are a political appointee.   Kristen: I am not a political appointee, but I am an at will employee.   Carol: Oh, you're an at will though.   Kristen: Yeah,.   Carol: So it's very similar. So you're an at will person, does that impact you at all, like in decision making or as you go about doing your job?   Kristen: Well, certainly. You think, you know, is this decision going to make me the scapegoat for something that goes south, right? So, you know, it does impact my thinking. I don't let it impact whether it's right or wrong. To do that is just my base. You know, you just have to have that gut kind of commitment to. This is what I said. It's the truth. I don't have any qualms about how I do the work or the transparency that I have in the work that I do. So keeping it all above board, hope that that serves you in the end. Natasha, you had a very positive outlook on new people coming in. In my tenure, I've experienced a lot of changes in different people at different levels coming in and not having any idea about the rehabilitation programs that we run. And so it is a kind of a continuing education of individuals who are coming and going to have them see the value of the programs and the way that they need to operate.   Carol: Yeah, I appreciate that. So let's look a little bit at kind of leveraging both of you like this leveraging your data. And we're kind of skipping around a little bit here. But how do you guys like to leverage data to inform your financial and programmatic decisions? Now remember we've got a lot of new directors. We have listeners out there that are they don't know we I get this question all the time. You know, we talk about data informed decision making. People are like, yeah, we talk about it, but what does that mean? And how do you really do it in practicality? So Kristen, what would you say do you have like an example or how do you like to best leverage data when you're looking at making decisions, whether programmatically or financially?   Kristen: Just because I have a little bit more programmatic data that I have access to and ability to manipulate, we really look at that in terms of, you know, when we're setting our annual strategic goals, what is our five year goal? Take a look at what have the last three years look like. You know what the percentage of increase or decrease is? How are we adjusting those things? Use the data to understand where are the gaps, what's not working, and something we expected the needle to move and it didn't. What's not working in that process. And so you know, what lever do we pull to say this is going to be quote unquote a countermeasure for that thing, and then measure that data over the next three, six months. And if there's a change, then we can kind of understand then did that work or didn't it work? I think far too often in our workforce we say, well, this is a problem, but we don't really have any data around it. Should we gather a ton of data for the program to being able to use that data to help inform what decisions or what changes to processes should we be making and how should we make those. And then we can track it to see did it make a difference or what difference did it make? And is it something we should replicate? Is it something we should pull back. So I really like to use our data from our program, you know, participant program data to inform our strategy on what we're going to be doing in the next 1 to 5 years.   Carol: I know before you have presented at CSAVR and showed like you had some really cool ways you were able to look at data and you did a lot of it by your region so you could start narrowing in, because you can have this tendency to go, oh, you look at the data broadly and then you're like, oh, we must have this problem everywhere. Well, you realized you had regions, you know, in your state you're like, well, why am I like spanking everybody? What we write, we need to focus over here.   Kristen: Yeah, we have those metrics. And it's a metric per counselor, per rehab tech, per purchasing specialist. That unit of counselors rolls up to the supervisor. The supervisor rolls up to the program manager. So I can drill down from a state level perspective to a region perspective. Is it a supervisor office problem? Is it a person problem? And that has really helped us understand. Also, where do we need to direct the energies and efforts in terms of making changes.   Carol: Yeah, I really like that. That was really good stuff. How about you, Natasha? What are you doing with leveraging data? Because I know that's in your wheelhouse, too.   Natasha: We actually hired within, like, the last year or so, a data analyst who is skilled in data visualization and being able to take a bunch of raw numbers and tell a story. And we have been working with her to develop not only the programmatic data, which we now have a ton of that we can look at, but also our fiscal forecasting and what's happening on a budgetary level. It is because of those reports which I am getting weekly, monthly and quarterly reports, depending on the nature that we were able to suddenly see this huge, unexpected spike in case services authorizations. Within just a month of it happening, we were able to drill in. What exactly is going on? What are the bucket items that are the red flags we were able to look at by staff member by region, and we found that our interpreters have gone up over 300%, which then led us down to, okay, what's going on with that? What's the story behind the data? We also are every week meeting as a fiscal team. So the three fiscal staff that I have and myself, we meet every single week. I am intimately involved in our federal reporting. I look at every single report that they put together before we submit our 17. We walk through it. I know where we're at with match. I know where we're at with maintenance of effort. I know exactly where our 15% set aside is, and I can tell you that every single month how we're doing and what issues we're going to be facing. And that's because we have the data. If a director never looks at data and doesn't know what's happening in their programs, they're not going to be able to spot issues. You have to know whether you're doing good or you're not doing good. You need to be able to catch those things.   Carol: Yeah. And unfortunately, you have many colleagues across the country. And I will come in and they're being told by like the DSA fiscal staff, hey, don't worry about it. We got it. And so there have been directors of programs of 150 plus million dollars, have never seen a budget report. Zero idea. So literally anything they want to do. Hey, can we send a staff to training? They're asking this group of fiscal people sitting over here because they don't even know what's in the budget. It is the most insane thing I've ever seen. So you really hit the nail on the head. Like, you have to have access and it is required in the law, in the act, in setting up the agency org structure, you have the sole responsibility over the allocation and expenditure of your funds. And how can you have that sole responsibility and not have any data that goes with it? So I preach. Natasha: I will say, data is if you have a legislative ask and you are requesting more funding, the stories are important, but they also want to see the data behind it.   Carol: 100%. And it can't be data that's changing by the day. Oops, we forgot this because I've seen people get burned on that as well. And then the legislators are going, okay, well, this data now is suspect, and I think they need a legislative audit report and review because what are they doing over there?   Kristen: From a data reporting perspective, like having historical data to the same reports they pull, they cannot keep changing the reports that you're changing the methodology of that. That was a lesson learned for us is we had to understand what data we were pulling, how were we calculating the numbers we were calculating. And now we have data since 2018, and we can tell when we've made any changes. And so then we can see what are our trends. What does that look like. How can we use that to help us predict in the future. So that was a lesson learned for me. We came in and it wasn't much in terms of data. We built some reports and then it was like, oh, but now we need to kind of be able to track, oh, well, this thing happened. And that's why maybe that spiked or dipped or we did this thing and here's the change we saw. So we were able to speak to that year over year as well.   Carol: Well super cool. So what advice would you guys have for other leaders out there? All the lessons you all have learned. We can try to read the tea leaves, like where is VR heading in the next few years? But what do you all think? Like what do you think where's VR going? And what advice would you have for other leaders? And Kristen, I'll go to you.   Kristen: I just think remain committed to the mission and the purpose of the programs that we have. we're here to serve individuals with disabilities. We'd keep that at the forefront. And, you know, I heard Natasha say to you, the mission is on the wall, right? We all have our missions. We all have our visions. Just don't let that get buried in all of the craziness that is happening and continue to be persistent. Carol mentioned the persistence. I think that is key. You don't let it drag you down. Don't let it burn you out. Just be persistent and know that all of the work that you're doing is for a good reason, good outcomes.   Carol: Good stuff. Natasha, I'm going to give you the last word.   Natasha: Don't get comfortable with how things are going right now. Speaking to what Kristen said earlier? Things will change, and probably for reasons completely outside of your control. And also remember that easy decisions aren't always the best decisions, and the best decisions aren't always the popular ones.   Carol: Well said. Very true. Well, I appreciate you both. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to see what you all have done. You're two of my favorite directors. Don't tell the, don't tell the other directors that are listening.   Natasha: Yeah, cut that out, Jeff. Don't have that in there.   Carol: Thanks for joining me today. Sure appreciate it.   Kristen: Thank you.   Natasha: Bye.   {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!

Nebraska VR is on a mission to elevate careers and empower businesses through its innovative Disability Innovation Fund Career Pathways Advancement Project (CPAP 2.0). In this episode, Carol Pankow sits down with Cathy Callaway, Nebraska VR's Assistant Director, to discuss how the program helps individuals with disabilities advance in high-demand fields like STEM and skilled trades. With over 130 business partners signed on, the initiative is breaking barriers, fostering workforce development, and proving that growth doesn't stop at job placement—it's about career progression. Tune in to hear how Nebraska VR is redefining success through strategic partnerships and a dual-customer approach!   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Carol: Listeners, we would like to dedicate this podcast to Mary Eunice Neary. As the different CPAP 2.0 director. Mary played a vital role in this work, but was unable to join us for the recording. In her absence, Cathy Callaway, the interim director, stepped in for the discussion. Sadly, Mary has since passed away, but her impact on Nebraska VR will always be remembered.   {Music} Cathy: We look to find those clients that were closed previously in VR and work with them to advance them in their careers, and then in conjunction, we work with businesses to create a business model that we can help businesses work to advance people in their business so that it assists them in their workforce as well. The number of business partners we had a goal in the grant of signing 100, and we're at 130 plus with still a year and a half on the grant to go.   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 Cathy Callaway, Nebraska VR assistant director and interim director of the DIF CPAP 2.0 project. So, Cathy, how are things going in Nebraska?   Cathy: Cold right now? Other than that? Very well, though. Very well with the grant.   Carol: Excellent. No, it is cold here today, too, in Minnesota. I tell you, we go from 54 degrees down to minus eight. It has been a lot. So for our listeners, three years ago, Nebraska VR received a Disability Innovation Fund grant for the Career Advancement Project, and the Rehab Services Administration funded this initiative and is focused on helping people with disabilities who are eligible for VR services, including those who are previously served and have returned to the program, advance in their careers, and the goal is to help individuals move into high demand, high quality fields like science, technology, engineering and math. Those Stem kind of professions, including computer science, and the initiative also supports entry into career pathways and key industries through programs like pre-apprenticeship, registered apprenticeships and industry recognized apprenticeship programs. And the efforts really designed to help people achieve better jobs with competitive wages, become more financially independent and reduce their reliance on public benefits or state and local support, and promotes independence and full inclusion in their communities. Oh my gosh, that's a bunch. So I know Nebraska has been at this for a bit, so let's dig in and find out what's going on. So Cathy, help our listeners out. Let's start by getting to know you a bit. What's your role and how did you get into VR?   Cathy: That's a long story actually. As you mentioned, I'm currently in the assistant director role. I started when the 1992, amendments to the Rehabilitation Act were implemented. In those amendments, the State Rehabilitation Council was created, and I was hired clear back then to work with the State Rehab Council. And then I just kept working with VR. I actually have a business degree, and I kind of started working in the financial area and really was working in the fiscal area when the push to integrate data and program was kind of a thing. And so I started working on integration of fiscal and program and data and all of that. So I worked very closely in both of those areas and kind of just got to know the program side and the fiscal side and the data side, and moved from then the fiscal arena into the program director for quality assurance for a few years. And after that, just two years ago became the assistant director. So kind of had a little bit of a role in everything.   Carol: Well, excellent. You're a person that takes after me in my heart with having the fiscal program combined. I might have to tap you for some other things about that, because we often talk in our work about combining fiscal with program and data, and there aren't a lot of places that have people who've done all of that. So good to know. Thanks for that fun fact.   Cathy: You're welcome.   Carol: So I hear you had a pretty unique situation in Nebraska that made you the perfect fit to apply for this grant. Can you share a little bit about what that was?   Cathy: Sure. We applied for the grant in 2016 to 2021, and it was our what we call Career Pathways Advancement Project CPAP 1.0, and it focused specifically on promoting, upskilling and backfilling incumbent workers with disabilities. So that project ended in 2021. And at that time then another DIF project was made available. So we applied and expanded that. We are still looking to upskill and advance workers, but we also then included another component that was related to working with businesses directly. So this grant was kind of a add on to the CPAP 1.0. We actually call this one CPAP 2.0. Yeah it's the similar but it expands into working with the businesses as well.   Carol: Well and just for folks, so they know what is CPAP. Can you just tell them...   Cathy: Yes, it's career pathways advancement project.   Carol: Perfect.   Cathy: Advancing clients in those career pathways that you mentioned in those STEM areas.   Carol: Excellent, thank you. I just know VR is notorious for our acronyms. And then some new people are in there like, I don't know what you're talking about. So give us the big picture. What are you really hoping to accomplish with this project?   Cathy: We're hoping to develop a business model under this grant that can be sustainable. And once the grant ends with VR and we look to find those clients that were closed previously in VR and work with them to advance them in their careers. And then in addition to that advancement, whether that's in a new career pathway or in the jobs they're already in, we hope to increase their wages, benefits, maybe their hours, and to help improve their economic self-sufficiency. And then in conjunction, we work with businesses, as I mentioned, to create a business model that we can help businesses work to advance people in their business so that it assists them in their workforce as well.   Carol: I love that you're really living into WIOA, you know, the whole dual customer approach.   Cathy: Yep.   Carol: Now, I know early on when you were introducing this idea to clients, people were thinking you guys were scammers. What was going on with that?   Cathy: They were we started out thinking, well, we'll just call back these clients that we closed and talk to them about advancing. And because of the world today, many of them. Yeah. Thought we were scammers and there's no way somebody's going to pay for my training or me to go back to college and advance. So we really had to kind of refine our outreach efforts. We actually moved to sending them a letter with the name of the counselor that they previously worked with and some more about. Remember when you worked with VR and we assisted you. And so we send out those letters first and provide some information about the grant. And then we follow up about a week after the letter goes out with a phone call from someone. So that's really made a difference. They kind of are like, oh yeah, I worked with VR before, I know who you are. And I remember that counselor. So that's made a difference for us in terms of outreach.   Carol: Well, good. And hopefully your phone isn't showing up as, um, scam possible scam call.   Cathy: Exactly.   Carol: So what have been some of your biggest challenges you faced while getting this project off the ground?   Cathy: Yeah, I would say probably some of the things we wrote into the grant, maybe we would do a little bit different. We had written into the grant that we would like to sign businesses up, I guess, to make referrals to us. And we've had some resistance in terms of the signing of it isn't obligating them to anything, but they kind of some businesses are reluctant to sign anything. And so we've had some resistance that way. Although we've been able to sign over 130 business plans with businesses to offer referrals to the program. So we would probably do that a little bit different. That's been a challenge, I think training. We hired new staff for the grant and then that, of course, learning the VR process and all that goes with it really took a significant amount of time. So we got behind in serving clients and then retaining, of course, with a grant, your staff realize that it's a grant and it will end. And so some staff that worked on the grant have now taken permanent positions with VR. And so we're kind of a work in progress with the keeping the staffing. And then just as I said, building the trust with clients as we reach out to them. And we've adjusted, as I mentioned earlier, but kind of making sure that adjusting our marketing outreach so they realize we're not a scam.   Carol: Well, I know often these projects, you know, you're projecting ahead and you're thinking, okay, I want to do these great things and you create all this in your mind. But typically all of the DIF grants end up evolving in some way a bit from the original plan. And you alluded to this a bit, but I know you guys have had to pivot. And so what have been those ways in which you've pivoted, maybe from what your original intent was in the grant?   Cathy: Yeah, we've pivoted a little bit. The grant, we thought we would get a lot of clients that wanted short term training, and a lot of them want to get advanced degrees or get a degree. And those have been taken much longer time than we thought. So there's been just some different thinking about clients that want the more long term degrees or advancing in degrees. We've had to change our marketing materials. We kind of had just generic flyers, and now we've moved to developing specific marketing materials for the businesses that we're going into, which has really helped with their employees. Instead of just seeing this generic flyer, they can say, oh, the company I'm working for, there's opportunities in these areas and I can advance. And it's been very specific to the business, which I think has created some buy in with the employees. I would say we hired a Career Pathways recruiter specifically to work with individuals with more significant disabilities, specifically developmental disabilities, just because that's a whole different group to work with. And so we've kind of hired an expert in that area, which has helped. And then I would say changing because Nebraska is such a rural state, we had identified originally career pathway recruiters to work with specific areas of the state, and we've had to kind of pivot and say, okay, you can work with anybody across the state given Zoom and Adobe Sign and all those things, because it's allowed us then to serve more clients statewide, rather than limiting it to just areas where we have the career pathways recruiters.   Carol: Yeah, that really has been amazing, especially for states that have more rural sections. You do like we do in Minnesota as well, you know, and the whole ability to serve people remotely is amazing or virtually, you know, you can get at them. I think that's great. I know in your marketing efforts have been super impressive. And like, how are you making that happen? Do you have an in-house person, or are you contracting to make those marketing efforts happen? How are you making that work?   Cathy: We do have an in-house marketing team and they're amazing. They're super flexible. They're willing to work with us, so they work to provide whatever materials we need, as I mentioned, able to work in partnership with businesses to specifically customize those marketing materials for the business. And then the other marketing piece we've really done that's kind of new is what we call lunch and learns. And we go into businesses and we kind of do a presentation over like the lunch hour, or sometimes early in the morning at the beginning of a shift. And we really target the HR managers and the team leaders and the people that can get the word out to their employees about our services and about the grant. So those lunch and learns have been pretty well attended, and we're able to really get the word out to a lot of people in the businesses for them to then refer their employees back to us.   Carol: Yeah, that's excellent. So looking back so far, what accomplishments are you most proud of?   Cathy: I think the number of business partners that we've been able to reach out to and connect with and sign those individualized business plans, we had a goal in the grant of signing 100, and we're at 130 plus with still a year and a half on the grant to go. So just getting that word out. You know, the nice thing about doing that, getting in those businesses is we're not only mentioning the grant, but we're also able to mention Nebraska VR. And if you, you know, can get people just the word out about Nebraska VR, even beyond the grant has really been a benefit. We've had several clients that I say we are really proud to say have gotten advanced degrees. It's not just certifications, but they've been able to go on and get advanced degrees through this program, and then just being able to help contact those clients that we previously served and were able to get a job, and just letting them know you can do more, you can advance and we can help you with that. So I think just all of the clients that we've been able to reach out to and really help them become more economically self-sufficient.   Carol: That's excellent. I know that's a big foundational piece within VR. So it's fun to see it actually happen. So for those folks out there that are thinking about applying for a grant in the future, and hard to say what the future holds, what advice would you give them? Because I know often people are like, oh, I don't know. Or, you know, is it too much of a pain in the butt, you know, to try to do all of this stuff? What kind of advice do you have for them?   Cathy: I would just say, take the plunge and do it. It's given us an opportunity to really think outside the lines, a little bit of what we could do in Nebraska VR, but it's also gives us the opportunity to make those mistakes and adjust and pivot and evolve. So the hope would be, you know, by the time this grant is over, we have created that model that is going to be sustainable under VR, and we have just learned so much more about our dual customer approach, working with the businesses as well as with the clients. So I would suggest if anybody is looking at doing that, to just do it and give yourself the chance to develop things outside of what you think is currently possible.   Carol: I like that. That's great advice. You know, with the dual customer and this focus on business. Are there particular sectors you're seeing that are responding, you know, to this program. Are there certain sectors. You know every state has a different kind of flow to it. So I wondered if there were specifics there in Nebraska.   Cathy: Yeah, we've had a pretty big response in the healthcare industry. We actually just signed a business here. Vetter. And I think they have over 30 locations across the state, so we're going to be working with them. We've had a lot of success with the CDL, the transportation and distribution and logistics area. Those have probably been our two biggest focuses or the ones where we've had the most interest. And then probably we've had some in the manufacturing area as well. But specifically we have a lot of businesses with the CDLs that is popular.   Carol: Interesting. That's very cool. I know Minnesota was doing something and they also were doing it in the transportation area. I guess I hadn't realized how big that is and the need right now.   Cathy: It is, yes.   Carol: So where can our listeners go to learn more about your project? Do you have a project website?   Cathy: We do. It's VR.Nebraska.gov/pathways. And there's contact information on there regarding the Career Pathways Advancement Project. There's some success story videos out there and just a lot of information about our project and our grant.   Carol: Excellent. And then are people able to if they go on the website, are they able to like get at if they had any other questions or something they could get one of you?   Cathy: Yep, there's contact information on there as well for anyone to reach out with. Any questions.   Carol: Yeah, it's been really fun. As of late, I've been hearing from a lot of folks across the country and they said, we sure like hearing these stories because they're trying to plant the seeds and get ideas. And are there things that they could even try in their state right now...   Cathy: Absolutely.   Carol: Different way. Yeah. That's great. So any last parting thoughts for our listeners?   Cathy: No, I just appreciate the opportunity to share information about our project and encourage anyone interested to go to our website and ask any questions, if they have any.   Carol: Well, thanks for coming on today. I really appreciate it. We don't hear much from Nebraska, so I'm like, I have to get at you guys and see what's going on. I look forward to talking to you again when you get kind of in that last year and see where you're standing with all the data and what's happening. So thanks much, Kathy. Appreciate it.   Cathy: Thanks, Carol. Good to see you.   {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!  

Join host Carol Pankow as she dives into the complexities of Order of Selection (OOS) in vocational rehabilitation with two expert guests: Theresa Kolezar, Director of Indiana Combined, and Chris Pope, Director of the State Monitoring and Program Improvement Division at RSA. In this episode, they break down: ·      Why agencies implement OOS due to financial and staffing constraints ·      Key regulatory requirements and compliance considerations ·      Strategies for managing and eventually lifting OOS ·      Indiana VR's data-driven approach to decision-making and communication ·      RSA's insights on fiscal forecasting and policy compliance If you're in the VR field, you won't want to miss this insightful conversation on planning, stakeholder engagement, and using data to overcome challenges.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Chris: As you know, we have 78 VR agencies and only eight of them have a closed priority category, and only one of those eight have all priority categories closed.   Carol: So by going back and saying hey you gotta look at this other side of the house and really analyze what's happening. It will give you the full picture, than what is playing into what's happening over here on the fiscal side of the house.   Theresa: For the majority of folks. They were maybe even having somewhat of a positive impact because we were able to get them processed, get them in sooner. And you know, there's obvious benefits that go along with lower case load sizes.   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 Theresa Kolezar, director of Indiana Combined. And Chris Pope, director of the State Monitoring and Program Improvement division at the Rehabilitation Services Administration. So, Theresa, how are things going with you in Indiana?   Theresa: Oh, we're doing well. Thanks. So happy to be here.   Carol: Thanks for being here. And, Chris, how are things going for you in D.C.?   Chris: Things are cold in D.C. at the moment, Carol, but we're hanging in there.   Carol: Yeah, not as cold as Minnesota.   Chris: I knew you were going to say that.   Carol: Yeah. I'm like, wow, we're 14 below people. Well, there has been a lot happening with the VR program over the past decade, and we certainly have had our ebbs and flows with funding and staffing. And as of late, the fiscal pendulum has been swinging, VR programs have been experiencing a tightening of the belt, so to speak, and discussions about the order of selection have been ramping up. And so for our listeners, order of selection is a process required under the VR regulations. When a VR agency does not have enough resources, whether it's funding staff or both, to serve all eligible individuals, and it's designed to prioritize services for those with the most significant needs. But over the years, order of selection really has sparked a lot of tension. And for some it's seen as just another layer of government red tape adding to the stigma around bureaucracy. Others argue that it undermines the very spirit of the rehab act by limiting access to services instead of promoting inclusion. Critics point out that it can widen service gaps. It leaves individuals with moderate disabilities without support, even though they still face serious barriers to employment.   And for our counselors, order of selection can bring its own challenges, including the emotional burden of explaining to clients why they can't receive immediate services. And for clients, being placed on a waitlist can feel disheartening and frustrating. And at the same time, agencies are grappling with a harsh reality. There's limited resources. Tough decisions have to be made. So how do we balance fairness, inclusion and the constraints of funding? And that is the question at the heart of today's conversation on order of Selection. So, Theresa, I've been a fan of yours for a long time. I think you bring a really thoughtful approach to almost every difficult situation in VR, and you been around a while, so I definitely want to pick your brain about your thoughts and approach on the topic. And Chris, I'm really count on you to bring the facts from an RSA perspective on what needs to happen with the Order of Selection. So let's dig in. So, Theresa, can you just tell us to start out with a little bit about yourself and your journey into VR?   Theresa: Sure. I probably have the least interesting journey, but maybe the most classic. I went from straight from undergrad to graduate school to get my masters in rehabilitation, got my CRC that same summer, and I entered the rehab field initially with a nonprofit, CRP, before coming to Indiana VR in 2004. So I've been with the VR program for a little over 20 years. Made my journey starting from a VR counselor and now director with, as you can imagine, a lot of other roles along the way. And I think I'm a fairly tenured VR director with almost nine years under my belt in this role.   Carol: Yeah, definitely you would be. Because I remember being told when I left, I had six years, you know, and people were telling me usually the lifespan of a VR director is about five years because the job is tough. So you're definitely one of our longer term folks. So, Chris, how about you? How did you venture into the VR world?   Chris: Thanks, Carol. Well, similar to Theresa, my graduate degree in rehab counseling, I became a CRC and began my career as a VR counselor with the State of New York in the general agency at the time, for about four years. And I've been with RSA now for a lucky 13. Just had my 13th anniversary. And in that time have served in a variety of roles. So, yeah, really happy to be here and now leading the division that's responsible for all of our formula grant.   Carol: Yeah, it's super cool. It's been fun to watch your career, Chris, as  you have grown. I remember one of the very first conferences you presented at, and I believe you were still, you know, more kind of on the staff level. And I thought, who's this guy? You were up there, you just had such a great presence about you. And I'm like, he's going somewhere. And you have, it's come true.   Chris: Thanks, Carol.   Carol: So let's talk about the realities of Order of Selection. It's not something that can be implemented at the snap of a finger. And so I want to start with you. What are those factors via our leaders need to take into account.   Theresa: Yeah. You know it's hard I feel like I sort of came to terms with it because it's it didn't feel so much like something we had to choose or decide upon, but more something we had to do. if your circumstances are such that you don't have the resources to serve everyone. So in Indiana, we enter the order in 2017, and I believe that was the first time in our history, as far as I know, it came after years of trying other things, you know, implementing strategies to improve our capacity, stretch our resources. And just a few examples. Implementing efficiencies, changing to our staffing structure, changing our minimum VRC qualifications to a bachelor's degree, and a whole lot more. And those strategies were definitely focused for us at that time around staffing resources. But there were also some fiscal unknowns or concerns because right around that time, the 15 earmark requirement was also, you know, kind of hitting us. And we were trying to figure out how to shift those resources. So the strategies we did pre they were definitely helpful. They were effective, but we still were left with a deficit. You know, we still had high caseload sizes. It was taking way too long for new referrals to get an intake appointment. Our VRC turnover rate was much higher than is optimal. Ultimately led us to identify that we were not able to provide the full range of ER services to everyone who was eligible, and therefore we needed to enter the Order of Selection.   So we started planning for that probably around nine months prior to. The implementation and when I was making my talking points, there's a lot that you have to do, right, to prepare for Order of selection. So discussion with our internal leadership, our VR council, our stakeholders, our staff conversation with RSA, drafting that state plan amendment, getting that out for public comment. We took a couple extra steps and met with our other workforce partners because we thought, hey, they may get more referrals here. We may want to tell them why and what's going on over here and what this means. And then we of course, you have to develop written procedures, adapt your case management system. And then we also wanted to be really careful with our messaging to applicants. So we drafted some materials that we wanted our intake counselors to share and get that consistent message out there and, of course, training our counselors. So I think the nine month runway was probably a fast track Approach, thinking about all those steps. You want to do it right? You want to be planful. But at the same time, once you identify that this is a need, you usually need it to happen pretty quickly.   Carol: Absolutely. I know for me, when I was a new director in Minnesota, I actually faced this. And Minnesota Blind had not been on an order for many, many, many, many, many, many years. And being a little naive, you know, coming into VR going, we have this situation, you know, I'm thinking this all can happen super fast. It does not. But I found for me, really getting grounded in understanding our data was so important because I see these things all going on. But you had to put all the pieces together, get your fiscal side of the house and what's going on and how you're making expenditures and investments in different things and what's happening with that. But what also is happening programmatically, the people that are coming in and the characteristics of your caseload and all those different things, you had to put it all together to really get the complete picture. And for me, I know I had to do that rather quickly. So it becomes super important to have people around you. If you are not that person you know, that can pull all that data and present it in a way so you can really see the picture of what is happening and kind of unfolding in the state.   I think it just so foundationally because I know I have this little list at my desk of people that have called me looking at needing to go on order selection or thinking they're going to need to. And we have over a dozen states that have outreached in the last two months. And part of my advice to them has been back, you know, you have to get grounded to and what was your data telling you? Because you can't just base this all in sort of an assumption or something. You've got to be grounded. So I always think that that's a really important piece to start with. Now, Chris, I know from a regulatory perspective there are items that are absolutely critical for VR to have in place when you were considering Order Selection. Can you help us with that? Because I want to make sure people aren't making a mistake, you know, as they're kind of thinking through the process.   Chris: Definitely. There are several regulatory requirements, and before we address those, I thought I could provide just a little bit of context at the moment of where we're at with Order selection across the country. As you know, we have 78 VR agencies and only eight of them have a closed priority category, and only one of those eight have all priority categories closed. So this is significant progress over the past several years, I'd say since the passage of WIOA in 2014, in the past, as many as a fourth of our VR agencies had at least one closed priority category. And I can say that when RSA meets with congressional committees and other stakeholders, they often ask us for a status check on Order of Selection, and I can tell you that they respond really positively when we share that very few VR agencies are unable to serve all eligible individuals. Further, since RSA and our federal partners approved, the latest state plan would be the 2024 to 2027 state plans, RSA has approved one VR agency's new order of selection, and at the moment, we have 2 to 3 VR agencies that have submitted paperwork and are pending implementation.   Carol: You might have a few more. Chris now coming because I have I have my list of people calling. I mean really we do have 12 now on the list, so I expect maybe some more outreach.   Chris: Yep. So in terms of all of those regulatory requirements, like you said, VR agencies need to have a few things in place as they consider implementation. These include a comprehensive fiscal forecast, cost containment policies if necessary, and assessment of staff resources. And as Theresa talked about, consultation with the State Rehabilitation Council, so that fiscal forecast needs to address six data points. Average case costs, the projected number of new IPEs, the current number of IPEs, the projected number of applicants and the cost of any assessment services that might be needed to determine them eligible for the program. Projected increase or decrease in the cost of providing VR services to these groups of people, and projected income, or in any other budget resources that may become available. The fiscal forecast produces that data, Carol, that you were talking about, that demonstrates whether or not the VR agency can do the following four things. Whether the agency can continue to provide services to all individuals currently receiving services under their plans. Provide assessment services to all those individuals expected to apply to the program over the next fiscal year. Provide services to all individuals who are expected to be determined eligible in the next fiscal year. And finally, that fiscal forecast needs to include data that demonstrates that the VR program will continue to meet all of the various program requirements, like that 15% reserve requirement that Theresa discussed. So in terms of creating an Order of Selection policy, there are about five things that the VR agency needs to include in that actual policy.   First is it's priority categories, including the regulatory definition of what significant disability means, how the VR agency will determine which individuals have the most significant disabilities. And that definition must build on that regulatory definition of significant disability. The policy needs to address whether the agency has elected to serve individuals outside of the order of selection, who may require specific services or equipment to maintain their job or to keep employment, was one of those new requirements. The policy must indicate how the VR program will provide information and referral services to individuals who may be placed on a waiting list. And finally, the policy needs to describe how the agency will carry out the order, how it will be implemented so, in effect, how the waitlist will be managed and how the VR agency will decide when to open all of those other priority categories. I was happy that Theresa also mentioned that VR agencies need to ensure that their case management system can fulfill the administration of the order. And we like to see in the policy some discussion of what tracking mechanisms VR agencies will use to account for such things as cost, staff time and caseload sizes. So in other words, sort of that real time data analysis that That informs whether the order continues to be necessary or whether it can be lifted.   Carol: Awesome. I'm sure people are probably, as they're listening, taking copious notes. So folks need to know that there also is always a transcript that goes along with the podcast. So if your wrist just broke, you will be able to just take a look at the notes and get all those things. That is super helpful. Chris, I wanted to ask as a follow up, so that people that have outreached so far, those states that have outreached are you seeing? Is it a fiscally related issue? Is it a staffing? You know how sometimes the states are really struggling with having appropriate staffing? I know it's only been a few, but do you know kind of what that looks like if it's based on more of the fiscal end of things, or is it they don't have capacity because they don't have any staff?   Chris: It's been a combination of all of those things, Carol. So we're seeing agencies with limited fiscal resources, whether that be state appropriated funds, their inability to kind of fully leverage the federal award. It may be retention and recruitment of VR counselors. It could also be sort of capacity of providers, whether those are community rehab providers or contractors who provide VR services. And oftentimes it's other things that kind of just contribute to those as well. And what we're hoping to see in those justifications that VR agencies submit is a real data informed discussion of those factors, like real time data in terms of both fiscal data and performance data. So the money and the people.   Carol: Yeah, I can't underscore that enough, because I know the folks that have reached out to us a lot of times they tend to talk about, you know, their hair is on fire about this thing. And then I'm always bringing  back. So if they're all focused just on the fiscal. But I said, what's happening in your program, what's going on? And that has been very interesting as people are talking about. And then they call us back. They go, you know, the characteristics of the individuals coming in the case characteristics, kind of pre-COVID to now is different. And so we're finding clientele coming in has many more needs, and so the cost of the case are so much greater. And they hadn't realized it until they went back in. They just knew something was going on with the people, but they didn't understand what. So by going back and saying, hey, you got to look at this other side of the house and really analyze what's happening. It will give you the full picture. And then what is playing into what's happening over here on the fiscal side of the house. So I think for, you know, we've all said it, the data is super important. I just want to underscore that. So Theresa, tell us a little bit about your journey with Order Selection in Indiana and your current picture what's happening?   Theresa: I echo the data conversation, that's critical, and you really have to justify the need for the order. So we did all of that really before we even probably got to that, that nine month runway that I spoke of. But from there, our next step was to get our internal leadership approval. And there were hesitancies, which is understandable. We really had to work to articulate and help them understand the challenges that we were facing. Again, justifying using that data that we were not able to provide the full range of services to everyone, while also meeting the range of other expectations, you know, timeliness, getting people in the door in a reasonable period of time. And we really had to work to articulate the negative impact of having these ongoing high caseload sizes and the cycle that we were in with staff turnover. It just felt like we were getting deeper and deeper into right into a hole and further and further away from optimal capacity. So ultimately, we presented the Order of Selection as one something that is federally required for our agencies, you know, not able to provide that full range of services. And then two, a lever of sorts that would enable us to maybe pause or slow some of that growth in participants, giving us the space to get out of that cycle to rebuild our foundation, which for us primarily at that time, was fixing our long standing staffing capacity challenges. But for those experiencing fiscal deficits, of course, that focus would look very different. Once we got leadership support, we moved as quickly as humanly possible. And now on the other side of it. I'm thrilled to share that we have now opened all of our priority categories. We released the last 200 or so from our waitlist just this past October, so we were in and out of the order in about a seven year period in Indiana.   Carol: I love that. I like that you said you want to project, you know, the ways to get kind of out of the order to open the categories and do that. I know for states that have contacted us, that's one of the pieces of advice I've been giving. I'm like, okay, you're thinking about the right now, but you also have to think about the future because that is everyone's biggest worry. You're going to do this thing and it's never going to go away. People are going to be in a waitlist forever. You're never putting strategies in place to come out on the other side of that. And I know for me in Minnesota, that was very much part of what I had to do. And given the circumstances we had at that time, I had this plan and I said, if you all can hang with me, I believe by about 2018 or so, end of 17-18, we're going to be on the other side of this, which actually ended up playing out and coming true. And so you've got to not only like react to your current situation, but you want to be thinking thoughtfully about what are those things that you can put in play so that you aren't just going to stay there? This is the lever we're pulling and we're going to be here forever. So I really like that you said that. I know, Theresa, when you and I talked earlier, Order selection can often be treated like a bad word in the VR world, and it is loaded with a lot of stigma and frustration. But at its core, you know, when you and I were chatting and, you know, you just boil it down, it really is a mechanism. It's a tool required by law to prioritize services when resources are limited. And so if we can't do everything for everyone, it's a system that outlines how to make those tough decisions. What are your thoughts about Order of Selection and how we can maybe shift the conversation to reduce the stigma and see it for what it is? It can be this necessary lever to balance fairness amongst those limited resources.   Theresa: Yeah, that's probably one of the trickiest parts in communication. Communication, right. Communication. Communicating with stakeholders about Order Selection will probably always be challenging. It's a challenging thing, but I think there's a couple of things that were really helpful. And one is sharing a game plan to address the underlying resource challenges. Is a helpful approach, right. Making sure that there's game plan. This isn't the end result, right? This is going to enable us to make this shift and again kind of get out of the cycle. We also found it helpful to share the federal requirements. So just very factually, if you can't serve all you have to prioritize certain populations first. And the Order of Selection is the prescribed process for complying with that. And I think it's a good process for doing that. It's effective at making sure the prioritization happens. Additionally, we also share data throughout our process on the percent of eligible individuals who were impacted. And what that showed is that the majority of individuals were actually not impacted. You know, relatively speaking, a pretty small percent of folks ultimately went on a wait list. And, you know, you could even argue, and I think we did a couple of times that for the majority of folks, they were maybe even having somewhat of a positive impact because we were able to get them processed, get them in sooner.   And, you know, there's obvious benefits that go along with lower case load sizes. So we often relay that only about 10% of eligible individuals were going on a wait list, and 90% were meeting that criteria for those with a most significant disability, which was our open category for a good bit of our seven years. I will say people were a little wary of that stat. They kind of had a hard time believing that, and I think that it's because that term MSD or most significant disabilities, it definitely has meaning. But also we found it could be a little bit misleading. You know, people thought, oh, to be MSD, someone must look like this, right? And we actually found that those meeting that MSD criteria were really a more inclusive group than maybe that term people would perceive that term to imply. And that was just another educational opportunity for our stakeholders and our referral sources.   Carol: I like that you talked about the communication piece around all this, because that really is important. It's almost as important as all of the plans you're putting in place. All the things that Chris told us about that need to go in developing that communication plan, that goes along with how you discuss this out amongst all the stakeholders and such, is super important. I know, Chris, do you have any insights on this part, on the stigma or anything you wanted to share?   Chris: I guess I just had a couple thoughts on like the element of fairness that you talked about in dealing with fairness and at the same time limited resources. So I guess I would just say that order of selection is only one of the cost containment measures afforded to VR agencies through the law and through regulations. And there are other things, too, that VR agencies may want to consider, and that's comparable services and benefits. How we inform people and refer them to other workforce development programs. Those may be our partners or others. How we balance what VR Agencies by in terms of services and what we provide in-house in the cost kind of associated with both strategies. One of the other things that RSA often considers VR agencies to look at when we're talking about implementing an order is kind of carefully evaluating the need to require additional assessments when the law allows and promotes the use of existing information. So sort of not overdoing that eligibility determination process because that often comes with cost. Right. And then finally VR agencies should also be reassessing sort of their routine practices and policies that result in increased cost. That may not always be necessary. So we're really looking at kind of the entire fiscal picture of the program, not just those VR service costs that are provided to eligible individuals.   Carol: That's good. I'm glad you brought all of that up, because we often do talk about these other factors. And I asked people, are you also looking at what are you getting bang for your buck? And not that we're trying to bang on vendor communities, but do you have vendors where people never like they're never done with service, they never graduate, they never get to the end? I mean, maybe it's looking back at that and going are the ways in which their training really working for your clientele? Maybe not. Maybe you need to circle back and work with them or have a parting of the ways and think about that. I also like the thinking about really leveraging our partners. I mean, the whole rehab act, when it was redone, you know, and we had the 2014 WIOA comes out of that. We always had partners, but I don't think we were very good at leveraging what things are they doing. And I feel like some of this stuff is duplicative. You know, why are we offering these same sort of trainings that are now at the one stop that people can access and go to those courses or whatever, you know, types of things that they're offering. So it does force you to take a look at that and really actually live in to WIOA and leveraging the partnerships and the funds across all these systems. I like that. Thank you Chris, for saying that. Order Selection also has to be a super thoughtful process. And so, Chris, I know you talked about the data points that folks should look at. Theresa, what are the data points you look at regularly? And I like it because some directors talk about kind of they're reading the tea leaves to complete your fiscal forecasting, or there's some other things that you like to do.   Theresa: Oh gosh, yeah, We could talk all day on fiscal forecasting. But to just kind of be brief, you have to look beyond just what did we spend last year and apply that and assume that. And I think if you don't have programs talking to fiscal sometimes that is the fiscal assumption. Right. By fiscal staff being made. So with the pendulum swings that we tend to see in VR, which of course are highly driven by trends and applicant and participant counts, you really need to have a very layered approach to forecasting. This is where, again, that program knowledge and fiscal knowledge, it's essential that they're paired up. Just a few things to consider would be beyond the basics right. What is your data show? What are your trends? Show. But what's in your state plan? What are the goals? What are the initiatives that you have in place? There may be a fiscal impact to those, right? There may be a staff resource impact to those. So for instance, a very obvious example in our state plan, we have some goals around increasing enrollment in post-secondary training. There's some fiscal impact there. We need to know what that is, how to apply that, and then really have an understanding of our ability to sustain that goal into the subsequent years.   Again, the applicant and participant growth trends are super important. So keep your eye on and then any impact of any other outreach or collaborative partnerships that might be contributing to some of that program growth. You know, more people served generally is going to mean more expenses. And then just quickly, from kind of a fiscal standpoint, something that might be a little bit unique beyond, again, all the basic essentials of fiscal forecasting is we really have to account for carrying over a certain portion of our dollars. And that really comes down to making sure we don't have, you know, disruptions and services and can comply with this period of performance requirements. So we find in Indiana that, you know, carrying over like 20 to 25% works well for us, ensures that we can continue authorizations past 9/30 and not have that challenge of waiting until ten/1, you know, to encumber new funds. And that just keeps the flow of services going. So I'll just add that as maybe a nuance that others aren't always thinking about.   Carol: Yeah, I appreciate that because I think that having that strategy I did too, as a director, wanting you have your sweet spot of what you like to have in that carry over, because it really does promote that consistency when you have that hard start and stop, and especially in an era of continuing resolutions, you know your whole strategy with how you're flowing into the next year and how all that's going to work. You need to think about that piece for sure. Now, I know a big problem has existed around priority categories and the most significant disability designation. And many programs have three categories, but almost 90% of the customers are in category one, which makes it difficult, you know, when you're implementing an Order of Selection. How did you address that in Indiana?   Theresa: Yeah, that's exactly what we saw. And we balanced this by a couple of key strategies. One is that we did not release anyone from the waitlist until a little over two years into our process. That's  kind of how we, how bad of a cycle we were in. And again, it's a lever. It's  that dial. We had some targets like caseload sizes, retention rate that we were tracking as a gauge to when we could start moving people off that waitlist. So just for example, average caseload size is getting to under 100, turnover being less than 20%. So those were some indicators to watch to start releasing folks. Another strategy that was really helpful is that we opted to do larger releases each quarter instead of kind of smaller, more frequent releases. And this gave us the opportunity to really have our staff know that it was coming the same time each quarter. They could carve out time because it is a lift on top of the day to day, right? You've got to reach out to folks multiple times. You've got to schedule them for meetings. You've got to get IPEs in place. And then with those reviews of the, you know, again, we might look at like 2 to 300 people to see, can we take 300? Can we take 200? Is it somewhere in the middle? How does that break down across your 26 offices? And inevitably each quarter, one office got hit with a high number. And then there were a few that had very little. So we also had to weigh that and see where we could balance our resources to make those work. You know, at the end of the day, you ultimately have to release more people from the waitlist than new people who came in as eligible that quarter in order to get ahead of it. So that was another data point that we looked at.   Carol: Did you find that actually learning kind of through Covid, a lesson, you know, with working remotely and all of that, did that help as you're looking at distributing across the 26 areas? Because you can I mean, and I've talked to other directors about this now you can work with people. Maybe you're in this part of the state, but you can work with other folks as well to keep them moving. So maybe there isn't this huge one off, it's just got 200 people and the other offices get one, you know, they don't have any. Did you find some ability to flex that around the state?   Theresa: Absolutely. That's exactly what we did. So those offices that were hit hard, of course, they were also the offices with the highest number of vacancies. It just seemed to be how it fell every quarter. So absolutely, our region managers really did it. We have five of those five regions. They really did an excellent job troubleshooting that, you know, we helped where needed. But they for sure did that looking across offices in their region and even across the state. We also have about 7 or 8 working lead counselors, kind of floater counselors. So we were able to deploy them to the areas with the highest need. And then as we progressed through the order, we had a pretty robust outreach process. As we were getting ready to release folks, we ended up centralizing that a little bit to take some of that load off of our field staff as well. So, you know, you kind of have to adjust as you go. Move your resources where you can. But absolutely, we found that to be a great strategy.   Carol: Chris, you have any thoughts on that about the priority categories and the most significant disability? I just wondered because I know folks struggle with that. You were looking contemplative, so I thought maybe you might have something to add.   Chris: My philosophy with a lot of things, Carol, has always been less is more. And you mentioned that most of our agencies have three priority categories. And if I were able to say this is a requirement, that would probably be what I would say. But, you know, VR agencies have flexibility to develop more than three. I would just caution that as you get more complicated, things get more complicated for applicants to understand and for VR counselors to implement. So again, I would just say that the law requires that the significant disability category be identical to what's in the rehab act and the regs, and that that most significant category needs to build upon that. So we often see agencies talking about more functional limitations, more services being needed, more time needed to help the person reach their employment goal. So the more specificity there, the better is. I think that helps VR counselors kind of understand where to place people when they're determined eligible.   Carol: Yeah, that's really good advice. Now I know, Theresa, also, you have talked about wanting to bust the myth that nobody gets off the waitlist. And how can we better do that?   Theresa: I can't tell you how many times I've heard that in Indiana, and that was part of the a lot of the grief is that there was this thought that we'll never get out. So we know that's not true. The facts are there. You know, there are many states. And Chris shared, you know, 25% down to less than ten. So less than ten states. So we know it happens. There are states who've done it. I don't know if we do enough to highlight that to kind of our stakeholders, you know, at large and celebrate that. So maybe that's part of the answer. You know, we have those actual examples. That's an important part of the communication to internal and external stakeholders. The other piece here is outlining the conditions that need to be in place to progress, to opening more categories, to ending the order, and then people can see you hitting those target milestones. They may start believing that, oh wow, there's some actual notable objective progress here. We are getting closer to the end. This does seem doable.   Carol: Yeah, I think going back to that communication strategy for sure can help. I know with our SRC, and I had laid out the plan like I had all these points that we needed to do to kind of get through our struggle. And as things were met or we were able to achieve other savings in certain areas without impacting, you know, a quality of a service. Man ,it was great. Like no stone was unturned as we did that. But I wanted to be super transparent. Here's all the things. And I kept a little chart, like, here was this savings, or here we met this thing so people could see we were actively working a process all the way through, versus okay, we are pulling the lever and the lever is just staying closed down. That's it. They don't see the other end. All that work that's being done behind. So what is your best advice for state directors contemplating pulling the lever?   Theresa: Well, we definitely looked at it as that lever or that dial, and we felt that that gave us an opportunity. We really would not otherwise have had to take action on addressing a really significant foundation or core issue while slowing down that incoming train a little bit and refocusing our resources, staffing and fiscal building adequate resources and capacity. It's an ongoing effort. It never ends. It's one of the more difficult things, probably, that we do, but it's so critical to carrying out services in general, let alone good quality services. And it requires a very thoughtful plan and a lot of simultaneous strategies. You know, all the strategies we implemented from salary adjustments to, you know, creating those working lead counselors I mentioned, we developed a layer of case coordinators to take on some of the case management aspects. I think some states call them rehab techs. Lots of gaining of technology, you know, modernization and efficiencies and then some. Right. It ultimately helped us with two really big systemic needs. And one was getting cancer caseload sizes to manageable levels and reducing our VRC turnover. I mean, those things are gold when it comes to staff capacity.   Carol: Now, Chris, I don't want to steal your thunder, but what I'm going to say to folks too is call RSA. Like, reach out to your liaison and talk to them about your situation. You want to start those conversations because the worst thing I would think is you're a state liaison at RSA and you just get this boom, we want to do it. We need to go on March 1st and today is January, you know, 24th. You want to have that partnership all the way along. And I know, Chris, you can speak a little more to that for sure.   Chris: Carol, you know, we often talk about with clients early and sustained engagement. And I would encourage VR agencies to take the same approach with us at RSA. Reach out early and keep that conversation going. The order of selection approval process is going to be iterative. In 99% of times, RSA will have feedback and will have questions, and we'll want to see justifications be made as strong as possible. So to your point, Carol, our ability to approve orders of selection overnight is not possible. Theresa talked about sort of a nine month on ramp. I wouldn't say it's going to take that long on our end, but it will take at least a couple of weeks. And the stronger the justification we receive, the better. Again, I would just say that consider all of the flexibilities that the Rehab Act offers to VR agencies when it comes to managing the program, in addition to implementing an order. And we talked about some of those before, but they could mean cost containment from financial participation to preferences to instate services, to looking at the administrative costs that you might pay for providing services, your staffing capacity, and really leveraging the ability of your SRC. To advocate for the program, we often talk about the return on investment of the VR program, and it really is unlimited. Our program offers a lot of flexibility to be creative, to help people meet their career goals, and that's kind of the best thing we have going for us to argue for the sustainability of the program moving forward.   Carol: Yeah. Excellent points. The SRC can do so much more than we can do, really, and a lot of venues and have a different voice and a seat with the governor. You know, they're appointed by the governor. They have a different mode of communication that they can use that we cannot. So we definitely don't want to forget about them. All right guys, so we're coming to a conclusion. Any last parting thoughts from either of you for our listeners?   Theresa: Well, I'll just add, I think we've touched on a lot of great lessons learned in communication. Number one, really important. And we've hit on some ideas and strategies around that. And then the second, having that game plan, it's  critical so that we're all viewing Order of selection, not as that end result right, or that indefinite status, but as that lever or that dial that can be adjusted to address the situation at hand and then get back on track, get out of the order, be able to serve everyone who needs those services.   Carol: Awesome. I really appreciate you both and appreciate having this conversation. And for our listeners who were taking notes, because I know you guys read the transcript because that will help you with all of that. You can go back through and highlight the things you need to do. Thanks so much for being here today. Appreciate you.   Theresa: Thank you.   Chris: Thanks, 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!

This Manager Minute episode spotlights how the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind and MassAbility are leveraging AI to improve service delivery. Host Carol Pankow discusses innovative AI applications with guests Lola Akinlapa, Nathan Skrocki, and John Oliveira. They explore an AI-assisted intake platform designed to streamline processes, enhance multilingual support, and enable faster access to services. The conversation also highlights AI-powered tools like policy lookup systems and data visualization platforms like Tableau. Emphasizing accessibility and transparency, the episode showcases AI's potential to alleviate administrative bottlenecks, support staff, and empower consumers while preserving the human touch in service delivery.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} John: We were looking for items that might be helpful to our staff. As many of our veteran counselors move on to retirement, it became imperative that we find a way that the newer counselors could find access to information quickly.   Lola: We're not looking to reduce workforce. We're not looking to reduce your day to day operations, right. We're looking to streamline and to make the consumer's journey at MassAbility more accessible to them.   Nate: What we're doing is just enhancing and streamlining the process to better understand and strengthen their policy knowledge, to make their jobs a little bit easier.   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. Today joining me in the studio is Lola Akinlapa, director of strategic initiatives in Massachusetts. Nathan Skrocki, Policy director at the Massachusetts Commission for the blind. And John Oliveira, Commissioner for the Mass Commission for the blind. So how goes it, Lola?   Lola: Oh, everything is good. Thank you for having me, Carol. I think this is a really great forum to kind of spread the word on what we've been doing at the state of Massachusetts.   Carol: Excellent. How about you, Nate? How are you doing today?   Nate: Happy new year. Doing well. Glad to be here. Thank you.   Carol: Excellent. And last but not least, John, how is it? How are things? You got a new role.   John: Everything is great. A very cold day today, but we'll get through it. Uh, it's close to zero wind chill. So very cold day here.   Carol: Ah, it's like you guys are in Minnesota...   John: Yeah, I think so.   Carol:  Joining Jeff and I...   John: I think so.   Carol: Yeah. We were three below today. It was fabulous. Well I'm super excited about our topic. So artificial intelligence, although it's really not a new concept, it's gained significant attention in the recent years and the field of AI research was officially established during a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956, where researchers optimistically predicted that human level intelligence machines would be achieved within a generation. However, it became clear the challenge was really greater than anticipated. But today, you know, we have AI everywhere seamlessly integrated into our life. You know, we've got Siri and Alexa. I rely on them all the time to your biometric scanning at the airports and the list goes on. And I had the good fortune to find out that Massachusetts is really standing out as a state that has embraced the broad implementation of AI and incorporating it extensively across various aspects of daily life and governance. So I want to dig in and learn some more from you guys. So I'd like to start out because our listeners like to get a little insight into all of you. If you could tell us about yourself and your role. And for our my two friends from the Blind agency a little bit. How you got into VR? And Lola, I'm going to start with you first.   Lola: Thank you, Carol. So a little bit about myself, as you mentioned, Lola Akinlapa, I am Director of Strategic Initiatives at now, formerly what used to be the Mass Rehab Commission and now known as MassAbility. I came into the agency back in 2014. I actually started in research and development, doing a lot of the analytic work. I actually was voluntold, I would say, to assist in a new project that we were implementing. It was a statewide case management system for our different divisions at MassAbility. Through that process, I was able to kind of take a step back to say, well, what do we need at this agency to push us toward the future?   Carol: Yeah, Lola, it is great being voluntold, because that leads to some of the best things when you're working on different things. So, Nate, how about you? How did you land at Mass Commission for the Blind?   Nate: I landed at MCB about eight years ago. At this point. I've been a manager within state government for many years and ended up at MCB. Hopefully this is where I'll be staying for many more years. I really like the mission of MCB and the work that we do as an agency to provide services to residents of Massachusetts.   Carol: Good stuff, good stuff. And John, you've switched roles, so I've known you for a while. But tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.   John: All right. Carol, I've been with the agency for, wow, 37 years.   Carol: Oh my gosh.   John: And started out in services and worked with the senior staff, senior consumers, and was in vocational rehab for a while, worked as director of staff development and training for a while. I headed up the assistive technology program for a while. I was deputy commissioner for something like 12 years, oversaw the programs, and I've been commissioner now for a year and a half.   Carol: Good for you. Well, sure good to see you again. So in the fall, I had the had the chance to attend an AI convening with Tony Wolf, who is the MassAbility Commissioner. And Tony was mentioning she kept talking about all these really cool things happening in Massachusetts. And I just I needed to learn more. So now, Lola, like, how is MassAbility moving in this AI space? And I know you're doing some things that are helping the consumer experience be quicker and easier. What's that look like?   Lola: Oh my God. It's been quite a journey to say the least. At our agency, we as many other agencies identified bottlenecks, identified issues with maybe the bureaucratic side of things where it takes longer to get someone from point A to point B. It was through, actually, our centralized intake unit where we discovered there's area for improvement here. And that area of improvement could be resolved through an assisted intake form. So at MassAbility, we're developing an AI assisted intake platform that's meant to support our staff at MassAbility, who are doing the intakes to allow them to have more leeway on doing what's more important to the work, which is getting our folks to the services they need. Through this intake form, we're actually removing the repetitive task. We're looking at some speech to text technology and then also some guided workflows. And we're also able to get multilingual support. And through the intake, it's meant to guide a lot of our consumers to feel a little bit more empowered to get from I'm stuck here, how do I get services that I need, whether I'm going to work or looking to live or transition into the community, instead of waiting months before someone can speak to you to get you through the process.   In this platform, we're actually able to allow our staff to have more time to be dedicated to more personalized interactions with our clients. So it's been a journey to kind of develop what that roadmap looks like. But we are super excited about this. We actually will be going live early this year through our MassAbility site, through our consumer portal, where it will be housed, and individuals will be able to go in, log in and fill out the form, and the form would guide them through the entire process without human interaction. And for us, I think it's really important to take a step back and really understand the purpose of this. Right. It's not to remove the individual from their work, right. It's to make some processes a little bit more streamlined, but then have our staff, our counselors, our case managers be able to focus on more of the human interaction. It's been quite a journey for us, to say the least.   Carol: So, Lola, are you working on that with your own state IT folk or who kind of is helping you mastermind all this?   Lola: So this is in collaboration with our IT folks at Executive Office of Technology. Also, we're working with a contractor who's been helping us build this platform out. They've been super great. It's been a very collaborative effort across the board. I would even have to throw in Microsoft because there's some work that they're assisting us doing, and it's been a team effort to get it to where it is today. And we're actually very proud of what we've done in such a short period of time.   Carol: Very cool, I like it. I know Lola, you had talked to me too, you were interested in doing something kind of in this data realm because I know data isn't cool always. But you were trying to do some stuff with Tableau and AI. So what does that look like?   Lola: Tableau. For folks that don't know, it's a visual data tool that we've been using at MassAbility for a little bit over four years now. The really cool thing about technology is as the years go on, the tools get better. Tableau was another way that we were using to kind of drive our data decision making at the agency. You know, things that are really core to the MassAbility beliefs in our missions. With Tableau, we're able to have a chatbot, and the chatbot would be utilized something similar like ChatGPT, where you could say, show me how many individuals are getting X services, or show me how many individuals are served in certain parts of the region. Right?   Carol: Yeah.   Lola: very cool things like that where you don't have to be a data analyst or a data science...   Carol: right.   Lola: to use Tableau. It kind of makes it more user friendly and at your fingertips. I think of it like on demand data. So that's something that we've been looking at that is in collaboration with an initiative that we have over at Northeastern. And we've submitted a proposal for that. So we haven't started, but we're looking forward to some of the cool and innovative things, because I think many state agencies will agree. Data is really, really interesting to look at, especially when you're looking to tell a story, when you're looking to improve just the overall outcomes of your agency, depending on what you're looking to achieve. So it's really been something great that we're looking forward to getting started. And then also on the back end, kind of showing and empowering our own staff as to what this data means, right? Because not everyone is a data scientist. Not everyone enjoys. It's a very dry subject, but I think this is a way to keep folks engaged in terms of what's really going on at the agency, and it kind of tells a story without having to truly understand the data to tell the story.   Carol: I love that. I think you'll find if you guys can make that all happen, there's going to be a lot of folks across the country that are going to be super interested in that piece because data has been so critical, especially as WIOA passed, and we're looking at so much more of the data and what really is happening for individuals with disabilities and getting into employment. And so I feel like sometimes we're data rich, but we're analysis poor. And people are like, I don't know what all this means. You get a little bit overwhelmed by the data. So I think that would be great for people to be able to do the old ChatGPT kind of thing and just ask a question and get the answer.   Lola: Absolutely.   Carol: I love that, that's very cool. So when you look at AI, there really has been considerable impact, too, for individuals who are blind and visually impaired. And Nathan and John, I mean, what are you guys seeing with the customers you serve? Just in general, when you think about AI and the work you're doing now?   John: Well, obviously in the assistive technology field, there's always been a lot of talk about incorporating AI to serve consumers. And over the past 4 or 5 years, many of the wearables have become very popular. And every year when you see these items, they get better and better. And that's benefiting a lot of our consumers tremendously. I'm sure that you've all heard about the meta glasses. Tremendous assistance for our consumers. You put on this pair of glasses, you can take pictures of the environment you're walking through. You can use it with description services such as Aira and Be My Eyes. And it works great for someone who doesn't know the area. For someone who's trying to do some work and needs to access print immediately, a great way to do this. Many other things are coming down the pipeline, but we were looking for items that might be helpful to our staff. As many of our veteran counselors move on to retirement, it became imperative that we find a way that the newer counselors could find access to information quickly. We do the trainings the usual way, but that takes quite a bit of time. And if you have questions and you want answers right away, we were looking for a solution and we came across this solution in Outlook Insight. I read about it somewhere, I called them, I spoke to an individual at the company and we agreed that we would meet at the NCSAB Conference. And I turned them on to Nate and his policy team. And he can give you more of the story about that journey going forward here.   Carol: So what do you know, Nate?   Nate: Thanks, John.   Carol: John is the idea guy and he's like, Nate, go do the thing.   Nate: And it works out great. So what we did was we connected with Outlook Insight, and we wanted a tool that would allow kind of a quick reference lookup for our case managers. So it could be that they have questions themselves and the policy or procedures. And making sure a case is executed properly or consumer may have a question and they want a quick reference for that. So what we did with Outlook Insight is develop a tool that takes all of our internal policies and all of the other policies that govern us, and kind of housed it all in one place and very similar to ChatGPT or some of these other AIs out there. You can ask it a question and it will provide a response. And when it provides a response, we have the ability to really take a look at where it's coming from. So it will include all the resources that it's pulling from with the response. So it will cite the documentation. So it might be some direction from RSA or some of our internal policies or another piece of policy that is out there, another piece of guidance that is out there. And it will cite that particular piece of policy where it's coming from. You can click on it. When you click on it, it will bring that policy up and you can read further, but it will also provide that response. So if you ask it what form is needed at this step of a case procedure, it will bring up what form is needed. Bring up the form and you can go from there.   Carol: Nice. So where are you at in the process with this rolling out?   Nate: We have rolled it out to some staff. It's not officially rolled out yet as an agency. It's something we're still testing. But we did roll it out to some staff to test to really kind of understand what they're using it for. Another piece of it is we're allowed to add tiles to this particular system. We can create these buttons or tiles above the search bar that will have preloaded questions. So say a consumer is going to college and we you know we might have a button that has the question on it. What is college reimbursement for a student at MCB. You can click on that and we'll bring up all the information about what's appropriate for college reimbursement, how much that college investment can be, so on and so forth. We wanted to get an idea of what people were asking it. We wanted to get an idea of what they're using it for, so we can kind of load in those different tiles on the top as well. And as we go through certain cycles in case management, those will change over the year, in the future when we do roll this out. And we also just were curious on what people were looking up for quick reference. And people are using it. It is a very good tool. It's been helpful for us in the policy unit. We're not getting as many questions for people that are using it, because they're going to that first to see if they can look up the policies on their own and get a response on their own. We do caution people though, because it is AI, so sometimes it does not provide the full picture. I guess is the best way to put it. It might give a partial answer. We haven't seen where it's giving any wrong answers yet, but sometimes it doesn't fill in the whole picture. So that's why we include the policies with the response, because people can go in and search further within that policy if they need to formulate a decision a little bit better.   Carol: Yeah, you bring up a really good point. You always have to trust but verify, even ChatGPT you throw something in there. And I use it a lot because it's super helpful and it'll be going along. It's really great. It gives this response and then you have some kind of wacky line comes in there and you go, I don't really know where that came from, but that isn't right. So you can't just turn it all over to the bot. You still have to use your own kind of critical thinking skills and take a look to apply it.   Nate: For sure. The advantage that we have, as opposed to like an open source AI, is we control what goes in and out of where it's pulling from. So we're the ones putting the policies in. Or as Lola had mentioned before, if you want statistics or something like that, you can put it in a document with certain statistics and it can pull from that. But we control everything in there. So it's not pulling from this open source where it might recognize something as helpful, but it really isn't. It's everything in there. We've kind of vetted and we understand it's something that is needed by the agency.   Lola: Absolutely. And just to Nathan's point, open source, we're talking about like Google, you know, you can get millions of results back and very true at MassAibility. Similarly, we obviously have regulations that we're following with RSA. And there are things that we have to control just to make sure the language is correct. So we're putting in what needs to be said at the bot kind of just follows that logic. So that's kind of the nice thing where you can still have that control, even if it is kind of AI, but it's still guarded. It's not as loose as just an open source would be.   Carol: Yeah, absolutely. It's a great point, Lola. And I know for the both of you, you know you're doing things that are impacting the staff. So staff can definitely have a reaction to this. Sometimes positive, sometimes not. Like we're all super excited. I see your smiling faces like, yay, we're doing the thing. And then they're like, you know, people feel like back what I was saying in the beginning, like, we're going to replace everybody with robots or something. And so staff can get concerned. So I'm going to kick this to you first, Lola, what's been kind of the response from staff about the things that you guys are trying to do?   Lola: Well, I'm very fortunate to work at an agency where folks are very open minded. Change is a little different, but we're very open minded at MassAbility. I think it's all about the messaging and the purpose on why we're doing certain things right. For sure. There are people that are going to have, you know, pros and cons about it, but I think how we message it is we're not looking to reduce workforce...   Carol: right.   Lola: We're not looking to reduce your day to day operations, right? We're looking to streamline and to make the consumer's Consumers journey at MassAbility more accessible to them. The option that we have right now and how we've messaged it to staff is it's an option, right? We're not removing the human aspect of it, but it's an option for individuals who are in certain circumstances that need to get something done a little bit faster, right? It takes a little bit longer to talk to individuals, but if it's something that they feel like, you know, I'm just going in and I'm looking for a job, I know everything I need to have. This is another outlet that they can use where the system itself is like, I'm not a person, but I can guide you like an individual, right? At the end of it, you will be meeting with a person. You will have that personalized experience, that interaction, but mostly for the admin and the data entry, right? We can repurpose that. We can shift that burden to some of the tools that we have available to us, like the AI assisted intake form. So that's really the messaging behind it, right? The messaging is not to impact staff. It's not to scare staff.   Carol: Right.   Lola: But it's more to help think of allowing people to have different options to come into the agency that aren't so impactful or don't feel like a bottleneck.   Carol: Yeah, I love that. I love that point. How about you guys, Nate or John? Have you seen any initial responses from staff, maybe different than you thought or how has it been going?   Nate: I think for us it's a little bit different too, because we're providing human services, so we're not replacing that in any way with an AI tool. We're not going to be replacing us, going out and sitting with a consumer and meeting them where they're at and providing the services that they need to be successful. What we're doing is really just enhancing and, like Lola said, streamlining the process to better understand and strengthen their policy knowledge to make their jobs a little bit easier. We haven't really explored any type of AI that would help with case management work or anything like that, and it's really tough because like I said, in the human service field and in Lola can probably also agree with this. Every consumer is so different. We're meeting with them a lot of times in person, especially at our agency, and providing the services that they need. A lot of it's hands on services, something that we're not going to be able to do with AI. What we're really looking at is how do we enhance their ability to provide and streamline services and make the experience better for the consumers and for our workers. And that's what we've done with this first policy tool. And I think it's been successful. I don't know if you have anything to add there, John.   John: Yeah, we're supporting the staff at this point. So it's not that we're trying to take staff out of the process. We're making it easier for you to do your job and for you to answer questions that you may have about the process of moving the client through the system, or even questions that a consumer may ask you, and you can explain to them. And if you're missing any of that data, you can pull it up on your laptop. And that tool is always with you. You can ask it at that point, or you can refer to other resources we have on that machine. So you could certainly help them get the information they need faster and help yourself process the information they've given you faster.   Carol: Well, having done technical assistance for years with state agencies, and I see the hundreds of pages in all your policy manuals and all this craziness, I'm sure staff will greatly appreciate anything that streamlines some of that work that they have to do, and all the things they have to retain. And you've got your policy and your procedure and your desk and your 14 other directions. It's a lot. I mean, it's a lot to keep track of, as well as just paying attention to the individual that's sitting before you. And so I think anything you can do to streamline that is great. I'm wondering if you all have other ideas. I know Lola, when I talked to you before, you are full of lots of thoughts. Do you have any next steps for accessibility that you're thinking about?   Lola: I have a couple of next steps right now. I have to rein myself in. We're for sure right now really focused on getting our automated intake form out. We're at the tail end of testing and everything has been looking great on the up and up. So we've been really trying to get our messaging around what that looks like, especially to our constituents that are looking for services. So folks just understand the purpose, the why and how we're trying to make this a little bit better. I'm hoping eventually one day I can take this to phase two where the eligibility pieces may come into play, but we're not there yet. Right. We're taking baby steps.   Carol: Yeah.   Lola: I'm really excited we've gotten this far. I know Nathan and I have had conversations a few months back about looking at something similar to what they're doing with the policy, because we have our own policies, right, that are kind of everywhere. They need to be updated and staff need to reference them or individuals are looking for them. So I think definitely what MCB has been doing has been in the back of our minds a little bit. But like we said, we're taking baby steps and hopefully we can get there. But I think across the board, these are all great initiatives.   Carol: Yeah, absolutely. How about you Nate and John are you guys looking at, you thinking a 2.0 on anything or some other areas you'd like to dabble in with AI?   Nate: I think it's rolling this out first and kind of once we get this completely rolled out to staff and kind of understand how well it's working, I think we can take those next steps. We're always keeping our finger on the pulse of technology and how it's advancing, and if it can assist us in any way, and we'll continue to do that. I think an interesting, it kind of fits in with AI is, you know, one of the biggest barriers for our consumers is transportation. And as far as AI goes, one of the big conversations in that community is automated cars and those type of things. And we have in the past provided some input about automation. And when they're creating those type of things for transportation, how to think about how it would benefit people with disabilities and those type of things. It's a long way off, but it's something interesting and something I personally get asked about a lot when I'm out speaking in different areas is, where is that? You know how close that is?   Carol: Yeah.   Nate: That's nothing we'll ever do as an agency. We're never going to be providing, you know, services. But we have provided some just some input in the past on that. But as far as like case management and service to consumers and those type of things, like Lola says, eligibility is something that's very interesting. If there's something that can help with that, it's for different programs within our agency. You know, when you're coming to MCB, we're a little bit different than MassAbility. By law, you have to be registered with us if you reach the threshold of legal blindness in Massachusetts. So you're registered with us. It's the law. But depending on what services you're receiving and what programs you're in and those type of things and maybe something interesting to look at in the future.   Carol: Yeah, definitely. Blind agencies have a lot of moving parts and pieces. So how about any advice you all might have for states that are starting to think about this? Because states are in all different, you know, places and people are kind of, their administrations. Some are very proactive, some are not. Do you have any advice, as you've been working through these projects that might help other people that are starting to dabble? Lola, I'll kick that to you first.   Lola: Yeah, I think that's all dependent just on where you are as a state agency, right? It's taken us a while to come to the realization, like, maybe there's something more we can do to kind of help the process that we're in. And it just so happened some of the things that we've identified as pain points, it looks like AI and technology would really help alleviate. And I'm not going to say remove because we're always going to have issues, but it would help alleviate some of those pain points. I think one of the things that would be insightful for folks to know, and just because the disability community loves the community, it's just when it comes to technology, we have to be very careful, right? We need to be mindful of some of the biases that come along with that. We need to make sure that the accessibility is actually accessible. It's usable, right? To Nathan's point, we serve various consumers ranging from different types of disability. And I think sometimes that gets lost in the conversation because we're so much let's get it to the next level and let's make it work for us and automate it. And I think we forget to take a step back and remember who we're doing it for, right? We're doing it for the folks that maybe don't have mobility, the folks that can't always read or have low vision, or the deaf or hard of hearing individuals. We really try to make this form all about the people. So I think as agencies are probably trying to embark on technology, those are some of the things that they might want to keep in mind. And it depends just where you are in the process. Just it was great timing for us, and I'm sure Nathan would agree. It was probably great timing for his agency to start some of the discovery process around how we can utilize AI.   Carol: Good advice. John, do you have anything you want to add?   John: Yeah. When you're going down this road, be prepared that you understand the process that your state has, because there's many other departments that come in and want to take a look at what you're doing and ask for a lot of different documentation. And so that all has to be done before any product can be deployed. And depending how bureaucratic the state is, it can be different. A large state might have a whole bunch of departments Moving in and wanting to take a look in a smaller state may not be as complicated or as cumbersome process as it can be. So just be aware. Once you understand the idea and you think of a potential product, make sure that you've understood all the steps you have to do at the state level to be able to deploy that product and not have it pulled when you're halfway through, or you've spent money on development so that it gets scrapped in the development stage. So just be very aware of how to get that process through the state.   Carol: Yeah, that's  very good advice. Nate you get the last word on this.   Nate: Patience. For a lot of reasons and pointing at both what Lola and Commissioner Olivera talked about here. You got to have patience to go through the process. But you also have to have patience to make sure that it is accessible. Here at MCB, we obviously have a myriad of different folks using it and with different abilities and ways that they approach the system. We got to make sure it works for all those different ways. And that wasn't easy either, but more so for the process. It's a long process. We're still in the middle of that process, but it's worth it. I do want to say that have the patience, but it is definitely worth it. AI is extraordinarily able to just provide a way to save time. You know, a question that may come up to us where we research a question, decide on what the answer is, reach back out to a worker, give them the answer and they go to a consumer. Give them the answer. It could be days. This is seconds. The time that it saves. And maybe even if you, depending on how it's deployed, the cost it could save in the long run. It's extraordinary and worth the time put in.   Carol: I love that you would mention that. There used to be something that I compared every year that came out from RSA, and I'd compare to the previous year, and so I'd always look at, you know, I'd do this side by side, kind of mark up what all change, what language changed. And it used to take me hours, you know, just to look through the document. Now I send it through a tool and literally in a minute it highlights everything that changed from one year to the next. I'm like, boom, done. You have it. People always are asking us questions as a TA provider, and I'm like able to immediately tell them what change they're like. How'd you do that analysis so fast? Well, I used my friend, you know, an AI tool that was able to do it. It really is an amazing Time saver. So how can our listeners find you guys? Could you leave us with like, an email address or something? Lola, would you mind saying your email address for the listeners in case somebody wants to reach out to what you're doing there?   Lola: Yeah, absolutely. I can be reached at Oluwafunke.Akinlapa@mass.gov. The spelling is o l u w a f u n k e dot a k I n l a p a at mass.gov.   Carol: Oh that's great. And then Nate or  John, do you both want to give your email or who's the contact there.   Nate: It's Nathan.w. Skrocki@mass.gov and I'll spell that out. It's n a t h a n dot w dot s k r o c k I at mass.gov.   Carol: Oh, that is awesome you guys! I really am looking forward to seeing your stuff roll out. You need to give me an update. I am super happy about this. In fact, we were having an AI conversation the other day on our GW team and I said, hey, I'm doing a podcast this week and they're like, you got to give us the names of the people, because some folks are working on something, they like, they're gathering up information from across the country. So I said I'd be happy to share. So thanks so much. And please do keep in touch. I wish you the very best with your projects.   Lola: Awesome. Thank you Carol.   John: Thank you Carol.   Nate: Thanks.   {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!

Join host Carol Pankow in this thought-provoking episode of Manager Minute as she sits down with VR fiscal powerhouses Katie Marchesano, Chris Merritt, Allison Flanagan, and Sarah Clardy. Together, they unpack the pressing fiscal issues shaping the vocational rehabilitation (VR) landscape, including: ·  Navigating fiscal forecasting challenges · Addressing technology gaps · Strengthening collaboration between program and fiscal teams The conversation highlights the vital role of policies, training, and institutional knowledge in sustaining VR programs while anticipating future shifts, such as technological advancements, fiscal constraints, and potential WIOA reauthorization. Don't miss this episode, packed with actionable insights and expert reflections to keep VR programs thriving!   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Katie: I'm really excited for that tool to be shared, and I think it's going to be a really helpful tool for the agencies.   Carol: This job takes constant attention to detail in what is happening. It is always going to be work.   Chris: More people are going to be reaching out asking for fiscal forecasting and understanding how to look at this program in the future.   Allison: One of the things that pops in my mind that might happen over the next three years is reauthorization of WIOA.   Sarah: I think we're going to see some new resources, hopefully in the technology world develop, that will assist our agencies so that their focus can remain on the customers where it belongs.   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 my colleagues Katie Marchesano, Chris Merritt, Allison Flanagan and Sarah Clardy. So this might be a little bit of calamity for our listeners, but we're going to do it. So how y'all doing today?   Sarah: Great   Chris: Great.   Allison: Good.   Katie: Wonderful.   Carol: Awesome to hear it. Well, we have had quite a journey on the QM for the past four years. The fiscal focus was a new aspect of the grant, and we are so grateful to then Commissioner Mark Schultz for realizing that TA in this area was an essential element to the work. And since we're in this final year of the grant, we wanted to have a chance to visit together, share our insights with the listeners into the whole fiscal picture across the VR program, and discuss our perceptions and perspectives. So buckle up, folks, and we're going to dig in. So I want to start with how you each found your way to VR. And I'm going to start with Chris to talk about your journey into VR.   Chris: Well thanks, Carol. Mine's a little bit different than most people. I did not start in VR. I have a very different background. All fiscal for the most part. But I came to work at a fiscal state unit and learned about VR there. Loved it, loved it, loved it. And then was kind of asked to be part of this Ta team and couldn't say no because it's just an incredible program and it's a little complicated. So being able to help the states understand it better is what brought me to this team.   Carol: Well, not you, and you're being modest now. Tell them about like a little bit more of your background because you have an interesting educational background and all of that.   Chris: Yeah, I do. So I'm an environmental engineer by trade. Worked in that field for a while. Learned that sampling sludge was not a cool thing to be doing. So went to work for a small business that was just starting on Department of Defense World. Loved all the fiscal part of that. Went back to school and got my MBA and have been doing fiscal stuff ever since. So yeah, it's a long road that brought me here, but I'm happy I took it.   Carol: Yeah, we're glad you're here. How about you, Miss Allison?   Allison: Well, it's kind of hard to believe that I have over 30 years in this VR journey, and it actually started out in the field as a VR technician, and I just fell in love with the mission and purpose of VR. So I quickly changed my direction to be a VR counselor, and then that evolved to other promotions and positions throughout the year, where I ended up being director of both Kentucky Blind Agency and then moved to Florida as the General Agency Director. And when the VR TKM opportunity came about, I was ready for a change, especially after being a director through the pandemic and through the implementation of WIOA. I was looking forward to just a new opportunity, new learning areas, so this has been a great jump for me. I've enjoyed it very much.   Carol: Why don't you tell them too about your other gig with NRLI a little bit. We'll make a plug there.   Allison: Yeah. So part of the VRTAC-QM is the National Rehabilitation Leadership Institute through San Diego State University. I have the honor of continuing Fred McFarland's legacy, who began this program about 25 years ago. And it is a program that is building the future leaders in the vocational rehabilitation field. And it's been a joy to see these leaders be promoted throughout their careers. Being stepping up, having an interest at that national level, the issues that are facing VR. So it is definitely a part of my job with QM that I hold near and dear to my heart.   Carol: Yeah, it's good stuff, I love it NRLI of our favorite things to participate in when we get to do training. So Katie, over to you next.   Katie: Well, my journey with VR started when my brother was receiving VR services, and he actually is who inspired me to go and get my bachelor's degree in psychology and work in social services. That led me to Department of Workforce Services, where I spent 13 years in various roles and capacities, which ultimately led me back to VR.   Carol: Awesome sauce. And last but not least, Sarah Clardy.   Sarah: So I started out about 24 years ago out of college. I was working in banking full time and going to school full time, and had an opportunity to come on with a state and Missouri vocational rehabilitation, had an opening for an assistant director of accounting and procurement. They had some systems and processes that were a little out of whack and needed some help with reorganizing pretty much the whole accounting structure. So I came over at that time and started in with Missouri, and then spent 20 years there and got to spend half of that time in the field directly with our field staff and counselors and really take this program to heart, and then had an opportunity four years ago to join the VRTAC-QM. I had said for a long time we needed technical assistance in the fiscal realm for years and years. I was thrilled that Mark Schultz saw the vision and made it happen.   Carol: Good stuff. Well, now we're going to enter the danger zone because I have some questions for you all. Not exactly sure how this is going to go, but we are going to do our best. So y'all jump in when you want. So what has been your biggest realization or aha moment since you started with the QM. And Allison, I'm going to have you kick us off and then other folks can jump in.   Allison: Honestly, Carol, there's been a lot of those aha moments for me over the last, you know, almost three years with the Technical Assistance Center since my experience in VR started in the field and I was a counselor, kind of the program side is where my comfort level is or my knowledge and experience. So when I joined the fiscal team there, definitely there was a lot of those aha moments, mainly a lot of the things that I did not know or did not realize even as a director when I came over. So one of those aha's is the director. Even though I received these beautiful monthly budget reports for my fiscal staff, even though I had a leadership team that we reviewed budgets with, understanding the fiscal requirements in and out, the uniform grant guidance and all the regulations. And, EDGAR, all of that, I think, is critical for any director or their leadership team to have knowledge of. And that was definitely one of my aha moments. And one of those things I go back, wow, if I could go back and be a director, I would be a lot smarter after being on the technical assistance side. And like I said, there's been a lot of those aha moments. I could share tons of them, but a couple other ones that jump out is just that critical need for that program side of the House and the fiscal side of the House, to always be communicating and always making sure they're checking with each other. On whether it's a new implementation, whether it's expenses, contracts, doesn't matter. There needs to be that collaboration happening at that level. And then probably the technology challenges is another one of those constant aha moments in the year that we're in and how reliant we are on technology. I am still amazed that there is not technology out there that will do what VR needs it to do, right off the shelf.   Carol: Amen, sister. You said it all. No, but I'm sure there's people that want to say some more.   Chris: I found it interesting when I came over that not every single, not a single state has it right. I thought that there would be more that are fully knowledgeable and are running with it and doing all the great things they are doing, the great things. They just don't have 100% right.   Carol: You are making me laugh with this because I'm just going to say I have to jump in on that. Sarah and I right away, in the beginning, anytime we had met with RSA we learned something new, we're like, uh, I gotta call back to Minnesota, tell them, because we realized, like, hey, we thought we were sort of doing it right, but we all realized things. We went, uh, yeah, we had a little slight misstep on that.   Katie: I would agree with that. Like, we came from a state that was in an intensive agreement. And, you know, I was like, man, we really got it wrong. But then, you know, it's a huge learning curve and there's a lot of people that are putting in their best effort, and they're still just a few things that aren't quite right.   Chris: Absolutely.   Katie: Another realization that I had was we have this table of contents for a grant management manual that we send out to agencies. And when I received it in Wyoming, I was intimidated by all the things that needed to be included. But my aha moment was when you break that down into individual items and you really look at it, it's things that are already in place, the policies and procedures that you're already working on. It's just finding a way to get that on paper and put it into some sort of policy and procedure and internal control. So realizing that states have the capacity to do that, just figuring out how was an aha moment for me.   Sarah: You know, when I came in, I was thinking back to 2017 and RSA came out with guidance on, I'm going to say it, Period of Performance. And it dominated our whole agency for a good nine months, trying to understand the guidance, looking at systems. We had to do a whole overhaul with the way we looked at obligations, just we spent a massive amount of time and effort to right size our systems, internal controls and all of that because prior to performance sets the beat for all of financial within a VR program. So coming into the QM, I really assumed that more agencies knew of Period of Performance and had gone through at least similar steps, or at least had internal conversations. And what I found was completely the opposite. Somehow a lot of folks missed the memo and that work hadn't been done. And of course, we've been running Fred Flintstone style, trying to help agencies get up to snuff. So that's the piece. I think that's been the most interesting. I think for me.   Carol: I think along that same vein for me was really that realization states are more different than I thought because I figured we all had the same information. We all kind of operated sort of the same. You might have your own internal systems, but I remember, Sarah, you and I talking that first year just going like, oh my gosh, everybody is organized so completely differently. They approach their work so completely differently. There isn't just one size fits all. Like, hey, you should do it this way. And like, everybody can do that. Uh uh, it is like having an IPE for how the fiscal is managed. Individualized we need to give very individualized TA. So what do you guys view as the number one challenge facing our programs nationwide? And Sarah, I'm going to have you start us with that.   Sarah: Okay? I'm going to say it I think Allison said it earlier. We are lacking in the technology space. I think a couple of things we have, the pendulum has swung to the other direction and before it was spend, spend, spend, a lot of agencies made adjustments so that they were increasing their spending. The large carryover balances weren't so large. Now my concern is how are we looking at our finances to see if we can still sustain that. And in order to get accurate projections and for leadership teams to have the conversations about where they stand financially, we have to have technology systems in place that are reliable, are tracking period of performance, can provide those fiscal calculations in terms of where we stand on all of the different requirements, so that we have a constant pulse on where do we stand as an agency. And I liken it to being in private industry and a CEO knowing at all times how much does it cost to make the widget? How many widgets are we making and what amount of time? All of those kinds of things. And I feel like in that space right now, we have agencies that are trying to figure that out, and we have some that are in a very delicate position, and it can cause a lot of catastrophe and crisis if that's not solidified. So really, it goes back to having reliable technology that will take care of all of that. And that includes our CMS, our Case Management Systems space. A lot of our vendors are struggling in that Period of Performance area, and we're not there yet. We have a lot more work to do.   Carol: Well, it's like a $4 billion industry, you know, and I feel like we're still using an abacus or something in some cases for tracking the money. It is the most insane thing I have ever seen.   Allison: And, you know, related to that technology challenge, though, is knowing that, that challenge is there, knowing that the technology is not correct. I think what adds to the complexity of that is the fiscal staff or the just the staff within the VR agency. They lack the fiscal knowledge enough to know if their system is working correctly or not, or know how to go in and make the adaptations needed to assist them. And that's a challenge within itself.   Chris: And I will piggyback right on that, because the thing I think that we've struggled with is we have lost so much institutional knowledge that people don't stay in jobs like they used to. And so if these policies and procedures are not written down, you get new people coming in, they don't know what they don't know. And if the technology is not working right, they don't know that that's not something that they can handle. So it's a lack of that long time knowledge that used to be in this program.   Katie: Yeah, Chris, that is exactly where I was going as well, is the loss of staff and institutional knowledge is huge, and it really highlights the importance of getting policies and procedures in place and not waiting till that person has their foot out the door and is ready to head out to make sure that you're getting that in writing. You know, succession planning and really building up success in the team.   Carol: I think for me, one of the things I see, because I love that whole organizational structure and non-delegable responsibilities, I love that area. I think one of the biggest challenges facing the program is the whole shift in how things are organized between if you're in a designated state unit within a designated state agency, and that centralization we have seen of all the fiscal functions along with IT and HR and all of it, but I feel like VR has lost control. And so as these services are centralized, and not that they can't be, but that they get centralized to a point that the VR program has lost complete input control direction. I mean, you've got directors being told you can't spend anything over $5. It has to go through 40 layers. You can't hire anybody. Staff cannot travel to go see customers like all of that. If we can't fix this structure of how things are put into play in each of these states, I really see kind of the demise of the program. As we see things get buried, the program gets buried down within these big agencies. The lack of control ends up leading to problems with them and being able to carry out the mission. And it's really hard to get a handle on that. And I know Congress has given, you know, this leeway so that states can organize like they want. But boy, the way they're organized right now, it's pretty tough.   Allison: It's a double edged sword when you think about it, because you're probably like me Carol, as former directors, we wanted more money going into the consumer services. We wanted it going to support our customers. We wanted to find ways to reduce any kind of administrative type expenses so that that money can go there when the centralized functions were really being pushed at the state levels. In my mind at first, I will say this, at first I saw, yes, this is a benefit because we're going to have these shared services, we're going to be able to spend more of our funds on our customers. And I still somewhat agree with that approach because it is a cost savings. But what has to happen, though, is that balance, what you talked about, the balance where VR still has control over the decisions or they are included in those decisions and the restrictions that have been put in place has to be lifted. But I do see the benefits of those shared services as long as the structure gets set up right.   Carol: Right. And that's been few and far between.   Allison: That needs a national model.   Carol: It does. And that's been a problem. I mean, if there's anything anyone can work on, little congressional assistance in that or whatever, you know, getting some of that rewritten, how that looks.   Sarah: Well, and I came from an agency that was able to retain an entire unit of 13-ish folks when all of those consolidations were occurring because within our Department of Education, our commissioner understood the complexities of our award and knew that if all of those positions rolled up to a department level, they weren't going to be able to support the program and were able to coordinate with our state leadership. And it served the program very, very well. So I think we have a little bit to be desired still in that space to get agencies the support that they need 100%.   Carol: So what has been your favorite thing to work on or accomplishment in your role? And Katie, I'm going to kick that to you to start us off.   Katie: Well, I've really enjoyed my role here with the QM. There's a lot of things that I enjoy, but the task that I've enjoyed the most is really having the ability to dig into the new uniform grant guidance that went into effect October 1st of 2020. For one of the things that I did while doing that was I took the old uniform grant guidance and the new ones and did a side by side where all of the things that were taken out were redlined and all of the things that were added were highlighted, and I'm really excited for that tool to be shared with the agencies right now. That's with RSA to get the stamp of approval, but I've used that tool already to help update all of our things on the website and all the tools that we're sharing with everyone, and I think it's going to be a really helpful tool for the agencies.   Carol: I love that tool, Katie, so much because even when we were down doing to last week and some of the just the nuance pieces that came out, when you're reading it and you go, okay, that language did change. Like there is a slightly nuanced variance to this that I hadn't completely grasped until you see it in the red and the yellow, and it all highlighted up. I mean, it was pretty nice.   Katie: Yeah, they did a lot of plain language changes, which is really evident when you look at the side by side.   Chris: I'll jump in here and tell you what my favorite thing is. And it's when we were working with a state intensively and, you know, we've been working with them for a long time, and you get to know them really well and you understand their environment and how things work, and they come to you and say something really profound, like, I was watching this training the other day and they got this wrong, and they got this wrong and they got this wrong. It is like a proud parent moment. When you go, they understand what the program is supposed to be doing, and they understand when other people not necessarily are getting it wrong, but mostly they're able to recognize what's not absolutely correct. And it just makes you feel like, oh, we have come so far.   Carol: It's like fly, little bird, you're flying.   Chris: Yes.   Allison: That's probably one of my favorite parts too, Chris, is the state work that we've done and how you get to know these state people. There's so many amazing VR staff across the country, and their hearts are all in the right place, and they want to do good. That's what I've enjoyed is getting to know these people better, broadening my network as well because I learn from them. But just being that resource I do like, I'm one of those weird people that likes digging into the laws and regs and finding where is that gray, vague area that we can interpret a little better. So part of the TA work, you know, really digging into some of the laws and some regulatory guidance I've enjoyed as well.   Carol: I have a story I love to share. I was having a breakdown probably a year ago, Sarah's laughing at me, I had a breakdown. You know, you're providing TA to state you're so ingrained with them, especially when they have a corrective action plan, you feel like you're part of them. I always say we, you know, when we're talking because I feel like I'm part of their team and we've been working on a particular piece of it, and nothing that we sent in was anything RSA wanted. All I knew was that this was not what they wanted, but we couldn't exactly figure out what they wanted. And it was driving me crazy. And I'd called Sarah and I said, I think I have to quit being a TA provider because I suck at this. I'm not able to help them. I haven't been able to figure this out. I am done, and I went to bed that night. I actually was on site with another state and I woke up at two in the morning and I do my best thinking as I'm sleeping. It's so weird. I've done it my whole career. I wake up in the middle of the night and have an idea. I woke up at two in the morning. I'm like, oh, I know what they're talking about. And I got up and I typed, I typed for like three hours and then got up for the day and got ready for the other state. But exactly what was needed was that, I mean, when we ended up meeting with the state and then they met with RSA, and that was the thing. It was the thing that was needed to get accomplished. And I felt super proud that we could kind of like, figure it out. It took a while. I almost quit, but, we got there in the end.   Sarah: You know, being in the final year of the grant, everybody's asking the question, what comes next? And of course we don't know what comes next. But I think my favorite part is looking back and building the relationships. So kind of touching on what all of you all have said. Relationships are important to me. Building the trust we are learning alongside of them just like they are. I always say there's no top of the mountain that any of us are ever going to reach when we've arrived. It's a daily learning process, but the program financially is so complex and trying to take those federal requirements And each of the state's requirements, which we've acknowledged already are all different, and bring that together in the center. And there's never been a resource to help agencies get down in the weeds, look at their systems, look at their processes, and help them navigate through that. And so just having something to offer and having directors send an SOS text at 9:00 at night, or we've talked to directors who have been in tears or excited because something really great has happened, and they want to share the success. It's all of that. Just being able to provide that valuable resource and support them along the way has been very rewarding for me. I know, and you all, but especially I think for the States.   Carol: So if you had a crystal ball, what would you predict regarding the financial state of the VR program over the next three years? And Chris, you get to start us on that lovely prediction.   Chris: Okay. Well, since I don't have a crystal ball, I think Sarah touched on this a little bit earlier. So for several years, the message from RSA and from Congress has been to spend, spend, spend. And so there's been a lot of changes in all the agencies to be able to spend more, to spend quicker, to do everything quicker and faster. And I think the spending is catching up. And I think that it might go too far. Like Sarah mentioned, the pendulum is going the other way, and I don't think the fiscal forecasting is robust enough to be able to predict when it's going to get hard. And since most directors do not come from a fiscal background, most directors come with the VR heart that you know is what a counselor has, paying attention to that. Fiscal forecasting is going to be a critical, critical point. And I know that most states are not doing it right. So that's my prediction. More people are going to be reaching out asking for fiscal forecasting and understanding how to look at this program in the future.   Sarah: And I think to tack on to that, I think we're going to see new technology and new resources emerge that will assist our agencies. Again, like Carol said earlier, some days it feels like we have our big chief tablet out and we're still doing things old school. And I think the only direction to go is up. So I think we're going to see some new resources, hopefully in the technology world develop, that will assist our agencies so that their focus can remain on the customers where it belongs.   Allison: And I would have to say ditto to both of that, especially the fiscal forecasting and the pendulum swinging the other way. And a lot of states considering order selection or going into order selection. But one of the things that pops in my mind that might happen over the next three years is reauthorization of WIOA. I know the discussions are happening with Congress right now, and if that implementation happens, you know, what's it going to look like? Because ten years ago when WIOA was passed, it was a huge impact on VR. And it still is. I mean, we're still challenged with trying to get everything implemented, trying to spend the minimum of our 15% on Pre-ETS. There's just so many things that we're still working on through. So very interested to see where that's going to go.   Carol: And I definitely think like nothing ever stays the same. So we always think like we're going to get to the place and it's just going to be even flow, like it's all going to be cool. We don't really have to pay a lot of attention, and I don't think that's ever going to be the state of the VR program. Like it's going to constantly need people paying attention. Whether the pendulum is one way and we have loads of money or it's the other way and we have no money now, like we have to somehow try to like even this out with the fiscal forecasting and all the things you're doing. But if you think you're going to get to the place where like, oh, I've reached it, Nirvana, it's all great. That's never going to be like this job takes constant attention to detail and what is happening. And so it is always going to be work. It's going to take a lot of effort from a lot of people. And as all the new people keep coming and going, figuring that out for the team so that you can sustain the practices and things that you have that help you to understand what's going on.   Katie: Yeah, I would just agree with everything that everyone already said. One of the big pushes that was brought up at CSAVR, is technology, and I think it is going to be interesting to see what kind of technology is introduced in the next three years that's going to help assist our programs.   Carol: So what is your best piece of advice for our listeners? And I'll let anybody open that one up.   Allison: I'm going to say you need to have a deep bench of leaders who are adverse in the financial requirements, maybe incorporating fiscal training for all staff on an annual basis, whether that's just refreshers or making sure new folks being hired understand all the requirements. But fiscal needs to be part of your ongoing training with staff. It's just critical.   Carol: I'd say, for directors coming in, I know the tendency is to want to be like, I have to know everything. I'm the director, I need to know all things. And even when you don't know the things, you pretend, you know the things. Don't pretend you know the things you don't know. Like you need to be humble and figure it out and learn and be willing to learn. For a lot of folks that are growing up in the VR system, having that sort of physical part of your brain, it may not be completely there. You're like, I went into VR because I didn't want to do math, and now you're in charge of, you know, $300 million in a program. And so you've got to just continue to learn and chip away and figure out how you can gain that really strong understanding, because you cannot just hand that off to some other group and think someone's managing that for you, because the buck really does stop with you in the end. As far as the responsibility over the control and allocation of the VR funds. So please keep learning, as Allison said, and be open and be humble when you don't know things and ask.   Sarah: There's a song by the Beatles called With a Little Help from My Friends. Everybody needs a Little help from time to time. And I know over the years we've worked with most of the agencies, but there are some that we haven't, and I've always assumed they're good. They don't need us. They're fine. It's not always necessarily the case. So acknowledging if I pick up a phone and call a peer or a fellow director, or hopefully the TAC continued to exist beyond this grant cycle. Reaching out and asking for help is okay, and it's encouraged.   Katie: Yeah, mine will be through the lens of policy and procedure. That's where I keep hitting. That's my passion on this QM team. We have a ton of resources available, and if you're struggling, you're looking at that table of contents saying, I can't do this. Reach out, give us a call. We can help you with prompting questions just to get the thought process going. And you can do it. It's going to be okay.   Chris: Ok, my piece of advice is to make connections. And I think everybody has kind of said that in their own way. But make those connections so that you have people you can reach out to and ask questions of whether it's us at the TA center, other states, other fiscal people. You need to be able to ask, how do you do this? What do you think of this idea that I have? How would you handle this? I mean, being able to have that connection and that type of conversation is critical 100%.   Carol: Well, I sure appreciate you all. And while we're still around, all our listeners can still connect with us. And we do have a QM fiscal email address. I will spell out for you. It is QM f I s c a l at v r t a c-qm.org. So qmfiscal@vrtac-qm.org. So please do reach out. We still are around for a little while and we can be your phone a friend. So thanks for joining me today guys I really appreciate it.   Chris: Thank you Carol. This was great.   Allison: Thanks for having Us.   Sarah: Thank you.   Katie: Thanks.   {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!

Join us for this enlightening episode of VRTAC-QM Manager Minute, where we explore the transformative power of Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), also known as Performance-Based Payment (PBP). In the studio, we have Chip Kenney, Co-Project Director of the VRTAC-QM, and Lisa Mills, a consultant and subject matter expert in VBP, sharing their expertise. VBP is more than just a financial model—it's a strategic shift designed to drive better outcomes for individuals with disabilities. By aligning provider incentives with measurable performance outcomes, State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) can enhance the quality of services, improve consumer results, and optimize costs. Tune in to hear Chip and Lisa discuss how SVRAs can harness the power of this approach to revolutionize service delivery and create a meaningful impact. Whether you're considering adopting VBP or seeking to refine your approach, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss! Value-Based Payment Methodologies to Advance Competitive Integrated Employment: A Mix of Inspiring Examples from Across the Country   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Chip: Virginia reached out and they wanted to include value based purchasing specifically in their Disability Innovation grant. I said, this is an opportunity we can't pass.   Lisa: Is there anything about our payment structure that incentivizes or rewards this kind of quality that we're saying we're not getting, thus reduce the amount we're investing in unsuccessful closures.   Chip: When we can get to that point where we can identify and measure and demonstrate and get quality outcomes that will move this whole system a gigantic step forward.   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 Chip Kenney, Co-Project Director of the VRTAC for Quality Management, and Lisa Mills, Consultant and Subject Matter Expert to the QM on Value-Based Purchasing. So here's a little context for our listeners. Value-Based Purchasing, also known as Performance-Based Payment, is a model that offers financial incentives to providers for meeting certain performance measures. And as state rehab agencies look to improve outcomes for individuals with disabilities, the quality of purchased VR services, and overall cost effectiveness. A Performance-Based approach might be an option, so I don't want to steal their thunder, and I'm going to let my guests discuss what they're doing today. So let's dig in. Lisa, lets' start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you find your way kind of into this VR space?   Lisa: Sure. So I've been in the world of disabilities for my career, for the entire career. So, 33 years, I think where now I've lost count. But about 20 years ago, I got really interested in employment working with Self-advocates way back before there was such widespread support for ending Subminimum wage. You know, the support that we do see now, but that was at a time when that it wasn't even being discussed. But Self-advocates were very clear that they wanted to earn more money and have more opportunities. So I got interested in supported employment and why we weren't using it very much. And so I started working with Medicaid and long term support agencies on improving employment services and outcomes. Back then, there was something called the Medicaid Infrastructure Grants, which allowed states to create Medicaid buy ins for working individuals with disabilities. So I really dug in around what were we doing around employment services. And of course, that brought us to the relationship with VR. And about 16 years ago, I started working on customized employment and developing ways to pay for customized employment, and worked with a couple VR agencies at the time on payment structures for customize. And then most recently, I'm a mom of a transition age son who used VR supported employment services to get his first and second jobs, and he's been employed in competitive, integrated employment since 2020. He's about to turn 21 and that has changed his life. So I'm a firm believer.   Carol: Good for him. That's really cool to know. I always love it finding out the stories people have, because you never know, we all get here a different way. But I love your path. So Chipper over to you. And I'm going to say Chipper because I'm naughty. He Chip is my colleague. So for our listeners I do like to rib Chip a bit. So Chip, how did you find your way into the VR space?   Chip: So very similar to Lisa. My whole career has been in public rehabilitation for a bit then technical assistance centers, but fast forwarding to about 2009 was interested in customized employment and its applications, and the need for VR systems to have an employment system that really addressed what people with the most significant disabilities needed to be successful, and I was sort of glommed on to that space ever since. And then with the passage of WIOA, it just seemed a really necessary connection that VR agencies and systems have something new they can offer. People who would have considered going into sheltered employment now are coming out. What are you going to offer them that's new and different from when they went in and have been at it ever since, mainly focused on the implementation side of it, because there's a bunch of trainers in that space and they're all really good. But we learned early on that it takes an infrastructure to embed, implement and sustain customized employment over a period of time. And so that's been my focus the last several years. I mean, we're still learning a lot. And rate structure is part of that, which, I mean, I've known Lisa for years too, but rate structure is something every agency struggles with. And when the opportunity came to work with Lisa on this and move this forward, I thought, this is a big missing piece that we have to fill.   Carol: Absolutely, I'm underscoring that 100% because we know we get a lot of rate work with our QM work and the whole idea and customized employment with that sustainability. You can have the great idea. And we're going to do the thing and we're all excited. But then what happens. Year one and two and three and four as it goes on and it all fades away. And we don't want that to fade away. We need to have that good sustainability plan. So Chip, how did you get involved in bringing Lisa on board? What was kind of the impetus of that?   Chip: Virginia reached out. The state of Virginia reached out to us and they wanted to include value based purchasing. And they mentioned that specifically in their Disability Innovation grant, and somebody referred them to me. I mean, I knew a bit about it, but then as soon as I saw the Lisa connection and started reading her work on it, I said, this is an opportunity we can't pass, even though I don't have any experience. But Lisa brings all that and the knowledge and the background and said, it's really important to be a part of this.   Carol: Very cool. So, Lisa, I understand you have a very unique superpower. You can speak and interpret languages across multiple partner systems. How did you develop that?   Lisa: Well, I guess I'm a bit of a policy wonk. I did a lot of interviewing of people from different systems to try to understand what was going on with partnerships, what were the challenges. And this was probably 12, 13 years ago. I was doing some work with ODEP at the time, blending and braiding. And when I was doing a lot of my interviews interviewing the different partners, including VR, I figured out that a lot of what was going on at that time was sequencing. It was really not blending or braiding, and if we wanted to get to braiding and ultimately to blending, I felt like we really had to find what was going on then as something foundational, you know? And that's where I kind of coined the term sequencing and said, this is really what we're doing, but we can help people understand then what it means to switch from sequencing to braiding, what it means to switch from braiding to blending, and really start to get people interested in the advantages of moving away from sequencing. So it really was just wanting to dig into each system enough to figure out what solutions might improve collaboration and outcomes. Sometimes it can be easy to lay out all the issues, right? Everything that's not working, but to really dig into each system and figure out where could we align ourselves, where are we aligned, and we just don't realize it? That was more, I guess, the policy wonk side of me.   Carol: I love that because I think I've been on lots of work groups over the years, I mean, I just have when we've worked between, you know, departments of education and your state Department of like maybe developmental disabilities or whatever you are calling it back in the day. And then in the VR system when we all had different ways of describing everything and we could get stuck in the what's the problem? Here's all the problems. We got problems. We have a million problems. Here's all the hundred problems we have to get through before we can get to a solution. But if you go in and go, I love that. Like, how are we aligned right now and what are the things that we could build off of right now instead of always focusing on that whole myriad of things? But I think understanding each other, how we speak about things and we may say the same word, but it means something different to each of us. Once we can kind of clear up that dictionary and talk the same language, it makes it much easier to comprehend what's going on in each other's systems and how that can then work together. I love that you have that. So what is the essence of Value-Based Purchasing?   Lisa: So to me it's quality service combined with efficient service that results in quality outcomes. So I think about that. Efficiency without quality that would not lead to quality outcomes. We'd hurry up and do things, but we wouldn't really see the quality outcomes we wanted to see. And at the same time, if you have a quality service that goes on and on and on, you lose the cost effectiveness and you typically you lose the job seeker. They're going to give up or go find a job some other way. So to me, we have to recognize we need both quality and efficiency in the way services are delivered and that we have a set of quality outcomes we want to achieve. And we have to ask ourselves, to what extent are we getting those quality outcomes? And to me, if we can figure out a payment structure that balances rewarding quality and efficiency and is really clear about what is quality and service delivery, what is efficiency and service delivery, and then what are we looking for? As quality indicators and outcomes? We can design a payment structure that really will deliver on that. And I think as you start to think about that, you realize how the existing payment structures really aren't set up to do those things for various reasons. And that really, I think, helps people buy into the idea that there might be a better way to do this. And this idea of value based purchasing might actually have some legs.   Carol: So that payment structure piece, that's my interest. How did you really dig in and kind of figure it out? Because it sounds good and I understand all the things you're saying about quality outcomes, but how when it comes down, like putting the rubber to the road, do you get at the nuts and bolts of figuring out the payment structure?   Lisa: So everybody always wants that. Next they say, so tell me what it is. And I always say it is what you need to develop locally in your system. You need buy in from those who are purchasing and those who are providing, and you've got to bring them to the table in a constructive way. So in a really collaborative way, sometimes we talk about it as co-creation and you dig into what do we agree is quality service, how do we differentiate quality service from service that we would say is not high quality. And then what do we agree is efficient service? How do we differentiate efficient service from service we would say is inefficient but very important to VR agencies, at least those I've spoken to. Are these quality outcomes, the career path outcomes, the jobs with benefits, the jobs with more hours and better pay? You know, some of these things, you're just not necessarily seeing a lot. You're getting outcomes that you can count as a 26 closure, but they aren't the kind of quality outcomes that, and you see some revolving door effect of certain people who and I know that's a big issue in some states or you see a lot of dropouts in the process. So in every state it's important to sit together and figure out what should we be doing better, what does better quality look like, and then what is quality and efficient service look like? That's how you get the buy in to establish a payment structure that where people want to implement it and intend for it to work. I can certainly share examples of how that co-creation works going on elsewhere and what the ultimate outcome was, but that is what happened there. And I really like the idea that and really believe that you've got to do a local co-creation process to get to something everybody's bought into and something that has a high probability of working. I would never say, oh, Value-Based Purchasing is this. It's only this. Or you just take this model from this other state and you plunk it down here. That won't work.   Carol: Yeah, I can see why you sing to Chip's heart there. Because he's all about systems work, you know, and that whole and everybody's systems in your state are so different. How you're set up, what your relationships are like between your providers and yourself and other entities and all of that. So I do like that you're speaking to that and you can't just pick up and replicate because you've got all your nuances that are happening in your state, and you need to understand those before you can get to the agreeable solution. That makes a lot of sense.   Chip: And it's not only that, and we're finding this to be true now that providers are not a monolith, that there's not a state where you can go, okay, every provider looks like every other provider. There are a lot of uniquenesses, a lot of variables that have to be taken into account to bring at least the majority of them on board. And that's we're finding that to be true as every state system is different, every provider network or non-network is different.   Carol: Absolutely. And even when you think about the states, kind of just the like the geographic challenges they have and the things that are going on, we've saw such an increase, especially after Covid with people moving and some of the states go like our cost of living in certain areas has gone up exponentially, like 300% or something. And so you've got everybody like, decided because they could work from anywhere. We're all moving to this town and then other areas become depleted, maybe from people, and there's less resources available and harder to get providers to serve an area even though you have customers there. I just feel like we have a lot of geographic and economic challenges across states, even tiny states. It's been super interesting. We've found that work as we've been just doing plain old rate setting with states, so let alone what you guys are digging into. So what are some of the biggest challenges in implementing this value based purchasing?   Lisa: I would say the time it takes to do it right. I think sometimes state agencies and I'm not singling out VR, but they want quick solutions. You know, they think about it for a long time and then they say, okay, we want to do it. Let's get it done. Can we get this done in three months or can we, you know, and you have to say probably not in a way that would be successful. And so it is something not to take lightly and to really commit to invest in. I think there's a lot of additional benefits to doing this, including provider relationships and the learning that goes on. Providers now understand what it's like to step in the shoes of a funder. Funders understand what it's like to step in the shoes of a provider. I always think that helps with everybody getting on the same page and agreeing to a model they think will work, but it takes patience, it takes partnership. Some states are, they're very uncomfortable with bringing providers in. They tend to develop things and then release them to providers. So you've got to have a level of trust when you identify the providers you want to involve. I always encourage to identify who are your high performers. They are the providers you want this model to work for because you want more high performers and you want those that you have to expand their footprint, for example, to go into geographic areas that are underserved or to hire more staff. So always thinking about partnering with the high performing providers. But there's a bit of reluctance, you know, and risk in doing that and saying we're going to create something together. Lots of outside the box thinking. It's really hard to get away from payment models that you've been invested in for a long time. Milestone fee for service. Just to think beyond those can be very difficult, but I think once people start to and that's something I do, is kind of bring ideas and thoughts and stimulate thinking to get them to move away from those models and really say, what should we be paying for? What is important to value in the payment structure? I think it really gets to be very exciting, or at least I think so. You really need data to you cannot develop a model without good data. Sometimes the data is readily available. It's reports that VR agencies are already pulling out of their system. Other times the data's in the system, but they don't typically pull it. And so we have to work with them. And it helps to have a data analyst to assist with this process, to be able to pull pieces of data or data analysis and different ways that informs what we're doing. We want a data driven approach. And sometimes, of course, you probably know that data analysts are very, very busy or they're off doing something else. And it may be hard to get them committed to the work.   Carol: Have you seen improvements since? I'm just thinking since WIOA and kind of the requirements that RSA has put on state agencies about collecting a vast amount more of data. Have you seen improvement as you're working with states that they actually have data they may not have had years ago that you can get at. I mean, there might be a little bit of a problem with the staffing or getting your data analysts to pull it, but that availability of the data you need to really to dig into this, that it's actually there.   Lisa: Yeah, I do think the systems are pretty sophisticated, and it's a matter of helping them understand how to use more of the data they have, because we have the standard WIOA measures. We have the way that VR talked about its performance prior to WIOA but I think we're digging in to get it more data elements that help us understand. One of the most important things to understand is demographic information and how that affects maybe how difficult or how easy it is to serve someone. So, for example, adding criminal background to someone's demographic profile, or we know from history that, you know, that does create a challenge. So it's weeding out what are the things that differentiate people who VR would serve and try and understand better how that relates to cost. The other thing that's really important that I don't typically see is what's the average cost of a successful case? So I see this is the average cost of successful closures. So taking all successful closures and dividing it by the number and then average cost of unsuccessful closures, then average cost of a case. But for me what matters most is what are we paying for a successful case if we're including everything we're paying. So including all the that we're spending on unsuccessful closures in that and saying, basically this is what it costs to get a successful case, because we also have to pay for the unsuccessful closures and trying to focus on how do we reduce, how much we're paying for unsuccessful closures, and to really make sure more of the money that we're paying flows to successful closures. There's a little bit of complacency that goes on with every system where if we just compare ourselves to other states, we may say, look, we're doing better. We should be happy with our performance. We are better than 75% of the states. But if we stand back and compare that to people without disabilities and their participation in the workforce, I think that's when we say we're comparing it to school. Like if you got 60% on a test, would you pass it or would you fail it? So I think we have to challenge ourselves to say we may be doing better than so many other states, but we are not performing at a high level and we want to move up. We want to not just judge ourselves by other states. Now, 100% success is unrealistic. I don't think there's anybody who would disagree with that, but it's important for the providers and the funder to come together and say what kind of improvement above where we've been. Do we want to try to incentivize? Do we want to see and to develop the payment structure, to say we believe this structure will directly influence our ability to move those percentages up over time and thus reduce the amount we're investing in unsuccessful closures without reducing the number of people were serving, without cherry picking, but truly improving outcomes.   Carol: I love that that is a good way to challenge the thinking that's going on out there, because people sort of, I don't know, poo poo or they just this is over there in that bucket and they let it be. And we're kind of complacent with just, you know, we're doing better but is better. What's the next state like. You know, like better than what. And so what does that matter.   Chip: But I think I mean, the key to me is the concepts of quality, the quality of services and quality outcomes. And if you can define and you can measure and you can demonstrate quality of services and quality outcomes, it seems like you don't need to compare yourself with other states. You can say this is quality in our state. This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it. These are the outcomes. So state by state national comparisons are way less important. So when we can get to that point where we can identify and measure and demonstrate and get quality outcomes that will move this whole system gigantic step forward.   Carol: 100% Chip. So what would be your best advice for states as they're listening. Right. You know, they're listening in and they're thinking, well, I want to do something, but I don't know what to do. Like what would be the next steps? What should they do?   Lisa: To me, it's, start the conversation. I find that the process of bringing state people together with providers, that they're all learning together about this different way of thinking, And it helps because it does take a little bit to get your mind around what Value-Based Purchasing is and how it's different from milestone payments or fee for service. And I've often seen like people have come up to me sometimes and said, you know, it was the third time I heard you talk that the bells finally went on, you know? And I said, that's fine. I think it's just the way it is. It's complicated in a way, because it's so different. So getting the conversation started and thinking about, you know, asking yourself questions like, is there quality in the outcomes that we want as an agency that we're not getting quality and service delivery? We don't feel we're getting quality and outcomes we're not getting. Then think about your payment structure and say, is there anything about our payment structure that incentivizes or rewards this kind of quality that we're saying we're not getting? Sometimes maybe there's something there. Sometimes you could say, no, there's absolutely nothing in the payment structure that does that. And then I always say, think about the providers that you think are doing the best work for you. Are they financially benefiting? Are they doing better financially. And in some cases I've seen no, there's no difference. I'm performing better, but financially that's not being recognized. And in other cases I've seen they're actually earning less because they're doing such a good job and they're very efficient. You know, they're producing quality with efficiency. They're actually doing more poorly financially than some of the providers who are performing at a lower level of quality. So I think when we start to think about those questions, people see that the need to try to figure out a different way to do things, then they're willing to, you know, let's talk about what this Value-Based Purchasing is what the principles are, how it's different, and begin to think about how we might bring our high performing providers into a conversation with us about this.   Chip: My advice for states is that you're in this for the long haul. To Lisa's point very early in this discussion that this isn't a quick solution. That's something that can just be laid in the state and just immediately adapted. It does take that level of discussion, that level of understanding, collecting data. It's complex. And sometimes I think to myself, why am I choosing to get involved in the complexity of Value-Based Purchasing overlaid the complexity sometimes of customized employment, but I think in the end result we will have a much better system, much more equitable service delivery system for everyone, including providers, including customers and job seekers. But just keeping the discussion going on things like this, things that CSAVR presentations Getting this into the national discussion, I think, is the first step.   Carol: Those are really good tips. Where outside of VR is Value-Based Purchasing being implemented?   Lisa: So definitely in the Medicaid world, most of your listeners are probably aware of that, but mostly in the Medicaid world, it's on the acute primary care side. So hospitals and doctors, primary care physicians and things. So I always caution people there's things we can learn from that and those examples. But it's not a wholesale import those approaches over to VR. I don't think that would work. But there are some principles or strategies that we can use, like there's a concept called shared savings. There's some other things that I think we can think about and use, but we still have to develop something that's specific to employment. In my work on this around employment on the Medicaid side has been with the long term services and support agencies, the DD agencies, the mental health agencies, managed care organizations who are doing LTSS and employment is a perfect place to start with them around their thinking, around Value-Based Purchasing. They're facing some pressure. I would say some to use Value-Based Purchasing because it's seen to be working on the acute primary side of Medicaid. So they're saying, why aren't we using it in LTSS? And they want better quality and better efficiency too. They want to see people supported to achieve their highest level of independence. They want their high performing providers to do well. So we worked on it with employment because it's so obvious that fee for service, which is the typical payment model, disincentivizes all the things that we associate with high quality supported employment, the better you are at getting people jobs, the better you are at coaching and fading because you're good at it. We reward providers under fee for service with less money. And those providers are performing more poorly, end up with more money. So it's not hard to get people to see why fee for service doesn't work for supported employment. So we've worked on models for job coaching that pay for hours worked rather than hours of coaching, so that providers are appropriately financially compensated if they do better at fading, which goes back to what kind of job did they get people, as well as how good they are at coaching. That model incentivizes them to get people more hours. So if you start with 12 hours a week, that doesn't mean you stay with it. If they're doing well, the employer wants to increase that. The person wants that they can get paid more in the model. Fee for service providers don't get any financial remuneration for increasing people's hours worked, even though we say that's a goal. So that's been a lot of where we see some of the value based models developing. We're paying for things up front services like exploration, which I'm really happy to see the results of states that have added exploration and exploration to their waivers, because we now have a way to tackle people who say no thanks in a planning meeting or I'm not interested, or their families say that we've been paying for developing payment models for that. That's an outcome payment. So they complete the service, then they get paid based on the quality of the information they submit and the efficiency. So there are ways to align what we're doing. Providers certainly appreciate that they would like to be paid the same way. Typically once they experience being paid in a Value-Based structure. So that's where it's happening. But think about just the general business world. There are so many examples of payment based on performance or quality, right. Sales Salespeople earn incentives for sales. So business has long been doing this in terms of creating those kinds of incentives and even nonprofits. Now, United Way and others are funding nonprofits based on outcomes and deliverables. They're no longer funding them to just provide service. So I think if you look, we're seeing it everywhere, really.   Carol: So you brought up a whole lot of points. If people are interested in more information, do you have resources we could send them to?   Lisa: Well, in 2021, I did a publication that looked at examples from around the country that I'd been in some way involved in. That's on the Lead Center website as well as there are a series of webinars we did at the time with representatives from various states. I have a lot of information about what's going on in the Medicaid side. Et etcetera. So I guess I would say that was my thinking in 2021, I continue to learn and evolve my thinking, and I think we're at a point now where we're trying to do in Virginia, is move beyond both fee for service and milestones, because neither are working very well, right? So you've got some state VR agency saying we're paying fee for service. It's not working. Should we move to milestone? But if you talk to states who are using milestone, they will also say it's not working very well. Some of them are thinking about going back to fee for service. And I'm thinking, I don't think we should do either. I think we should work together to figure out what's the next way we attempt this that addresses the shortcomings of both. And I think that pathway is Value-Based Purchasing.   Chip: and helping moving states to. Well, I'm a little concerned about the unknown. What we have may not be working now, but it's the known. I don't really know what's ahead, but I think where in Virginia at least, has done a really good job of creating that safe space. Like, let's explore this together and keep this comfort zone of what we currently have, but move forward into something that's more equitable and beneficial for them.   Carol: So, Chip, if people wanted to reach out, what would be the best thing? Should they contact you or what would be best?   Chip: Either one of us is if it's a state agency, probably me if it's others listening to this. Lisa.   Carol: Do you want to give them your email address?   Chip: It's r k e n n e y at SDSU (San Diego State University) dot EDU.   Carol: Awesome. And, Lisa, do you mind sharing your email address?   Lisa: No, but I'll warn you, it's long. So here we go, Lisa Mills l L i s a M i l l s, all one word, at M as in Michael, T as in Tom, D as in David, D as in David, dot On Microsoft, all one word, com. And that was my IT friends who gave me that ridiculously long email, which I hate.   Carol: Holy smokes, that is long. Well thank you both. I really appreciate it. And I will put a link in our podcast announcement out to your publication from 2021 as well. Then folks could at least see that. But thanks for your time. I really appreciate the conversation.   Lisa: Thank you.   Chip: Thanks. We really appreciate this opportunity.   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!

Join us for the latest episode of the Manager Minute podcast, where host Carol Pankow sits down with the incredible Serina Gilbert, Cheryl Carver, and Peter Pike from Colorado's Pathways to Partnership DIF Grant! In this episode, they dive into their groundbreaking Pathways to Partnership project, a collaborative initiative designed to enhance outcomes for children and youth with disabilities. Discover how they're embedding VR counselors in schools, launching the innovative “Map My Transition” app, and partnering with Centers for Independent Living to create a brighter future. Tune in as the team shares valuable insights, learning experiences they've faced, and what's on the horizon for the grant's second year. Don't miss this inspiring conversation about transforming lives through partnership and innovation! Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Serina: To support the families that are surrounding these young adults with disabilities, as well, to help them gain the skills to be able to help those students move into competitive, integrated employment.   Peter: The centers for Independent Living are required to deliver core services in one core service is supporting young adults transitioning into high school.   Cheryl: We will actually incorporate those components of the six core skill sets and the age ranges, along with all of those local partners into map my transition.   Serina: Gosh, there's so many things we're doing.   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 the Tri-Force from Colorado, Serina Gilbert, Cheryl Carver, and Peter Pike, Co-project, directors for Colorado Partnerships for Partnership DIF Grant. So how are things going for you, Serina?   Serina: I'm doing fantastic. I like that word Tri-Force. It feels really, really fancy. It's October here and it's like almost 80 degrees, so I'm happy.   Carol:  Ahh, good for you. You know what? In fact, I had to use a little ChatGPT because I said, well, how could I describe a fearsome threesome? And they gave me all these different things. And I went, I'm going to go Tri-Force. I really liked it.   Serina: So don't tell people your AI secrets. You came up with that all on your own. you did it.   Carol: I know, I know, how about you, Cheryl? You are old hat at this. I got to talk to you a couple years ago, which was super fun. So Cheryl's like the podcast queen now. She's on this twice.   Cheryl: I'm with Serina, though. I liked that word too. I thought it was empowering. I think this is awesome. We're going to have to use that again. Things are going well. Always busy though, you know, and the DIF grant has added to that, but in an awesome way in terms of growing, expanding and learning. So we're excited to be here today.   Carol: Awesome. And Peter, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited you are on. How are you doing?   Peter: Well, I got to tell you, I'm a little nervous. This is my first time joining a podcast, so I'm not sure how it's going to go, but I appreciate the opportunity. And I'm coming off of two big meetings today, one with the Centers for Independent Living, where we get to get caught up on priority topics, and of course, our Disability Innovation team meeting. We meet on a regular basis. So the timing is great.   Carol: Good. Well, you're all bringing the energy. So that's great. So I just want to do a little quick refresher for our listeners so they understand what the earth we're talking about. So I have been doing different series on the Disability Innovation Fund grants. And this particular grant has to do with the Pathways to Partnership grant that was funded by RSA, and it supports projects aimed at fostering deeper collaboration between agencies. Turning these collaborations into true partnerships, and the projects aim to enhance service delivery by piloting cohesive models that better manage resources, while coordinating efforts to improve outcomes for children and youth with disabilities and their support systems, ultimately facilitating smoother transitions. And Colorado is wrapping up the first year of the grants. So let's dive in and see how things are progressing. All right. So let's get into it Serina, I'm going to kick off with you first. Could you just start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in VR?   Serina: Sure. So you already know my name is Serina Gilbert, and I'm currently a program manager under our youth services team with the Division of Voc Rehab here in Colorado. I actually got involved with VR because I was a recipient of VR services way back when, when I was in college, and while I was receiving services, I kind of flipped the script around, I was like, well, what do you do? This looks fun. Like, I want to learn this. So I got my master's and a few years later, here I am. So I've always enjoyed working with youth. That's always been my passion and I'm super excited to even be in this role.   Carol: Awesome. So, Peter, what's your journey to get to VR? Tell us a little bit about you.   Peter: Well, that's a great question. My name is Peter Pike and I work for what's called the Colorado Office of Independent Living Services, which is part of the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. And I got to tell you, for a couple decades, I actually worked outside of the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation as a vendor and as like a community partner on different grants. And a few years back, Colorado established this Office of Independent Living Services, dedicated to working with nonprofits called the Centers for Independent Living. That's how I got involved with the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, and I'm also a person with a Non-visible disability. And so this fits very nicely in terms of my philosophy and being part of the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.   Carol: I love that because you bring a whole other perspective. Having come from that vendor field. So you've got some things going on that can contribute greatly to the agency and this project for sure. And Cheryl, last but not least, you know, it's been two years, but let's tell our listeners again a little bit about you and your journey into VR.   Cheryl: Well, mine is not as direct as Peter's or Serina. Again, my name is Cheryl Carver. I am the second program manager we have here in the state of Colorado under Voc Rehab for our youth services and transition programming. So Serina and I work very closely together. I kind of fell into this by accident, but I have always been in healthcare related fields. I've worked for the independent living centers. I've also worked in assisted living and I worked as a vendor as well with DVR in the mental health sector. After that, I really lucked out and was able to apply for a position. That was 24 years ago and I joined the youth services team 20 years ago, so it's been an indirect path, but once I found my niche, I have loved growing in this position with youth services at the administrative level.   Carol: I love it, you know, no matter which way, if you come in a direct way or lots of people, it's kind of a long and winding road to get into VR. Whatever way you get here, we love the energy you all are bringing, and we think it's great because people are bringing all kinds of different perspectives to the work now. I was super excited about your project when I was reading through RSA's website and looking at the little synopsis, and I'm like, oh, I got to grab the Colorado people first. You're the first in my group on this particular topic, and I understand that your project has multiple components. Can you give our listeners a little overview of the project and what you aim to accomplish? And I think, Serina, you were going to kind of give us the big picture to start out with.   Serina: Yes, it's a very big picture. So I'm sorry. We dreamed really big when we saw this grant posting last spring. We saw a lot of opportunity in our state to maybe help build some capacity and some connectedness throughout the state. So one piece of it is we started out by deciding to build what we're calling interdisciplinary teams. And what that is, is traditionally in Colorado, we don't usually have DVR counselors housed specifically in the school districts. We do have counselors that liaison with the district, but they are not like actually full time there. So we actually just did some hiring, and we'll have a couple of counselors starting in the next few weeks that will be housed directly in the local school districts and embedded with the school transition teams to make sure that services are able to be delivered to the students with disabilities within those districts. Another super exciting part that coincides with that is that there'll be services provided by the Centers for Independent Living, which Peter will talk a little bit more about as well, to make sure that there's a dedicated service provider to be able to help support those teams. And one really big, huge thing that we're really excited about is what's going to be called Map My Transition. And we jokingly call this the You are Here Website. So it's going to be a website and iOS app and an Android app designed for students, their families, educators and service providers and other community agencies within the state of Colorado. And the way that it'll work is we'll start from the student perspective, as the student will create an account on the site, they'll be asked a few questions about where they reside and what their long and short term goals are, and then they'll be presented with customized resources and videos that are specific to what their needs are, and specifically, how to get connected with the agencies that can support them. The super exciting part about that is that that also allows kind of that turnover resistant piece of things, because The educators and the service providers can also see that same list of community providers that are specific to their geographic region. So if somebody leaves a position, the next person can come into that position and get connected on this website and instantly know who their community partners are within their geographic area to connect with.   Carol: I love that app idea though.   Serina: I'm so excited about it.   Carol: Well, you know, when you talk about kids like students, man, they're not. Don't email them. They're not out looking on the internet.   serina: No.   Carol: like their phone is their life. Like they need everything to be direct connect that way. That's how they're going to, you're very smart to go that route.   Serina: Yeah. So we're super excited. Also gosh, there's so many things we're doing also to support the students. We are partnering with our family led organizations to support the families that are surrounding these young adults with disabilities, as well, to help them gain the skills to be able to help those students move into competitive, integrated employment. But then that's not all, I feel like a game show host.   Carol: Do tell more.   Serina: I know, I know. I'll have Cheryl talk a little bit about our interagency transition building as well, because that Map My Transition is also going to support that aspect of what we're doing here in Colorado.   Carol: I think that's cue to you, Cheryl.   Cheryl: I was just going to say, is that my cue? so five years ago, Colorado began an initiative through the National Assistance Center on Transition Coalition, and we began looking around the state to identify where our own gaps and weaknesses were as it pertains to interagency coordination teams. What we discovered were several of the components that Serina has mentioned that we hope to build into Map My Transition. Things like we were having trouble sustaining interagency transition teams, and that was due in large part because of turnover and staff. When interagency transition teams were coming together locally, they placed those responsibilities with an individual instead of their position. And as a result of that, once that person left, there was nobody to continue on with the work. And these interagency transition teams just eventually dissolved. Additionally, they really didn't have any goals that kept them together and gave them a reason for continuing to come together. So we wanted to help the local partners rediscover their interagency transition teams, identify tools that would help bring them together and give them an actual purpose. As a result of that work, what we created was a workbook for all partners that come to the table locally in these interagency transition team efforts, every partner at that table is required to identify within six core skill set areas that we've put together an age range, what services they actually provide. That way, when education is working on developing an IEP, an Individualized Education Program, or other entities sitting around the table like the division of Voc Rehab, developing their individualized plans for employment, we can look and see what areas does this student need to grow in, depending upon their age and their skill gap. With that, then we can pick and choose and strategically work together towards the same goals with that student. So we actually have coordinated student outcomes. We are not duplicating services. The challenge we faced was that the workbook, because we didn't have any backing to help us complete this, is overwhelming and it's difficult to use. And as a result of that, again, this is where Map My Transition comes in. We will actually incorporate those components of the six core skill sets and the age ranges, along with all of those local partners into Map My Transition so it will be easier for all users, whether it is the youth themselves or a family member, or any one of the number of entities that sit around an interagency transition table to be able to go in and see, we know what the students ultimate goals are, and these are the areas we are working on. So let's take a look at and consider what are the choices for the service providers. So I am also extremely excited about Map My Transition, because I think it is going to be fabulous in terms of what we are envisioning to create, as well as to help interagency transition teams accomplish that coordinated student outcome.   Carol: I think that is going to be super replicable across the country, like the work you guys are putting into that, because I know that's one of the things with the DIF grant, they're hoping that some of the things you all create are going to help other states out there. And that particular piece, I think that's fascinating. I think that sounds really cool.   Cheryl: I agree. So with that, we'll take it to the next level, if you will, and continue to enhance, we hope at least. What else would do you want me to kick it back to you, Serina, for apprenticeships or family member training?   Serina: I forgot about our apprenticeship piece because we're just doing so many things. We shot for the moon, right?   Carol: Yes, yes you did. There's like, 20 moving parts on this thing. I'm like, wow.   Serina: Cheryl is correct. One other aspect was to make sure that we're connecting young adults with apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities. So we are partnering with our apprenticeship representatives here in Colorado within the Department of Labor and Employment, called Apprenticeship Colorado, and they will be helping the counselors and the interagency teams learn about how to connect with employers for apprenticeships and actually be developing apprenticeships in the areas that we're serving. And then they're also going to create training for us to put on Map My Transition for future reference, but also train our staff on it. I did talk a little bit about the family led organizations in the training, but what we didn't talk a lot about was the Centers for Independent Living Partnerships, and I'd love for Peter to be able to cover that a little bit for us.   Carol: Peter, I know you're passionate about those CILs for sure.   Peter: Yeah, I always love the opportunity to talk about the Centers for Independent Living. And maybe a starting point is to just briefly talk about what is the Center for Independent Living, right? These are nonprofit organizations that actually exist in every state of the Union. And so in Colorado, we have nine centers for independent living that are focused on helping people with disabilities of all ages, any disability type, living as independently as they can. And I want to be clear, that doesn't mean they are residential facilities. These non-profits are not residential facilities. They are non-profits that we have contracts with to support people living independently in the community, and they are a key partner. One of the great things about this grant is there was a requirement that Centers for Independent Living be part of this grant. And so with that, it really accentuates some of the strengths that they have. There are two things that come to mind. Number one is the Centers for Independent Living provide peer support services. What that means is that these organizations have over 50% people with disabilities from the board of directors, all the way down to their entry level staff. And that is key because an emphasis of this program is peer support services. So in their work for this grant, that's what they're going to be doing, is working with young adults in high school, transitioning out of high school to Address and navigate some of the adult issues that come up, whether that be employment, post-secondary education and otherwise. So that's an important strength. The second strength that I believe the Centers for Independent Living offer is that this service system you don't age out of just because you turn 18 doesn't mean, oh no, now there's another program I need to join. As I said earlier, Centers for Independent Living serve all ages of all disability types. So that provides a key continuity of services as folks transition out of high school into what's next. So in addition to that, the Centers for Independent Living will have contracts with the centers for Independent Living, serving on the interagency teams and some of the expectations in terms of the services they're going to be providing are things like benefits, planning services, things like financial literacy. They'll be focused on supporting and educating people on accessing what are called ABLE accounts. Able stands for achieving a Better Life Experience, but it's an opportunity for these young adults to actually increase their assets and resources. In addition to that, they will also be serving as vendors for the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. And so those are key elements that they'll play in working alongside the interagency transition teams with the school districts, with the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. So it is a great opportunity for those organizations to really illustrate their strengths and the difference they make in the lives of people with disabilities.   Carol: I love that you are leveraging the Centers for Independent Living, because I think sometimes people I don't know, they're there, but you sort of forget about them as being a resource for more than maybe folks are thinking about. Oh, somebody needs a ramp to get into their house. Let's call the CILs, you know, type of thing. But they have a lot more going for them. And they're strategically positioned throughout your state and in every state. You know, they're all throughout all the geographic areas. So they're excellent partner to leverage. When you're looking at an endeavor like this I think that's smart.   Peter: You know Carol, it also fills one more gap. Like the Centers for Independent Living are required to deliver core services, and one core service is supporting young adults transitioning into high school. So with this particular project, they're actually working with youth in the schools. That's not necessarily part of their core services. So it really complements the opportunity to start the work earlier and support it ongoing even when they're out of high school.   Carol: Yeah, I really like that, Peter, I think that is so great. So I know you guys are you know, you're at the end of year one and you made it. You made it through year one. What kind of learning experiences. And I love it because I'm not going to say what sort of challenges did you have? What learning experiences have you had so far? Cheryl, I think I'm kicking that to you.   Cheryl: You are. So while this is a multi-pronged approach that we are taking, if you will, with several different outcomes for each one, we have encountered challenges that we have had to overcome or lessons we have had to learn along the entire way, starting from the very beginning with communication. Even between this Tri-Force. And I don't think it's a terrible thing to mention. That was one of the things that the grant reviewers brought up how, as three managers, are you going to do this job together? And we were like, we can manage this, we can handle this. We did. We had to learn how to communicate well together. We had to understand one another's styles and figure out what worked best for each of us in order to come together, agree upon things and respect when somebody didn't, and hear them out, even if that was not the direction we were going to go in. Inclusion has been another one. While we put above everything equity and diversity and inclusion. Just because we are the division of Voc Rehab, it's still easy to overlook or forget to give certain audiences the opportunity to have a say in things, especially something this large. And when you're moving forward and you've got deadlines and timelines, having to take a step back and say, wait a minute, did we check with everyone is really, really hard. So fortunately, again, because there's three of us, we always have that one that raises their hand and says, wait a minute, did we do that? So it's good to have that piece there. When we're working with our planning and advisory team or other partners around the table, we are also learning all about marketing and how to go about getting the marketing. We need to message things correctly and deliver that message out there to the communities about things as simple as trainings that we hope to offer to family members in partnership with our parental consortium here in Colorado. We are maintaining, I think maintaining is a good word, maintaining a huge, massive budget and having to be willing to be flexible within that budget. We are given certain parameters to operate within, and we have to go about getting changes approved periodically. But every time we turn around, there's been another new need or a new requirement or oh, wait a minute, we calculated that wrong. So we've got to go back and recalculate it. It has absolutely been, I think, a learning process for all of us. Another area that we have worked very diligently in is just as a state government, where we have had to learn different processes and procedures. Things have taken longer than we expected, having to write reports in certain manners or fill out certain forms. That in and of itself has been a hurdle that we have had to overcome together in regards to learning things.   Carol: You guys are not unique. I mean, I do ask this question of everybody when I'm talking about the DIF grants, just because the learning opportunities you've had this first year, it is really common because there are so many systems and practices and processes within each state. Everybody's got their own little nuances and things. And when it isn't your everyday job to navigate those and you now are co-directing, you know, this Tri-Force and this lovely DIF grant, and you're getting exposed to all these other processes that you didn't know about. It is quite a learning curve just to get through all of that. And once you get it figured out, then you fundamentally go, okay, you know, year two gets easier. It's like, all right, now we figured out all the pieces of the process and it gets better as you go along. So that is common. Everybody, I don't think I've talked to anybody across the country that hasn't had that as well. So I think you guys stated that really nicely. Now I know you all when I got to visit with you a little earlier, you had mentioned that you had this really important realization about your service model and that maybe it doesn't work like you thought it was going to work. When you are conceptualizing something and then you're going to put it into practice. So I don't know. Peter, can you talk a little bit more about that?   Peter: Yes, thanks. I'd be happy to. So as we've been talking, we talk about establishing three pilot sites or three interagency teams. And so we went through a process with our planning and advisory team, came up with a matrix, and we were able to identify three sites. And so we have this vision in this model about how those sites are going to be implemented and moving forward, including the Centers for Independent Living. And so one of the communities where we are working to establish a pilot site is in northwestern Colorado. And the school district that's involved is based out of a rural community, but it's also a mountainous resort community. And so what that means is the cost of living in that particular area actually is pretty high. And there's been articles on it within the city and across the state talking about challenges, just filling some government positions in that community. And so as we were having conversations with that interagency team, particularly the Center for Independent Living, that serves not just that community, but a five county area, they talked about the challenges. If we're going to have a contract with and bringing on a staff because the wage and the affordability for someone to live in the community that they're serving don't align very well. And so we've had to sort of pause and talk with our local partners about, man, what does this need to look like in order to meet the needs of the students and families in that school district, and at the same time, navigate some of these real issues around the cost of living. And so we're taking some extra steps in working with the Center for Independent Living and the school district to identify maybe where do we need to bring in new partners or other partners, or what are alternative ways to deliver the services that are necessary to meet the needs of the youth and families, right? Just because you're living in a resort area doesn't mean everybody is of the same economic class. And so our aim with this project is to make sure we're serving underrepresented communities. And sometimes socioeconomic status is kind of an important factor in that way. And so we have to take more time and understand how best to meet the needs of that community and how it might look different than the other two communities where we're continuing to move forward with all the parts.   Carol: That's a really excellent observation. I know VR has been facing this ever since the pandemic, kind of across the country, especially as people moved, you know, we had like floods of people moving to Florida, people moved into Idaho and different communities. And I know the directors have said, boy, it's impacted the program in different ways because now you have whole communities where they've had this big population move in and all the prices have gone up. And so it's tough even to get counselors and different staff working in these different regions and even to get vendors in those regions because the cost of living is so expensive. So you've got people there who've been there for many years, but yet new people are coming in and you've just got this kind of mire of crazy economic conditions that make it really difficult to navigate all of that for the consumers that are in those areas. So that is a really good realization you had. Now, I know we're on year two like you're three days into year two. You guys, what are your plans for year two? Miss Serina.   Serina: Sound like I'm in trouble.   Carol: Oh, no.   Serina: No, no. We have a lot like we talked about it a little bit earlier where we're hiring the school based rehabilitation counselors. We're well into that. And making sure that they have the training and support that they need to get started with everything. We're super excited because we're in the early stages of planning their kickoff meetings, where we'll be on site with each of the teams and help them, A, get on the same page and like kind of level set everything like so everyone has all the same information. And then one of the bigger pieces is that they all walk away with a tangible plan for how they're going to initially start collaborating and coordinating services with one another. So we're super excited about that. Another thing that I'm really personally excited about, because I'm kind of a marketing and social media dork in a way, is we're going to be coming up with some branding and a way to refer to this grant that resonates with the people that we're serving with students, families, educators, and, you know, the service providers that are working with us. Saying DIF grant, unfortunately, doesn't mean much to the average person. And there's a lot of DIF grants now. I believe they just funded the fifth or sixth round of them. So.   Carol: Oh yeah, and there's like 28 of those or something.   Serina: Yeah.   Carol: so there's a bunch   Serina: There's a lot. So we're super, super excited to get some branding and social media going and things like that to get people excited about what we're doing. Um, what else are we doing? Team what am I missing? Those are some really big things that we're doing.   Carol: Do you have anything cool that you're doing with the branding? Like can you share if there's something little or is it all top secret right now.   Serina: No, we just, thanks to our grant manager, Lauren Riley, and our program assistant, Amy Smith, they found us a marketing agency, and we're going to be meeting with them in the next couple of weeks so that they can talk through kind of what our needs are and things like that, and then they're going to have some focus groups with stakeholders to get their input and see what resonates. So I'm super excited.   Carol: Very cool. Very cool.   Peter: You know, Serina, thanks, sort of opened up an opportunity to talk about family and youth engagement. And one of the opportunities we have with this project is we actually can pay honorariums to young adults and families to participate, particularly on the planning and advisory team. And so we definitely want to hear the voice of the people we're serving and bring them to the table so that as we bring this to life, we have their input from the beginning.   Carol: Yeah, I love that, that's great, you guys, the energy of the three of you, it is super funny. I can feel it like our listeners can't see it. But coming off the zoom screen. Like it is so fun. I think you three complement each other very nicely. Now, I know for our listeners, you know, sometimes people want to reach out to you. I know you're in your initial stages, but sometimes folks just have questions or they're super interested, like Map My Transition, they're gonna be like, when's that going to be ready? Because we want to borrow it like we want all of that. Do you have an email or something you can share with our folks on a way to contact you?   Cheryl: We'd like to direct those questions to our actual grant manager, who is Lauren Riley, and her email address is l a u r e n dot R i l e y at state dot co dot US.   Carol: Excellent. Now that's helpful because otherwise the stuff goes kind of all over. And I do end up hearing back from the different folks we've had podcasts with. They're like, oh, we had some people reach out. So I'm hoping folks will do that. Are you three going to be at the CSVAR conference?   Cheryl: Not the upcoming one.   Carol: Possibly in the spring?   Cheryl: Maybe.   Carol: Yeah, because then people can track you down there as well.   Peter: I'd like to. Next time you talk to Kristen, say, hey, Kristen. Sending Peter to the CSVAR conference?   Carol: I'll put in a plug for you, Peter. That's awesome. Well, you three have been an absolute delight and I really appreciate your time. And I'm hoping I get to check in with you down the road to see how things are going. And I wish you the very best with this project. Have a great day.   Cheryl: Thank you, Carol.   Serina: Thanks so much, Carol.   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!

The RISE-UP project is a transformative initiative to revolutionize rehabilitation services for underserved populations, focusing on racial and ethnic minorities. Dr. Mari Guillermo and Dr. Mark Tucker, Project Directors at San Diego State University's Interwork Institute, highlight how this project seeks to drive systemic change through state agency partnerships and tools like QA Advisor Plus. RISE-UP strives to reshape vocational rehabilitation and improve employment outcomes nationwide by fostering equity, inclusion, and access.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Mark: QA Advisor Plus, a tool that agencies can use to check their RSA 911 data for errors and to help facilitate or expedite analysis of their own data.   Mari: How do we close this gap? Where are people not being served, what populations specifically are not being served? And the emphasis is on systems change because we can't improve these outcomes without really looking at what needs to change within that system.   Mark: So we hope that when you see information about the survey coming out, that you take a few minutes to fill it out and can provide us with information both about what they see as needs related to serving underserved populations. But also, we're asking folks to identify any promising practices that they're aware of with respect to providing effective services to underserved populations.   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, Dr. Mari Guillermo and Dr. Mark Tucker, are co-project directors with San Diego State University Interwork Institute. And they are joining me in the studio today. So how are things going in San Diego, Mari?   Mari: Uh, well, it's warming up. It's going to be in the 90s by tomorrow, but it's also the start of the semester at San Diego State University. We're in our second week, so things are still trying to settle down, but it's been quite a good busy two weeks for sure.   Carol: Oh, good for you. Well, I was in San Diego back in June and I'm going, okay, why isn't it warm here now? It was warmer in Minnesota than it was in San Diego. It was so crazy with that kind of, I don't know, marine layer or whatever hangs out. Yeah. How about you, Mark? How are things going for you?   Mark: Going well, yeah, That marine layer in June we that's like a typical thing June Gloom we call it. And then we pay the price in September. September is usually warm for us, but we'll get back to our normal San Diego weather in October.   Carol: Nice. I do love your fair city though. It is really awesome. Well, I thought, and I'm so glad I could get you two because I've been trying to snag you. I think I've been talking to you since last December, but now is finally the sweet spot. I thought it was super timely that we talk about the project given you're at the end of year one. October is also National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and I really think the project that you guys are embarking on could have a significant impact on the employment arena for underserved populations. As a little side note, we're super happy as part of the George Washington University team to be a partner on this project. So I want to give our listeners just a little bit of background. Over a year ago, RSA competed a discretionary grant, and the grant was specifically related to section 21 of the Rehab Act, as amended by WIOA, which requires RSA to reserve 1% of the funds appropriated each year for programs under titles three, title six, and seven to provide grant, contract or cooperative agreement awards to minority entities and Indian tribes to carry out activities under the Rehab Act. Secondly, minority entities and Indian tribes to conduct research training to or a related activity to improve services provided under the act, especially services provided to individuals from minority backgrounds. Or thirdly, state or public or private non-profit agencies or organizations to provide outreach and technical assistance to minority entities and American Indian tribes to promote their participation in activities under the Rehab Act. I learned a whole bunch. I know for our listeners, you're getting a whole history lesson, but I thought this was cool. And so under this priority, the department provides funding for a cooperative agreement for a minority entity or an Indian tribe to provide training and TA to a minimum range of 5 to 15 state VR agencies over a five year period of performance, so they are equipped to serve as role models for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the workforce system by implementing policies, Practices and service delivery approaches designed to contribute to increasing competitive, integrated employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities from underserved populations. And the other cool part is that you also need to contribute via our research and really good practices that promote access, and this will be really of great benefit across the whole country. So I'm super excited. Let's dig in. So, Mari, typically our listeners like to know a little bit about our guests, your backgrounds. So can you tell a little bit about yourself and your background?   Mari: Yeah, I'm originally from Hawaii, born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. I moved to San Diego in the late 80s to as a graduate student in the rehabilitation program at San Diego State University. So since moving to San Diego, I haven't moved very far from San Diego State University and our rehab counseling program. I'm currently faculty in our graduate program, but I've been with the Interwork Institute since its beginning, when it was started by doctors Fred McFarlane and Doctor Ian Champion, and just worked with some incredible number of leaders in our rehabilitation field. And upon graduating from the master's program, I started working with Doctor Bobby Atkins. And for those of you who few of you who are not familiar with Doctor Atkins, she is a leader. When we look at all diversity initiatives and in fact, when we look at section 21, that was started with her groundbreaking research looking at the involvement and participation of African Americans in vocational rehabilitation. But I worked with Doctor Atkins upon graduating from the program in the capacity building projects funded by this same pool of money. And Doctor Atkins was the national director for the Rehabilitation Cultural Diversity Initiative, which then morphed over into the Rehabilitation Capacity Building Project. So I worked with her from the 90s. All the way up to like 2015 I think is when the project ended. So a lot of the work that we are doing in Rise Up really builds on the foundational work that we did with Doctor Atkins back in the 1990s. So it's an incredible honor.   Carol: I think that is very cool. You've come full circle. Oh my gosh, I love that. I had no idea. And for our listeners too, I just want to say a word about Doctor Fred McFarlane. Fred had passed away this summer. Fred has been a good friend to many, and many of our listeners have benefited from Fred's work with the NRLI and the Leadership Institute. Fred was the founding person developing that and really did such an amazing job touching so many VR professionals over his career. And his legacy definitely lives on. So I just I needed to say that because Fred is definitely missed. So, Marc, how about you? Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background.   Mark: Sure, I've got a Master of Science in rehabilitation counseling, and I'm a certified rehabilitation counselor. And in fact, you know, when I was applying to the graduate program in rehabilitation counseling, Fred interviewed me. Uh, that was a few years back. But that...   Carol: Yeah, 1 or 2.   Mark: Yeah, but he was there right at the start for me. And then kind of in the profession, I got my start in community based non-profit agencies and then from there joined the Rehabilitation Continuing Education program for region nine at Interwork and SDSU in the early 2000. And when I was there, was involved in all kinds of different technical assistance, training and research projects, while also kind of teaching in an adjunct capacity in the Rehabilitation counseling graduate program at SDSU. And then eventually the Rehabilitation Continuing Education programs transitioned into the Technical Assistance and Continuing Education centers. So I continued doing that same type of work with what were called the TACE centers, and then in 2014, joined the Rehabilitation Counseling Program faculty at SDSU full time. So that's sort of where I spend a lot of my time. But I still continue working with, you know, Interwork. The two are just so intricately joined. It's really difficult to be part of one without being part of the other. So I continue doing work at Interwork. One of the recent projects that Mari and I were both involved in a few years back was the California version of the Promise Projects. It was a 5 or 6 years of work with transition age youth who were recipients of Supplemental Security Income. Presently, I'm the coordinator of the Rehabilitation Counseling program at SDSU, and do that while maintaining connections to a variety of projects at Interwork.   Carol: Yeah, you're always wearing about 40 hats. I always think of you, Mark, as being the data guy though, too, because you love the data. I mean, everybody likes data, sort of but you love the data. I mean, you've done some really amazing things with our national data.   Mark: Thank you. I enjoy that. I appreciate being able to bring that to a lot of the projects that I'm involved in. Yeah, you're right. I think I find it fun maybe at times where other people are like, oh, we'll leave that to somebody else.   Carol: Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh. So why don't you guys tell us a little bit about your project? I know it's called Rise Up. Maybe you can tell our group like what's that stand for? Everybody's got their fun acronyms and what you're trying to accomplish.   Mari: The name really captures the overall vision for this project, and we have to give a shout out to Doctor Chaz Compton because after several failed acronyms, as we were writing the proposal, it was Chaz who came up with the name. And RISEUP stands for Rehabilitation Improvements in Services and Employment for Underserved Populations. And so that really captures what we're aiming to do, improving the services and in the process of improving services, improving the outcomes for underserved populations, in competitive integrated employment, in careers, in academic achievements and accomplishments now underserved populations. There's many ways we can look at that, but RSA has defined it for us and it concentrates on race and ethnicity. So it encompasses individuals who are black, Latino, indigenous, Native American persons, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color. And so that is the specific focus for this grant and the population that we hope to impact ultimately with the work that we do with the state agencies. An important component of the project is the partnerships that we aim to build with ten state agencies. And that partnership is really important because while we think about this work is okay, we'll do training and technical assistance and all these different topics and how it intersects with these different populations based on evidence based practices and promising practices. But we can only do so much with training and technical assistance. We really have to look at, okay, how does this then translate into the work that goes on in the agency and not just in the agency? How does that look at the different levels within the agency? How a director would translate the training will look different than how a counselor or a technician would translate. We hope that it complements each other, but everyone has a different role in this process. And that's the other part of the project, is that we want to really look at the whole agency and all the different levels, and being able to provide that support to them where they need it. And really looking at how do we close this gap? Where are people not being served, what populations specifically are not being served within a state or a section of the state? And the emphasis is on systems change, because we can't improve these outcomes without really looking at what needs to change within that system. And there's different components that we're going to be incorporating into the project in our partnerships with the state agencies to look at what are the strengths and weaknesses within your agencies and what are the opportunities and gaps. And while there are big challenges that we all are aware of, there's also some great things going on and we want to highlight that, and we believe we'll be able to find that also within each of the state agencies.   Carol: I like a couple of things about what you just said. Well, I like it all, but a couple things stick out to me because holistically, we've seen it as we do TA and as people put in new initiatives in place. If you really get the whole agency going in the same direction, it is the rise or fall of that project for sure, because maybe the director is all in, but the mid-level managers and the counselors are like, I don't even understand what's going on. You're asking us to do this other thing? I don't get it. It seems weird. It's extra. I don't want to. I'm not going to. And then it doesn't happen. And so you really have to get everybody in sync. So I think you're smart to look at the whole organization and how everybody interprets the information and the training and how it actually gets implemented, because it isn't the director implementing it. It's the boots on the ground folks, it's your counselor. You need your line folks engaged and involved and giving you feedback and understanding what's happening. So that I think that is brilliant. Secondly, the data I think it's been interesting and I think Mark, it's some of the work that you've done over the last couple of years that I've known you as well, that as people start to get better about looking at their data, I think folks were looking really high level, not getting into the real intricacies and seeing the maybe the disparities that are happening in employment as you start looking at different races and ethnicities and who's getting what kind of work and what those outcomes are. And then we've seen states be completely shocked, like we didn't know we have a huge problem in this area. So I think getting at the data is super important. So I know, Mark, you and I had spoken to and you talked about this special wrinkle, and we're not using wrinkle in a bad way. It was in a good way. But you have a contractor called Encorpe and they're bringing something special to the project. Tell us a little bit about that.   Mark: Sure, and this relates a bit more to the data aspects of the project that we were just talking about. So Encorpe is a partner on the project. It's an organization that's headed by a couple of individuals with considerable experience with the public VR program, and they offer a tool that's known as QA Advisor Plus. So this is a tool that agencies can use to check their RSA 911 data for errors and to kind of help facilitate or expedite analysis of their own data. So users of the tool can run custom queries on their data. They can do things like track changes from quarter to quarter in things like population served on a variety of measures that might include things like applications or eligibility plan services, competitive integrated employment outcomes. Those are the kinds of things that are of interest, particularly to us as part of the Rise Up project and built into this project is that Rise Up will pay for one year of QA advisor Plus for participating agencies if they elect to use it. So agencies aren't required to use QA Advisor Plus if they don't want to. We have other strategies for helping and assisting with data analysis if they elect not to use it, but that's there as an offer. Rise Up will cover one year of the cost of that service. And I think one of the things that we're trying to get at is that through the project is to kind of help facilitate kind of long term attention and ongoing attention to things like population served and differences in services and outcomes, and to use that for more data informed planning, in our case, particularly around underserved populations. But agencies can certainly pretty easily extend that out to other groups of interest or other aspects of the rehabilitation process. That may not be maybe the central focus of what Rise Up is doing. And one of the things I sort of want to underscore here is that the project is intentionally designed to make considerable use of data that the state agencies are already gathering and reporting to RSA anyway. So if agencies are interested maybe in participating in Rise Up, but they're like, oh, I don't want there to be like an additional heavy burden on my data folks or my direct service folks. Our intention is that things will be fairly light with respect to those kinds of demands, because we'll take advantage of existing data that's already being gathered, and then we'll either use QA Advisor Plus or some of our own staff to assist with the analyses.   Carol: That's the beauty of this project really, I love that because it isn't like you're going, okay, state, we're knocking on your door to like, come and do this thing. And then you need to add like ten positions to pay attention to this. And I think it's great because I got a chance to look at that QA Advisor Plus. I saw the Encorpe guys at, CSAVR and they were like, hey, do you want to see a little demo of this? I was like, oh my gosh, I know as being a small blind agency director, we had one data person who's doing a million things, and so we were very surfacey. We got a little bit of stuff, but it was really hard. You have one person there doing a million things, and so that tool, I liked how it kind of rose up little things. It had that cool feature and it would just flag something for you to go like, hey, what's going on in this particular area? That would have been so lovely because I know a lot of our programs are small, so you might just have a half a position or one position that's working in this area. They don't have a whole team that's got all this really developed deep skill set in there. I just think having that added resource is amazing and could really take that level of sort of your data analytics to a whole different place than what you've been able to do so far and not, you know, not disparaging anybody's current skill level at it. It's just that people don't have time because there's so many demands. So when you can add like a feature to help with analyzing that data, it really is a great gift. So who are your agencies that are currently participating in the project?   Mari: So we've had initial conversations with a number of agencies, and certainly there were a number of agencies who had written letters of commitment when we wrote the grant, and that was really important. I don't want to mention the states yet until we have agreements in place out of respect for the agencies, our goal is to have by the end of year two, our goal is to have six agreements in place and by the end of year three, another four. So that will be a total of ten. But we've already started to have that conversation and people are at different starting points, right? And trying to map out how will this make sense and be of value to your agency and mapping that out in an individualized agreement with each of the states? So maybe we'll be invited for a second visit a year down the road, and I can at least give you a few more names more specific than what I'm giving you now, Carol.   Carol: No,  that's totally fine. Absolutely. I wasn't sure if, you know, like, are you needing some people? Because sometimes our listeners are like, hey, I want to be part of that project. I want to be in.   Mari: No, absolutely. And we're more than happy to talk to agencies throughout this whole process, because really the intent is we targeted ten agencies because we want to make sure that with the resources that we have available to us, that we use that in a way to really make that impact, to really try to get to that systems change because again, change doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen on a zero budget, right? But the hope is the lessons that are learned from the ten agencies in this work will be relevant to the rest of the country.   Carol: That's what I've loved about all of these different discretionary grants that RSA has put out, because I've been talking to people for the last year, and there is such cool things being done and demonstrated that now they're sharing out, you know, with other people and just that wonderful plethora of ideas. It makes it super fun. And everybody gets really excited planting the seeds of a different way of looking at things and doing things. So you are at the end of year one, and I love it when I talk to all our grantees that have gotten these grants, like, what have been your challenges this year?   Mark: I would say some of the challenges that we've encountered are things that it's not like they're not doable. It's just that they're the time and process demands are, you know, things have sort of taken longer, I guess I've started to come to kind of expect it. But still, when you're anxious to kind of get going and get rolling, these things sort of surface as challenges or frustrations. And so some of them are, I think, very predictable things like fleshing out the project staff, developing and executing subcontracts. I think Mari, she's nodding her head often. It's a little bit more complicated or involved than you think it might be. We've been working on things like establishing the technical infrastructure for the project, information management, information sharing systems, and we have a website that's in development that will ultimately use to share information coming out of this project, with many more than just the ten state agencies that we work intensively with. So there will be kind of dissemination of project learning far beyond those ten. We've been comprehensively surveying the literature related to underserved populations in VR, and it's not really just a challenge. It's just kind of a time consuming thing that we're kind of working our way through. We are going to be implementing a national survey of state VR staff around both challenges and opportunities related to serving underserved populations and the instrument development process is always a little time consuming, and you get a lot of feedback and you make revisions and there's several feedback and revision stages. So that's something that will be surfacing in the near future. That's just it's taken time, but we'll get there. Or going through things like the human subjects institutional review process, just to make sure that everybody's, you know, treated well and treated ethically. So those are all, you know, just things that have moved along or are moving along and we're squaring them away. But for those of us who are like, would like to just get going, all of that process stuff at the beginning is a little bit of a challenge. One thing that I think the team is wrestling with a little bit, and this is something that I think were a challenge that we will contend with going forward, and I've got confidence that we'll be able to address it, but it's just going to require some thought is that, you know, as Mari indicated earlier, the underserved populations of interest are defined by race and ethnicity. And we know already from looking at our data over a long period of time that our clients, like everybody else, often are multiracial, and they check a whole bunch of boxes So we're not going to necessarily be able to look at clients who are folks don't fall neatly into very convenient categories, right. So I think we're going to have to be very sensitive to that dynamic in the process and probably develop multiple ways of looking at race and ethnicity, so that we don't kind of miss any really important lessons that are coming out of this project.   Carol: Absolutely. And regarding that national survey, is there something our listeners can do to be of help in that or something they should be looking out for?   Mark: We're still in the process of piloting it like we want to get it right before it goes out, but we will be working with one of our project partners, which is CSAVR, to disseminate this national survey. It'll be an electronic survey, and it's really designed to go to VR staff at all levels. Like we talked about earlier, involvement of folks, feedback from folks at all levels in VR system really important. So VR staff at all levels, folks like SRC members will be disseminating it through CSAVR. And we would encourage everybody to, you know, I know we survey ourselves all the time in society here in the US. But this one is important. And to me and I think to the overall intent of the project. And so we hope that when you see information about the survey coming out, that you take a few minutes to fill it out and complete it. It will be anonymous. It won't be linked back to you. So we hope people will respond candidly and provide us with information both about what they see as needs related to serving underserved populations. But also, we're asking folks to identify any promising practices that they're aware of with respect to providing effective services to underserved populations. I think both of those types of information can be really helpful to us in terms of planning out the future of this project, designing effective training, effective technical assistance efforts. So we see it as one way of kind of triangulating that information. We will look to triangulate it with other forms of information, but really critical to kind of building some of the key infrastructure to the project.   Carol: Good.   Mark: Yeah.   Carol: And we definitely can be a help to in passing out the word when the survey comes out. I know Chaz, he'll be like, Carol, can you get that out in our email groups too? We have lots of different ways. We communicate out. We have different COPs. We've got lots of mailing lists and such, so we can help kind of promote the word to get at the different groups of folks. So you get kind of a wide range of participation. So I know, Mark, you've alluded to a few things that really you've learned so far this year. One, because always year one's a learning year because people don't fall neatly in boxes. Are there any other kind of learnings you've had from year one so far, or Mari, too. either of you?   Mark: Yeah, I'm going to defer to Mari on this one.   Mari: We've learned a lot. And when you say, what have you learned so far? It's almost what has been confirmed. The whole reason why this funding opportunity is available because there's a gap there, right? And so what the conversations that we've had with agencies is just confirmed that there's a lot of work that we need to do and that we need to do better. But every agency is at a different starting point. Who they consider underserved will vary from state to state, or even from city to city within the same state. Right And where those gaps and inequities occur will also vary. For some states, it's just getting the outreach to communities to that door exists in their area, to certain populations dropping out before they even reach the point of developing an EIP, and other agencies are seeing where the EIP is developed. Things start to roll out and then for different reasons that we want to dig into, we lose people, you know, in certain populations compared to the overall populations being served. And so one of the things we are learning is that we really need to direct the training and technical assistance to where each agency wants to start, but also helping them and working together using that data that Marc talked about to confirm or not confirm whether these actual inequities at different points in the process are occurring. And then of course, the environment and the climate that agencies operate under impacts what they're tackling, something that we've heard repeatedly. And I'm sure, Carol, you've heard often, is the staffing challenges that our state agencies are experiencing upwards to 40% of unfilled positions, and that will certainly impact the work and the progress and the impact when we start to work with the agencies. Some agencies are further along in the process where they've really looked at the data from their comprehensive statewide needs assessment and saw a hole there and actually started to develop a goal to address that. And so they've already have that beginning understanding and now are at the stage of, okay, what do we do with this information? What kind of training and technical assistance can we provide our staff, and how can you help with this. And getting us to move the needle, at least move the needle forward, right? And I know we're going to get a lot of new information or confirming knowledge from the national survey, but also using that national survey to start the conversation with each of the individual agencies. You know, how does this national data look for you? Is it true or how different it is? And so I think we've learned a lot, and there's a lot more that we're going to unravel in this process.   Carol: I love it. The CSNAs, you know, I think states for a long time did it as a check the box. We have to do the thing. We're going to contract to somebody to do the thing. Here's the thing. It's 300 pages. All right. We put it on the shelf. It's in the electronic folder. But I have noticed this over the years we've been doing the QM work. People are really taking the CSNA and actually paying attention to it and starting to put all the dots together, linking that as the basis for then what flows into the state plan flows into goals and priorities and really connecting and spending more time. The thing I've been very hopeful of is spending time with direct staff so that they understand the whole process, because staff will hear about this stuff, but they don't really understand it or what is that about? And now people are linking like, here's why we're doing all of this. We're actually finding out what's the situation in our state, and we're taking this and we're putting together goals and priorities within our state plan based on this data, this information. So it all links together, because I think people feel like everybody's just doing these random activities, but they actually all come together.   Mari: Yeah.   Carol: So that I have seen as a change, definitely in the five plus years I've been doing TA work now, I've seen a big swing and I've loved it, because now people are digging down in the organization and including not just your executive leadership and middle managers. They're including the line staff and having them have an understanding of what's going on so that they can understand their contributions to this overall big picture. So I love that.   Mari: Yeah, and we learned that from the Cal Promise Project We had this whole large, comprehensive database and our team were able to put together, I guess, reports of here's what the data is looking like, here's how your region is being impacted, and the transition specialists, the people who are meeting with the families and with the students, like we've never seen this before. We're always feeding data to our supervisor. Our boss is always asking for data, and so we give it to them. But we never know what happens to it. And now it makes sense. This is how my work is impacting people.   Carol: Absolutely. It's mind blowing to the staff because when you go out, you're talking and you're like, okay. They're like, well, why is Congress doing all this crazy stuff with our money or whatever is going on? I always tell them, I go, the only way your story can be told because they don't know all your anecdotal, really neat. You got Joe, a job like this is awesome and it's a great career and you know, all this great things are happening. They don't know any of that. They only know by the data you put in the system. And when you put data in the system, that isn't very good. That's the picture, the story that your agency is telling. This is the only way for other people to make decisions. You just see this. Aha. Like people are like, oh well this stuff actually does matter. And it is being used for something and then they can figure it out. And I love it when you get down in regional levels because then they go like and they'll know what's going on. Sometimes up here the management's like, oh they're trying to figure out what's happening in that region. Talk to the staff. They see boots on the ground, what's going on. So the data confirms what's been happening in that area. And then the whole agency having that conversation, it's really exciting and super empowering and energizing. I feel like for their customers and what's going to happen for their people, I love that. The other thing I was going to say, Mari too, is we've been seeing a slight improvement in staffing levels. Now it seems like things for some reason, because we work with a load of states and we talk a lot about this particular issue, the staffing levels, it's been leveling off with that whole people leaving, leaving, leaving, leaving, leaving. And now I've had a couple agencies in the last year where they were sitting at 25, 30% now. They're at 5% and 8% turnover. Like there have been significant changes because of all of the things they put into play to not only get staff, but to keep them, to retain them. So we've been trying to do some efforts on our end and we can't say it's all us, you know, but people have been putting a lot of strategy into this, and it's really fun to see on this other side, this more encouraging landscape for the staff out there.   Mari: Wow, that's great to hear.   Carol: Yeah. So I'm hopeful for you guys as you're carrying this out. So now what are your plans for year two as you go into year two? What are you guys hoping to accomplish this year?   Mark: I think it'll be a busy year for us. I think one of the major efforts, you know, we've already kind of alluded to a little bit, which is get the national survey out there to get that information back, have our team kind of start analyzing the results. We'll use that data. As I said before, we'll triangulate that with other information sources that we have our team working on. You mentioned comprehensive statewide needs assessments and state plans. Our team is doing an analysis of that specifically through the lens of underserved populations to see what can be gleaned from those statewide reports. And they're triangulating that also with kind of other forms of published literature around underserved populations. So there's a lot of kind of building that kind of database of information will be focused on executing agreements with the first of the agencies that are going to be involved with kind of the intensive phases of Rise Up, while at the same time kind of establishing the groundwork for agencies that we will add to the Rise Up group, you know, to as we work towards our goal of getting to up to ten state agencies. And then I think as we work with each of the agencies, kind of to begin to identify the populations that they want to focus on for, you know, kind of sustained efforts to enhance getting folks in the door, getting them into plan, getting them services. The outcomes will also begin to kind of roll out. You know, one aspect of Rise Up will be training. Some of it will be technical assistance. That will be kind of systems change focused efforts. We'll begin to roll out initial training. Some of those will focus on topics like cultural humility And then we'll be using the literature search, the national survey, consultation with the agencies that we're working with to lend direction to the development of additional trainings that will be kind of targeted towards all levels of the organization. And then within the agencies that we begin to work with, we'll also begin kind of identifying the targeted and specific areas of need for technical assistance that will be unique to each of the agencies. So I see those as kind of the major tasks that will be kind of getting into in the beginning of year two and then kind of sustaining through the next year.   Carol: That is super exciting. I'm really excited about this. I would love to talk to you guys too, again at the end of like next year to see where things are at. Now, I understand you to, I believe, or somebody coming to CSAVR and people may want to chat with you. Is there a way folks could reach out to you if they are interested in talking to you about the project?   Mark: Sure.   Mari: Yeah   Mark: Yeah, so we will be at CSVAR, our project coordinator, Letty Vavasour will be there. Mari will be there. I will be there. So we're certainly kind of approachable there. As we mentioned before, CSAVR is a project partner of ours, and we mentioned encore. I think they're going to be there as well at CSAVR. And one other partner we haven't mentioned, but we should give them some credit, is a major partner with us is the George Washington Center for Rehabilitation Counseling, Research and Education. They're also a project partner with us and will be instrumental in kind of our efforts. So CSAVR is one place where folks can connect with us. Our team is working on a website, so we should have that up kind of in the near future. That's another way to get a hold of us. Email is always a good way to get a hold of us. I'm easy to get a hold of by email at MTucker at SDSU.edu and Mari is MGuillermo@SDSU.edu. So those are kind of really easy ways to get Ahold of us. And then of course Interwork Institute and the VRTAC-QM, we're sort of housed right there and involved in a number of those projects going on there so folks can track us down through Interwork or the QM.   Carol: Excellent. And, Mari, would you mind, Mari, would you spell out your email address? Just in case, because like me, it's like, how is that spelled?   Mari: And for those of you who know Spanish, my last name is Guillermo, which is William in Spanish, but it's m g as in George. U I L L E R M as in Mari o at SDSU.edu.   Carol: Excellent. Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time. I'm super excited. And I wish our listeners could see like, the excitement on both of your faces about this project because it makes me like, super happy. I mean, the project couldn't be in better hands. You guys always do really good work out of Interwork, and I'm really excited to see what comes. So let's definitely chat again down the road.   Mark: That would be great.   Carol: Thanks for joining me.   Mari: Absolutely. Thank you 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!

Get ready to dive deep into the future of Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) with Dr. Joe Ashley and Dr. Bob Schmidt in our latest episode! Joe, the dynamic Project Director of the VR-ROI initiative at George Washington University, teams up with Bob, one of the leading economists and the Project Research Coordinator, to bring you insider knowledge on revamping return on investment models for VR programs. They're on a mission to streamline and elevate how VR agencies operate, helping them become more efficient, effective, and impactful. Their discussion is packed with actionable insights that will empower your agency to sharpen its data collection strategies, ensuring the true value of your services shines through. Plus, learn how to better communicate the VR success story to policymakers and stakeholders! Tune in to discover how you can maximize your VR impact with the latest advancements from the VR-ROI project. Don't miss out!   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Joe: We're trying to make sure we have information that the director can use with policymakers, and something for clients and counselors to use to say, yes, this is the kind of services we're looking for.   Bob: The model we develop is based on readily available administrative data.   Joe: It's built on the individual customers and how well they do and what their outcomes are.   Bob: The human capital development, that's what it's all about a lot. Some things just aren't measurable. So when you mentioned financial return on investment, that's what we're talking about.   Joe: If you can't capture it, you're not able to tell the story.   Carol: Yep, if it isn't documented, it didn't happen.   Bob: That's right.   Joe: Yeah.   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 Dr. Joe Ashley, the project director for the VR Return on Investment project based at the George Washington University, and Dr. Bob Schmidt, one of the five economists working on the project and the project research coordinator. So, Joe, how are things going for you today?   Joe:  Today they are doing really well. Thanks for asking, Carol.   Carol: Nice to hear it, Joe. and Bob, how are you doing?   Bob: I'm doing well as well, at least, as well as Joe is doing.   Carol: That's awesome. Alright, glad to have it guys. Okay, so for our listeners, Joe is my colleague and we got him out of retirement to serve as the project director for this important initiative. And this project is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, also known as NIDILRR. Now, this is the federal government's primary disability research organization and is part of the Administration for Community Living. Now, NIDILRR's mission is to generate new knowledge and to promote its effective use to improve the abilities of individuals with disabilities to perform activities of their choice in the community and to expand society's capacity to provide full opportunities and accommodations for its citizens with disabilities. NIDILRR achieves this mission by funding research, demonstration, training, technical assistance, and related activities to maximize the full inclusion and integration into society, employment, independent living, family support, and economic and social self-sufficiency of individuals with disabilities of all ages. They also promote the transfer of, and use and adoption of rehab technology for individuals with disabilities in a timely manner, and also ensure the widespread distribution and usable formats of practical, scientific and technological information. And they do address a wide range of disabilities and impairments across populations of all ages. Now, Joe, I know you have a little disclaimer you wanted to make.   Joe: Yeah, I just want to be sure that people understand that what Bob and I are going to talk about today is our opinion of what return on investment should be, and is not necessarily reflect what NIDILRR is looking at.   Carol: Excellent. Well thanks Joe. Let's dig in. So, Joe, why don't you kick us off and tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey in vocational rehabilitation?   Joe: Carol, I've been in rehabilitation for quite a while. I worked with the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, the general agency in Virginia, for over 25-27 years, most of the time as an assistant commissioner in a variety of roles. I have a master's in rehabilitation counseling from the University of South Carolina. That sort of got me focused on vocational rehabilitation. And then later I had a Doctorate in rehabilitation from SIU at Carbondale that took me on a path of looking at program evaluation and program development. When I got to Virginia, I was working out of the Woodrow Wilson Rehab Center, now called Wilson Rehabilitation Center, and was working in a program that was collaborative across, it was one of the early transition grants, 1985,and it looked at vocational evaluation as a part of a process to help kids learn what they needed to do. And we were working with students from special education and vocational education in the schools, and vocational rehabilitation, and getting these systems to collaborate to help kids find out what they want to do and to be successful in employment and in life. And I got to where I really enjoyed that kind of collaborative work, and I ended up as an assistant commissioner in the agency, looking at developing innovative new programs as a part of my responsibilities and looking at a lot of the ancillary support services like rehabilitation, engineering and other kinds of things. Through a series of circumstances, I ended up as the director of the field services for four years, where I began to get a good sense of what disabilities needed to be in terms of supports to be successful in employment and being able to live successfully in their communities. In addition to that, what counselors and other staff needed to be able to provide those services to them. And then I got into the job that was my favorite, which was something called grants and special programs, where I did a lot of the Social Security stuff, cost reimbursement, work, incentives specialist advocates. We created a new system there to do fee for service for the work incentive services. We did a lot of work with the workforce agencies. I did all the agreements with that, and then I got to do grants and any of the grants that helped people with disabilities be able to live and work and thrive in their communities were things that we were willing to support. And I got to work with a lot of different funding systems and across a lot of different systems, you know, Special Ed workforce systems, behavioral health, a lot of different groups to help people with disabilities have opportunities. So that's what I really enjoyed. And that's where I came across the late doctor David Dean and then Bob Schmidt as a part of that package with Dean. And it was about telling the VR story. And I got real passionate about how do you tell this story in a way that is going to get people like GAO to pay attention, as well as help directors with policymakers and individuals and counselors help make decisions about what's a good choice for them. So that's really how I got to where we are today with this new grant.   Carol: Very cool Joe. I know we all look to your program in Virginia for kind of the cutting edge stuff that was happening, because you all seem to always have just something cooking.   Joe: Yes.   Carol: It didn't matter what. And especially like the disability work incentive stuff that you were talking about and all of that. Oh gosh. I just think you've done a lot of stellar things there.   Joe: Well thank you. It was fun.   Carol: It's awesome. So, Bob, tell us a little bit about yourself.   Bob: Sure. Happy to. Joe mentioned Doctor David Dean. He was a colleague of mine in the Department of Economics at the University of Richmond. He worked on what he called economics of disability, and he started working on that in graduate school at Rutgers with a faculty member there. And he worked on that. So that was in the 1980s. He came to the University of Richmond, and he got me interested in it because he was an outgoing, gregarious, very bright guy and made friends easily. So he got me involved in this probably early 1990s, and we started working with DARS and several other things at the time with Joe, but also Kirsten Roe. I don't know how many people remember her, but she was instrumental in all the work we did. So this is actually our third grant with NIDILRR. The first one was a demonstration grant. So it's a kind of a proof of concept. Second was implementing it. Now this one is refining it and taking it to the next step. That's what we're trying to do with that. So David got me excited about it. Joe keeps me excited and he keeps me honest.   Carol: That is awesome. Well, I know just being around the director ranks for years and folks talking about return on initiative, it's been a, you know, a hot topic. People chat about it, but I don't know that everybody always really understands it. And I think sometimes people think maybe it's something that it isn't and they aren't very good at explaining it, but everybody wants to do it. So you guys are going to unpack all this for us. Joe, why don't you tell us a little bit about the project and what you're trying to accomplish?   Joe: Well, with this current iteration. It's what NIDILRR calls a field initiated project on their development side, and it's got a ridiculously long title. So I'm just going to say it is about updating and simplifying our return on investment model. That's its main purpose, and it's about helping our agencies understand what they can do to be more efficient and more effective, and take a look at the mix of services that they provide, to be sure that they are getting the most out of the resources they have to help people with disabilities obtain, you know, that probability of employment and upon employment, their earnings. And we're trying to make sure we have information that the director can use with policy makers, that agencies can take a look inside their own services to say, maybe I need more of a particular type of service because I'm getting good outcomes, or maybe I need to tweak a service because it's not getting what I want it to do, and then something for clients and counselors to use to say, yes, this is the kind of services we're looking for. We got four goals, and the first one is just really to update the model. Our previous model was prior to WIOA implementation, so what we hope to be able to do is take a look at the data systems and take a look at the performance indicators that WIOA requires. And we can do a correlation, perhaps with the long term employment to see how well they're correlated. Also take a look at Covid impact. The second goal is about intensity. Our other model is you either got a service or you didn't. And if you got the service then how did it affect employment and earnings? Well, the next logical step according to The Economist and we have five on the project as you mentioned earlier, was what is the intensity of the service. Does that make a difference. So that intensity measure could be hours of work. It could be what it costs to do something. It could be units of service. And taking a look at if that is related to the propensity for employment. The other piece that goes with that is how about internals provided services, what we had before in the system, nobody had good measures of the services their own staff provided. So we're hoping with what we're seeing now and we're working with the two agencies in North Carolina, and they've been extremely helpful and collaborative with us on this process is take a look at the internally provided services and see what impact they have on the employment and earnings side of things. And then we've been told many times our third goal is simplify the model. Right now it takes economists to run it. Well that's not always a good idea for some people. So what we're trying to do is see what econometric models could we put in place to simplify this process so that it's more available to rehab agencies. But you want to make sure it's still rigorous enough to give you a reliable estimate of return on investment. So one of the things we're having with that is many of the folks on the who are listening to the podcast may be aware that we did a data analysis and management capacity survey that CSVRA sent out. Our advisory committee supported, and with that, we got 54 agencies to provide us information on what their data capacity is and what this capacity of their staff is. And then what kind of training they might be interested in. We're still looking at the data from that and we'll have some information on that later. But what we find in this may make a big difference on how simplified the model can be, or whether we need to take a different track to help people be able to implement a new model. And then finally, it's about knowledge translation. And part of that is coming to us like we did a consumer and stakeholder forum with the North Carolina State Rehab councils and some other stakeholders to get input on what they'd like to see, what kinds of information and would this information be helpful to them. And then we're going to have another consumer and stakeholder forum probably next spring to say, here's the model as we have it so far. Does this make sense to you and would this be valuable to you? So those are the big overriding goals that we have for the project.   Carol: I really like that you guys are digging into the capacity that agencies have, you know, with that data analysis, because I'm just thinking definitely, as I've been out across the country that you've got to have and the have nots. I mean, there for sure. are folks, I think of our friends in Texas and they have a lovely team there. Just they have like an amazing...   Joe: Oh yeah, they do.   Carol: ...resource team. And then you've got other folks trying to scrape together kind of a half of a position that can maybe do a little smidge of a little something around the 911.   Joe: they may have a resource like a data system, but they don't have anybody that can run it, or they may have staff with the capacity to do the data system, but they don't have the system. I mean, it's a lot of different variables there.   Bob: I'd like to jump in here just on one thing, which was on the simplified VR model. So the model we've developed, thank God it was by economists, is we're trying to address the question here. The goal of the program is to get people into competitive employment or keep them in competitive employment. If they already came into the program with it, maybe build on that. So there are a lot of things that are correlated with how well you do in the labor market, gender, race, Age, education level. All things are correlated, right? And maybe service provision in the VR program. But we'd like to take it from well, it's correlated, but we don't know exactly how or why. In the same way you can say, well, provision of this specific type of service leads to improvement in the labor market, leads to a greater likelihood of obtaining competitive employment. Now that's a different issue. Now the way you normally do that, the gold standard is a randomized clinical trial, right? Where you take people and you randomly select them and it's double blind. So neither the researcher nor the individual involved in the experiment know who's receiving the treatment, or  who isn't. Well, that's clearly impossible in VR. First of all, it's illegal to deny service to someone who is eligible and for whom you have the money. But secondly, it's impossible. So what you have to do is you have to impose statistical controls somehow. You have to do it through some sort of statistical model. And we've developed one which is state of the science. What state of the science inherently means that not everybody can implement it. So even at some universities, they aren't able to implement this particular model. And so we wanted to ask the question, could we come up with a simplified version of this model, a simpler model that can be used possibly in a VR agency or possibly at a local community college or university, something like that. And they could get similar results. So we wanted to see how could we do it? Is that a possible goal? What do you lose when you do it? Does it do a good enough job, or what kind of qualifiers do you have on it?   Joe: Where are the tradeoffs?   Bob: Yeah, what are the tradeoffs? That's a simpler model we're trying to do.   Carol: Should we talk about the model you developed now? Do you want to talk about it?   Bob: That'd be fine. Sure.   Carol: Let's do it.   Bob: Okay. One of the things is that the model we developed is based on readily available administrative data. What that means is you don't have to run a survey. You don't have to go out and do a very expensive sort of research project to find out what's going on. Instead, we use data from agency's own data system, which they collect to report to the Rehabilitation Services Administration, (RSA). they have really, really very good data. The RSA forces them to collect very good data. In fact, for some of our economists, their eyes just lit up when David told them the kind of data that he was able to access it. Whoa. That's great. So there are two levels. One is you get data from the agency itself, and then they will provide data to us that they provide through the quarterly RSA and nine over 11 report to the RSA. And more than that. So we get much greater detail than that if we know how to use it. If we can identify and know how to learn how to use it. And then secondly, all the agencies have given us access, been able to give us access to unemployment insurance sort of data. So quarterly data on that and what the RSA collects upon closure. They're mandated to follow employment and earnings for four quarters after closure, but we don't think that's long enough, especially since WIOA was passed Workforce Innovation Opportunities Act and changed the mandate to work on transition age, transitioning students with disabilities or providing those sorts of services. Well, if you're going to start working with young people who are just entering the workforce, or you're providing college level education or skilled training services to any age. You can't just follow them for four quarters. I mean, if you're just entering the workforce, you're not going to enter it at the highest levels of the workforce, right? So if you want to know what the real impact is, you have to follow them longer. So with the unemployment insurance agencies, we've been able to get quarterly employment and earnings data from 2 to 3 years before they even applied to the program. That's kind of a baseline. But what are the services do to you? How do things change? Well, that's your baseline three years before application. Then we try to follow them for at least five years after application at least. Now the current one starts in 2018. So the earliest applicants we have from 2018, and then we collect all applicants between 2018 and 2021. So already it's a stretch to get five years of data. But we had to start that recent because we all wasn't fully implemented effectively until 2017, 1819. In fact, the fellow North County says preferably 19 or 2021. But then you don't have, you know, this thing ends in 2025 and you don't have enough data, enough tracking. So that's the first thing, is readily administrative tracking earnings over a long period of time, as long as possible. Another thing is generally the way these things are done or have been looked at is you look at the VR program as a whole. You don't look at by discipline, you look at the agency. These are people who apply for services, and these are people who got to the point where they got a plan or plan for employment services. And then how do they do? We look a little differently. We look at by disability type. First of all, we look at for broad based disabilities folks with a cognitive impairment. And that could be an intellectual disability or a learning disability. Folks with a mental illness. And then also we try to find out how severe that mental illness is. Folks who have a physical impairment and folks who are blind or visually impaired or otherwise visually impaired. So we look at and we estimate those all separately because we think services are assigned differently by disability type on average. And also the disability type affects how you will do in the marketplace, for example. What we found out was for folks with physical impairment, unlike folks who have a cognitive impairment, cognitive impairment might be with you since birth, perhaps. And so therefore you kind of have a steady level of earnings at a certain level. But if you have a physical impairment that often comes on very quickly, very acutely, very quickly. So all of a sudden you see their preapplication Application for earnings pretty good. And then boom there's a big plummet, right? And so then you have to do something different with the track that the pre-application earnings. So that's the second thing. The third thing is that this idea that these folks, we look at the folks who received,, who had a plan and therefore received services, we compare those people who didn't have a plan and didn't receive services. So he received service, he didn't. Or, in economics or the social sciences, you call it a treatment group and a comparison or a control group. Well, we thought you could do a little bit better than that. What we look at is we look at anywhere from 7 to 9 to 10 to 11 different types of services things like diagnosis, medical treatments, college education, training, all those sorts of things. We say, first of all, how is the decision made that you're going to receive this type of service? And then secondly, what impact does it have? So what factors influence the decision to We see what type of services and what impact does that service have in the labor market on gaining and keeping competitive employment. So we look at that. So we look at different types of service. So you can see already it's a much richer type of analysis therefore much more complicated types of analysis. And then the last part is that we built sort of a state of the science model. And that's what makes it complicated for many people to try to implement. And by that we mean that this correlation versus causation. So instead of doing a randomized clinical trial you have to take the data as you receive it. So therefore you kind of build control by saying how do you control for different things that might affect this that you don't observe. Now one of these might be motivation, right? So if you have someone who's particularly highly motivated that will might lead them to both apply to a VR program and a plan, follow through and move on, successfully complete the program, and might also quite separately, whether or not they receive services. It helps them in the labor market, right? Because they're motivated to succeed. So how do you distinguish those things? That's tough. You do randomized clinical trial. You can't because both types people end up in both parts motivated and unmotivated. So we have to impose this controls. And that gets a little complicated. So that's basically the model is then once you're done. So then we get impacts by type of service. We also collect cost of providing those services. Cost of the program. We have those impacts. We let them spit out and say what would happen if they kept getting this benefit level for the next five to 10 to 15 years? And then you have to do some what's called discounting in technical and finance and econ. So you do that and then you say, okay, this is the total gain from that service or actually from all the services combined. And this was the cost. And the difference to that is kind of cost versus benefits, right? Hopefully the benefits exceed the costs, right? And that's how much they've gained because of the service per versus both the. That's essentially what you do. And the other thing about that is we can calculate that for each individual in the sample. So we have individual level returns on investment individual level benefits or effectiveness. And you can then aggregate that up and say okay agency wide. This is what it looks like. The agency's return on investment for a particular disability. That's what their return on investment look for males their females. Any group you want to do you can just do it because we have the individual impacts of it. So that's the model. And we want to see whether a simplified model can get us similar sort of information.   Joe: One of the things, Carol, that I find compelling about the model in particular is something Bob just pointed out, and that is it's built on the individual customers and how well they do in this process and what their outcomes are, and it builds up. So it starts at that individual client level. The other thing, when the economists were developing the model and they were looking at the data of people who went through the system, they observed that there's a lot of variability in the types of services that are provided. So they built the model around that variability of services. So that individual service model, that is VR is what makes the variability work for this model. So it's very much tied to the core tenets of the VR program, that individual services model. And that's where the variability comes from. And that's why it can give us some causation. So I think it's really important to note that it is consistent with how we do services and how we provide what we do. The other thing I will say about The Economist is they have been dedicated to understanding how VR works. They often in the early days when we were going out, they would sit down with the agencies and say, does this make sense to you? And then they would look at the model to see what would make it make more sense in terms of telling how VR works or the outcomes of VR. So they've spent a lot of time trying to understand the system and get knowledgeable about how VR works and what the opportunities are, what the process is, so that what they're modeling is consistent with how we do business. So I think that's a key component.   Carol: I think that's really cool that you said that, Joe, about taking it back to the individualized nature of the program because VR, you know, you think about it in an aggregate, we get this big $4 billion in a lump. And, boy, each person's experience within that is so individualized. It is, you know, whether you're getting this or that, you know, are you getting educational sorts of services and access to training and post-secondary and all kinds of different things? Or are you a person on a different trajectory, and maybe you needed some medical rehabilitation type of stuff going on? You needed something completely different. Like, people have so many ways to mix and match and use the things they specifically need to get where they need to go. You probably can't do it unless you get down to that level. So that is very interesting. Now, Joe, I know we've talked about this in our team a little bit even. And I know you said you wrestled with your group, but this whole notion of return on investment or taxpayer return on investment has been a really interesting topic and is fraught with some issues itself. And I remember coming into Minnesota and the general agency director like taxpayer return on investment, and I was brand new in the program. I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about right now, but a lot of times you tend to hear it discussed that way. But I know, Joe, you've said there's a lot of issues around this. So what are some of those issues?   Joe: It's an interesting little issue. The very first meeting we had, it was at Carver, and we had a number of people from different agencies and state rehab councils come into a meeting, and we were laying out the first model. And one of the directors at that point said, well, are you doing a taxpayer return on investment? And by that he meant returning Taxes, increase in taxes, receipts going back to the Treasury. And that was his definition of it. That was the first one. And then when we were in North Carolina at the consumer forum that we did the stakeholder and consumer forum, we got the question from some advocates and said it doesn't seem to go away. We always get that question, but the issue is what is the appropriate way to determine the return on investment for a particular type of program. And it was interesting. We got this question so often, even from some of our workforce friends that are the economists said about writing a paper to describe why taxpayer return on investment is not appropriate for a VR type of program. And they submitted it to, I think it was three, maybe four different econ journals, and some of them didn't even send it out for review. They said, this is already settled. It's not appropriate for this kind of program. So the issue is another workforce programs or human capital development. And the purpose of a human capital development type of program is to in our case, find people employment and look at that probability of employment. And then conditional on that earnings, if you've got people in your system and they're entry level, a lot of them are not going to be at the level where they pay any kind of taxes at all for several years. So you really don't have a lot to show when you do taxpayer return on investment in terms of that. Also, one of the things that we noticed when one of the studies that was done is that in some cases, and this is with a particular type of one of the particular disabilities, is the only one they looked at this with when we had some Social Security earnings available data available to us for a short while. Not only do we get people off of Social Security benefits, but we also find people that go on to Social Security benefits from being involved with VR, and that often makes them more stable. So then they can then participate in a VR type of program and be successful. But it's a long, long term process to do that. So in the short term, you're not going to show anything but about as many come on as go off. So you're really not showing that. But if you're doing what the authorizing legislation says you're supposed to do, which is get people employed, let's just take it down to a simple level and then the question becomes, are you efficient and effective in that process? And that's what this particular return on investment model is about. And that is what the economists would say is the appropriate way to look at this. Now they would call this a social welfare type of program is the category they put it in. And then human capital development. But there's other kinds of benefits that accrue to the individual. Because this model, this type of approach looks at it benefits to the individual and to the society in general, which is the individual being employed. And in this case, there are other benefits that we can't observe. Self-confidence would be a good example. Quality of life would be a good example. So in our case, what we're able to observe is how they're interacting in the workplace. And that's really the piece that we can measure. And that's where we're going with this. And the others might be important, but very few places have really figured out how to measure that.   Carol: Well, Joe, I actually I was telling Bob before we hopped on, I said, you know, I threw something in ChatGPT because I was like, all right, VR return on investment. Explain it to me. And ChatGPT it spit out. It talked about financial return on investment, you know, with employment earnings, cost savings. But it was talking about social return on investment, improve quality of life, community contributions. You know people experiencing that enhanced self-esteem, independence, all those things. And then personal return on investment with skill development, career advancement, those kind of things. It was just kind of fun to run it through and go, hey, yeah, because I know you guys have wrestled with like, what are you going to call the thing? Did you come up with like the name, The Thing??   Joe: Yes, it's interesting. I think what we came down with is that we think the vocational rehabilitation return on investment is the name we're going to stick with. And then say, you know, what we have is a human capital development project, and that's how we're measuring it or return on investment. But what we're going to have to do this is so ingrained in the culture of VR that you've got to return taxpayer dollars. Well, that's really not what VR says it's supposed to do. And so how do you get people to understand that that's not the appropriate way to look at the VR program. So we're going to have to do some education. I think about what return on investment is. And I may use your ChatGPT story...   Carol: Yeah.   Joe: To ...tell it.   Carol: Bob, I see you have something you want to jump in with.   Bob: Yes, and I think well, I have several things. One is I think the reason it's so ingrained, I think I might be wrong. Joe can correct me is because agency directors have to testify before the state legislature to get the money they want from the state legislature, right? And say the legislature, at least for a while. I don't know if they're still doing it. They're saying, yeah, but what's the return to the taxpayer on this? Why are we funding this if it's a money losing proposition Well, that's the thought process. But the problem with that is the state legislatures are kind of going against the odds. The federal authorizing legislation, you know, VR dates back to again, Joe can correct me. After World War One, when veterans came back from war and they had some severe physical injuries, and the federal government said, well, let's try to get them services to help them vocationally help them get back to work, get a job, and keep it so that they're effective in the workplace. Well, that thing was incredibly successful. So over time they said, well, this works so well. Can we expand it to other disabilities? Maybe states want to get involved in this as well. So what's happened over time is every one of the 50 states has this kind of co-funded arrangement with the federal government. And the Rehabilitation Services Administration oversees it, where they jointly sponsor these things, and it now covers many disabilities. Some states have more than one agency, one for the blind and visually impaired and one for the general. Other disabilities. So it goes back that far. And the authorizing legislation says is specifically provide services to help the individual gain and maintain competitive employment. And we're back down to the individual with that. It doesn't say to pay for itself to the fed, to repay the state or federal government for those services. So that's one thing. It's not what the metric to do it by. A second thing is, I mean, I never did like the social welfare. I'm an economist who would never call this a social welfare program. First of all, welfare has a negative connotation, even if its denotation is not negative. It's social improvement or anything. But it's really less a social more. As I said, the human capital development, that's what it's all about. And he also mentioned the issue that a lot of some things just aren't measurable. So when you mentioned financial return on investment, that's what we're talking about. Is the agency doing its job of getting people back to competitive employment and leading a better life, and maybe freeing up some of their family work to do other things. There might also be a multiplier effect in the sense that they earn more money, they spend the money. Other people, as a result, earn more money. And economists call that a multiplier effect. So that dollar has more on it. But it wouldn't get measured in this taxpayer return on investment at all.   Carol: Okay, cool. So I know you guys have made some interesting observations in reviewing the data and looking at some of the longitudinal data. What kind of things are you guys seeing?   Joe: My observation is that it concerns me that some people we've  learned recently that some of the states aren't capturing data after the fourth quarter after exit in terms of UI data. I know one state that is capturing going for that after the fourth quarter for their Social Security cases, because it helps them obtain more resources through cost reimbursement. But I think that we're underselling the value of VR when you only do the fourth quarter up to four quarters after exit. And I realize that's a lot more than we used to do. But on the other hand, it's probably not the best way to tell the VR story, because you just don't capture everything. And younger population exacerbates this. You just don't capture it with all the impact of VR can be for an individual over time. So I think that's one of the things I have seen. We had a study we did from a long time ago, from the first since I did with David, Dean and Bob, where we had a program, that transition program, and the students that participated in it were focused on post-secondary opportunities, and they were measured against the counterpart group that went in the VR system of youth. And the other kids typically went to work faster than the participants in this program. But at year six, after application, the perk students took off in terms of their employment, and the other kids just they were still employed and they were doing well. But the perk kids took off with this post-secondary approach, which is what we're being asked to do now. And you really wouldn't have told the story if you only went for five years after application. So those are the kinds of things that I'm concerned about with the longitudinal data.   Carol: Joe, so what about this to with it. You know, like especially blind agencies tend to provide a lot of the services themselves. What kind of problems are there with that and not sort of capturing the data?   Joe: We have seen that as an issue with the 2007 data set. We have in the 2012 data set, we had and our colleagues in the blind agencies were very clear that there were services that they were providing that were critical to successful employment and adjustment, but we didn't have any way to capture it. And so you're, again, you're undervaluing the impact of those agency provided services by not capturing them. And I think that's going to be critical. I think there's some requirements now that they have to be reporting some of this information, but it's a question of whether it's getting into that case management system and it becomes readily available administrative data that can be used to help tell the story of the impact of the great work that these counselors and other kinds of specialists are providing to help people become employed and adjust into their settings. Bob, you want to talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the data?   Bob: Well, yes. And now with the new data set, RSA 911, that quarterly report that all agencies have to provide and again for four quarters after closure that thing now they've made some changes and it's now required whereby types by 32 different service types they report. Did you provide purchase services during the quarter. If so how much did you provide it in-house or was it provided through a comparable benefit, some other external agency and that might have a dollar value attached to it? So we're going to use that data and see what we have. Now of course with any data set. Now I'll tell you purchase service data that's pretty reliable because they need to get their money back, right? They need to get reimbursed. They need to pay the bills. And so they track that through their accounting system very well. But the other things are and had entered often by counselors who are harried and busy and have a lot of other things to do, rather than this bureaucratic kind of form filling out, so it's only as good as the data that are put into it, and we won't know how good that is, but we'll see how much we learn. this way, hopefully we'll learn some things we didn't know.   Joe: What we have been told is that the data is not there for us to capture, and that it undervalues the kind of work that's being done. So we're hoping we can find a way to tell that story, because it sounds pretty important. And then from my personal experience in managing some of these services, I know how hard these folks work and how valuable these services are. But if you can't capture it, you're not able to tell the story.   Carol: Yep. If it isn't documented, it didn't happen.   Joe: Yeah.   Bob: That's right.   Carol: So what are the next steps on the grant and how can we get folks involved? Are you needing people to help with anything, any states or anything we've got?   Joe: North Carolina is, we're working very closely with them and they've been really good to work with. We will be once we get the prototype, I don't know what to call it. The economists are putting together the data system information so that they can begin to apply the new model and that'll be happening hopefully within a couple of months. And then once we've run the model a couple of times, we'll be asking some other people to come in sort of a national audience to take a look and hear what the model is, what it offers to get their feedback on. Yes, that would be useful or that doesn't seem to work for me much. Could you do this other thing? And then we'll also be asking them about. We'll be showing them what we've come up with for the simplified model to see if that version is going to work or if we need to be developing maybe a template RFP for them to use with a local institution that they work with, then they would be able to get the data set. So we're going to be looking at that. We may be asking folks to work with us a little bit on the capacity survey, where it talks about the training that states might be wanting to say, who can provide this kind of service, and would this be valuable to do to increase people's ability capacity? Because there's a lot of data needs out there. And I think if it would help our project, it would probably help a lot of other projects as well.   Carol: So, Joe, are you thinking about that for fall, possibly at CSAVR or something?   Joe: That's November. That should be a time when we would have an opportunity to gather some information. Yeah, because we might be ready for it by then. Of course, that might put a little pressure on the economists, but I don't mind doing that.   Carol: Yeah. Bob's looking like, oh well okay.   Bob: You love doing that, Joe. I mean, one of the things my major professor in graduate school always said, I love working on a research project where I learn something and what Joe said is exactly right. So we would take and vet our results to various agents. We may make a trip to the agency before Covid. We go and we sit down. We go through everything, explain what we're trying to do when we sell. And then they would say, that looks a little wonky or something, or did you do this? And you say, no, we didn't do that. Yeah, we could do that. Let's do it. And then we would revise the model or no, unfortunately we don't have enough information to do it. Could you collect it? You know, that kind of thing. So yeah, we keep learning things and that's what these groups are intended. That's what they're for. For our selfish purposes. That's what we like about them.   Carol: That's excellent, you guys.   Joe: So November would be good, Bob.   Bob: So you say.   Carol: Well, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what comes out of all of this. And you were saying that the end of the grant then is in 2025.   Joe: August 31st of 25.   Bob: Right.   Carol: All right. That's coming up quick you guys, really quick.   Joe: Oh it is.   Carol: Well, awesome I appreciate you both being on today. I cannot wait to hear more as this unfolds. So thanks for joining me.   Joe: We really appreciate the opportunity.   Bob: Yes we do.   {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!

Go behind the curtain at the National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials (NCRTM) with Heather Servais, Project Manager. Join us as we delve into the vast resources available to vocational rehabilitation counselors, supervisors, and VR professionals. From employment navigation to disability-specific resources and cutting-edge training, Heather reveals how the revamped NCRTM website is a treasure trove of information and tools to enhance your practices and improve services. Tune in to explore these new features and see how the NCRTM can support you in your vital work. Don't miss this opportunity to unlock the full potential of this dynamic platform!   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music}   Heather: This is made by people that have done the work, like it's just so relevant and timely to what's happening in the field. We have resources on a Microsoft Word and PDF, PowerPoints. There's a whole bunch of information on the NCRTM page, which is a great starting point for when you're thinking about how can I make this information accessible for everyone? If you have a customer who's thinking about work, or you want to have some reputable job-seeking tools, it's a great tool for those counselors to be able to give to their customers. If you want help locating some resources, just email us NCRTM at New Editions dot Net.   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, Heather Servais project manager with the National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials, or the NCRTM, will join me in the studio today. So, Heather, how are things going?   Heather: It's so good to be here. I'm great. I'm so excited to be on Manager Minute.   Carol: I love it, I love it. We've been doing lots of fun stuff lately, so it's kind of fun to do this collaboration. I want to give our listeners a little bit of a background. So the NCRTM is a central clearinghouse for vocational rehabilitation information for individuals with disabilities, and it offers VR and education communities an opportunity to contribute new knowledge to their specific fields and gain visibility for their work. Now, I remember Heather, when I was still with Minnesota Blind, and I stumbled across this website and it was full of information, I was like, what is this? I had no idea it existed. And back then we had this internal like a little intranet. And I remember linking up staff to different materials because back in the day, and I know you went through a big refresh of the website back in the day, it was a little complicated to get through. I was linking folks to some really specific things that existed out there, and I thought that was so cool. Now, I know since you've been on, you've been working really hard on promoting the website and everything that NCRTM does, and we wanted to just take our listeners behind the curtain at the NCRTM. I also wanted our listeners to know, too, that Heather and I have been collaborating for the past few years on a lot of different items, and she has been fabulous in promoting our podcasts and all our materials for the VRTAC for Quality Management. So with that, let's dig in. So, Heather, would you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your journey into VR? You didn't just like land at the NCRTM out of nowhere. You came through kind of a fun journey.   Heather: Yeah. I'd love to tell you a little bit about my journey in VR. Well, if you would have asked me when I was growing up if I would be a VR counselor or know what the field of rehabilitation counseling was, I would have told you no. I actually landed in this field by happy accident when I went to college. I was majoring in history and was considering being a teacher, or maybe pre-law, and I was looking for ways to get involved on campus. And I came across a club called Best Buddies that pairs college students into 1 to 1 friendships with individuals with disabilities. And I just loved being a part of the club. I loved my buddy that I was able to be paired with. And then while I was volunteering, I got asked by one of my co volunteers to consider working with this new company in town that worked with individuals with disabilities on independent living skills and non-residential support services. So I started doing that when I was in college, absolutely fell in love with it. And then when I graduated, I moved on to work for a community rehabilitation provider, where I started as a job coach, moved up to an employment specialist. I dabbled in vocational evaluation and then eventually became the employment services manager. And while I was there and working in the field, I absolutely just fell in love and I knew that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So I actually went back to school for my master's while I was working full time.   I was really lucky to be the recipient of an RSA scholarship. That helped me be able to go back to school to get my master's in rehabilitation counseling, and I was able to do that, which I really felt like helped my career and was really able to be beneficial to me. When I made the jump from community rehabilitation provider to the state VR side, it was like there was all these names and terms and theories behind the work that I was actually doing. So it really kind of tied it all together in a nice little bow. I worked for that community rehabilitation provider for about seven years, and then I decided to make the jump to state VR to be a counselor. And for a long time I had a general caseload. I also worked in a rural county, and then towards the end of my time in the field, I worked with youth. And then I made the jump over to VR headquarters, where I took a supervisory job as the supervisor of at the time was a new unit called the Field and Provider Relations Unit, and this unit did training and technical assistance with both VR staff and with the community rehabilitation providers that were providing those employment services. So I really enjoyed it because it got to pull together the field experience that I had and then also the provider experience. And then my last stop at Florida VR was as the assistant chief of Field Services, where I oversaw a lot of the programming. So I oversaw learning and development, Ticket to Work, the employment programs team and the deaf hard of hearing deaf blind team and business relations team. I worked there and I loved building programs and loved being part of state VR. Towards 2020, I started to study for my Project Management Professional, or PMP certification. We were managing a lot of projects and building a lot of programs, and I felt like the PMP kind of helped me have a better understanding of some different methodologies to be able to do that. So it really helped pull the programmatic experience with the project management experience. And that's what really landed me here at NTM. So in my role, I get to work with a lot of technical assistance centers and training centers, and I'm able to have both the VR program knowledge and then also the project management knowledge to be able to understand the terms of the project and the contracts and the business aspect of this too. So it's been a long journey, but I'm so happy to be here because this role I get to work with so many different stakeholders. I love working with the VR agencies, the counselors, the rehabilitation counseling students, the parents, the families. I get to see it all, and not just from a local perspective. I'm getting to work with state and nationwide programs, and I think that's just a really big joy.   Carol: And it's so cool. What a great fit for you. This explains a lot. You crack me up, though, because I was considering being in pre-law like back in my undergrad as well. I feel like we have kind of similar journeys. I was a job coach. I'm like, we both come from those humble beginnings, kind of fall into VR, and we find a lot of our guests on the show have been from different backgrounds and sort of stumbled into VR different ways. So that is so cool to know about you. Thanks for sharing that. Now, I know sometimes people are maybe confused a little bit about the NCRTM can you ground us in like how all this works, how you're connected with RSA? Like who do you actually work for? Because people are like, is this an RSA thing? What is this thing? So give us the skinny.   Heather: Yeah, sure. So the NCRTM has actually been around for more than 40 years. When I found that out, you know, I was a little history nerd. So I did some digging and I was shocked. I was like 40 years. I mean, I think I've, you know, been around in the field for a long time and I didn't even know about the NCRTM until I was working at headquarters as a manager. So I think about the first basically half of my career, I didn't even know about it. And that's one of the things about this job is like, I want people to know. And so when NCRTM originated, it was a paper based repository that was basically where RSA grantees would submit their products at the end, and they would be stored and used and to what it is today, which is this really dynamic and engaging platform that has a website and a YouTube and social media and lots of connections. And so it's kind of continuing to grow and evolve. And the driver of NCRTM, where it actually originates is section 15 of the Rehabilitation Act. We are in there. And what section 15 says is that it creates a clearinghouse, and it says that we have to deliver three things. One is information about the location, provision and availability of services and programs for individuals with disabilities. We also need to have information and research related to recent medical and scientific developments bearing on disabilities. And we have to have information about the current numbers of individuals with disabilities and their needs. And so when we look at NCRTM, that's our driver. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to share that information, the NCRTM itself and how it relates to RSA. Right now, NCRTM is funded by a contract through RSA and is operated by New Editions Consulting. So technically I work for New Editions Consulting, which is a fantastic company to work for. We just won one of the top places to work for the Washington Post, so they take wonderful care of us. It's been one of my favorite teams I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of. It's just been a really fun place to work. So we work very, very closely with RSA. We have a coordination team, so there are a big group of folks from RSA and the different units there that add and contribute to the content and the planning and the strategic direction for NCRTM. And then we also work really, really closely with the Technical Assistance Centers with other RSA grantees and federal partners to build out the content to deliver to our users through the NCRTM website and our platforms.   Carol: I had no clue that that had been around for 40 years. Holy cow. I had no idea. That is amazing. And I can imagine, you know, when you think about the paper based, you know, products in the day.   Heather: How do you get that out into the hands of the field? So we live in a great time,  you know, we have this technology and we can use it because the products that are coming out of the technical assistance centers and some other RSA grantees, you know, this is made by people that have done the work. Like that's one of the things that I love so much about the clearinghouse is it's just so relevant and timely to what's happening in the field.   Carol: Yeah, I love it. That advent of social media, too, has helped so much with us all being able to kind of cross plug and promote each other's tools and activities and things that are going on that has been so great. Now, I know since you arrived there, I feel like, no, I'm not disparaging anybody from the past, but I feel like you've brought this just fresh, different look at things and you've been really doing a lot of cool stuff. So would you  talk about some of that cool stuff that you've been doing and kind of where are you getting your ideas from? Because it's been really fun to watch.   Heather: Yeah, I came onto the scene with NTM in late 2021, and there was a lot of this stuff that was already in progress, and we launched a new version of the website in 2022. So not only do we have, you know, pretty robust content, NCRTM has mostly been known for the library. When you say NCRTM, people think library, library, library, and that is a big part of what we do. We have more than 3600 items in our library. When you think of a library, it can be anything from podcast episodes, research papers, blogs, toolkits, guides, trainings. There's such a diverse array of materials in that library. So that's one of the things we were most known for. We started with some of those library enhancements, so we had an enhanced filtering. So now our users are able to locate by topic area, disability type, audience type. There's a ton of filters that you can select to really zero in on materials of interest. We also added some recently viewed features. So if you go to the NCRTM and you're poking around looking for some things and you look at it, you can go back and you'll see some of the items that you recently viewed. We now have the ability to share the information from the website so you can email it to yourself. You can share it directly on social media. Also, as part of that big website launch, we updated our training and events page. This is one of those plugs that if you are new to the website, I love directing people to the training and events page because I know time is of the essence and there's so much training and information available, and NCRTM collects training and events and post them from the Technical Assistance Center. So if there's something happening from those, those are going to be on our site, from federal partners, from grantees. So a grantee could be a university, could be a nonprofit. There's lots of different types of events that are out there on our site. You can sort by live, which means these are like live upcoming events. So you're going to want to log into those or on demand. So that could be either a training module that was made to be an asynchronous learning experience, or it could be a recorded event from one of the previously featured live and upcoming events that we had hosted prior. You can also sort on that training events page by CRC Credit Availability. So for those of you that are counselors or administrators or managers that are looking to get those CRC credits, this is a great way where you can zero in on finding those trainings that are of interest to you, that offer that CRC credit for free. It's a great resource. We also added some new pages to the platform so that we're really the result of user feedback. I think that's one of the things that I'm most proud of with NCRTM team that we do is we are serious about user feedback. So we are collecting feedback from surveys. We run user advisory groups a few times a year. We also are really out in the community talking to VR counselors, talking to rehabilitation counseling students. We're talking to grantees about their needs and what they're doing, really wanting to get the feedback so that we can curate content or we can build content that's meaningful for folks. So in the spirit of section 15, one of the new items that we launched on NCRTM was a programs and services page. And this page focuses on job seeking resources. So for individuals with disabilities. So all processes from when you're considering employment. So maybe you need to do some assessments. Or maybe you're just thinking about going to work all the way through the hiring and retention and career advancement phases of your career. So this is a really great starting point. If you have a customer who's thinking about work or you want to have some reputable job seeking tools right at your fingertips, you can use it there. It's a great tool for those counselors to be able to give to their customers as a starting point. And we do update that page regularly. So if you would like to see like a national level resource on there that you found, that's not, email us. We're here. We want to add things to that page. We are constantly growing the page. We are adding new information to the library and to the website regularly.   Carol: I actually have your site up right now. I love it really did change with that refresh that you guys did in 22 I remember having. Well, I'll say it, I tried to search in the library before and it would bring up like either 50,000 things or no things. When you put in word search or something, it just seems like your capabilities on here are so much more robust than they used to be.   Heather: Yeah, we've definitely added a lot of enhancements to make it a lot more user friendly. We were trying to make it more streamlined. We wanted things to be easier to find, easier to get to material. And then we're also trying to be a little bit plainer in our language. Some of our users felt the language was way too academic, and we wanted this site to be something that's useful for all. So we're trying to do better with using plainer language and getting straight to the point of what the document is or what that material is, so that it's easy for people to digest when they're reading it. We also added a business engagement page. So for those counselors or even those folks who work for VR agencies that are on the business relations or business consulting team, this is a great resource to kind of help you understand the business needs and how to work with employers. When you're thinking about things like job placement and job retention and accommodations and the process for hiring, that's another great tool that you can use and share in your work. But you can use it as a counselor to educate yourself. It's also helpful when you're engaging with businesses so that you're using their business language.   Carol: Excellent   Heather:  One other thing for counselors to consider. I know sometimes when we're VR counselors, I always say it was the hardest job I ever had. There's so much that you have to balance. There's so much to learn, and it always feels like there's things on your plate that you need to do. And sometimes we're so focused on our individual customers, our individual caseload, that we can forget that we're part of something so much bigger. It's not just our caseload or our office or even our state. We're part of a national VR program. Every state has a VR program. There's programs and the territories. There are so many others that are in this field along with you. And I think that's one of the great things about NCTRM is it can kind of help connect the dots so that you get to see the bigger picture. You can find materials that are created by other folks that are doing this work. You're able to see what innovative practices are working on caseloads that may be similar to yours. It may give you strategies that you can better know how to work with your customers. So I think that's one takeaway for NCRTM is just it's a different perspective. You can find things from your peers to help improve your work, and it just connects you better to the VR community around the country.   Carol: Do you guys agree with that page at all with like CSAVR and the NET?   Heather: We did. We were very happy that CSAVR and Kathy West Evans was helpful with us when formulating that content and reviewing that content. So yes, absolutely. We partnered with them to help put that together.   Carol: Excellent.   Heather: We also have I know you mentioned the Disability Innovation Fund and I'm a Manager Minute podcast listener. So I know, I know you've done some episodes with some DIF grantees, and we have a whole page that's dedicated to the Disability Innovation Fund grants. And so this is one of those pages that we're working on. It's definitely still a work in progress. So if you're interested in learning more about those Disability Innovation fund programs, we have each iteration of the grants there so that you can see kind of a little bit about what the purpose is and what those grants are doing. And then as those grantees are submitting products, we're going to be linking those products in the library right to that page. So you can kind of start to see some of the outcomes from those grant programs. So that's a really exciting page that we added. We're looking forward to being able to continue to update that pretty regularly, as we're starting to get some of those products in from those grantees.   Carol: I love that. Those Disability Innovation fund, let me tell you, since we started doing podcasts, you know, featuring the different years and the States and what they're doing, I had no clue, you know, you'd hear about them. But unless you're really, like, talking to the people and finding out what's going on, man, there's some awesome stuff happening across the country that is going to be so helpful to the rest of the VR. People put out their products. It's good to know you're going to have a page dedicated to all of that, because I just envision these really amazing things coming from that, that are going to be so useful to VR as a whole for years to come.   Heather: Absolutely. And there really is a lot of innovation coming out of the agencies that have these grants. And that's exactly what we want. We want others to be able to access those materials so they can think about how that could work in their state, and how that could work in their program, and be able to connect to resources that can help them on their journey to implementing and improving and streamlining their services.   Carol: For sure. 100%.   Heather: And then lastly, I have to plug here for the Accessibility Resources page. So accessibility is such a huge part of what we do. And coming from the field of VR and coming from a provider background, I knew about accessibility in theory, but it really wasn't until I got to working at the clearinghouse when I realized all I didn't know about accessibility. And this is definitely an area where I've had a lot of personal growth and a lot of personal learning to do since I came on board here. But the NCRTM has a page for accessibility resources. So if you are with a VR program or you're a VR counselor, or if you're an RSA grantee and you're looking to make your products accessible. So if you're thinking about having a PowerPoint, how can you make that accessible so that the information is accessible to all users? We have resources on a Microsoft word and PDF and PowerPoints. We have guides, we have video tutorials. There's a whole bunch of information on the NCRTM page, which is a great starting point for when you're thinking about how can I make this information accessible for everyone? And so we encourage folks to check that out too, because it's a really great starting point.   Carol: Yeah, I think that's been an area that maybe VR has not done as well with. You would think we'd know better and do better and be better with that. But I've been amazed over time, different places I've gone or, you know, folks I've talked to and people still struggling with accessibility. So your having those resources out there is super timely and really important.   Heather: Yeah, absolutely. And it really is one of those you don't know what you don't know until you kind of get into the thick of it. And I'm thankful now that I know better and I'm starting to do better. But it's definitely a journey and there's a lot to learn. And I would encourage folks not to be intimidated because you can start small and just learn a little at a time. And over time, that makes a really, really big difference in what you can do with your materials.   Carol: Absolutely. Now, I know we have a lot of counselors that listen in, and you and I had talked about this a little bit. What advice would you have for counselors who may be exploring your website for the first time? I know you and I talked about you felt like you'd be a whole different counselor had you known about the cool materials that are out there for them.   Heather: Yeah, man, I do. I feel like I would have been totally a much better counselor than what I was. When I think about going back to being a VR counselor, it can be overwhelming. I always say the hardest job I ever had was a VR counselor. Just because there's so much to learn. You have a lot of cases. I had to travel a lot for mine because I was in a rural county. You have a lot on your plate and it can be kind of overwhelming and you kind of start spinning your wheels sometimes because you're like, well, I don't even know if I have time to find out this information to help me do better. And I think, you know, what I would tell counselors is NCRTM is here and you can plug in. And so whether you're a new counselor and you're coming into VR kind of cold, maybe your background is in something different. You know, maybe you came with a social work background or a business background, and you may be kind of struggling to learn the VR part of counseling. Or if you're a seasoned counselor, you know, you may feel like you've been doing this a long time and you know a lot. But if you're not learning, you're not growing, and there's really always something more you can learn. And so we have resources for you in every stage of your career. And even as you continue to grow and transition, we have a lot of resources for those who move into management or supervision and program administration. So it's a really great resource to be able to support you when you are out there in the field looking to do, I think about like motivational interviewing and how much I really wanted to do that and use that technique. And I went through some trainings and it was like, okay, But the trainings, I always felt like they were just kind of never really got to the nuts and bolts like it was overviews. And one of my favorite resources in the NCRTM was actually this motivational training series that was created by Oregon VR and it's, you know, several years old now, but it's nuts and bolts. It's how to do motivational interviewing in a VR setting. Like it's amazing. And I wish I would have had that when I was a counselor. And there's also all kinds of different toolkits and guides. There's so much available. There's also another place on the NCRTM team where you can kind of as a starting point. We produce these things, which is a fancy word. We call it a curated list, but basically we have more than 20 curated lists on various topics, and most of the topics that we have selected these curated lists on were user driven. These were given to us. Ideas came from the field, came from our users. And these curated lists usually have, you know, 10 to 25 different resources on them about various topics. So for instance, we did one on VR 101. So for those folks, it can be counselors, it could be parents. All of the curated lists are segmented by audience. So if you're a counselor and you're looking for resources for yourself, you can check out these lists and it'll say for VR professionals. Or if you're looking for resources that you can share with your customers, you'll see for individuals with disabilities and families for general audiences, some of them are for specific disability types, like we have a list on autism and employment. We have a list on mental health. We have curated lists on work incentives, financial incentives, labor market information. So there's more than 20 of them out there. We add new lists pretty regularly. Right now we're in the process of updating some existing lists. So these lists change and they grow. But that's a really great starting point. If you're not really sure where to go or what to look at, I'd also highly recommend plugging into those training and events pages. So I know with the variety of information and training topics that are available, sometimes you really don't want to sit down and do a training, but you can look and a lot of the trainings are available on demand, so you can do it at a time that's convenient for you. As nerdy as it sounds, I like to listen to trainings in the background sometimes, so most of the trainings that are on the site I've listened to, I've taken myself and there's some really good stuff out there. So I'd encourage you to not be intimidated. But I'd also like to offer is just support. There's a team behind the team behind this curtain that's there to help you. So if you want to get acquainted with the site or you want help locating some resources, just email us. Our email address is NRTM@NewEditions.net, and one of our team members will be able to help you right away. So don't feel like you're in this alone. Like we can help you navigate and help you learn how to explore and show you what's available on the site and how it can benefit your work.   Carol: All excellent advice that you've given that is super cool. I know that curated list. When I found that, I'm like, oh my gosh, that literally is what I felt like I did back in the day when I was at Minnesota, was create a curated list from your website. It was like linking counselors to these different really awesome materials on particular topics. So it's so awesome that you guys have done that. I feel like this is advanced so much and I know your team can do other cool stuff for VR agencies. So I heard you say, you know, obviously people can email you and you can do some support, but what are kind of trainings you could do for a VR agency on supporting using the website and such?   Heather: Yeah, absolutely. So we are happy to do in-service trainings and system demonstrations for VR agencies. In the past we've had agencies where we've done executive leadership, where we've shown the executive leadership how to use the site. Not only do we show you how to use it, we talk to you about it. We tell you about it, and then we show you it. So you get to see a live system demo and then, you know, we can take requests. So if it is of interest or particular parts of the website where you want to learn a little bit more information, we can focus on those areas. We've also done it with teams or units. So we can do any type of training like a 1 to 1 setting or like small group setting for your teams. If you're interested in learning more about NCRTM and how you can use it in your work, we also help agencies with locating materials. Well, not just VR agencies. We help individuals so we get emails all the time about people. I just had one last week from a parent who has a child that's transitioning into the workforce, and they're really interested in learning more information about customized employment. And so the parent reached out to us because they really weren't sure where to go. And we were able to pull together a list, kind of walk the parent through what was on the list and was able to share that with them. So if you've got a topic that you're interested in, or maybe you're looking to compile a curriculum of trainings that are available to support you, there's a ton of great resources out there for the training. So those on demand training modules are very common. So if you're an agency and you're looking to build out a training curriculum without like basically rebuilding and restarting and rebuilding the wheel, let's take a look and see what's already out there. You know, this stuff that's coming out of the Technical Assistance Centers and RSA grantees. It's really relevant to what's happening and what's needed in the field right now. And we really want folks to be able to connect to that so we can help you locate those. I had an agency that was asking about financial literacy training, and I was able to send them, Carol, to the financial literacy training from QM, you know, so it was really great. So we have these kind of resources and these requests coming in all the time, and we welcome that. We want to be able to help you navigate resources that's out there. It's up to us to know where to point you and we're happy to do that. And then another thing that we do. So for those agencies that want to submit products to NCRTM, or maybe they're a DIF grantee or another RSA program grantee, we do accessibility technical assistance. So the team behind the team is we have a 508 team here at New Additions, and they help us a lot with accessibility work and making sure that the products that go onto the NCRTM are accessible so we can help provide technical assistance. We do accessibility reviews on materials, especially if they're the result of an RSA grant. And then we can offer if it's like remediations or complex accessibility work, we can provide technical assistance on that. So for instance, we had an RSA grantee who was really interested in doing some new video work, but they really weren't sure how to do audio descriptions. And so our 508 team was able to provide that technical assistance, to be able to kind of show them and walk them through how to do audio descriptions in work. We often do a lot of document remediation, so we're able to kind of review your PDF and word documents. If you're submitting it to the NCRTM, to let you know if it's accessible or not, and then what kind of steps need to be taken to make sure that it's accessible. So that's another service that we offer.   Carol: I had no clue about that. That is fabulous. I hope people take you up on that for sure. Oh my gosh. You've talked about the website and the materials posted there. So I know that the RSA grantees can put information out there. Are there other people that can put information on your website?   Heather: Yeah, technically anybody can submit materials to the NCRTM. It's a public website. So anybody can what we recommend if you're interested in submitting, we have an online library submission form. So when you go to the NCRTM website home page, if you navigate to the library using that top navigation bar on the far left hand side, it says library. When you go into the library, then you will come across a link on the right hand side of the page. And what that link says is submit materials to the NCRTM library. You can go ahead and click on that link. And there's a form that you can fill out. And you'll just have to put some very basic information about the material that you're submitting. So maybe this is something that your agency created, that you're very proud of and would like to be on the NCRTM website. Or maybe it's something from a federal partner that's publicly available, that's not in our library that you think should be. That's another thing you can do is you can submit it to NCRTM. Every material that's submitted is reviewed by our team to make sure that it's accessible, and then also that it's appropriate to be on the NCRTM, and then we can go ahead and publish it and make it available on the website. So anybody can yeah, anybody can submit, which I think is pretty cool. And we really encourage folks. So if you're a VR agency and you have tools and you have success stories or you have trainings you want to share and you want them to get the word out about it, send it our way, we will help you figure out a way to put it on the site and help you amplify that material. Like, we really want these products and these materials that you're working on that are really meaningful for the VR community. We want to get them out there.   Carol: Well, we're definitely better together. You know, everybody's creating all of this great stuff. We don't have to all reinvent the wheel. Like, let's use this so each other can get like all that great stuff. Everybody's producing. I think that's wonderful.   Heather:  Yeah. If you're afraid to use that form, you can always email us like we are small team, but we're very responsive. We take a lot of pride in making sure that we're responding to folks quickly. So if you have questions about submitting materials or you want to walk it through, you can email us at NCRTM@NewEditions.Net, and we'll walk you through that. For those RSA grantees we have a whole guide that's out there, the guide for product submission and websites about submitting products to the NCRTM. But that's more for RSA grantees. If you're an individual or you're a VR agency, definitely email us or use that library submission form and we're going to be happy to help you.   Carol: Very cool. So I know you have a lovely newsletter you guys put out. And then I saw recently kind of a little different format. You were doing like a news blast or something. Sort of groovy. How can folks, because we do have a lot of counselors that listen into and they don't always have access, you know, maybe the directors on your mailing list or something. But how do folks subscribe so they can get it quickly?   Heather: Yeah, we have a lot of ways that you can connect with us. Carol, you mentioned the newsletter. We do put out a monthly newsletter. We are trying some new things. So we are starting to do some news blasts. So if there's some really important announcement or might be an event reminder or something that NCRTM is doing, we're going to start sending some more regular communications to our subscribers. The best way to do that is to sign up for the NCRTM newsletter. And you can do that by using the web page. You use the top navigation bar and click on join the NTM network tab. That's going to take you to our page, where you can start to subscribe so you can subscribe for our newsletter. Like I said, it goes out once a month. We also have another subscription where if you're really interested in keeping up to date on what's new, what's happening with the library materials, you can subscribe for library updates. So once a month, you'll get a list of all of the new items that were added to the NCRTM library. And it really varies month to month. Sometimes we have a lot of folks that submit products, other times it's just our team out there looking and finding what's new and putting it onto the site. So some months you'll see a lot, some months you might not see as much. It just really depends if you're really interested in staying up to date, we encourage you to do that. We also have social media. You can find us on X which is formerly Twitter. Our handle is at RSA_NCRTM. So we encourage you to follow us on Twitter. We do a lot of amplifying new products. We talk about some of the events and trainings that are going on. And then we also have a YouTube. So whenever NCRTM hosts a training because we do host trainings ourselves too. Right now we're doing a series of lunch and learns. Carol, you were a big help with moderating what our first Lunch and Learn event last November with Doctor Herbert. We had a panel discussion about recruitment and retention. We also just did a really wonderful lunch and learn session that we did alive. And then we just released the publication earlier this month on managing counselor workload guilt. So for those of you counselors who are out there maybe struggling, feeling a little guilty because your workload is high, and this really looks at strategies to kind of find balance and prioritize wellbeing. It was a really fantastic event. And so that video is available on our YouTube channel. And then earlier this month we hosted a lunch and learn where we partnered with NRIC, the National Rehabilitation Information Centre, and really kind of zeroed in on research. And how can you navigate with NRIC and use research in your work. And so the video of that will be coming out very soon too. So if you're interested in looking at some of the trainings that NCRTM has done, definitely check out our YouTube channel.   Carol: Yeah, folks, definitely need to sign up because then you get everything. I love it because I must be signed up like three different ways. I get it, you know, from RSA, Joe Doney. And then I get from you guys, I get it all the time. So I make sure I have all the current information and the lunch and learns are fabulous. They're really fast paced. It's nice. There's just great guests that have been on there. I think they're really a good product that you've developed.   Heather: Yeah, so definitely the newsletter. I think you hit it. That's the best way. So if you're looking to connect, we have a lot of ways. But the newsletter you're going to see a lot of the new stuff that's coming out. You're going to be able to see any of the lunch and learns that we're hosting. You're going to get to see NCRTM materials. You'll also get to see all of our new library materials. We usually feature 3 to 4 new library materials on that newsletter, too, so you don't sign up for library updates. You can still see that in the newsletter. So yeah, the newsletter is really a great source to get the most information about what's happening at NCRTM.   Carol: Very cool. So is there any way our listeners can help you? I don't know if you had any particular ask for them. Or are there ways that our listeners can help you guys?   Heather: Yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned, we are very serious about user feedback. So we want to hear from you. We want to be able to curate content that's meaningful and helpful for you. So we want you to share your ideas with us. So if there's library materials, if there's a webinar or training topic that would be helpful for you or idea for a new curated list, we want to hear from you. That's how we continue to build and grow the NCRTM to make sure that it's meaningful to our users. So really reach out to us, email us, NCRTM@NewEditions.Net. We also have a customer feedback survey so you can connect with us. That way you can fill it out if you have ideas for content or things that you would find helpful, and then also just connecting with the NCRTM team by signing up for the newsletter would be a really big help. It also helps keep you up to date on what's happening. Those are some of the bigger ways that your listeners could help us is really those connections. Tell us what you need, how we can help you, and then connect with us and stay up to date. Connect with us so that you know what's going on, because I guarantee you your work will benefit.   Carol: Awesome. Thanks for joining me today, Heather, I really appreciate you being on. This was great.   Heather: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was awesome I appreciate it.   {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!

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. Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music}   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.   {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. 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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.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music}   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} 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!  

Welcome to VRTAC-QM Manager Minute! Today, we're joined by Brandy McOmber, Project Director, Ashley Banes, Counselor Specialist, and Paul Fuller, Counselor Specialist, all representing Iowa General. Our focus is Iowa's Blueprint for Change DIF Grant and its creative use of the collective impact approach. This initiative aims to amplify opportunities for competitive integrated employment through strategic partnerships and pilot programs. Its overarching mission? To phase out sub-minimum wage employment in Iowa and revolutionize the career paths of individuals considering such options. As 14(C) certificate holders decline, many individuals find themselves without employment, often spending their days at home or in day habilitation programs. Stay tuned to learn more about how they're transforming lives with DIF!   Listen Here   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.   {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!  

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.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music}   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.   {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!

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.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music}   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.   Listen Here   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.   {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!

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.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} 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.   {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 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.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} 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.   {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 is David Leon, Director of Workforce Programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS), and Kate Kaegi, Project Manager for the DIF. In recognition of Disability Awareness Month, the second podcast of our DIF series includes David and Kate explaining how Virginia's DIF grant was initiated, implemented, and adjusted to best reach their initiatives of placing 750 individuals with disabilities in STEM and healthcare careers, registered apprenticeships, and State, County, and City jobs. Learn about the challenges they navigated and what they recommend when applying for a DIF grant.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} David: Don't be afraid to apply for a diff grant. It is an amazing opportunity to infuse energy and enthusiasm into your workforce. It is a chance to stretch, learn new skills, try new programs. You get to see staff flourish and more importantly, get some really cool outcomes for the clients we serve.   Kate: I was a little intimidated with the idea of RSA, but what I have found is this RSA is there to help us. They want us to succeed.   David: You can accomplish some great things.   Speaker1: 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 David Leon, director for workforce programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, or DARS, and Kate Kaegi, project manager for the DEP. So David, how are things going at DARS?   David: They are great. We are plugging along, working on our grant. A colleague has a SWITZI grant, so it's been neat to really try a bunch of new things here in Virginia.   Carol: Very cool. So how are you Kate?   Kate: I am doing spectacular. Thank you for having me here today.   Carol: You bet. So, David, you and I had a chance to visit in a podcast on work incentives counseling in April of 22. And just so you know, you were one of my top five downloads. And when I think of Virginia, I always think of you and all the amazing things that have been cooking all the time. You guys always have something in the hopper and this is no different. So I started a series of podcasts focused on the diff grants and career advancement, and you are the second in my series and happened to fall in October with a nod to Disability Employment Awareness Month. So I want to just give our listeners a little snippet again about the diff grant. And so this particular round, the grant activities are geared to support innovative activities aimed at improving the outcomes of individuals with disabilities. And the Career Advancement Initiative model. Demonstrations were funded in federal fiscal year 2021. They were intended to identify and demonstrate practices supported by evidence to assist eligible individuals with disabilities, including previous served participants in employment who reenter the program to do the following. They were looking at advancing 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 competitive integrated employment outcomes, economic self-sufficiency, independence and inclusion in society, and to reduce reliance on public benefits like SSI, SSDI, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and State or local benefits. Now, I remember reading in the announcement some of that sort of I thought it was disturbing data that provided the base for why RSA picked this particular area and chose to fund it. And they based it on the program year 2019, RSA 911 data. And some of the things that they said were participants that were exiting the program in competitive integrated employment reported a median wage of 12 bucks an hour and working like 30 hours a week. And the top ten most common occupations were reported. They were like stock clerks and they were order fillers, customer service reps, janitors, cleaners. I call it the whole Food, Filth and Flowers. So I know through this initiative they were trying to do more. So let's dig into what you guys have cooking in Virginia. David, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. How did you get to VR?   David: Thanks, Carol. Started as a job coach years ago. We won't say when. It'll make me feel old, and I worked for a private nonprofit. I then assisted in Virginia, working with individuals, exiting a training center and moving towards community living. From there, I came back to the Richmond area to work for a community service board and again was a job coach and then worked within a sheltered work and day services program before coming to DARS, where I started with the Ticket to Work program and now have that the work incentives and a few grants and the workforce programs.   Carol: You and I have very similar backgrounds. I too was a job coach. I did work in a sheltered workshop for a while as well and all of that. It's always interesting how people find their way to VR. Kate, how about you? Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got to VR?   Kate: I kind of fell into this. A lot of times, similar to other people. Unexpectedly, I found out about East Carolina's rehab program and that they had a scholarship for people who wanted to get their master's. And I'm like, Oh, free money. So I jumped into that. Absolutely loved it. I did my internship at the Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitative Center. It was called something or a different title when I started back in the day. As I tell my kids, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I was there, started off there as an evaluator and then kind of moved across the state, became a rehab counselor in the field, have done transition counseling, substance abuse counseling, went back to Boca Vale for a little bit, even dipped my toes into the world of job coaching and worked with David for a period of time at the CSV, came back to DARS, worked with the Department for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and also, as an aside, also had joined the military during that timeframe on the reserve side. So I'm out of that at this point. So I have quite an eclectic background. As a supervisor once said that I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do, but it was all overall 24 years of work working with individuals with disabilities in a variety of areas. So it really kind of dovetailed well for me to work in the first dif grant that we received prior to this grant where I was a VMA or Virginia Manufacturing Association liaison for our grant. And when we were working on this Phase two grant, it was just pulling from what we've learned previously and growing from there. And so here I am.   Carol: I love it, it positions you really well for the work under this new grant. Very cool. Thanks for sharing that. So, David, why don't you paint us a picture of Virginia DARS How many staff do you have? About how many people are you all serving?   David: Okay, DARS comprises the Division of Rehabilitative Services, the Disability Determination Services, Aging Services. We have roughly 28 to 30 offices around the state and are currently serving just around 18,000 clients. If you include Pre-ETS in those totals.   Carol: that's a bunch., holy cow. I didn't realize you guys were that big.   David: Yeah, and that doesn't include however many cases DDS is handling or our aging or the other units. But that's a little bit about DARS, and I like to say we stretch from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to almost as far west as Detroit. If you go down to Bristol, Virginia, which is technically a little further than Detroit. So lots of types of environments and communities and very unique challenges in different areas.   Carol: Yeah, so you're definitely facing different geographical issues and I'm sure probably even economic differences. You know, if you're talking the coast versus maybe more of a rural area. So I'm sure there's probably some challenges there with even getting providers or how you're providing services.   David: It's interesting. One of the things we've been able to see in, for instance, Southwest Virginia, there is an economic center that's only 16 miles away from an office. But to get there, you go over three mountains and it could take two hours. So are those jobs really accessible to someone without a vehicle? On paper from Richmond, it might look like, why aren't we placing folks in this community out of that office? Well, it's a two hour drive each way, and that's the only way to do it. You mentioned at the beginning those top ten job areas. And one of the things we're really trying to challenge ourselves with now is giving people the information to make an informed decision about a career choice. But if they choose a career that might not look as great, what is the best potential version of that job? What is the job within that sector that actually could become a career? So at the beginning when we were starting to work on this, our agency had been in order of selection for years with categories closed and with the pandemic. That all changed. But the clients we were seeing didn't change and their goals didn't change. I think that's going to be a longer term conversation. But if we can do things to promote the best version of a position. And so I'll just give you one example. And our commissioner, other folks would probably say, why do we have so many folks who want jobs in food service or in this? Because typically they're low paying. Typically there's a lot of turnover. It's hard to become stable. One of the first projects we worked on in this grant was a partnership with a school nutrition program, and we've been able to help a few individuals enter into work in a kitchen at a school where they have the same hours. Monday through Friday. They have the opportunity for benefits. In one case, we couldn't find transportation. That school system was allowing the individual to take the school bus for that person. That's a really stable job and it's somewhere they can grow and thrive for years. So I do want to just say we have to think a little bit differently about what Kate or I or others might think of as a career. How do we find that best option for someone where there is room for growth, but equally important room for that time for stability to get to mastery, to then look at other skills and hopefully down the road they'd come back, not because they lost that job and need it again, but because they've learned so much that they want to go on to the next thing of their own accord.   Carol: Yeah, I like that you said that because I remember that when we visited before talking about that best version of that job. So not to mean that no one can work in kind of food, filth and flowers. I know I say that and it sounds sort of condescending and it's not meant to be. But we typically relied on kind of those occupations, really entry level. But I like that you're taking a spin on that and really looking deeper because we need folks to work in those occupations too. And there's people that love doing that work. But how like you say, can you do the best version of that? So you have benefits and you're looking at those long term like working in a school district, you can get retirement and all these different really awesome things that go with that. So, Kate, I'm going to switch to you. So big picture, break it down for us on your grant proposal and what you're hoping to accomplish with I know you had said you have three core components. Talk a little bit about that.   Kate: Sure. I do want to make a caveat that I love about this grant is it is a demonstration grant, meaning we have the opportunity to try out innovative products and projects across the state. I just want to put a caveat on that to keep that in your mind as I'm going forward here. So our main goal is to place 750 individuals with disabilities in federal, state, county, city jobs and or registered apprenticeships or also Stem and health careers. So we have those three main components on that. And when we looked at this grant and David worked on the development and the proposal for this, we really wanted to touch individuals that had been kind of missed in the first grant. And this I think, is something as we're doing a grant, you're learning all the time. And we wanted to make sure that we were hitting those unserved and underserved across the state. So individuals that aren't as plentiful in different areas. So say like Winchester has a large Hispanic population, does that reflect the number served in the actual DARS office? How do we get Spanish speaking individuals more involved in DARS? How do we get women who may only recognize those areas that you talked about that flower filth? And because that's what they're aware of, that's the work they've done in the past. So I just need another job in that area. How can we open up some possibilities? Have you thought about the IT field? Have you thought about advanced manufacturing and can you see yourself doing that? So providing those opportunities, it's a way for us to look at those unserved and underserved across the state. And we're defining that as we're going and we're looking at the census data, we're looking at who we're serving within each state. And then we're also looking at our plans, the plans that the rehab counselors are creating. What are those plans? What is the main goal? Overall we see a lot of customer service because it's kind of a catch all. What does that mean? Is that customer service as a helpdesk technician as opposed to just somebody as a receptionist? So we're really helping both the VRC, the counselor, and the candidate explore possibilities like that.   Carol: I like that. I just love what you guys are doing and really fundamentally getting down, digging in and really focusing on those folks that have been underserved or unserved and just taking that twist on the occupation because there's a wide range like within customer service, you have the job from here to here.   Kate: Exactly.   Carol: Yeah, that is very cool. Now, I know you all had some really weird hiccups in the beginning when you were starting out with this particular grant. So what were some of those kind of hiccups and how did you overcome that? And Kate, I'll probably shoot to you first on this.   Kate: So part of the thing that I didn't mention was is that the roles that our team players have. So we have a liaison with Department of Labor and Industry, specifically the registered apprenticeship side. So they have their foot in the DOLI world and the foot in the DARS world. We also have a team member who has their foot in the Department of Human Resource Management Liaison, and then also her toes are also dipping in the DARS. So we've had some different team members on that. We also have a quick response, counselor, somebody who can go in and respond to immediate needs of employers, of an individual that might be working with them, that has a disability, that might need some help, whether that's in a registered apprenticeship or on that particular job. During the first year we hired and we had everybody up and running and we had two team members, one had a medical emergency and had to move away from the position because there was some driving involved. And then unfortunately, we had Lisa Hanky, who passed away unexpectedly on us. So, you know, you get all getting that hiring going and then all of a sudden we lost two individuals, so we had to restart that process.   David: But Kate, if I can add to that, and I believe this is true for everyone in our round of this DIF funding, I believe we were told two days before the beginning of the project, it was about a day after that that, you know, many agencies coming out of the pandemic have had challenges with staffing and we had those challenges in our procurement division. So getting contracts signed, getting those staff replaced. But the other thing that has been a challenge and we're finally coming out of. We created three positions that this agency has never had, and it had meant that we had to learn how to provide quality support to two other state agencies in the context of working with DARS and similarly with our quick response counselors. So we created these positions that we had an idea of how they could work. But once someone got into those roles and was learning the other agency, we've had to be flexible in understanding how they can actually benefit our clients and our agency. And that has been a learning process.   Carol: You guys bring up a really good point because I think sometimes when folks are applying for the DIF grant, you're not recognizing off the get-go That first year can be a struggle because like you said, you found out two days before and then you get the money. And then as we know with any state government, it takes time to hire and like to get through all those processes. And so RSA may be on one hand going like spend the money and you're like, we're trying, but we've got to get through all our HR processes and all this crazy stuff. So it takes a little bit to get rolling in that first year. And I know we often on the TA world are talking with people as they're applying for grants going just know as you're going into it that first year, you're probably not going to spend the amount of funds you projected originally because there's just is a time factor and getting through all of that.   Kate: Absolutely. That was the one thought that David and I, if you know, we apply for another one down the road, maybe making that first year a little bit less intensive and spreading it out from year 2 to 5 because that's where the major work will be done.   Carol: Yeah, that's smart. Very smart. So I know you guys were talking about some challenges. What are some other particular challenges that you're experiencing right now?   Kate: Well, I'll get started on that piece. One of the things we have found similar to the staffing, the challenge that we had when we first started of hiring individuals, we're finding a turnover in staff in DARS. And so we are having a lot of younger counselors that have, in some cases don't have a rehab background. They might have a social work background. So we have a lot of training that we're doing and then redoing on that. We're having a training coming up in October for the VOC rehab counselors and we're getting kind of back to basics. What makes a good referral for our Pathways Grant, looking at those possibilities of not just that receptionist job, let's look at helpdesk. What are the opportunities that are out there? And so that has been kind of a challenge, is just retraining. And I think this is kind of normal across the board. But these rehab counselors are busy. They have a lot more documentation they have to put in Aware. There's a lot more individuals coming through their door because we have the rapid engagements, so they are overwhelmed. And how can we dovetail our services to best support them, how to make the referral process as easy as possible for them, what supports make the most sense for them? So that's been one of the interesting challenges.   Carol: So, Kate, have you guys done anything around just the way in which your staff or the support of those counselors, do you have like other staff that are kind of wrapped around them, whether you call them maybe a rehab tech or some sort of a case aide or whatever it might be that can help the counselors with sort of all the documentation requirements and that kind of thing. Have you done some work in that?   Kate: Actually, here in Virginia, we do have support. We have vocational evaluators, placement counselors and what they call employment service specialists that run the job club and things like that. And they can help support with some of the paperwork. But similar to other states that actually have like a rehab tech that would do some of the counseling or the that kind of thing, not as much. And each office is run a little bit different. That's part of the appeal. And what I mean by that is, is some of the offices might not have a vocational evaluator, some might have a placement counselor that might be covering more than one office so that there is enough differences on that piece. But yeah, that has been a struggle for keeping all of that work and getting it done for them.   Carol: Yeah, You're definitely joined by your colleagues across the country on that. I keep hearing that over and over. David did you have anything else you wanted to add to that about any of the particular challenges?   David: Yeah, I think we wrote this knowing we needed to do some things better and serve certain populations differently to get to where people had the same outcome regardless of gender, race, ethnicity. And that is still a challenge. We are learning that we have a long way to go to effectively serve those folks who have English as a second language. And when we started the project, we started with like a counselor advisory board to help not only create buy in, but inform us what the counselors needed. We have now shifted to an advisory board geared towards helping us do better with the Hispanic Latino population, and that English is a second language. So we're hoping over this next year, working with members of our state who are representative of those groups will actually help us figure out what services are going to be most likely to bring people in for help. What supports we will need to think about providing for those individuals to be successful. And again, it goes back to how do we help people see for themselves greater opportunities and careers than they might have.   Carol: So are you linked in then with your like your WIOA partners on your adult basic ed side? Like under that, you know, the English as a second language, Like they're more expert than us in working with that group?   Kate: Absolutely. One of our key partners is the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center, who teach the adult ed, they help support them across the state when we get further along I'll talk about some of the projects that we're working with with them.   Carol: Yeah, that's excellent. I love that. So I know you guys are seeing some exciting results. What kind of exciting results are percolating up?   Kate: So one of the things that we found as we're moving forward is we actually had working with adult Ed, we had a program that we were doing Intro to IT, where we're starting a basic starting platform for accounting fundamentals, and we were ready to go. We had seven individuals in this first cohort, and one of the things we found was the individuals that we met, even though we just came through Covid with all of the tech training, we had individuals they knew enough to get on to Zoom and to do some items, but we really needed to step back and do some basic tech training. So, they had enough gaps in their knowledge that they couldn't move forward without some major help. So what happened on this is, is we stepped back and started to do some digital literacy training and they moved forward with that. And each of those individuals are now moving forward with the accounting fundamentals this summer. So stepping back, we're actually looking at what we're calling digital work skills training, which is really exciting opportunity for individuals to get started with North Star digital literacy. We're working on goal setting some soft skill development just to get them started on that end. So we have individuals that would typically not be able to go to a virtual training actually get started there. And what we're finding with that end is, is that we have some individuals, you know, those customer service people who just want to do clerical, they're getting introduced to IT. And so we've had a few individuals that have moved on to our next training, which we call the Max Career Lab. And Max Potential is an employer here in Virginia. And I think they go into other states as well, several other states. And what they are, they're a temp agency for IT employment. So they hire individuals to work with Dominion, to work with, you know, with all these employers doing various IT. But they have a unique hiring model. They actually have an opportunity where individuals come in and they go through a career lab five day, three hours a day, 15 hours of a career lab. Then they do an interview. During those five days, they do an overview of data analytics, networking, all these different career areas. So they'll do an hour and a half of overview of the career, and then they do an actual interactive activity that they break out in groups for. So it's a great way to explore the IT field. So we've hired them to actually run career labs for us. They do the 15 hours, then they get homework and then they have an interview assessment. So the interview is just like a typical interview that they run, but they follow up with what activities that they're interested in. So this has been a wonderful way for us to explore different IT areas and to help individuals determine what area of IT they want to do. Here in Virginia, we're blessed. We've got Nova, we've got a lot of IT careers, but counselors and vocal evaluators don't always know how to direct somebody into the right avenue because technology is always changing. You know, cybersecurity, cybersecurity, that's always a great one, right? Because we're right here in Nova. However, not everybody wants to do cyber. Have you thought of data analytics? Have you thought of the different networking positions? Have you thought of machine learning? You know what, all is out there? And so it's an opportunity for us to do a hands on career exploration and next steps with an actual employer running the sessions for us.   Carol: That's cool. Yeah, I hadn't heard about a career lab before like that. That is very intriguing because so many people learn much better, you know, by actually experiencing seeing what that's about because it can sound cool. You read about something like the cybersecurity was the big deal, but then you get into it and you're like, Oh, I don't really want to do that, you know? So giving them that opportunity, I think that's fabulous.   Kate: Yes, and we have had our first cohort. We had 25 people sign up. We had 22 complete the whole piece. That includes the interview.  Of that group we had six individuals. So they compare the group together, but they also compare them to the other public groups that they have across the board. So of those individuals, six are encouraged to look at direct work experience. The rest have been encouraged to do a few other activities, like maybe develop more professional skills or develop more tech training, possibly, you know, accounting fundamentals. We had one that decided they did not want to do IT training. And I'm thinking, what a great opportunity you now know what you don't want to do. And for us, that can be great, right? So we're looking at some other options for that young man. It has been a wonderful opportunity. We're now in our second cohort and our hope is, is to keep continuing this as we're going through this grant and to see how we can set this up once the grant is over.   Carol: Very cool. Have you had any surprises kind of as you've started this. I know you're in year two. Are there any surprises?   David: I think there are always surprises. This is right. Staff and surprises some of the opportunities that have come up. I don't think we anticipated. So we've shifted to take advantage. One of the big pieces of this grant is our focus on state hiring and the individual we hired for that aspect worked diligently during the first six months with them on an alternative hiring process through the legislation, had a go live date, whether we were ready or not. And what we didn't understand is during the first year, this process, it wasn't available to current state employees who may be disabled. That created a lot of issues for folks who were upset that they couldn't access this to move up within state government. We weren't able to change that ourselves, but it was changed in legislation. And starting in July of this year, we were allowed to offer a certificate of disability to someone who was currently employed and that has seen an increase. We've had roughly 1500 people request certificates of disabilities. I think part of what was surprising is what a great opportunity that has become as a referral source for DAR's. Roughly 300 individuals have chosen to get more information and receive VR services, and we are seeing that as a really nice piece of the process. Additionally, I think we finally had our first individual who went from what we call part time wage employment to full time classified, which was one of the intents of the process we developed. So it's nice to begin to see that work. But for Kate and I, we have to remind ourselves some of this might take two, three, four years before we really actually see these things that could be possible in action. And I think the other big surprise there is just how great of a partner our Department of Human Resource Management has been. They recently allowed us to present to 120 hiring managers and we will be a regular part of their monthly recruitment network action meetings. They've bought into our use of windmills training. They advertise it every month and we are co-sponsoring a job accommodation network training in October for them that they will heavily market to state hiring managers. So I think that's been really great. And then the other surprise, it turns out that our division of registered apprenticeship within the Department of Labor and Industry is moving to a new state agency. So we will see what that does. You know, you think things are pretty stable and static in certain ways, but they can change. That's been a surprise. But it's not a good or bad. It just, you know, might be a chance to actually work with more of our partners more directly.   Kate: And David, another surprise that we had was the use of data. We have been doing some trainings with the field and they you know, when you bring numbers involved, people get a little, oh, I don't know if I want to touch this, but what we found was the counselors, the evaluators, the placement, they enjoyed looking at this data. They ate it up. So the use of data as a tool to look at who we're serving, how are we serving them, has been an eye opener. At least it was a surprise for me. Now I'm a vocational evaluator, so I love data and I thought I was, you know, unique. But I'm not you know, everybody is, you know, surprisingly likes that data.   Carol: Yeah.. Well, and definitely how you present it to the field, you know, if you're just like blah, blah, blah, whatever, they really are interested because it's the culmination of their work, you know, so they see what's happening. It really helps to paint that picture and then they can react and respond and do things in a different way in response to that data. So I think that's smart that you guys are doing that. Now. I know you both had talked about shifting the conversation around employment and shifting that whole narrative on barriers to advancement and employment. Talk a little bit about that.   Kate: So one of the things that the counselors are really good at is, is when somebody comes in the door and they say, hey, you know, I need help finding work. But when we look at the definition of what we do, it's getting and but it's also keeping or advancing in your career. So what is that advancement look like? So if you have somebody coming in who I need a job right away, maybe this is where somebody is going to go for a stock clerk. But what about the idea of doing a quick training so that they can get a credential in the Certified logistics associate and then moving from there, maybe when they do that interview, now that they have that credential, maybe they can ask for a little bit of a raise. And what is the next step on that piece? So we've definitely looked at that. How do we make, as David said, the most of the career that you're looking at or the other areas that we've already talked about? Let's look at other areas.   David: One of the things that actually came from one of our offices that they wanted was we've heard more and more about attrition and attrition from application to plan, but also attrition from plan before employment or before successful closure. And we have created a group called Work Wise, which is designed for individuals who have just become employed to meet once a week in the evening, talk about their jobs, have an opportunity with a staff person to talk through issues, challenges. It's been really a powerful group, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how the individuals who choose to participate in a couple of cases did not want to stop going when their case was closed because of how valuable it was to in close to real time talk through things that were happening at work with someone with a VR counseling background. And that has been a really powerful group because it's also given folks to learn from each other and get to that stability and confidence to maybe also look for future opportunities. I know we're getting ready to also hold a salary negotiation training for folks. So again, let's help people think through and have those skills now that they may use now or they may use later when an opportunity to move up comes around. And similarly, we've started a group that we're calling money wise where we've partnered with a local credit union with that hope of how can we help make sure folks maximize their the benefits they choose to take advantage of from an employer. How do we help someone make sure that if there's a 401 match and it's X amount, that they do that much at the very least, Right. Those things that everyone is told, Well, if there's free money from an employer, you take it or if there's tuition assistance or some other thing, maybe there are things to plant some seeds. So someone would continue to move forward.   Carol: I can see how so much of this work that you are doing is so foundational and will be of benefit to, you know, your other colleagues across the country with the things you've uncovered and the things that you are working on, these different classes and groups and all of that. I'm sure other people are going, Gosh, I want to do that too. I think this will be amazing to help plant the seeds across the country. Now, David, I know you were concerned about implementing something that could withstand the test of time. And I know DIF grants are meant it's a demonstration grant. You're trying something out, but you want to also be able to carry forward these ideas into the future. So how are you guys structuring this to make that happen?   David: We really are thinking about sustainability and to Commissioner Hayfield's credit, that's been one of the things that she and Dale Batten have really stressed to us. It's great to do great work in a period of time, but how can we make sure that the things that have the potential to be value add or transformative continue and don't just end the day the funding stops? And we've really thought through many of the activities that we are creating, we are working on from at the beginning. What would this look like when there's no funding? How will we continue these? It's part of our partnership with Valray. We're working to get some of these pieces put into Canvas and set up through that learning management system. But within some of the positions, you know, one of our hopes is that the DHRM VR liaison could become its own full time non restricted position at the end. Similarly, we would hope that for the others, or at least those activities become a part of multiple staff strategically throughout the state. And that's one way we're looking at it.   Kate: And yeah, we're looking at the train, the trainers, also the tools that we're using. One of the pieces for vocational evaluators would be English language acquisition and knowledge. So there are assessments that are out there that can test somebody's English language, which is important for us to know if we're working with individuals and we're trying to place them on the job. So how do we get the tools necessary into the hands of the individuals and trained up for that so that that can be moving forward? So we're being proactive for these individuals that we hope to come into our doors a little bit more often.   Carol: That's excellent. So what do you guys see as your next steps? Where are you going from here? The point you're at right now, what are the next steps?   Kate: So a lot of our programming that we're doing right now is in partnership with adult ed. We see a great marriage between DARS and Adult Ed because Adult Ed works with a lot of individuals with disabilities already. They're adult educators. They can provide a little bit more support for our learners for credential training. They've got different things that are across the state. I'm working with our rehab center, Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation to really figure out how can we marry these? Right now I'm coordinating all these trainings. Is there a way that the center can provide this? And this gives the center an opportunity to look at a virtual environment? What does this look like? We're not sure what it looks like, but we're giving a try to see for that next piece so that max potential with the employer, can that be run through Wilson so that it is open and able to run after the grant is over.   Carol: So for our listeners that would want to apply for a grant, but they've been afraid to do so. What advice would you give to other people?   David: Don't be afraid to apply for a grant. It is an amazing opportunity to infuse energy and enthusiasm into your workforce. It is a chance to stretch, learn new skills, try new programs and get some great outcomes. If there are things you've wanted to try and you don't necessarily have the budget to do or don't seem to fit a demonstration grant is a phenomenal opportunity, and when I came into this agency under grants and special programs, usually we had to worry about things like a match component. And if you have the chance to apply for a grant where there isn't a match and you are willing to be patient with that work, you can accomplish some great things. You get to know your partners better. You get to see staff flourish and stretch and more importantly, get some really cool outcomes for the clients we serve.   Carol: Love that infuse that energy and enthusiasm. I wrote that down. That was a great. You're like giving a commercial for the RSA DIF Grants, that's awesome.   Kate: One thing I would add on this too is when I first came in eight years ago on the other grant, I was pretty much kind of a newbie in the grant world, and I was a little intimidated with the idea of RSA. But what I have found is, is RSA is there to help us. They want us to succeed. And if you have a solid grant application and know what you want to do, they will help you give you some ideas. They invited other states to meet with you to kind of talk about different things. So they have been very good about sharing knowledge and they want to see us succeed.   Carol: That sounds so great. Well, I am going to definitely tell our listeners like they should reach out to you too, if they've got some questions to reach out to David and Kate, because you all have a lot of very cool stuff cooking, and I'm sure you're willing to talk to others about what you've been doing as they're thinking about maybe applying some of this, even though they may not have a DIF grant, but applying some of the things that you're learning into their own work in their states?   Kate: Absolutely. We're here.   Carol: Excellent. Well, I appreciate you both. Thanks for spending time with us. And I look forward to circling back with you a little bit in a couple more years as time flies on this grant and see where you're coming in at and those good results. So have a great day.   David: Thank you very much.   Kate: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!  

Joining Carol in the studio today is Sabrina Cunliffe, Disability Innovation Fund (DIF) Grant Manager, with Oregon General. Find out how Oregon General has tackled some challenging cultural issues and is starting to see great results with their strategy for implementing the DIF grant through their Inclusive Career Advancement Program.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Speaker1: 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 Sabrina Cunliffe Disability Innovation Fund, Inclusive Career Advancement Program Manager, or DIF grant manager for short with Oregon General. So Sabrina, how are things going in Oregon?   Sabrina: Oh gosh. Oregon has five seasons, fall, winter, spring, summer and fire season. So it is currently fire season. It looks like a little post-apocalyptic nightmare outside right now, but other than that, we're doing really well.   Carol: I'm sorry to hear that, though. There's been a lot of the wildfires this year that have been so devastating.   Sabrina: Absolutely.   Carol: Well, I'm really glad you're here today. And I just want to take a couple of minutes to give our listeners a little bit of background on the Disability Innovation Fund grants. And so in this particular round, grant activities are geared to support innovative activities aimed at improving outcomes of individuals with disabilities and the Career the Advancement Initiative model demonstration. And these were funded in FY 2021 were intended to identify and demonstrate practices that are supported by evidence to assist eligible individuals with disabilities, including previously served VR participants in employment who reenter the program to do kind of four of the following things 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 their competitive integrated employment outcomes, economic self-sufficiency, independence and inclusion in society, and to reduce the reliance on public benefits like SSI and SSDI and or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Now I remember reading the application and kind of the notice and all of that, and there was really actually some disturbing data that provided the base for RSA and why this particular area was chosen to fund. And they were looking at the program year 2019, RSA 911 data, and it said things like this, like approximately 80% of the participants were earning less than 17 bucks an hour. And in fact, participants who exited the program in competitive integrated employment reported a median wage of 12 bucks an hour and median hours at 30 hours a week. And the ten most common occupations that were reported by one third of the participants who exited in CIE were stock clerks and order fillers, customer service reps, janitors, laborers, stack material movers, retail salespersons, cashiers, food prep survey, including fast food production workers and dishwashers. It's that whole food, filth, kind of the flowers thing I used to call it. And I know they probably were focusing on career pathways because RSA had also done a competition back in 2015 and they awarded for career pathways for individuals with Disabilities projects under a demonstration training program. And furthermore, Congress made career pathways a necessary, if not foundational, part of WIOAs workforce reform. And so you put all of this together just to put a little under our belt, I just wanted people to have a little bit of a base. Like, what on earth are they picking and why are they doing this? So let's dig in and learn more about you in the project. So can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what your journey was getting to VR?   Sabrina: Sure, Carol. I started out going to college, majoring in business, working in the corporate world, doing that sort of thing, did that for several years, and then life sort of caught up with me. And I had children and my second child was born with cerebral palsy. And when that happens, it kind of changes your whole view on the world and you start to find out about disability in a way that you never really knew, and you really dig into the systems that exist and see what's available for your people in the world. And what I saw was, you know, the long trajectory of my son's life. And I decided, hey, you know what? I'm going to leave the corporate gig behind. I'm going to go back to graduate school, study disability awareness, study disability services ended up leading to rehab counseling, became a rehab counselor in the state of Oregon in 2009 and then was a branch manager starting in 2013. And then just about a year and a half ago, signed up to take on this innovation grant so that I can maybe change the system from the inside out a little bit was really what happened for me and why VR is so important and critical?   Carol: I love your story because we all come with these different stories and how we got involved in this field and some people fall into it a variety of different ways. But I really like your journey and I think it'll give our listeners a great perspective as they hear you because it's super fun, your passion and and all of that. So can you give us some facts too, about Oregon General? Like how many staff and customers do you have?   Sabrina: Yeah, so we have approximately 275 employees in Oregon that work for Oregon General, and we serve roughly 10,000 customers annually. I would say it used to be a lot more pre-pandemic than it is now or working through that. And we serve customers across 13 individual VR branch offices. So there's 13 branches, 20 offices throughout the state. Oregon has four very distinct economies that are geologically diverse and geographically diverse. We have that Oregon, Portland metro area, and then we have very much rural eastern Oregon and we have the coast and then the southern Willamette Valley and southern Oregon regions. So it's sort of like working in four different states all at the same time in a lot of ways.   Carol: I didn't realize that about Oregon. I was thinking about it. I knew you had some sort of rural nature, but really thinking about those four different distinct areas, that does always pose a big challenge, I'm sure, with both staffing and just as far as getting service provision.   Sabrina: Right, running a statewide program and trying to make it locally based and locally run and locally honored can have its own special challenges for sure.   Carol: Absolutely. So what prompted Oregon General to apply for this grant?   Sabrina: So you may or may not know that Oregon had probably the worst, if not the second worst. We might have been the second worst as far as data in that RSA911 that they based these grants on for measurable skill gains and credential attainment just in the tank, really. And it's something that that we knew that we needed to change for WIOA 2014. And we just never really got with the program in changing the culture of VR to really talk about optimal level of employment and to fully bring post-secondary education into the fold to get those credentials and those Measurable Skill Gains that we needed. And in Oregon, we have this beautiful, robust, existing career pathway system within Oregon's community colleges with hundreds of different career pathways nationally recognized that VR was completely under utilizing. And so what a great opportunity for us to partner with Oregon community colleges and change the culture of Oregon VR, really to see post-secondary education as a gateway to optimal level of employment that we needed to be focusing on.   Carol: Well, the only place to go is up then, from where you were. No. You know, when you start kind of in the basement, you're like, all right...  Well, we're climbing out of it. Good on you. So can you give us a big overview of the project? I know you have these different arms of things you wanted to do.   Sabrina: So ICAP - Inclusive Career Advancement Program is what we named our grant, and it supports a minimum of 500 people with disabilities, including those from marginalized communities. So 45% from black, indigenous, people of color communities in Oregon to help them choose a career pathway of interest, access post-secondary education, participate in that training or the internships in those high demand career fields. Obtain the credentials in their career field that's chosen, and then to also help them gain the employment upon completion of their program and we're doing that through installing a career coach in 16 of the community colleges across Oregon. So in one FTE position at the college, that's the boots on the ground person to be that conduit between the counselor and the community college. And the difference between this mean you might see navigators with Department of Labor or with all sorts of other different programs. But what's different about ICAP is that that career coach is specifically trained around people with disabilities, the specific needs of people with disabilities, really looking at the intersectionality of race and disability, of poverty and disability and all of those things that often people with disabilities don't have success or as much success with those other navigators because very specific disability barriers are lost on them. And so huge emphasis on that. We have four core partners. It's Oregon VR, it's the main grantee, and then we have Portland Community College, which is a Subawardee that manages all of the individual sub grants with each individual community college. And then we have Oregon Commission for the Blind because we wanted the Oregon Commission for the Blind to have their participants be able to participate in our program as well. We have two of them already, which is fantastic. And then Cornell University or the Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, there are evaluation partner and also our training and provider for this grant.   Carol: I'm so glad that you partnered too, with your blind agency. Sometimes we've got states where you know you're both there, but it's not always good communication between you, so that is great.   Sabrina: And then we just have the GEPRAs. I just wanted to touch on those real quick so people know what we're measuring. We're 500 people is the target of those 45% need to be from black, indigenous and people of color communities. So that'd be 225. We need to have 375 of those that start finish and of those 375 that get a credential, we need another 75% of those to actually get competitive, integrated employment within the span of the grants timeframe. And then 75 Percent of those people to get hourly wage gains, 50% of those to get employer provided medical benefits. 65% of those also need to increase the hours that they worked from whenever they came in to whenever they left. And then we need to also track if anybody got a promotion or any additional responsibilities or anything like that between when they get the job and when the grant ends. And then also reporting about whether or not they are receiving less or no public benefits with 35% hopefully having their competitive integrated employment be their primary source of support.   Carol: So you're going big or going...   Sabrina: Big or go home. Exactly.   Carol: That's right. So what are you seeing as the biggest challenges?   Sabrina: Oh, gosh. When we decided to do this innovation grant, we could have gone two ways. We could have had ICAP be separate and apart and ran it completely independently of the larger program. And we decided not to do that. We decided to fully integrate it into the existing program. All ICAP participants must be VR participants. All VR counselors can work with ICAP participants, no specialization of any kind. So we needed to completely train the entire staff about this cultural shift, about what it means to have optimal level of employment, to teach them how to write post-secondary ed plans that work, how to do the comprehensive assessment in a way that we're really, truly looking at interest, ability, skills, resources, priorities, concerns all through an informed choice lens and making optimal level of employment happen. And not just for lack of a better term, McJobbing people left and right and hiring job developers and punting and seeing how it goes for folks. And so that is our innovation for our grant. It doesn't sound like much, but it's huge for us to be able to do that work. And so, of course, the first challenge we have is the amount of time it takes for someone to become a participant. It's not like we could just sign them up for ICAP. They had to go get in line at VR, and in Oregon, Sometimes that can take up to three months. By the time they get asked, call the office, ask for an intake, meet with the counselor, found eligible for our services. And when you're working with particularly youth and students that are going from high school and potentially entering a career pathway, they might decide that they want to start a career pathway two weeks beforehand. And so our system and the career pathway system had to really say, we need to look at this, right? We're starting to really pay attention as an agency to figure out what several other states are doing. Some states are finding people eligible within three days or 17 days. And we're looking at all of those different ways in which we can change that. That's a larger process that's going to have to happen. But what the ICAP Grant did was really shine a light on it and gave us some really cool data of something that everybody knew but that nobody had really codified in writing and reported to the RSA. And so here we are. That challenge has been identified and it's definitely something that we're going to have to address. We've, of course made lots of little shortcut solutions in there to address the ICAP grant. But as far as the larger program, it's kind of front and center. Now that particular issue. The second biggest challenge that we have is that while we thought we had a great post-secondary ed policy, what we found out that it was really how to rule people out, not how to rule people in policy, and it created an exorbitant amount of red tape for counselors. No counselor wanted to do it because it was an extra three hours worth of work with a participant. Right. Who would want to go through all these checklists and make sure all of these things are in place and fight these fights with the financial aid offices and do all of this stuff that was required in our policy that just seemed like we're going to figure out every way to not support post-secondary ed. So one of the first things that we did was identify that and we completely rewrote our post-secondary ed policy, took out all of the language that you shall and you must and made it seem very inclusive. And you know what? Tell us what you want to do. Let's figure out what supports you need so that you can be successful. We're going to do that and we're going to remove all that paperwork piece for the VRC to be able to feel confident in doing that. And we also had these things with every branch manager, had to approve every plan that a counselor wrote for any post-secondary ed that was removed completely. And it's given autonomy and trust to the counselor to make these judgments that they need to make in their jobs. And so that just came out a week and a half ago, though. So we haven't seen the impact of it yet completely. But one of the most exciting challenges and solutions that we've had to date, what's great, we have Cornell University on doing our and training. We've probably done over 50 trainings in the last year and a half, really looking at the discernment for appropriate use of training through an what does that mean for someone and how do we write those plans? Just creating fake plans, really. I have plans, samples that are like for IB CAPPY so counselors know how to reflect the services and the plan. They know how to write them effectively. They know how to really understand. And their decision making and how to have those critical thinking moments and how to have the conversations with the client that are more appropriate when you have a lot of counselors that have been discouraged for years from doing this work. It can be kind of scary as they learn these new steps and when people kind of make decisions out of fear, they do it either with, Oh, you can do whatever you want and there's no accountability. That's probably half the VRCs, and the other half is, No, you can't do this because I need to have control over this and make sure that I can control the outcome, right? So finding that middle ground, empowering clients, empowering VRCs to do the work has been absolutely huge. We'll be ongoing for the duration of the program and then lack of equitable workflow for coaches. So we were silly kind of when we designed this in the beginning and we didn't realize that there are 17 community colleges in Oregon, but they are vastly different in their capacity. And so we started out with everybody is going to serve, you know, the same amount of participants in the grant and what we found out, that's not going to work because Portland Community College, you know, has seven campuses within the Portland metro area and has 30 different VRCs that are referring to the program. We're out in eastern Oregon. There's two VRCs and one community college with only 14 career pathways, right? So we couldn't expect the same result from rural schools as we have from metro schools. And so really not looking at it through an equality lens, but an equitable lens for our performance measures through each of the individual community colleges is something that we're doing when we start serving students at the beginning of this year. And hopefully that will give our numbers more meaning and have people feel more respected in where they're at and what they can actually do.   Carol: Well, I love that you're digging into these very tough challenges, and I know things like our policies and procedures, words do matter. I mean, it sets a tone for your counselors. And we've seen this with lots of states. When we do TA work, you know, people will be like, thou shalt not, you know, and everything that the customer has to do and we will not pay for this or do this. And you have to prove yourself and all of that. When you flip all those words around, it does send a message, even if it's subliminally to those people that are reading it can just see that in other states you see this cultural shift happening because you're looking at this more positively. You're focusing more on like a person's strengths instead of all the reasons they can't do something. I think digging in and all your kind of warts, so to speak.   Sabrina: Yeah. And to watch someone go from having a process driven agency to a people driven agency just warms my heart. It just feels really good.   Carol: See, that's all you West Coast folks, because Joe Xavier started the charge with that because he's like, We're not going to let the paperwork get in the way of the people. Like we got to remember the people are here first. And so you're picking up on that, too. And you also have created new acronyms with the IBCAPPY or whatever. That is very cool. So obviously you've got all these things, you're digging in and you're doing this stuff, but how like I know you said you wanted everybody in the organization to be able to do this, so you didn't keep this all separate. But structurally, organizationally, I'm sure people are sitting out there thinking, okay, Sabrina, there's you, do you have a team of people? Like, how are you structurally carrying this off?   Sabrina: When you look at our key personnel for the grant, I left my cushy branch manager job and took a limited duration job to do this. Not much of a pay raise at all, but I believed in it so much. That's how I got here. And then I have a communication specialist. That's Jen Munson. She sort of runs all of the communication and all of the outreach activities. Really in lots of communications we have organizationally is a community of practices, so local community of practices and statewide community of practices. And so she makes sure that those are happening. And then I have a data analyst and their job is to extract all of that 911 data for ICAP participants to work really well with Cornell and their evaluation team, making sure that they get the data that they need. And then just giving us kind of a daily update on all of the data that's happening and where we need to be focusing so that we can stay really data informed as we move forward and continue to innovate the grant. So there's three FTEs with the grant and then there's a project manager for 0.2 or 0.3 FTE. I have a project manager that is worth their weight in gold. They write our huge project plan, develop all of our buckets, tell us all of the different work that needs to be happening in those buckets. By when mean don't wake up a single day without knowing exactly what I need to do that day and why and how it needs to happen and when it needs to be done by. So it creates a very proactive approach to managing the grant through this project management lens that we have. And then of course, we have our deputy director who's overseeing the entire grant at 0.2 FTE of her salary is dedicated to this grant for the duration of the grant. So that is how we're structured internally. And then of course, we meet with branch managers, get an ICAP FaceTime with me for an hour once a month, and there are multiple opportunities to our communication system on the side that we're able to distribute information and keep people up to date on what's happening.   Carol: So you do not have an army, I mean like you're really literally talking about 3.5 FTEs?   Sabrina: Yes   Carol: And you're making miracles happen, like you're changing the world with three and a half people. You know, I know sometimes states think like, oh, we don't have enough people, We can't do the thing, We need this and that. But like, you are making it happen with a really minimal staff investment. But it is shifting all this thinking and shifting the ways that the agency is operating. That is very interesting.   Sabrina: Yeah, it has the love, though, of the entire exec team of Oregon VR. We couldn't do it, just the three of us. If Keith and Heather and all of the other people that do all of the instrumental things that are happening in VR, if there was infighting about the direction that we needed to go culturally, it'd be a much different situation. But we are united in our thinking and our belief system about where our agency needs to go. And so I think we get a lot of free labor actually from whether it's our youth manager or policy manager, our business and operations manager, probably not a single person in VR that hasn't helped us in some level or another. Also, so don't want to make it sound like just the three of us pulled this off.   Carol: Yeah, you do have a really good exec team because Keith is great, like Keith and Heather. I know those guys and they're very invested. And especially as you talk about like wanting to change the culture and making significant impact, like go big or go home. I love that. I love that. So I know you said some of the activities, you know, you were out you did like 50 trainings and all of that. What are some of those other activities like specifically you're carrying out? Because I'm sure people are thinking like, oh, my gosh, you have this huge project. And when you were listing like all of the kind of the metrics that you want to accomplish, it sounded like this massive word problem. So if we were in Chicago leaving on the train and then we hit New York, you know, like how many people are on the train now, all of that. But gosh, like, how do you start this?   Sabrina: So the interesting thing about a DIF grant is that you find out you're getting the grant and then two days later you get this money, right? And don't know about you. But in state government around here, it takes about six months to write a position description, get it approved, post the position, get the positions, go through the hiring process, and then start dates and then onboarding. And so while the grant started in October of what, 21 is that it? 22?   Carol: Yeah.   Sabrina: Yeah. I wasn't hired until the next end of April. And so there was a large chunk of time where there was a whole bunch of work happening on the background when people could, when they weren't trying to run Oregon General at the same time, but also trying to get the people hired to do the work. And then we also needed to hire all of the career coaches at all of the community colleges and the infrastructure within Portland Community College to manage those career coaches. And so all of that took the first 9 to 10 months of the grant where we weren't really drawing down hardly any funds, and it made the people who monitored the drawdowns very nervous. And so that clock starting immediately, just be aware of that, right? It might be a five year innovation fund grant, but you're really not going to start to serve the participants. And we were lucky we were able to start serving them at the end of year one probably had about 19 or 20 participants then, but lots of DIF grants even struggled even more than we did with getting those people hired and into those positions. And then we created a framework, is really was the first thing that I did whenever I came was say, okay, this is the framework document, this is what we're doing, this is how we're going to structure our community of practices. This is how we're going to communicate with each other. This is how we're going to get everyone on the same page. This is how we're going to delineate workflow between what's a VRCs responsibility, what's a career coach's responsibility, what's everyone else's responsibility? And really talk about that. Educate all of the VRCs on what career pathways are, how to access them, how to contact them, develop the referral processes that needed to be developed for those, we needed to update some policies we're doing that. We'll continue to do that and then develop statewide community of practices in addition to the local community of practices and calendaring. All of those sorts of things is really how you get started is just map it out, sit down and go, okay, this is where we want to be. Work backwards from there. Get your project manager in, create your work buckets and get to work.   Carol: You made such a good point. I think people don't realize that. So for our listeners, you know, as you're thinking about the DIF and people that have been part of one, they'll realize we've heard it over and over, man, that first year. It does not go like you think because it takes forever for every state government, you know, to get rolling with getting those positions hired and all of that. So you've got that pile of money sitting there and then you're going, Oh my gosh. I mean, we're just trying to get the people on board and get rolling. So that is good advice. Just to remind people, it takes, takes a bit to get going. So I know you are starting to already see some initial results. What are you seeing?   Sabrina: Let's see. We have about 140 students enrolled now. Ten folks have already received their career pathway certificate, which is fantastic, which means they're in the looking for a job stage. We're about two months behind on the reports that we get from the community college. So actually, there might be people out there that have a job. I just can't tell you that for sure because I don't have it in writing yet. About 58% of our ICAP students are youth, which is fantastic, and 37% of those youth population are from the BIPOC community. And so what we're noticing is that we have a lot more success if we focus on youth and career pathways than if we are looking to people who are needing to change careers for whatever reason. We need to find out more about that. But as far as our referral process is concerned, really working with our youth partners to pull this off I think is going to be instrumental that we didn't realize we needed such an emphasis on when we started. We have ICAP students are enrolled in 75 different unique educational pathways. Right now, 75 we have 58% of the VRCs in the state have at least one ICAP participant. We have that much penetration with VR staff, which warms my heart because we were worried about that. But we'd love it to be 70 by the end of this. So if you were to combine all the college credits that our ICAP students are currently taking, they're currently taking over 4000 college credits, according to my little data analyst told me this morning. So they're doing it.   Carol: Good stuff. That's good stuff that's happening. I love to hear it. So now that's the happy news. What are some of these speed bumps that you've hit along the way?   Sabrina: The biggest one is that in our $18 million grant, 2.3 million of that is supposed to be spent on client service dollars, right? Tuition fees, books and supplies. And what we're finding is there are so many comparable benefits out there. And how we're structured with comparable benefits in VR doesn't do anybody any favors. And so when we're getting their Pell Grants or their Oregon Opportunity grants or their SNAP grants, there's so many. When Oregon is the last payer that US spending that $2.3 million and doing it within regional and policy has been really, really challenging. And so that'll be interesting to see how it is that we can maybe change that or shift that or find ways to braid services more effectively with all of these other different grant opportunities because they're the last pair to they're just less cumbersome than VR is in order to do that. And just some more of that ancient thinking on the part of VR as we only pay after we've made sure everybody else is paid right, What might that look like if we were a little less stringent? And then of course, our big, big giant speed bumps were around Measurable Skill Gain Credential Attainment. The nuts and bolts of that we found out, is really how we were capturing that data in our aware program. And the translation is, is we weren't. And so hence the...   Carol: Reason you were in the basement.   Sabrina: Right? So we had to completely look at how we had those screens developed on our educational goal screen in Orca. And like so many late nights of Heather and I watching videos from Missouri General on how they did it right and looking at that and then rebuilding that entire part of our Orca system, Orca meaning AWARE system so that we could capture that data and have it be accurate because it's not that Oregon wasn't doing MSGs and credential attainment. We just never wrote it down. And so we had to train staff about what those are. We had to create procedures and have those in place for how to do the data entry. And we actually had to build the infrastructure back so that it would actually report correctly on our 911 reports. So that was a huge undertaking of I'll sleep when I'm dead kind of activities that needed to happen to pull this off.   Carol: Holy cow. I like it when you get you did your voice as your stringent voice. Oh my gosh. So I know you also have had you are not shy for all our listeners. I mean, Sabrina and I had chatted a little bit ago and super cracked up because you are definitely one to say what's on your mind. And so I know you made some interesting observations since you started leading this project. What are some of your ideas you thought should change?   Sabrina: Oh, that's the if you could change the world, Sabrina, what would it be question? Oh, this is just Sabrina talking, not saying anything. But if I could, we all know how poverty and disability go hand in hand. Same outcome results since the 80s. What's going on? Where's the juggernaut? Guys, we have the ability to fix this and it all comes down to post-secondary ed and our unmet need problem that we have, how we take their Pell grants and we skim right off the top and we do tuition fees, books and supplies off of their Pell grant. If nationally, we could find a way to take that Pell grant and let them use that for poverty based stuff housing, food, all their disability related stuff that we can't pay for or that they don't know how to report. Just let them have their Pell grants to live on and. We covered tuition fees, books and supplies. In addition to that, it would be life altering and life changing to the poverty cycle. We continue to find people with disabilities in in America, but that can only change with big time people that have, you know, some sort of sway in how it is that Pell Grants are administered and approved. And think under the Department of Ed, they could really work together in a great way to recognize participants in a different way. With Pell Grants, let us do the tuition fees, books and supplies, allow those Pell Grants to serve the people from their poverty lens. Huge opportunity there. That I think would really take a lot of fear. And the struggle I mean, you know, it a person with a disability doesn't have the option of working three hours in the evening while going to school full time. It takes them 2.5 hours to get dressed in the morning. It takes them another three hours to work with their adaptive equipment to write that paper. It's not apples to apples. It doesn't need to be apples to apples. And we have an opportunity to recognize that. And change the unmet need calculations for VR or change how Pell Grants are interpreted by VR. That's my biggest dream. It would change so many lives.   Carol: That is excellent. I know one of my colleagues, DJ Ralston, does a lot of training around disability and poverty and how it goes hand in hand, and I think we don't talk about it enough in VR. It's like we somehow think all of that's superfluous, like it's out to the side and but it's so intricately intertwined with the person because if you don't have food and you don't have a house, how are you...   Sabrina: You're not going to go to school.   Carol: How are you going to school and where are you plugging in your laptop? You know, you can only be at Starbucks so long in a day.   Sabrina: Or if you're  housing is tied to those benefits that are tied to a poverty cycle.   Carol: Yeah.   Sabrina: Yeah. No , can't do it. Yeah, So much fear around that.   Carol: Do you have any other thoughts on changing the world?   Sabrina: I have so many thoughts on changing the world, but that's the one that. That's the one that I probably have the okay to talk about.   Carol: Yeah. We don't want to get you off the grant now. So one of the other things that's interesting is that the DIF grants are a discretionary grant. So when we get our VR or 110 dollars, it's a VR formula grant. What kind of challenges have you faced in managing this discretionary grant versus, you know, the typical VR funding?   Sabrina: I would say it's constantly managing and balancing the funds and the report writing requirements of the grant. I don't think anybody knew what that was all about. Whenever we signed up to do this, it's pretty heavy. We have, you know, monthly reports that we need to write, monthly calls with that we need to attend quarterly, meetings with other DIF people that we need to attend. And then twice a year we had an end of year report, annual performance report, that are giant documents. We are held accountable for every penny. Don't lose a penny, Pull down the money, spend the money, Why aren't you spending it fast enough? But make sure it's applicable, make sure it's reasonable. Make sure it's necessary. Make sure you prove it to us. Then all of those things are. But are you serving the people? How many people are you serving? It's this dichotomy of crazyville that kind of gets me going around pulling down the funds, spending the money, managing the budget, re managing the budget because you're just guessing when you say how much this is going to cost, you have no idea that the entire workforce is going to receive a 6.5% wage increase next year and another 6.5% wage increase after that. And you didn't write that into your grant and you don't know that travel is going to be exorbitant with inflation, all sorts of things that you have to constantly rebalance the funds and you have to write down absolutely everything you do with a DIF grant. So you have to say what you're going to do and then go do it and say what you're doing while you're doing it, and then say how you could have done it better and then say what you might do better in the future in this continuous cycle across 15 to 20 different work buckets and work plans that you have in place? Yeah. For every minute that you spend doing something, you spend another minute and a half writing about it, it feels like.   Carol: So yeah, I'm glad we brought this up because I know it's just the stark reality of it. And so I think folks sometimes get into the DIF grant and they don't understand this about, you know, you have line items in a budget and now we're going to go outside of this and we want to move money, but we got to get okay, you know, and all of these things because it's very different than the VR grant. So I think it's better for people to at least understand that going in that there is going to be this component. So if you're able to build in, you know, someone that can help assist with some of this stuff as you're doing the project, which is the really cool stuff, you know, that you're trying to get done. But you have to remember there is this sort of a little bit of an administrative burden. And it's not just even a little bit, you know, it's kind of a, a lot bit, but it is sort of the price we pay to have these funds to do these cool different things.   Sabrina: Totally worth it. But yeah, go in with your eyes wide open. And if you don't have somebody that's done grant management or you have somebody that's strong in project management, think about the person that you need in that role to be able to pull that off for sure.   Carol: Yeah, good advice. Good advice. So of course we talk about the bummer things, but let's talk about something like what is like one of the coolest things that has happened to date. Do you have a fun story or something really cool? We want to leave people with like a happy thing.   Sabrina: Want to share two things because two things came to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is part of our initiative is to either develop or enhance existing career pathways in Oregon for people with disabilities. So make them more accessible, make them more anything that they could be to be working for the people that we serve. And so one of the things that they've done out in eastern Oregon is create this drone program. You know, those drones that go up in the air and fly over stuff. And so what that's done is it's allowed for people that want to work in agricultural fields and want to work with cattle, want to watch crops, want to work for an elk hunting operation, those sorts of things. They can now, without a lot of physical mobility, be able to run a drone, go check on their crops, go check on their cattle and their herds, run hunting programs and all sorts of things through this program that teaches people how to run these drones and how to work for companies that have these drones all over eastern Oregon, which I think is really cool. And we're having several people that have disabilities sign up for those programs in a way that because of this program, we're able to develop that and make that possible for them. So that feels really good.   Carol: That is very cool.   Sabrina: Yeah. But one of the cooler things that sort of hits me in the feels is just when an ICAP participant walks up to you and says, Before I had my career coach, I didn't have anyone. But with career coaches that understand my disability, I have gone from a 1.6 GPA to a 4.0 GPA, and I'm the first person in my family to ever go to college. Right? Those just, yup. that's why we all get up every day and we do this work and we keep plugging away at it and we try and make the world a little bit better for people. And so that's really what excites me. And it happens not just once, not just twice, but all the time.   Carol: That makes my heart happy. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Because we've thought about those navigators, other places we've had, but not here. Like what your spin on this has been super interesting. I love it.   Sabrina: What happens if that career coach understands disability, understands that unique lens? Gives grace. Just somebody that goes in and talks to the Accommodations office at the local community college on behalf of a student that can even troubleshoot it with a professor if it's not working out right, somebody that's physically there that they can just walk into their office and sit down and go, Hey, this is really hard. It's great. Those coaches, they're amazing.   Carol: That's great. So what are your next steps?   Sabrina: Next steps, Right. We're going to continue with our messaging. We really need to target in to get up to that 45% BIPOC number. With our recruiting strategies, there's not a lot of black indigenous people of color in Oregon. It's pretty low, 14.4% of the overall population. So that 45% is a big ask for us and they don't have a lot of warm, happy feelings about accessing VR in general or our larger human services offices that we're all located in. So that's a big deal. We are going to be onboarding three additional community colleges to start serving students this fall. We started out with the core ten. Now we're adding three more. So that's a big deal. We're going to continue to draw down those funds as quickly as we can, find new and inventive ways to braid funding more effectively so that we can use those client service dollars. And then really, the big thing on my mind that I worry about is figuring out a way for this to be sustainable. How do we get to retain those coaches long term in Oregon? We're going to prove that they matter and that they make a difference. How do we keep them? So that's on my to dos.   Carol: Well, I'm fully confident you're going to do it. All of it, because you are a get up and go kind of gal. So I so appreciate the work you're doing in Oregon. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us and share so our listeners can get a little glimpse into what's going on in Oregon. I think it's fun and that you guys have been willing to like you expose all your dirty laundry like where we were. You know, we're in the basement, we're going up. It's going to be so good for the people in your state. And I'm really excited. I hope you'll come back towards that last year when you have really fun results to share.   Sabrina: I hope so. I do hope so. That'd be great. I'd love to come back. Thank you, Carol, so much for inviting me. It's been fun. Thanks.   Carol: Have a great day.   Sabrina: Hey, you, too.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!

Joining Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM studio is Delora Newton, Division Administrator for the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, and Kyle Schemenauer, Director of Services, Eligibility and Order of Selection Unit at the Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute (SRVI). Delora and Kyle talk about the partnership that reduces the time for eligibility determination while freeing up counselors' work time by outsourcing and streamlining the pre-eligibility work to SRVI.  This partnership has brought an objective and consistent process utilizing a per-customer rate fee. It has been working for Wisconsin VR as applicant rates are soaring, keeping SVRI busier than ever.     Listen Here   Full Transcript:   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute - Maximizing VR Services: Leveraging Resources so Counselors Can Get Back to Counseling - Wisconsin VR- STOUT Partnership   {Music} Speaker1: 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: So welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is Delora Newton, Division Administrator for the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, and Kyle Schemenauer, Director of Services, Eligibility and Order of Selection Unit at the Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute. Holy cow. That was a mouthful. So how are things going, Delora?   Delora: Going great. I agree. I thought mine was a mouthful. But Kyle is even more than mine.   Carol: It is. It's kind of funny. How are you doing, Kyle?   Kyle: Doing good. Doing good. Easy. We could abbreviate to Director of services. How about that?   Carol: I like giving you the full shebang. The full glorious title. So I want to give our listeners a little bit of context. Wisconsin had embarked on a project to free up counselor time. It was way back in 2015, and the premise was to have SVRI program at Stout handle the applications and gather that pre eligibility information that is packaged up, passed to the Wisconsin VR counselors for making the eligibility determination. And Delora's staff have discussed this at previous conferences, but we are all well aware of the seismic shift in leadership across the country over this past decade. And I mean, I know I thought, Delora, I think you did too. We thought, oh, everybody already knows this, but there actually is a whole new group of leaders who have never heard of this idea. And I actually think people are really at a different place in being open to new ideas and ways of operating post pandemic. I feel like folks thought and I know I did when I was sitting in the audience, Oh, that's a cool idea. But I really didn't know how I would pursue that or how it would apply when I was working at Minnesota Blind. And so given that State of VR today, I think it's timely to bring up all the options that could be available for states to pursue when it comes to leveraging resources to make VR services happen. The other thing that's really cool about your project is that it's kind of withstood the test of time. So let's dig in. So Delora, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how long you've been with the agency and how many staff and consumers that you serve?   Delora: Yeah. Thanks. I have maybe a unique story for being a VR director. I came to VR in a roundabout way. I am not or have I ever been a licensed counselor in Wisconsin. Division administrators were political appointees, and so before coming to VR, I had served elected officials in the state capital for almost ten years. I also have several years of experience working for various businesses and business related nonprofits. So I actually started working for the Department of Workforce Development. That's who VR is aligned with in Wisconsin. So I started working for the Department of Workforce Development in July of 2014, and then I was actually hired as the administrator for the Division of Workers Compensation in August of 2015. So the Secretary's office in the Department of Workforce Development was very pleased with what I was doing there in workers comp, and there was an opening for a director in VR. And so they asked me if I would make the move. So I did. And since that time I've used my knowledge of the state's law making and budgeting processes, my management skills, my understanding of small business needs to lead Wisconsin VR along very several very talented managers. I am so blessed to have them. They have the counseling degrees and the historical knowledge of the federal regulations that I lack. So I've learned a lot along the way and I feel blessed to work with such a great team who positively change lives every day. And you asked about how many people we have. We have about 335 staff if we are full up. So we're located in 42 offices around the state so that we're close by where our consumers are. And counselors can also travel to where the consumers are. They don't have to come to the office. And a lot of things are being done virtually these days as well. And we were serving with open cases, about 16,500 consumers each year..   Carol: Wow! You know, I didn't know that background about you, Delora. That explains a lot because I always think you've had this super practical approach. You're very, you know, even keel and the way you've talked about kind of things you've implemented in Wisconsin, I think that serves you well. You bringing that background and having some of that other expertise in the regs and the different things, and then pairing it with your Meredith and all your other, you know, great folks there. Gosh, that's a great team. Good to know. So, Kyle, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with the SVRI Stout group?   Kyle: Yeah. So I come in, I'd be just shy of seven years now that I've been in my role here at. SVRI. And prior to that a couple of years in higher ed and disability services and then about six years or so in the VR world, in a local agency here that provided VR services. So as a service provider to Wisconsin. So all in all, I've been working with Wisconsin VR for almost 15 years and the service provider end of things. Yeah. And you know, kind of like Delora mentioned, I have a different path that kind of took a long path and have never been a VR counselor or anything like that, but have been in supervisory and director roles basically my whole professional career. Yeah. And that's got me here today, I guess.   Carol: Very cool. Well, and a little fact about me. I was not a VR counselor either, so I think a lot of us came into VR from a variety of different ways, but it's all good. So Delora let's go back to 2015. You came on board with Wisconsin VR and when you arrived, I know there was this confluence of things that had happened. Set the stage for us a little bit on what was going on that caused your staff to create this idea, and then you came into the picture and you helped them to implement it.   Delora: Yeah, well, again, it goes back to being a talented team. They're very innovative and creative and trying to come up with, you know, different ways to address issues. So they started this work before me. So when the law was when WIOA was signed into law in July of 2014 and, you know, they were looking at all the new things that VR was going to have to do. They were like, Wow, we need to try to find a way to address the additional administrative workload requirement for staff so that they can be able to prioritize their time to actually serving active consumers. So at that time, it was estimated that the VR counselors were spending up to 20% of their time processing applications. I mean, that's a lot, a lot that included getting consent forms signed and gathering the records that were needed to be determine eligibility. You know, things like the medical educational records. Et cetera. And then going back and forth with the consumers in communication or the applicants, actually, they would be applicants at that time. Also, at the same time, Wisconsin's Legislative audit bureau had done a report, and that report showed that eligibility outcomes were lower than anyone would like and that they were taking longer than people wanted them to. And then in addition, those eligibility determinations across the state were inconsistent. And what that means is, you know, we have 11 different workforce development areas. I told you we have 42 offices. And so depending on where you were in the state, you might have been using a little bit different of a process. So we thought or my staff at the time thought that development of a more objective and streamlined eligibility review process could really help address those issues. So DVR managers reviewed the law and they were like, Huh, Could we outsource the administrative elements of the eligibility process? So they talked to RSA. We're very good about talking to RSA up front before we do a big new initiative that saved us quite a bit. So they talked to RSA to make sure that outsourcing was allowable and RSA confirmed it was possible as long as the rehab counselors that were employed by the state agency reviewed the eligibility recommendation provided by the contracted entity or and that those counselors remained responsible for making the official eligibility determination. So knew that UW Stout and would be a perfect partner for the project. We have had a long standing history of collaboration with them and both UW Stout and SVRI are public entities operating in different roles, but with a common goal of increasing quality employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. SVRI operates as a nonprofit within the university and can serve as an innovation incubator to pilot new ideas and approaches that can then be expanded or replicated.   Carol: I love that, you know your team, they're smart. I always look to Wisconsin like you guys are the one state agency that didn't have any monitoring findings. Like, you guys are always the people. You're on the edge and you aren't always out there chit-chatting about it. You know, you'll talk at a conference, but you aren't out, you know, widely promoting what you're doing. You all just are head down doing the work, but you're doing really creative things. And I love that you talked about engaging RSA because sometimes folks are thinking about these really great ideas and you don't talk to the federal partner and you might have a little element of this wrong. So that was really good advice that our listeners can take into anything that they're doing. Like it's really good to engage your federal partner just to make sure you don't go down the wrong path. Now, clearly you can't roll out something like this without taking some sort of staged approach. So what was the implementation process like in the beginning?   Delora: Yeah, you are right, a staged approach was really key. And so we launched the initiative as a pilot project in the fall of 2014, and then DVR and SVRI leadership started meeting weekly to design the pilot. So they talked about several different funding models and DVR opted to design it as a new service and then use case service dollars to fund the process per applicant. So we recognize that SVRI they were going to have high startup costs, you know, and we recognize that. And so we wanted to pay a higher rate initially to help them offset those higher start up costs. And then once those were covered, we started paying a lower set rate per case. And that model has worked really well because it provided SVRI with a boost to help with those initial costs. And then we could account for each expenditure because it was connected to a case. So then in May of 2014, SVRI initially hired ten staff for that pilot phase, and their leadership team provided close supervision and support as that new service was implemented and also DVR provided a multi-day, in-depth training to that new team in May of 2015. And then ongoing training was provided as needed. After that, we also provided extensive training to our staff, including directors, supervisors, counselors and support staff, so that no matter who you were on the team, you understood what the new process was going to be. And then we started piloting that new service in our southeast part of the state, which is the largest population center. For people who aren't really familiar with Wisconsin. That includes Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, you know, a very large population area of the state. And we started that in May of 2015. And then a phased model was used to expand the service statewide by the summer of 2016. And as more of our areas were added then SVRI hired more staff. So by the end of the first full year of implementation, SVRI was processing more than 10,000 applicants annually on behalf of DVR. So it ramped up very quickly. I think if we had to do it over again, we would probably have phased it in a little bit slower. But, you know, those are some of the takeaways and the lessons that you learn. But overall, it worked really, really well.   Carol: That's a lot when you talk about that 10,000 applicants. I know I keep that number. When you said in the beginning, really that your staff were spending 20% of their time, you know, processing applications. Holy cow. I mean, this leveraging, you know, of these other services definitely helped you out. So now I know you also Delora did in the beginning kind of had this little bit of a situation or kind of the pushback from the counselors where maybe they were challenging some of the work done by SVRI. Can you talk a little bit about that?   Delora: Yeah, we knew going into it that we had inconsistent eligibility determinations across the state, which meant that all of our counselors weren't doing it the same. At the time we had almost 200 counselors reviewing those applications and then making the eligibility determinations based on their training and interpretation of the regs. And we all know that our regs are not black and white. They are gray. So people interpreted them a little bit differently. And of course, everybody believed that their way was the correct way to do it. So when SVRI had a dedicated team that was reviewing those applications and recommending the eligibility determinations, remember, recommendation is a key word here. The recommendations became a lot more consistent across the state because you had a set group of people who was doing it no matter where they were. So counselors have to make that final determination to stay compliant with the regs. Some of the counselors disagreed with the SVRI recommendations, so we had our managers review those disputed recommendations. And funny or not funny, however you want to look at it, they determined that most of what SVRI was recommending was actually correct mean some of our counselors weren't doing it correctly. So our managers, you know, also regularly conferred with SVR leadership about the feedback and the questions that we got from counselors so we could update processes as soon as possible if they needed updating. Sometimes more training was required for SVRI staff and sometimes more training was required for our counselors. But it was a joint effort of, okay, here's what we're seeing. You know, talking to Kyle, here's what we're seeing, here's what they're seeing. What do we need to adjust? So it was a very collaborative process.   Carol: Yeah, I really like that. And I'm sure any time you go into a new venture, you know, and staff are like they're kind of suspicious of what's happening and are you taking my work away? Even though people are like, it took 20% of my time, I don't want that work, yet, I don't want somebody else to do it either. So that sounds like that was handled really well. Now, Kyle, kind of switching to you a little bit, you came on board at the end of 2016 when the project was fully staffed. What challenges did you face as you were fully rolling all of this out?   Kyle: Yeah. As anything new in growing a new kind of business is getting the buy-in of one.. your staff, but then of your partners. So it was one continuously growing. So things, systematically things are changing, processes. We're trying to be as efficient and effective as we possibly can. So training, all of that, making sure we have the right staff, developing that communication and trust with Wisconsin VR, trusting in the process of what we're doing. So with anything new that was, you know, our biggest challenge is, is establishing the lines of communication and doing it the right way and getting the buy-in from both our staff, but then the VR staff as well, that we're in it for one thing, and that's the consumers. And we're here to do it together and make it the way it's supposed to be and provide that consistency across the board. It was a lot of training and education on both ends. It was our staff needing some time to kind of stand their ground of, well, this is our process and this is how we do that. And really just continuously to work together. In my role, it was continuously still hiring, even coming in at my spot at that point, we had that turnover, we had that that transition of anything new where you got your certain staff that were certainly bought in, maybe some staff that wasn't for you. So it was the growing pains of anything new. So facing that, plus then facing the referrals coming in and really just gearing up and making sure that we're providing the service that we say that we're going to provide and doing that. So yeah, it brought its own challenges, but working with VR in the past, having local VR connections and things like that on my perspective really helped kind of me and I guess maybe building that trust with VR and just being completely transparent in who we are and what we're trying to do.   Carol: I think it's cool. It's really evident you guys have a very good working relationship. I just wondered too, Kyle, kind of a little follow up. Did you ever think like, I keep thinking about 10,000, you know, like you had to do 10,000 applicants. Was that at all in your brain that it was going to be that many to handle?   Kyle: You know, maybe not, but we can do it. When you look at what's coming at you week to week, obviously that's accumulating. And over the time at the end of the year, yeah, we've served that many individuals and that's just amazing. And we have a great team of staff that, you know, we still have staff, the original kind of 10 or 8 staff. We have some of those staff that are still with us yet today from the beginning. And we do have a lot of longevity now since really myself coming in and some staff even before me coming in. So it's been great to see. It's been  great to see us continue to evolve together and working on little mini pilots within this to be more efficient and more rapid engaging with the consumer and stuff. So it's come a long ways and it's been a great partnership.   Carol: That's very cool music to my ears. That rapid engaging of those consumers. I like it. So Delora, as with any new initiative or initiatives that you go on, you've got staff that love it, you got people that hate it. How do you deal with those perspectives of staff? I'm sure you probably still maybe have a little rumblings of that as you go along.   Delora: Yeah, there has been rumblings a little bit, but as time goes on and we have more new counselors come in, they don't even know any different. So what we just continue to stress when we hear grumbling is that having SVRI handle the administrative side of collecting those applications and the related documents gives counselors more time to do what they want to do, which is actually offer rehabilitation counseling. It also has given counselors more time to work with transition students. We have met our federal 15% Pre-ets funding requirement every year since we've been required. I think we've heard we were the first state to do it. I can't verify that, but that's kind of what we had heard. And that equates to about $10 million annually for us. So counselors have really had more time to meet with those students throughout the year. And we do a lot of summer youth activities and trainings. And so it gives people time to actually plan those. And those summer youth activities give skills training and temporary work experiences to hundreds of students. So most counselors are now really happy to have SVRI do the task. And any new counselors who kind of want the experience of better understanding what is involved in making an eligibility determination, we will allow them to do those eligibilities on their own for a couple of months I mean, you know, with support of their supervisors and stuff, but we discourage them doing that very long term. So that's how we've addressed it.   Carol: Excellent.. Well, good for you too. I'm like, I'm giving you a big clap that you met your 15% and you're not one of the agencies that just received their 107 monitoring letter on the Pre-ets expenditures. And I would only expect the best of Wisconsin because you are the people we all always look up to because you guys are always doing it the right way. Now, I know you talked a little bit before about how you fund this, and so I just wanted to make sure that I had captured that in my brain the correct way. So you're doing kind of a fee per case, is that correct?   Delora: Yes, a fee for case. And we know the volume can fluctuate a little bit. So that also helps too. So like just having a flat rate, it helps us be able to budget more, I think, because it's something that they at least they know what the rate is per case.   Carol: Yeah, that's really good. That's interesting because I'm sure some of our folks that are listening in are going to sit there and go, Well, how are they making this happen? Okay, So Kyle, you had some really interesting data on your website. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, what the numbers look like?   Kyle: Yeah, really kind of, you know, feeding into what Delora mentioned is, you know, it's our goal is to provide that consistency, give back that time to the VR counselors to provide that guidance and counseling and let us do that busy work of the eligibility process. So really what we looked at is like a five year snapshot of kind of an internal study that we did on our end of what is our service providing to our agencies. And it is that sense of consistent eligibility across the board. More time back for the counselor to provide the guidance and counseling that they want to be doing. Allow us to do the busy work of the records collection, the information gathering and provide you this written report back to you that you can just take and run with and go. Now again, stamp of approval VR counselors providing their approval of that. We're just providing that recommendation. So really just looking at creating efficiencies and cost savings for our agencies and reflecting that. So we have some numbers on there over that five year window of how we're able to decrease eligibility determinations. You know, at one point we were down to like 23 days of being able to submit eligibility back to Wisconsin. All of this is a little bit you know, this is prior to the Covid timeframe that changes everything a little bit, too, but just the cost savings. So really what we're trying to reflect is what can we provide or, you know, even not just us having to do this for other entities, but showing what we've done for Wisconsin VR in that snapshot of time.   Carol: Yeah, I love that. I thought that was good stuff. So since you brought up the dreaded topic of the pandemic, let's look at that a little bit. So how did that impact what was happening with this project? And Delora, I'm going to go to you first and then I'll get your thoughts Kyle.   Delora: Yeah. So, you know, we're like other VR agencies around the country. Our numbers really went down during the pandemic. Even people who were on the caseload at that time who opted, can we just put my case on hold because I'm not comfortable going out in the world and very vulnerable medically. And it would be really, really especially difficult if I got Covid. So we respected that. So since we pay per case, SVRI saw a big decrease in their funding level and so they had to make staffing adjustments on their end. We understood that. And Kyle can speak more about that in a minute, but I do want to just add that SVRI remained a really strong partner throughout the pandemic and continued to provide sufficient staffing levels to meet our needs. So kudos and props to them for continuing to be a strong partner through a difficult time for everybody.   Carol: So since Delora said that, Kyle, what did that look like for your staffing numbers and how that all impact you?   Kyle: Yeah, overall, we've always kind of floated around a fully kind of staffed unit of about 25 to 30 staff, just really kind of depending on where things are at, at that point when referrals are starting to dry up. We didn't have any work anymore. We ended up going down to only five case facilitators, like a few office support staff to handle that during that time frame and then even campus implementing furloughs and all of that stuff. So there was furloughs that went across to quite a bit of our staff at that point, which nobody knew where things were going to go or how things were going to ever get back. You know, everything shifted completely remote. That was something where we would have day in and day out. You would have case facilitators in their cubicles here at work, and it was a buzz that went completely silent. Then everybody started shifting to working from home. That's been really the biggest, I think, shift to, I think for everybody is the world of work realized that there are some possibilities where you can be doing this from really anywhere. So we really started practicing that too. Even as we started to staff back up, we did weather the storm. It wasn't delightful by any means, but we made it. And realistically, now we're seeing record numbers on our end. And thankfully we were able to bring back almost everybody that we had to furlough at the point of our lowest point. And really, as things kind of changed and the world started shifting a little bit back to quote unquote, normal, we were able to then staff back up and pull everybody back in and just really adjust to the referrals as they were coming back to us.   Carol: Holy cow. Going down to five, my heart sunk. I'm like, that's a lot. That's pretty drastic. So since you said that, you know, where are the numbers today? So are you back at it, Kyle? Are you back up to your 25 or what are you looking at?   Kyle: We are crazy busy. We have seen weekly numbers that we have never seen before in terms of weekly referrals. We look at our numbers on a calendar year. Our actual years, July 1st, June 30th, we track our stuff within our case management systems calendar year. So January 1st through the year. And right now we're on pace for a record breaking year. We started tracking our data through Salesforce, our CRM that we use. We started tracking that in 2017, and right now we're on pace to shatter anything that we've tracked since then.   Carol: So what does shatter mean? What's that mean?   Kyle: Right now, at this pace, right now, we'll be over 12,000 cases. And in 2017, when we first started tracking, we were at just shy of 11,000. So we're going to at least be close to that, if not more. And that's great. That struggles with that is just the unknown that that was happening and really staffing back up. So that's kind of where we're at right now. You know, talking about pandemic and things changing the world of hiring employees is ever so challenging right now. And we've been in the hiring phase really since early this year and continue to hire because we can't keep up, which is great for business and we'll get there. We're confident in that. That's really where we're at is we're seeing such an influx in cases and the expansion of what we're doing, which is awesome to see that. And that's what we keep plugging along, is getting people in here as quickly as we possibly can and get them trained into our process and getting them doing eligibility.   Carol: Well, that's exciting news. So, Delora, I'm wondering, are you seeing numbers now of just consumers overall? Are you getting back to kind of pre-pandemic levels for the consumers you're serving?   Delora: Yeah, absolutely. I think our numbers went down through the pandemic. And then like I already said, we had people who just kind of like dropped out and said, this isn't a good time for me. But then even our new numbers coming in was really, really low. But we are ramping back up quite rapidly. So we started to ramp up last year, but to just give you an idea, so we had in June of 2022, we had 873 applicants and this June we had 1264.   Carol: Wow.   Delora: Since October of last year, we've consistently seen higher monthly numbers. It's anywhere from like 100 to 400 more than that month the previous year. So it's really going. We think part of it is because we want to make sure that we spend those federal dollars and we don't have to give money back. We've increased our outreach across the state, you know, making sure that we're connecting more in the schools with the local ILCs, with the ADRCs, and just really trying to get our message out that we're here to help. So we think that that's been helping. So we hope that that higher trend continues. And as Kyle said, we appreciate him watching those numbers, too. He's got a little bit harder job on his end because he's so dependent just on what we're paying, where we can absorb through higher budgets. But they're doing a good job of, you know, hiring as quickly as they can to respond to the need.   Carol: Well, that is super exciting news, though, because I know nationally, like the numbers have been just down in the program. So it's exciting to hear that that spurt, you know, coming back in, and I'm sorry, Kyle, I cut you off.   Kyle: No, that's fine. I just second what Dolores saying those numbers per month from last year to this year. That's exactly what we're seeing, too. They're seeing trends that we've never seen before. And really, you know, as the summer months, school's out, things, you know, kind of that roller coaster, you're kind of maybe going down a little bit. That never happened. This year, we're seeing over a thousand cases referred in the summer months, which were 700 in years prior, all years prior. We're seeing trends in data that of the years that we've been tracking it. This has never happened. So that's great. And the outreach must be working because they're seeing it and we're seeing it as well.   Carol: Yeah, that's super cool to hear. So I know that many states are looking for ways to leverage those other resources to help them carry out this type of work. And I know that, you know, Kyle, you and SVRI you can't do the work for the whole country. In fact, Delora won't let you because Wisconsin has you. But can you tell us some of the ways you've helped other states get started on this journey in their own state?   Kyle: Really, with our national networking of SVRI and who we are and the partnership with Wisconsin VR, we have drawn interest from other states from just having a conversation like we're having right now about kind of who we are. Two other states that are very interested in wanting to model something like this. Actually, we are doing a small pilot with the state of New Hampshire that we've been doing since actually just about a year now that we've been kind of fully engaged. Three offices, I believe, out of the state of New Hampshire on a very small scale doing that and also will be looking in the near future to be also piloting for the state of Vermont on a small scale again. And we've had other conversations. We've had a lot of conversations with the state of Texas and looking to collaborate with the Dallas Fort Worth area, University of North Texas, to really model who we are in that area. And then we've talked with Maryland on a couple of different occasions as well. And again, it's just really being as transparent as who we are, providing the information. And we're here to help guide or train or any type of technical assistance or anything that we could be doing in our end to talk about what we've done over the years and the growing pains and the ways to approach it. And if you did it differently, what would you do and things like that. So we've engaged in a lot of different conversations, most recently within the last probably couple years of who we are, you know, getting at the intrigue of those other states.   Carol: Yeah, I think that's cool that you guys are willing to do that and kind of share your knowledge out because definitely I feel like coming out of the pandemic, people are in a way different space with looking for different ideas and options and how to do something. And obviously you can't serve the whole country. So it is nice if you can help another state, maybe replicate this with their university or some entity, you know, to be able to take that on. I think that's really cool. So what lessons have you learned from this whole deal that are important to others as they might be looking at this option? And Delora, I'm going to go to you first.   Delora: Thank you. First of all, don't be afraid to think outside the box to find workable solutions. And when you're doing that, be sure that you're talking to your frontline staff to learn what are their pain points and then help. Let them help you identify some creative answers. That being said, people are naturally resistant to change, so create a solid change management plan and implement it early. Communicate that plan to staff in multiple ways. Use things like email trainings and staff meetings. The staff are going to need to hear the messages about why, how and when more than once, because they need that to fully absorb the big picture as well as all of the details. Make sure that that planning and implementation timelines are realistic. I mentioned earlier, if we had it to do over again, we would have phased that pilot project out a little bit longer than just a year. So be sure you don't rush it. And the benefits to doing pilots and launching segment by segment of your team is so that you can learn what's working, what's not, and what additional training needs that you have. And then also, as we've talked about, don't forget to consult with RSA during the process to make sure your innovative project is allowed under the regs. We have a positive working relationship with them and think it's a lot because we consult with them in advance and can make any needed adjustments prior to implementation and think that's probably also why we didn't have findings, as you mentioned earlier, because we do regularly consult is this allowed or not allowed? And then we might kind of come back at them a couple different times. Are you sure we can't do this? Or how could we do it a little bit differently so that it meets the regs? But that communication is key.   Carol: Yeah, love that. Really good advice. And Kyle, how about any lessons learned that you might be able to share?   Kyle: It works. We have a track record here now that just show that it does work. And if you can build a good team both as the service provider and the agency and you have strong communication and trust in the process, it works. And if you can get those buy-ins, , it's great to see the growth and I'm glad that we've had the opportunity to collaborate with other states because it's been something on my end. When we first kind of got started and got rolling out like, Oh my goodness, this needs to happen in other places because this is something that I truly believe in that can be replicated and can do the right thing. The biggest is your communication and trust in each other to do it and entertain anything new. And from our perspective, we're always looking to try to be more efficient, more effective. What is out there? Technologies are always changing. Processes are always changing to make us faster and to entertain those ideas and to share those with others to do it the right way.   Carol: Love it. You two have been fabulous this morning. I really appreciate it. And I'm sure as our listeners may want to reach out, that you're both open if someone's going to email you or some such with any questions. Is that all right?   Kyle: Absolutely.   Delora: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we have had other states reach out to us and we're more than happy to meet with them. And New Hampshire did as well as the state of Texas. There might have been another state, too, that I just can't remember. So, yeah, we're always happy to help.   Carol: Well, good stuff and wish continued great success in your collaboration going forward. And thanks for being with me today. Appreciate it.   Delora: Thanks for having us.   Kyle: Yes, absolutely. Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!  

Dr. Jim Herbert, Professor of Counselor Education and Rehabilitation and Human Services at Penn State, is back in the studio today. In this second part of a two-part series, Jim discusses the retention challenges identified in his study- Recruitment and Retention of State Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors: A Mixed Methods Analysis.   Please listen in as Carol and Jim continue to unpack this study and have a frank discussion about the significant challenges and possible solutions you can apply to your situation.   Be sure to check out the Recruitment side of the study by Dr. Jim Herbert in the previous episode of Manager Minute.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Speaker1: 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 back in the studio today is Dr. Jim Herbert, professor of counselor, education and Rehabilitation and Human services at Penn State. Now we're going to discuss the second part of his study, recruitment and retention of state vocational rehabilitation counselors, a mixed methods analysis. And I'm super happy to have you back with me today. Jim, how's it going?   Jim: It's going well and I'm excited to be with you this morning with the podcast and appreciate the opportunity to kind of build on some of the information that we talked about in the earlier one.   Carol: Absolutely. I'm super excited. And for our listeners out there that did not get to listen to the first part of this podcast in June. Please do go back and look in the archives and you can listen to that so you get the full picture because Jim really painted a great foundational piece on the study that he had done, and we focused on one half of his work. And now today we're going to focus on the other half because there's a lot of really good information to unpack. So as I had said, you know, this is a second part of our two part conversation. We're going to focus on the retention aspects of your study today. And just to set the stage for our listeners again who maybe did not listen last month. I first met you through the CSAVR Operations and Personnel Committee, and I used to co-chair the old HRD committee that was evolved into the new Operations and Personnel Committee. But I did that with Cynthia Speight, and I continued to participate after I entered into this TA world. And Cynthia and I had been interested in this recruitment retention topic going back at least eight years. We were doing some different surveys with our states to see what was happening, and we just saw this shrinkage of people entering the field, the reduction in universities offering a master's in rehab counseling and knew back then even like we've got to do something. So I was really pleased to see your work and you had come to the committee to collaborate on this study that you were doing that was supported in part by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehab Research, which is NIDILRR. And in the executive summary, you noted there had been this consistent shortage of qualified rehab counselors employed by the state federal VR program for several decades. I guess you know, some of us were thinking, Gosh, this has really been like the last ten years. Uh, this is actually been going on for a while. But the Covid 19 pandemic, I think, exacerbated the shortage. And so today we're going to look at this again, the retention aspects of your study. So let's dig in. And I do want to go over a few things in case our listeners, you know, didn't have a chance to hear you last time. So, Jim, can you just tell them again a little bit about yourself and how long you've been in academia and how did you get there?   Jim: Okay, so I'm an old guy. I've been here, as I kind of explained in the first podcast, I'll just kind of abbreviate. Yeah, I've been an academic for about 37 years and prior to that I worked as a work adjustment counselor and job placement specialist research specialist. So I've been around and as I explained in the initial podcast, like many of you, I became interested in rehabilitation as a result of having a family member with a disability and then started doing some volunteer work. Absolutely loved the field and I loved doing Voc Rehab because I could see kind of the difference that that you can make and you can impact on improving the quality of life for people with disabilities. So if you want to read more about my background, you have nothing to do and you have trouble sleeping at night. You can just look me up at the Penn State and within two minutes I'm sure you'll be falling asleep after reading my bio. So that's the deal.   Carol: I love it. I love it. So many of us did that, though. We kind of fell into it. I fell into it with my mom used to be the volunteer corridor coordinator at the state hospital in Faribault where I grew up. So she used to bring me up to the Pink Ladies canteen where they had donuts and treats and things that the residents of the campus could come in. And I remember being five and on campus and working with all these people with developmental disabilities and other disabilities and just got super interested in the work kind of through her and having people over to our house for Thanksgiving and Christmases and different holidays. It was super fun and I just grew up in that. And so that is the same case with many of our listeners, I'm sure. So last month we talked about the first part of your study. Today we're going to get into the retention aspect. So let's talk about the retention challenges that you identified in the study. So what are those top challenges VR is facing?   Jim: Yeah, so part of our study, what we did, the first part, we basically interviewed state directors. We had them complete an online survey, but then we did about 20 interviews to sort of unpack. A little bit more. And basically we identified and I'm not sure to be frank, if this part is going to be new information for your readers or for the listeners. But it sets up what I want to talk about how do we address these problems of retention? So when we look at why are counselors leaving? Okay, well, the first thing I'm sure your listeners like no surprise on this one. Low salaries, big number one problem graduates coming out of programs now realize and also people are currently working in the field realizing I think in essence kind of the power really that they have. And I think this is sort of a nationwide thing. People are starting to realize, I've got choice, I have options and I want to exercise those. And so we've got to understand that and be receptive to that. So low salaries and we'll talk about, well, what can we do about that aspect? But just for introductory purposes, that's a big, big reason we're losing people to the Veterans Administration. We're losing them to community mental health programs, we're losing them to universities and colleges such as like the disability support services or even sometimes a career placement services. I know former alum from our program here at Penn State who've been in the state system for a long time and left to work at university settings such as disability services or career development. You know, the issue with that is, of course, when you think about the investment with the RSA training program coupled with the two years post-graduation that they have to use for the payback, well, that's a tremendous amount of investment that we've made in unfortunately we're losing them because after they do their two year payback, they're saying there's some other opportunities. Another big problem, and this is particularly true, I think, of the newer graduates, one of the things we know from research is that many counselors, what they do not enjoy is the amount of paperwork process information that's involved with the job data entry, documentation that's involved with that. And I've heard a number of students will say, I didn't get a master's degree in counseling to sit in front of a computer and enter data. I recognize that's a part of the job, I recognize there's information that needs to be recorded. But for the Gen Z and the millennials in particular, they want to work with clients directly. They want to have that client contact. They enjoy working with people. That's a lot different from interacting on a screen or processing paperwork in that way. So while data management, that's a critical part of the job, we've got to think of some other ways of how can we work with particularly the graduate trained personnel, more efficiently and more effectively in a way that benefits the whole mission of the program? That's a big reason why people are leaving. Another problem kind of related to that caseloads. And while it's different, I think with specialized caseloads such as people who work with persons who are visual impairments, vision loss, blindness, hearing deafness, while their caseloads are lower counselors with general caseloads, it's not unheard to have caseloads of around 200. I mean, that's. So how do you develop an effective working relationship when you have to interact with 200 people? The answer is you can't or it's difficult. So I mentioned these three problems because I think it provides a context for what are we going to do about that? How do we address those kinds of things that are underlying? So that's what we're going to be kind of diving into today.   Carol: Yeah, I agree. I appreciate you setting that backdrop because those are all things as I was reading the study, I'm like, Oh, absolutely. And I keep thinking if folks are continuing to be organized the way they were pre-wioa as far as staffing and structure and roles and responsibilities, man, you really need to rethink that because there are opportunities and I think we'll get into this. There's a lot of cool stuff folks can be looking at doing now differently. We talked about this in the first podcast, you know, about, well, we've always done it that way and I think in VR we can tend to fall into that trap. And you forget like, Hey, we are inventive, creative people. We have got to approach this in a different way. So let's talk about that. Let's get into what are some of the retention strategies I know the state vocal rehab directors believe would contribute to retention. There were a number of things that you had in the study I thought were pretty cool. So let's unpack some of those.   Jim: All right. Well, let's tackle the big problem, the salary issue. And we've mentioned this a little bit in the earlier last month's podcast, but we've got to take a look at what is the salary structure. Okay. And are there ways that we can adjust that And just in terms of wages or benefits. Now, the first thing is, no, we can't. It's too difficult. It's, you know, it's really about. That's true. But at the same time, I know from talking with directors and to come to mind, Kentucky and North Carolina, where there are states, Maryland, I think we mentioned in the earlier podcast that have been effective in getting better pay, more equitable pay for counselors. Now, again, I think as we mentioned, I think actually, Carol, you mentioned this, you know, this isn't something like, okay, well, next week we're going to start that. No, this takes literally years to do because of the political influences. You know, like who are the secretaries of state and the governors, and is there support to do that And yes or no? And how do you build the case? So building that case of, you know, hey, we're losing people when we look at our salaries compared to rehab counselors in the Veterans Administration, compared to mental health counselors, compared to other comparable professions, let's look at what the data. So, you know, you don't need to be a genius to kind of figure out this job is going to pay $20,000 more for what I think is essentially the same job. And so it's like we've got to take a look at this because the thing is, you know, just kind of throw your hands up and say, well, we can't do anything about that. Well, I'm not sure about that. But I do know this, that to institute any kind of change, we have to have some sort of rationale and data to support why do we absolutely need to do that? And we'll talk about this aspect a little bit later. But part of the data collection also, and this is a tool that we have available but very few states use it, is when we conduct those exit interviews with people that they're leaving. And you ask, well, why are you leaving? I'd be willing to bet based on my understanding of either people I know that have left the agency or what I've seen in the review of the literature. These testimonials, I think are really critical and say over the last three years we've lost 50 counselors. We asked them, Why are you leaving? 85% is because of low salary. That's important data. Okay. And that's just not something that hey, wouldn't it be nice? But I can't think in terms of any kind of real data, anything more important than those kinds of testimonials. But the problem is that most states don't use exit interviews or if they conduct them, frankly, I don't think they do a good job or even if they do a good job the problem is the data doesn't always get communicated back to the state director. So here in Pennsylvania, anybody works for labor, Labor and industry. Well, that's just not VR counselors. That's a whole other group of professionals that get kind of lumped in together. And so those are kind of some important data that we need to start monitoring. We need to build a case we just can't keep kind of poor me, blah, blah, What are the data? And then ultimately how is that impacted? And I think those kinds of things are really important.   Carol: I agree 100%. I know as I have talked to different directors across the country, you mentioned Kentucky. Absolutely. Core McNabb talked to her. She's done some things, really big, impactful things with this. Scott Dennis, as we talked about, I know Brett McNeil right now in Florida has a big initiative that's taken several years, started before him, but and he's a newer director in but continued that fight. And I'm hoping fingers crossed that he's able to get that through the legislative session this year to get those increases for his folks. But for our listeners, I know some of you are thinking like, well, it's daunting. Like this is a terrible task. You've got to do all of this work. It's going to take all these years. But if you never start, you're never going to finish. If you never build the case, you never collect the data, you don't go after this. Three years from now, we're going to be talking about the same problem and you've done nothing towards it. And so I just really encourage people like you have to start this is so critical. This is a fundamental issue for your agency that pay piece. You need to work on it. And that's where you have to build your relationships. You got to look at any coalitions that you can engage in. You want to reach out to those other directors that have been successful to find out what they've done. Jane Donellen in Idaho General, she's done some interesting things around this as well. You want to talk to those other people, reach out to your CSAVR colleagues and say like, Hey, how you do that? I know every state is set up differently and you have your own civil service rules in your state. But by and large, doing something like this, what you said, Jim, you get to build the case. And so I don't care what state you're in, you're always going to want to come in with your data. Here it is. And you present it because you may be thinking that HR is like looking out for you. But think about it. HR has had these huge turnovers and staff to they don't know what's going on. You know your story, they don't know it. You're one of a whole bunch of books of business in that state. You've got you. If you're in a labor agency, you've got all these other programs, unemployment insurance, they'll remember that was kind of having problems. You're the one living with it every day. So if you can paint that picture, that helps them because I know there's always a method for doing this within the state. It may be a little daunting, but if you don't start I mean, I'm kind of on my soapbox right now, but if you never start, you're never going to get there.   Jim: You're absolutely spot on. And I would agree with that. One of the things I'll ask my students when we talk about problems and problem resolution and those things is the issue of control. And one of the things I'll ask is, what is it? Because there's so many things we can't control, but what is it that we can control? And I think that's a question that you're asking. And then also, too, is the perception because you think, oh, well, we can't. And it's like, well, maybe we can, but the first thing we've got to collect the information to support the case. So related to that kind of issue of control, and I'm going to spoiler alert to your listeners, I'm going to probably say a few things that might be a little bit controversial. No surprise there. But kind of related to that and this is going to be hard, I know, is the question of how are we conceiving of this job. You know, I said earlier that the millennials and Gen Z in particular, they didn't come in to be a rehab counselor to six out of eight hours of the day in front of a computer and data entry that doesn't light it up for them. And so one of the things we know from a number of studies of graduates, they're saying to us, we want opportunities that are going to give us greater client access. So I got into this because I like working with people. You know, I enjoy that interaction. I love that part of the job. And so what some states are doing and a couple come to mind, North Carolina General, Tennessee, they're saying, okay, how can we reduce the administrative data entry task? Is there a way that we can maybe allocate those aspects to maybe someone that you don't necessarily have to have a master's degree to do that? And we know that, Carol, you know this you know, a number of states now are kind of rethinking this baccalaureate position. Maybe there are opportunities at the introductory level, if you will, professional level that require a baccalaureate degree. So the thinking, of course, being if we can assign those tasks to and sometimes states use different titles, sometimes you'll hear the term counselor, aide paraprofessional, which personally I don't like that because I think at the Baccalaureate you're a professional. I think to me it kind of denigrates that. But the point is the intent here is like, okay, can I have someone's going to help me with the case management functions aspect, the documentation that I might now be able to spend more time with clients. The other thing too, that we learned I found this was interesting New Hampshire developed kind of a pilot project with I think this is I think was a University of Wisconsin Stout. I believe if it's wrong, my apologies to the other university who did, but I think it was with Stout in helping them in the decision making process of eligibility determinations. So they would outsource this to UW stout personnel who then review the case. Now, they didn't make the I want to be clear on this. They didn't make the determination. They made maybe a recommendation for that. The counselor makes the final determination, but was interesting. I believe that by doing that, New Hampshire was saying that saved about 30% of time that a counselor might have to allocate for that, that now that if we outsource that, that allowed them to have greater contact. So that's another thing.   Carol: Yeah. So it's funny you bring that up, Jim. So I'm actually doing a podcast in August with and this really started in Wisconsin. Wisconsin was the spearhead of this and New Hampshire jumped onto it with the Stout doing that. So my August podcast is going to be focused on how Wisconsin created this project with Stout. And we're going to talk about how they did it, because now more and more states I still remember when Wisconsin brought this up back at CSAVR, you know, probably four years ago, and everybody was kind of like, huh, Like, oh, that's interesting. Or why did you do that? Well, now everybody's going, Hey, I want to know more about that. And Lisa Hinson Hatz in New Hampshire. She dug into that to going, Hey, we need help out here. And that's where I was saying earlier, if you're organized in the same way you were pre WIOA stop it. Like you need to think about this because there's a lot of things that fundamentally have changed. And I love what you said about can you use other positions that are maybe more of the case manager of that case and doing all that chasing around? Can you use technology solutions? I did a podcast with our friends from Alaska in March on SARA with a semi-automated rehab assistant. You know, you're chasing down these MSGs and I need your transcript and all of that. Are you looking at other solutions? Friends that can help to automate maybe some of this that your staff are currently doing. I just think to look wide.   Jim: Absolutely. And I think that is again, kind of like, is there another way that we could do this? And I think we talked about this a little bit earlier. Sometimes we fall in the trap. Well, we've always done it this way. Well is it working well. If it's not working, that says we have to change that. So increasing the time again, either through technology or perhaps the creation of and I'll talk about this a little bit later, different levels in terms of a career ladder. Another thing and again and this is it's particularly problematic because when you don't have enough counselors, typically what happens then? The supervisor fills in, the counselor leaves. Now the supervisor or it gets redistributed to other counselors so their caseloads increase. And then here's some academic telling your audience that, well, you got to reduce caseload size. So, yes, I live in the ivory tower. Okay. But let me just say this again. These problems are interdependent and the solutions are interdependent. You can't implement one because we'll have about ten or so that we're going to go through. You can't implement one and think, oh, that's going to solve it. It's not. It's a combination of confluence of all of these that will change, if you will, in terms of the retention aspect. So reducing caseload size, you know, next to salary. The other thing, too, you if you talk with counselors, what is it that they have too many clients and we talked in the earlier podcast, again, while there's some specialized caseloads may be different 30 to 50 clients, other generalized caseloads, they could be 150, 200 clients. So it's difficult to believe that you can have any kind of effective working relationship with that size. And the other thing I'll just mention, it's interesting because when you look at what factors predict who's going to have a successful rehab outcome, when you look at the literature, basically what you find is that a significant contributor is the relationship. There's that word again, the relationship between the client and the counselor. I know we use the term customer. I'm kind of old school. We don't get into that. But anyway, I still use the term client. The point being is when you have an effective working relationship, you have better outcomes. And so it only makes sense then, well, you know how many of you, when you go to your physicians appointment, you get in a rush, you know, two minutes, and then you come at a physician that actually spends 30 minutes with you, you know, like, Wow, this is so good. They feel like they took time to know what my problems are, what the issue is, what's kind of going on. The person that spends too, like, look, I don't you know, I'm overworked, I'm underpaid, I don't have time for this. Those messages get communicated. Clients are pretty savvy and picking that up. I don't think we give them enough credit for that. So part of that is when we were talking about providing more access to clients and developing that relationship, but also reducing the client caseload size. So related to that, we have to think about again, maybe modifying some of those caseload practices. So when we talk about grief, thinking how the job is done, again, maybe there's some components that we could institute that might allow greater access. So I think it was Iowa for the Blind that had a specialist that maybe would assist the counselor. I think the same thing like in Indiana, a case coordinator. So maybe there's specific roles that other people might do, particularly at the baccalaureate level, to maybe determine or help determine eligibility and help with the caseload aspect. So by implementing that in conjunction with that reduction, again, I think is going to contribute to successful outcomes. And the only other thing I'll just mention, I remember one director that made this statement. It's always interesting to me, like Carol, you're talking about in Maryland and Florida and other states, do they have some sort of secret sauce, some magic thing? You know, what did they do? The question that comes up is like, well, if it can be successfully implemented in one state, can we duplicate it in my state? So what is it that we can do with that?   Carol: One of the things I've learned some years ago that Joe started this Joe Xavier out in California was implementing this team model concept. And so the counselors like the orchestrator of the team, but you have a lot of people that surround an individual as they're going through their VR journey. You know, you have placement people that are working with them. You know, your business specialist could be in a blind agency. You might have an assistive technology specialist and you've got your rehab tech and all these different folks. And so we borrowed from California when I was in Minnesota to leverage all the people on the team so that that client could feel supported, even as counselors are working with lots of people. But it could be that the case aide is talking to them. It's your AssistiveTechnology Specialist is talking to them, your business specialist. So they feel surrounded by this team of people that are ultimately supporting the counselor and the customer and getting this employment goal accomplished. So taking a look at leveraging all your resources, because as you say, when you tell me like 200 people on a caseload, I'm like, that is too many. Think about how many days there are in a year and how many days a person works and you have 200 people. You're trying to keep this relationship going. If you can leverage the support of your team members too. So the person is feeling like people are reaching out and they're contacting them and they're in touch, it will lend to a better outcome.   Jim: I'm glad you kind of amplified that a little bit because it lends itself to the next point is when you think of the career ladder structure that exists in old VR, we kind of have that one counselor, one client kind of model. And what you're talking about is more a systemic approach. And recall that I think it was in Indiana where they had I think it was Indiana. If it wasn't, then my mistake. But anyway, I think they have what was called kind of a work project group. And so you had staff that collectively worked together. So when it talks about a particular client, so you had multiple people. So now in their work group, as I recall, they might have like an individual who might be the eligibility determination counselor. And then other people worked as caseload counselors and others work more in terms I'm going to use the term therapeutic counselor relationship aspects. And my recollection from talking with the director there was when they looked at that approach, what they found was that actually the time spent in eligibility that was reduced. So it's like we're providing more effective service, more timely services and the benefit in terms of the counselors, in terms of their training, that also was kind of reduced because they're kind of specializing on this aspect of the job. So part of that is thinking about, well, maybe we have to think things a little bit more systemically. The other thing is when we look at the career ladder structure, this is all over the place because you have states that basically have like level one, level two counselors and some there's three or some four or some five and that's all as a function of how many years that you've been with the agency, whether or not you have a graduate degree, whether or not you're a CRC, all of those things contribute. So one of the things that you have to think about, is there a way that we can kind of build in a little bit more? Because again, basically you kind of go from a counselor to a supervisor and most counselors, at least that I've found, they're not clamoring necessarily to be a supervisor. That's not an easy job. In fact, much of my research and I do a lot of training on clinical supervision for state rehab agencies. And I can tell you, I know firsthand I've been doing this for 20 years. That I think is the most difficult job in State VR, is to be a counselor, a supervisor or a manager. So that being said, it was interesting. I think it was Missouri when they looked at when counselors are leaving, what they had found was that their counselors were their most susceptible were counselors that had been with the agencies 4 to 6 years. Looking at that, one of the actions that they took was, well, maybe what we need to do is try to build in some sort of other kind of a counselor level creating another level so we can retain those because it's bad when you lose anybody. But those are the people that have gained the experience. They've got something to contribute and now they're the ones you can least afford to lose. So they created something specifically for that career ladder to address that problem.   Carol: Absolutely 100%. I have loved it because we've had a number of states reach out to us as we've been doing this recruitment retention pilot through the VRTACQM and other people have been like, Can you help us a little bit? Look at these career ladders for our staff? Because some folks I didn't realize how many states are just sort of flat. You have your counselor come in and then like you said, then you're the supervisor and not everybody wants to go into management of any sort. There's a lot of people that like that individual contributor, but they want to grow that role. And when you look at those people, as you talked about with that vast experience, if you can create more of that team lead or a counselor lead or a senior counselor or whatever, they can take on mentorship of the new people coming in, they're the go to person for those really difficult cases is your problem solving. And they love it because they thrive in that space. And so we have been successful. I know we worked with South Carolina Blind and them instituting some levels in their system. That was really fun work to do and helping folks just think again, like, let's not be organized the way we were pre WIOA. We need to look at this differently.   Jim: Absolutely. And, you know, and I think the other thing, too, Carol, is, again, maybe you can invite me back for a third time. I don't know. Clinical supervision. But and that's exactly the problem because, yeah, a lot of counselors don't want to be the supervisor, the manager. So when you think in terms of the career, it's like, well, you're a counselor and you go right to the supervisor. Is there a way that we could structure so you can also when we think of career ladder, we can do kind of hierarchical, you know, typical, but also we can do kind of across horizontally. And again, I've seen some states that will create kind of a specialist, a job placement specialist or the eligibility determination. There may be some ways that we can kind of create because there are some counselors will say, actually, I love doing the intakes, I love doing the eligibility. I'm not so keen about the paperwork on that aspect. Others will like the job development, The job placement will go getting out, working with the employer. So everybody's different. So the question is how do we tap into that individual strength that the counselor provides and then match it? Basically what we're doing like the same principles of rehab that ostensibly we do with clients is that, well, maybe we should be doing it with our own agency and our own folks, which I know to varying degrees we do. Moving on, because I know I'm cognizant of the time and I'm looking like, oh my Lord, my list. But just very quickly, another thing is how well do we promote within the agency? How many times have we worked with clients? When you think like, well, you know, actually this person would be a really good rehab counselor. Now I know that we do that, but that's something again, you know, just kind of think about, you know, in doing that. But let me get to some other things that maybe we don't do as often and might be a little bit more controversial for some folks. It's always amazing to me how we promote rehabilitation principles and practices for our clients in other employment settings, but how well do we do it in our own settings? So let's unpack that a little bit. Now, one thing that the pandemic has done is if we were to have a room of 100 counselors and supervisors and directors and mixture sampling, let's say we met five years ago and say, okay, well, here's the deal, folks. We're going to move to. Everybody can kind of work at home and we're going to allow you to basically do all that. And in terms of the work schedule, yes, you have to put 37.5 hours. But if you want to do that on your weekends or you want to do that at night, you can do that, like, what are you smoking? It ain't happening. And yet with the pandemic suddenly now we've rethought. And this reminds me of the old way back when, when Henry Ford was building cars and said, Hey, we're going to move from that six day, ten hour work week to a five day, eight hour. People like you can't do that. It's impossible. Yeah. And look what happened? Production. And so we're operating with historic principles that may not be in the best interest for the current worker. And change is hard. Again, particularly, I think as a baby boomer, it's like, well, we've always done it this way. It worked. Then why can it work now? Well, maybe, maybe not. So the big recommendation or a recommendation is we have to offer greater work, flexibility, telework, flexible schedules, job sharing. Interesting enough. And I'm not going to call out any particular states, although I do know particular states. But what I see, and be honest with you, is a little troubling. It's like, well, we're going to go back to where it was before, really. And I'm just kind of wondering, how is that going to work? I'm not really seeing that. It's sort of like you opened up the box. Oh, wow. There's something really nice here that I like. Okay, let's cover it back up. I just don't see that working.   Carol: It's not working. So I know a couple of those states where now we're post pandemic and the governor of the state is like, Oh, everybody's going to come back into the office. You're all coming in five days a week, 100% of the time, and it's killing them. They are losing staff by the droves. It has been an absolute nightmare. I'm not understanding the thinking behind that because it is literally killing them.   Jim: Here's the other thing, too, and this is where, again, we talked about the importance of data collection earlier. There are studies in the business world I haven't seen too many, and there may be some that I'm just not aware of. But studies have said, well, let's look at the impact of offering this kind of what does this do? How does this change in terms of our numbers? The bottom line status 26, it's like, well, have we witnessed a significant drop off of that? And is that attributable because of offering counselors options? I would contend and I'll talk more about what I refer to as the big enchilada. I'll save that to the end. I would contend that giving people greater choice, I think, helps in terms of kind of their morale gives them more control, particularly single parents managing children, you know, and also when you think it mirrors the life that our clients I mean, people can't take off. Necessarily between your 8:30 to 4:30 day, I may have availability at night or maybe on the weekends. So offering workers, not just telework, because I think that's pretty common, although as you say and I would agree, I know states are kind of like, let's go back to the way it was, but also in terms of offering flexible schedules, it's like, where's it written that it has to be 8:30 to 4:30? And I know a number of states all have like four day work weeks or ten hours a day. But then again, here's one of these rehab principles. We talk about job sharing. Do we do any job sharing in rehab counseling, practice? Do we do? How does that. So again, it's something we espouse for our clients, but we don't necessarily how do we practice that in our own offices? That's something that we need to do. Related to that is and again, this might be a little bit controversial is allowing people to work part time. Now, again, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, we can't do that. Or if we do that, it's only under kind of medical reasons. So if someone has a medical issue and they're trying to get back to work, I guess my question is, would you rather lose a counselor 100% of the time? Or would you rather have somebody rather than a complete loss that they're working half time Now? I'm not saying that we should all move to half, but I'm saying allow counselors choice. If there's one thing that's clear, and I think this is what you were alluding to, Carol, People want choice and people I think the thing is, they understand for probably the first time in a long time that I've got choice in the workplace. Okay. So allowing them to work part time.   Carol: I love that one, Jim, because especially when you think about your retirees, you know, you and I are in that age.   Jim: Some might say I should have already been retired. Yeah, Well, and you go, okay, so you know, a lot of times folks are looking at retirement and it's an all or nothing thing. You know, you're working full time, 100%, and then you go to nothing. There's a lot of people that want that staged piece of it. So you take a look at some of your longer term counselors. Sure, they want to retire, but they wouldn't mind helping out work in part time like that would be good for them. And they could still get some benefits and some things and work 20 hours a week. And especially given you can do things with telework and different things that can keep you going like versus having nobody there. And then you're adding on caseload to other people. You keep a person that understands your system, but they're just willing to do it at a reduced rate. And again, it's one of those things like, does it hurt to ask HR like in your practices? So because the state has never done it before doesn't mean they can't. And you are not the only industry isn't the only industry facing that same issue. It's all of state employment. So people are starting to look at things very differently where they may not have done that even five years ago. So again, using your words and at least asking if you could do it, absolutely. Again, they kind of phased in retirement part time. Yeah, because especially the older worker, I mean, all that history there, the people that when you have a staff meeting and a new person comes on hey, let's try such and such. And that's the person that says, Yep, we did that in about 20 years ago. We tried that. Okay. We talked a little bit about exit interviews. Some states, One of the things that they're doing and you've mentioned this several times, ask if you don't know, ask another thing states are starting is the use of stay or exit interviews. So have kind of open ended discussions with your employees about why do you stay here? And then those that are leaving, what are some of the factors that are contributing to your leaving? So having like Kentucky did this kind of open ended listening tour, which was kind of really cool. So talk to your counselors, try to understand like, what are those issues? It might be that, for example, maybe you as the state, the district administrator, rather than that person conducting the interview, maybe someone outside. So because there's questions or concerns about who's asking the questions or those kinds of things. So let me talk about some other strategies that necessarily maybe weren't mentioned by state directors, but our research team have come up with and then our work with the Operations Personnel Committee, with CSAVR. So, we talked about part time options and Carol, actually you mentioned about phased retirement. Again, if you know someone that's going to leave in a year or two, maybe we can kind of phase that in doing kind of a part time. The use of affinity groups that can also be important to enhance career longevity. Affinity groups usually are groups that are created where people share a common characteristic, a common concern. So they might have people that share in terms of maybe disability aspects age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, where there are common interests, common identities, common kinds of experiences. And. What we know from research in the business world is that affinity groups often can contribute to employee well-being and also reduce workplace stress. And I talk a little bit more of this in the Journal of Rehab article that was just published the other month. So if you want to learn more about that, let me get to the big enchilada, though, while we have a few minutes left. Okay, I know like what I'm about to say may be heresy, but remember that Henry Ford history note? Okay, This is for states that boy, you know, that salary, that all sounds good. It'll take years. But, you know, who knows? And I said to you, well, think about what is it that you can control? So getting salary adjustments may be really kind of difficult. Here's a question I have for you. Where is it written that? Is it possible that rather this sort of five day, 40 hour work schedule, we could go to a four day, 32 hour work schedule? Here's the kicker. At the same pay as the 40 hour work week, if I was with some of the listeners, was like, Oh man, this guy is really kind of gone off.   Carol: They're having a heart attack right now.   Jim: Suddenly everybody just clicked off on the podcast. They just Bloop. That's it. Well, as I mentioned, while there's certain states Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida, Maryland that may have successfully negotiated pay raises, a lot of states it's more difficult. And so the question is, can we create a full time at the same pay for 32 hours? Now, it's interesting. I'd love to work with states who want to implement or think about that. I've heard through the grapevine there may be 1 or 2 that are seriously thinking about this, but I know in the business world, when you look at the evidence of a shorter workweek, while it is mixed, but at least the studies that I've seen, some of the benefits, one of is, is that greater, higher employee retainment, they also have a better work family balance. You know, my wife and I, we have a son who's 26. He's a hard worker. But his view of what's important in life and my view, it's different. So like, why work was everything. Work is important. But he said, Hey, dad, there's more important things to or just my social life, my love life, my recreational life. I want a better quality of life. I want to have a better work family balance. And so when you look at some of the literature, what you see is there are a lot of benefits. So my point is, before you just sort of offhand like, no, that won't work. Think about and start informing. Start looking at, well, what is the literature say about that? So I think working toward that four day, 32 hour, I could be wrong. But I really think and again, state federal government usually are not the leaders to this, usually the kind of the last to react. But I'd be willing to predict that within 5 to 10 years that's going to be happening. And if states start doing kind of pilot studies looking at the impact on that and if they find like, wow, there are ways that we can kind of reduce it because, sure, we waste time. We don't always kind of eight hours every minute we're doing working. But the point is that I think is a proposal worthy of discussion that needs to be had.   Carol: Well, Jim, appreciate you leaving us with the big enchilada for sure. I'm sure folks are going, holy cow. But I know there's been a number of articles done on this and research done on this. I believe it was over even in the UK where they were taking a look at the 32 hour workweek. So it is definitely food for thought. I did want to wrap up and let our listeners know that at VRTAC-QM.org we have recruitment and retention strategies and ideas listed, many of which come from Dr. Herbert's research as well as what your colleagues are doing across the country. So I invite you to go to our website. Probably the easiest way is in the search box. Just go human resources and it'll take you right to that piece of it. But we have a lot of great strategies that folks have implemented with their examples and how they've built the case and done different things. So that could be of help to you as you're on your journey. So Jim, thanks again. I really appreciate having you on. Your work has been super interesting and I look forward to more things that you're doing in this area. So have a great day.   Jim: Thanks, Carol. Appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!

Dr. Jim Herbert, Professor of Counselor Education and Rehabilitation and Human Services at Penn State, joins us in the studio today. In this first part of a two-part series, Jim discusses the recruitment challenges identified in his study- Recruitment and Retention of State Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors: A Mixed Methods Analysis.   Please listen in as Carol and Jim unpack this study and discuss the four significant challenges and possible solutions you can apply to your situation.   Stay tuned as the focus shifts to the retention side of the study by Dr. Jim Herbert in the next episode of Manager Minute.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Music} Speaker1: 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 Doctor Jim Herbert, Professor of Counselor, Education and Rehabilitation and Human Services at Penn State, is joining me in the studio today to discuss his recently released study, Recruitment and Retention of State Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors, A Mixed Methods Analysis. I am so happy to have you here today. How are things going in Pennsylvania?   Jim: Well, first off, I'm happy to be had and things are going very well in Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful summer day and the nice thing is that many academician might appreciate it. While we love students, summer session, they're not here, which means you can get parking spaces downtown, lots of restaurants. You don't have to wait a long time to get in. So it's a good time and good place to be in State College, Pennsylvania.   Carol: Oh, that's awesome. Say, are you getting any of that wildfire smoke from Canada?   Jim: You know, it's funny you say that because we just got an alert that indicated like over the next couple of days, Yeah, it's going to be coming this way.   Carol: Yeah, we definitely got hit with it the last two days. And I saw it moving off to the East Coast, looked like the apocalypse here. It was very, very weird. So to set the stage for our listeners, I first met you through the CSVAR Operations and Personnel Committee, and I used to co-chair the old version of that committee. It was called The old HRD with Cynthia Speight, and I continued to participate in it when I entered the TA world. And so back in the day, Cynthia and I were super interested in recruitment, retention issues of counselors. And I'm talking like, this is probably like eight years ago now. And we had done several surveys with state agencies to kind of gauge where they were at with getting new counselors. And we kept seeing this shrinkage of people entering the field and the reduction in universities offering a master's in rehab counseling. And then you came to that committee to collaborate on a study you were doing that was partly supported by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehab Research or NIDILRR,   Jim: right.   Carol: And so in the executive summary, you noted that there had been a consistent shortage of qualified rehab counselors employed by the state federal VR program for actually several decades. I mean, we're kind of thinking this is a new deal. And it's like this has been going on for quite some time and the Covid 19 pandemic really exacerbated the shortage. And you were also looking at the funding RSA provided to graduate programs that encouraged individuals to work and to be in VR. And you wanted to see like what happened after that two year kind of payback phase. And really, I found that interesting, that the funding had been provided for 65 years, but there had been no formal study about the scholars continuing their employment with VR after that period of time. So your study primarily examined recruitment, retention, concerns of the state vocational rehab agencies, and you identified strategies to address those. And in addition, you looked to see if there was a mechanism to track that long term employment outcome of the former RSA scholars working for the state VR program. So we're going to do this in two parts because you have a lot of stuff you did, and I think our listeners will kill us if we're going to do a two hour podcast. So we're not everybody just stay buckled in. We're going to tackle in two parts. And Jim and I are going to talk today about the retention side of the project. And then next month we are going to talk about the recruitment part of this. So, all right, enough background. Let's dig in. So, Jim, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, like how long you've been in academia? How did you get there?   Jim: How did I get here? Well, I've been an Academician here at Penn State for 37 years. And where did the time go in terms of kind of how I got here? Probably like a lot of your audience, when you think about people that work in the rehab field, a lot of times you get in the rehab field because they have either personal experience with disability or a family member. And that's exactly what happened to me. I had a brother who had Down syndrome, and so I got interested and did volunteer work on high school and in college. And I loved working with people with developmental disabilities. That's how I got interested in rehab. And then during my, you know, college, I knew I wanted to work with people. But a lot of times, you know, when we teach career development, we kind of make it sound like it's this very logical process that you, you know, pluses and minuses and I going to do this. And yet we fail to acknowledge there's a lot of things by fate that impact on your career choice. You just happen to be in this office who you just happened to say something who happened to know somebody else who happened to have this job. So when I look back at my own career, one of the things I tell my students is that, yeah, you can plan and you want to be in a position to have opportunities. To come, but there's a lot of things you can't control and there's a lot of things that just sort of happen, if you will. Some might say by divine providence. I don't know if that's the case. But anyway, there's a lot of things that you can't plan. So in my own career, how I got that was sort of a combination of just fate happen to be in this place at this time. And then obviously preparation in terms of formal education and experience. But yeah, it's gone by fast.   Carol: I love that when you said 37 years, we probably have some listeners out there going, I'm not even 37 years old right now. And I was thinking this year I just had my 37th anniversary. And so you and I have been around for a little bit more than a minute. I think that's cool. But I love that that you said by fate, I think a lot of us have fallen into our career trajectory truly by fate in whatever kind of circumstance. Like you said, you came into it at the time. So what went into approaching this study and kind of how long have you been at this?   Jim: Yeah, it's funny. As far as doing this study, how I kind of got interested in it was I mean, I've been a project director for many RSA training grants throughout that time period. There's a lot of investment that you make and help students become rehab counselors and Penn State I think like many universities, we have a strong commitment to the state VR program. You know, I've always said that I feel that State VR people, you should have the best trained people to address the difficult needs and complex needs of people with disabilities have. So there's a lot of investment that's made. And then also, as you know, after they graduate and they get supported through RSA traineeship, they'll typically work for every one year of support, two years of full time employment. So if they work for a state agency, there's a lot of investment the agency makes. You'll often hear it takes 2 to 3 years before you just kind of feel like, I know this job. So when you combine that, you see the amount of financial investment and professional investment that educators and practitioners make. And so over the years when I've had a chance to meet with a number of our former alumni and what are you doing? And one of the things I notice is some of them would be working for a state agency, and then after a couple of years, they do their two year payback and said, I'm out of here. It's like, man, you know, what's going on? What's happening here? What are we doing? And what I came to learn talking with other educators across the country is it's not something I think, wow, is this something just unique to us? Maybe we're doing something wrong here. Maybe we need to do a better job, which of course, we could always do. But what I learned anecdotally was that, no, this seems to be kind of a nationwide problem. So you had that on top of I was interested. So what research has been done to look at the long term effectiveness of the RSA training program? And what I learned was I could not find any study throughout that whole history. I thought that was kind of interesting because I know we followed in the first two years, but after the payback period, that's it. So that started a pilot project that I had done. So I was just interested what happened with the people that came through Penn State, received the RSA Scholarship and worked. And what I learned from that pilot study, even though the data was a small sample size, I learned when we look at the percentage of people who are at the agency versus those that worked at Non State VR, I learned that it was significantly higher. The rate of people who are intending to leave the state VR. So that kind of rang some bells for me. And from there, with that pilot data, we then decided to undertake this three year study to investigate what's going on and more maybe not necessarily more importantly, but just as importantly, what can we do about it? So we are just finishing our second year of data and today and next month, we'll talk about some of the results of what are some of the things that we found from that study. So that's really kind of how this whole thing emerged.   Carol: I really love that you tackled this because that was so interesting to me, especially when you were looking at 65 years of this program. But there was nothing done like there had been no study of what happened to the people. I'm sure as you were talking to directors and I used to be a director, you know, anecdotally we could see and tell you, like we knew in Minnesota, I felt like we were the training grounds for the VA. And so, you know, staff would come in, they would do an internship with us, come on board, Yay, you know, and all of that. And then the next thing you know, there's skedaddled over to the VA because they could make like 20,000 more a year starting. It was crazy. So it's like, how do we combat that? And we'll get to some of that. You had definitely some ideas for folks on how to do it, but I was really super pleased to see what you had undertaken there. So let's talk about the recruitment challenges that you identified in the study. What are the top challenges that VR is facing?   Jim: Right now, the first thing I'm going to tell you, I'm sure your listeners are going to go, duh. I mean, the first big challenge is we don't have enough applicants. We don't have enough people applying for the jobs. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And I'd like to unpack maybe just a few of them. But one of the big things that states are constantly saying is years past, maybe we'd have a job opening and we might have 15-20 applicants today. We might be lucky if we can get a couple and in some cases we get none. So the big problem is we don't have a sufficient number of qualified job applicants. That's, you know, the big thing. So it's like people don't know about us. People don't know how to kind of how's this process work? To varying degrees, I think educators do kind of a mixed job on how do we market this. So why would you want to become a state VR counselor? You know, if you ask college students who want to be counselors, social workers, psychologists, and say, hey, there's this thing called a state counselor, it's like, what? What is that? I don't know. What do they do? That's a big, big problem. Another big, big problem that we have is look at the bureaucracy. You and I, we've had a history of and I'm still working in the bureaucracy here at Penn State as much as I love it. But the big thing is in that bureaucracy, the time it takes to recruit somebody, then you have to kind of review all the applicants. You have all the policies and procedures and steps and levels of people that need to review and sign off on this. Well, that process typically takes 2 to 3 months. And so you're thinking like, okay, for states that are looking and I know that regulations are changing, hiring more baccalaureate people, but especially for master's level credentialed persons, they don't have time to kind of wait two, three months to hear back from a job. If you think back to like when you know, way back in the Stone Age, when I'll just say when I graduated, you finish and you were poor and you needed money and I need to get a job and a job fast. So to ask them to wait for 2 or 3 months after they graduate, we're losing. We're losing a lot of qualified people. We need to do something about how do we reduce that time that's a little bit more manageable and a little bit more reasonable.   Carol: I hear about that from directors all the time, that hiring practices. In fact, we're doing a little bit of a pilot on recruitment retention within our VRTAC for quality management. And so you've been aware I've been working with John Connolly and Ron Vessel, John Walsh, Missy Deal and Crystal Gary on our team where we've been talking about this. We've been also coming to the Operation Personnel Committee. But one of the states we're working with, you know, it's taking them 7 or 8 months to be able to make the offer. So they literally interviewed people. And then by the time HR worked through their processes, it was eight months later. And then you're going to offer to somebody and they're like, we thought this was done because we haven't heard from you. Gosh, you're going on a year, for Pete's sakes. People aren't hanging out. And if they are hanging out, there's probably a reason they're hanging out and somebody else didn't pick them up.   Jim: You're absolutely right. Typically with state directors who we spoke with and we spoke to about 20 in the first part of this study, usually it was about 3 or 4 months. So, boy, if it's 7 to 8 months, oh, my lord, that's really, really bad. So on top of that, another big problem and this is where I think educators need to do a better job. A lot of applicants really don't understand what is it that a state VR counselor does? This might be a little controversial to say, but I think one of the things when we kind of went through the new accreditation process from CORE to CACREP and all and the counselor identity, now this is just my personal opinion. I'm not saying it represents, you know, any other constituent group. But in my opinion, I think what we've lost in that transition is we've lost a bit that the importance of career development, of job placement. We've lost, you know, kind of career counseling. And so I think students really don't understand that while I want to work in private practice, so they have this kind of idealized expectation, like, you know, I just open up my shop or I work out of my house and people just be coming and it'll be great. I'll provide good services, I'll make a good income. It doesn't work that way. It takes time to kind of do all that. And then my wife is a therapist had been doing this for 40 years. Even when you do that again, you have some idea of how you think it's going to work, and they don't really understand, like, Hey, well, what are some of the downsides of kind of private practice? And so a state view job has lots of benefits, I think, that make attractive. And one of the things I say to my students is where should I start? For me, working as a state counselor is a fantastic way to kind of get on the ground floor because you learn different systems, different agencies. You understand the whole network, and you'll also get connected in the community so you understand, you know, other providers and kind of what they do. That takes time. I think that's another problem because people have some understanding and we'll talk about the paperwork and all that. And there are definitely downsides, but there's a lot of upsides. The other big thing, no surprise, surprise, money. We don't pay them enough. We can talk about later on this podcast or the next about what certain states are doing and all. But the big problem is and you just alluded, not alluded, you actually stated that years ago, you take like the VA offer is just one example and it's like, okay, the credentials are the same. So why would I want to work at this place? It's going to pay me $20,000 less to do basically kind of very similar kinds of jobs. And so while some states have been successful in getting higher compensation, others have not. And we'll talk more about this probably in the next podcast because I do have some ideas about what you can do to address the compensation issue. So when you look at those four reasons, the fact that we don't have enough people, the fact that it takes time to go through all the recruitment that applicants, they don't really have an understanding of what's this job about? And the money, that's a deadly combination. And so we need to now think about, well, what are things that we could do to kind of make this more attractive to recruit them?   Carol: I know when we were talking money, so I did a podcast. It was in April with Scott Dennis from Maryland. For our listeners, if you didn't catch that episode, definitely go back and listen, because he was successful in getting a significant increase for his counselors and the supervisors and the regional administrators because he's in this unique position where he's surrounded by like DC and all these other states. So he goes, Gosh, we're the training ground for RSA. Like they're stealing all my people. And folks were making significantly more well by him. And this wasn't overnight. Like everybody needs to know like any of these solutions that we're going to talk about, like it takes time. Literally. They've been working on this for several years. And finally, we're able to get it through. It almost immediately stopped the bleeding because he said he was every week getting everybody was reporting up like all these resignations. And it stopped and they actually started getting people back in that used to work for him, came back and said, hey, we love that job, but now you're paying a decent wage. I will come back. I know it struck me in the study, when you go the range of pay was from like 16,000. When you're talking about like an intern, you know, and it might be like the aid type of thing up to 101,000 and you go, that is a big spread. And there's a whole lot of states talking about, you know, those master's level counselors coming out and they're making $36,000. That's not going to cut it like that is not going to cut it. So I am definitely excited as we kind of get into talking about some of the other strategies folks could use. Now, I know you called out directly that VR agencies do not have an overall strategy to develop a comprehensive recruitment plan. And recruitment really is a reactive process. When somebody leaves the agency and I know we're going to chat about retention next month, so let's talk about some strategies that might help folks on the recruitment front.   Jim: Yeah, that's right. So the first thing is, okay, when you look at traditionally like how does a state VR advertise? And often what we find is they'll do it through the State Civil Service Commission. And because that's the mechanism that historically that we've used. So we're going to continue. That's great. That's fine. But we've got to expand other outlets because number one, as I said, job applicants, many may not even know what civil servant. What is that? I don't know what civil service. I don't even know what that is. Well, we advertise there, but we have to look at accessing other networks. So the things that, you know, like indeed, and LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter, Facebook, there's just tons of social media networks that we need to be aware of. Again, I'm kind of old school, so Facebook. But yeah, I mean, my son, who's 26 TikTok and Reddit is a bunch of it anyway, so I'm not an expert on all that. But the point being is we have to think broader. So when we think about that, we have to recognize there's other tools that we're not using. Now, with that being said, and states are already starting to do this to again, historically, they've sought out rehab counseling programs as a source to say, hey, we're going to have some positions. If you have students coming out, we'd love to interview them. Great. But there are a number of states that you don't have an accredited program in your state and Savannah were fortunate because we have several, but there are some states that have none. So what they have to do in those instances, they've got to look at other programs, mental health programs and social work programs and school and psychology and substance abuse. So there are universities that have those kinds of programs. So we need to establish and I'll talk about this in a minute or two, a better working relationship with individual university program coordinators. Historically, we've had that. But in some cases, I think maybe because of the pandemic, things have kind of necessarily evaporated. But I think, you know, that relationship has been tested a little bit over the last couple of years. And not just that in terms of the network. And I think historically, State VR has done a good job in this area, but they could still do better in terms of the diversity of workforce. So there are groups I'm thinking in terms of ethnic minority groups in particular here where we need to do a better job in terms of recruitment. And so what that means is maybe we can't always rely on kind of traditional sites that many people use, but there are certain job boards and certain postings that are specifically devoted to access to underrepresented groups in terms of disability, may be wrong on this,. I think it's called recruit disability. I think there's another one called 70 million Jobs. So we have that. The other thing too, and sometimes in rural areas we have to do more and want to get back to something actually you mentioned, Carol, was I have to say this was a surprise to me. Originally we were going to do the study. We were going to interview state VR executive directors, and then the HR person who is responsible for recruitment and retention. And based on the people that responded to our surveys, we didn't find anybody. There's nobody that says this is my job title. Like, my job is to focus exclusively on recruitment and retention. And I think that's a big problem because that gets to what you were talking about a little bit earlier and that being that unfortunately, recruitment is kind of an afterthought. It's a reactive process. It's like, Oh, we just lost somebody. We got to recruit people to refill that well, that's the wrong way to kind of do things. That's sort of like we're reacting to something that actually happened and well, we'll get into retention next month. You know, part of that is how do we keep people? That's a separate issue, but also how do we recruit them? So we have to think, you know, what are we doing? So having a designated person who is responsible for this, I can't think of a more important aspect than recruiting and retaining your workforce. Lots of problems. But if you don't have a qualified workforce that is going to be around, everything else is kind of a moot point.   Carol: So I agree 100%, because I even think back to our old agency that I came from in Minnesota, we didn't really have a recruitment strategy. And in our agency, we were in a labor agency. We had all these programs. You know, you've got adult dislocated worker and Wagner-Peyser, and we've got unemployment insurance and disability determination services and all this stuff. And they finally did. They they're like, Oh, we're going to get one dedicated person who's recruiting for all of it, like for every division. And you go, okay, for one, we all vastly do way different work and having some strategies, you know? So you've got this one person I'm going to go to the career fair over at blah blah, blah place. Oh, good grief. You know, we had to all kind of help pitch in to get the message out because a lot of times, you know, on that state website, you know, your career opportunities for the state our ads suck. I mean, they aren't very good. They're not very appealing. It's like, oh, come work for us, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't sound very interesting. And I remember the very first time I was like, okay, heck, no, we are not having that. And I rewrote that advertisement and like, come and join us for this like, mission driven organization and all of that. And people were like, Oh, I don't know if we're allowed to do stuff like that. And we had people apply because they're like, We've never seen an advertisement like that, you know, just getting in some of that fresh thinking. But that is something that VR can think about. Maybe you do only have one person in the agency, but then within your own group, is there a way you can have someone that can assist in helping to like make those advertisements appealing? Can they help to get the word out? I know our colleagues in North Carolina, General, they did a really cool thing through Facebook. They were writing really cool, like, why you want to come and be on my team? I'm like, I would answer that ad like, that was awesome. I think VR has got to get in there and advocate and see how they can help be part of the solution for this.   Jim: You're absolutely right. And again, that's where, you know, kind of the history. Well, we've always done it this way. Well, that doesn't mean that we need to keep doing it that way. In any kind of professional reports that I've written about the study. I wouldn't say, you know, the way we post is sucks, but actually you're absolutely correct. That's exactly I mean, you read these job postings and say, well, is this intriguing? Like, my God, this thing sounds boring as hell. Why would I ever want to work that? No, thanks, but no thanks. And you mentioned North Carolina. That individual also participated in the study. And one of the things I remember that she had done was talking about not just how we do it, but the consistency. In other words, a state position, the same job. It's written one way in one city, it's written another way in another city. So wait a minute, how can we have the same job? And it's, you know, so we got to make sure that, number one, that the information is consistent across. But number two and the larger point that you're hammering on and I would agree, we have to think, especially with the newer applicants, again, I'm baby boomer I'm just about boomed out. But the Gen Z the millennials not to stereotype but I think they have a different view, a different way of thinking as it relates to this job seeking process. So we have to make it present, not just the job. Why do you want to work here in this office? What's unique, if you come in the Philadelphia office, what is it that we got that's so doggone special that you're going to love as opposed to Pittsburgh as opposed to Altoona or Harrisburg? So that's where we have to think a little bit more about on a unit level like and you know this and I know our listeners know this, you can go into one district office and the climate may be you can feel the vibe and you can go to another district office and there's another vibe. And that largely depends on the leadership and the sensitivity. And so you can go in and go, Wow, You know, these folks, they look like they're having fun and then, oh, this doesn't look like much fun. This is not fun. And so you have to be sincere, but you have to think I mean, that gets into a whole other issue in terms of climate, which we'll that's another topic. But anyway, the point being is if you feel like, you know, this is a good place to work, what makes it a good place? Explain to me in simple language why you want to come here. And so that's something. So while you can have the standardized because sometimes states regulations and all it has to be you can have standardized narrative, but you can also incorporate a section on why do you want to come here at this office? This is what we can offer you. This is why it's cool to work here.   Carol: And that's completely controllable, you know, like having that little added narrative, just by like we need to use our words and speak up. I think people get used to the system sort of happening to us and with our situation happening in VR, like we got to stand up and go, Hey, like that isn't working because I'm getting zero applicants from that crappy announcement. Can we just change this wording? I know we need to have in our very specific things, you know, there's required, but can I have a paragraph that I can add at the top and it can be done? We've talked to people and they're like, Well, I don't know if we can do that. Did you ask? Because for sure you're never going to get to do it if you don't ask. You need to at least use your words and ask and show them an example like, Here's all your blah blah stuff, but I need this in there to just like punch them right away. Like how and grab them. This is going to be a really cool opportunity and that is in our control.   Jim: Again, you're hammered that point very well. And sometimes people like the system or those guys, it's like, who are those guys? You know, to quote a line from a Butch Cassidy Sundance movie. So that's a movie for the baby boomers. But any rate, who are those guys? Well, we are those guys. And you're right, so often we don't even ask. We just assume this is the way. Well, could we? Oh, I don't know. No one's asked that. The other thing, too, that we talked about is the time, the time it takes before you get the job announcement and you go through this whole rigmarole and you actually hire can be months or, you know, in your case, three quarters of a year. I mean, that's unbelievable. So the question is, well, what can we do about that? It's funny because now I got North Carolina on the brain and because for confidentiality, I could probably mention but indicate I wouldn't mention people's names, but just say North Carolina, I'll leave it at that. You know, one of the things that what was happening that they identified was, well, why does it take so doggone long? What is going on there? Because the director is here and, you know, all kinds of complaints. Why, you know, from the managers and blah, blah, blah. So what things that she found that was important is like, well, let's talk with the HR people and say, can we do anything to kind of make this a little bit shorter? And so you had these like everything else, it all comes down to the R word relationship. So suddenly, like, I have a relationship with HR and I can contact them. They know me, I know them. We've built up mutual trust here. We're not just sort of a voice on the telephone or that kind of a thing. And so what they learned is, well, there are some things that we can do for reducing that lag time, but it all really kind of depended on staying on top of it. You know, so, hey, we advertise this thing last week. Where are we? What's the process? So we have to monitor and see this again. That makes a big difference when you have a designated person that says, my job. We have 25 vacancies in the state office this year. My job, part of it is finding out where are we? What's happening? What's going on? How many people? So it's that constant monitoring, following up, asking questions. So you have that. The other thing is like, well, procedurally we said, well, kind of reduce. Well, agencies, there's all kinds of background checks. You know, you got criminal background checks, you got child abuse, history clearances, motor vehicle. Sometimes you need to have those kinds of records. Some of that documentation could be done up front. So, in other words, as the application. So maybe that's part of the you know, hey, be aware that we need these. So you're already telling the applicant get started on this because it takes usually 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes a little longer. But if you kind of start that up front as opposed to 3 or 4 weeks into the, well, now we've just added on to that. So what can we do? So one of the things I know, like what I'll say to my students is most places now require you to do these background checks, whether you're going to state or not, to have these kinds of background checks, especially obviously if you're working with children or adolescents, get all that documentation from the very beginning so that when you begin the process, we're all ready to go. So I already have that information. Now, the other thing, too, again, I don't want to get too far in the retention aspect, but, you know, a lot of times like, okay, why do people leave? And one of the reasons is we'll talk about next month is people leave because they don't really understand the job as it relates to recruitment. Then there are a couple states at the moment, I can't say exactly which ones, but I do remember there are a couple states that what they had done is and I found this really interesting, is part of the recruitment process and to address the problem of what were you expecting, what was your understanding about this job? So as part of the recruitment process and the interview process, what they did was they would allow the applicant to actually job shadow a state counselor for maybe a day. You can learn a lot of information. And we know that when we have greater samples of behavior, we have stronger predictive outcomes. You know, they can see like the good, the bad and the ugly of this job. So some people might say, well, boy, if you do that, you know, we might not get that person. Well, maybe that's a good thing. Like this person. I'm not really sure this job is for me now after doing it. Yeah, I kind of think no, I don't think this is the job for me. At the same token, you have people like, Hey, I get this a little bit more. You know, I think this would actually be kind of a pretty cool job. The other thing and I can just talk more from my experience working with students who predominantly, not surprisingly, they're going to work for the state VR program would be here in Pennsylvania. And I get it. Because of hiring, you know, we have to be consistent. But sometimes, like that whole process almost sounds robotic. It's like you can't be human. You know, you have to ask these questions and you can't kind of deviate. And I'm not saying kind of break policy on that, but I would ask the again, this is the point that you made. Well, we've always done it that way. Well, did anybody ask do we have any kind of latitude here? Can we do some other things? So in other words, as they go through that initial screening process, one of the things happened is not that you have kind of the formal but you also have kind of an informal process. So one of the things that I know students really appreciate is if they have an alum who's working at that district office. So it's like, well, yeah, you graduated from Penn State two years ago as Dr. Herbert. Yeah, that guy, he's still there. They can't get rid of him. So then they have kind of a natural connection. So what states are doing is like, well, want to have kind of informal kind of get together. So maybe after you go through the formal process, you give everybody the opportunity. Some would say, yep, that sounds good. Others, no, I don't want to do that. But you give everyone the same opportunity. Would you like to talk with some of our, you know, Richard Bolles, who maybe some of your audience might not know who he is, wrote a book called What Color is Your Parachute? It's all about career and fantastic. Well, anyway, one of the things I remember many, many, many years ago when I first saw him, he said there's two decisions being made in the interview. The first is, do we want you? Do we want the job applicant? But the more important decision is do they want us? We got to pay more attention to that aspect we represent. So when you're interviewing, you know, like who are they interviewing with? It's like, what's the energy that you're communicating with? Yeah, we need to do a better job with that. The other thing I'll just kind of finish up on. This aspect is I talked about the importance of relationship, and that's the same thing here, states and rehab educators. We need to kind of reengage, if you will. I think because of the pandemic. I think that relationship to some extent has kind of impacted. And so make sure that you have a working relationship with your individual program directors and also to think about like, well, when jobs are going to be available, you know, let's say, hey, we're going to have something in May, well, usually they might contact us maybe in April. If you can be a little bit more proactive, if you know something's coming down the pipe, let us know earlier because then we can kind of, hey, these are coming available. I guess the final thing I'll just say, we've done this historically in Pennsylvania and over the last couple of years, it's been phased out. I'm hoping it'll get back phased in. Think about allocating a portion of your budget to offering paid internships. If you can give students the opportunity to say, look, it's a paid internship, you're going to get some income because they're poor, even though they have the training grant. Most programs, that's not going to cover all of the expenses. So providing that kind of paid internship. And in Pennsylvania, I'll say we're fortunate they also provide medical benefits. So you do the paid internship if you do a good job, you know that, Wow, you're going to be hired here. Maybe not this particular office. We do an internship, but one of these offices. And so giving that kind of opportunity and also more importantly is then you can see, I mean, the job interview, anybody can fake it for an hour or two. But when you have somebody for 15 weeks, you know, whether or not, you know, hey, this is a person we want to retain or we don't want to retain. Yeah. So I feel like I've been a little gerbils speed up, but hopefully that that kind of covered it.   Carol: No, I love it. Jim. I think the important thing is to take away from this conversation today is that really VR has got to look at this differently. We cannot be operating the same way we operated 20 years ago. Like times have changed. So we have to deal with the situation where we're at today. We need to be proactive instead of reactive. There are a number of things within our control and we should be good at like we're people, people, relationship building that's in our… like we're good at that, Like buy a muffin for those people. I used to tell folks that whatever you need to do to grease the skids to get things rolling, like really working proactively, looking at your messaging, looking at I love that. Paying for the internships for the folks. Absolutely. We started doing that. I can't believe when I first came, it's like, okay, we're going to have interns come in and we're not going to pay them. Well, nobody has any money. Like, what's wrong with minimum wage or something? Let's give them some money so they'll come and do that. And it is a great insight into how folks can work. I really look forward to us continuing the conversation next month to go through the rest of the study. So I really appreciate your time today and definitely I will put the link for your study out with our podcast announcement as well. So thanks for joining me today. Really appreciate it.   Jim: Thank you. It's a wonderful time and I look forward to talking with you next month.   Speaker1: 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!

Kristen Mackey, Administrator of Arizona Department of Economic Security- Rehabilitation Services Administration; Jacy Wilmes, Managing Analyst Financial Services Administrative Team supporting the Division of Employment and Rehabilitation Services, and Morgan Harmon, Senior Financial Analyst, for the Finance and Business Operations Administration, joined Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM Studio. Kristen, Jacy, and Morgan explain how they have navigated and managed the fiscal support services consolidation at Arizona VR. Learn about the solutions and lessons learned that make Arizona's synergistic approach work for everyone.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: How to Survive a Move in VR support services and Come Up with a Solution that Works for Everyone- Arizona VR   Music} Speaker1: 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. Kristen Mackey, Administrator Arizona Department of Economic Security- Rehabilitation Services Administration, Jacy Wilmes Managing Analyst Financial Services Administrative Team supporting the Division of Employment and rehabilitation services, and Morgan Harmon, Senior Financial Analyst, for the Finance and Business Operations administration are joining me in the studio today. Holy cow, I can barely say all of that, big crowd. So thanks for being here. Kristen, how are things going in Arizona?   Kristen: It's going well. We are settling into a routine of hybrid services and just getting to be really nice time of year here in Arizona. The weather's beautiful.   Carol: Well, you go, girl. I wish it would have been nice when we were there in January. It was not. It was raining. I'm like, What happened?. And Jacy, how are you doing?   Jacy: I'm doing great. Have a baby on the way right in the middle of July. So, you know, perfect time to have a baby in Arizona when it's 120 degree weather.   Carol: Oh, wow. Well, congrats on that. That's pretty cool. And Morgan, I got to see you out at CSAVR. How are things going?   Morgan: Yeah, it was great being out there. Great seeing everybody. Things are going well from my end. Got some vacations planned that I'm really looking forward to.   Carol: Excellent. Excellent. Well, thanks for being here today, guys. Really appreciate it. Kristen, you were actually on my very first podcast back in May of 2021, talking about how VR is going to look post-pandemic. That cracks me up because it seems like a decade ago and so much has changed since then.  For our listeners, our fiscal team at the VRTAC-QM have been working with Arizona combined under an intensive agreement, and we've gotten to know Kristen and her team so much better and are also working with both the DSA fiscal staff and the Division Administration fiscal staff. It is a really complicated setup, but we're going to get to that in a minute. So coming off the recent CSAVR conference, I thought it was really fitting to talk about how to survive a move in support services and come up with a solution that works for everyone. And I was talking with so many different VR agencies and folks are struggling with this movement of support services. I'm talking about, you know, moving your fiscal team, your HR, your IT from under the VR purview into more of a shared services model or up at the DSA level or sometimes even a move where it's going to a statewide entity.   Carol: And that is really common with IT. Now, you can't stop the DSA from consolidating services since it's happening everywhere. So let's figure out how we can work through this to make it work for VR. So when we were on site with Kristen back in January, we saw how this consolidation was working firsthand and we got to meet some pretty terrific people that are very committed to learning and understanding the VR nuanced pieces of the work. And so I wanted to break this story of what happened in Arizona. And I think you all can be of help to some other states. Now, I need to make one more disclaimer. No state has a perfect system and everybody struggles still, but they have really taken a great approach in Arizona to get this into a workable situation for all. So let's dig in. So Kristen, kick us off with a little information about Arizona VR. Like how many staff do you have, How many customers and how long have you been with the agency?   Kristen: Thanks, Carol. Arizona is a combined VR unit, and we have about 326 staff members right now that are just in the VR world. And then we have our support services that also help manage the madness as we say. We serve just under 11,000 clients right now. Our numbers are slowly starting to trickle back up, but we're still about 30% less than we were prior to the pandemic. I have been with the agency for 15 years. I started as a brand newbie transition counselor and had worked my way up and was in the policy unit when WIOA came into fruition. So that was a great place to be at that time and then moved on into the administrator role a couple years after that.   Carol: Well, it positions you very well being in that role with WIOA coming into play for sure. So Jacy, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and current role?   Jacy: Yeah, I graduated from Iowa State with a degree in finance back in May 2020, right when the pandemic hit is when I graduated. This was my very first job out of college, and I started off and I was actually supposed to be the WIOA and Employment Administration analyst, but we had someone leave and I got swung into the RSA role. There was a lot of learning. So I was a financial analyst fresh out of college, really just got thrown into this position a ton of learning for about a year and two months on that program. Got it in a pretty decent spot and in the Financial Services Administration world and then got switched over to the unemployment insurance program. So I became a senior financial analyst over there. I worked on that program for about 9 to 10 months and think for everyone in RSA, just be glad you're not in UI. So yeah, and then I took over the management analyst position on the team, which is kind of just the workflow manager for the team. So we have a supervisor who's a senior managing analyst and then I'm right under him, so I just manage all the workload on the team. I review all the Fed reports. I review everyone's documents. I kind of get the whole team in the same groove with our actual workload.   Carol: I like it. I like that you used groove. You can tell you're all in a good groove for sure. Appreciate that. How about Morgan, Over to you. The same question.   Morgan: I graduated from ASU, got my degree in economics, and right after graduating I went the personal finance route where I started off as a broker for Charles Schwab, got my series licenses, talked with clients, place trades all day. I enjoyed it. But I had a friend who worked for the state's Department of Economic Security, actually over UI who would reach out to me like every few months is like, Hey, you should come work with me. And so about a year and a half ago, I took the leap. I left my job with Charles Schwab and came to work on public finance for the government. And I really haven't looked back since. I've really enjoyed my time here. I enjoy the people that I've been working with currently on a financial planning and analysis team with a great group of people. But being placed over RSA has definitely come with its challenges. It feels like the previous analysts in my role have all found pieces of a puzzle that they've been putting together and then when they leave, it's like they move that puzzle and things are still somewhat in place, but other pieces have moved and then it's just trying to put it all together. And I've enjoyed that challenge. I've enjoyed learning the program. And yeah, we've got a great group of people here.   Carol: Yeah, very cool. We saw that when we were down in January. That's why I just thought, I've got to talk to this group because you guys really have a unique setup and I think it will be important for other people to hear about that. So, Kristen, why don't you talk to us about the overall structure of the organization, like the DSA you live under, what services are under the big DSA and kind of that how this all lines up?   Kristen: Yeah, The Department of Economic Security is one of the largest agencies in state government. We serve more than 2 million clients every year, more than 40 programs to address all of the social and economic needs of those that we serve. DES is employees. We really have more than 8000 employees across the state. So we're a ginormous state agency. Seven program divisions such as adult Protective services, child Support services, developmental disabilities, and then our division, which is employment and rehab services, all of the DOL programs are also within our division. And so we work closely with the WOTC and UI and our local workforce development areas. All of that is under our division. So we are one of the largest divisions within the department as well. Then there's six operational divisions that help keep the lights on and everything that happens to, you know, keep the programs moving. Yeah, as Sarah would say, it's a big dot deal.   Carol: It is a big dot deal. That is a big group. And as Jesse said, we can all be happy we're not in UI.   Kristen: So yeah, we see that firsthand every day being part of our division, the UI madness.   Carol: Oh yeah, absolutely. So, Kristen, when did the change occur for you with this movement of the fiscal team from under your direct purview? Kind of describe what happened at that time.   Kristen: Yeah. You know, the department had been doing some of the shifts and kind of had you had talked about, you know, IT training. What are those services that support the divisions but kind of do the same thing for all of the divisions and all of the programs. And so about 5 or 6 years ago, we had the shift in contracts, training, fiscal, policy. All of those were moved to a shared services model. And under that shared services, you may have a single administrator or a single point of contact for the entire division. And as you just heard, our division is really large and very different in the services that we provide. And so we found that it's not always super helpful to have one person that is spread across all of those different programs. So previous to that, we had the fiscal staff reported directly to the RSA administrator and that fiscal person had a team of individuals under them. We had very tenured staff in those positions. We had people that retired from their positions. And so the work then became, you know, it was a unit. They all learned from each other. They had been through monitoring. They had known all the fiscal people and federal RSA. They had done all of the work. And so I think we're not immune to what business is now, right? People retire, new people come in, people leave, people shuffle. And we found that we just had staff that didn't have as much knowledge of our RSA programs and didn't know the technical side of the work either.   Carol: Gotcha. So this new structure, it's kind of a little confusing still to me. A little bit. If we could like go through what does this exactly look like? And Kristen, maybe you talk from the highest level and then I'm going to go to you because you have like the next chunk and then Morgan can talk about like, how does this all fit for the fiscal?   Kristen: Yeah, it is complicated. The department has the operational division, which is the division of finance operations or financial operations. That's where Jacy is housed. So they do kind of the big bucket activities under the grants management portion of the work. And then within our division we have the Finance and Business Operations Administration. So that is where Morgan and team are housed. And Morgan and Jacy, they work very closely together to manage the aspects of the work. And then, you know, I'm a pest and throw myself in there every once in a while, more often than they probably wish to understand, you know, how do we manage the work and what needs to get done and when.   Carol: That sounds good. So. Jacy, you pick it up from where Kristen kind of talked about it, Like, how does this flow between you and Morgan?   Jacy: Yeah, if I use acronyms, Financial Services Administration, we call FSA. That's where I'm housed. So an FSA, we kind of like Kristen was saying, we manage the big buckets of things. We do the big Fed reports, we do all of the federal drawdowns, we manage the payment systems, we manage the budgets in our accounting system. So when we get new award letters, Kristen sends them over to us. We load them in, match everything up to what the feds have sent us. We reconcile the revenue we receive to make sure that we're actually spending it down. We do a lot of analysis that are kind of more higher level and the way we work with Morgan and team, I would say they're more in the weeds of things. They see a lot of the actual invoices where we just see an expenditure into a category. So we'll see personal services, employee related expenditures, while they may see the actual documentation for that cost. So the way we work with Morgan is we just really rely on their knowledge of the program itself because like Kristen said, in division of financial operations were moved around a lot. So I'm the managing analyst on the team. I'm over our employment administration. I dabble in a little bit of childcare so we don't have a vast knowledge of each and every program. We try to become a subject matter expert in each one. When I came on, I was actually a subject matter expert for FSA in RSA because that was the one I spent the most time on. And then I'm also a subject matter expert on UI. I don't have the most expertise in the other areas and that's where other people come into play and that's where we utilize them. It's an interesting setup. Whenever we do an analysis specifically for our spending down our match. As everyone knows, spending down match is very complicated with RSA just having to meet a 15% pre-ets and also 21% state match. We work with Morgan and team to kind of utilize the client system they use and also our accounting system to come up with, okay, how much have we actually spent, what are we authorized? And then also just utilizing them for any questions we have when we see expenditures or anything on the federal report that just looks a little off from what we think we should be reporting.   Carol: Gotcha. So I was thinking and you just graduated from school in 2020 and look at all the buckets that you are over or impacting. That is a lot. Good for you. Good for you.   Jacy: Thank you.   Carol: So, Morgan, tell us about like, okay, now you're the weed guy, so you're the weeds. How does this I shouldn't have said it that way. So sorry. How does that all work? How does that work? Being the weed guy.   Morgan: It's fun. I say that with air quotes. Jacy explained it really well. Kind of our relationship there. What I would say a lot of my job is working with the programs like the various nuances that each program has, how they work with clients. We take, like the Transition School to Work program, where the ones that approve the budgets, we send out those invoices, we make sure that we're collecting that money and if necessary, we'll do an expenditure correction and a pretest, which would then send a Jacyso that he manages that at the grant level. I'm looking at it all on the program level. So my main deliverable that I provide each month is a budget packet, looking at each individual program that all feeds into like the Section 110 grant or independent living. We look at each of those programs, how they're performing, how they can improve and then go from there.   Carol: Yeah, I have to say, your budget packet was really impressive because you guys had showed us the reporting that you do and I'm like, Oh wow. I had told Kristen, I'm like, You are actually very fortunate that you have these fine gentlemen who really get at a lot of great information about what is exactly happening with the financial position of the program.   Kristen: Yeah, I'll give credit to Morgan, too. I mean, like I said, we had tenured staff and, you know, I think we all thought we were doing it just right. And as we dig in, we learned that maybe we weren't just doing it just right over the years.   Carol: Right.   Kristen: And so just having that fresh look into what is actually happening and are we doing it the right way. Morgan and Jacy and the team have done a really great job at reevaluating our processes and making sure that we're heading in the right direction.   Carol: Well, and since you brought that up, Kristen, you would let us know there was quite a bit of turnover, and that has seemed to now stabilize. Like that core group that is around now seems good. And you've all been around for more than six months, which is really, really nice. So Kristen, how do you keep that momentum and knowledge alive with this turnover that's been happening?   Kristen: We think we're still working on it, right? Recognizing and know that the teams have folder structures in the background that we look for access to. But all of the reports that. Morgan. And are working on. And I'm amazed at the work they do in their Excel spreadsheets and books in the macros and the databases and everything. I don't understand all of that. And so you see these documents are housed in folders and it's really up to them to try to figure out like, what is this? You know, they can push a button and it'll pull things forward. But is that really the right information? So I'm really fortunate that both of the teams, I think, are working towards memorializing what is it that we're doing and how does it work and what is the actual behind the scenes work that, you know, what are we pulling into these documents? It's not just relying on a preformatted sheet and having it just pull what it's always pulled. So just trying to just be aware and think. My role is I poke quite a bit. Is this right? Do we know what that's pulling? Can we identify what that means? So just allowing some space for additional questioning versus just assuming that what's been there and always there is right. Because think we love the people that worked with us before and nothing against them, but we need to make sure that we're doing it the right way at this point in time.   Carol: Yeah. And love it, Kristen, that your team is always really willing to say don't understand what this report means. I love that. I think it was Jacy and Morgan were handing you some stuff and we were all in a meeting and you're like, Okay, what does this mean? Can you guys walk me through this? And I love that because then Morgan and Jacy have a really nice way, a good style of talking in plain language to us non-accountant kind of people or whatever, and could explain the process really well. It was cool.   Jacy: Yeah. So I think there's a few things I could add to that just because, like Kristen said, there's a lot of files we use. So I think one thing that we've really been working on as an agency in general is just standard operating procedure. When we create a file, we also create the steps to update the file. What we're looking for in the file. When I came on, it was my third month was when the RSA17 dropped. That's when it became a brand new report. So I had to create the entire template in Excel. I had to create all the backup documentation that goes into that report. And it was very confusing. And I think every quarter it's still a work in progress of like the deeper understanding of that report. And now they come out with new kind of technical assistance for it and it's really helpful. So we kind of update our ways of how we update it. We talk a lot with Patricia, our RSA liaison, and she's very helpful on telling us, Oh, like this is what you should be doing here. So those are the kind of things we do on the finance side of things is we create a standard procedure, we create actual templates so that way it doesn't have to be redone. It's just the next quarter someone can take my template and add on to it and then also see the standard procedures of like, okay, this is how I would update this. We also specifically for everything we do, we go through a multiple step review process. So for federal reporting on the team, three people review it and those three people could all have a different experience with federal reports and they could ask very good questions. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was Kristen mentioned that me and Morgan have been really good at supporting, but to be honest, we couldn't do it without the advice or what Kristen and the team wants. At the end of the day, we're support services. We provide what the program thinks is useful. We try to just update whenever we have our monthly projections meeting, and that's when Kristen kind of mentions like, Hey, I don't think this is as useful as it can be or hey, like I think this is really good. Please keep this in there. And we constantly are updating our packet to meet those needs of our divisions.   Carol: Yeah, that's what I loved about you guys most because there is this really back and forth and this fluid flow and it isn't super rigid. Like, well, we developed this report and this you get what you get. So that is like one of my favorite parts. I know when I was working with your person that does a contract monitoring and just was able to review that standard operating procedure on that, which was super well done. And there were just a few little pieces to include in with current reg changes and things like that. Super responsive. Like I thought the work that you all are doing with those standard operating procedures is just you're nailing it. It's really good, really good. So I know our team was super impressed with the work of everybody, but I really wanted to go into a little more about that work Morgan does. So as I'm understanding, he is still on your side of the house, at least. Kristen, within the Finance Administration, within your division, and he has this colleague Zach. And so I got a chance to do some initial training with Zach as he first onboarded because of course VR is a big, interesting topic with lots of weird terms and acronyms and trying to get him grounded. But Morgan, I was wondering if you could walk us through a little bit more about the work you do for the VR program. And you got a little more in the weeds and you were starting to do analysis on some different things for folks. So can you talk a little more about that?   Morgan: Of course, the way that we used to be structured is our team had about three or more analysts that all worked under RSA, but back during COVID, that was cut down to two analysts. And then when I accepted the job, I was the only analyst doing the work that I do, which was working directly with the programs. Mike would meet with the various program heads over Behavioral Health Services Transition school to work, meet with them. We'd talk about the programs, figure out what kind of work they needed or adjustments they needed from a financial perspective, and then would take that information, roll it all into our budget packets, and then go present that to Kristen. The hard part of the job is it felt like I was routinely just turning a wheel. I was looking at the previous work that the analysts were doing, trying to piece together what they did, but then I didn't want to break anything, so I just kind of kept it in their same process. It's been a learning and growing process, trying to piece together RSA from the training that I received. And then about three months ago we were able to bring on another analyst to help support RSA as well. And I feel like the knowledge and the core that we have around this program is growing significantly to the point where I'm now able to work with Zach. He's able to handle a lot of the day to day tasks, making sure that we're getting these invoices sent out, that we understand the numbers that are in Libra or System seven, what we're reporting for the account balances and making sure that we're actually properly tracking where our dollars are being spent, if they're going into the correct program or what reports might need to be adjusted because we might be over reporting on a grant, especially if we can't understand where that money is coming from.   Carol: Want to ask you a follow up question on that, Morgan because I had seen it on site. You were starting to dig in and you were doing this analysis. Have you had any kind of aha moments as you've been looking at the data, as you're putting information together for Kristen and have some things like just jumped out at you about what you're looking at?   Morgan: Absolutely. And I think the biggest one recently was understanding Match and how match plays into everything that we do, where that money is coming from, how much we're receiving, how the state dollars are matched with federal dollars and how we're reporting that. And then have we been reporting that properly between projects being 100% fed? Have we been mixing state in there and found past reports that that's been happening? And so now we got to go through and correct it and feel like building a foundation of the program has really helped me understand what needs to be done from a financial perspective. Understanding the grants, where this money is coming from, how match plays into that, and then spreading that out across the programs. It was really eye opening to understand that this is what we are managing and this is what we need to fix.   Carol: Yeah, I love that. I do. I love that. Kristen, I just wondered back to you, how is this work of Jacy and Morgan really impacted you in your ability to manage?   Kristen: Gosh, like having the line of sight into the budget and the projections and the out years. What's our reversion potential? What do we have like managing and seeing all of that nearly on a monthly basis is the point we're trying to get to. I remember thinking previously we got these budget packets are beautiful, but wasn't sure like what grant your money is, is coming from. Is this what where does this go? How did how am I. So at a month to month glance it was fantastic. But from an overall big picture of managing the grants over multiple years was a challenge for me and preaches a very specific example. What is being applied? You know, how far am I away and how much is that going to detract from the overall grant? So having some of those conversations and I think as a group, we've said these things out loud and we've tried to figure out, okay, how can we have documents that help all of us understand what's happening? Because not only do we have ourselves right and we are involved in, you know, usually daily, from at least our perspective, you know, probably as well. But we have a line of leadership that's also that we have to report to that doesn't understand and won't ever understand all of these nuances. And we need to be able to say to them in a very clear picture, this is what where we're currently at. And so that building those documents not only for ease for me and my team to understand, but for us to also be able to communicate that up the chain very easily, given all of the strange nuances that we have.   Carol: Yeah, I've really liked your approach because you have included your leadership team in so you know, you've had Brandi in there and your other folks and then how you communicate with your boss Lynn. Like, I love that. And she was participating in parts of our trainings when we were out. And I love how you kind of grabbed this whole group of people because you're all better if everybody understands what's going on.   Kristen: Absolutely. And I'm big on if we don't know, we just need to ask. Nobody's going to get hurt feelings. Let's just be open and honest and try to understand what's happening. And am an over communicator will probably see everybody and their dog on something. And you know, if they get it too many times, that's fine. I'd rather people have it and be aware than not be aware.   Carol: Yeah, that's good stuff. So Jacy, I remember back to our meeting in January and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, this guy is really kind of at the DSA level you were super engaged. And really I felt like. You are so on top of things. How did you get up to speed on your role working with VR? I mean, like in a short amount of time. Think about it. You graduate in 2020, you did UI, you've done all this other stuff and now the VR world. And I feel really confident in your abilities and your learning. How did you do that?   Jacy: First, I just want to kind of say the culture of the Financial Services Administration is a lot of overachieving. We have a lot of smart people in FSA who are just very passionate about the work they do. So when I came in, it was really I wouldn't say there was like downtime or chill time. It was like, we got to figure this out, we got to figure this out. So it was like we in FSA are just very passionate and also our culture is just overachieving. Like we all are striving to be the best version of ourselves, and I think that pushes each other to that limit. Sometimes I work really late, sometimes my boss works really late and sometimes it's not even necessary. Sometimes we don't even have to work late. We're just really passionate about what we do. Yeah, so I'll kind of give you the rundown of when I first started, when I first started and came on like I mentioned, I was supposed to be on a different program. The person in RSA had taken a position in California and left, so I was in a day's notice. I was moved over to RSA and started doing the drawdowns, started doing transfers, started doing loading budgets. So I was really thrown into it. There wasn't a whole lot of training for me. I was just kind of told like, Hey, I need you to load this in our accounting system, or Hey, can you please process this transfer from a different state agency? And I was confused. I was really confused for my first month, probably I was trying and trying to understand, but there was just so much going on that I just had no idea what I was doing. But I was still processing stuff. And then I would say one of the things my boss at the time, I was a financial analyst, he was a senior manager and also a few positions higher than me. He told me like, Hey, we don't have a subject matter expert over VR or RSA and FSA. And at the same time, our counterpart who had been in the position for over a year had just left too. So then Morgan's boss got thrown into the position. So it was two new people with no resources on VR essentially for finance side of things. So obviously the program has people who are very knowledgeable, but the finance side of things, we were two people brand new. So one of the things my boss told me was, okay, you're going to study the regulations every day. That's your daily work. So I would literally go on to the CFR, the Code of Federal Regulations, and I would read it. I would go to VR and I would read, okay, so we need to meet a 15% match requirement. And I would also read about our 21% match requirement and all that's included in there. And then I would go into our kind of reports and stuff and I would say like, okay, so we have appropriation for the entire division, but we use it mostly for VR. We also have a VR appropriation that match and that only takes up half of match. So where's the rest of the match coming from? And we get these different revenue sources and there's just a lot to piece together. And so at the same time, you know, Trevor was asking me questions, I was asking him questions. And I think that really pushed us both to learn. Like we were like, okay, they don't know. And I don't know, like someone needs to know. It was a long process. I wouldn't say I knew anything in my first month. I barely knew anything in my second month. By the third month, I probably had a little bit better understanding, but I'd still go into meetings and be asked questions and I'd say I'd have to look into that. I have no idea. I would literally have the code of federal regulations on for every meeting, and I would literally be typing in code words, trying to figure out like, how do I answer this question? And then eventually, after about six months, I understood those regulations really well and I could explain them. And I think that also really helped me with my reporting because now I knew, okay, this is what I need to look for in our accounting system to pull into this report. I need to pull in these different appropriations. I need to pull in what we call program code in our accounting system. I need to pull these in to get the revenue for our match. I need to get the expenditures. So it took a long time and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still learning. I'm still like, I think when you guys came, it was eye opening for me. I was like, okay, there's some stuff that we could update or some stuff that we can improve. And I spent a lot of time on RSA still, you know, just trying to get the analysts that we hire on up to speed, but also just trying to understand all that I've learned on that program and try to communicate that to the analysts. And it's not easy and it doesn't work in a day. It doesn't work in a month. It takes multiple months of studying and multiple months of working through problems and issues that come up. I think another big thing was changing how we like we just changed our packet. We present to Kristen every month to include different things and we're still we're trying to work on updates for our fiscal year 2024, trying to get rid of, you know, we had this page and I think it confuses everybody. I don't think it's helpful. So we're trying to fix it so that it's like it just makes a lot more sense. So we're still updating daily and I think that helps my understanding of the finance side of it. You know, when I update these files, when I create these analysis and create these views, it's like, okay, now I understand like what this is actually showing.   Carol: I love that you've done that because like, it's so key. I've told other folks as we worked in other states, part of it is understanding and I'm glad you go to the Electronic code of federal regs. I mean, that's the place to go. Because it's always the most current. There are other versions of things out there, but the eCFR is the best. But you take in just a few minutes every day to read and learn. That's how you learn. I mean, that's how we all learn. You just have to go at it a little bit at a time. You're not going to you know, it is like drinking through a fire hose. You aren't going to absorb it all in one, you know, one day or a month or 2 or 3. It takes time as you're working through the pieces of this program. But you started somewhere, and I think that's such a critical message for folks because I think people get so involved in the transaction or I'm doing the thing I'm doing whatever event, I'm putting the thing together. But you're doing it in abstract because you don't understand what you're putting together. You're following the motions, but you may not have all that deep understanding behind it. And that comes with learning. And so good for you. I mean, I'm really impressed about that. So, Kristen, what do you think is fundamentally made, this whole situation work for you?   Kristen: Well, you just heard the dedication of Jacy and Morgan really been blessed to have individuals that care about the program and wanting to do right and do well because the mission of the program is so important. And so I think we've been blessed in that. We haven't always had people that have been so invested. And so having that and really building that team, feeling a sense of team, like we're all in this together, we're all learning together, it can't be really a us versus them type of thing, which I think is easy to do. And I know that even from program side, it was really hard when my folks got taken, right? It was like, Oh, I kind of took that a little personally. Oh yeah. And it was hard for those team members too. And so how do we continue? How did we keep people together and organized around the work that we do? It's not us, them, it's the people that we serve. And so I think that's been a really key and critical element and everybody can join together in that vision. Again, I said it before, I am a past. I don't know what I don't know and I don't have a problem asking questions. I don't have a problem kind of poking and saying, Well, what about how about I'm kind of more of a vision kind of person. So if I've got something up there and I tell the team all the time, like don't fiscal speak, don't have it. So I'm just going to kind of say what I'm thinking and would this work or how does that work? Have we considered? And so just having the opportunity for those conversations is, I think, really helpful and just setting the culture of no questions, a bad question. We're not here to attack each other. We're just trying to figure out how do we do this better. And I really believe that everybody on the team has that mindset of how do we get better at what we're doing so that we can ultimately better serve our clients?   Carol: Yeah, it's been a great approach. So I want to get to some lessons learned because I know we have listeners and we have them from all over the country and there's folks in the similar situation to you. You know, people have lost their teams that were under the VR purview. They've been moved up to a DSA level. They don't have maybe as intricate levels as you guys all have. But what would you say are a couple lessons you learned that might help people in a similar position in another state? Is there 1 or 2 things and Jacy, I'm going to go to you first on this.   Jacy: Yeah, I think from the finance side of things, federal reporting is not the same agency to agency, program to program on our team. We manage every program for the state or for our agency, which is 90. So we do 90 reports and we get kind of this groove of reporting and just, Oh, this makes sense. The RSA17 is different. It's a different beast. It is not at all similar. The program is not similar to anything Department of Labor. So I think as a support services shared services team, really getting away from trying to manage all your grants the same way, I think we really learned we have to do this differently for each of our programs. We can't have the same process because it just won't work. That's one lesson we really learned and we've been really working on trying to not separate it, but just manage it differently. Another lesson I think I've learned is, you know, I was really shy, quiet when I started. I didn't like reaching out to people. I just felt I was young, just graduated. I felt like I was going to annoy people who've been here a really long time. They're going to be like, Why doesn't he know this? But now that I've been here a while, ask questions, communicate. Like Kristen always says, she thinks she's a pest. I don't think that's being a pest at all. I actually appreciate meeting with people and talking through things because then I learn something, but also problems just get solved so quickly and you communicate. I think problems just grow and grow and grow when they're not mentioned or caught. And even if it's not an issue, but if it's brought up, then we can explain it and then, okay, everyone feels comfortable with this. Now. I really just think those are the kind of two big lessons I've learned.   Carol: I cannot imagine you being shy. I just have to say, I always see you as a person that's very willing to talk. So those are great lessons. Morgan How about you? I'm going to go to you next. Any lessons learned that you could share with other folks in a similar position?   Morgan: I 100% agree with what Jacy said, especially when it comes to communication. Communication is key. Being able to ask questions, being able to know who your points of contact are for different programs. Being able to reach out to them for support, asking them questions just so that you have a good understanding of what you are doing is big. I would say, especially for the first few months I was there with Jacy. I was shy. I didn't know who to reach out to. I heavily relied on the analyst who was in my position prior. And it wasn't until I was able to break that mold and start acting on my own and start reaching out to people, even if it wasn't the right person to reach out to. I now knew the answer to that question and could then sort through problems on my own. Well, not necessarily on my own, with the support of who I needed and the various points of contact are. And the next is take your time. Take your time to learn what we're working with. Take your time to look through the numbers of the budget, to share what questions you have on the numbers. Even if something doesn't quite make sense. I frequently reach out to Jaycee to understand what this program code is and why are we reporting it in this way, and are we missing something if we're not reporting it properly? And so I would say those are my two biggest lessons and something that I try to instill in Zach as he's coming up through the training process as well. Ask the questions that you don't know the answer to and take your time to think about what you're doing.   Carol: I love that. That's really good. You guys are all super good mentors as the new folks come in too. I really appreciate that. Kristen, I'm going to let you have the last words and a couple lessons you've learned.   Kristen: Be involved. Didn't realize the impact as an administrator that I needed to know on the fiscal side and again, coming from program highly involved in what changes do we need, what do we need to do to programmatically to do better. Think fiscal was more of an afterthought. Like the money comes and the money goes and we'll just continue to do our program work. But really understanding what the impacts of the fiscal and the behind the scenes fiscally also advocating, as you heard, I mean, there's just a ton of work. So while there's shared services, but advocating for those direct supports. So Jacy is spread across several teams. But I'm fortunate that we have a direct support team in Morgan and Zach and their upline leadership is apportioned directly supporting. So I think that's given the capacity and the bandwidth for Morgan to be able to understand a little bit more, for Zach to be able to understand a little bit more jargon, ask those questions versus just plugging along to keep the daily lights on. I feel like that's really been super helpful for us. Finally, just, you know, again, both of us have said communicate. We just need to be able to ask the questions of each other and try to get the answers we need and plan forward. Right. It's a continuous improvement. So nobody's expecting it all to be done tomorrow, but continuous improvement and then I will plug the VRTAC. We've never had an opportunity where we can bring on an analyst and have an analyst have, you know, kind of a quick one hour, two hour meeting. Right. You know, never have that opportunity to understand and just get those words out there. Period of performance, you know, grant management, all of those things that as a program person don't understand, I can't really convey very well. So very appreciative of the work and opportunity to have you all help us in expanding our knowledge there.   Carol: Yeah, we appreciate that. We really want to get folks started on the right foot. So well said. Kristen, I really appreciate you all being on with me today and thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to your continued good work. Have a great day.   Kristen: Thank you. You too.   Jacy: Thank you. You too.   Morgan: Thank you.   Music} Speaker1: 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!

Scott Dennis, Assistant Superintendent of the Maryland Division of Rehabilitative Services (DORS), joins Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM Studio and tells us about how Maryland DORS increased recruitment and decreased resignations by raising salaries to compete in the regional job market. Learn how they opened the door and proved the case.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Music} Speaker1: 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. Scott Dennis, assistant superintendent of the Maryland Division of Rehabilitative Services or DORS, is joining me in the studio today. So thanks for joining me. How are things going in Maryland, Scott.   Scott: Things are going well, Carol. I appreciate the opportunity to join today's podcast. Excellent.   Carol: So a little background for our listeners. I did have some familiarity with Maryland DORS. I had worked with Sue Page. She was the former director and a national level. We were on the executive committee together and Sue and I also did a couple panel presentations and that was super fun. And I was so disappointed, you know, when she had retired in '18, I had just worked with her. And then like the next week she goes, I'm retiring. She had sent me a note and I knew you had been her deputy and I think you were named right in 2019 to replace her, was that right?   Scott: Yeah. I came into this position an acting role in 2018. Sue left in June of 2018 and I was named, the Acting. Was permanently placed into the position in January of 2019.   Carol: Gotcha.   Scott: Almost five years now.   Carol: Nice. Well, it was really fun because early in '19 you and I, we were working on that RSA workgroup around Rethinking Performance. So I liked getting to know you and realizing, Oh, you're the fiscal guy too. You were the fiscal guy for the agency. So it's been fun to have that kind of a little lens into your agency. So I know you've had some unique challenges that we're going to get into later. And I understand that there had been some previous runs at trying to get employee wages increased, which, you know, had failed. So this was all prior to you being at the helm. And the state of the recruitment and retention issue nationally has been front and center for every VR agency, I think. And you were able to more recently secure a rather significant employee pay increase. So I am sure our listeners are on the edge of their seats and are anxious to hear, How did you make that happen? So let's dig in. So Scott, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, like how long you've been with DORS and how have you got to the position you hold today? What's kind of the path you took?   Scott: Well, sure. I kind of happened into VR. I was working in a private sector in retail and was looking to do something different than that. And as anybody who's ever worked in retail, there's a lot of long hours that are very odd and so forth. So I was looking to do something different and happened to come across an advertisement in the paper for a director for this program called the Business Enterprise Program for the Blind.   Carol: Oh, wow.   Scott: It kind of struck me. And so I said, Well, I've got a retail background, I've got a business background, let me get my shot at it. And so I put in my application and went through the interview process. And about four months later in 1990, I became the director of the Maryland Business Enterprise Program for the Blind, which was kind of unique because my background was not in the area of either VR or in blindness, but I did bring that business background, which is what the agency at the time was looking for. It was a great experience. The business enterprise programs for the blind bring their own unique challenges and so forth, and trying to operate a business environment inside of a state government. And you've got some real challenges in trying to do stuff fast and an organization is trying to slow you down. But it was a great experience. I was the director for BEP for six years and then our state director, who was Bob Burns at the time, said, I need some help over at DDS. And I went, What's a DDS? Because my focus had been strictly on BEP. And so he sent me over to the Disability Determination Services as the assistant director over there, and I oversaw sort of the administrative side of the DDS and did a number of activities over there. We moved into a much larger facility. We also at that time moved off a state legacy system onto *Levi. And for any of those who have been around a long time and have a program, you understand how far back that went. After about five years of DDS, moved over, back over here to the side of the shop and became the director of business services, which included all the administrative functions of the agency and sort of the financial piece of it. And so I was that until 2018 when I became the assistant state superintendent.   Carol: Very cool. I had no clue. Your days started with BEP. That is amazing. Good for you. You have a definitely a great broad history there. Paint a picture for our listeners about DORS and what agency you live under. What's your designated state agency and how many staff do you have in VR? And you already said you had DDS, but is that service under your purview as well?   Scott: Yeah, we're  housed within the Maryland State Department of Education. We're probably one of the first big divisions of the Maryland State Department of. We were created in 1929 and we at that time the division had two employees and a budget of $15,000. And the only reason I know any of this is because we've got the enacting legislation sitting out in the hall. We had two employees and $15,000 worth of state appropriation at the time. And of the two employees, one was the director of the agency and the other one was his secretary. He was also the counselor at the time as well. So obviously but we've been here ever since. The Division of Rehabilitation Services is comprised of two main programs that we operate are the VR program, obviously, as well as the program. In total, we've got 648 employees in total, of which 416 of them reside in the VR program and the remaining 232 reside in the DDS program. Within that VR program operates an Office of Field Services, which is very much operated the way the general agencies operate and then we have an Office of Blindness and Vision Services, which operate very much as a blind agency. And so we have a director of each one of those offices. They have their own budget and own staff and so forth. Then we also operate our Workforce and Technology center, which does a lot of our training and so forth, as well as a number of community based services out in the field and so forth. So yeah.   Carol: Yeah, you have a large operation. Holy cow. I didn't realize all of that. That's a bunch.   Carol: So let's talk about your unique position as far as the state. You border other states, as does every state. You know, people probably think duh, but there's something special about where your state is positioned in this country, because I always hear people say that you're the training ground for people that move to RSA. Can you talk about like what that geographical situation has played for you as far as your staff?   Scott: Yeah, and appreciate that. It does provide a unique situation for us. We border Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia as well as D.C. We do have some challenges, especially when we're competing with the federal government. And so because of the federal agencies that are housed here, it has become a real challenge because obviously the states don't pay as much as the federal government does, in particular around the Washington, D.C. area. The salaries are much higher than what we as an agency was able to offer. I mean, in some cases we'd have staff leave and they would nearly double their salaries as a result of that. In some cases, you just can't blame them. It has been a challenge having some of that federal government around, you know, as especially the presence of it, you know, large presence and so forth.   Carol: So we all know about this great resignation, you know, that's been talked about in the news. VRs experienced that itself. So how has that impacted what was happening in your agency? What were you facing for vacancy?   Scott: We were facing a high level of resignation. It was almost I hate coming in in the morning and turning on my computer and opening my email to see how many people resigned that particular day or week. And so we got hit pretty hard. We had about 40 counselors and supervisors, so it was about 30% of our workforce. We had vacancies in and that's on the VR side, on the side. You know, for those agencies that operate that, we had 59 vacancies and our examiners, which was about 45% of that. And, you know, the big culprit was they were going elsewhere, both private and public, to organizations that were paying them substantially more money than what we could afford, at least at the time. It hit us bad.   Carol: Well, I know your number's up there. I'd heard from some other directors talking about you like a 60% turnover in counselors and all these crazy numbers. It's hard to imagine how the work is able to get done. So obviously, you've got this geographic situation, you've got the great resignation going on, and you decided to embark on a journey where you wanted to get these wages increased. Can you tell us more about what went into that?   Scott: It was more than just me. I mean, it was a total agency effort. And I'm talking about from the top. In 2021, we got a new state superintendent who was from Texas. And so he was obviously very new, very young and high energy. And so being one of the large divisions and he wanted to have a one on one with me. And so we sat down and we talked. And what he wanted to know what DORS was to begin with and what VR was because he'd always been in education and so forth. And so we, you know, we talked and his first question, you know, real serious question was, what's your biggest challenge? I said, I can't hire, I can't retain because our salaries are so low. And I gave him an example. I said, we've had a recruitment out for three weeks now and we've got one person who is applying and they don't even meet the qualifications down in Montgomery County and Prince George's County, which are two largest counties in the state as far as population, but they're also the two counties that encircle Washington, D.C. And so the obviously the wages down there are extremely high because of the federal government. And so getting any staff at the wages that we were paying was next to impossible. We couldn't recruit, period. That was just the part of the problem. And so, you know, after I told him what the wages were, he even coming from the south out of Texas, even by his standards, the wages were low. So he put together, you know, he tasked the senior management, not only of the Maryland State Department of Education, but also of DORS to start working on a salary adjustment. Obviously, with something like this, it takes all hands on deck because it's just not one person who's doing all the work and guiding this. And so he tasked us and so my staff started doing feelers out to other states to find out what they're going for. We looked at the federal government and some of the positions that they were hiring for that had sort of equal entry level requirements. We looked at our counties. Some of our counties were paying way more than what we were. And so we took all that into consideration in looking at what is it that we wanted our salaries to look like. The other piece of this that was probably sort of the saving grace for us. Our counselors are in a classification series in this state that's only unique to DORS. It doesn't cross other state agencies or anything. And because of that, our Department of Budget and Management allowed us to do what they call an off cycle adjustment. Typically when they take a look at their salary adjustments and so forth and see whether they need to rescale them, they're looking across all the state agencies. They've got to balance who's got money and who doesn't, money when they start to raise salaries for, you know, let's say, an office secretary. Well, every agency has an office secretary. So they've got to have to balance this all out. When they say, okay, we're going to raise the office secretary's levels, well, they only had to look at us. They didn't have to compare us to anybody else, which made it a lot easier. And because a lot of our salaries, the way the state funds us, they put most of our state match dollars into our case services budgets. And so we've got just a small amount that actually goes towards salary. And so when we kind of pulled this together and say, okay, where can we go with this? We said, Hey, for a little bit of investment from the state side, we've got more than enough appropriation and federal funding over here. We can support this without any problem. So the meeting started in September. We kind of got going in earnest just after the Christmas holidays. We spent basically from October through December polling just gathering information. And then in from about January on, we started writing this up, getting everything put together. And then by late April we had the package ready together and we presented it to our Office of Budget and Management and Director of State personnel, and we suggested a threshold that we thought we could go to. They didn't quite agree with that. So there was some negotiating with the Department of Budget and Management, but we landed on a on a figure that was acceptable that they could live with that wasn't so far off that they were going to have problems with other state agencies as well, once they learned about what we had done. Our superintendent really wanted to push our salaries. He wanted it to be the highest in the nation.   Carol: Wow!   Scott: And he was pushing very hard to get us there. Didn't land there.   Carol: So how far did you get? How high did you get to go?   Scott: We got a substantial pay increase for them. We got, depending upon where they started, it was well over 20% pay increase for our counselors and examiners, which really stabilized it. I mean, it kind of gives you an idea, our salaries, starting salaries for what we call our VR counselor ones, which are individuals who come in with just a bachelor's degree, no experience. So we kind of have to build them up. We were starting at like 41,000 between 41 and 42. Our VR 2-counselors are individuals who have come in with a master's degree, no experience or some experience. And they were starting around 44,000 at the time and we were able to get them up. I mean, today our starting salary for counselor one is 57,000 and a couple of months with the new fiscal year will go to 58. Our twos were starting them at 60,000 and they'll go up to 62 in July. And then we have a technical specialist series and these are for individuals who again, have master's degrees, have been here a couple of years. They're starting in the upper 60s and low 70s now.   Carol: Yeah, good for you. That's pretty amazing. So were there other positions included? So it's not like your examiners or counselors. Were there any other types of positions in the agency include?   Scott: Well, we had to go back and do a readjustment because it affected both our counselors and our supervisors because it's a series of counselors, one, twos, technical specialists and supervisors. Then we have our regional supervisors and our regional directors. Well, because of it went up by grades and steps. Basically our regional supervisors were making the same thing as our office supervisors now. And so we had to raise them. When we raised the regional supervisors, they were making the same thing as the regional directors. So we had to raise the regional directors, but it had to happen over the course of time. The first push was the counselor series and so forth, and then we had to come back about a month later and do the rest of the others and so forth. So yeah, it's been sort of a work in progress and we still have some other classifications to take a look at as we kind of move down this path.   Carol: I wondered about that. If you had some work left to do.   Scott: Yeah, yeah, we do. We have to kind of go back. I mean, our support staff, we've got to go back and we've already started that work already to start looking at that group as well, because again, those classifications go across all state agencies, so we have no authority to raise those salaries. So we have to go back and do what we call a reclass them, which means we have to take a look at their classifications, see whether or not it still fits the job duties and so forth. So that's the only way I can raise that series, those individuals up. I just can't do what we did with the counselors. And in some cases, those salaries and all that are all controlled by the union.   Carol: Yes.   Scott: And so you've got to kind of have to work through all that stuff. So those positions take a little bit longer to kind of get through.   Carol: That makes good sense. So how long did that take you for this?   Scott: The first like I said, we started in 20. We started in September when I first met and we started in September. Late October.   Carol: Was that 2021?   Scott: Right.   Carol: Okay.   Scott: And then the pay raise went into effect on July 1st of 2022. So it took us nine months to kind of get it all put together and work through all the processes and doing the negotiation and so forth. So yeah.   Carol: And it's interesting because you are a union state as well. I came from a union state too, so there's extra things that go into play because I know some other folks have been successful across the country, but they didn't have that added complexity to it. So it was good to see you were able to do this in that environment.   Scott: Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things is even though we're part of a union, because the series is strictly DORS, we brought the union in once we had kind of got everything kind of worked through and said, okay, here's what we've done. They could have said, Yeah, no, we don't want you getting a pay raise. We worked at it that way just because and we had to cross even within our parent agency, if our parent agency, the Department of Education had a classification series and some of the stuff that they did, this would have never happened.   Carol: right.   Scott: Because of that uniqueness, we were able to get it done.   Carol: Yeah, the stars were aligned for you, for sure. So how have these increases impacted your staff recruitment and retention?   Scott: Oh, yeah. Big. I mean, it's like I mentioned earlier, we couldn't find staff or if we did, our supervisors and directors were making the decision of, I got to have a body, and so in some cases you're just getting a warm body. This has nothing to do with the person or anything like that. But they were probably individuals that this may not have been the best fit. But because you're sitting there as a supervisor and you've got 3 or 4 empty caseloads sitting on your desk, at least if I can get them in and get them do some work that's less work that I've got to do and so forth. So we were making some decisions on trying to sort of balance whether this was the right fit for people, but also looking at the number of people that are actually applying for the job was extremely low. I mean, we might come up with 4 or 5 individuals that make like really good candidates. And then when you made salary offer to them, they went, Uh, no thanks. In some cases we actually had made salary offers to individuals who had interned with us and wanted to work for us. And then we made the salary offer and they went, no thanks.   Carol: They're like, I can go work at Target instead.   Scott: You're exactly right. Because the salary, especially down in Prince George's and it is extremely high. Maryland has the highest median income in the country. You know, it's driven by about 3 to 4 counties in this state that drive that. And so that kind of shows you how tough it is in some other jurisdictions to find people and retain people is extremely difficult. Like I said, you know, one of those recruitments was just before we put out the salary change where we had gotten one individual. We got the permission to start publishing the new salary and we went from 1 to 40 in about two weeks.   Carol: Wow. Good for you.   Scott: For example, we had a recruitment out for this for about a month and maybe have gotten 25 to 30 applications. We re-advertised and got 170 in 3 weeks. So we went from 30 people to well over 200. So it obviously had a tremendous impact. In fact, I just had a regional director in talking with me earlier this week, talking about the quality of individuals that we're now seeing, because I haven't seen this high level of quality of people that we've gotten in years. So yeah, the impact has been immediate.   Carol: That's terrific. Have you had any staff want to come back? Maybe that left?   Scott: Well, actually, funny you asked that. We went back out to we had several staff. members who left 3 or 4 months earlier, and these were good staff. Sometimes you have staff leave and you go, thank God. Other times, you know, you see staff go out the door and you go, What a loss. And so we had about a half a dozen staff that had recently left that were sort of, oh, man, I hate to lose them. And so we reached back out to them and we were able to get four out of those six back. We almost got five back. But when they went to talk to their new employer, they went, Oh, we'll give you a pay raise. So she ended up getting a pay raise out of it because we told her what we were going to give her and they went higher. That's the benefit of a private sector situation versus, you know, state government type of situation. So we were able to get some seasoned staff back really quick. I mean, literally within weeks after the new pay plan went into effect. So yeah, it's stabilized. I'm seeing right now what I would consider sort of normal turnover. Now you're back down to 5 to 6% turnover rate versus 25 to 30% turnover rate. It's really made a made a difference in the world. It's stabilized the agency. We have a wait list. We had to basically shut it down because we had so many vacancies. I mean, we have had one and we were bringing people off the wait list. We just had to literally just shut it down. We couldn't handle. The individuals that were coming in the door that met the criteria for Category one. We were struggling with that along with our pre-employment. We just couldn't handle. We couldn't do it. So we shut it down.  Once we got stable. Our regional directors and director of Office Field services came to me and said, We can handle bringing people off the waitlist now. And so we've been able to start bringing people back off the waitlist now.   Carol: Good for you. That is terrific news is a big win all the way around. I just wondered if you had any advice for other directors and leaders across the country as there may be interested in doing something like this in their state. What advice would you give them?   Scott: The biggest advice is you've got to get buy in from your senior secretary, superintendent, whoever is your most senior, most person in the agency, because at the end of the day, they're the ones that are really going to have to go to bat and particularly when you start dealing with the counterparts over at your budget office who are always going, Oh, that's going to cost us a dollar. No, I don't think so. That's where you really need to have sort of that political clout to kind of push some of this stuff through, because it's not, it's not easy. And again depending upon the environment, to some degree, we benefited from the environment itself because obviously we weren't the only state agency losing people. And so the state, I think, recognized that they had to do something. Because even other state agencies around us couldn't hire people because of the state wage. And so I think we kind of hit it right at the right time, so we were able to do it. So I think the combination of two. One, we had a superintendent who had no problem to go banging on the secretary of budget management's door and say, I need this in order for this program to function and opening the door and then letting the rest. of the team go to work and prove the case.   Carol: I Like that you said that, prove the case. So if folks wanted to reach out to you. What would be the best way for them to contact you? Because a lot of times our listeners will say, I want to talk to Scott Dennis about what he just said.   Scott: Yeah, I mean, anybody can reach out to me. My email address is Scott Dot Dennis (D e n n i s) @maryland.gov.   Carol: Excellent. I really appreciate you joining me today and congratulations on the win. I just wish you continued success as you're working through your other positions. This is very cool. Thanks, thanks much.   Scott: Not a problem. Thank you, Carol.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!

Joining Carol Pankow in the studio today are Cody Dixon, Director of Operations SARAWorks, and Susan Baker, Program Coordinator II, Alaska VR. SARA provides a solution to VR programs with a client engagement and communications system that automatically gathers needed information at the right time from consumers and providers without staff intervention. SARA uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing and complements CMS functionality. Alaska VR has been an early adapter from SARA's first introduction. Susan tells us how Alaska VR utilizes SARA daily, and Cody brings us up to date with all the latest integrations and new states coming on board with SARA.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   SARA: Technology Solutions States Have Proven to Work -Alaska VR and SARA   {Music} Speaker1: 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 Cody Dixon, Director of Operations, SARAWorks, and Susan Baker, Program Coordinator II, Alaska VR. Thanks for joining me today, you guys. So, Cody, how are things going in the world of SARA?   Cody: Good. We've been extremely busy. We've got a number of new states that are coming on board that we're working with and a number of new features that we're rolling out. So really excited to be here with you today.   Carol: Glad to hear that. So, Susan, how are things going for you in Alaska?   Susan: Well, it's pretty good up here in sunny Alaska. Just kidding. It's about 15 degrees. We still love SARA. We're actually getting an upgrade this weekend that we're really looking forward to. Things are going great.   Carol: Awesome to hear that. Well, I'm in Minnesota, so I can empathize with the Alaska climate. Had some interesting winter weather this year for sure. So for some of our listeners, you may remember back to the days of WINTAC and a special project that was done to bring SARA to Voc Rehab, and the original idea was to provide a solution to VR programs that used this new kind of client engagement and communication system that automatically gathered needed information at the right time from consumers and providers without staff intervention. SARA uses artificial intelligence or AI and natural language processing and is complementary to a case management functionality. So if you fast forward seven years, SARA's really undergone some very cool changes and is once again part of a pilot program within our VRTAC for Quality Management. And I'm also really excited about hearing from a state that was at the forefront of using this and has remained a continued champion years later. So let's dig in. So, Cody, I'm going to turn to you first. Can you tell our listeners about yourself and what you do at SARA and a little more about your products?   Cody: Yes, absolutely. So I'm the director of operations for SARAWorks, and we are an extremely small team. We are growing. But essentially, historically, I've been responsible for all of our new customer implementations doing the training, the configuration of SARA, making sure that SARA is doing what it's supposed to do for the agency, and then of course, keeping track of our support staff for our wonderful service that we provide, working with our development team as well. So just kind of making sure that all the day to day stuff is running as it should. We've got our primary product, which is SARA, and SARA is our application for counselors and case managers. And it's used typically to stay in contact with clients or consumers that are receiving services under the idea that we're really trying to use SARA as a communication hub with the idea to bridge that connection gap in human services. We believe that the good technology can be used and is going to be essential for creating human connection so that people don't fall through the cracks. And that's kind of where SARA comes in.   Carol: Yeah, like that, that you use that term communication hub. That sums it up really well. So Susan, can you give our listeners a little more information about yourself? What's your role in Alaska? How many counselors do you have and the number of customers that you all serve?   Susan: Sure. I am a Jill of all trades up there for in Alaska, a program coordinator. So really what that means is responsible for our quality assurance, our program reporting, our data requirements, our policies and procedures. And I'm also in charge of our case management system, our SARA communication system, our SharePoint system. So there's quite a bit of an IT aspect software support that comes out of my role as well. We are, you know, a big state geographically, but a small state population wise. We always like to remind Texas of that, but we only have about 25 counselors spread out through the state, though. But that's over you know, we're talking potentially 2500, 3000 miles apart in some places. And right now, our open caseload right now is around 1000 - 1500. Yeah, we're small, but mighty.   Carol: Wow. That puts some perspective. I didn't realize you had 25 counselors across that expansive Alaska. So do folks have to, like, fly into places? Because I know some of your areas are so remote, how do they get to see certain customers?   Susan: Absolutely. Yes. We have a few counselors that are dedicated to serving our rural populations, flying into hubs like Barrow, Ketchikan, Pretty amazing. It's a kind of a unique situation. They're flying in for about a week, trying to get as many informational referrals out there, then to get as many applications as they can going. And if there are open cases in that area or village, they're trying to work them as well. We do a lot with SARA helping us keep in touch when we're not in the area.   Carol: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That gives such an interesting perspective. So, Cody, I understand SARA's gone through some changes and can you tell us what happened with the company and like where you live right now, it's different.   Cody: Yeah, definitely. So back in September, SARA was acquired the company itself, the Career Index Corporation, the founders of SARA, was acquired by a company called Radical Health, which is a company that acquires software companies that are in the human services space and put together a new division called Radical Apps that SARA was the first product to fall into. And so under radical apps we have SARAWorks, which is how we've rebranded our company. So for some of our folks out there that recognize TCI or the Career Index we are now, SARAworks with our product, SARA. And under Radical, we are working to see how we can grow SARA's reach and help make an impact in other markets and other industries. Radical Health currently works with software companies that are in food banks and community food pantries and things like that, as well as foster care management, behavioral health and homeless management as well. So a couple of other areas that we feel that SARA could really make an impact. And as I mentioned earlier, we've been an extremely small team and so we didn't necessarily have the resources in place to make that happen and continue to see our vision grow. But with the help of Radical, we've got a roadmap to making that happen. And really just overall taking this concept of wanting to foster that connection in human services and helping clients feel like they're more than just a case ID and giving them that voice, using SARA to be able to maintain that connection with their agency and the service workers that are helping them.   Carol: Well, Cody, I remember back to my days in Minnesota and we were trying to get your product and there were definitely some challenges with IT resources. And I understand you have a new venture that eases the burden on IT resources. What is that all about?   Cody: Yeah, absolutely. We actually have a couple of things that we're working on in that regard. First of which was a strategic partnership that we entered into with Alliance Enterprises for their Aware case management solution. And so we are working with them at the moment on creating a way to interface the two systems together that eliminates the need for a state agency's IT department to really be involved. Historically, we've relied upon the state agency to have to install a Windows service and maintain that service on a state server and things like that in order to get data to go back and forth between SARA and the system of record. So what we're working on with Alliance is to, number one, have that connection, bypass the need for the state agency to be involved. And then we're also working on a new API that will be more of a plug and play option for other agencies that might not utilize, Aware, maybe have something that's homegrown or one of the other larger vendors. So it's something that I'm really excited for. We are rolling into some testing right now and should have that solution rolled out by the end of quarter two.   Carol: Wow, that's pretty cool. That's a big deal. I think that'll be a game changer for folks. I know we have a lot of people that are with Alliance, but there are a lot of folks that are not probably half the country is not. It's probably about a half and a half deal. So having that option for other folks as well, I think that is definitely going to be of interest to our listeners. I personally love your whole communication aspect of this and you talked about that communication hub. Can you just explain that a little more like all the things that can go into that?   Cody: Yeah, absolutely. So we you know, we call SARA the communication hub and we continuously try to make improvements and enhancements and bring new features so that, you know, if you think of a way to stay in contact and connect with a client electronically, we want SARA to kind of be your go to source. So SARA has two components. There's an automated side of SARA, and then there's some manual tools that counselors and case managers can use to try and stay in contact. On the automated side of things, we actually configure SARA to typically follow a workflow of the process of the agency mirroring in SARA, what we call tracks, which are the case statuses to the system of record. And we train SARA to understand when clients need to be contacted, what it's regarding, and if there's any data or information that needs to be obtained from that individual in order to successfully move them on to the next case status. And with that, SARA utilizes email and text messaging to stay in contact, reach out and conduct interviews with the clients, find out how they're doing, and then, just like any good assistant would, generate alerts that go back to those counselors and case managers to inform them of what's going on with their client, as well as giving them information so they can make an informed decision of what action to take next. Do I step in and now offer that direct client engagement? And that's where those manual tools come in. We've also got the options for staff to be able to compose emails and compose text messages directly from the SARA application. So from the comfort of their keyboard, they can be sending out messages. They don't have to have their own cell phone or a state agency issued cell phone. They can send out those messages directly through SARA. And then over time, they also start utilizing SARA for sending out emails. And the reason to do that is that everything that SARA does is going to automatically create case notes. So no longer does a counselor have to send out an email in Outlook or their provider of choice and then go back into their system of record and leave a case note about the email they just sent. They just send it off in. SARA It creates that case note. That case note goes from SARA back over to the system of record. So you can imagine the amount of time that is saved over time as staff start utilizing those features. Additionally, we have a document management center that we're actually rolling out this week that includes things like electronic signature. We've got an Outlook calendar integration. SARA's really good at scheduling appointments and allowing opportunities for clients to reschedule appointments based upon counselor availability. And so we can connect with an Outlook calendar so that both the SARA calendar and the outlook calendar are in sync. And SARA truly knows, you know, when that counselor is available for appointments to be scheduled and rescheduled. And then we also have something that really came in handy during the beginning phases of the pandemic when agencies started working remotely but still trying to provide services. And that is a feature that we call ODIN, which is our on demand interview network, and it is a HIPAA compliant tele counseling platform so that counselors can conduct tele counseling sessions with up to nine participants at a time and providing them an opportunity to take case notes throughout that session that are only visible to them. And then at the end of the session, they click a button to save all those case notes. And there's one case note that goes into SARA that kind of documents what that session was regarding who the participants were that attended. And then all of the case notes that the counselor created. And then, of course, those case notes go back over to the system of record. So very cool stuff that we're that we're doing here at SARAWorks.   Carol: Yeah it sounds super exciting. I was sitting in my head thinking, you know, kind of ticking the boxes about how much time you would save with a number of those items. That would be pretty amazing. So, Susan, you have been around since the beginning of SARA. I remember you were part of the pilot states up in Alaska. And I talked actually to the Alaska team. I bet it was maybe, I don't know, 5 or 6 years ago when we were all in Oklahoma at a PEQA conference. And I wanted to find out, like, how did you like it, what was going well? And I know that you all had struggled with some upfront kind of the communication and the implementation of the product. So what are some of the lessons you have learned along the way as you've implemented this?   Susan: Yeah, sure. It's one of the questions I get from many states that reach out to me, and I bet we could have a whole separate podcast about lessons learned. But I do want to give a quick shout out to the Alaska team during that implementation time. It was exciting because we were helping build this product better, you know, like there were a handful of states that were just throwing more feedback back at Cody, Hey, let's try this. Hey, let's try this. And it's really cool to be a part of a product from the beginning and to say that Alaska VR agency was one of the agencies that helped kind of, you know, point it towards a really cool direction. Although I know Cody was always brainstorming, so don't want to take that away from him. But a quick shout out to Alaska VR for that. Hindsight's having stronger procedures and understanding your staff's capability in technology. Now, it's easy. Don't get me wrong, I love this product. I can't say enough about it. However, we do have to consider who we're serving and who our workforce is. So in hindsight, I wish I had prepared better procedures for them because it was scary at first. You know, change is hard. That would be the first one that I could go into. I often found myself saying, Well, what would you normally do when you get a message? And it was also during a time where we were just still kind of, you know, feeling it out. So if I had come on with SARA outside of that pilot world, I would have prepped with stronger instructions, if you will.   Carol: Sure, that makes some sense. I get that. So how are you using SARA today? Because Cody just talked about all these cool new things, like are you guys implementing some of that or. I know some things are rolling out shortly, but how are you? Yeah, how are you using it today?   Susan: Oh, our staff still rocks it. They're making appointments daily. I mean, how often we would get stood up pre-SARA to now is just so ridiculously less. I mean to have that reminder texts come in and remind the client that they have an appointment is just golden. We're kind of working with our IT to turn on that calendar integration. It's in progress, I'll say. But they would absolutely love that. That's kind of out of their hands at the moment. They are in it every day. New employees come in, we have training and it's a whole new feel about like people understand that the phone is dead. Mean, it's a little dramatic, you know, unless you're calling your doctor's office or your parents or family members or whatnot. But outside of that, I'm getting you know, I just got a reminder text from a chiropractor appointment. I have a couple of days, you know, the hair appointment that's around the corner. I mean, this is the age that we live in in terms of like helping us be where we need to be in one example. But on the other end, like, oh yeah, like I have this connection. I'm doing something with this place. And our clients, our clients really love it. You're going to have any type of survey you send out, you never know what kind of feedback you're going to get. But overwhelmingly, our clients enjoyed hearing like, okay, I've got something here, I've got a connection. So staff and clients do enjoy the product.   Carol: That's awesome to hear. I wondered about that, how your staff and clients were responding to that. So that is terrific. Well, Cody, I understand you also have some exciting new things happening. What are you able to say? The new states that are being rolled out, you talked about you have a number of them. I don't know if you're able to disclose or not, but sometimes folks love to hear like, who are all the people I can talk to about that are using this product?   Cody: Yeah, absolutely. One of our states we're working with right now is New Hampshire. They're actually working with us in conjunction with Alliance with the Aware Integration. And I think most of the customers or potential customers that we have at some point find their way to Susan and kind of lean on some of her expertise, as you know, with what Alaska has learned. And so we really value having Susan available to talk to a lot of these customers. Additionally, we are in the midst of rolling out Texas, so TWC, they are going through training with their statewide rollout right now that we hope to have finished in April. That's been a really exciting project for us, learning a lot along the way in terms of some additional areas that SARA might be able to help with down the road with different surveys and working with businesses and other employer vendors and things like that. So that's been exciting. And then we've got South Dakota and Maryland that are also coming up as well.   Carol: Wow, that's very cool. You know, I was just thinking about all the complexities of these different states. You know, Texas is ginormous and they're also ginormous as far as staff and clients, whereas Alaska is ginormous but maybe has a smaller population of people. But how this application works across anybody and thinking about a lot of our states that may be smaller, but they have a lot of rural components. I think that's very interesting because it fits all the different sizes for sure. Now we have, SARA included, just for full disclosure, as a special project within the VRTAC for quality management. Can you talk about that just for a minute, Cody, what that's all about?   Cody: Yes, absolutely. So the SARA portion of that project has actually allocated 220 SARA licenses, and that's how we market. SARA as a SaaS company is a subscription model and we've got 220 licenses that we're looking to disperse over 2 to 3 states that right now we are in the process of providing demonstrations, you know, working with business analysts and ITdepartments to determine what states might be a good fit to take on a SARA pilot. So that's very exciting. And we're hoping to have the states finalized here in the next month or two so that we can get rolling on those new SARA pilots.   Carol: Oh, that's cool. That's really cool. So, Susan, what advice would you give to new states that are either just getting started with the system or they're considering using this as a communication solution for them?   Susan: Well, it's funny because I just got a follow up email from Maryland this morning, Cody, because everyone does seem to find their way to me, and I love that because it's a conversation I can have with them that talks about, again, more of those lessons learned. Knowing your staff, knowing your population you serve, understanding who is it that is going to be your champions, What is your management structure? And start small. SARA In terms of Cody mentioned, there are two sides of SARA and there are two very different sides. I call them, you know, the automated side and the direct side, the direct side being the human, you know, shouting out those texts on the fly or hey, hey, you know, come get your bus pass, you know, things like that. You know, the quick human aspect. And then you have the automated side, which is kind of awesome because you'll find information that you had no idea was happening or out there. I've heard scenarios where SARA finds out the client's employed and we're like, Wait, what? So it's kind of great to catch up on that. And I think what people at least to have committed in your first step is you're looking and you're trying to figure out what you want that awesome automated side to do for you and is to start small. Don't try and have an awesome long conversation with the SARA system because it's cool that she can do that. And I apologize. I have been trying not to give pronouns to SARA, but after seven years just she has just come out of my mouth occasionally, but start small and include your counselors include your counselors include your counselors. They are the ones who are going to need to be your champions. Because as you're starting off with this system, you want that participant to engage with it. And if you're not presenting that information from a comfortable standpoint, meaning your assistant staff or your counselor staff who are first talking about SARA in maybe an intake appointment or some, you know, the first opportunity to speak about the system, you have to prepare your staff to be able to talk someone through that. That was something I didn't quite hit. Let's just say that was a swing and a miss, as that one was. So yeah, that's all I can think of at the moment. Really include your staff what you, meaning you know you at the quality or implementation level think might be really cool, may not be really cool. It's something you can get to I think like I'm on version four of what is known as the rules for SARA, meaning what the robotic side will have to say in a conversation. And the first time I did it was just sort of, I don't know, let's try this. And then then I got to realize, no, I got a few more revisions. So start small. Include your staff and it is pretty awesome.   Carol: I am really glad you said that. Include your staff because I remember because I talked to Kentucky and it was, I believe Nevada and then the Alaska folks and you all three had that similar experience where I think everybody was like, Woo, this is a great new thing. This is super exciting. Everybody's going to love it. Well, not everybody just loved it right off the get go because they didn't understand it and they hadn't been included in all the conversations. And I can see that happening. I would have that tendency to I'd be like, Woo, this is super exciting. We're going to do this really fun thing. And then you go, Oh my gosh, we got to get everybody on board with that. So I had heard that back in the day too, that to definitely talk with the counselors because you have to get them used to this idea because while it will help them, at first they're thinking, what? What on earth? Because don't you have to develop Susan some scripts or you know, like AI doesn't know what to exactly say. You do have to program that, correct?   Susan: That is correct, yes. You do want to prompt a path for certain questions that you ask. And what I learned over the years is and this I might want to say that, you know, this is perhaps unique to the VR world because SARA is applicable in other worlds outside of VR, right? So when we're thinking about the population that VR serves, we want to maybe make our questions to the point and as short as possible. You know, I'm thinking about keeping it at a grade level that is appropriate. Whereas if you're out maybe outside and you're dealing with a different population and then there's this ability to like, you could do so many things with it, you know, as long as you have that engaged person on the other end who's answering, I mean, you can ask and get so much information out of a text message. It is amazing. But what I learned just from knowing my client base is that less is more. I went to more specific questions. And if something didn't work out with that response, I just sort of kind of turn it back and say, okay, we're going to get with you. You know, like, let's not try and text anymore. Let's actually try and, you know, let's connect. But we wouldn't know or we wouldn't have that ability to say, Hey, let's connect if SARA hadn't started the conversation.   Carol: Right, yeah, no, I get that. I think that's just awesome advice. So, Susan, I think you were also the one I had heard that created this idea of having a SARA Summit quarterly with all the users. Can you tell me a little bit about that?   Susan: Yeah, sure. You know, I've been a customer of software and implementing software for over 20 years, and there's been, you know, a handful of vendors that, you know, really get that extra step, which is you got to embrace your customer and let them have perhaps a ground to just grumble and celebrate. But, you know, it comes to having a bit of a united front around the user, if you will, talking with other users of the company. How do you have this program or how is SARA doing that? You know, I feel like that is the next step that I think SARAworks is going towards and I'm so happy to help with if it comes to fruition because it is so cool as a person who is sometimes at least up in Alaska, I know my team, you know, we're trudging through something and we're, you know, trying to figure out if that's the setting that we want. And then all of a sudden, you know, I'm on a national call with like 50 other states that use this product. And we've got this like great conversation going and people are helping other people and people are like, Oh, yeah, heads up. This doesn't work. I mean, it's just a pool for knowledge. And I think that's a good step to move forward with SARAworks too.   Carol: Yeah, I think that'd be really smart because you look at all these new states coming on board and the one thing I've always loved about VR is how giving people are I mean, everybody wants to help other people out, and I love that. It isn't like, Oh, I know this and we created that and we're not going to help you. Everybody's like, Here, have it. You know, this is how we're doing it. So that is pretty cool.   Susan: Yeah, totally.   Carol: So, Susan, what is the number one thing you'd want people to take away from this conversation today? Like our listeners, What would be the number one thing you want them to take away?   Susan: Well, I struggled with this one when you sent this out, because I almost have two. My number one and I tell this to every state that is inquiring with me about SARA and it's kind of geeky. It's not flashy. It's the quality management side of me that's going to speak out for a minute. And it's the fact that we're required to check in with our clients a year after exit actually, you know, second, fourth quarter after exit. This is a federal requirement. And the thought of having our counselors manage what happens a year later after they close the client was, I can't I have no idea how other states are doing this. I have an automatic system that does it and I don't have to even think about it. And it's the most beautiful thing ever, done. I mean, I don't know what else to say. Like it's an entire data element of compliance that I barely even have to think about. It's beautiful. Thank you, Cody.   Carol: It makes me think of, like, boom, mic drop. That's the end.   Susan: And guess my number two is that there's a reason this started seven years ago, and it had to do with we need to communicate more with the individuals that we serve. I see it in case reviews that I do. And this is the tool. There's my other mic drop. They're out there, they're listening. You got to do it.   Carol: Absolutely. And you look at now the third thing that is rolling across the nation is really there are no staff. And so we need to keep in communication. We have less people to do so. So we've got to leverage other things to make that happen so that can continue to live into its mission. And we're trying to get people into competitive, integrated employment. And to do that, we need to be in contact with them.   Susan: Exactly.   Carol: And keep moving through that case. Absolutely.   Susan: Well, and I think just to add to it, it's important that at least from our standpoint, like this is not counseling. This doesn't count as a contact. We have trained our staff to say, SARA is that icebreaker and it helps you. Yes, keep in touch. But it by no means substitutes the actual counseling guidance that is required. You actually speaking with the client, not through text messaging, not through email. If anyone was listening thinking, well, are they counting that? No, not counting that as a contact at all. It just helps get in contact if need be.   Carol: Right. Well, and it helps to smooth out those contacts you need as you're chasing for things, you're chasing for a transcript, you're trying to chase people down for certain stuff. Those items, those kind of more busy calls that you have to do and all of that, it can help completely in that area. And like you said, the year after closure, like follow it up with people because that's tough to keep track of all of that.   Susan: Yeah., and I think the second day we turned on SARA, staff was saying, oh my gosh, I was about to close this client. I haven't heard from him. And I mean, it works, you know, it really does. And the fact that it keeps in touch with your clients and it's making you compliant with one of the most, like, strangely weird ways to track something a year later. God bless you, Cody. Right on.   Carol: So, Cody, what is the number one thing you'd like people to take away from this conversation today?   Cody: Well, Susan did a great job expressing it. You know, really, it's the fact that, like you mentioned, we're losing resources in terms of the number of staff, while the number of folks receiving services and needing services are increasing. So if, you know, agencies are looking for a digital assistant software that allows case managers and counselors to shift their focus, not make less work, not take things away, but really shift their focus from the administration to client outcomes by automating some of their communication and compliance. That's. SARA.   Carol: That's awesome. So, Cody, how can people get in contact with you for more information?   Cody: The best way is to go to our website. That's SARAWorks.com and you can request a demonstration and that comes directly to me. I can also be reached via email. Cody.Dixon, That's D i x o n, at SARAWorks.com.   Carol: Thank you. And Susan, I'm sure they're going to be people that are going to want to reach out to you as well and listen to your sparkling story. I love it. You have a lot of high energy, which is great. So how could folks best get in contact with you?   Susan: I would say my email would be the best way to go. Susan.Baker, b a k e r, @alaska.gov.   Carol: Well, I sure appreciate you both being on today. I think this was an important conversation to have. I'm super excited to hear about all the upgrades and the ways that SARAWorks has improved and that Alaska State that's been in it from the beginning is still using this product. So good for you guys. I hope you have a great day. Thanks much.   Susan: Thanks for having me, Carol.   Cody: Thank you, Carol. Thank you, Susan.   Susan: Yep, Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!  

Joining Carol Pankow in the studio today is Damian Schlinger, State Director of the North Dakota Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Learn how Damian and his team moved from a double-triple check culture to one that encourages and enhances staff autonomy using techniques and strategies that have had tangible results. Listen as Damian explains how his agency is eliminating low-value activities and is focusing on keeping customers engaged to achieve quality outcomes in North Dakota.   Listen Here   Full Transcript {Music} Speaker1: 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. Damian Schlanger, State Director of the North Dakota Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, is joining me in the studio today. So thanks for joining me, Damian. How are things going in North Dakota?   Damian: Things are going well. Good morning. Thanks for having me on, Carol.   Carol: Well, it was so funny. I was telling Jeff, the podcast producer, I'm like, you know, when you were talking at CSAVR this fall, I felt a little bit like Simon Cowell. You know, there's a panel up there. I'm looking down and you started talking and my head went up. I'm like, Who is that guy? And I went right up to you after that general session. I'm like, Can you be on a podcast? I just think you have the most awesome things that are going on, and I wanted to make sure that we could spread that out to the rest of the country. And I really love the quote on your slide deck during the conference, "Take care of your employees and they take care of your business", by Richard Branson. And I just think you only had maybe 8 minutes to talk there. And I thought we could have a little deeper conversation this morning. So let's dig in. So can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, like how long you've been at North Dakota VR and where do you come from? Because I know you did come out of VR. Can you tell everybody a little bit about your background?   Damian: For sure, yeah. So I'm a relative newbie to vocational rehab, so I was just two years as of this last December here. So but I've always been in a helping profession. So the last 20 years I spent in the medical industry in various different roles, I started out actually as an athletic trainer. And for people that don't know what that is, my wife would always say, if somebody gets hurt on a field or at a game, the guy that goes running out, that's what my husband does. So that kind of gives me an idea that's good. So it was really good and it was a great career for the longest time. But then I had little kids in that night and weekend thing really didn't always work out. So yeah. So then I found my way into clinic management. I had a great mentor and supervisor and first I managed some walk in clinics and then some surgical clinics, and then I found my way to occupational medicine and that's actually where the link with VR happened. So sometimes we would get injured workers that couldn't go back to their previous place of employment because the injury was so severe. So we had to figure out what could they do. So we would do functional capacity assessments and things of that nature. And then I would be on the call sometimes with a Voc Rehab counselor, and they would ask, Could they do this? Could they stand? Could they sit? So yeah. So then when I was looking to further my career in a Voc Rehab position came open for a director, I thought, Oh, that would be perfect. Yeah, that's kind of how I got my way here.   Carol: Very cool. That is kind of wild. I know we've all fallen into it in different ways, and that's really neat. I'm glad to know that about you. Give us a little picture about North Dakota VR. Like, how many customers do you guys serve? How many staff you have, and maybe a little bit about the challenges you're facing. You've got a very different complexity in your state.   Damian: Yeah. So we have definitely a high rural population. A lot of our state is rural and then there's obviously these big population centers throughout the state. So that's somewhat of a challenge. And then what has been great is across these last few years coming out of the pandemic, things have really increased to the point where we're starting to challenge our all time highs in certain areas. And I know certain states might listen to this and go, Oh, that's really small or whatever, but it's whatever your situation is, if you can challenge some of those all time highs, I think that's great. So certainly our clients served about 3800 of those each year.  In our OIB, we actually helped 555 individuals last year. I think there was like 313 applications. But some of those things are going really well and coverage into rural areas is just a part of what we do. We have eight regions is kind of how we carve our state up and then we know there's a lot of windshield time in covering those more rural areas.   Carol: So about how many counselors would you have that cover all of that?   Damian: In the state, there are about 40. So in our bigger regions there might be as many as seven or eight, and then the smaller ones are usually 2 to 3.   Carol: Gotcha. Well, I remember my grandma lived in Bismarck, and so even when I was learning to drive, my mom made us have so many hours behind the wheel. And I'm like, I'll drive to grandma's because it took us about 10 hours to get there. It was a long state to get through, to get to Bismarck. But I get my time in. So I completely understand that whole windshield time that folks have. So I know when you came in, you really hit the ground running. How did you come up with these activities You have focused on this past year around your staff?   Damian: One thing that I've been fortunate to do is because I've been in different spots, usually I'm in a spot for about four years is when I look backwards on my career. And so it's given me an opportunity to get into different situations where sometimes it's a realignment, sometimes you're starting up, sometimes they have great success and they just need to be polished. Some of the clinics or areas that I've been in. But what was interesting about ours is that they had really good, I call it Good Bones, almost like a house, You know, it's got good bones. You know, you don't have to replace a whole lot of things, but just to try to align everybody. So one thing that was interesting is that they had not, I don't know if team building efforts or coming across regions with different ideas was commonplace. I think they would sometimes share best practice, but it was almost like if it happened, it wasn't necessarily something they concentrated on. And when I visited the regions, all these folks, whether it was Frontline or regional administrators, had great ideas and then I had seen them. Maybe we're only enacted in that one region and I thought the other seven regions could really benefit from that. And plus, who doesn't love, you know, you have a great idea. And to see that come out of your mind and get legs and run across the state is a fantastic feeling. So that's a lot of what we concentrated on was just trying to get people to just share ideas and come together across the state.   Carol: Yeah, I think that's super cool. I know you have this dual approach. You really are focused on both the staff and your customers or clients or whatever you may call them in your state. And like in VR, we're always talking about clients in business and I think staff does get left out of this conversation. So I know you walked into this culture that was kind of double triple checks. You talked about that at the conference. How did you go about kind of beginning to revamp that culture?   Damian: I always think about assuming positive intent. I do a lot of reading on psychology and things of that nature and even the double and triple check cultures, if they exist, and those existed in the medical community that I started as well. It comes from a good places that you want to do the very best for your client, your patient, your whatever you call them, right? You want to have them have the best service ever. So I also know there's individuals that are really performance driven, but it's the same goal, right? They want to have great things happen for the customer. So it's about blending those two perspectives. So when I started to think about that even early in the career, I'm embarrassed to talk about it. But I ran headlong into a brick wall because I thought about the patient very much and thought about performance. Like how many could we serve, how quickly we could we get them in and out because nobody wants to be someplace for an hour and a half, especially if you're sitting in a clinic. But then what I realized is that my staff, I didn't share some of my thoughts necessarily openly outside my head a whole lot. You know, we think about things a lot, and that continues to be a challenge for myself. But trying to understand, it's like I introduced a higher challenge to them. But then what I didn't understand is I wasn't necessarily investing in listening to them or growing their skills. So it's like those two pathways have to emerge together. So I actually pulled the staff together and I apologized to them. So then I was aware of it, you know what I mean? I couldn't just concentrate on the clients. It had to be growth of the team members as well as the service to the client as well. And so that's when I found out really Myers-Briggs, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, all those things. The big five, those were like the map. Otherwise it felt like I was stumbling around in the dark. But when I found those that felt like the key, really understanding individual motivation and the types of folks that are out there and then how to grow them, and then when they feel great and they're engaged and they're growing, the clients, it just it's natural. It's like peanut butter and jelly.   Carol: Oh, absolutely. You sing to my heart because I love that. I was always big on the Clifton Strength Finders. We did that because a lot of times you focus on people's deficits. So we're going to fix that. But why don't we build on the strengths people have and make them even like superpowers? And so really leaning into what are people doing well and helping them to do more of that.   Damian: Yeah, and there's all kinds of them out there too. I love, yeah, like you said, strength finders. We've done that as well. And actually what was interesting here just recently, we're starting to do a lot of like self directed project teams. And I also have done Disc assessments which really talks about personalities as they perform inside of a team because it's great if you have an individual, but who are we kidding? Like even in high school, my kids have been doing project based learning since they were in middle school, so I'm glad that that's happening in the schools because that's what real life is like. You rarely work as a lone wolf, so understanding that and who might be the best person to run the project? Who might be your document creator? Who might be your reporter or communicator, it really helps fit those skills in. A lot of those are based off of the same research. That's Carl Jung and all that. I remember doing actually a personality profile one time where they divided you into animals. You're either a golden retriever or a beaver or but it's all based on the same kind of four categories, you know.   Carol: So yeah, it is super helpful. I know for folks maybe not using that. I liked that too. We did that with some of our self directed teams and we realized like we were kind of new into it and we were super excited and we're having these teams that there was a team and they were all awesome at talking, but there wasn't like that leader person to, okay, here's our agenda and keep that going. And we realized like that was bad on us because we hadn't sort of sorted that out correctly to have all the different styles within the team so you could get something all the way accomplished, right? You can't put all the same people together because then they're all just chatting. And so I learned a lot just applying those kind of principles. I think that's cool. Now, I know you guys did a survey and I understand that the state was using the Gallup Survey. Can you describe like how that process went?   Damian: Yes. So actually, the first survey that they did statewide came out actually a month or two before I even started. And what I like about this is it gives you an objective measure because I think you can get into any setting or into any region or whatever position you are, and you can kind of get a feel for it across time. But it is just that it's a feel and it's just a perspective from whatever seat you're at. So it was great about the Gallup survey is that you can break it down for region. I think you had to have at least five individuals because then they wouldn't parse the data out. They would really want to make sure things are confidential. But then you can take a look at certain groups. You could take a look at your leaders. So like your regional leaders, you could look at state office, you could look at all the leaders together, all of VR together. So that was really important to understand, like what the needs and concerns were for certain audiences. So then what they did is, so they did it in October of what would that have been? 20? And then they did another one in the spring and now they do it every October. Just to make sure that we understand where we're at. So we were at a, I think, 31% engagement at that time. And so we recognized that that was low for sure. And I know that they say through Gallup, at least their research is when you're at 50% roughly engagement, that's super. Anything north of that is fantastic. So even if you're around that, that's great. So then we really did a lot to make sure that we understood. It's like it was a new day and actually we were just coming off that it was 100 years of VR. So it's like, what are we going to do to reinvent it for the next 100 say? So we did a lot of looking at going out to our regions, understanding where the crux of the issues when we're trying to deliver service to clients. And that was new. There was one lady that had said, I don't know the last time I've seen a director, it's been years, you know, so you really want to make sure that we went out to them physically and saw them as well, because that means a lot they feel invested in. So it's just through that, including in projects. We created small teams in each region to then address their issues and talk about them and then took action. And a lot of it was just saying yes to a lot of the things they wanted to do, and that turned it. So we went to 61% and then now this last year I think I might have pressed the pedal a little too far on our performance. So there's always that balance to play. So back down to about 50%. So then I recognized, okay, you know, we're going to do a little bit more, make sure we're mixed and growing skills to match the challenges that are out there.   Carol: That's really cool because you can see, like the fruits of your labor. It's directly in those percentages. I get that. I know you had talked back at the conference when you were telling us your stories and you really threw your staff for a loop by that, going out and popping in on Zoom and all those different things, and they really didn't know what to make of you. I thought that was kind of cool. So what kind of tangible things have you seen change as a result of the efforts you put into place these last two years?   Damian: Oh, sure. There is so much, and I think there's probably tangible parts of it, and then there are also parts that you just feel like, I don't know if you still want to call them tangible, but maybe they aren't. Like when I think of the sort of soft indicators, I can tell that the team members know we have a place within HHS because HHS is where we're housed in the state. And then they're also, of course, aging divisions and DD divisions and so on and so forth. And there's hundreds of millions of dollars, lots of staff. So I think initially there was maybe that feeling like you're the redheaded stepchild, but now they know it. And of course, because now the workforce issue is such a great thing, not just in our state, but throughout the nation, they know we have a place at the table. So a lot of that was even just inviting in, like my supervisor, who was one of the executives at HHS, talking about our importance in a staff meeting of leaders and then also in our all staff meeting. So that made them feel connected to the rest of the group. So I know if you want to actually call that tangible, but it was a big thing.   Carol: Oh, yeah, I call it tangible. That's pretty cool.   Damian: Good. And then just relationships with a lot of our providers are certainly other warmer. They're more frequent, they're more collaborative. One of the regional administrators said back in the golden era, he would call it that, you know, we did X, Y and Z. So we really restored a lot of that because we realized that as our providers go, so goes VR. So that was a critical relationship to mend and then also elevate. And we're trying to do that with a lot of other areas advocacy groups, employers, our sister divisions or sections within HHS. It's all working in that direction.   Carol: Good for you. Good stuff. What are your next steps like? What do you want to do next? Or are you just continuing on this trajectory? Do you have some big ideas? Where are you going?   Damian: Oh, sure. And actually this is a great time. So we just took a look at our strategy now have our strategic plan set for 2023. So we really have four major areas of concern. So one is certainly staff development. We continue to have new challenges. The needs of our clients change every year and we want to make sure that we really keep up on that. Another one is what we call just efficiency and design. So a lot of it matches our main areas or strategic priorities. We are still a lot of paper and pen and we don't use a lot of electronic systems, so we do want to transition to that type of situation and also see if we can centralize some teams. So we worked with different states, Texas, Indiana and in Nebraska just to see what they have going on, because we want to use the best of what anybody's done throughout the nation. And then we're also looking at other things like outreach, continuing to expand outreach awareness, whether it's meeting with partners like I just talked about or social media. We just want to be where the eyeballs are as much as possible to attract as many clients as we can. It was actually a really great compliment and I feel so great for all the people that work in VR. I just did our budget detail testimony this last week and one of the senators asked, he said at the end of the presentation, he said, everything seems to be going up and going well in VR, where some of ours aren't as busy. He goes, What's the secret? I did not want to leave the podium and I'm not a great public speaker. I usually want to get off of there as soon as I can, but that was a really great feeling. It just speaks to the work that's been done across the last couple of years because I think we concentrated on the right things and the right stakeholders. So we're excited about that and looking forward to this next year. So self directed teams is a big part of that. So if my leaders hear this podcast before Monday morning, maybe they'll have a little bit of heads up, but we're going to continue to grow in that direction.   Carol: That's very cool. I know there's nothing better than being able to tell the story of the agency and people really noticing, because I know folks are still struggling across the country. A lot of your colleagues are kind of at this holding pattern or really buried down with not having enough staff trying to get the clients to come back and all of that. But it seems like you're on this upward trajectory and getting some. How about the staff? I just was curious like, what is your vacancy rate look like right now? Are things picking up for you? Are you fill in those jobs? How's that going?   Damian: That's a great question. And actually it's good timing, too, because when we did that testimony last week, we got some recent turnover numbers. So it was interesting. So when I got here a couple of years ago, we saw that across the data that I had was the last seven years of our counselors was about 28% turnover and it had been in 2019 as recent as high as 35% turnover. So I mean, it just undermines your ability to complete that mission. I mean, you can do a pretty good job, there's no doubt about it. But it's hard. So we looked at some of the crux of what was going on there, and certainly it was involvement being heard, feeling like they had the ability and autonomy to do a lot of things. So there was some situations like that or even simple. We were able to increase the counselors limit of decision making or spending up to $10,000, and it had been capped artificially at five. And I said, You took the procurement training at $10,000. Why are we capping it at five? So there was a lot of little things like that that really helped the autonomy of situations. And you know what? I've been talking in a line here and I forgot the original question. Let's go back to that. What was your question, Carol? My apologies.   Carol: Well, no, I was just asking about how it was going with your staffing, Attrition and turnover.   Damian: Yeah, my apologies. Sometimes we get talking in one direction and I'm like...   Carol: We're good. I'm all good. I'm flowing with you.   Damian: Okay, So anyway, so yeah, so there was definitely a lot of turnover and that was a situation. So we wanted to make sure we did as much as possible because usually people want to throw money at an issue and it's usually one of the last solutions, not one of the first. So we were able to get good engagement out of that. There was no doubt, and it slowed the turnover train a little bit. So it was 23%. This was overall not just counselors in 2021. So it's like, okay, that slowed down, but it's still a quarter of my staff every year. So what was really great is the we really have progressive leaders in HHS and then also in our HR department. I know a lot of people think of state government as stodgy and slow and so on and so forth, but actually they've been more inventive and collaborative than anywhere I had worked at before. So they really took a look at, we were able to increase wages for some of the individuals that were coming in, knew that was a big deal. So we've had extremely low turnover in the last couple of years and I know some of that's just because it's been a couple of years. But also that helped and it was kind of an unconventional approach because they had tried to approach increasing wages in different methods. One was a booklet and it's hard for individuals to make decisions of a whole booklet. So we just went with a very simple one pager, talked about we had the funding to do so, federal authority to do so. We have the flexibility to move some money between lines. And so then we were able to and I know that caused some disruption for our staff that had been existing there, like, well, these new people are getting paid more. I almost had to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. And so what happened is eventually HR and our exec spot into, yes, we need to increase wages for our staff. So then we were able to do that this last October. So that's been huge and that slowed it down. Now I think the stat was 18% this last year and we can see month to month it's diving. So yeah, it's inclusion. Being with your teammates, feeling like you're heard, they have to be compensated. Right. It's always kind of the four main things, I think, but it's working well.   Carol: Good for you. You've hit that on all the fronts. I was just reading an article about autonomy. They're saying folks first they wanted that flexibility in their work schedule, work life balance. But now the big buzzword is people wanting that autonomy. They want to be able to make decisions. A lot of times we have that just overarching smack down. You know, 14 people are reviewing every single thing and approving and you're like, oh, my goodness, these people have been trained. They've gone through school, like, let them go.   Damian: Agreed.   Carol: Yeah, good for you. You've hit it on every front. That is pretty amazing to be able to get through the increases. Have you seen any kind of trend like former staff coming back because they've heard, well, there's more money now and there's, you know, like we have autonomy and all these things are going on. I wondered if you're seeing anything like that.   Damian: You know, I haven't seen anything in that regard yet, even though there are I mean, across these last couple of years, I saw a couple stars leave for some higher compensated areas. And I thought, boy, I'd love to be able to get them back. So we haven't gone there yet. But if I can just continue to keep and grow, the individuals that we have, they're bright. We have some new faces that are wonderful, but I think that's a good thing. And then also, once they stay here and they're here for a while, it gives that opportunity for promotion and that just all feeds in together positively, I think.   Carol: Yeah, very cool. Very cool. So how about all this work now you're thinking about your positively impacting your staff, you're having less attrition. You've done a lot of neat things culturally. How is it translating into your outcomes for your customers? Are people getting into employment? Is there more people getting into work? What are you seeing on that front?   Damian: Oh yeah, and this is all fresh in my head. So this is a good time to have this podcast. But we took a look at and we always do that because I think what's interesting is that when you have discussions amongst your leadership, of course we're going to all have different perspectives on things. But what matters is the objective data, like objective truth matters. So we always make sure that we have that at the fore. We keep a dashboard. So we take a look at that month over month, year over year, because it helps indicate like where are the weaknesses in our system that we can shore up because they're not just weaknesses in building a car or an iPhone. This is service. To clients you know, that they care about. So we've taken a lot of look at that. When I take a look at like our closed our number of successful closed, we think within this next biennium we can actually get to the high point that we've ever had. Back in 2000, we had a really high watermark and we're on our way to do that in the next couple of years. But even if you look month to month and across this last year, the number of individuals of client served, the number of "in plan". We could see month to month that it's building, not that we're adding the months together, but each month it's increasing. So in going with that, we're also trying to decrease what it takes to do the work. So that's where that double triple check culture had to go away. It's like, let's concentrate on doing it once and doing it right and then we can move on to the next person, you know, instead of having to revise it. But it's been great. So staff engagement numbers we talked about, OIB applications are up. Actually eligibility. I think that's something that I spoke about at conference that was wonderful. And actually this came from the outside one of our providers. And then there was a few clients that talked about how long it takes to get the process rolling, and that engagement upfront was so key. And actually even our data individual, Warren, talked about this a lot and it was a concern of his because the data showed it. So then when we looked at it, it's like, yeah, we are taking too long. So just in a lot of adjustments that our assistant director Alicia made with comparing with other states, we found that we were going above and beyond the regulation, but it didn't necessarily add any value to the process. It didn't add any value to the client nor the business client. So she said, Why are we doing this? So we got to rid a lot of those things. And it was I mean, from April to I think it was November, we saw the change. It was like 32% faster. So that was wonderful. And that also helped the provider community feel like they were heard too. So it's just a win win all the way around. I think it was great. And that's all. While our client satisfaction either stayed the same or improved, that's when you know that counterbalance to it. I mean, you can go faster and then not please people. But also it stayed the same or got better. So we know we're in the right place.   Carol: Well, and we've done a whole series on rapid engagement. I think I've done three podcasts with different states about rapid engagement and just thinking about what people's expectations are today. You know, VR is kind of based on this very methodical system, and it's built in a lot of these time frames. But if you took all of those like 60 days for eligibility and then you're going to have 90 more days to do a plan and it's six months before they get a service.   Damian: Oh, yeah.   Carol: You come in from your medical background, you know, if somebody came in, you're an athletic trainer and you're like, well, I'm going to do an assessment and then I'm going to get back to you in about 30 days on that, and then we'll make your plan. People would think you're nuts. Like, there is no way people want it. They want it right now.   Damian: It's totally overlooked. And I agree. And maybe that's my perspective from that previous industry I was in is different. Like there's walk in clinics. You can access any information you might want from your bank, your investment account immediately. So it was about, I'd say a month ago or so, there was a great Harvard Business Review article I came across and said, Your competitors aren't who you think your competitors are. And I thought that was really key for a government agency or maybe even VR by itself is that you can't just compare yourself to VR. You have to compare yourself to any industry. It could be the hospitality industry because your clients have experiences in all those areas. So we shouldn't fool ourselves that good enough for government is the way that we are going to do things. You know, it has to be good enough for that person they set What quality really means for us and engagement and results are key to that.   Carol: Oh my gosh, you're hitting so many chords with me right now that I just, I used to do this training years ago about customer service in the government and people would be like, Well, you know, I always called people hostages because they can't go shopping around to get another service provider. You're the person. And so they're hostages and we kind of serve them when we want to. And just to flip the script on that. So I would really challenge our staff to think about that. Just because you can take 60 days. Do you want to do that? Like that's not what we're about. And so really challenging, that kind of thinking. Yeah, and I'm sure your background plays a lot into this, so I'm really happy to hear about what you've done with this rapid engagement.   Damian: And actually Carol I was going to say, so it's not just my background. I have to give credit. There are a lot of individuals in VR that also saw that, and so some of the phrases that they use, I kind of steal them or borrow them and use them as well. One of our leaders was talking about the front line. Sometimes there can be some perspective that that's my quote unquote time frame. It's like, no, it's not. That's the client's time frame. We don't own it. And also, I would never want to say to a client, like, we're going to have our level of service be the government regulation for this. Nobody wants to hear that ever. You know what I mean? And it's a big part because you think about physical health in the medical world or economic health. One of the frontline staff emailed me the other day and said, we're actually saving lives because economic health matters and it matters in stress, it matters in depression, anxiety. Where are you going to get your next meal? Can you pay rent? That's a big deal. And if you say like, Oh, you're going to have to wait on that 60 or 90 days, forget it. It's existential. You know their done.   Carol: You know, it's too late. Yeah. Just like you say. You've got to pay your heat bill. You got to pay your mortgage, get your food on the table. People come to us and they're often in this very critical stage. So when we put all that time in between us and any next steps, they're just like, what is happening? And so then we wonder why in the statistics it's how do we lose people? They're no longer interested in services. They moved on because we haven't done anything. And so we need to, we're in this. spot where we can. Like where else can you go that you get these tangible resources that you can give to the individual sitting across from you? There's not very many places. If you go to your regular counselor and you're talking to them about all of your issues, it's not like your counselor goes, Oh, hey, we'll pay your house payment this month because I know you're stressed out. They can't do that. Yeah, we have things we can help in supporting that individual to getting the life that they want. We're incredibly blessed to be able to have this opportunity.   Damian: And there's some things that we do, too, that I think helps shorten that gap because, I mean, we live in a different world sometimes from our clients and I think about that a lot. Like when I go home, I go to a nice house that has lots of food and it's warm and all that stuff too. And then clients might not be that way. It's almost like we have two sets of clients. There's those ones, like you said, that are living in almost crisis, and then there's ones that are looking to advance their career and they're both very important. But those ones that are on that edge, we try to share a lot of stories of kudos or great impact in all of our staff meetings. And there's been a lot that came from one region across this last three months that it's like when you read them, it warms your heart because they talk about, I can support myself now, I can support my family. It's like, Oh, that's what got us all here. And I think we need to continue to keep that at the fore because otherwise it just feels like a client becomes a case and they're not, you know, there's still a client.   Carol: Yep.   Damian: Those are big things we try to do.   Carol: Yeah, I love that. That's awesome. So I want to switch gears for just a minute. Now, I know everybody's talking about spending money because there's been a lot of money going back to the Treasury, a lot of money being returned through re allotment each summer. And so do you have strategies or how are you guys doing that with spending the money and actually get that out the door so we aren't returning all these funds to the Treasury or to the US government. We want to spend them on our VR purposes.   Damian: And actually it was interesting, I can't remember the name of the fellow that presented to us from Pennsylvania, so he thinks a lot the same way I do. I identified, I call them seven different levers. But in his conversation or his presentation, I think he had like ten or 12. It was really great. But one thing that I think about is provider rates. One thing that was interesting is we had always matched our hourly rate to what DD was doing in our state. But I said, that's like basing your checkbook off how much your neighbor makes. Like it didn't make any sense to me, you know what I mean? We're in a position where we're flush with funds and we can put them to use, so let's do it. So we increase them recently here, 15%, and they hadn't been increased for a long time. The other thing that we did was minimum tuition allowance had been at $600 for a number of years and that was necessity. Back in 2012, we had a situation where our fiscal folks and our program folks weren't necessarily connected. So we went into an order of selection. We ran ourselves out of money, and the key culprit was tuition. So I can understand that trepidation to increasing that. But it was a need and we heard it a lot from the outside community. So we did that way and went from, I think it was 600 to 1000. And then also when we talked about the counselor and some of the impact they can have, it was interesting. So another part that was totally necessary at the time is they went to counselor budgets in 2012 and we have a lot of people that are in our colors training goals like guardians, people that want to protect and make sure they do things well. So they started to treat that money as an individual checkbook almost. And that might have constrained what we would spend on clients because you know that if you had 100,000, let's say, at the beginning of the year, and then all of a sudden it's April and you're down to 10,000, well, now you might start to restrict what you spend on a client versus the one that would have came the first day of the new year. So we abolished counselor budgets. We just went to a regional plot and I think that helped people be a little bit more freer with what was going on. And then certainly the wages increased, put some dollars to use.   Damian: So it's a lot of that. As far as some of the levers we pulled. Oh one that I would be remiss to mention as well. Our client financial participation. It had been if you made $25,778 for those nonexempt services, you were zeroed out your would not contribute in some of those areas. So we changed that. We actually doubled our financial participation limits. It actually helped a lot of those families that weren't necessarily in a crisis yet. But if something happened, you know, they're just hanging on and then it's really hard to get hearing aids or whatever when you're making 25,000. I mean, that's a decision between rent and a hearing aid. So opening that up helped a lot. And then actually, we always participate at least 20%. You could make a million. Not that there's millionaires coming in for your services, but you could do that as well. And so our participation level is it's open ended, kind of goes 80, 60, 40, 20, and then it just stays. We always participate at least 20%. So that's had great effect, I think, in attracting clients and so on. So yeah, those have been a lot of the levers we've pulled this last year or two.   Carol: That's very cool. I'm really glad you mentioned counselor budgets. I know on the QM on our fiscal team as we go out and we're talking with states, it's one of the things we advocate against having counselor budgets because of the very reasons you said you can almost end up being like you're on an order without being on one because it becomes then this is my pod and I'm protecting it. And if something is going to go outside of it, even though folks have a mechanism where you can ask for more money or whatever, people don't, and so they're restricting what they're doing. And so moving that up. I'm really happy to hear you say that because we advocate for that all the time.   Damian: Yeah, and all that comes from a good place. And I'm also I'm not silly enough to think like that. I created all this or the people that are here that created all this positivity to it's really because when they went into order selection, they made the right decisions that we have this money to spend now. So I appreciate the efforts of the leaders of the past and it really put us in a good position to capitalize on, I think.   Carol: Well, and it absolutely speaks to that. You need to continuously evaluate your position. So because you were there in 2010, it's now 2023 and you're in a different spot. You don't want to keep operating in the same way. You want to keep evaluating, looking at what you're doing, pivoting, making changes, and that's part of it. I think VR sometimes struggles a little bit with keeping sort of the same keep an eye on. We're doing the same thing, same way. We keep going. But the world has changed in the circumstances of a change and so much has changed that it really forces you to look in and go, Hey, we've got to react to this so we can move ahead of it to for the future. So we're setting up our program continuously for the future to be the best we can be.   Damian: Agreed. Yeah. The one big thing that came from that too, is we started to do forecasting within VR. You know, we didn't necessarily rely on our physical folks and the ones that we have now are fantastic. So don't get me wrong there, but it was helpful. Patti, who in our office takes a look at that. They were always planning for the worst case scenario, which if I had been here ten years ago, I would get that too. But the situation had changed and we made some little tweaks because also we started to notice they had always assumed that the grant would stay flat. But if you look at it, I think it's like 1.018%. It increases each year was our average roughly. And it might be different state to state. But it's interesting how much money that feeds into your bottom line and then you need to plan for because it's like you can't be at either extreme where you spend yourself into order, but you can't be on the other end where you're sitting with a giant pot of money where we are collectively. Now you want to know that those dollars are being put to good use. So we try to hit that happy medium.   Carol: Absolutely. We work with folks all the time on doing some forecasting and having a spending strategy, and we lay it out like, all right, what's your situation look like? How much carryforward do you have? What are you projecting this year? What's the increase? Some of the folks, the increase in the formula grants more like 7%. So when you look at that year over year, that's a big jump. You've got a lot of things you're maneuvering around to figure that out. So I know a lot is going on in VR and it can be really overwhelming. We have a lot of new directors in, we have a lot of new leadership. There's a lot of people like yourself who are coming in from the outside. What advice would you give to your colleagues across the country? They're trying to figure out what to do. What kind of advice would you.   Damian: Give them outside of the engagement that we talked about before? I think the other areas is I call it cutting through, and that's when we talked about popping into meetings, so on and so forth. Visit your regions. And it's not that I know and there's a lot more layers in other states that are maybe here too, but whoever the direct supervisor is, that can't be the person that's visiting the region. It has to be somebody above that so that they know that their voices are heard and are important and find those good ideas and cut through. I think also a lot of what we do is that certainly there is in our state plan, there's goals that are introduced and so on and so forth, but I would say have a strategic plan that doesn't sit on the shelf, make sure you're assessing your regions, hearing their input, pulling all that together, and then ruthlessly prioritize. So what I find is like, you can have I've heard this call, the disease of distraction is you can work yourself to death on a very large number of medium or low priority items, but you really don't get anywhere. But if you tackle those probably 10 to 15 big items, it's like it has a cascading effect. The medium priority become low priority. The low priority just kind of disappear. Ruthlessly prioritize, say yes to good ideas, concentrate on your objective metrics, and things really turn out. So that's the way we've done it here, Anyway.   Carol: I love that ruthlessly prioritize. Oh my gosh, you need to write a book or something. You are full of a lot of amazing ideas. I really appreciate you being on the show today and I'm wishing you the very best as you continue your ventures in North Dakota. Thanks a bunch!   Damian: Thanks for having us on. You have a good day.   {Music} Speaker1: 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 David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. David has focused on making MCB the best it can be. Learn about the concept of disability as a qualification, the Accessibility Technology Survey, the entrepreneurial program developed with NIB, and dig into the 32 reallotment projects MCB has done over the past few years.   David is the Idea Guy and shares a lot of information in this brief 30-minute conversation.   Find out more about what is happening at MCB:     MCB Home Page 2020 Reallotment Project Summary 2021 Reallotment Project Summary   Listen Here   Full Transcript {Music} Speaker1: 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 David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. Thanks for joining me today, David. How are things going in Massachusetts?   David: Going very well. Looking forward to a great 2023. And thanks for having me again.   Carol: You bet. Me too. I love this 2023. I have my little resolutions for this year. You know, I really want to be intentional. That's one of my things. So I know I had you on the show over a year ago and we were talking about some of your great employment strategies during National Disability Employment Awareness Month. And you have had so many cool initiatives going on in your state that I think of you as the Idea Guy. I put you and Joe Xavier from California up there as two bold leaders in VR that we can all learn something from. Now, I know you've been keeping your head down and really looking forward focused on making your agency the very best it can be. And it also seemed like you were having some just really amazing employment successes for customers during COVID. So now more than ever, we need to take some serious steps to address the problem of spending VR dollars and improving outcomes. And you started looking at the problem when you first started at MCB and you hit the ground running. So let's dig in. I know we have lots to talk about. So David, can you remind our listeners about yourself? Where did you come from and how long have you been at MCB?   David: Sure. Well, I'm a consumer of MCB also, and being legally blind from a young age. I remember getting VR services back when I was in junior high school and high school. So that's really my first impression with MCB was as a consumer, as a young man. But since joining MCB in 2018, I came over from the Office on Disability, where I was the director of the Massachusetts Office on Disability. So when the MCB position opened up and got an opportunity to serve. And, making great strides for these past five years and looking forward to hopefully more time to be able to get our people employed and help lead our people to more independence and self determination.   Carol: That's awesome. So can you tell us a little bit about MCB? Like, how many staff do you guys have and how many customers are you serving currently?   David: Sure. So we're one of the first blindness agencies in the country. We often argue with Connecticut, if they were first, we were first, but we were established in 1906 with one of our first commissioners being Helen Keller. So we have a long history and track record of providing services for people with blindness throughout Massachusetts. We currently serve approximately 24,000 people in Massachusetts with all types of services. Massachusetts is a little bit different than many of the other states. We don't provide just for VR services, and that's not to diminish VR services, but we also provide what we call our services or social rehabilitation services and deafblind extended support services. So we serve people who are blind and deafblind and people with blindness and then additional significant disabilities. So that adds up. Our 24,000 people and our range of blindness really is the whole spectrum. So everybody from hi partial and legally blind like me all the way to somebody who has no light perception at all. And we know from the data that we've collected that actually there's probably more people at MCB as consumers who have visions closer to me than vision, closer to somebody who has no light perception at all. So we've got some data that's going to be coming out that I would encourage everybody to look at. We did an assistive technology survey recently with all of our consumers that really reveals information that I think people will take notice of because many times people were thinking that, oh, well, your consumers, they can't see, so they're not on the Internet or they're not taking part with this technology. And our survey really sheds new light on that. So stay tuned for that. You can check that out on our website, Mass.gov/MCB. It's really going to be an important survey when we reveal these results. It's going to be eye opening for people.   Carol: Well, cool. Yeah. Shoot me a note when that comes out. I'm really interested in seeing that. Do you also serve individuals like starting as babies? Like because some programs I know do that. We did not in Minnesota but I know some start very young with kids.   David: Yeah in Massachusetts we serve people from birth to death. So cradle to grave with all of our services and the social rehabilitation services that we provide are really geared around independence and self determination. So we will start providing services as soon as somebody gets that mandatory report of legal blindness and they're declared, which we are the keeper of, that we register somebody as legally blind after their doctor, their eye care provider, has provided us with that record. And then we get the services flowing, whether it's teaching Braille or providing assistive technology, orientation and mobility, training, all of these core services, we really believe getting those in place first.   Carol: Yeah   David: That's really going to help in terms of VR. It's setting the bedrock so people are already independent and self determined and then can focus on their career goals.   Carol: Yes. So smart. You've got the foundational pieces in place and early, you know, you're getting at the students early, which is incredible. That is great. That is great. So I really liked your getting grounded in that three part framework. You talk about it and I was reading it again on your website about the Path to Prosperity is Paved with Perseverance. Can you tell me more about that?   David: Sure. Carol, thanks. Really. I first said that publicly during the commencement address that I gave for Lesley University's Threshold Program. Lesley University has a great program for people with intellectual disabilities where they provide a college like experience. And back in 2017, when I was director of the state's Office on Disability, I had the great opportunity to be able to provide the commencement address there. And that's really where I first laid out that I believe the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. Or what does that mean? I think that becoming employed is not a one step thing. There are many steps on that path on your career journey. So we really try to instill in to our consumers here at MCB that there is no get rich quick scheme. This is not a one click approach like so many of us are conditioned today through these devices and through technology. Just one click in your in. Getting a career, getting employed, getting your job, getting on that path to prosperity takes many steps. You got to hang in there because it's not easy. If it was easy, it would be done easily and everybody would do it. Everybody would be a multimillionaire. It takes many steps and depending upon your disability or in mass commission for the blind on your blindness, there's such a spectrum. And really we have to work with everybody individually because everybody is in a different stage in life. And some people are aging into blindness. Some people, it comes upon them quickly. Some people have it from a young age, some people come to it at mid age. It's so different for everybody. And we really just want to make sure that people are clear what the expectations that we're going to be with them through their journey along this path and that it does take time. All good things come in time. So that's really what the path to prosperity is paved with. Perseverance is about that you've got to persevere. These are challenging things. The very essence of being a person with a disability. Disability comes with challenge, It does. And so we try to get people to accept their disability, accept that challenge and then help them work through it. And so I believe in people and I believe anybody can become employed. I think work matters. I think it goes to the identity of a person. If I were to see you in the grocery store and we would have strike up a conversation, invariably one of the first questions that you or I would ask each other is, Well, so what do you do? And if you're employed, you're going to tell me about your job because it goes to the identity, it goes to who you are and what you're accomplishing. So work matters. Our consumers matter, and that's why we want to try to get them employed, because there's so many contributions in our community that we're trying to bring out for the benefit of our consumers, but also for the benefit of society. I really believe that our people have a lot to give and you've got to hang in there. That's part of being on the path to prosperity.   Carol: I think that is one of the cool things with blind services. It's very foundational. All the things that you have to learn. And I remember being at Minnesota blind and just seeing that, especially with people that came in that were new to their vision loss and it happened abruptly. Something happened, an illness or something overnight almost, and you wake up and you can't see and everything changes. How you read, how you get around in the world, how you get around in your home and your clothes and like how you do everything and having to learn all those foundational pieces first and getting that acceptance and then working on work skills because you can't just launch right into that when somebody goes, I don't even know if I'm wearing the orange socks with the black suit. I don't know what I have on.   David: One of the initiatives we've been working on and we keep advancing is something that I came up with about ten years ago that I've been trying to encourage people in VR to embrace, and that is the concept of disability as a qualification. I really believe that the lived experience that our people have to learn to problem solve around is a qualification in and of itself. Let me give you an example. If I were to take somebody with good vision and ask them to cross a busy intersection, they probably wouldn't think twice of it. Right?   Carol: Right.   David:  But to take one of our consumers who can't see and ask them to cross an intersection, the skills involved and the intestinal fortitude involved with crossing that intersection. You know what? I want that person on my team, if they're going to be able to go out and have the intestinal fortitude to be able to do that and then the demonstrated skill to be able to do it, because that takes sophistication, if that life experience does not qualify you for some type of role that deals with problem solving. How many employment opportunities are there out there for people who are good problem solvers, for people that have a solid backbone and won't just roll over? Right?   Carol: Right. I love that you say that.   David: Those are qualifications, those matter.   Carol: They do matter. So I'm just going to say a little thing about me. When we were in Minnesota at the blind agency, all of the leadership team and the VR counselors, the staff, you had to go through six weeks of sleep shade training, so you were under sleep shades for six weeks. And so doing that as a new director myself, having that experience, it's just a taste, but we did go to one of our Adjustment to Blindness Training Centers. We had the experience of the classes all day under sleep shades. I still remember at the end of the day, walking out. I had my cane. I was still had my sleep shades on. I'd taken them off and I got in my car. I scared a lady that was across the street. She's like, That blind lady is driving now, but getting that very firsthand experience about that problem solving that goes into everything you do during the day that is so interesting and very applicable to the world of work, for sure.   David: Yeah. So that's why we're pushing disability as a qualification. We believe that those lived experiences are going to help employers and a really good qualifications for employees.   Carol: Yeah, that's very cool. Very interesting thought. So I want to take you back to 2020. You asked for reallotment dollars, but you had some very specific initiatives you wanted to accomplish and in fact, you were dealing with the pandemic and you wanted to figure out your role in pioneering a path forward in a post-COVID recovery. So talk to me about what went into that 2020 that ask for reallotment dollars and kind of how you framed up all of those initiatives.   David: Sure. Well, we wanted to make the best use of our time knowing that we were not going to have the community interactions and be able to travel freely like we had been doing. So we said, let's study this and let's come up with some things now, some of the things we had put in motion, some of the plans that we had put in motion were prior to COVID. So it seemed that we were prescient on some of them, like our ad campaign we did, What's Your Vision? So now we've been on Massachusetts television with our announcements, not just public service announcements, but paid ads to be able to get the message out to employers, Hey, we've got candidates for you and get the message out to our consumers that, hey, we'll work with you to get on this path to employment. So there's campaigns like that. But then we followed it up. Once we knew COVID was in there and we did our Quest for Independence, which is a graphic novel which is aimed at not only the consumer, but people in the consumer's sphere of influence, their brothers, their sisters, their fathers and mothers and guidance counselors and people there so that those people can understand the path to employment that we lay out in the process that we do. So it starts at pre training and goes through all of the steps along the way and we make it like a questing journey. We made it like kind of cool and try to put it in a format that people of Pre-ETS age would be more apt to buy into. So many of the VR documents are black and white text only small print, like who's reading that? Who's consuming that? Certainly not a 15 or 18 year old person that we're trying to get interested in the workforce. So whether it's things like that or whether it's studying Disability as a Qualification that we just talked about or trying to do some of the other surveys that we put together, we really tried to make the best use of our time. I think in all total now we're up to 32 or 34 reallotment projects that we've done over the past three or four years.   Carol: Oh my gosh!   David: Yeah. We've really tried to make good use of our time and build the catalog of information. And all of this is available to VR people if they want to visit our website again, Mass.gov/MCB. All of the re allotment projects are out there. We have studies on the Built Environment in the Workplace. We have studies on Disability as a Qualification on Assistive Technology. So many different topics we have data on as well as these ad campaigns. We did one with Sleep Machine recently. We worked up 16 different types of consumers and interactions that it's not a one size fits all approach. We really got it into 16 different approaches, so it tries to suit all of the different demographic areas, and that's a VR approach that we took so many different projects that we encourage people to find out more on our website.   Carol: I know you did a lot of data analysis. There were a lot of projects around different data analysis, so maybe talk about one or two of those and how you used that data to now kind of inform your programming or whatever you're doing now at the agency.   David: Well, the assistive technology one is a perfect example like. When I came to MCB and I said, I want to do a survey, they kind of like chuckled and I'm like, Why do you want to do? And I said, Well, how many of our people have email or how many of them use the Internet? I remember distinctly without naming names, but some really veteran VR people saying, none of our people use the Internet Commissioner or they don't do this. Well, come to find out that 70% use it daily. That right there was like informing our programming because no longer was I going to allow this myth to be put forward that our people don't use the Internet. That's just not so. Now we've got to make sure that we're making these sites accessible. So a recent proposal that I've been working on is a registered apprenticeship program for our consumers who are blind. Who better to make these websites accessible than people who are already using screen reader technology? So we're trying to get two registered apprenticeships, one in making web pages accessible, and then the other for making other online things accessible apps and forms and documents online and things like in the electronic space. So we're working right now with the Department of Labor, but we're also seeking other states. You need five states to be able to make a cohort to do it. So if people are interested in joining our cohort, please contact us and let us know if you want to join in this registered apprenticeship program that we're going to be launching soon.   Carol: That's super cool and very smart and needed. I mean, there's a lot of sites, a lot of websites in a lot of trouble because they are not accessible. I love that you did the Assistive Technology survey. I've thought for years, like the invention of Apple and the iPhone and all of that single handedly changed just information for people who are blind, visually impaired because that device is accessible and it was built-in. There's so many cool apps now and things out there that our folks are using now. I know you also contracted out for your comprehensive Statewide Needs Assessment and that that isn't necessarily new. A lot of states do that because it's much easier to contract with someone than do it yourself. But what was different about that particular assessment and how do you use the information that you got from that?   David: Yeah, again, I think that was the one where we put it out there and the awarded bidder I think was the public consulting group. So they're a pretty big firm. They had worked in other states before. I think one of the things that they had worked in was like Indiana. And so we work with them. Obviously our sister agency, MRC, we wanted to make sure that we were kind of on the same page as well. So I think that helped and really it helped strengthen the things that we already knew we were doing well. They really came in and were able to look at that and say, Yeah, you know what, you should probably keep doing that. Did identify some areas and we've made some adjustments as well. And I think now in this post COVID world, we were prescient that we were trying to already get our people to be able to work remotely, whether it be our staff, who a significant amount of our staff are actually our consumers also, which were very prideful in that they'd been remote prior to COVID. And so now the trends in employment with less and less people in an office environment, we really were again, a little bit ahead of the curve in trying to predict that We think that's where the workforce is going. There's going to be more and more opportunities that are away from an office environment. So if you can work online effectively, that's just going to increase opportunities for our consumers.   Carol: Oh, I agree 100%. So how has all of this helped your numbers? Like where are you at today? Do you feel like have things moved up or are you getting customers back? How about people getting into employment, all these different initiatives? Has it led to some success and outcomes?   David: Yes, it has led to success and outcomes. Our numbers are up generally across the board. There's a couple of exceptions, but things we really like to talk about is the nature of the jobs that we're able to help our people navigate into. And just to be clear, we are very up front with our people. People like, get me a job, get me a job. We're very upfront with them and say, we can't get you a job. We can help you get you a job. We don't get anybody jobs. Our consumers get themselves jobs. We're there to help and build value and work within whether it be any of the networks that we develop with stakeholders or using the existing public systems or education, whatever the case may be. It's consumer driven, it's consumer informed, and it's consumer driven. We make that clear that really we're just a partner in this, and it's up to the consumer to be able to make the final decision. One of the things that I think is very successful is that there's more choice than ever before. I think our consumers were faced with maybe one opportunity, and if they didn't take it, it was like, all right, let's start all over again. Or, you know, now let's go on another six month search. Now our consumers are being presented with multiple offers, multiple opportunities. That's a really good sign. Another really good sign is the nature of the jobs that they're getting. We're now going past just the entry level job or the base job, and we're into more management. Some of our placements are six figure placements. These are consumers that many of them have been with us for a while, but some are fairly new. So like before, this is where I think our ad campaign is really helped us because consumers who maybe hadn't approach MCB before are now approaching MCB. So we're doing our best to reduce the stigma of what it means to join MCB. So many people before who were low vision, high, partial, legally blind...   Carol: Yes...   David: ...didn't really feel that they were. Well, I can see I'm not really blind. Well, if you're legally blind, then you're entitled to the services. And so people with existing track records of employment that they've been in the workforce for 20 years and now they've lost their vision. Before, many of them were just leaving. And then we would find out five years later, well, I left because I was depressed or I left because I couldn't do the job. Now we get to them more quickly and actually work with them and the employer to let them know, Hey, we're there for you. We're there to provide these reasonable accommodations. We're there to emphasize the great skills that you have. So many of these things can be remediated now with technology. So we're seeing six figure placements. We're seeing management level placements. These are all very encouraging signs. But again, they didn't just happen overnight. It's the culmination of all of these programs working together. And most importantly, let me just give a great shout out to our counselors, our VR counselors develop these relationships and work with these consumers. And really, they're part of the secret sauce here, sitting at their kitchen table with them and their families and letting them know that we're going to be there with them. I think that's irreplaceable. And you can create whatever program you want and fund it however you want. At the end of the day, that needs to happen. Without that, I don't think we'd be having the success that we're having.   Carol: I love that. I know your PSA campaign was really clever because I had looked at the ads. Very cool. Are you still continuing to do that? Is that still going on?   David: Yeah. So we're looking at another reallotment project to fund another ad buy. We're going to have a dialogue with RSA about it. I think we can show that we got results from it and if we can, I'm hoping that they'll say that that's a good use of the money. You know, right now we've gone through some change. We've had a significant aging of our MCB workforce. We've had retirements of people that have been at the agency for 40 years, 38 years, 39 years. So I think COVID really helped in a way where it gave people a pause to be able to adjust. And that's not only our consumers and our counselors, but really like the whole workforce. And as a result, many people are saying, you know what, it's now time I've put my time in and it's time to give it up to the next generation, which is good. But it's a challenge because now we spent a significant amount of time trying to backfill these positions and like something with orientation and mobility. I think one of our O & M people we got from California, another one from Michigan. So hunting around trying to find talent can be challenging and we're certainly not trying to raid other agencies or muscle other competition out because Massachusetts is the state where the cost of living is quite high. We want to make sure if we're getting people here, that they're positioned for long term success. So we've definitely been trying to navigate some of that, as I think many of my colleagues can probably resonate with on at their state level.   Carol: Oh yeah, that is the hot topic of the day. The mass retirement and kind of exodus of people out of VR. I know when I was at Minnesota, this is, you know, ten years ago I walked in the door in HR hands me a list saying I think it was over 50% of the staff were eligible to retire in the next three years. I just went, what? And they did, you know, people did because people have been with the agency. They all started together. They'd been there 30, 40 years together. And they all went. And then that just got exacerbated by the pandemic. People going out the door for sure. If people are wanting to find your PSA information, is that also on your website still?   David: It sure is. And it's on our YouTube channel as well. When I came to MCB, we had no social media. Now we've got Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and our own YouTube channel and all of these avenues that we've gotten such great input from our consumers and their families because, yeah, it's about serving the consumer, but it's also about serving their families because that's oftentimes the people that are working with the consumers just as much, if not more than our counselors. So it's about empowering the whole consumer. And what I mean, the whole consumer, I mean, it's their extended family. It's their spouse or their son or their daughter or their niece or their nephew. They're aunt, their uncle or their friend or neighbor. It takes a village. And we've had good success with that approach.   Carol: Great. It absolutely does take a village. Can you give that website address one more time?   David: Yeah, sure. It's. Mass.gov/MCB. So, its Mass dot gov. Forward slash m c b.   Carol: Excellent! Yeah. Because I know you have a lot of really good stuff out on the website, so I know you are always thinking you don't ever stop. You're on to the next thing. So what's up on deck next for MCB?   David: Yeah, I think we just need to continue to now emerge from the pandemic and continue to assimilate so many new staff that we've got. I mean, I think of our 130 staff, about 40 of them are new within the past couple of years. So there's a big assimilation going on, number one, but really making sure that our community feels safe to get back out there and independent and self determined, ready to go. That's job one.  Is getting that adjustment to blindness, that acceptance of blindness, continuing to find new consumers to be able to provide the services to. Then once we do that, then at the tried and true, it's wash, rinse, repeat on what our counselors and what VR has established so well. It's mentoring and then interning and then interviewing and then getting a job and then staying upwardly mobile in that job and trying to move up into management or entrepreneurial. And one of the new things we're working on that we piloted last year successfully with National Industries for the Blind is this entrepreneurial program. We really believe that that is the future for many of our consumers that are interested in a small business opportunity, and that is establishing an e-commerce presence online where you own your own thing and you're really an entrepreneur at that point, selling products and services online through their accessible platform. For years, we tried to get our consumers interested in selling on Amazon or eBay or these other e commerce platforms. But the platform itself, the app, the technology itself was not accessible to screen readers working with the national industries of the blind and tremendous credit to them for investing a significant amount of their time and resources into making an e commerce platform that is accessible for screen reader technology. This is a huge opportunity for people with blindness who are interested in being their own business owner online in the e commerce space. Like I said, we piloted last year. We proved the proof of concept. We have another class now going in. I would encourage anybody who thinks they have a consumer interested in this space to contact national industries of the Blind. Mention the pilot with Massachusetts that we've done. They'll know what you're talking about and get your consumers enrolled because this really is the future and it's a great opportunity.   Carol: Yeah, I thought that was a super smart idea when I was reading because that was one of your re allotment projects was to study it and to look at it and to figure that out so that can actually be a viable option for your customers.   David: That's right. We didn't just rush in horns first. We studied it, we spent time, looked around, conferred with NIB, and NIB has done a great job. Like I said, they've really made a major investment here and using their Ability One shops that they've had, they have such a tremendous network of providers and vendors that many of the products, I think it's about half of the products are actually made by blind people also. So it's almost like a double win when you really get down to it. To be able to sell these products online. We're very optimistic about it. Good things start humbly and that's where we started. We started with the first class. I think we started with 12 people. Then it went to 6 because some people didn't have the screen reader skills necessary that you would need. Then from the 6,, 3 of them dropped out because they didn't want to own the lemonade stand. They just wanted to work the lemonade stand right there from the 3. It went to 2 and then 1 ended up actually seeing it all the way through and becoming profitable. So we've proved the proof of concept. We just now need more consumers. So if you've got consumers in your area, let's get them going.   Carol: Well, it always starts with 1. You need one, you know, and then there's 2 and then there's 3 and it keeps moving up. That's great. At least it gives another opportunity. And it really is the gift that keeps on giving. You know, when you look at using those reeallotment dollars, it doesn't just benefit you. In Massachusetts, the work that you're doing can benefit the whole country.   David: Yeah, I really think that, Carol. And if people again go to Mass.gov/MCB, look at the, again now, I think it's either up to 30 or 32 different real allotment projects that we've done. There's quite a bit of information in there from studies to these campaigns to the Quest for Independence guide that we did, all of these different things. they're there for everybody else to be able to use. If we've had success, you can just kind of repurpose it and have success in your area with it.   Carol: Well, and your quest to  independence. Guide You've been being very modest about it, but that is hilarious because it's a comic book and you're the superhero. In it. It is the coolest thing. I thought that was the most clever thing I had seen in that Pre-ETS space.   David: Well, thanks, Carol. If it leads to one more employment, then we'll be pleased.   Carol: Yeah, that's cool. So, David, I know there's a lot of new directors across the country like you were a few years ago. What kind of advice would you give them as they're wrestling with ways to effectively spend their funds?   David: Yeah, it would really be, Don't just settle for what has been done previously. I've found the people at RSA to be very supportive, to be willing to listen, and just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't be done. Find out what your consumers need and then figure out how to backtrack that to these federal dollars to be able to get them the resources that they need to be successful, whether it's a small business enterprise or Randolph Shepherd or they want to go to kind of a more traditional route of getting employed, whatever the case may be. There's a program that can be crafted to individualize everybody so that they feel like the job they're getting is the job for them, because that's what we want you to spend so much time getting somebody in the workforce. We want to make sure these people are staying in the workforce, staying gainfully employed, because again, we really believe that independence and self determination, that's the thing that you've got to get through so that people can long term stay viable on their own.   Carol: Well, well said. Thanks so much for being on the show today. I've been a big fan of yours for a long time and I just really wanted to get your message out to our listeners and have folks look at your website and the very cool things you can do. I know there's a synopsis of all of your projects so people can get a really good sense of what you did and what you learned. I think it was brilliant, so I wish you the very best of luck in 2023 and thanks for joining me today.   David: Carol, Thanks so much. You do such a great job. I appreciate you. Thanks for everybody for listening. And please contact us if we could be a support in any way.   Carol: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!

Tina Herzik, the Vice President of Operations for Service Source, and Brent McNeal, the Director of the Florida Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, join forces with Carol Pankow in the Manager Minute studio to chat about creative staffing solutions in the great State of Florida. Tina and Brent discuss how the Florida General agency and Service Source are partnering to meet staffing needs with a unique model. With a business relationship that spans over 22 years, the duo shares how their two organizations continue to serve as front runners of innovative staffing practices and transformational leadership.   Listen Here   Full Transcript {Music} Speaker1: 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 Tina Herzik, Service Source vice president of operations for the VR program in Florida, and Brent McNeal, director of the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Florida. General, I am so happy to have you both with me in the studio today. So, Brent, how are things going in Florida?   Brent: Things are going well, Carol. Thank you. We're definitely happy to see the end of the hurricane season here in Florida and looking forward to going through the homestretch here into the holiday break.   Carol: Yeah, I've seen you've had a lot of weather. We had our own 13 inches of snow on Monday, so at least you don't have that. Holy cow. So, Tina, how about you?   Tina: Same thing. Just getting over trying to lose that word pandemic and getting back to normalcy. But I live in Vero Beach, so happy that last hurricane didn't take us down. But we're standing.   Carol: Strong. Yeah, absolutely. Know all the Florida folks. I really you know, our hearts go out to y'all with everything that happened in that Fort Myers area. That is something else. I don't know how you deal with that all the time. That kind of those terrific weather conditions that can really just devastate a whole area. So I know you're rebuilding and people are working strong. So, Brent, it was really fun meeting you live and in person at the CC VR Leadership Forum before the conference began, and we all heard a pretty sobering message about the state of the national VR program. And we've got to spend the money. Each agency is facing different challenges, but the factor that binds us all together has to do with finding ways to expend funds. So the VR program, much like the rest of business across the country, is in the midst of a staffing crisis and trying to seek solutions to meet customer needs. Now, I know Florida General has a model that's been in place for over 20 years as a result of a legislative change. Now, this model is not really conventional, and I think you're the only people in the country doing something quite like this. But you have worked out all the kinks and have really learned so many lessons. So we thought others could benefit from the work that you all have done. And there's really a unique partnership that really is withstanding the test of time. So let's dig in. So, Brent, why don't you tell us a little about yourself, your background, how you came to VR and a little bit about Florida General?   Brent: Sure. First of all, I'm happy to be here. I echo the statements that you've made, we certainly are in the same boat as other programs around the country. And so this is a way that folks could explore to spend some of those funds and to better provide services to their customers. So my background, I came to VR first in 2009. It was my first job out of law school, actually, and did not know anything about VR or what it was, but quickly became so interested and invested because of the good work that I saw that the division was doing and so really enjoyed getting to learn the program. I also represented our Florida Division of Blind Services, so got to do a lot of interesting work and Randolph Shepherd and in other areas with that unit. So that is how I came to VR. I worked with VR in a legal capacity for around eight years and then took this director's position back in February. So coming up on one year here shortly in terms of Florida General, we're housed within the Florida Department of Education, headquartered in beautiful Tallahassee, Florida. The states broken up into seven geographical areas, and each of those has an area director. Now, we haven't always been here in the Department of Education, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the history and where the division was previously. But yeah, we've been with the Department of Education for a number of years now and are a big component of Florida DOH.   Carol: So your background really positions you nicely for this job because you know, the regs really probably pretty inside and out as being the attorney for the agency for so long.   Brent: You know that part is certainly helpful and I tap into it regularly. I have to resist the urge to just be the lawyer. And we have a very capable and wonderful deputy general counsel that leads our VR legal team. So I defer to Nicole Saunders now on legal matters, but it is nice to have that background as well as those relationships that I was able to build as the attorney, including with folks like Tina.   Carol: Absolutely. So how many people do you serve and how many staff does Florida General have?   Brent: For the past several years, it has varied between around 45000 to 50000 individuals receiving services within a state fiscal year. We have 884 full time equivalent staff that are employees of the division of the state of Florida.   Carol: Wow. That is huge. Are you in the top five programs in the country or something? As far as size, I think.   Brent: I think we must be I know that we're one of the largest. And, you know, Florida is such a diverse state, too. We talk about from the tip of the panhandle, which is where I grew up over in Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties, all the way down to the Florida Keys. And, you know, those two ends of the state could not be more different in terms of, well, just geography, but also all of the economics, you name it, just really diverse and a lot of different challenges throughout the state for such a big state as Florida.   Carol: Yeah, tough for you to just like we're going to drive to all the offices today. That can't happen. So the model I alluded to, what is this model that Florida general is working under to meet your staffing needs?   Brent: For over 20 years now, Florida VR has been working with Service Source in a successful public private partnership, and that's really added service capacity in our state. And so I'm looking forward to telling everyone more about that today.   Carol: Very cool. So, Tina, I didn't mean to leave you out.. Why don't you tell our listeners about yourself and your background and how you kind of fit into this picture?   Tina: Oh, thank you, Carol, And thanks for inviting us here today. I have been in Florida most of my life here. As I said, I live in Vero Beach. I did live where you are from in Minnesota for five years. So I've enjoyed the Minnesota life as well. I started my career out as a teacher, so working with the youth has always been very close to my heart. I obtained my master's degree while working under this contract over the years and rehabilitation counseling, I have my CRC, my Certified Rehabilitation Counseling license. I was the second employee hired under this original contract with this partnership in 2001 as a vocational rehabilitation counselor. Believe it or not, I took this job under a newspaper advertisement. Does anybody know what that is anymore? So the director that hired me to start up was the startup director for the privatization project, Steve Palumbo. Steve had worked with the state of Florida VR system for many years. He started this privatization. He was a great mentor to me. I was very green, just like Brent talks about coming in. I didn't know that much at all about what I was getting myself into. I had no idea that 20 years later I'd be as excited as I am about what we do. And as he mentored me over the years, I started out as a VRC, so I was a vocational rehabilitation counselor for a few years and then I became a unit supervisor for one of our largest units, which was one of the first units in this partnership on the Treasure Coast. It serves four different counties, and I did that for about 11 years. And then when Steve retired in 2017, I became the director for the program and have held that position ever since. I've worked with Service Source for over 20 years and I've been very excited to be part of what I always say to people, kind of the trailblazer of this type of model. And it's been great because, as Brent said, we also work together very closely when he was the attorney for VR. So it's just been a great partnership.   Carol: So Brent, what happened back in the 1999 legislative session that led to your model for meeting staffing needs?   Brent: Well, I'll give the caveat that obviously I wasn't around at this time, but I've done some research and know anecdotally that there were some similar circumstances to what we're facing now. There are very high caseloads. We had a number of vacancies that were presenting challenges and consequently we had some underserved areas in Florida where folks were having a hard time receiving VR services. In response to that problem, the Florida legislature passed Senate Bill 230 and which directed VR and I'll quote, to enter into local public private partnerships to the extent that it is beneficial to increasing employment outcomes for persons with disabilities and ensuring their full involvement in the comprehensive workforce investment system. So at that time, Florida VR was broken into 24 regions. The division was housed in another state agency at that time and had not made the move to the Department of Education. So there were 24 regions in stark contrast to our seven areas now, and initially contracts were only awarded for three of those 24 regions. Service Source was awarded two of the three contracts that were initially awarded after procurement was conducted in 2000. And just a little bit more about Senate Bill 230. It did include a section on the legislative intent, which I thought might be interesting to listeners, and it basically states the legislature finds that individuals with disabilities experience the highest unemployment rate of any group in society as high as 75%, and that unemployment and poverty go hand in hand. The legislature also finds that persons who complete the vocational rehabilitation program are twice as likely to obtain and maintain employment, and the use of private providers is the readiest way to add service capacity for this population. I'll stop there.   Carol: That's really interesting. You know, we're still facing that issue today with people with disabilities being one of the largest groups that have issues with unemployment and living in poverty. And so the needle has not changed a ton, but you were able to increase capacity. So let me just clear this up. Did the legislature at the same time, did they like freeze your FTEs or you actually lost some FTEs, but you could then use this source to be able to make up the difference?   Brent: I don't know that there was a simultaneous move with respect to FTEs. I know that over the years that has occurred where they have been frozen or we have been permission to expand, but I don't know if that was occurring simultaneous to this effort in 1999. And Tina may be able to speak a little bit more about that because obviously there was some trepidation on the part of division employees to this fairly significant change.   Carol: Well, absolutely. They're thinking we're being eliminated. You're taking our jobs away. So, Tina, why don't we go to you? Because you were around back in 1999. What's your perspective on what happened back then?   Tina: Yeah, absolutely. I actually remember it like it was yesterday. As I said, when I came into the position, I remember, you know, you start your first day on the job with your little box of all your desk items and you're walking in. And state workers at the time, field staff looked very concerned. There was a lot of concern and it wasn't the welcoming that you might have expected on your first day of your new job, because I didn't know that at the time and didn't understand it. But as time went on, I understood that the communication wasn't very clear on why we were there and what we were doing there. But we were brought in. We were brought in to work alongside state employees. So at the time we were working in the same offices right next door and taking over some of the caseloads. And, you know, everybody's very particular about giving up their caseloads. But what I believe happened at that time is VRC caseloads, the vocational rehabilitation counselors were dealing with over 300 plus cases in certain units. There were counties that, as we were talking about, were completely underserved. As I said, I started out here on the Treasure Coast. There are four counties on the Treasure Coast, very large school districts that needed to be served. And we are about an hour and a half driving distance from the actual area office for the state. So this worked very well and it took a little bit of time. But when the employees started to feel the relief and some of the challenges they were having and they realized we weren't there to take their jobs, I feel like over time it just made things a lot easier when they saw the positive responses and that they still had their jobs and they were able to leave as they retired and there was no difference. In that particular office, those people, those state workers left over time through retirement. And then it became that the Treasure Coast was mainly the private provider inside the state offices. So definitely, as Brent said, it was a very unusual time and communication wasn't very forthright. Nobody really knew why. We knew we had jobs. We were coming in to help, but nobody understood it. But I believe over time those challenges kind of went away and the fear went away when we were helping and it was making a difference. And so that made a big difference. It got better.   Carol: So I'm sure the feds probably wanted to say one or two things about this arrangement. So what do either of you think, Brent, I'll go to you first from a state perspective, if you are able to answer this, what did you guys do to help alleviate federal concern about this arrangement? Because I keep thinking non delegables, you know, in my head.   Brent: Sure. Well, that's the big one. And so that is addressed contractually. And I think it's certainly explicit and clear in our current contractual arrangements, which we'll get into. But I would imagine that that had to be addressed right out of the gate because it would be the obvious challenge or something that we would have to deal with. And I think we have done so well. But I think to go back to the federal response, I do understand that RSA had some pretty significant concerns initially, and I speculate that that led to the decision to only enter the three small contracts initially rather than to try to do the whole state. And I understand they were only one year contracts with a possible renewal for two years. So a limited term and very limited geographically to start out. And I think that probably helped to address some of the concerns.   Carol: So, Tina, do you have any thoughts back then about the federal concern because you were there, you probably heard a little bit about that.   Tina: Sure. Basically what we found or what I saw was that RSA contracted agencies to come in and do quality assurance. We had many, many audits and quality assurance reviews regularly. And what I feel probably alleviated those concerns over time because I was part of them, my cases were pulled for audits and then when I became the supervisor, we were still doing many, many quality assurance desktop audits. And basically once we would get through these audits and they were positive and they could see that we were following processes, we were doing the same work that the state was doing, we were following everything that was laid out in the contract. The audits became less, the quality assurance coming around every few months were less and less. And I believe that just spoke to the kind of work that was happening over time. But there was definitely a lot of concern in the beginning and as Brent said. It started out with short term contracts and now we've gone into more of a three year with three year extensions. And of course, everything is still we're all being we should all be under compliance audits from time to time, but it's more regular now. It's not like it was in the past.   Carol: Gotcha. Okay. That helps clear that up. So, Brent, I know I said something about the non-delegables, so how do you address that to ensure that VR remains in control? Because I'm sure our listeners are thinking, all right, but how does that work exactly?   Brent: As I mentioned, we clearly set forth the definitions within the contract and sort of address that head on. And early on in the language of the contract, for example, in the purpose of the contract, under brief summary of the nature and purpose of the project, it states, the purpose of this contract is to perform delegable VR services to eligible persons with disabilities in Area two, Area three, Area six and seven. Essentially, we're establishing that right out of the gate we define what those terms mean within the definitions, of course, citing to the applicable regulations and laws. And then most importantly, every unit has an assigned position that is a state employee that we call a counselor analyst, and they have the final signing authority for all work in the unit. So that's really essentially how we address this the non-delegable issue. The Service Source unit supervisor reviews the work first and then it's ultimately reviewed and signed off on by the counselor analyst. And so Tina mentioned our Treasure Coast where we have two counselor analysts based just on the size of that unit and the population there. The counselor analyst reports to our area director in each area around the state and those four areas that have the private units. And so, of course, we always have to document customer choice and form choice and working with private or state staff. I think we do a good job of explaining during our intake process that the services will still be the same and that it should appear the same regardless of which selection a customer makes. As to whether they would prefer to work with our state staff or with Service Source staff.   Carol: So that speaks to the question then what steps did you take to integrate staff in the work? And Tina, I'm going to send that to you because you've been there since the very darn start of the whole thing.   Tina: Yes, we wanted this to look seamless, and in the beginning I wasn't part of those decisions, but I can see why we did this. And it worked. Basically, our Service Source staff are on the state system, so we have emails, we're included in all the state correspondence. If you were to pull up myself or Brent, we're both in the system, so are all of the staff, Our Service Source staff, we do take our Service Source trainings like you would do for any company that you work for. But then we also, our staff is part of the mandatory state trainings, including ethics and sexual harassment and all the beginning onboarding, because it's important that our staff understand when they're working inside of a state system. There might be a little bit of differences in how the state system may work to a private agency, so they're held accountable for the same things that the state employees are. The VR staff have some additions. What I had to do is we have a staff handbook for Service Source. I actually had them update the handbook over time to add some things that my staff that are working under this contract need to also abide by because they're under this contract. Our management for Service Source is part of all the bureau meetings. We sit on their task forces. It's been wonderful because over the years that's a big piece. The communication has gotten better and better. And what we found is that if we collaborated together and that we work together on strategic plans, brainstorming ideas for Florida, we work together so our management and our leadership sits with their leadership and we work as one. And really it's seamless. We don't go out into the community and say, we are Service Source, employees, we are VR. So when we're in the office, we get paid by Service Source, we work for our company. But when we are working under this contract, we are working as a VR employee.   Carol: I like that you said seamless. That was the word that popped into my mind because you're explaining this. I'm like, This seems really seamless and I'm sure that took time to get to that point.   Tina: It evolved. It evolved. But I feel like in all the years I've been here, we're at that place. We're at that place where it's the best I've ever seen it. And it's been a lot of collaboration that's brought us there, but definitely seamless at this point.   Carol: Excellent. So I know one thing that buzzes around in my mind because in Minnesota we're a unionized state, several different unions our staff fell under. So Brent, is Florida unionized?   Brent: Florida is a what's known as a Right To Work state. And that essentially means that a person can work in the state, whether they're in a union or not. They can't be compelled to join a union as a condition of keeping their job. I believe a little over half of the states are right to work states. You know, that doesn't present as much of a challenge for us here as it might in other areas.   Carol: Sure, no, thanks for clarifying that. So, Tina, I wanted to look at today how much territory does Service Source cover in Florida and how many employees are on the Service Source side of the house.   Tina: Yes. Brent alluded a little while ago to the fact that we are in four of their contracted seven areas that we covered. We are inside 16 state offices from Jacksonville to Key West we are predominantly in central part of Florida. And on the East Coast, we have 145 employees inside this contract. When we began to kind of give you how we've evolved, we started out with 45 and we only had two offices. So now I would say percentage wise, years ago, it's probably about 18% of what the state is doing. We're involved in, I would say somewhere between 18 and 20%, but we have offices mainly between Jacksonville and Key West.   Carol: Yeah, that helps to give a better picture of what that looks like. So what are some lessons that you've learned along the way? And Brent, I'm going to go to you first on that.   Brent: Sure. And, you know, Tina and I have talked about this as we prepared for this podcast. And I think we both agree that communication is really the key. And Tina alluded to that earlier, that the communication perhaps could have been better and stronger, more robust at the beginning of this process, because any time you have a significant change like this, we all know that there's going to be if there's a vacuum of information that's going to be filled and people are going to fear the worst and they're going to just come up with the sort of 'Parade of Horribles' to use an old legal term of what might go wrong. So I think it's just critically important and has been important to our relationship that we keep those lines of communication open. We need to make sure as the division that we ensure that our partners, that Service Source, receive the same messages and information that our state employees receive and really toward the greatest extent possible work to that seamlessness that we've talked about. And it's interesting that you all focused on that word because that has been sprinkled throughout. But also I think it just does go to that seamlessness that we look for where for all intents and purposes, the work we do is the same and the customer has the same quality experience no matter who their counselor is.   Carol: So how about you, Tina? Are there any other lessons learned that you want to talk about?   Tina: Yes, I totally agree with Brent. Communication has been the biggest key lesson learned over time. Change management would have been a good lesson 22 years ago. We could have used that topic right? How to help people get used to something different. But I guess something that comes to my mind, I think about many, many years ago we tried to do a staff leasing concept many years ago in one of the areas that we serve. We tried the idea of having a state supervisor, supervising Service Source staff in an underserved area, and it worked for a little bit, but I don't think it worked as well as our current model and what we're doing. So I think that was definitely a lesson learned that we should probably stick to what we're doing from the beginning here with this model, because when you're answering to or you're being supervised by somebody in your own company, it still was all the same concept. But I think it definitely worked better when we didn't do that staff leasing. Having the contract the way it is now, but hugely about communication all across the board. It helps with employee retention, it helps with training, it helps with us all following policy and doing things the way we're supposed to do to serve the customers.   Carol: So I'm sure everybody is wondering how you both are dealing with staffing shortages. I was thinking about that. Does staff move between like the two organizations and how do you deal with that? Tina, I'm going to ask you that first.   Tina: Sure. You know, Brent and I even newly working together, we discuss this ourselves, and I've talked about this with every previous director. We definitely discourage poaching. We do not look to take each other. So that's not the whole purpose of this contract. The purpose of this contract is that we're working together. However, we don't discourage it happens very infrequently that the employees go from one side or the other. But it does happen and it happens for good reasons sometimes, you know, some people have to move to another area of Florida and Service Source doesn't have an office there inside the state. So it would naturally make sense that they would stay within our system and they would go to a state unit and vice versa. And also for any kind of possible advancement. We do not have all of the positions that the state of Florida has. We have quite a few of the positions that they have under contract. But there may be an opportunity for one of our staff on both sides to have advancement if they come. So we do want to keep all of these great passionate people inside the system. So we're not looking to do that, but we don't encourage that. But that's the biggest thing, is making sure that we're working together and as a team rather than encouraging anything like that.   Carol: So is the pay similar then?   Tina: Yes, the pay is very similar. The only thing different you have to understand is that state benefits are less expensive. If you really kind of look at the bottom line, sometimes it may appear because we have to add on a little bit of money there to cover benefits and different things that a private company would be different than a state system. But when you really look at the actuality of them, Very similar. Very similar.   Carol: Gotcha. So, Brent, how about you? How are you dealing with just the overall staffing shortages?   Brent: Well, we're certainly thankful for our partnership with Service Source to provide the services that they do and the staff that they do. But bigger picture, I'm pleased to announce that we have put forward as part of the department's legislative budget request some pretty significant raises for our what we call our frontline staff, our counseling positions, our technicians and those folks who are working with the customers. It's frankly long overdue. And we, as many agencies around the country have experienced, have definitely had challenges with staffing. So we have gotten further along in this process than we have. I understand that before I came on board last year, the division was taking a run at this and getting their proposal into the legislative budget request, but it did not happen. So that has occurred this year. We're very excited about that. We have the department's support and we're cautiously optimistic that that will make its way through the legislature and this upcoming session and that we will have a great outcome there.   Carol: Good for you. That is exciting to hear. I'm sure colleagues across the country will be interested in how you pitch that to get into the budget. That's always part of the problem. Just getting it out of the agency.   Brent: Absolutely. And I will say a lot of blood, sweat and tears and a lot of hard work with staff here who really thought deeply and for a long time about the various ways that we could go about this. Yes, I'm proud of the folks here who have helped to make that happen. And as I said, cautiously optimistic. And we've tried to be as transparent as possible with folks around the state as well to let them know what we're doing and that we are we're trying to go to bat there and we're excited about the possibility and looking forward to a good result in the spring.   Carol: Excellent. Well, do keep me posted on that. So, Tina, I'm curious, are there other states that Service Source operates in? And then what kind of services can you provide?   Tina: Yes, we are a leading nonprofit disability resource organization. We have services and prime contract operations located in more than ten states and the District of Columbia. Service Source have five regional offices share a common mission to provide exceptional services to people with disabilities through a range of valued employment training, habilitation, housing and many, many other support services. We have regional offices that are in Florida, Virginia, Delaware, Utah and North Carolina. Our mission aligns with vocational rehabilitation mission. I mean, we are committed to building more inclusive communities.   Carol: Very cool. I had heard mentioned that maybe you guys even get into like being able to provide interpreter services and things like that.   Tina: Yes. Well, from this contract, having this contract for many, many years, you know, as I said, we sat on many bureau meetings and at one point Florida was in need of having a larger interpreter services scope throughout Florida. They already had interpreter services positions throughout Florida, but they were looking for a private organization or a contract. And we had experience in our Florida regional office working with individuals with deaf and hard of hearing. So we immediately jumped in and offered those services. And through that task we have a contract now where we have an interpreter services contract that is based out of our Clearwater, which is our regional office here in Florida. And we have positions throughout the state, again, just like our contract sitting inside state offices, serving right alongside the state interpreters, the state and staff interpreters. And it's been a wonderful program over the last few years.   Carol: Very cool. Yeah, Thanks for sharing that. I know some folks have struggled with the interpreter contracts. I've just heard that as of late across the country. As with anything else, you know, where people are struggling to get staffed. So looking back on all of this and knowing what you both know now, is there anything you would change about what has happened and how it may be happened? Brent, I'll go to you first.   Brent: Well, as I look on the historical record and the documents that I've been able to find about how all this occurred, I think hindsight being 2020, probably some of those initial contracts could have been drafted in a way that might not have raised so many red flags. Now, again, that is hindsight, because this was such a new and different concept. It may have been the case that regardless of how they were drafted, there would have been concerns. But, you know, I think some lessons can be learned from that as to how those have evolved. And again, there was some movement around this time when all this was occurring where VR was sort of moved from one agency to another, and it eventually landed with the Department of Education in 2002. And I think that provided some additional stability for the division, and we've been here ever since. So I think it was probably wise to start small and scale up from there and to focus on underserved areas. Those are, I think, some lessons that were properly implemented and that that would be a good way to get something like this off the ground.   Carol: Tina, how about you? Any thoughts on that? Anything you would change?   Tina: Yeah, I totally agree with Brent. The contracts started out very differently. At one point we had five contracts for this, this one contract. We had five different serving different areas of Florida. And I understand why it happened that way. Looking back now, though, probably with the idea that you can do amendments to contracts, I think if we were to do this again, just amending contracts and having one large contract, because now we do have over the last five years, the most recent contract is one large contract working as a team approach across the state. So all of our goals and deliverables are work together as in anything that you work with and a team approach always works better. I have consistency among managers working together. Everybody has final goals that we're all working for the same mission and concept, but they're working together and they're working as a team rather than working in separate areas of Florida with different guidelines and thought processes and salaries. It wasn't as consistent years ago. So I definitely think that was something that definitely will help all of us in the future when we look at something like this. But we have to, over time, continuously work on streamlining and efficiency based changes. They're necessary and we've done that over time. And I think because we've done that, it's led to the success of the program.   Carol: Well, the lessons that you all have learned and everything that you've gone through can definitely help another state because they don't have to go through the same path. They can start off kind of right where you're at really with learning from you all. So do you have any parting words of wisdom? If somebody is interested in this type of model? How about you, Brent?   Brent: Sure. I will just continue to say how well it's worked for Florida and how much we value the partnership. And I echo the sentiment that the state should all learn from one another and from one another's mistakes and challenges. And that's one of the great things about our collegial body that we share around the country with our colleague. You know, we're certainly willing to talk to folks to share documents, to let them know about how this is historically evolved. And I guess I would just say that it's one of the great benefits is that we're able to learn from one another and to complement each other. A private entity is able to be a little bit more nimble in many ways than a state agency that has layers of bureaucracy and sort of red tape. That's certainly a benefit that can occur with this kind of arrangement. It's something that we would certainly welcome any questions from other folks as to how they might do something like this in their state.   Carol: Excellent. So, Tina, how about you? Any parting words of wisdom?   Tina: You know, I would say just like Brent, it's a great partnership. We've had almost 22 years of experience working to support the state of Florida and their mission that has become our mission. It works successfully because we've cultivated an excellent working relationship with each other. The natural cooperation with our state counterparts has been an influential force in our success. Many years ago, one of the previous directors called it We now are VR one. We're no longer Service Source in State VR, we're VR one. I look to what we've just been talking about over the last year in the CSAVR, especially in the Spring Virtual Conference about transformational change and transformational leadership. You know, I wanted to raise my hand and go, that's like what we did 22 years ago. We were the transformational change that nobody really thought of back then. And so these are the types of ideas I hope that during my career now, I can see us replicate this relationship in other states so we can assist state VR agencies that are in need to help them achieve their goals and better serve their customers.   Carol: Very cool. I love that VR one. That's awesome. So I know you both had mentioned if somebody out there is interested in the idea and there's certainly welcome to contact you. So Brent, what's the best way for them to do that?   Brent: Sure. Number one, I have to get in a plug for our new website that has recently been redesigned. That's at w w w dot rehab works dot org. So that is the Florida general website. But to contact me directly, I'd be happy for folks to shoot me an email. And that is Brent dot McNeal at VR.fldoe.org.   Carol: Excellent. And Tina, how about you if somebody wanted to reach out and talk to you?   Tina: Sure. And I'll give you my contact first. That same thing with Brent. You can reach me on the state system at tina.Herzik@VR.fldoe.org or you can reach me on my service source, which is Tina dot herzik h e r z i k at service source all one word dot org. Please look up our website as well, ServiceSource.org. You'll get to hear and see all the other wonderful things we're doing throughout the country and you can see what's happening with other parts of our business. But we are very unique with this partnership. As far as what service source is doing for what we're talking about today. But that's also in the information when you look it up.     Carol: Excellent. Yeah, I really appreciate both being on. This is very cool to hear about what is. Happen and that it's sustained. It's really lasted the test of time, which is really interesting as well. And Brent, I hope you keep me posted on what's going on with those staff salaries later on. So I wish you both the best and happy holidays.   Tina: You, too. Thank you so much, Carol.   Brent: Thank you so much, Carol. And thanks, Tina, for agreeing to do this. It's been a great experience and happy to spread the word and hope that it's helpful for folks.   Tina: I'm glad we're working together, Brent, This is great, continuing our journey. That's right. Happy holidays, both of you.   Speaker1: 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, Dacia Johnson, Executive Director of the Oregon Commission for the Blind, chats with Carol Pankow, about some of the really innovative practices that the Oregon Commission for the Blind has implemented to improve organizational effectiveness and benefit the VR community.   Dacia and her team did a lot of work preparing for monitoring and restructuring some critical elements of the organizational structure that has the VR community talking.    Join Dacia and Carol in the Manager Minute studio for this timely conversation on championing innovation and high performance in a climate where so many agencies are looking for ways to spend VR funds effectively.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Rethinking Agency Organizational Structure- Ideas that Work with Dacia Johnson-Oregon Blind   {Music} Speaker1: 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 Dacia Johnson, executive director of the Oregon Commission for the Blind. She has been the executive director since 2013 and was the director of the agency's rehabilitation services program prior to that. So Dacia was so good to see you at the VR conference last week. How are things going in Oregon?   Dacia: It was great to see you as well, Carol. And things are going well here. I mean, I think like every agency, we have our challenges and opportunities, but certainly we're focused on providing the best services we can to Oregonians who experience vision, loss and just getting at it every day.   Carol: Awesome to hear. Well, full disclosure to our listeners, Dacia and I have worked together in both NCSAB and CSVAR and we were new director buddies. Back in 2013, right before the world changed with WIOA in 2014, and I had the good fortune to participate in the Oregon Commission for the Blind Monitoring visit this year and learned a ton of interesting things about the agency. Dacia's undertaken some really cutting edge organizational improvements that will be a benefit to the VR community, and I knew I needed to get her on the program to talk about this. And I think it's also fitting and timely with the state of the national VR program and agencies are looking for ways to effectively spend funds. So let's dig in. So Dacia, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and the agency? Like what's your background and how did you land at the commission?   Dacia: Sure. I started my undergraduate degrees in psychology and so like every undergraduate with a psychology major, I didn't know what I was going to do. And I moved back to a small town in southern Oregon and I got a job with at the time it was a GPA workforce training program, and I loved that job. I did that for a couple of years and what I realized was my favorite part of it was working with at Risk Youth and what that was with youth with disabilities, right? They were kids with significant learning disabilities, kids with psychiatric disabilities. And I just love the work. That job ended and I moved myself to the big city and I started in private rehabilitation. And I realized quickly that the work of private rehabilitation just didn't really fit my values. And so I started working in public vocational rehabilitation while I simultaneously pursued my graduate degree in rehabilitation counseling. I did that at the general agency in Oregon. There's two agencies here, there's the general agency, and then there's the services for the individuals who are blind under what's called the Commission for the Blind, where I currently work. And I was recruited to come here in 2000 and I immediately fell in love with the work. Carol, you know this, but blindness rehabilitation is very holistic. You really have to address the needs of the entire person, starting with skills and adjustment and just helping them kind of redirect their existing skills and new and innovative ways. And I just loved it. I also love the fact that with the blindness organization are oftentimes closer to the work. I love policy, I love meetings. I'm a nerd that way. I love thinking about new programs. But with our agency, you actually get to see people who are going through the rehabilitation process. You get to interact with them. And so it was just the right elevation for me. And I've been here ever since.   Carol: I love that. I didn't know that about you. That's a cool way to start. And you're like an old timer now. You've been there, what, 20 going on? 23.   Dacia: Been here? Yep, 22 years in August. And for a long time I was the newbie. And so now it is a little bit interesting to be one of the most senior staff people. I will say that I have never not wanted to come to work and to me that's an incredible gift to be able to work doing things that you're passionate about with incredibly committed, passionate rehabilitation professionals, not unlike yourself, Carol, but we just have just a wonderful, service oriented mission. And I love coming to work and I feel incredibly grateful for that opportunity every day.   Carol: Yeah, you have a fantastic team. Now, I know a commission is a little bit of a different structure than most people are maybe used to. Can you give us just a few high points and what's different about that? And then also, like, how many people do you guys serve?   Dacia: All right. So we have a commission structure. We're grandfathered under the Rehabilitation Act, so we don't have a state rehabilitation council. We have a seven member board that reports directly to the governor. And that board has appointing authority over the executive director. Myself and the majority of those commissioners in Oregon have to be legally blind. And so our structure really ensures that we're focusing in and have crystal clear priorities around the best services possible to Oregonians who are blind or blindness organization. So we provide a combination of vocational rehabilitation services and independent living. Services to individuals with the largest independent living program being the older independent living program. For individuals who are blind. We serve anywhere from 1300 to 1600 folks a year in our vocational rehabilitation program. Last year, I think we served around 650 folks.   Carol: Yeah, it gives me a good perspective because I think back at SSB when I left, we were around 800 folks in the VR, and OIB program we were serving about 5000 people.   Dacia: Wow. It's incredible.   Carol: It's pretty cool. But I'm like you, I love that work and I love being close to the people and seeing what's going on. So I know you and your team did a just a ton of work preparing for that monitoring, but you also did a lot of work in restructuring some critical elements of your organizational structure. Can you tell our listeners what prompted you to think about doing something different with your structure and what are the specific things that you've done.   Dacia: On the monitoring piece, I think what I will say about preparing for monitoring is use the tools that are available to us that you, Carol, have developed. So I think that basically you use the checklists that the TAC has created for agencies. It makes a difference, right? So we actually thought we were on the short list for a long time. So we actually had been preparing, I would say, on a quarterly basis, going through the monitoring guide for that particular year and just trying to think through some of the questions. The monitoring guide doesn't change radically year to year. So we just kind of made sure that we were not starting from ground zero once they notified the states that were monitored. And I encourage everyone to do that because it really makes you think about kind of your structure. The other thing is I've been here a long time, and so I think that some of the skills that we all developed in vocational rehabilitation counseling, in terms of assessing skills and abilities and capabilities, I feel like I've applied that to our organization over time. And then I've looked for opportunities to be able to strategically invest in the organization. One of the things in which we're unique is that we actually employed an internal auditor and folks are like, How can a small agency benefit from an internal auditor? Well, I'll tell you, one of the first things that that position did when we hired them was to create some infrastructure around our quality assurance manual auditors, because we wanted that position to be able to actually audit the work they own the process of making sure things were documented in terms of internal controls, policies and procedures, but they actually didn't create the internal control, if that makes sense. They didn't create the policies and procedures. So that position had enough distance that over time they can actually do the internal auditing and testing of the processes to make sure they're in place. But really having one position that directly reports to me that had that full responsibility of making sure that things were clear documented in one place and kind of reflected the organization, I think was critical to us. That position is constantly having activities going on to make sure that our organization is running effectively and efficiently. They also were the lead on the monitoring preparation. It is a massive lift to get prepared for monitoring and go through the process. But we had one point of contact that doesn't do the work of the service delivery and they were able to objectively kind of track our progress and leading up to the monitoring and then led the work for the onsite monitoring itself. And it felt like it ran pretty smoothly to have that structure. So even if you don't have a separate position like we have, I would encourage folks to use that central point of contact ownership model because I think it made our monitoring run fairly smoothly.   Carol: Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool because that's Clay's position, correct?   Dacia: Yes. Yes.   Carol: So if anybody out there, you can't have Clay, But Clay is really awesome. And we were able to get into contact with him before you all went through the monitoring. He had reached out about a couple of things and I was like, What? Like what is this position? And that's why I just want you to say, what did your monitoring team say about this position?   Dacia: They were really pleased to see it, particularly on the fiscal side and looking at the way we have that separation and the ability to objectively review information, they were very favorable about the position for sure.   Carol: Yeah. In fact, I think they said we've never seen this anywhere else. You are the only agency that has had a position that was developed quite like that, and I thought that was pretty cool. So I guess I didn't realize that Clay had not developed that whole extensive manual that you had. There is a lot of work that went into that. Who did that? Who did all of that?   Dacia: He helped kind of with the lift of getting things documented. But each of the programs actually did the identification of the issues because we wanted him to have that autonomy and independence and not creating the actual documentation itself. Before we had dedicated resources, we started the process of creating a quality assurance manual. And what we realize is without dedicated resources to focus on it, it never happened. So the other thing I would encourage folks to do, if you don't have that position to help with the documentation is I basically said and I gave I think three months and I just said, you have to do it by this date.   Carol: Oh my gosh, yeah, that's quick.   Dacia: And I just said, it's never going to be a good time. And I just set a deadline. I think it was three months. People freaked out a little bit, but the reality is it got done right? And then we built from the foundation. We added once we kind of did a gap analysis of what was missing from that initial documentation list, then Clay helped kind of figure out where we needed to create documentation beyond what that initial lift was.   Carol: Well, and I know with the blind agency, it's always unique because we're typically smaller. We don't have a lot of resources. So kind of carving out these sort of positions and making investments in a particular piece of infrastructure like that. You know, it's kind of a deal. It's a big deal to do it. And so taking the funds and kind of making that happen. So had you had that kind of swirling around in your mind for a while?   Dacia: I had I mean, like every agency you go through the single audit act experience where you have external auditors. When I first became executive director, there was a significant push to try to make sure that the agency was running effectively and efficiently. And what I quickly realized is you don't know what you don't know, you know, especially like in on the service delivery side, but you have gaps and you're just not going to see them unless you have a focused attention on actually looking for your gaps. And so once I realized the pressure and the expectation to have this particular element be like running the best it could be, then I thought, well, then give me the resources. Right? I advocated for the resources to make sure that we could actually maintain that level of expectations.   Carol: Good for you. That's awesome. You also made some investment, though, in your fiscal team. I remember because did you not structure some things in a different way with your fiscal unit as well?   Dacia: We did. We actually had some turnover at our chief financial officer level and as I did the exit interview with the candidate that left who loved working for the agency, they indicated like this is impossible work, like you have like the CFO as a small agency wearing all of these hats. But there were so many hats that they were running from one fire to another fire to another fire to another fire. So then we hire a new CFO, and within a couple of months, the new person was like, I feel like I'm running from one fire to another fire to another fire like, All right. So either I listen to these very different professionals with different backgrounds and expertise and say there's too much work, right? So we advocated to add a grant accountant position that had just started actually last December. So not quite a year yet. And the grant accountant position in part is going to be focusing on preparing all of the grant reports and all of that tracking. And then that gives the CFO the opportunity to be able to review that work with some separation to make sure that that work is accurate, that it has all of the required elements in it. We had some very small but annoying financial reporting errors that were recurring that came up on the Single Audit Act audits. And the major barrier for us was the CFO was preparing the report, reviewing their own work and then submitting the report. And there were keying errors, you know, silly things that you just can't double check your own work. It's impossible.   Carol: Right? Good for you. Yeah. Because you know, all those single audit act, when you get on that list, there's always a lot of follow up. And I remember back in the day, like our governor's office, I'd have to send quarterly reports like how we're going to resolve this particular finding. They don't like you to have any. So good for you for doing that. So how do you think things are working out since you've made those changes? And have you had any kind of lessons learned along the way so far?   Dacia: Yeah, I think that they're working out well. One of the things we're working on now that's still in development is, as we know, our financial management is super complex. So we have to at any one time look at state level appropriations and budgets. At the same time, we need to be managing our match and our maintenance of effort and our Pre-ETS and we have to look at our cash on hand and tracking that and making sure that we don't have federal cash around too long and all of these pieces. And so we're creating with the lead work, being of that new grant account position, some kind of a dashboard that can kind of help us make those types of decisions, like when to switch from one year of Pre-ETS to the next year of Pre-ETS, and when we've met our match and maintenance of effort. And how does that compare with our state appropriation year and making sure that we expend all of our state funds that we have available during that period? And what I'm hoping that will be able to do is as we're trying to make decisions in terms of budget appropriation, grant management decisions around re allotment and all of that stuff, that we have kind of some data intelligence to help us kind of drive those decisions and track it over time.   Carol: Well, imagine that data driven decision making, Dacia.   Dacia: I know, right?   Carol: I think you did a little presentation on that a few years ago somewhere. I kind of seem to remember that was one of your big things you like to think about.   Dacia: Yeah, the piece that I would in terms of lessons learned, we're a small agency and we have passionate staff, right? Sometimes I think that I could have probably engaged staff and more often. And as to why are we adding these positions that aren't in the direct service bucket, I think that's a question that still comes up periodically, even though they see the value, but still sometimes they're like, Oh, did we add this? And why didn't we add a counselor or a teacher? No, I don't think you can over communicate the why to staff, even though, again, I think they intellectually see the benefit. But when you add FTE, they really want it to be in the service bucket, the admin stuff. I think they feel like you always have enough, you know. And the truth is, I think that agencies, particularly small agencies under resourced the administrative tasks because there's a certain amount of work that has to happen and it has to happen well, and at the end of the day, if you aren't running your organization well, they're not going to give you extra credit because you've been putting all your resources in the direct service area. They're just going to say that you're not running your organization well.   Carol: Yeah, and then that doesn't bode well. I came in too, to that. And if we aren't shipshape financially and we don't have all of that together, then we can't really run the program.   Dacia: Yeah.   Carol: Don't know what we're doing. So it is always that fine balance because like you say, we're small typically, and when you add that resource over here, people immediately look at that, Oh, sure, you're making, you know, the central office. People are bloated, There's too many people. But boy, in a blind agency, when you're wearing 15 hats, it gets tough. And there has to be that separation for sure.   Dacia: Yeah. And Carol, you and Sara have kind of reinforced directors need to know the financial matters. And I think I can't reinforce that enough, like the whole vision of having a grant account and then figuring out this dashboard stuff that came out of me not sleeping right and trying to think like, gosh darn it, I need to have this kind of information available because I'm the one that's worrying about this at the end of the day.   Carol: So I hope we didn't make you not sleep.   Dacia: Oh, no, not at all.   Carol: I know we talk about it a lot, though. So how far away do you think you are from this dashboard? Because I'm sure people are probably pretty interested.   Dacia: It's probably about 70% there.   Carol: Oh, wow.   Dacia: Yeah, we've been working on it for a while. Like right now we're having to try to make some decisions. Do we have enough spending authority for the remainder of our budget cycle, which is through June 30th? We're going to meet in a couple of weeks. And this is the first test. It's like, is this dashboard going to give us the data that we need to make that budget decision? So we're trying to apply the concepts now to say, where are we at with periods? That's the other test that we have is working with our sister agency, the general agency, on the 22 projects. Are we good? Can we move on to 23 periods? Those kinds of Things.   Carol: Yeah. I definitely want to take a look at that. When you get that done. I'm super interested. I'm sure other people would be as well. So I know your mind is always thinking, Do you have other things you're cooking up there that you're thinking about doing?   Dacia: Well, right now we're preparing and Oregon has a biennial budget, so we've been looking at a specific focus on outreach. We feel like the pandemic was a particular time where folks were kind of hunkered in, especially individuals who are blind, as oftentimes they had other secondary health conditions that made them nervous about acquiring COVID. And so we're wanting to do a pretty aggressive outreach effort and we're hoping to get the resources on that. The other thing that we're excited about is we're asking for some dedicated resources. That would be in house expertise with state funds. That would be like technology gurus to help with kind of the statewide enterprise technology projects to lean in on the accessibility and usability of any type of statewide projects. So in the event that a job seeker or candidate who is blind was thinking about working in some case management system or whatever, that we would at least be able to influence the accessibility usability of some of those statewide systems. So we're pretty excited about that as well.   Carol: Oh, that is very cool. I'm going to give you a tip on that outreach campaign. Check out David D'Angelo. He's from Mass Commission for the Blind. He did this big PSA initiative about a year or so ago with some real admin dollars. And it was very clever, very well done. And I know it's impacted his numbers, so I always like pitching that to everybody. Check out Mass Commission for the Blind as well, because there's not a lot of people. Everybody's talking about this right now, but there's not a lot of examples of ways that people have done that that are out there. So it is always nice to kind of go, Oh, what's somebody else done?   Dacia: That's great. Yeah, we'll definitely check them out.   Carol: So do you have any advice for our listeners as they contemplate looking inward at their own organizational structure, any kind of words of wisdom for them as folks are struggling with this right now?   Dacia: Well, I was inspired by our colleague from California, Joe Xavier, during the course of our leadership forum when he was like, be bold. Right? So I think that would be my first thing. I'm going to just quote Joe and say, be bold. I think that this is a time to just lean in and just think big and just try to apply the same skills that we learned. Many of us grew up through the ranks of counselors and just think about your organization the way you would think about a client, like what are the strengths, what are the resources and what are those opportunities to improve? The other thing I would say to folks is even if you have constraints around FTE and you can't build out a grant account and look for an intergovernmental agreement and grab some resources from another agency that might be able to loan you the expertise. The same with auditing. Before it had a position, we contract it out for auditing work. What I realized from that is the ownership piece is different, right? And you're just not controlling and directing a consultant the way you do a staff. So it just didn't have exactly what I wanted, but it was better than nothing. So know what you can do within your constraints of your systems that you have to work with and then just go for it.   Carol: That's well said. And you've given a little commercial for next month because next month I'm talking to Brent McNeal from Florida General and they've had this contract. They lost FTEs and they weren't able to get them, but they had the dollars, so they were allowed to contract for positions. So we're going to talk to him about how he did that so that that is timely, too. Well said to lead into that. Well, I appreciate your time today, Dacia. I think it's super cool. I'm really excited about what's going on at Oregon and please do share that dashboard when you get that done.   Dacia: Absolutely.   Carol: Thanks for being on the show and best of luck to you and happy holidays. Coming up, Happy Thanksgiving and all that good stuff.   Dacia: Yes. Well, thanks for the opportunity, Carol. It's always fun to visit with you.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!

Joining Carol Pankow in the studio today is Inge Huband, Program Consultant for the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Small Business and Employment First programs, and Nicky Harper, Vocational Rehabilitation Administrator for Wyoming VR. This year, the National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) has a theme of Disability: Part of the Equity Equation in recognition of the vital role people with disabilities play in making the nation's workforce diverse and inclusive. For our listeners, Wyoming VR does not participate in the Randolph Sheppard program; however, they have concentrated for almost two decades on their small business program that focuses on self-employment. Learn how this focus has attained over a 50 percent success rating for small businesses through partnerships, creativity, education, and community networking.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: National Disability Employment Awareness Month - See how Self-Employment Serves a Critical Need in Wyoming with Inge Huband and Nicky Harper   {Music} Speaker1: 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 Inge Huband, Program Consultant for the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Small Business and Employment First Program, and Nicky Harper, Vocational Rehabilitation Administrator for Wyoming VR. And wow, was that a mouthful? So good to have you both. Inge, how are things going in Wyoming?   Inge: Oh, they're pretty good. We had a very hot summer. We're looking forward to some cool down here.   Carol: Absolutely. And Nicky, how about you? How are things going?   Nicky: I am well, Carol, thank you for having us. Life is good in Wyoming.   Carol: Excellent. Well, you're some of our favorite people, that's for sure. So this year, the National Disability Employment Awareness Month, or NDEAM, has a theme of disability: Part of the equity equation in recognition of the vital role people with disabilities play in making the nation's workforce diverse and inclusive. So this past year, my colleague Alison Flanagan and I had the opportunity to participate in the Wyoming VR on site monitoring review by RSA. And during the week we spent together, Alison was sitting in the session discussing your small business program in Wyoming and was completely blown away. She told me immediately, She's like, You got to follow up with them and get a podcast together. So for our listeners out there, Wyoming VR does not participate in the Randolph Shepard program. However, they have had a focus for almost two decades on their small business program that focuses on self-employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that over 10% of US workers are self-employed, and self-employed workers also represent many of the country's entrepreneurs who are responsible for creating jobs for other workers. So let's dig in. So I'm really excited about your small business program, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about that. So Nicky, can you give us a little context about Wyoming does not participate in the Randolph Shepard program?   Nicky: That is correct, Carol. We don't have a Randolph Shepard program for a couple of reasons. Primarily, incidents of visually impaired individuals is very low. So when the cafeteria programs went away, oh gosh, several years ago, it was set up that funding was coming into vocational rehabilitation. So at that time, my predecessor and I believe the field services administrator took a look at that and said, well, there's still funding coming in. So instead of a cafeteria program, can we still continue to look at the vending program and how can we get some legislation and statutes written so that vending income could be utilized to still support individuals with disabilities wanting to develop small businesses? So instead of doing vending cafeteria with Randolph Shepard, we kind of went a slightly different avenue.   Carol: So Wyoming has their own take on this. So you actually have your own legislation that governs what you're doing.   Nicky: We do, yes.   Carol: Excellent. I was very curious about that. So how does the funding work for this program?   Nicky: So the legislation or the statute allows for us to go out for bid for individuals in the communities. They don't necessarily have to be an individual with a disability, but I do believe this score additional points on an RFP, if they have a disability to set up vending machines in state owned buildings. So they set up the vending machines with understanding that a percentage of the earnings come to vocational rehabilitation. So we then use those earnings as match dollars when we set up a small business so that we use federal dollars obviously, and that vending income is used as a non-federal match portion.   Carol: Gotcha. Thank you for clearing that up. So do you partner with the Wyoming Small Business Administration?   Inge: Not directly. So I would call that an indirect partnership. We put a couple of years. We have partnered with the Wyoming Women's Business Center and they receive part of their funding through the Small Business Administration. So what we have started doing is to refer some of our clients. Not all of them will work for this program. Some of them can be referred with the approved loan amount, and then they will actually have to go through a loan process through the Wyoming Women's Business Center. The amount that DVR has approved for their small business is the loan amount that they're applying for, and we are able to pay that loan and the client will have to provide us with showing that they actually purchase what they have. So that's another layer of responsibility for the clients. It's no longer just gives me money. It's like, Oh no, I have to fill out a loan application and I have to talk to the loan officer and put everything out there and they have to have a. That's account ready. They have to have their legal entity already registered before they can even receive those funds. So it puts everything in another level of reality. And then they have the responsibility of purchasing all the approved items and approved that they did purchase them. And they have to send that also to the Women's Business Center as well as to us. So that's kind of how we keep track of all of that. But it does help with the diverse things that clients need. It's sometimes very difficult for, say, to purchase certain items through the process that we have. And so that makes it a lot easier, a lot more efficient than quicker for the client to obtain those needed items.   Carol: I know your state is very you know, you have the rural component. There's sort of a little bit of the bigger city areas and such. But what are some unique challenges that people face in Wyoming with creating a small business?   Inge: It is probably infrastructure. Internet sometimes is an issue, just being in very small communities and very rural, having to drive to places and it causes a lot of issues. But as I said, people are very resourceful when they buy into their idea and they see their idea growing from, Oh, here's that concept that I have in my head and through the process of business planning, it becomes a tangible idea of something that really makes sense and we help them really understand, okay, where you're at in this particular situation, does it really make sense to have a ginormous warehouse? For example? Would it not be better to utilize drop shippers or whatever we're considering in that situation? And then the idea grows from this big monstrosity to something small, functional and doable, and the client is able to just move forward with it. And also, I think giving them the future outlook of you can always grow your business, you can always change. And Wyoming has a really great network of support for small business. We work with local economic development chambers. I encourage the clients to work with all of these entities to really get into the nitty gritty of their small business idea and figure things out.   So it's not uncommon that I ask clients to do surveys, talk to their community and say, Do they really want this service? Because being online works sometimes, but not all the time. It's difficult. It's a big market out there. So when you have a following in your local community and get started, it's a lot easier to transition online or go into a warehouse. So for example, in a small town here in Wyoming called Buffalo, we have a saddle maker and he was visited by our governor. And because of that, we had another visitor from a local retailer who wants to help him with some free space. And so now he's able to move from his own property into a free rented location down the road. We'll probably have to pay rent, right now it's free and he'll have a little retail location. So what he can offer are smaller items. So he doesn't just rely on saddles and so he's really excited and things are moving.   Carol: Well, that sounds like a super smart approach, especially when you talked about having some of the Internet issues that can happen in rural areas too. So you want to have somewhat of a following in that community because people may not be able to get to you online either. That makes some sense. So you talked about this saddle maker. So what are some of the other interesting businesses that have been pursued?   Nicky: Oh, my gosh, quite a few. We get really, really creative. And Inge is a really good job with ensuring that the business is viable and they can be successful. The clients have to put together a pretty detailed business plan. The one that I kind of laugh about is we call it the pole dancing business.   Carol: Do tell!   Inge: This one was a client who just came to me and said, Well, I'm this athletic person. I teach pole dancing. I want to do that as a business. And I wasn't sure if we could do that, being tied to federal funding and all of that. So sure. And I didn't understand the idea of that being just physical exercise and all of that. So there were all these other things with it. But she opened up a studio and a really small town. It worked really well. She had a nice clientele. She was big enough to open a second studio in adjacent small town that worked also well, and then her injury got worse. Unfortunately, she had to sell to local studios. She moved and she's still selling her choreography and her merchandise online. And so that one was a really fun one to work with because it was so out of the ordinary, something different.   Nicky: We have done some really cool ones like. On supporting horses for Wyoming that works out. There's a lot of rodeo and that kind of stuff happening, and individuals may not always have the capacity to transport their animals across state lines. So we've done that kind of business and sometimes even to some micro-businesses kind of thing. One that comes to mind that was pretty cool was the latest craze of like essential oils and that kind of business. So we have really supported from large businesses, from mowing companies to moving horses to one was a t shirt company. This guy, he would get this product and then resell it. I think in his second year of business he cleared like 70,000. Well, that was.   Carol: Well that is cool though, because you guys have been super creative and it's worked for Wyoming, you know, and what people have needed there, because I know you definitely have a lot of challenges with the geographic nature of your state.   Nicky: Absolutely.   Carol: Very, very cool. So how do your outcomes look and how did the pandemic impact your customers and their businesses?   Inge: So our outcomes on general, when we check our numbers, they're about 50% success rate, which is pretty good because nationwide, when you look at all the small businesses that start in the first year, you have a 90% failure rate. And of those 90% within five years, you have another 50% failure rate of those remaining business. So it's very tough. So we are doing pretty good. The pandemic really didn't do that much to us. I was as busy as before the pandemic actually even busier. People were really hunkering down, thinking, well, what can I do? How can I support myself? And we did a lot throughout the pandemic. So the pandemic itself did not. We're seeing a slowdown right now. That is because there are a lot of jobs available. I believe right now the unemployment is at about 3% in Wyoming.   Carol: Oh, excellent.   Inge: So there is that natural slowdown that happens with that. So when work is available, micro slows down a little bit. When it's not available, we get really busy. And so we have that here. But yeah, the pandemic itself was a busy time for me.   Carol: Good. That's good to hear. So how do you partner with the VR counselor in making all of this happen?   Inge: Yeah, so that is a really good relationship. The counselor works with our clients. Sometimes clients get to refer to me right away. Sometimes they have good working with a VR counselor for some time before they even come my way. And then the counselor reaches out. Here's the client, here's what they want to do. So I provide services to our counselors as well as to our clients. I encourage our counselors to contact me if they have a client that has, let's call it a harebrained idea that may not work. So we do research with the client together to figure out is that even a decent idea or these pyramid schemes that people sometimes get involved with. We research stuff like that. So when a counselor isn't sure, I encourage them to contact me. When we're ready, the client gets referred to me and I start working and that looks different for different clients. So sometimes they're very proactive. Other clients, they want their counselors with them. So we just schedule phone calls again, virtual meetings or something to work together and then make sure that the client has all the support that they need. Usually, once the client is comfortable with working with yet another person, they are okay with working with me. That helps lead the process up a little bit because we don't need to coordinate all of our calendars and so we can solve this on that. Again, it depends on the client, but in general, the client can get a bland easy in three months.   They have to do financial projections. So at minimum we have to do a one year, month by month financial projection to see what is your projected income, your expenses, what's the bottom line looking like? How much money do you want to take out of that business? Where is all going to go? That's kind of what determines the whole process and everyone is of a different level. So some people you will have to explain everything to them. You have to teach them entrepreneurship, you have to guide them through the process while others come in with some knowledge already. Sometimes I get completed business class before I even have met the individual, and then once a plan is approved, the client goes back to their VR counselor and then they work together on finalizing the business. They start up their business. The VR counselor meets with them regularly to ensure that everything is on par, and if not, I hope that they will contact me and let me in. And that works pretty well that way. Working with the Women's Business Center. Has been really tremendous because that long counseling that they're receiving is just another way to make sure that everything that we try to teach them, try to put into this plan and process is being reinforced and someone else tells them, know some of the same things that we have went through with them already.   Carol: So that sounds like a great partnership that you have.   Inge: Yeah, it took me a long time to get that build out because outside of vocational rehabilitation, we're considered a brand and to educate those partners, it's not a grant and it's a different kind of process and program and people have different kinds of needs. We need to sometimes slow it down or speed it up, depending on where they are on that continuum, then that's where we need to be. And so that's not always easy. So it took me a long, long time to get through and it took a food truck business who needed a loan, couldn't get a loan through a bank, and the Women's Business Center was able to make a loan. So that client, they finally understood our process. And then I was approached for a contract. We actually entered a contract to make sure that everything is being all the confidentiality and all of that of oversight. And there's information that I cannot share and they cannot share because of lending rules and all of that. So we do have to have all of that information and continually work together.   Carol: So how does that work when you close a case? Because I understand that you're opening a case for the consumer in some situations. So how do you determine when you're closing in the case and consider it successful?   Nicky: Usually it's part of the business plan. They have to be able to demonstrate self-sufficiency, you know, and sometimes we might support them for a good couple of years just following them along for additional supports, just like a regular rehab closure, so to speak. We want to ensure that they are earning adequately, that they can self-sustain their business, that they don't have any additional supports from the division that they need to sustain business. We usually ask for regular paystubs and that kind of stuff to track that. They are doing well and by the time we are looking at closing the case, they have also established a working relationship and develop their credit through the Women's Business Center, which is where we funnel the funds through, so to speak. So they have established credit and I think each closure is very individualized, just like every case is so individualized, the counselor and the client and Inga works together to ensure that things are going well. The client does believe that they can self-sustain by themselves. And we did have a recent success story, which was really cool. We helped an individual set up a small business. I think it was like car detailing, if I'm not mistaken, and because the division helped him and he became really successful, this client then started hiring other V.R. clients to work for him, which was just really neat.   Carol: Wow. That is good stuff right there. Yeah. So what are you most proud of regarding this program?   Nicky: Oh, wow. Most proud of. That's a difficult question. I think it's the fact that we have some flexibilities in the program because we have a client who would essentially be eligible for VA services and considered to have a significant disability can potentially qualify. And if it is a viable business idea, we are always open to exploring it. And I think I really like is that we don't just say, okay, here's a set of funds now what do we walk them through that process? And then our recent engagement with the Women's Business Center, where the clients then get the opportunity to start developing their own credit as well, because we all know a lot of individuals with disabilities have challenges in that area where they don't necessarily have good credits or try to borrow in the future becomes difficult. Trying to borrow from the state small business might be challenging, so this really sets the client up for success and we're not necessarily doing for them, we're doing with them. And I think that's what I like to see, that we just don't say, Well, here's a set amount of dollars. Just like our individualized plans. Business plans are very individualized too. So depending on the need and the business, sometimes it might be 5000, sometimes it might be 50,000. I like that we can individualize it and work with the clients to help them out and help them out in their communities. Most recently, we sent a client to Nashville. He is super talented in the music industry and as a counselor, I was always hesitant to support someone to get a music degree right. But this individual, we sent him to Nashville. He's doing amazingly well. And one of the final things we are going to assist with is so the v r program is going to purchase the vehicle and the small business program will purchase kind of a mobile studio that he can. Around recording, and he already has multiple offers for recording contracts in Nashville. So that's really.   Carol: Cool. Wow, that is super cool. Well, and it speaks to what Inge said earlier about the percent of people that are successful because most small businesses, 90%, fail in that first year. But you guys are seeing a success rate well over 50%, which is good stuff. And that just speaks to what you're talking about with all of that support that you're giving to individuals the entire way through.   Nicky: Absolutely. And it's kind of a comprehensive support group of the counselor working with them, the area manager, getting involved when needed, the community support. I mean, it really does take a village, right, to support folks. And we have some really good success stories.   Carol: I love that. I love that. So, Nick, is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners out there about your small business program or if they're considering something like that? I know most of the states have a Randolph Shepard program, but you have expanded obviously out to working with other people with other types of disabilities.   Nicky: I think sometimes we just get so stuck in bureaucratic, can we do this? Can't we do this? Is it allowable just giving clients and counselors the flexibility and the freedom to get creative, but then also having someone like Inga on staff who really have the expertise to determine if that business actually has the viable to be successful in your state, in that community, being able to do some fiscal projections for that said business, like I said, you know, the pole dancing thing, we were like, Wait a minute, worked. But they were very successful in that community. There was a lot of research that happened, went in to determine that there was a need for specialized exercise kind of thing and that there wasn't anyone providing it. So we do a lot of research and it is time consuming. But I think I go back to our staff, just us can be very creative and we need to believe in our clients too. So giving people the opportunity, being realistic, saying they want to start a small business to mirror Elon Musk might not be feasible, but being realistic and working within your boundaries, but sometimes stretching comfort zones and being curious and exploring options. So that's what I would suggest.   Inge: I would just say, know your local economy, get to know the people, talk to local people. Because if you hear for the third time that you want to have another woodworker opening up shop, you really need to know can that community support another business?   Carol: Yeah. Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and I really appreciate you highlighting what's happening in Wyoming and helping us to celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Best of luck to you all.   Nicky: Thank you so much. Yep. And like you said, the beauty of what we do is just giving opportunities for individuals with disabilities to do what they think maybe that they were not going to be able to do to be contributing members of society. Again, we contribute to their families and we all come together. We can all make a difference.   Carol: Thanks much.   Nicky: Thank you, Carol.   Inge: Thank you, Carol. I appreciate it.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!      

Dee Torgerson, Director of VR General in Minnesota, joins Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM Studio to take a close look at VR service delivery through a post-pandemic lens. Dee presented at CSAVR and was part of the National Rehabilitation Leadership Institute (NRLI) that produced a paper titled, "Now is the Time: Advancing Services to Individuals with Disabilities by Reenvisioning VR Services." The pandemic forced VR agencies to offer services in new and flexible ways to meet the evolving needs of individuals with disabilities and employers, and Dee and her team at Minnesota General rose to the occasion. Listen in as Dee talks about bringing her vision to life.    Listen Here   Full Transcript   Re-envisioning VR Service Delivery with Dee Torgerson- Minnesota General - Meeting People Where They Are At   {Music} Speaker: 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 Dee Torgerson, Director of VR General in Minnesota. So full disclosure, I have worked with Dee off and on since 2006 and two different agencies and in different capacities. And I've always been in awe of her stellar management skills and she is just an all around good human being. So Dee, thanks for joining me today. How are things going at Minnesota General?   Dee: Hey, Carol, you are too kind, but it's great to be with you talking with you today. Things are doing well at Minnesota General right now. We're in a good place. And of course, in Minnesota it's fall. So people are happy like it's the great Minnesota get together at the state fair. It's the Renaissance Festival, Labor Day weekend. People with young families, all the kids go back to school on Tuesday. So parents are ecstatic. So we are happy in Minnesota.   Carol: Well, for our listeners out there, you're going to get to hear two Minnesota accents. We laughed. You and I were like, Oh, they're going to get a whole lot of the Long O's today. So buckle, right? So D, you were part of the National Rehabilitation Leadership Institute that's also known as NRLI. And I was reading the paper your team wrote and I caught your presentation at CSAVR. Some of the things you were saying really intrigued me and I wanted to dig in further. Your group's paper was titled Now is the Time Advancing Services to Individuals with Disabilities by Re-envisioning VR Services Delivery. Your group talked about the challenges that started in 2014 with the passage of WIOA and the new requirements like Pre Employment Transition Services, Section 511., There was increased order selection and of course the pandemic was the cherry on the top. So all of this has created the situation where VR agencies must offer services in a new and flexible way to meet the evolving needs of individuals with disabilities and employers. So you had some really interesting things you're undertaking at Minnesota General. And I want to just let's dig in. So can you give the listeners a little perspective about Minnesota general? Like how many people do you serve, how many staff do you have and what's your overall budget?   Dee: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting when we talk about VR, there are two significant time frames. We talk about pre WIOA and post WIOA and now we talk about pre pandemic and post pandemic. So it's like in VR, our world is centered around that time frame, but in Minnesota, so actually I'm coming up on three years as director in Minnesota, General VR. Prior to that I was a regional director. So I've been in the VR program about ten years, and prior to that I've always worked in some type of rehab, private, public nonprofit, had my own business for a while, you know, and at my age now we say over 25 years we don't want to say how long it really is. So it's been a long time. I have been in some type of VR system, but coming up in three years as director, one of the things when I came in as the director to this position in Minnesota general, actually at the time we had sort of this like flat leadership reporting structure. I had about 14 senior leaders reporting. To me, it was interesting. I thought it was pretty unmanageable. One of the things I put into place, it took me two years to get this into place, but I now have an executive leadership team I added two deputy director positions. So one of them many of you probably worked with in the past, she's been with the Federal VR program for lots and lots of years. Chris McVay, she's our Deputy Director of Disability Employment Services. So essentially she oversees all of the field work. And then we had a new person come in to VR as a Deputy Director. She oversees our operations and partnerships. Michele Basham, And many of you will have an opportunity to meet with her coming up. And then another long term person who fills out our executive leadership team is Jennifer Koski, and she oversees our new quality assurance program. She's helped get that up and running, quality assurance and staff development. So Chris came on just less than a year ago. Michele is about six months in. It's a very new structure, so we're still settling into it. But as a director, it's fabulous to have that small, tight knit group that you can really dig into the details and get some things moving with. But a little bit about Minnesota General, we have about 365 staff. If we were fully staffed, we should have close to 400. We have about 50 vacancies which we have had for a very long time.   Carol: That's a bunch.   Dee: That's a bunch, yes, We're in a similar situation as many other states. And honestly, right now it's a little bit of the perfect storm. We had a state hiring freeze. We really never were able to recover our positions after that. In Minnesota, we have had really low attrition and we didn't have a lot of retirements and then the pandemic hit all of that. Was amplified. We lost one of our strong VR Masters programs in Minnesota, lost one of our pipelines of people coming in. So we're experiencing all of the things many other states have been experiencing for a while, but it's sort of is all hitting us at once. So it's something I could talk about a little bit more later. But we're in a staffing crisis just like everyone else. Around the country in 2019. So again, pre-pandemic, we served about 16,000 people in Minnesota. This past year, the pandemic hit that decrease just like others had seen in 2022 program year. We served about 13,000. We are quickly edging up to close to. I expect that we will meet or surpass that 16,000 a month. In years past, we've served up to 18,000 folks.   Carol: Wow. Good on you. That's great. That's moving up. Is it changing, though, the group that's coming back in, is it more younger folk or what?   Dee: Yeah, it's changing. So we've seen sort of this gradual picking up of students that were serving. I would say it's gone from 40%, 50% recent years. Last couple of years, we've seen about 60% of who we serve are students. That's in addition to the pre potentially eligible that we're serving. And I'll tell you the new trend, we were just looking at our new applications, 75% of our new applications are students.   Carol: I mean, we've had a significant focus since, again, WIOA on serving those students. So Wow. That's significant.   Dee: in many ways it's not surprising, but there are a lot of needs, especially coming out of the pandemic.   Carol: So definitely you've been talking about kind of your pandemic numbers pre and post. So I'm sure too that the upswing in the students with schools being back and all of that and not just online, I'm sure all of that's played into those students coming back up.   Dee: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to comment real quickly about our budget. We have a actually a very healthy budget. In the past, we've had a lack of resources. We've had categories closed and now we have a lot of money, but I don't have staffing. So we've always had order of selection for many years. For a few years we had all categories closed for many years, like over ten years we had all but one category closed. In 2020. We were able to open up three or four categories. We still have our fourth category closed, which is those who don't have any functional limitations, the funding to open that up, but I don't have the staffing to open that up. So that's our situation right now. But we're sitting we have a healthy budget right now. We're budget of about 71 million.   Carol: Oh, wow. Good on you. Yeah, I didn't remember it being that big. That is big.   Dee: Yeah, we got re-allotment. We got everything. We asked for it. There's a lot of money available. As many of you know, our program income with the ticket to work, we earn nearly $6 million in program income, which is the most we've ever earned. And then, of course, we all got a bit of a bump in our 110 awards as well.   Carol: Yeah, pretty incredible.   Dee: And we have a healthy state match, which we're blessed to have.   Carol: Yeah, we've always been fortunate in Minnesota with that state match for sure. I know not all states have enjoyed that same benefit. That's just been a blessing to have that.   Dee: Right.   Carol: I know your group at NRLI really did a nice job outlining the current challenges facing VR. Can you talk more about those challenges that were outlined in that paper as it relates to Minnesota General?   Dee: Yeah, I can go a little more in depth at that. Actually, we wrote the paper. I was just looking back at the date. It was in October of 2021, so it's already been a year ago. So when I look at the challenges at the time, they're much different than the challenges we face right now. But they were the precipitous of us writing this paper and diving into that and really working on how do we re-envision across our nation the VR service delivery system. So I'll talk about what those challenges were at the time and perhaps talk a little bit about where we are right now. Certainly the challenges. So as October 2021, we were still in the pandemic talking about what are things going to look like when we're coming out of the pandemic? How are we going to rebuild our system? We had, I think, as others have seen, to a sharp decrease, certainly a new applications. Many of the people who were already in our caseloads, we were serving, they're like, you know, I'm just going to wait and see how things turn out. I'm not ready to get out into the environment and work right now. So we had a lot of cases on hold. And of course, as you all know, the schools were in turmoil. So there weren't a lot of I mean, people just weren't able to focus on our services. They're just trying to keep students educated at the time and that really was  the focus.   Carol: Yeah, absolutely.   Dee: Yeah. And so we because we've always had at least 50% or more of our services going to students. We had invested in technologies including laptops and cell phones and some other things for those. So about half of our staff in Minnesota were already equipped with many of those mobile devices and trained on them, but half were not. So that was the challenge, just getting all of the technologies available. I think everybody experienced this. It was hard just to get the equipment and then training people to use that equipment and all of the new software's and making shifts and the policies and learning about electronic signatures and implementing all of that. So it's a steep learning curve. And, you know, it's not just about getting that equipment out there. You have to have somebody managing all that, managing those assets, helping to do the training, helping to get the equipment in people's hands. Fortunately, I had a great team working on that. We were able to get those technologies out to the other half of all of our staff pretty quickly while we were all working remote.   Carol: Good for you. I know some states said they had to send staff home with their desktops. like it was just a nightmare, getting that networked through. So I wondered how that went, because we all know sometimes that I.T. purchasing can take a hot minute.   Dee: Yeah. And we did a little bit of that, too, with desktops. Luckily, we didn't have to do a lot of that. We did a little bit of it. I remember the day so clearly it was a Friday afternoon. Y'all got to be out and you have to set up everybody and they need to be working in their home by Monday at noon. Ok, I mean, you know, and we did it and we ramp up and it was bumpy. It certainly was bumpy in the beginning. But now we're in a really good place with that. Lots of technologies we built electronic signatures and other new policies and ways of doing the work into our systems. So I think one or the other significant challenges in Minnesota is we VR general in Minnesota. We were heavily embedded into our one stop systems like for many years. There was a big effort about 20 years ago I think maybe more to embed., many people still talk about it. Remember that, to embed us into those one stop systems. So in Minnesota we have 18 comprehensive sites, but we have over 50 locations all across the state and we were in about 40 of those locations. And again, I would say VR, like we had the most staff, we had the most space, we were paying the most money, we were heavily supporting those physical locations. So when we were all out teleworking and we're like, there's a lot of things changing. We need to do this differently. We need to shrink our space. We need to have people working in a hybrid environment. People need to get out in the community and meet people where they're at. So we knew that would include, as our leases expired, reexamining our physical footprint. And that was no easy task to take on because of sort of how the system was set up in Minnesota. And frankly, we couldn't have done it without our broader agency support in doing that work. So we did a lot of prep work, we did talking points. We met with all of our workforce development partners. And I won't say that it went really smooth because they didn't like the even though the message made sense and we were doing the right thing, they didn't like the message and they weren't ready to make those same changes that we were moving ahead with. So it was bumpy, but it has settled down a little bit. We've actually vacated only about seven sites across the state. We're still in about 30 different sites, but we continue to reevaluate that. And now we're finally a year into this, starting to hear some of those workforce development partners say, you know, we get that vision. We're looking at shifting services and models also. But it's taken a year of very intensive strategic work to get to that point.   Wow. That's significant.  Well, it's been tough because that was a very political situation, too, in Minnesota,   Dee: very political. We had to give our governor's office a heads up. There was letters and phone calls to our commissioner and governor. We knew that would happen. So we were able to give them a heads up with that. But that still made it really difficult. So it was absolutely very political. I think the other when I'm thinking about challenges at the time, as many of you know, in the midst of the pandemic, we had the George Floyd murders and civil unrest, much of which originated in Minneapolis. And that certainly was impactful to a lot of what we've done. We also have reports in Minnesota just about the inequities in employment. We're doing great. We have the best unemployment rate in the nation. However, there is absolute definite inequities in that employment rate when you're looking at people from other cultures and people of diverse backgrounds. So that's been also a huge focus area for us in Minnesota, in our agency overall and within VRS. And we had to really think about those underserved communities. And how are we reaching out to them? And one of the things we know is that they don't just stumble into a one stop center. We have a new American team that we're working with, a lot of those different cultures. They're not trusting of government and government locations. So we knew that we had to get out in the communities. We had to meet people where they were comfortable in order to make a difference in that. So that was a huge kind of incentive or motivator reason why we wanted to do that.   Carol: We learned from you with your new Americans team. I know when I was at the blind agency, definitely we had met with your team and took some really valuable lessons to help us as we were working with our specific group of folks. So they were spot on good people.   Dee: So that was a huge part of it. And then of course, Minnesota is right in line with all of the federal data about the gradual decreasing enrollments, and we are decreasing outcomes, all of those things. And it's like we can't keep doing what we've been doing because we're going to get more of the same. We have to change some things up and we have to do some things differently. And in VR and the federal program, there's such a focus on informed choice. Yet we never gave people a choice of how, when, where they receive services like you come in at this timeslot Monday through Friday. Actually, typically this was more like two days a week between the hours of eight and 4:30. You got to show up at my office and you got to get there. And we live in Minnesota and I'm telling you, Minnesota in January, it is brutal. I mean, thinking about the physical barriers that people have to go through, we serve, most of whom we serve are people with mental health challenges. That's been consistent over the years. It's still remains true. So we're working with people who have anxiety disorders and all sorts of mental health disorders that are already barriers to them getting out, navigating the landscape, finding transportation. We're trying to serve people who don't have resources. They don't have transportation ways to get to our offices. Those are issues that we had to find a different way to address that.   Carol: Well, knowing you, I love that you like to reflect and you're so great at laying out a vision. So what is that vision you have for service delivery for Minnesota General?   Dee: You know, Carol, I was thinking back to you and I worked at a previous agency together many, many, many, many years ago. And I think both of us have always had a passion for customer service. I came from private industry nonprofits where you had to focus on that or you could not be successful, or if you ran your own business, that has to be at the forefront of everything you do or you're going to fail. And I felt like that was sort of missing in VR. Like we got so caught up in all the other things and processes and things we forget about the person that we're serving. And in Minnesota, we actually had implemented a huge strategy around providing person centered services. Now most people in VR and I will tell you, most people in general VR said, I already do that. That is not true..   Carol: It wasn't Necessarily true   Dee: Because sometimes we get caught up and all of these other things. So when we were even in a previous agency, I don't remember the name of the video, but you implemented that because again, we're trying to get people to focus on the customer. It's the  fish video philosophy.   Carol: Fish philosophy. Yeah. And I was doing that whole how we could provide good customer service even though we're the government. I did that training all over. In fact, I brought it to SSB, I did it there and I have done it actually since in my AT work as well. Oh funny.   Dee: And that's just I mean, again, that's one of the things I'm just so passionate about. It is one of the reasons I came into government in the first place is I thought, you know, we can do things better. And if we focus on the people that we're serving, we can do better. So that really has been the basis that sort of like when I talk about my vision, that's what it's about and it's about meeting people where they are again, overcoming all of the barriers that we talked about. We have to figure out how to meet people where they choose. We have to give them choice in the beginning of the process or the rest of it doesn't even matter. We don't give them choice, get them connected, get them engaged right away. As soon as that first phone call, that first time they're walking through the door, that first time they're connected with someone, none of the rest of it matters because we're not going to get them connected, interested or engaged.   Carol: Yeah. Then on the other end, they're the people that you're closing them out because you can't find them, you know, and they're no longer interested.   Dee: And that also we have to go find them. We have to go find them, and we have to make connections with the people that they trust. And it really is about empowering. That's part of our mission statement. Empower Youth and Adults with Disabilities. How do you empower them? Empower them by giving them choices and meeting with them where they're most comfortable. And it makes a difference. You as the counselor, like you get better, quicker, faster engagement. You get better information. You get a better relationship, better collaborative relationships. So that really was, I think, sort of the focus point of my vision. And the other part of it, it's about timing. Like, you know, have that vision for quite a while, but the timing isn't always right. Sometimes you need to wait for the right moment. And I'm telling you, coming out of a pandemic, we had everybody already teleworking. Our agency had done surveys of our staff. 90% of our staff wanted to continue to telework. That's significant. If we would have tried to make everybody go back into the offices full time and we had every counselor had a large office somewhere, they were all in their offices. If they weren't out in the schools providing services, they were in their offices meeting with participants. That is how we were set up pre-pandemic.   Carol: Oh yeah, I remember your group, we were working on that whole like remote work policy telework. Before that, before I left the agency in 19, I remember being in a meeting with you and I remember staff going, We can't do that. We can't work from home. We can't do any of that. There's going to be workers comp, nothing like a pandemic to show everybody actually you can get work done from home. It was so interesting.   Dee: Absolutely. You can, and, like meeting people virtually like we continue to do that as part of our service option. It has to be part of the service option. We have to give people choice. You want to meet in person, you want to meet virtually. Do you want to meet? We just chat over the phone and get our work done because and again, think about all of the barriers that people have. It has greatly increased our engagement with many other types of populations that we weren't as engaged with and parents and families, busy parents and families, they're like, This is so awesome. We would have come to VRS much sooner if we knew that we could connect this easily. So we have to continue that. There is no way we could not go back to the way that things were before.   Carol: That's awesome. So as you're implementing this vision, what kind of like roadblocks or challenges have you faced along the way and how are you addressing those?   Dee: Well, that's a great question. I mean, you talked about some of them, just the telework people. I mean, obviously, we could do virtual services and we could still do them well. We had to adapt and change a lot of things quickly. And the pandemic, frankly, helped us to do that and to do that quickly.   Carol: Silver lining.   Dee: The silver lining, I mean, that is and that's what I'm talking about. Timing like that was the time. It still is the time to make those changes. I would say the biggest challenge is sort of that one step center challenges. That was a huge challenge that we had to work through just any kind of change we were coming off of all the changes we had to implement in WIOA and we're changing the whole direction of services and a lot of things. And then we had the pandemic and then we're implementing because we needed to these different ways of providing services. We had to get pretty good at change management pretty quickly and understand it well and staff are still they talk about change fatigue and it's like, I get it. But we also have to hire people for that kind of flexibility and people who have that same vision or can easily, you know, understand and take on that vision. One of the things, as part of our new service delivery strategy that we decided to do in Minnesota was because we did actually surveys of our customers that we serve. But one of the ways that people want to be served, they want to continue to come into our offices and meet with us. But as equally important to them was us coming into their homes and providing services. Now, I come from the private industry. We I mean, I did that for 30 years. I met with people in their homes. It was just part of that world. It has never been a part of the federal VR program world.   Carol: Except on the blind agency,.   Dee: Except on the blind agencies.   Carol: We were use to doing that!   Dee: You're right. We're used to and we learned a lot from you. And we actually worked with Natasha Jerde is there now and now we work super closely with her and she actually helped us sort of implement some of these in-home services. But you're right, services has been doing it forever. Lots of other state agencies, but not certainly not Minnesota General VR. It was a very new concept to people. There was a ton of fear around it and I thought, Whoa, this will be awesome. We're going to do in-home services. Whoa, nobody else? Nobody else was woaing  about that. There was actually a lot of fear, a lot of barriers. We've been working on that piece for over a year and we had to, of course, wait until things loosened up around the pandemic. I wasn't going to layer that on top of all of the other craziness. So we're trying to figure out coming out of the pandemic, but we're now piloting we have a group of champions and we have some initial policy developed and we're piloting it this fall. I do expect, like if you come back and talk to me two or three years from now, it's just going to be part of what we do and we will have gotten across and gotten over those barriers and challenge.   Carol: Well, I'm confident you will make that happen for sure, because with your woo. I know that. Woo.   Dee: woo. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'm looking forward to when that is just one of the many ways that we provide services to people, because I think it's important and of course what we're hearing to the people that we serve is that it is indeed important.   Carol: So you mentioned doing the survey, and I know I was super intrigued when you talked to me about that before, and actually you had shared it with me and I sent it to some other states because they were wanting to do something similar. But what did that survey of the customers tell you? Were there any kind of surprises in there?   Dee: Yeah, I think it was less surprises and more about just reaffirming that people want services in a variety of different ways. So we did the survey and it was with our current participants. We did it in spring of 22, so just recently and we had over 1000 people complete the survey. So it was a fairly good response. It's always limitations in a survey. We had to do it through email at the time and it was those that we were currently serving. But one of the things that came out is that most people, most respondents, 41% prefer some hybrid model. They want to meet in person once in a while, but not all the time. They want to meet virtually. They want to connect with us by phone, connect with us electronically. I don't think that was much of a surprise. What was a little bit surprising to me, about 31% wanted. Only online services like that was a pretty high number. But also at the time, that was the way that we were connecting with people as well. And the other thing we asked was locations like where you want to meet and meeting in our offices, 45% wanted to have the option to meet in our offices and 40% to me that's a high number. 40% wanted us to be able to meet with them in their own homes. And then the third type was community locations.   Carol: I can completely believe that. When you think about Minnesota, though, like you said, our weather, it sucks, you know, and so...   Dee: right.   Carol: People are dragging through. They're going to the bus and then they had to change buses and then get to the place and check in. And then they're late and the counselor comes up and then they're mad at them. Like, well, they were very dedicated to get here because they were late for the appointment, not realizing like there is a blizzard and they're trudging through the snow and it's horrid.   Dee: Right, that is absolutely it. Yeah. We talked a little bit in the survey, too, about barriers people have to services. And again, that was a little surprising to me. The top barriers, stress and anxiety was one of the top barriers. We have to be able to address that with people and help people feel calmer in order to be able to engage with them. Lack of transportation was one of them and at the time again, it was spring of 2022. So we're still in the pandemic or towards the end of it, but lack of jobs that people wanted to apply for. So the survey was a piece in time. And one of the questions we had is, how do you know people want services this way? So let's ask them. Let's find out.   Carol: Yeah. So that was brilliant. That is brilliant.   Dee: And it's something we will build in. We know that we need to check this occasionally. We need to find a way to reach out to people besides email. To get broader perspectives. We need to also do some similar surveys to people who didn't get engaged with their services and find out sort of what the barriers were there. So more to do on this survey, but I thought it was a good start and gave us some good information to start with.   Carol: Well, absolutely, because I know other folks have been really wrestling with they don't know what the service delivery model should be. And when you shared that with me, I was talking to them because everybody's assuming, well, clients all want to come to the office. Well, maybe not. You know, maybe not. So asking is the best way to find out for your state what needs to happen? Because, again, every state is very different. Some are small, some are big. There's lots of geographic and urban rural issues and all of that. I just think such a fundamental place to start.   Dee: Yeah.   Carol: You know, I was wondering, you speaking, we've been talking pandemic. So how is long COVID impacted you and are you starting to see customers coming in with long COVID?   Dee: We are. We actually started to see customers come in pretty early. With long COVID. We don't have a good way of tracking that data. We can get to it and take a little bit of work and we will be looking at it. But I know anecdotally because I ask as I'm meeting with folks around the state, that is not an unfamiliar new disability. We're seeing quite a few people come in now with long COVID.   Carol: Yeah, we've been doing some work on that at the VRTAC., Roseann Ashby is a consultant on our team, formerly with RSA for decades. She is fabulous, but she has really dug into the long-covid and how it impacts VR and how do you work with that and eligibility and all of that. And she's actually recording a webinar a little bit later this month that will be available for folks to listen to.   Dee: That's awesome.   Carol: Yeah, she's got some great info on that.   Dee: Yeah. And again, I think it's an area that we could do some more focus and reach out towards because we're just getting the people that happen to come in but not necessarily focusing on it. So I look forward to hearing that.   Carol: Oh yeah. So what kind of lessons are you learning along the way as you're trying to pivot. You've got a pretty big ship there. If you would have 400 staff, if you have them, and from 16 to 18000 individuals that you're serving and all of that. But have there been any kind of those aha moments or kind of key lessons you've learned as you've been trying to re-envision this new way?   Dee: Yeah, I mean, a few things. You know, most of my background was in working and running smaller organizations. So as you talk about a big ship like it's definitely different running a big ship and making those turns and making those changes. A few things, learning along the way, whatever you implement, any change, whether it doesn't, even if it's a great idea and people want the change, you are still going to have a third of the people who are, whew, this is awesome. A third of the people who are on the fence and undecided and a third of the people who are going to work against you and detract and do nothing but complain. So one of the things that's been so important is to make sure you're hearing from all of those people, because I'll say even before we did, for instance, a survey of staff, 90% of staff wanted to work. The loudest voices we heard from were those who didn't want to telework. They're like, Let me back in my office. I need to be in my office. I have to see people in my offices. If that is the only voice I would have listened to, I would have had a really bad perspective of what was going on across the agency.   Carol: Good point, good point.   So third point, I had to work really hard to make sure we're hearing the whole, hearing all of the voices and to do some different things. And it's not one way to do that. There's multiple ways that we've had to do to make sure we're hearing about the whole and I would say the other just huge learning and huge lesson is making sure that people understand the why and not just like a quick thing like that. They deeply understand the why and that everything you do connects back to your mission, whatever your mission is, you know, our mission serving participants, people have to understand that and know one of the great things about working in VR, one of the reasons I love being here is because of people we hire. They're not the best paid. They're not I mean, we have pretty good benefits and things, but they're mission driven people. They're here because they love the work that we do. So you have to tap into that and have to make sure that they are able to make those connections and understand the why.   Carol: Yeah, we're the people-people.   Dee: the people-people, the huggers, as you used to say.   Carol: Although there's a few non huggers amongst us like don't touch me.   Dee: I know. Yeah.   Carol: So what kind of suggestions or advice would you give to others as they're going to re-envision the way they deliver services? People are just struggling across the country with what to do. We've got to do something different. We know numbers are kind of tanking and we've got to bounce back. We got to come back and do this differently.   Dee: Yeah, definitely. And yet to be seen. I mean, we're implementing these changes. We're in the midst of it. They don't necessarily have the data yet to show that it's successful, but I hope that we'll have the data a few years from now to show that it's clearly been successful. But we'll see. Again, I just think we can't keep doing what we were doing. We have to do some things differently. And if ever there was a time, a perfect time to make some of these changes, I really think that now is that time to do that. We're all in a hiring crisis, and so it's time to sort of relook at who we're hiring and make sure that we're hiring the right people to do those jobs, and that it's not just people who are good at managing the cases, doing the kind of the casework pieces, like you really have to have people who have that focus on customer service and willingness to focus on that and flexibility. We're in an environment is not going to be the way things were many, many years ago. I mean, VR was very, very, very, very stable with very little changes that it just is not. The current environment is not going to be the way of the future. We're going to be faced with constant changes, those that come at us and we have to adapt to and those that we need to implement in order to keep our programs viable. And I'd say just expect resistance and know you have to build that into your strategies and your plans. It's just always going to be a part of any changes. And to be thinking about the data like what is the data we do need to be tracking in order to show that this has made a difference or made an impact.   Carol: I like that and continuing to kind of tell the story because that's the only way RSA Congress people can know what's going on. They look at the data like what's happening to this program. And I think the way the world has evolved, especially like pandemic, I mean, everybody was ordering from Amazon, holy smokes, you know, instant. Nobody's going out anywhere. We all have everything coming to our house. People are just really used to this instant delivery. They want to binge watch Netflix. They want to get it all right now. They don't want to wait. String it out over six months.   Dee: I want to go chat with somebody and get an instant response. I don't want to wait two weeks for somebody To get back.   Carol: That's right. That's right. You are Spot on.   Dee: And that telling the new story is so important. And it's something like, honestly, we're struggling with a bit here, too, in Minnesota because common performance measures don't do it. The data we're tracking and reporting on doesn't do it, like how do we tell the new story? So in Minnesota, it's about the students. Those are long term results. We don't have instant results. We're on our ways to tell that story in Minnesota. Another factor is we had the highest number of subminimum wage earners. Now we're down to number two. So we're making slow progress. That is not a place that we want to be, however. But we've gone from five years ago of serving almost zero people with developmental disabilities ICD, to it is now our number three category of, number three disability area that we're serving. So huge change, huge shift in who we're serving. And again, we're doing customized employment. It's very intensive wraparound supports that we're providing. It's more long term. How do we tell that story? Because we can't do it in the typical ways. So that's a new challenge for us.   Carol: Absolutely. But you've got the right people. You got Kari Marsh there. She can figure that out, but she is so good.   Dee: That's true.   Carol: She will figure out how to make that data.   Dee: She is fabulous. Yeah.   Carol: If our listeners are interested in seeing your paper that your group did, is there anywhere it's posted or where would maybe be the best way they could get that?   Dee: So it was a part of NRLI, who, by the way,, they're taking new applications for the new cohort. It is an awesome experience. So NRLI, which is part of San Diego State University. My understanding is they're going to be posting those papers soon on their website. Otherwise, one of the leaders of that program is Fred McFarland and he said if anybody's interested, they can email him as well. So F M C f a r l a n at SDSU dot edu.   Carol: Excellent. That'll be awesome. Well, I look forward to having you back in a year or so to find out how your data is looking and how everything is going with this implementation. I think it's cool, but you always have to start somewhere, you know, when you have these kind of visions and that's the important thing you get to actually try it and not discount like this isn't going to work before you even go there, so good for you.   Dee: Absolutely. Well, thank you. I so appreciate. Obviously, we love talking about these kinds of things, so I appreciate the time to be able to talk about that. And again, I can't wait to see where we are in a year or two from now.   Carol: Yeah.   Dee:  I think it's exciting time.   Carol: Me too. That's awesome. All right. Have a great day.   Dee: Thanks, Bye bye.   {Music} Speaker: 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!

RoseAnn retired from being the Chief of the Technical Assistance Unit at RSA in 2021.   She talks about significant changes that shaped what VR is today, including independent living, informed choice and the impact of technology. RoseAnn elaborates on areas that VR is doing well, and areas VR can improve upon moving forward.  RoseAnn is currently contracting with VRTAC-QM, and you can find her work on Long COVID on the web at https://www.vrtac-qm.org/resources.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Listen to VR Legend RoseAnn Ashby, with her VR Reflections- Looking Back and Looking Forward   {Music} Speaker1: 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 RoseAnn Ashby, former Fed and part of the RSA team for 34 years. RoseAnn, I have to say, you are legendary. Everybody knows and respects RoseAnn. And for those of you newer to VR, RoseAnn started with RSA back in 1987, and she's supervised a number of units during her tenure there, including the Technical Assistance Unit, the Training Programs Unit, RSA Policy Unit, and the basic VR program unit. So RoseAnn, you retired from being the chief of the Technical Assistance Unit at RSA in 2021. And I have to say, wowsers, I think you've done it all at RSA except for maybe the fiscal unit.   RoseAnn: That's right. They keep me away from the fiscal unit, Carol.   Carol: I love it. I love it. So, RoseAnn, how are things going in retirement or should I say semi-retirement as you're helping us out on the VRTAC-QM with some contract work?   RoseAnn: Well, I'm loving my retirement. I will say it's very much less stress than I had when I was working. But I'm looking for ways to be engaged. And of course, I am enjoying my work with the center. I particularly love seeing my work on the website. That for me is really gratifying, that's for sure, and I hope to be doing some additional travel in the fall. You know, COVID has kind of crimped my style a little bit, but I'm looking forward to some opportunities there and some other volunteer opportunities. But I am loving retirement.   Carol: Good for you. Good for you. Well, we're loving seeing your work on the website, too, because there's nothing worse when we have coming soon. You know, we're going to be done with two years here in a minute. So we're like, yeah, we got to get this filled in. You have been just a big, big help to us. So, RoseAnn, I love that you said you're looking forward to fall, too, and getting to do some fun, travel and things, because I have always loved this month of August and this is the goofy part of me. Ever since I've been little. I like the smell in the air. I like how I can tell summer's ending and fall starting. I love that whole getting ready for school. And even when I was working at State Services for the Blind, I loved our planning. We did over summer and coming into fall for the new school year, we would do our Pre-ETS blueprint. And so I was sitting back and thinking about podcast and I thought, you know what? I want to do something where we can do some reflections with you because you have over three decades of experience in VR and you've seen so many changes. I thought it would be a fun opportunity to kind of reflect back and look forward. So RoseAnn, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and your background and how you got into VR in the first place?   RoseAnn: Okay. Thanks, Carol. So before I went to RSA, I was in the Independent Living Center in Miami, Florida. I was the assistant director there. I grew up in Ohio. I grew up in Canton, which is a little it used to be a factory town. My family was working class, but they always valued education. And I am a person with a disability. I am blind. And my mother, I credit my mother with really pushing hard to fight for mainstreamed education for me. Before that was popular before we had the laws that we have today. That's kind of my background in a nutshell. I went to college in Oberlin, Ohio, and I have a master's degree from the University of Miami in Florida.   Carol: Good for you. So what intrigued you about RSA? What do you think about work? Because did you have to move to D.C.?   RoseAnn: I did. I did. You know, I had worked at an independent living center doing direct services, advocacy, that kind of thing. And I just felt like if I could help influence some policies, that would be so terrific. And actually, one of the women who monitored our center told me about job openings there. And so in 1987, they were trying to bring on in RSA more people with disabilities. And that's how I got in.   Carol: very cool. And living in D.C., I just I have a love for DC. I love when the plane lands. I love everything about it.   RoseAnn: I do too.   Carol: Yeah. And that's exciting, being able to influence policy. So RoseAnn, and I know you came from that independent living side of services, how do you feel like that independent living movement has influenced VR?   RoseAnn: So as folks probably know, the independent living movement puts the consumer in control. The consumer is empowered to kind of control their services and their outcomes. Grew out of the civil rights movement and the feminist movement in the sixties and seventies. And we in VR used to have custodial attitudes that had to change because it used to be that counselors knew best what was good for people with disabilities. Well, after independent living came along, that was no longer true. For instance, in 1973, the concept of the IWR P, which is the predecessor to the IPE, came along. Folks with disabilities were partners with counsel. In determining their plan. And then in 92, of course, we had the introduction of informed choice throughout the VR process and in 2014 we had amendments that brought in the concept of maximizing employment, advancing and employment. So I think independent living needs to be given credit for really changing the scope of VR and how VR Counselors relate to people with disabilities.   Carol: I love that I sometimes help Maureen Maguire Kuletz from our team do a session for her grad students around self-advocacy. And I love looking back to those early days. You know, you go in the sixties, there's a lot of cool stuff that came out of that and it has really influenced and shaped what's happening in the world today, and that is amazing. So you've got to see that all.   RoseAnn: Absolutely.   Carol: RoseAnn, what do you think has been a real game changer in VR over the years?   RoseAnn: Well, one of the things I like to talk about as a game changer and there's probably many, but the one thing that occurs to me is technology and the advancement of technology and how that has opened up so many opportunities to people with disabilities that would just never have been there before. I remember typing on a typewriter a long time ago and having someone correct my typos. And now of course, with Jaws Screen Reader, I can do all that work myself. In fact, I edit other people's work and it is just so liberating. And that's just one very, very small example. All of the smartphones and tablets that are accessible right out of the box, that is so exciting for folks with disabilities. Now, of course, I'm most familiar with technology for blind people, but deaf folks now have video interpreting. They can live in the middle of a very rural place, and as long as they have Internet, they can get interpreters to help them facilitate their communication. And folks with physical disabilities, even very significant physical disabilities, have assistive technology to help them with their computers and to be independent at home and at work. I just cannot say enough. I think this has opened up tremendous career opportunities for people.   Carol: Yeah, I agree with that. On that technology, I think about when I was at State Services for the Blind, even just during my tenure there looking at equipment we bought early on. And then in the end you kind of want, hey, the iPhone does almost everything and there are a million awesome apps that are folks were downloading and going, Hey, we just need this. I don't need a bunch of other equipment, I just need a phone and this app and I'm good to go. I think that's cool. And for those young people out there, yes, typewriters. I remember typing master's papers and we had one line that could go back and correct. Otherwise we were using correct tape.   RoseAnn: Yes.   Carole: So, yeah. For those young people who have no idea what we're talking about, it's true. They can be grateful that there's been that advancement. So along with that kind of changes in technology, of course, what do you think is different about the expectations the newer, younger customers have as they access VR?   RoseAnn: Well, I think it's very exciting. So first of all, we've got to realize that young people were raised in a post ADA world. The ADA passed in 1990. So they expect things to be accessible. They expect services, they expect facilities to be accessible. They don't know that they shouldn't have those expectations. I find it's so gratifying to see young people with such pride and self-confidence. They demand services. They want everything right now. You know, we talked about this before, Carol, with Amazon. Amazon has raised people's expectations that they should expect their products to be delivered immediately. And I think young people particularly want the VR to reach out to them and to serve them quickly. And that's just not happening. I know we're doing some work on some modules that will be posting soon on rapid engagement, and that's just very exciting to me.   Carol: Yeah, I'm glad you made that plug for our rapid engagement series. So for our listeners, we are working on a really cool series that should come out and August and into September where we're going to talk about rapid engagement and some of the practices that could help you in VR to really more quickly engage with folks and hopefully then leads to better outcomes. And we're starting to see some really fun results from around the country. Four states that have entered into that. I know I'm working on a bathroom remodel right now and I just laughed because I was trying to order something off of Amazon and I thought, the contractor goes, well, it should be here by overnight tonight. But no, I have to wait four days. I'm like, What's wrong with that?   RoseAnn: That's right.   Carol: Oh, my gosh. So how do you those expectations that folks have now fit in with consumer choice and informed choice?   RoseAnn: Let me just talk a little bit about VR. And their role. I see the counselor as facilitating the dreams of people with disabilities. The counselor and the person with a disability are partners, and this is maybe new for some people or different kind of concept. People with disabilities have a right to try to reach goals that they want to reach. A good counselor can help them look at what's realistic. They can help them look at how different choices will have different consequences. But we can develop in VR interim objectives for somebody. For instance, if they pass a certain course, then they can go on to another course or the fall program. People with disabilities have a right to fail. We often learn more from our failures than from our successes, and I do see this whole concept of informed choice just playing into all of this that counselors need to honor that, respect that and support it.   Carol: I like that you said that learning from failure. I remember back to a parent when we were working with Pre-ETS students and they had that realization. They're like, I was trying so hard to protect my child from ever experiencing that failure, but they had this aha moment and we saw it in them and they went, You know what? We have to let them fail, just like we do our other children. Now, I love that you said that, Rosanne, you've talked to me before about Jo-Ann Wilson. She was the former RSA commissioner, and she had a whole philosophy about raising expectations. Can you tell us about that?   RoseAnn: Yes, absolutely. I love Joanne. I think she is a fantastic person and I really admire her. Honestly, she has never let anything get in the way of her doing what she wants to do. She travels extensively. She raised five kids. She headed up the rehab center in Louisiana before she became a commissioner. And she was a tireless advocate for people with disabilities. But one of the things that she always would talk about is one of our major barriers to success is low expectations. And she meant low expectations that people with disabilities have for themselves, low expectations that their families have for them, and low expectations that service providers have. And she would always talk about how we can just raise expectations. We would do so much to help people advance in their goals.   Carol: Those are wise words for today. They really are. They ring true even now. I think there's that soft bigotry of low expectations that still hangs around. Absolutely.   RoseAnn: Yeah.   Carol: So, RoseAnn, what are your thoughts about disability and poverty and how could we better address this?   RoseAnn: Well, unfortunately, you know, I don't have the exact data, but I do know that the percentage of individuals with disabilities living in poverty is higher than for the general population. I really think that the RSA's emphasis on good paying jobs is the key. It's not enough for someone to be placed in a minimum wage job or a job that just supplements SSI. I mean, obviously folks have choice about this. We need to be finding better jobs for people. Folks with disabilities have the same dreams as everyone else. They want to raise their families. They want to be active in their community. They want to travel, they want to have fun. And you can't do that if you don't have a good income. I think VR needs to work hard with employers to help them understand that someone with a disability can perform a job competently and as well or better than folks without disabilities. Unfortunately, Carol, there is still stigma or attitudinal barriers in our society. Some employers don't understand that folks with disabilities can be productive. And this is changing. But those barriers are still real. And I think VR needs to work on that.   Carol: Oh, you're dead on on that. I'm really hoping actually the one bright lining out of this pandemic is that it's been proven now that people working remotely, it's worked. I mean, it works really well, which can help individuals with disabilities who may have transportation barriers and other things being able to get into some good employment and employers being less critical about are they going to be able to do the job and giving them a shot for doing that and working from home. So I'm at least hoping I'm hopeful that that will prove to be true.   RoseAnn: I am, too. I think we have more flexibility now in our thinking than we did before the pandemic. And that's key because when we talk about accommodating somebody with a disability, sometimes it's just a matter of like restructuring a job a little bit or whatever. But I think that kind of like let's make it work no matter what.   Carol: Absolutely. So, RoseAnn, what do you think are things that VR is doing really well? And where do you think maybe we're missing the mark A little bit?   RoseAnn: I. First want to say that VR is a great program and I think we need to own that. There's hardly anything that cannot be provided to an individual with a disability if it's related to their employment outcome. We've got a great program to work with. I think it's exciting that VR agencies are beginning to really analyze their performance. That's one of the things I do think we're beginning to do well. I think another thing is that we have very dedicated counselors. It sure isn't the money that keeps them in the field. Right. But they're dedicated and that's wonderful. A few challenges or things that I think maybe could be better. I would love to see agencies work on getting more financial compensation for counselors. I think unfortunately, you know, we have a high turnover rate and if we paid people better, that would really help to keep them. In terms of the VR process, we allow the process to control us. We need to look at outcomes. The process in VR is good because it makes sure that people with disabilities are being treated fairly and equitably. It ensures that all the regulatory requirements are met. But that's not the end in itself. That's not what we're really all about. We're about outcomes and we need to focus our work on outcomes. Another thing I just wanted to mention, I don't think our agencies sometimes reward people on the staff who are creative and think outside the box, you know? And then the last thing I would say is we've often heard that VR is the best kept secret, but why the heck are we a best kept secret? We should be out there waiting to tell people what we do, to tell folks with disabilities, employers, other service providers, what we can offer because we are a tremendous resource. And that's an area where I think we can, we can improve.   Carol: I agree on that 100%. I know when I interviewed at State Services for the Blind, the director at the time told me, yeah, we're, you know, we're the best kept secret. I still remember that. And I remember telling staff when I got to the agency, I'm like, I don't want to be the best kept secret. We need to have people come in the door. And I love that we've got some agencies out now doing some cool things. I know David D'Angelo from Mass Commission for the Blind, he did a whole PSA campaign and it really impacted his numbers. He was, I think, one of the few programs during the pandemic, like their numbers stayed up. He wasn't losing tons of people.   RoseAnn: That's great. Yeah.   Carol: He made a big effort. And I know other folks have really been looking into that same kind of thinking, being able to get the word out so people can come in and find us. So do you have any ideas on how VR can shore up those areas where we might be missing the mark?   RoseAnn: Well, okay, so just to kind of continue along the same vein I was just talking about, first of all, I think it's really unfortunate that we lost our in-service training grants because of high staff turnover. We really need those training dollars. And I know, of course, agencies can spend their Title One funds on training. I'm sure they do. But I wish we had that dedicated funding source. if we had, I know there's a lot of training available online for counselors and maybe there'd be a way to provide incentives for people completing the training. Also, maybe some incentives for counselors who develop relationships with service providers. You know, we need our partners, Carol, to provide supports to people with disabilities that VR doesn't provide or can't provide. And so if we had folks going out and making contacts in the community and developing partnerships, I think they should be rewarded for that effort. I also think job development, that is a tough skill. It's a different set of skills than most counselors have, that's for sure. And we need dedicated folks to meet with employers and become liaisons with them and really develop jobs for folks. I mean, it is not sufficient to just give a person with a disability a link to Indeed a couple of job openings or whatever. You know, that's not what I'm talking about. I think we need to do some targeted job development more than we do.   Carol: Yeah, I couldn't agree more on that. That job development, it takes a skill set when you're doing that, and it's not always a skill set that a counselor has. And I know definitely some agencies require the counselors to do that work too. But boy, that's tough if that isn't kind of in your wheelhouse of engaging with employers that way.   RoseAnn: Right.   Carol: So Rosanne, if you had a crystal ball, what would be your predictions for VR in 20 years?   RoseAnn: Oh, my goodness. Okay. If I had a crystal ball. Well, first of all, let me say that I do believe we are at a very critical juncture right now. Unfortunately, our numbers are going down. I worry in this inflationary era whether funding for VR will become tighter. We have to prove. Our work, I think that if we offer diminished services and fewer outcomes. That's just not a good thing right now. We need to reinvent ourselves, as I talked about. We need to provide incentives for creative staff and support their creativity. We need to get our consumer partners, our individuals with disabilities to value us. And that's through working with folks with disabilities openly, honestly and being efficient. That whole rapid engagement thing we talked about earlier, educating employers about VR, what VR can do for folks with disabilities. Again, VR is a great program, but we need to market it. I see the future can be bright, but we need to do some work, I think some substantial work and we need to do it quickly.   Carol: Yeah, I agree on that. I was excited to hear the CSAVR group. I was on the director call yesterday and listening to some things that folks are doing to try to shore up recruitment, retention, and that was really encouraging with a couple of states and successes they've had. But I know the fall conference, they're focusing on some three main categories and one of them really is about outreach in the promotion of the program, which is smart. I think they're spot on and that they're in-tune to what's happening right now. So I'm encouraged about what we'll see this fall and hopefully that will get people energized across the country. So, Rosanne, I know there are a lot of people that are new to VR across the country. What advice would you give to them as they're learning and working in the program?   RoseAnn: Well, this has to be your passion. If you're new in this field, you're going to have to work hard. You're not going to get paid as much as you might if you were in some other field. So this needs to be your passion. If you truly believe that folks with disabilities have rights to full employment and should be treated equitably. You are so valuable to us and I really hope you'll stay in this field. But it's got to be a passion for you. We need you, that's for sure.   Carol: Well said. We need you, that's for sure. That is great. So, Rosanne, I just want to switch gears a minute and talk about the work you've been doing for us at the QM. You have been curating a lot of website content and also working on a project regarding long COVID. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that work?   RoseAnn: Sure. Long COVID is something that gosh, you know, it's very distressing. When I saw the data, a very conservative estimate is that like 7.5 million individuals have long COVID. And that means that they have limitations that are characterized by having had COVID that may prevent them from working. And that's why VR needs to be involved with some of these people. And so the work that I did, which I believe has been posted, talks about when we determine that someone with long COVID has a disability for VR purposes, but it's an evolving area. Carol. I know I particularly want to be involved in keeping up to date because things are changing. There's some reports coming out of the Department of Health and Human Services just this week about long COVID and what supports people need. It's very exciting and I'm really glad that the center here is working on this.   Carol: Yeah, we really appreciate you doing that work. And for our listeners, you can find what RoseAnn has done on our VRTAC-QM.org website. And if you go to resources, you can either go on the search box or you can go to resources and look for the information on Long-covid. You'll find that right away on the page. And I know she's continuing to work on adding, so that'll be a kind of an evolving document, I believe, and going forward.   RoseAnn: right.   Carol: Yeah. We really appreciate it. So, RoseAnn, do you have any other parting words of wisdom for all of us?   RoseAnn: Carol, I don't know that I have any parting words of wisdom. I think working together, you know, at all levels, we're going to get this job done. And I'm very excited. I think we've got people with disabilities who are demanding their rights and wanting services. I think we've got people of goodwill and dedication in VR. I'm just very excited about what all this can mean. I think we need to work together, be honest with each other, communicate and really get the job done.   Carol: Well said, RoseAnn. Well, thanks for being on our program today. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to talking to you some more.   RoseAnn: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed it. I've never done a podcast before, but this has been fun.   Carol: Awesome. Well, have a great day.   RoseAnn: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: 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!

Joining Carol Pankow in the studio today is Toni Wolf, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC) since 2017. Toni leads her agency with the belief, "If the system isn't enhancing the quality of life for the individual, we at MRC must change the system."   Toni explains how MRC has developed a culture of engagement with customers to build trust and make space for the conversation about what is possible.   Find out how the focus on engagement and partnerships with the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Transitional Assistance is moving the employment needle to quality.    Listen Here You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Moving the Employment Needle to Quality - Learn How the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission has Used Engagement and Partnership to Pave the Path to Quality Employment   {Music}   Speaker: 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 studio today is Toni Wolfe, commissioner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission since 2017. Toni has a rich history in the mental health arena and is leading her agency with the belief if the system isn't enhancing the quality of life for the individual, we at MRC must change the system. So, Toni, how are things going in Massachusetts?   Toni: Well, you know, first of all, I'm really proud of representing Massachusetts today. So thank you, Carol, for having us here. And Massachusetts is thriving. I mean, like everywhere across the country, there are enormous amount of job opportunities. And so I feel like it's our time. It's our time with people with disabilities. Inclusivity is the buzzword. People are really embracing it. They're really believing in it. And that includes people with disabilities.   Carol: Well, I'm glad to hear that. So, Toni, I don't know if you remember back, but I had the good fortune of meeting you back in 2017 when you were attending your very first CSVAR conference. And we chatted over lunch and you were getting your feet wet and now you've been at it for five years. I'd say you're probably one of the more seasoned VR leaders today. We've had such a turnover in the field these past eight years, so it's been pretty unbelievable. But it's awesome to see the things that you've been digging in and making so many enhancements to your agency, and people are definitely buzzing about the things happening in Massachusetts. So I wanted to focus our conversation today on the quality outcomes that you're seeing now. I know it didn't just happen by accident, and I'd like to unpack what went into the work you did with your agency. So can you give our listeners a little bit of perspective about MRC, like how many individuals you serve, kind of the number of staff you have, and any other facts that might help paint a picture of your agency?   Toni: Sure, I'd be happy to. Massachusetts is a small state compared to other states in the country. We have about 800 employees. We serve currently 15,000 people in VR. Now that used to be 22,000 before COVID. And that's true, I think for all the agencies right now we're seeing a decline, but we are also very eager to increase that number in addition to our VR services, which right now is about 57 million, we also have a very robust community living division, serving same number of people and actually increasing the dollars with federal dollars as well. So we're a little bit about 63 million in our community living division. And then we also manage and support Disability Determination Division that's funded obviously by SSA. So that gives you a little bit of a perspective of MRC, Mass Rehab Commission.   Carol: Yeah, I had no idea. You said you're small, but you're a lot bigger than I thought you were. That is awesome. So you had mentioned to me when we visited earlier that you're really focused on looking at quality jobs that can provide a career pathway for individuals. So what's that look like in the sectors that you're seeing in Massachusetts?   Toni: Well, I think, number one, we're really focusing a lot on cybersecurity. Those are positions that are starting salary is 65 and up. And we really want to help people really advance their career opportunities. So that also meant a longer training program because obviously it requires that kind of knowledge base working with the community colleges, working with our staff, working with the individual people are really seeing the value of cybersecurity and the job offerings are unbelievable. So again, there's a huge opportunity there. We're also seeing things like STEM positions, anything that's related to technology. And Massachusetts is really fortunate that we're at this hub right where we have amazing employer partners. So it really is an opportunity to really help people advance. And that's really what it's about. It's about mobility. You may not start in the job. That is exactly the job you want or the rate that you want, but does it give you the opportunity to have mobility? And that's what we're looking at.   Carol: So how is that impacted your data focusing on these different sectors? Have you started to see some changes in your data?   Toni: Well, we're definitely seeing in terms of higher wages now, I would love to say we want to see more of that, which is definitely true. We're also seeing that internships, apprenticeship programs are really the way to go on, not to say that people should not have a four year education opportunity, but we're really seeing short term training opportunities that gets people into the door with employers, then gives people the mobility access that they need.   Carol: I love that you said that because I think internships and apprenticeships we have not been very good at in VR. I mean, I don't think it's so good for a long time and I'm really glad WIOA has put a focus on that as well. And I think society as a whole has put sort of this, you know, the prestige around this four year degree or you've got your masters in, they're forgetting all these awesome occupations where you can have an internship or apprenticeship, you know, and get into a certain position and we're missing the boat, like making that somehow seamless because those are crazy careers. Like, I have a plumber at my house right now and you go, Those people are making a lot of money. It's not like five bucks an hour or so.   Toni: Well, and it's also relying on the resources of the employer. Employers really are eager to have people come in to the door and really support them and also really advance them so that they can keep a good employee. So it's really about maximizing not only the VR resources, but the employer resources with internships and apprenticeships and also helping people explore what's out there. Know there are positions that we've never heard of before that didn't even exist three years, five years ago. They exist today. So let's really help people think about what's out there.   Carol: Yeah, I think the pandemic opened up a whole new world to what we learned, what was possible from all of that. Right now, I know this idea of engagement has been really important to you. Can you tell us about the strategies that you have developed around engagement?   Toni: So this is very hot and mass rehab. So what we saw was that we missed people in the beginning steps, right? That we looked at our data and looked at the statuses and what was happening and how we lost people. And engagement means before you even talk about employment, you engage the individual to say, I'm here, let's think about what's possible. All right. And we spent a lot of time and we're using a lot of state resources to make sure that we are giving employees the opportunity to engage in individual. What that means is building a relationship, connecting with them, going where they are not always making sure that the individual comes to us. So that could be at a residential program, that could be at a community setting, that could be someone's library or natural community. It's really, again, going where they are or where they feel comfortable and engaging. And what we're seeing is, is that that opportunity allows people to begin to build a trusting relationship, to then be able to talk about work, talk about what's next, give you the opportunity to think about, am I really interested in employment? Maybe I could be right, because we're seeing people so hesitant right now, so even more so than ever, it really requires engagement.   Carol: So how did that happen with the staff? I know some other states have been talking with staff, have been a little hesitant about going out and meeting people, especially meeting people in their homes or things like that. But even meeting people in the community, folks have been worried about data privacy and all different things. How did you work with staff to make all this happen?   Toni: Well, we started first with one of our programs, which is a partnership with the Department of Mental Health. And we hired people that what we're calling mental health specialists, mental health rehab staff who really enjoy that population and understand the challenges and the strengths of people with mental health conditions. And we set up front, you're going where they are, you're going in the community residence, you're going. So that really set the tone automatically. Let me just say that. And also, we talked about engagement. What we did was we kind of looked at some of the principles we really want to instill throughout MRC and let's do it on a small scale basis. So we have a $4 million project with a Department of Mental Health. We have about 25 counselors, and they are going in the community settings, they're going in the residential programs, they're going in clinics. All right. They're going where consumers are, right, where it's not such an effort to engage people. And we also are making sure that our counselors are working within a team, that it's wonderful that VR has traditionally been one on one. But what we know also is that people really thrive when there are more resources at the table. So not just think about the person in the VR lens, but think of the whole person.   Toni: So is their home safe? All right. Do they have food on the table? All right. Can they think about work? Can they think about going on an internship? What about their transportation? How can we help people? So again, it's not only just working with the individual, but working with other resources so that people can really thrive on their goals. So that's when we started that. And then we expand it to a different partnership, which is our Department of Transitional Assistance Partnership. So again, we made sure that people learned and heard the value of going where the consumer is. And I have to say now what we're calling via are throughout the agency, people are realizing that that office is not the Pandora's. We can open that up. Right? We don't have to be glued to the door. And there was a myth that in VR for some of our counselors that felt like if an individual went to the office, that meant that that was kind of a test. They were really committed. Right. We know that's not true. There's lots of reasons why people don't make appointments. Right. It doesn't mean that they're any less interested in achieving their goal. So I do think in this, a remote arena that we've all experienced, it also is opening up enormous opportunities.   Carol: Yeah, you are spot on on that. I remember the whole test concept. If they get there and think about Minnesota like Winter and there maybe someone is also in a wheelchair and they're trying to navigate buses and then trying to get through our parking lot. That's not plowed very well. And then they're late. And then the counselor is thinking, wow, they weren't very committed to getting here. It just probably took him 2 hours to get here. So we don't have to put people through kind of through the paces. I know you're talking about this partnership with mental health. And of course, you've had that long, rich history in the mental health arena. So I wasn't surprised that you were engaging in partnering with your Department of Mental Health. How is that relationship blossomed over these last five years? Have there been any things you've been doing specifically to sort of cultivate that?   Toni: Yeah. So we first created a vision statement as a group so that we wanted to make sure this was a long term historical perspective. We wanted a vision statement. We wanted to make sure both agencies were committed short term and long term to really work with people with mental health conditions. We also on a monthly basis, even today, this project has been going on for four years. We look at the key performance indicators. All right, how are we doing? What is the say? What does this actually mean? Maybe we need to go back and dig into the data to see if there are other things that we can tweak. So it is really a partnership that we're doing with EMH and with MRC and it also involves other clinicians. And so how do we help other clinicians who may not always think about employment? All right, but how do we help them as well? See, broaden their lens to make sure that employment is part of their discussion with the individual.   Carol: When you talk to you about that partnership with the Department of that transitional assistance, I don't have a good feel exactly for what all that department does. But can you talk a little bit about that and how you have cultivated that? Like what is we didn't have a department that was named that. So I'm not understanding exactly what they what they do.   Toni: Yeah. So I'm not sure what's related to other states. So I apologize. But they are. The Department of Transitional Assistance provides residents with cash benefits, food assistance and workforce training opportunities. We're really excited to partner with the Department of Transitional Assistance on our Empowered to Employ program. Gotcha. It's a group that traditionally has not always seen individuals with disabilities, and yet we know that individuals with disabilities are everywhere. All right. So we sat down and said, look, the individuals that we work with are using your services. We are the experts in the disability arena. Let's partner together. You are the experts in benefits. You are the experts in food security issues. You are the experts in supporting individuals with food assistance and other economic features. Let's combine our efforts, and that has really been an eye opener for both DTA and for MRC. And I say that for MRC side. Traditionally we don't always see individuals as part of a family, all right. That they too are caregivers. And so a lot of individuals that we are servicing through our DTA project are single parents. So it has enriched our consumers, it has reached our staff, let me say, to really appreciate the challenges people have that are also caregivers themselves with a disability. Right. And it has helped to because they're seeing something incredibly positive when people get employed. All right. So it helps them also believe that more is possible for their individuals. So I think it's been a really enriching partnership and we are in the process of expanding that partnership. It's been so successful.   Carol: That is brilliant because if you think about it, you want to look for a job, but you're also you have these basic needs like.   Toni: Childcare.   Carol: Food. You know, I need food and I need childcare and I need all this other stuff. And so it's kind of this really revolving circle. And if you can't, you've got to get it all met together so that that all is in sync. That's right. So if somebody was wanting to reach out to that because we it was our Department of Health and Human Services and Minnesota would be that agency that did that and that kind of the SNAP and TANF and all these different programs. How would somebody reach out to get that relationship going? If you were giving some advice to your colleagues out there, how could they go about trying to engage that partnership?   Toni: So, you know, I would be lying to tell you that it was not something that happened easily. But at the same token, it was about relationship building. That's what everything is about. So it was really at that time the commissioner myself talking about where our shared individuals that we service were right how to think about that differently and not being so siloed in our roles and in our departments, but really looking at what I'm calling collaboration. Right. And we had more in common than we had. That was different. And so that really, really allowed us to really think about let's start a pilot project where we're working together, where we're looking at actually having a VRC in a DTA office. And this was pre-COVID. All right. So our VR counselor actually sat and was headquartered in a DTA office to start building relationships, and that then grew over time. And that's really, I think how you build partnerships is that you start building relationships, you start thinking about the shared individual that we all care about and serve and what's best for them. And I have to say, DTA has been a great, great partner.   Carol: That's smart. I mean, that was really smart, starting with that VR counselor in their office. Good for you. So I know partnership is definitely a theme and you took some lessons you've learned to help you secure. You get a Disability Innovation Fund grant from RSA in 2021. So what's the premise of that grant you wrote, I think you had called it Next Gen. It was something kind of snazzy like that.   Toni: Well, that's what we want to be snazzy. I think VR has a rap of not being innovative and that's not true. We are incredibly passionate here at MRC. Every staff person is incredibly passionate about the work they do, and yet we also have to translate it so people think differently about us, that we are innovative, that we do really look at servicing the individual and the family in a really robust way. So next gen is to serve what we're calling 18 to 30 year olds. All right. It is really about translating what we do to their needs. It's again, focusing on the team approach so that if somebody does not feel comfortable working as part of a team, they would not use next gen. But this is a very much of a team effort. The thinking behind this is that there would be a benefit specialist up front, there would be a counselor, there would be a peer mentor, someone with lived experience themselves. That's part of the team that could help an individual. They would be somebody that also understands outreach and the importance of outreach and the resources in the community. And the thinking is that the youth or the young adult is we're calling that person 18 to 30 really is part of the circle of that team and they will decide who they want to work with at that point in time. It doesn't always have to be the VR counselor that's the case manager or the care person that's coordinating efforts. So it's really putting the young adult in charge. And what we're hearing with youth and young adults, they want to feel like they're dictating what happens and they should. It's their life, right? So it's really putting the young adult in the center and really making sure that they're driving the ship. So we're very excited. And next gen, it does mean thinking very differently around VR services. It does mean, again, internships, apprenticeships, working in the community very differently. But we're very excited about this opportunity.   Carol: That's really cool. So I see you're probably like a year into this.   Toni: Now we're actually in a year of model design. And just to give you an idea of what we've done, we have vetted it with a number of young adults. We have vetted with sister agencies. We have vetted it with families because very much families have felt left out and not as included as they should in thinking about services. And I think that, again, there's always this sometimes myth, sometimes reality, that if you involve the family, the individual is not as independent. And we believe that both parties have a voice in that. And sometimes it's different. A different voice. All right. But if you don't, again, bring people to the player together, you won't have the results that you want. And that's really what this is all about, is really making sure that that young adult is successful and has results.   Carol: Well, I'm definitely going to follow up with you later on a later podcast about how things are going with that project. I'm really excited to hear about that. That is very cool. Now, I know we talked about the pandemic for just a second. At the beginning, you talked about the number of customers you're serving, went down from 22000 to 15000. Obviously, we saw this major contraction during the, you know, the pandemic and the people served in VR. So did you have any surprises as you kind of look back on the pandemic, any kind of surprises that may have come up that you learned about? And are your numbers starting to come back up?   Toni: Yeah, we are. Recently, we see about a 25% increase in the last 60 days. So we are seeing the numbers increase. I think, again, it's depending upon each state and where they are with their COVID rates. But Massachusetts has been very aggressive. Every state employee here in Massachusetts is required to have a vaccination. So we've been very aggressive in that. I think when I think about surprises as horrible and as challenging COVID has been, both in terms of people's personal lives, people's losses, it also has really, I think, demonstrated the resiliency of us as people. And it has meant that people had to change. There was no choice. We all had to react and we all had to react quickly. And so it has relied it has required us to rely on technology faster. And for some of us like myself, it always is a little bit of a challenge to learn a new technology. But it made me I haven't had no choice. And in some times when you have no choice, you embrace change and you don't even realize you're embracing change until you're in it. So I think for MRC, it really helped us really be able to appreciate the resiliency of our workforce, the resiliency of the individuals we serve. You know, we made sure that we did not close any cases for a long period of time. We just wanted to engage. All right. Let's not worry anymore about numbers for a while. This is a pandemic, but continue to reengage and have a relationship with that individual and. The individual will come back. And that's what we're seeing in the last 60 days. Our numbers have been increasing.   Carol: That's exciting to hear. Good for you. I think that's that's a good approach, that engagement. And I know for so many of the customers, people were losing employment. You know, they got laid off during that. So there was a lot of things and a lot of just everybody was struggling with personal issues, whether, you know, being ill or family and all of that. So I think keeping connected. So are your staff, are they back at the office or are you guys still working hybrid or.   Toni: Yeah, so we're embracing the hybrid model. We think there's enormous strengths and we actually are just now engaging with working with a vendor to really be able to have feedback every month from our consumers so that we understand what their experience is. Because what we're seeing is it's changing, right? People are beginning to feel more comfortable, but we want to really evaluate that. What are the things that an individual is experiencing well and what are the things that they're not experiencing? Well, at MRC, we are hearing that a lot of individuals we serve really appreciate remote access. It eliminates transportation challenges. It gives a quick opportunity. All right. And we've also had, I think, really fortunate opportunity to also offer technology to our individuals. So we've spent about $15 Million to make sure that people have the technology they need. So there was not a divide, a digital divide, which is what I was fearful of, to be honest. Yeah, we have now staff using technology, but we don't have individuals with disabilities using technology. So it does require training, it does require some education. We're also doing some things like what I would call soft tricks, soft skill training on how do you actually look when you're working remote, right? What are some of the things that you need to be mindful of when you're interviewing remotely? Right. So really being able to help people have a little bit more self awareness in this remote arena. But I think that it's been really a great opportunity for everyone. And what I'm seeing in our small state, even though we're small, right, it has allowed us to talk to the East and the West State in 5 minutes. Right. We've pulled more meetings together in a more collaborative way because we don't have to drive two and a half, 3 hours to get to that meeting. And so I think it has allowed us more access, more communication access for sure.   Carol: That is excellent. I'm glad to hear that. What advice would you give to colleagues across the country? You know, they may want to pivot and focus more on engagement and partnership. And obviously, you've been doing this for five years now. And as you said with something earlier, it doesn't just happen overnight. It takes some time. But in your wise wisdom hat, what advice would you give folks out there?   Toni: Well, I don't think I have any right to give anybody advice because we're all learning. But what I will say is that it does take time, but you really have to believe that people are committed to the work. And I do want to say that there is not a staff person here at mass rehab that's not committed to the work. You can't teach commitment. All right. You can teach change. You can help people adapt to change. You can't teach commitment. And so I think for me, it's really helping people understand the change, have the vision of the change. And one of the things that we did here was that we had a roadmap. We literally, when I came on board, brought in a consultant to help us develop a roadmap of where we're going. And in that roadmap, we still have a roadmap steering committee that really looks at are we keeping true to the priorities we've set and we communicate out quarterly to the results of that roadmap? Are we still staying true to what we said we want to work on in spite of COVID or maybe because of COVID? Right. Doesn't take away the direction and the vision of the agency. And so I think more flexibility is necessary in VR. I think innovation is absolutely essential and I think being able to translate the work differently is really also important. What we're getting feedback from young adults just with our own name called Mass Rehabilitation Commission, is that people are not broken. There's nothing about rehab that should be in our name. So we are also looking at our own branding exercise and we have a great communications director that's helping us do that. But it really is about how do we translate differently to the population we're serving. Young adults today are different, all right? They want different things. They want quicker reactions. They want responses. We need to be that reactive in a positive way.   Carol: That's like the Amazon overnight delivery. They want a quick we all do. If you can't touch your screen and scroll and all of that, you're like, what's going on?   Toni: That's right.   Carol: Yes, absolutely. So you've talked about so many cool things. I've been interested in this contractor that's doing the surveys monthly, and you've talked about the different projects you've had. Does any of this live on your website, any information about some of your projects? Because folks I know people always like to go, hey, can you get us a link to a website so we can go look?   Toni: So this is when I think our director of communications probably like scrounging right now because we're aware that a website does not reflect as much as we would like. We're in the process of developing a new website and enhancing our website. So please get on board and connect with us. And we'll be. Happy to give you any information we have. I really think this is a community that we have to support each other in change. And I want to put a shout out to California, who's really helped us as we developed our eligibility process and expedited eligibility. Thanks to California. All right. And we have now a centralized eligibility system called MRC Connect so that people can actually apply for services one time, whether it's in VR or HCL, that's really about really again streamlining processes. So for the individual we serve, it's not such a bureaucratic process. So I do think that innovation is really critical. Our website may not reflect that yet, so just reach out to us.   Carol: Okay, that sounds really good. And Joe Xavier would love that you gave him a shout out. We did a podcast with Joe's team about, I think about four podcasts to go talking about the rapid engagement, and it is our highest downloaded podcast that we've had to date. It's been really fun, but you are so right, Toni. I mean, it takes a village and VR and people have all these incredible ideas. I know Joe helped me back in the day and a team model approach and so many different things I took from colleagues across the country. And then you take it and make it yours, you know? So I love that you're willing to have people reach out and just contact you.   Toni: Yeah, please do.   Carol: Thanks much for sharing. You packed a lot into this half hour. I love it. And so there's been a lot of very cool things that you've talked about. And I definitely am going to want to circle back with you at a later date just to find out the progress, especially on your Next Gen, very snazzy, cool Grant. So it sounds good and thanks much. I wish you the very best, Toni. Great job.   Toni: Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to shine a little bit and MRC will be proud. But more importantly, I think everyone really cares about the work across the country. So thank you for helping us do that.   Carol: Have a great day.   Toni: All right. You too. Bye bye.   {Music} Speaker: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.  

Welcome to the 15th episode of the Manager Minute. Joining Carol Pankow in the studio today is Cheryl Fuller, VR Division Director with the Texas Workforce Commission and also incoming CSAVR President. Today we will talk about Social Security's VR Cost Reimbursement program, which was authorized in 1981. The purpose of that program is to make State VR services more readily available to SSA beneficiaries with disabilities and to generate savings for the Social Security Trust Fund for SSDI beneficiaries and the General Revenue Fund for SSI recipients.   Learn how the Texas Workforce Commission uses technology and staff to maximize and track Social Security Reimbursements to help support their programs.   Listen Here You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/    Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Everything is Bigger in Texas- Learn How Texas Leverages SSA Reimbursement   {Music}   Speaker: 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. I am so fortunate to have Cheryl Fuller, V.R. Division Director with the Texas Workforce Commission and also incoming CSAVR president, joining me in the studio today. And Cheryl, there certainly have been some very tragic things happening in your state and most recently the Uvalde School shooting. And my thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected. I know VR is typically filled with people with a lot of heart. We're kind of people people. So in light of all that's happening, how are you and your staff holding up?   Cheryl: First of all, thank you for thinking about us. This is something very much at the forefront of our minds and it's really on our hearts. And we have a field office in Uvalde about a block and a half from the school. And so it's a small community. Our staff knows everyone. I grew up in a small town myself, and I know just how wonderful it is to grow up in a small town with the support and the relationships, and that will be important for them going forward. And our agency, along with other agencies, immediately looked at what we can do, how can we help our community? Because it is our community. And we're looking at a couple of things. We're looking at some group skills training later this summer to help some of our students get ready to go back to school. And how can we do that? How can we help them think about going back to school and process that and think about some positive things that they look forward to about why they're in school, their career and growing up and getting ready to transition. And of course, we know adults also may need us. So we're redoubling our efforts to make sure that our community knows that our services are there to help them. If a few months from now they begin to have conditions that are preventing them from keeping their job. We're here to help, and we know that if we all do what we can, we will help our community work through this.   Carol: Well, I'm really glad you're at the helm because you bring that heart to it. That has just broken my heart. I'm thinking about you all. I'm praying for you guys every day. And I'm glad you're in that leadership role there to bring that to your staff and to your customers and that thought and thinking ahead for the next school year. That is so smart, so wise.   Cheryl: Well, that's our staff on the ground and it's our agency executive director. We're so fortunate to have an executive director that cares very much about our division, our programs, our customers and our staff, and was on the ground meeting with our staff and immediately asking what we can do and helping us be creative in thinking how can we help? We can do more. And so we're really fortunate to have.   Carol: I love that. That is so great to hear. Cheryl, I've known you since you started at the agency. And in fact, I don't think you probably remember this, but I was actually sitting behind you at your first CSAVR conference, and I remember thinking, Who is that lady? You were so sharp and you would ask questions like, I'm like, This gal is super intelligent. Like, Where's she come from? Because you were new to VR and you came out of the other side of the world. But I loved it because you participated right away and you've accomplished so much in your tenure. I've really always looked up to you and your leadership, not only in your agency but in the VR field as a whole. And so congrats on that new position as the incoming president of CSAVR. I know you're going to be spectacular at that job.   Cheryl: Thank you, Carol. You know, I've always looked up to you. In fact, we were following you around, as I recall, when you were president, as you tried to lead our association and lead our partnership with our federal agency to get more flexibility, which we so needed to serve students with disabilities. So I was in the group behind you going, Yeah, what Carol says.   Carol: So you are hilarious. Well, I never got to be CSAVR President, I was the NCSAB president. CSAVR Executive Committee.   Cheryl: Yeah, that's right.   Carol: I did a lot of that work through NCSAB, but you know, I was on both groups and so wow, definitely promoting those flexibilities and I'm glad they finally came through.   Cheryl: Well, thank goodness for your leadership there and your leadership with administrative changes like prior approval, I thought how has Carol already figured all of this out? And we're still trying to spell prior approval, so.   Carol: Oh, you are very sweet. Yeah, well, I'm still working on it to this day in my new role. Yes. But today we're going to talk about Social Security's VR cost reimbursement program, which was really authorized back in 1981. Right. And the purpose of that program is to make State VR services more readily available to SSI beneficiaries with disabilities and to generate savings for the Social Security Trust Fund for SSDI beneficiaries and the General Revenue Fund for SSI recipients. And so under that cost reimbursement program, the Social Security Administration will pay state VR agencies compensation in the form of reimbursement when beneficiaries served by State VR agencies enter the workforce and achieve nine continuous months of earnings. And those earnings must be at or above substantial gainful activity, and usually it's just referred to as SGA. I know for me that program income was really a game changer when I was at Minnesota Blind. I mean, it actually gave us some breathing room and we were able to do some really creative things and invest in. Our older individuals who are blind program. And so what I was thinking about who to talk to for this I of course I called Courtney. She was my person. I'm like, Courtney, what are the states out there that are doing really well with this? And you were at the top of the list. So when you look at those reimbursement levels, I know your state is out in the lead and being really efficient in getting every possible dollar. So let's dig into this. Can you give us a little picture about VR in Texas? Like what's your annual grant amount? Kind of how many staff do you have? How many customers do you serve? Paint a little picture for our listeners.   Cheryl: Sure. Our annual grant amount has been growing every year rather significantly. It's grown 23% since 2017. Wow. So our annual grant allotment is at about 300 million now. We're second to our sister state in California. Of course, California is bigger. And so we have certainly, as we've seen our grant grow, we are seeing it grow in significant part because of our population growth in Texas. We are expected to, if we haven't already surpassed the 30 million person point in Texas population, we were 27.4 in 2016 and we are now well into 30 million. In fact, I think we were leading the country in numeric growth from 2010 to 2020. Wow. Our state is growing in terms of population. Our economy is remaining strong and our grant is growing. I'll tell you our annual budget. So our grants are of course for two years, but our annual budget this year is about $276 million at the DSU level. And so when it comes to the number of folks that we're serving, if we just think about participants, which is how we now consider a number of customers serve in the most specific sense. So somebody with an IP who is also receiving services, last year it was about 65.5 thousand, so 65,514. To be specific, it's running 65 to 70000 a year is how many customers we're serving. We're doing that with a division that has about 744 positions. The vast majority of those are in the field. About 1663 of those positions are in the field. Almost 700 of them are counselors or transition VR counselors who work with students and youth, about 350 rehabilitation assistants to support them. And then we have other direct service delivery staff like our VR teachers, for example. We also have a residential training facility for individuals who are legally blind. Mark Driscoll Rehabilitation Center is in that direct service delivery group. And then of course we have regional and management unit staff also providing support oversight to our staff delivering services. So that's a picture of our system.   Carol: That's a bunch. I was doing the quick math, so I was looking at your 700 counselors divided by those 65,000 people. So you're sitting around 93 customers on average on a caseload.   Cheryl: On average.   Carol: Absolutely. I just have to ask, have you seen any changes as a result of the pandemic with individuals coming in starting to experience the long COVID or anything like that?   Cheryl: You know, we've seen just a handful. We have seen some. It's not big numbers. And I think as individuals experiencing long COVID work through what that is, what it means to them, whether it represents an impediment to their ability to keep a job or get a job or advance in their job. I think we may see more of that. And right now, it still seems like it's quite a new field of study. And these folks are trying to figure out where their resources are and how they're going to work through these symptoms that stay with them for a long time.   Carol: Yeah, absolutely. I'm just thinking that might end up coming your way given all that huge growth in population, for sure. That definitely is. People were all moving to Texas. I see it on Facebook all the time. I've had several friends moved down to Texas, so I get it.   Cheryl: Well, it's hot here right now, so they might be questioning that decision. It's supposed to be I think we're supposed to get to 107 over the weekend, so.   Carol: ]Yeah, I saw that on the news. It's looking blistering, definitely. So tell me about what resources you've been able to put into your SSA reimbursement like both people and technology?   Cheryl: Well, we have had, I would say on the technology side, a game changer over ten years ago, and that is using the Morrow Ticket Tracker system. This system significantly improved not only our efficiency, but the number of claims we were able to successfully process. And for those of you who don't know, it's called the Vocational Rehabilitation Ticket to Work Reimbursement Tracker Program or Tracker. What it does is it tracks and processes traditional reimbursements and ticket to work payments. What the system does. For us as it collects data from our agency case management system. It connects that with external data, which is still internal to us in our agency, which is unemployment insurance, wage records, state verification and exchange information, other types of information. And what it does is it identifies cases that may be ready to be submitted as a claim, may be ready to be submitted as a claim is really important because that's where the other resource we have comes in that is so incredibly valuable to us. We have two dedicated staff in our finance division at the DSA level, and this is all these two staff. Do they use the systems that we have, including Ticket Tracker? They identify claims that may be eligible for us to submit for reimbursement and then they go over those claims with a fine tooth comb because they know the top reasons why a claim may be denied. And, so just because it pops up in that system doesn't mean you just send it in. You go over it with a fine tooth comb, and then they submit it for reimbursement, and then they follow through and then they double check payments when we receive them. And if they think we received a low payment and we can make a case for more of a reimbursement, they submit that for consideration, the level of rigor that these two staff apply to this process is why we have such a low denial rate and why we're able to be so successful. So I call them our secret sauce. They are fantastic. They also coach our counselors in how to help a customer with a ticket assignment. And so what to do with the ticket assignment? Our counselors can reach out to them for help. They're sleuths. They'll look at possible match and say, Wait a minute, I think this date of birth or season, we might need to make a correction here. And so they'll identify that and work with our staff, if necessary, to make data corrections. They are just incredible. And the combination of those two things has helped us be quite successful in submitting claims and receiving those reimbursements.   Carol: I'm really glad you mentioned both of those because I remember going to a conference, I think it was like in 2013 and there were poster sessions up and they had the moral ticket tracker and I'm going, What is this? Because we were doing this old pencil paper, we were getting maybe 400,000 a year or something. And once we got the tracker in, it was not a huge investment. I was super surprised it was a low dollar amount. We never went under $1,000,000 after that. We were a small agency. I'm like, What is happening was amazing, but I think you're right. Having a secret source like you had your two women that were your secret source. So I had Courtney. She was our secret. She was amazing at that. You know, I think you have to dedicate some resource. And I know there are definitely some agencies struggling right now, and I know there are a number of folks that are not actually submitting for reimbursement right now. They just haven't been able to land and figure that out. But those are two important pieces to the equation.   Cheryl: Very important and sharing. And I would tell you that because I asked them in preparing for this podcast, I talked to them and I said, Sherri and Annie, what would you recommend? And they said, Well, first ticket tracker.   Carol: Yeah.   Cheryl: And second, check every claim go through every detail of the fine tooth comb.   Carol: Got it. Good advice. That is good. Yes. So I know you've had some recent struggles with your SSA reimbursement and I understood some of the rules changed. You had some things that well, the rules change and it's impacted the amount of the recovery that you've been able to get. So can you talk a little more about that?   Cheryl: I can talk a little bit about it, and then I will make sure not to get out of my depth, because I did talk to Sherri and Annie about this extensively and it reminded me all over again why they're experts and why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so what I would say, kind of overall, as with any program rules, over time, SSA makes adjustments to submission, how we submit what is accepted. And so it's very important that we as well as all the other agencies that are participating in this program, stay on top of those changes and understand that our sister agencies at the federal level will also be making adjustments, and some of those may take some time for them and us. And in the meanwhile, that affects the rate at which you may be getting your claims paid. It may affect whether you're getting your claims paid. And one of the things that specifically has changed over time is what is accepted is proof of employment, particularly when somebody is working in another state. Right. So what used to be accepted is verification of that is no longer. And so we used to be able to show the information collected in our case management system as a valid submission for reimbursement. Now we need something more rigorous. And so we're working through how we connect with our Swiss data, because otherwise we would continue to lose valuable reimbursements for people working in other states, like a pharmacist in California. They could see it, but we needed that proof so that that claim could be paid. And. So it's really being and VR professionals are fantastic at this, but it's being on top of changes and being flexible to deal with them and really trying to work in partnership with our federal agencies to make sure we're all understanding what is required and doing our best to achieve that.   Carol: You might have to drive out to California and take a picture of that pharmacist, if that would be allowed.   Cheryl: I know, I know. I thought, man, what a fantastic outcome for VR, though, right?   Carol: Absolutely. That is incredible. Oh, gosh. I knew those changes had happened, but it was after I left, so I wasn't sure the nuances. So that makes some sense to me. Definitely. So I know you also had something really unique happen with your legislature and your SSA reimbursement, so tell us a little about that.   Cheryl: Well, in 2016, September 1st of 2016, our legacy agency, the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, was abolished, and the programs in our legacy agency were transferred by the legislature, either to the Texas Workforce Commission, which is where VR, older, blind, our Randolph Sheppard program, for example, all went. And then the other programs went to the Health and Human Services Commission that included our blind children's program. Our program for those that have traumatic brain or spinal cord injury, are deaf and hard of hearing services that we had, as well as independent living. So independent living part B, part C that went to Health and Human Services and they became the designated state entity for those programs. What we had done historically, though, at our legacy agency is that we had used our program income to expand and enhance our independent living services programs, including older lines. It was just an incredible value to us at our legacy agency that those dollars, because you can use your program income to support other programs funded by the Rehabilitation Act, that those dollars could really strengthen important programs in independent living. And so when we transferred to TWC from DAAS, the Legislature appropriated some of our program income back to the Health and Human Services Commission for continued support for those independent living services programs. That's really important because as we have changes in agency structure, we want to maintain the quality of service that we're providing to our customers, whether they're VR, old or blind, independent living, whatever the case may be. And this is not something that VR agencies may be accustomed to. We know you cannot appropriate vocational rehabilitation grant funds outside of the agency. Right. The VR agency. But with program income, the statute says the state. And so the legislature may appropriate that outside of the agency and did so, $8.5 million per year is appropriated in our appropriations bill pattern to the Health and Human Services Commission to provide continued support to those independent living services programs.   Carol: So how does that relate then to how much you get in program income? Wow.   Cheryl: We collect about $20 Million a year in program income. We have had years where it was higher significantly. So I think our highest year was 33 million. Wow. Sometimes that has to do with when claims are paid versus when you submit the claim. But we can look at about $20 Million a year. So it represents a significant part of our program income and it's also the largest method of finance for those independent living programs back at our sister agency.   Carol: That's pretty incredible. It's kind of it's a little scary to think that they designated a dollar amount versus saying we're going to take 20% or we're going to take a percentage, which would make it a little easier. As there's fluctuations, you're not held to that particular threshold.   Cheryl: Certainly that's something we keep our eye on. And I'm sure that our policymakers and appropriators were concerned about keeping the programs whole. So I understand why they would have been concerned to make sure our independent living programs remain strong and healthy. But we certainly do watch that pretty carefully.   Carol: Oh, I'm sure, absolutely. So I know you're also looking at doing some good stuff moving forward and expanding your older individuals who are blind program with the SSA dollars. So what are you thinking about with that?   Cheryl: Well, I have a lot of favorites. The older blind program is one of my favorites. It is such a gem of a program when we think about I think the number is one in six adults age 65 and over will experience some type of age related macular degeneration. And you think about the growing population in our state and the fact that that grant is a really small grant that stayed small for a long time. We and our stakeholders just want very much to serve more. We want to serve more. Seniors who are learning to live with less vision, experiencing that vision loss, and we want to provide more services for them. And one of the ways we can do that is looking at our program income, say, can we invest some of this program income in expanding this program? And we took a little step to do that last year to see how it's going. We added a few staff and we were able to increase our client services a little bit. And now we want to really move in the direction to maximizing that program income to expand that program, not only to add staff. Because in the state this size, our OIC grants was a little over 2 million, maybe 2.2 million a year and by the time we add our match funds, we're at about 2.5 million. That's very small for the population that could really benefit from these services. And so we would like to add more staff across the state so that we're present in more communities and there's not so much windshield time for our staff. But also we'd like to really enhance some of the services that we provide, including offering a one week residential program similar to what we might see in our Chris Cole Rehabilitation Center that's focused on VR. How could we have a one week residential program where a seniors could come and really get support and encouragement from other seniors experiencing vision loss and learn some of those skills where they can just focus on learning those skills in a group and in a supportive cohort and making friends and kind of working through some of the fear associated with vision loss and really gaining their confidence. We also want to do that on a daily basis. So if somebody doesn't want to go away for a week, they could go into a center in a day program. So we want to start working toward those kind of activities to really enhance the services as well as serving more people.   Carol: I love that. Well, the OIB program is near and dear to my heart, Too.   Cheryl: I just love that.   Carol: That was one of my places when stuff was all kind of going crazy. I'd go down and talk with the staff from there. I loved it and the stories they'd have, and I'd get these little sweet letters from some of the individuals that we helped to assist. It was lovely. I just think the work done there has been so important for quality of life for people in your later years. You know, yeah, I'm thinking about you with your $2 million. And I mean, my grant was like a half a million dollars. And we're in little, tiny Minnesota with 6 million people. And you've got 30 million people. Yeah, proportionately, it doesn't seem like a lot, but I think you're on the right track with that. We had a lot of success in doing group training with the seniors and like you say, developing that cohort and people to support each other. It really does work well. So I hope you have great success with that.   Cheryl: I hope so. It's such a fantastic program. My granddaddy was legally blind from a very young age and his sight got worse as he got older. And I just think about all the things if he had had access to a program like this, that could have made it easier for him.   Carol: Yep. I had a grandma. I had a grandma too. She lived in 98 with macular degeneration. I remember visiting her one day, went to her house and knocking on doors. She lived over in North Dakota. She's about 10 hours away, but she didn't know who I was, you know, because she couldn't see me. And so I'm talking to her for a long time that it took her while she's like, oh, you know, before she let me in the door, because, like, what's this strange lady doing at my door? Yes, but it would have been so great if I would have had one of our staff could have gone out and helped her and her house and all the bump dots and getting things situated for it would have made it so much easier. I completely understand. Absolutely.   Cheryl: That's what I think about.   Carol: Well, that's the beauty with that program income where you're able to help invest in a program like that. It really is important. Now, I know some other of your agencies are really struggling. They're not submitting their claims for reimbursement. They're not really putting this on the priority list. So what kind of what advice would you give to our listeners about SSA reimbursement if they're sitting back kind of going, wow, we haven't paid this much attention right now and we're doing other things. What advice would you give to them?   Cheryl: Well, first, I have all the sympathy in the world for our sister agencies. I don't know of one agency that doesn't have a full to overflowing plate. And we're all trying to figure out how we can improve our services, how we can be continuously improving, how we can adapt to the environment around us, which is changing so significantly just due to COVID. So, boy, I know we all have a lot on our plates, but this source of income for us is allowing us to expand a program that is really underfunded for the size of a state. We have just the incredible difference it can make in the lives of people who may have had their sight for years and years. And now they're losing it and they're scared to death and we can be there to help. And that's just one way we can think about using our program in. So I would encourage agencies that may not have tackled this yet or may have struggled with it in the past to just think through it, think through what the opportunity is, how much you might be leaving on the table, what you could do with those dollars. And there's help out there to figure out what you're doing if you need some systems. There are systems out there. The ticket tracker is a great system. There are people out there that can provide support and help you as you develop dedicated staff. But I would make sure if you want to jump in and I encourage you to get the system you need and get the people who make it a priority because it is what they do and you will benefit and you will be able to do with those programming dollars some innovative things to support your programs, whether it's VR or older, blind or independent living.   Carol: Well said. And I believe VR still has a cost reimbursement group. So they always had a little a group that got together and they do some specific training. I remember sending Courtney and other people out to that training and they developed quite a cohort themselves of folks to rely on. I remember her calling Virginia people, you know, different folks that she got to meet through the training. And so definitely that can be a resource as well.   Cheryl: That's the great thing about the VR world. I've learned so much from other states, from you, from some of my colleagues in other states. We are there for each other. CSAVR and NASAB are great avenues to pursue to make sure your staff are connected to other people who do that work and can support them.   Carol: Yeah, I love that. I love that. So I cannot leave this episode though, without asking you about your upcoming presidency on July 1st. It's CSA VR. So I just wondered, what are you hoping to accomplish next year? Do you have any things that you want to tackle?   Cheryl: Well, first of all, it's a big job and there have been some fantastic people in this role over the years. And so my goal would really be to continue the conversation that we began at CSA VR a couple of years ago and that we're having with each other as VR agencies at the association level offline and also with our federal partner. And that is how can we understanding the trends that are affecting the VR program nationally? And by that I mean fewer people applying, fewer people being determined eligible, fewer people achieving employment outcomes. How can we work together to understand what's driving those trends and to be innovative and collaborative as a system, as a national program about how we can address those trends. And I'm excited about the opportunity we have as an association to add value to the member agencies, because we're all working on some of these things. We're all working on recruiting and retaining staff because if you don't recruit and retain staff, you don't have people to serve your customers and making sure they're prepared and trained well so that you can serve your customers with the level of expertise that we all want to have at the table for the benefit of our customers. We're all looking at what we need to do to improve our processes. Our processes need to evolve just as all processes in businesses around the country. So how is the VR process evolving to meet the needs and expectations of the customers in 2022? And we're all working how we can be visible to our communities, be available, make sure they know we're here. How can we be doing outreach and communicating about the difference our program makes? These are things we can all work on together, and I think that CSA VR in partnership with CSA B and collaborating across states can really add some value to that conversation and support all of us out here in the States who are working hard to make our programs the best that they can be.   Carol: I love that. I look forward to following you this next year. It's going to be super fun, super fun to watch. So thanks for joining me, Cheryl. I know you're super busy and I really appreciate your time. I hope you have a great day.   Cheryl: Thank you, Carol. Thanks so much for having me.   {Music} Speaker: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Aaron Thompson, Assistant Division Director for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation, joins Carol Pankow on this 14th episode of Manager Minute to talk about how Utah is making rapid engagement work. Carol has discussed this on two previous podcasts; however, each VR agency has tackled this differently. It is intriguing and exciting to hear about how different VR programs are confronting the dilemma facing VR on declining applications and consumer engagement.  Learn about Utah's “Back to Basics” approach, how they implemented this approach and how they involve their counselors and customers. From Utah's unique Performance Dashboards and Blueprint Systems, there is so much to learn about how Utah is making rapid engagement work. Listen Here You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Putting Customers First-How Utah Makes Rapid Engagement Work!   {Music}   Speaker1: 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. I am so fortunate to have Aaron Thompson, assistant division director for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation, joining me in the studio today. So, Aaron, how are things going in Utah?   Aaron: Well, first, thank you for having me. And things are going pretty well in Utah. I think we're spending a lot of focus. We're going to be talking about getting back to basics and really kicking off a lot of the initiatives that we have in the works.   Carol: Cool. Good to hear. I can't wait to get into it. So, Aaron, I know you've been with the agency for over 17 years. You've held a variety of positions from counselor to supervisor to district director, field services director to where you are today. And I know you've seen and done a lot in your career, which really leads us to this very important topic we're going to discuss today. The idea is really called rapid engagement, and I know I've discussed this on two previous podcasts. However, each VR agency has tackled this in a different way, which is super intriguing and exciting when tackling this dilemma that's facing VR on declining applications and declining eligibility. So VR is a program where we're over 100 years old now, and with all the longstanding programs, there can be a tendency to layer on additional policies and processes until we get buried under a bureaucracy of our own making. So when we visited back in March, I was really energized about the approaches you've taken in Utah and hoped our listeners would feel the same energy and enthusiasm as they hear the Utah story. Your director, Sarah Brenna, also briefly spoke about the efforts in Utah and the efforts around rapid engagement during the CSA VR conference. So I'm excited to explore this further and let's dig in. So Aaron, can you give the listeners a little background about the Utah program, like how many customers you serve, how many staff you have, and how the pandemic has influenced your numbers of applicants and individuals being served in the program?   Aaron: Certainly I appreciate the overview of the resumé and all the details. I've had a fun opportunity to move into a few different positions, but within us two are something that I think is interesting, is like we're one of the first five state VR programs as the program nationally was celebrating its 100th anniversary. That was also our anniversary that year. So we have a really unique position as being one of the flagship state agencies for people with disabilities. And we're a combined program, but we also have different specialized programs for people who are blind, visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing. We also handle the Social Security disability determination and also we oversee the independent living contracts. But we're the VR program at our core. We have a staff of 250 counselors, support staff directors. We also have our in-house Pre-ETS program benefits planners and also a division that focuses on assistive technology services. So for that context, prior to the pandemic, we were serving about 17 to 18000 people with disabilities coming through VR. And certainly like a lot of other state agencies, we were hit pretty hard. We had a drop in applicant and individuals choosing to suspend services or delay. And of course, our priority at that time was ensuring that our staff were safe, that our clients were safe, and keeping the program going and doing that same shift as everyone else, adapting our procedures, getting people doing telework and remote work. So as we were entering the pandemic around that same time, we were in the process of clearing out our order of selection wait list. So we had this slump where we were getting in more applicants, and then it was a bit of a setback. But now we're in that process of rebuilding, getting out there, re-engaging with the community, identifying new partners, not just resting on this being the new normal, but seeing what else that we can do that's new and different to get our numbers back up. So thankfully, the drop has stabilized. So we're really working on rebuilding those new applicants coming into services from VR.   Carol: So about how many people are you serving today then?   Aaron: So currently we're at about 16,000 people who are coming through the VR program, so the drop has stopped, but we're working on that rebuilding and really focusing on some of the local level partnerships that our clients and staff are making out there and also trying to be different. We realize we can't just go back to the same referral sources and do things the same. So we're really challenging ourselves to get our name out there and move past the phrase that I hate hearing about VR being the best kept secret. We really want to be out there and let different types of disability groups know that we're here and how we can help them.   Carol: Yeah, I agree with that. I hate that too. About the best kept secret. I used to say that I'm like, Why don't we want to be a secret? We want people to come in the door. So tell me about the impetus to implement your back to basics approach. What caused you to want to dig in and do things differently?   Aaron: I think it's interesting. During that time we had gone through about a 4 to 5 year period of a lot of significant change. Now change us something that's the normal we adapt to. But for context, we had a change in leadership. We had to rapidly implement an order of selection. And then we also moved from being under an education agency as our DSA and moving to Labor. We had a new case management system. We went paperless. Then of course all the fun with implementing WIO policies and procedures and audits. So we were in a constant cycle of change and as you said, layering. So we felt a need. We heard it from our clients, we heard it from our staff to take a step back because they wanted to know what are our priorities. And we also want it to be more intentional and less reactive. I think we were just in an environment and a culture of responding to change. So we did a lot of talking with our directors, with our frontline staff, and there was a consensus that they knew to do their jobs, but they didn't understand what their priorities were. What can we focus on now for the coming year, for the next two years? And we actually had an interesting conversation with one of our new deputy directors who was learning about VR and wanting to know what are your indicators, what are your outcomes? And he asked the question of what does good look like? And it was a good challenge not to raise it in a way about compliance or numbers, but his question was No, tell me, what does good VR look like? So we took that as an opportunity to really think about again, like, what are our core activities, things that we know at that management level. But there was a disconnect with our staff. They didn't feel like they were being counselors. They felt like they were being case managers, having to check the box, having to do the compliance piece. So we really wanted to look at what are our needs, what's going to benefit our clients, and what are the barriers that can't be solved by putting out another policy, doing another technology change, we're really stripping things back to the core. So that's how the conversation got started about getting back to basics and what that meant for Utah VR.   Carol: I bet you were really happy about that new case management system and going paperless in light of the pandemic. I mean, like what timing?   Aaron: It positioned us very well to be agile and adapting to the pandemic and being able to get all of our counties out there doing Telework and serving their clients event well.   Carol: So let's chat some specifics of back to basics. How did you implement this approach and what went into it and how did you involve your counselors and customers?   Aaron: Well, one of the first things that we did is we did some research. We were really digging into the theory of constraints and identifying some of those limiting factors or the bottleneck in the VR process. So we've got some focus groups together with our directors, our program specialists, and we pulled in our counselors to do some VR process mapping of start to finish even when we're going out in the community and doing outreach and then identifying those points of constraint. And some of the biggest issues that we were encountering was how we have things set up with our eligibility developing plan. We felt comfortable once we got our clients engaged in services under an IPE. But then we also identified another constraint point at the end of the VR process. When someone's job ready, we saw significant delays with our clients being able to get employed in the areas that we were supporting and training them and we saw a pretty significant drop off. So by working together and doing a process mapping, we also got feedback from our client assistance program, the State Rehab Council, and we really dug into our consumer satisfaction surveys where people were coming in and just due to those delays with eligibility or working through their plan, I think that's where we saw a drop in motivation if it wasn't happening in a timely manner. And then we also looked at some of our numbers and of course, we saw the longer someone was sitting in an applicant status or eligible that's or we were losing people, we could see a clear correlation. The longer it was taking to achieve those milestones, the less likely someone was going to come in and participate and stay engaged. So I think by doing some of the foundational research and also pulling our staff into those focus groups to see about the VR process, from their perspective, it really informed on what we were going to do to address that problem that was identified.   Carol: So you talked a little bit about data changes. What do you see now in your data?   Aaron: I think when we primarily look at our data eligibility, when we started, of course, we were compliant, but it was about 49 days to make an eligibility decision. And then with plan development, I think our mindset was. Compliance. So we were doing it at 85 days and of course that was like, Oh, we're compliant, we're doing it right. But is that what best for the client? And even looking at the end, I'm a bit embarrassed to say, but it was taking our clients who were supported employment or even working with an employment specialist about 160 days to get employed when they were job ready. And of course that's where we saw that connection to the motivation. And when things were happening, that's when we saw that disconnect with the counselors and the clients not communicating. So now we're in a good place. I still think there is room for improvement following the pandemic and getting back to normal, but with eligibility, we're doing that in under 27 days. Our plan development has had the biggest drop in the time that it's taking. We're at about 50 days and then that time to placement when they're working with an employment specialist, our internal employment specialist is under 60 days. So I think the parts that we can really control, support our clients and inform it's working. I think people are moving through it and I think they're doing it in a way that feels right and comfortable and really supports that. Client Counselor Alliance.   Carol: Well, that's really encouraging. I mean, that's great progress. And I'm sure from the customer viewpoint, when you think about all of this and sort of wanting that rapid engagement when we're ordering from Amazon and we want it overnight delivery that...   Aaron: Next day.   Carol: Yeah, I'm sure customers are very much appreciating, getting this, moving through the process, getting into their employment more.   Aaron: Quickly. It was really interesting getting that feedback from our CAP program. I mean, they were one of the first to tell us, you know, we're not getting the calls that we use to a significant portion of their time or people who didn't understand, am I eligible for services? What's next? Or I got this eligibility letter and I haven't heard from my counselor. I don't feel like I know what to do next. So that was a pretty hefty part of what we were working with them on. So to get that feedback of we're just checking in, we're not getting calls about this, what's going on, and I think we were able to happily share well, here's the reason why and here's what we're working on.   Carol: That's terrific. Kind of an unintended fun benefit from all of this, right?   Aaron: If you can get that seal of approval from CAP, you know you're in the right direction.   Carol: Yeah, that's great. So I want to talk about the performance dashboards. I know when you showed those to me, I was really blown away with everything that you can see and there was a great deal of transparency there. How did those come about and how are you using them today?   Aaron: I love our dashboard, so we use Tableau for data visualization to pull that information from our case management system and present it in a way that's usable that really connects with what we're looking at. And initially it was developed for management use at the admin level and for our regional managers. But we had a good conversation about, well, if we're seeing this and we're going to talk to our counselors about performance and numbers, they should be able to see the same information. So we really wanted to lay it out there in a way that wasn't like a compliance or it got you, but so they could use it to inform on their work and serving clients so they could see closures, MSG's, the days to eligibility to base the plan so they can have a better understanding of what our goals were. And I think when we have some of those initial conversations about rapid engagement, moving people through the process, I think we have people who were a bit concerned or have reservations. So being able to see other counselors who are making it work, I think it was like, oh, well, it can be done. And so we were really also encouraging them to reach out to your other offices and districts that they've developed a pathway or best practice. What can you learn from it and what can you implement in your own offices to show that something's doable, achievable and how to prioritize? So being able to see it, our counselors really like it. They feel it's a tool that helps them do their job and also how to prioritize.   Carol: Very cool. So how did you set your stretch goals in these different areas and get staff to buy in on that?   Aaron: First, it was really talking about setting an ambitious target and that was something that we were challenged to do, something that would really move the bar. And we had a conversation with our regional managers to say, Here's where we're at. Where do you think we can get to? We didn't want it to be a conversation where they felt that something was already decided that they didn't have input. So we wanted people to be comfortable, know that we were going to set some milestones and also letting them know that this isn't a process where you're going to be dinged. If we don't achieve it, we're really just looking at how we can push our program. I'd do it in the right way and talking with our counselors about why we're doing this. So I think I can confidently say it was a 360 process of what does good look like, what are you hearing? And we always try to use that framework of if you came in for services or a family member, when would you like to see things done? So we knew that they would still encounter barriers with records and appointments and follow through. But by setting those targets and people feel comfortable knowing, Hey, we can try, we can learn from it, we can share resources. That's how we came to setting those stretch goals by setting an ambitious target. We knew saying we're going to do it two days faster isn't going to move the mark. And so we exceeded those expectations.   Carol: I love that. I think that's a really great way and a nice approach. So staff could feel comfortable, like you're not all getting the axe right.   Aaron: And that's what we didn't want it to be something that this is in your performance plan and this is your standard. It's what can we do that's best for our clients? And I think everyone could get on board with that.   Carol: Yeah, I really get that sense. So your people really felt part of this whole process and that it makes everybody gets on board and makes it so much easier to move the train for sure. So I want to switch gears for a minute. You had something really interesting that came up that the governor's office had championed. Can you tell me tell our listeners a little more about this blueprint system?   Aaron: Would be happy to. So we have a great champion in our Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. The director was actually a former VR client in another state. She's someone who's blind. So she gets the VR program, she gets what we're setting out to do. And some of the biggest problems that we've had is coordinating with other agencies that are serving the same people. A lot of times people might be connected with the workforce development programs or TANF, and so they have competing goals, priorities and interests. So by doing this program, it pulls in other social service agencies to really develop a blueprint for supporting customer success. So we have the VR program. Hannah We have corrections, adult and family services and juvenile justice. So we all have an agreement in place where it pulls information from our case management systems, where it populates and identifies a match. So if there is a VR client who is also connected with corrections, when we register the cases are counselors will get an email and if they go into the system, they will see the name of who their counselor or case manager is, their contact information. It also pulls over information regarding any type of employment or family reunification plan that they have and also the milestones of what they're working on. And our expectation was, hey, if you get a notification, call that other case manager, have a conversation, involve the client. And we really wanted to make it about teaming together so much as a counselor, you feel like you're doing it by yourself, but pulling in everyone as a team to really talk about what are our priorities, how can we help our clients? And getting in that framework of giving our clients the right services, the right amount, the right time, and how we can support each other and work in tandem. So we've had this blueprint system for almost two years, and I think another gain that we learned from it is we had a lot of assumptions that the other programs knew what we do with VR. So it was really good to be able to educate them and give them more of an understanding. And so when they can see some of our plan information shared, I didn't know VR could do that or I didn't know these were the types of employment outcomes that you could help your clients with. And Oh well, what do you need for eligibility? I have that assessment. I can give the release and send it over to you. So we have people coming in our doors already having an application, having their records sent over, and that also helps speed up some of those rapid engagement milestones that we set up.   Carol: Yeah, I thought that was extremely awesome. I mean, like, it's just the coolest system I'd ever seen. When you demoed that, is there any information about this for our listeners? I just didn't know if there was something on the website, like the state's website or what would be the best way for people to find out more if they're interested in understanding more about the blueprint system?   Aaron: There is information on Blueprint Utah dot gov. It takes a link to a page that provides an overview and the philosophy of the program and any of the State VR agencies are welcome to reach out to me for more information. But truly having that champion with the governor's office made it work. I thought there would be the barriers with consent and data sharing, but we got the agreements in place. So having that push was a really great gain for us and also for our customers.   Carol: Yeah, I thought that was so cool. It'd be great if somebody could leverage the work that you all have done and take advantage. Having a similar system in their states. It was pretty amazing.   Aaron: Really happy to share.   Carol: That is awesome.   Aaron: And on that website there is information about the MOU that we developed.   Carol: Great. You know, as with any new initiative, it can be a lot for staff to pivot. And how are you engaging in recognizing staff participation and achievement with all of these initiatives that you've been putting into place?   Aaron: It's a lot. As we said before, I think people understand the reasons why we're doing something new and different. But I think overcoming that change fatigue really involved having their feedback and buy in and also looking for what we can take off of their plate. So something that we also did as we were running these new initiatives, we had counselor focus groups about time savers and it was really a true brainstorming session for them to give feedback about policies and procedures that were getting in their way that we could take back and then make adjustments and show them. It was your feedback that led to us making this change that also helps the quality of work in your job. In terms of recognition, we've made it a part of our culture with celebrating the new initiatives that we're putting in place. So at our annual in-service training, we give awards and recognition for like the district and offices that have the fastest time to eligibility, the fastest time to development of the plan. And we give incentives out that administrative leave and some of the other incentives that we can give. We want it to let them know you're doing something that benefits your clients, but we also recognize what you're doing and the adjustments that you're making. So it's kind of prompted some healthy competition and our staff pushing each other because they know that we appreciate it. They're helping, their clients are getting something and we have a district that will say, hey, we're coming for all of the awards this year. So it's nice to see that out there.   Carol: That's hilarious. There's nothing better than that healthy competition between districts. It's like, I'm coming for you people.   Aaron: It's out there back and forth. That's like a race to the finish those last few months towards the end of the performance year.   Carol: Yeah, good out of you guys. That's great. So what advice would you give to our listeners about taking steps to move in the direction of rapid engagement? I know we've gotten a lot of people out there. This is a buzz topic right now, but what are some good practical tips you'd have for the listeners out there?   Aaron: Think you really need to go into the mindset of customizing what works best for your stay and what works best for the unique challenges and barriers that you have. I think with every program that's going to look a bit different, and I think by having that conversation in terms of what are our needs, what does good look like for our agency, what are the other things that we have going on that might be barriers and how we can overcome that, have the conversation. Don't limit it to just being an administrative level, pulling your counselors. They're the ones who are doing the work, seeing the people, getting that direct feedback from your consumers and utilizing it really helped inform on what we needed to do and how we were going to go about doing it. I think that's the best advice I could offer is have that conversation and involve different people and different perspectives and make it work for your program.   Carol: Well said, Aaron. Well said. I really appreciate that and I thank you for joining me in the studio today. I appreciate this time with you and just learning about what Utah is doing to be successful. So I wish you great success.   Aaron: I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on and allowing me to share our story.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

In the Manager Minute Studio today is David Leon, Director of Workforce Programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) along with host of the Manager Minute podcast, Carol Pankow. Find out how the projects David has led are shaping the approach that Virginia is taking in relation to work incentives counseling (benefits planning). What is the overall structure? Why did DARS see it as imperative to develop the capacity for work incentives counseling in Virginia beyond what is provided by the WIPA(Work Incentives Planning and Assistance)? Find out what resources and tools David is recommending and what advice he has for you.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   Important Links Cities for Financial Empowerment https://cfefund.org/projects/   Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "Your Money Your Goals" and Focus on Disability - materials are free and may be        co branded https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/educator-tools/your-money-your-goals/   National Disability Institute https://www.nationaldisabilityinstitute.org/downloads/   FDIC Money Smart  https://www.fdic.gov/resources/consumers/money-smart/index.html   ·       Next Gen Personal Finance https://www.ngpf.org/   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Full Transcript   Work Incentives Counseling---Finding the incentive to engage in work incentives counseling with Virginia DARS!   {Music} Speaker1: 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. I am so fortunate to have David Leon with me in the studio today. David's the director of workforce programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, or, as you all endearingly refer to it as DarS. So, David, how are things going at DarS?   David: Excellent. Thank you for having me and thank you for asking.   Carol: Well, I was doing a little LinkedIn research about you, and I see you have been with the agency for over 11 years, and you're really known as a powerhouse in the VR community with some super creative work, especially as it relates to the agency's goal of helping those populations that experience both disability and poverty. And I learned that Virginia Diaries was awarded one of the announced Disability Innovation Fund grants, and I would definitely like to hear more about that at a later date. So, I'm gathering that the projects you've led and continue to lead on behalf of DARS with support from your commissioner, Cathy Hayfield, have really helped shape the approach that Virginia is taking in relation to benefits planning. And on a side note, I saw you're also a recent graduate from George Washington University with your master's in VR counseling. I always have to give a plug. My employer, I really admire you for going back to school and accomplishing that.   David: Thank you.   Carol: So today we're going to tackle the topic of benefits planning and learn more about the success of Virginia DARS has experienced. Now, when I asked around about VR best practices, your name kept coming up over and over again. And I know many agencies do kind of a one and done with benefits planning. They get something on the plan, they kind of move on. And my understanding is that your agency has gone far beyond that. So, let's dig in. What is the overall benefits planning structure in your agency?   David: Thank you, Carol. And let me start by saying anything we have been successful at here in Virginia is really based on our commissioner commitment to this work. The agencies buy into the value of this work in a systemic way, along with what we find as best practices from other agencies. I'm very proud of the work we do here in Virginia, and there are many other states with different approaches who we have borrowed pieces of over the years. Basic approach to benefits counseling is around what that looks like as a culture within the agency. To that end, we've done several things that I want to touch on first, and those include an expectation that all counselors go through VCU's intro to benefits course. That is something that all of our placement staff and our VR counselors are expected to go through. Every client who is potentially on benefits is expected to have within their IEP work incentive services. So, from an agency cultural perspective, there are a couple of things that are important there. We want our counselors to know at least a little bit about the subject and hence the reason that they go through the introduction to disability benefits. That's the course offered every month or two through the WIPPA program. That is the very basic six-part session on Intro to SSI, Intro to SSDI benefits. We also want all of our clients to get these services. The other piece that's important in Virginia is we don't refer to this as benefits counseling. We refer to it as work incentive counseling and work incentive services. The reason being we don't want to focus on benefits. We want to focus on work. You get what you focus on, and we want to focus on maximum employment and maximum earned income for our clients. So, another piece that's a little bit unique to Virginia, I think, is that every individual who goes through work incentives, counseling will be shown one example of what their life might look like if they are completely off cash benefits. Whether it's possible or not, we want every one of our clients to think it could be possible one day, and we want to create a document that kind of has a shelf life so that maybe you're not ready today, but maybe next year you get that opportunity after your case closed and you're going to have a report in front of you that might show you, Oh, now that I'm earning this much, it says I should look for these work incentives. So that's a little bit about the structure for within the agency. From a counselor perspective. Within our structure, we also have work incentives, specialist advocates. Those are people trained either through Cornell University or VCU, to provide work incentive services or benefits counseling as the rest of the country knows of it. And those individuals often work for employment networks and have partnership plus relationships. They don't always. But that is a best practice for our agency. And that's so that if somebody does choose to work their way off cash benefits, there's a natural link to an employment network and to continue to receive those services after post closure from the same people who provided them during the case. We also within our structure have a work incentive specialist whose sole job is to provide training for our counselors and those work incentive specialists each month we do state. Specific trainings on our state Medicaid system. Other things related to Virginia, how to use reports for counseling and guidance, and those hours count usually for their continuing education. So that's a really nice thing. It's a way to help make sure the people we have trained to provide services stay current. The other thing our work incentive specialists does is provides quality control. When a newly credentialed practitioner wants to provide services in Virginia, they have to share their first several reports with our work incentive specialists who double checks them, make sure they're correct and they are not allowed to provide the services independently without sending them until the person who works for me says You are good to go and that does something else. Know you think of rapid engagement. It creates a relationship between newly trained benefits practitioners and our staff in charge of quality control, so that when something wonky comes up, they know who to ask and they feel comfortable asking. That's a really key part of our system. The last thing that's unique to Virginia, we have state specific software that all of our work incentive specialists use when they're working, a case where you put in the scenarios earning X amount of dollars and it will do the math for you, along with provide an output of what potential work incentives might apply. And what we require are a couple of things. For a report to be completed and shared with the client and counselor, there has to be a copy of that individual's benefit planning query known as the BPI. The rationale for making sure that's a piece of it is sometimes we learn things that will really be important to the counseling and guidance process. For instance, if someone has a rep payee or an authorized rep, that's an additional conversation with the VR counselor about who might need to be at the table when it comes to talking about work goals. If someone has an overpayment on their benefit planning query, that might be an indication that we need to really hit home on the importance of wage reporting or budgeting, or other aspects related to what that overpayment has done to a case. So those are some reasons for that document. Another thing that's a little bit different about how we do our work world summary and analysis, which is the Virginia version of a benefit summary and analysis. We require the actual use of that individual's IP goal. And again, it's another opportunity to utilize Virginia specific labor market information around what the wages look like at 20 hours a week or full time for the types of jobs they're looking at. Again, everywhere through this process, we are reinforcing that value and goal of employment. The other nice thing about that is by the time someone gets to that work incentive specialist to go through the Work World Report, the individual might suddenly say, well, they want to do something different than is the goal in their plan. It's another point where we can ensure consistency with the client and their counselor. So, all of those are parts of what this first product looks like. The work world summary and analysis. We have a bunch of different services available. All of them are a la carte after that Work World Report and they are designed to be based as needed and outcome based. So, whereas you can go to the WIPA project, and you might be given advice, you might not necessarily be given things in writing, or if you're in the hierarchy at a place where you're going to get a benefit summary and analysis. If you say, I want to know what happens if I go to work 20 hours a week, you're going to get a report that shows that our clients come into a work world report and say, I want to know what happens if I'm going to work 20 hours a week. We say we're going to show you that, but we're going to also show you what it's like to work 25 hours a week using these two work incentives. And we're going to show you what it might look like working 40 hours a week, totally off benefits, because if someone hasn't imagined it, we don't want to artificially limit their potential for work. Some of the other services we offer through our work incentive services assistance with for achieving self support that's paid in two parts, one for submitting it and a second payment. If approved, we can help with impairment related work expenses. Blind work expenses. Student Earned Income Exclusions Subsidies. Medicaid Works. Our state's Medicaid buy in Virginia is a 209 B state, so we pay to help people get 1619 B protection. We will pay to help someone with an overpayment. We will pay to help someone set up an individual development account and able now account. We will pay to help someone get section 301 protection. And then under financial empowerment, we will pay for financial health assessments. We created a pre service called Maximizing Employment Potential through career pathways, we call it Max. And that's really kind of a choose your own adventure about career and money. We're really excited about that. It's still got some kinks to work out, but some of our providers have really created some cool tools there. And then we have a. Couple of services around budgeting skills, using financial empowerment tools. So that's all the different services we have currently. And again, each one, the individual only gets paid when they have proof, they've provided the service or in many of those work incentives, when that work incentive has been applied to the individual's case within Social Security or sometimes within our state social services system.   Carol: Well, I like what you said about you get what you focus on. So obviously starting out by focusing as an agency, you've made it important for your counselor. So that came through really loud and clear by everyone having that exposure to at least that introductory level training through VCU. So that I thought was really cool. And then also ensuring you're incorporating that into the plan that they must do that. I do have a question, though. I wondered about that state specific software, kind of that technology piece, like what did it take to get that all cooking?   David: That was something that existed before I got here. It was developed by folks at VCU and was developed as a policy tool for Social Security Administration. Things moved on. We had the opportunity to move it to be specific to Virginia and move it to the Web. So, we've taken ownership of that and continue to update it each year. And now it is just a Virginia specific tool with our kind of rules and thresholds built in. But it started well before I got here as a policy tool that then was converted to be used in Virginia. There is something similar that is called DB 101. I shouldn't say similar. It's very different because if another state wanted the tool we had, we would just give it to them and say, Hey, maybe help cover part of the development costs for any changes and another state would have to pay to get their specifics put in. But what I really appreciated about it is two or three different work incentive specialists could put the exact same information in in different parts of the state, and the math would be the same. That's cool, and that's really important because that stuff is not always right. And the other thing that's nice about it, I haven't looked at DB 101 in a long time, but last I checked, that tool was more designed as a self-service tool, and a lot of our clients don't know if they get SSI or SSDI. They don't always have a full picture, and I would never want to trust such a complex system to someone who hasn't really been trained to look for potential discrepancies and errors, especially. I guess the other thing oh, I heard from a friend of a friend who said, don't ever work more than this many hours because this thing happened. Right? We all hear the stories, and every situation is different, and you can never know that other situation to really compare it to your own. The other thing I just wanted to add about our approach with our counselors, because we've had some staff also trained to do more than just that basic level. One of the things we are fortunate to have here in Virginia is Wilson Workforce Rehabilitation Center. I believe eight states have comprehensive centers, much like WWRC, we have a staff at WWRC who is trained to provide all of the work incentive services. And that individual is one of the few internal staff who regularly provides these services in a comprehensive way. So, if someone goes to the center for other things, they might get some of these other services there. But we've also at times trained some other staff in these at a higher level, not with the expectation that they actively practice. We wanted people around the state to be able to triage or to know if somebody needed a referral. So strategically, we had trained our autism subject matter expert. We had trained the person who was in charge of PreETSs We had trained the person who was in charge of small business, set up self-employment. So, we had trained some other folks and a few counselors here and there. Again, not with the expectation that they provide services, but those folks who might be in a room with a broad audience and get asked a question and be able to say, Oh, you need this person and understand that based on that question, they needed some extra help. And so, some of those staff and the positions I mentioned have come and gone. But we continue to when the opportunities come up, try to add other internal staff just again to have more people at that next level understanding. And I think right now we have maybe three different VR office managers who are credentialed through Cornell and maybe one who's credentialed through VCU. And we have a district director who has their benefits practitioner credentials.   Carol: That's super strategic. Like you've been super strategic about that. When I think about the PreETS or the small business, all those different areas that has been smart to spread that out commonly. I just think back to my own agency. You have like one person, you know, there's that one person that knows it. They're the keeper, you know, the keeper of the knowledge and the other people. Have a little smuedge. I like what I'm hearing. You know, when you talked about that another state could take the what you've got developed, you know, that software basically they'd have to pay to get it developed with their data and such for their state. So, you guys are open to that?   David: Absolutely. Yeah. We worked on a grant and then get what happened. We were going to do a grant with another state where the grant would have covered it for them. I don't remember what happened, to be honest with that potential project. Maybe in the end we found out we got something else at that time in our ability to do both was and I'm learning with the RSA diff one new grant at a time is plenty.   Carol: Yeah, right. Good advice. So, I'm going to take you back a little minute because obviously you didn't just dive into the middle of this. This came from somewhere. So why did DARS see it as imperative to develop this capacity? And so, I'm not going to use my benefits planning for this work incentive counseling in Virginia, you know, beyond what's provided by the work incentive planning and assistance, those weapons, what's kind of that bigger picture?   David: You know, first, the WIPA projects fantastic. It's a great resource. It's important to remember they've gone from 113 to 107 to 93 to 87. The number of projects continues to go down, meaning the number of individuals that need to be served or could be served by each has gone up at the same level. Funding from when with a began funding has not changed. It's important to know. So, in a state like Virginia, where we have over 300,000 people potentially eligible for services, what we were finding is the clients of our agency were not always getting the services they needed just in time based on where they were at. And sometimes you have clients who are doing self-directed job searches, you have all sorts of folks. Some people could wait, but sometimes people couldn't, and that was creating issues. The other issue in Virginia, we are one of a lucky few states that's called a 209b state, which means Medicaid protection is not automatic. We were helping people get great jobs and some of them were losing their Medicaid prior to the Medicaid expansion and prior to the buy in through no fault of their own. But because they didn't know they had to apply and had a very tiny window to apply to keep their Medicaid. So, when our state had the Medicaid infrastructure grant in the early 2000, developing this program was a piece of it. And originally the folks who went through it were called Work Incentive Specialist Advocates, and they were called Work Incentive Specialist Advocates because of the advocacy piece around making sure those protections would be in place from Department of Social Services and DMS and Medicaid. That's really where this program began. Truth be told, my start was in this field through a local community service board. I started as a job coach and then I went to manage a sheltered work program, and when I was there early 2000, I was really surprised that some of the folks who were in my program that in my mind could be working and, in each case, something had happened related to their benefits that I didn't understand. But when this program was started, I was a provider, and I was in the first cohort to be trained as a work incentive specialist advocate. That was in 2005. The program didn't really do much in terms of what DARS had hoped in those early years. I was using it and I was thrilled that I had access to the person at the time who was the work incentive specialist, and we were able to work through those cases within the sheltered work program I was in where they were. At the very least, I was able to help folks move to enclaves and hourly pay from sub minimum. So that was a really nice thing to watch. So, you're talking to someone who believes in this from every level of how work incentives can help.   Carol: Which is why your name keeps coming up. You're kind of the pioneer. You've been doing it for a while.   David: I just got lucky. I got very lucky to understand how it could help people I cared about that were underemployed. I came to the state. We had this program. It wasn't really going anywhere. And the way we had done the training the first time, the training I had was fantastic. It was through a specific organization that wasn't providing it anymore. We had to restart and my former boss, Dr. Joe Ashley, who's a brilliant guy, was like, David, what should we do? How can we restart this? And I was working on the Ticket to Work program, and my thought was, what if we invite people who have been through this or who are willing to go through this that are willing to become employment networks because having those services at the employment network would be a reason for someone to choose to keep their ticket after case closure. And it might provide reasons for them to get other cases that might not come to DARS, he agreed. We used innovation and expansion dollars and partnered with Cornell University at the time to offer several rounds of training. When I got here, we had roughly 40 people who had maintained their credentials and said they were interested. Now we have 110 people today that are active and are currently fully credentialed. That doesn't include the internal staff. And by pairing this with the rest of the Ticket to Work program, I think it helped some of those agencies see the potential, and it definitely slowly helped those that chose to become employment networks create another stream of revenue because we as a VR can think something is important all day long. But if we don't provide tangible benefits for our partners in the community, well, they might support someone going through the training, but are they going to support giving them the time to do the work? Right. So, when I got here, we didn't really spend any money on those services. And now each year we spend between 400 and 500,000 a year in case service dollars on different work incentives. And what I'd say is our cost reimbursement has gone up. Now, I'm not a researcher. I can't say that it's a direct causation that spending this amount has led to this increase in our program income through cost reimbursement. But we have seen a nice increase in that area that looks like it trends along the same lines of our growth in the work incentives. And I will say that when you look at our numbers in terms of our rehab rate, which isn't as important these days with other changes, but it was significantly higher for those individuals that had work incentives services earlier in the process when we were able to hear the people who didn't get it, here are the people that did. It was about a 25-percentage point higher rehab rate for those that had work incentives and that remained constant as we continued to grow it. We don't track that anymore because again, it's not how we're measured these days, but it was a pretty cogent argument for the continued increase and development of these services.   Carol: So, I want to circle back on the money for a minute. So, you talked about using innovation expansion funds to start and then you made investments with your program income to help fund. Have you used any other kind of funds? Is that all been sort of VR money or has there been any other kind of funding that's helped you to kind of scale this up?   David: Interesting you ask again; we are always looking to improve. Right. And there were those promise grants a few years ago. One of the things that came out of that, and I think California did this work, California worked with Cornell University on a course related to youth benefits counseling. We are using pre dollars right now and we are offering the Cornell youth training to all of our current wishes for free. So, something they're not spending $650 on. Right. We're offering them the chance to get this second credential. And we're also offering it to our staff who have completed the introduction to Social Security disability class through VCU. They can't get the certification because they aren't fully credentialed. But again, we are trying to infuse this next level how to talk to families about money for their sons and daughters. So, we are doing that right now. I think people are a little zoomed out. I thought for sure each of these sessions would be 100% full. We're averaging 25 to 30 instead of the 40 I'd hoped. But again, we keep trying things and we keep trying things that incorporate our work incentive specialists around the state, our field staff. What things can we do that will help further align these goals? And then another thing we've tried, but again, on a very small scale, we have a Nadler grant around financial empowerment and able accounts, and it involves some financial coaching. And through that project, I've been able to pay for about five staff to become certified in financial social work again. And we pick people who are with us. Why? Because we're trying to really figure out how the financial empowerment piece fits, because the more I've seen, the more I'm convinced that they go hand in hand.   Carol: I agree. So, what do you hear from your staff? Like you guys have made this an incredible investment in staff. There's all these different levels and I'm sure some folks really like that. More specialization in this area. What does staff think of all this? And be honest.   David: I wonder if they tell me the truth. I mean, Drew, here comes Dave. He's going to talk about Social Security benefits or financial empowerment again. No, I think when people get it, they start to get it more and more. And what excites me is when you hear more nuanced questions like I've heard everything from why isn't this a requirement in your master's in rehab counseling? Like, I've heard all sorts of things about it. And I think what's nice is we now provide at least a one hour training every month. That's specifically for counselors. It's not mandatory, but we get 40 to 50 every month that sign up. We also are willing to go to different offices so regularly we will go to an office and do an hour to an hour and a half presentation and then my staff will stay to do one on one staffing. So, in terms of strategy of building the capacity, I think the way you provide information to the field, even now when we do it virtually, we're about to have a training later this month for a specific office. We're going to set the training from 10 to 1130, and then one of three people from my team will be available for the next two and a half hours. Half hour increments for any of the staff to staff some cases. Right. You just heard it. How do we engage you right now with your caseload to make sure we're answering your questions that might not have been as appropriate for that group discussion?   Carol: You're high energy. So, I'm sure as you bring it across, it's not like, oh, well, we're going to do this work incentives stuff. And here's another thing to do, because then they can see the value to them and in the end to the customer. I mean, that's the ultimate goal. It's getting people where they want to be and having the information so they can make an informed decision about what they're doing.   David: Absolutely. I love it. The other thing we do a lot and I have to do this less and less, which is great. But when we were building it, any time there was a good success story that included benefits counseling, I would write it up and I would turn it in so that our commissioner saw. So, I was trying to support and encourage almost like that growth mindset, form of communication. How can I write about someone's behaviors as a counselor that were doing what I needed them around benefits, counseling as a big positive? We did a lot of that early on. Like if a counselor got to see their name in a weekly report that they didn't write up, it added to their social capital. Right. It was a positive reinforcement.   Carol: And you guys are good at social media, like your commissioner is fabulous. So, I follow Cathy on social media too in Virginia.   David: DARS Cathy is amazing at that. In fact, she has taught me more about that than I believe it. I now I think about that stuff, and I never would have ten years ago.   Carol: So, what resources would you recommend for agencies who would like to expand their capacity to discuss a client's financial situation? I know there's probably some really great tools or something out there that you could help out with.   David: Now we're on to more of the financial empowerment, right? I think there are a few things. And first is, how do you get counselors to feel comfortable talking about finances? Right. We've gone to grad school for this master's and rehab counseling, but maybe we have credit card debt, maybe we've had a bankruptcy, maybe we've had a bill we couldn't pay on time. How do you get counselors to feel okay about that? That's the first thing. And we offer some trainings we've developed here in Virginia around like working with people in poverty as a form of cultural competency that I'm really proud of that work. And again, some of it we took from some great work from Kentucky. We added and grew it through our targeted communities' projects and some other projects and really try to help with a kind of behavioral economics framework for why clients may make some of the decisions they do. But the tools I love the most and that we support the most are twofold. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Your Money, Your Goals Toolkit is phenomenal. All of their materials are free to use. They allow for co-branding. So, for our partners, if they want to use their materials, they can put their own logo on them. So, it adds again, it adds to the perceived value you can go through and pick specifically the tools you need for any given situation. FDIC is money smart. They have money smart for youth, for adults, for various ages. And the money smart curriculum is in line with the standards of learning, at least for the state of Virginia and most states that have a financial education, financial literacy requirement in school. One of the things that makes this work easier, frankly, in Virginia is that a are commissioner gets it or commissioner full on believes in the importance of financial literacy and financial empowerment. In fact, when we talk about the folks who are working their way off cash benefits, we don't necessarily talk about the money. We talk about how many people we helped work their way out of poverty. Right. And that's how she likes to frame it. So, you take your cues from your leader. Commissioner Hayfield firmly supports this work. But the other tools that we really like here in Virginia and have been fortunate to be able to use, we use some tools from next gen personal finance. That is one of the most incredible nonprofits I've ever had the pleasure of getting to work with or meet any of their folks. All of their tools are really geared towards that K through 12 teacher who might be working within the financial literacy or financial education space, maybe those economics teachers in high school, personal finance, but they have developed some amazing tools and we use some of them regularly. And I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the National Disability Institute. We use a lot of their tools, and our financial health assessment actually was developed during our career Pathways for Individuals with Disabilities Grant with the help of the National Disability Institute. So, I think they're still there. But when we were developing this tool, I had lots of experts to run ideas off of, and when we had staff go through the financial social work program, we took that opportunity to revisit our financial health assessment and see if what we learned would change. And sure enough, we rewarded almost all of the questions to be more matter of fact so no one would feel bad about themselves. The way the question was worded, we made them all much more neutral, really. And I think all of those tools have been fantastic. To me, it's what is someone going to feel comfortable using and how is someone going to speak to this work in an authentic voice where they feel comfortable and proficient and there's 20 other tools out there. Most major banks have financial literacy programs you can get from their websites. We are just starting to partner with the State of Virginia Credit Union and we're going to try some other things with them. And then at our center, see, we are about to try a program called Cares for Youth that was established and created by a federal bankruptcy judge. Again, I guess he ran into people declaring bankruptcy more than once and thought that there should be some other help for folks. But we didn't have training in that when I went to high school. Now in Virginia, you don't graduate without a class in personal finance. It would have been very helpful because I can tell you firsthand, I have probably five shirts that have Visa, American Express logos on them with my college mascot. And I definitely had some debt because I thought the shirts were cool and they seemed free at the time.   Carol: I think the free is the is the key word there seemed. Yes. So, yeah. So, you have brought up like a ton of tools. And for our listeners out there, what advice would you give them if they're sitting in an agency where maybe they haven't spent a lot of thought about this? And we know that has happened across the country. People have just had different focuses. There's been different things going on. But for somebody that wants to get started because you guys are well down the road, like, what advice would you get for even kind of getting focused in this area?   David: Someone who works for a VR agency, there are several areas I am particularly interested in effecting change related to this work, so I can talk about those very easily. How many individuals that we successfully place have their jobs potentially put at risk when something that should be a known recurring expense comes back up? But it's more than 20 or $30. Example, someone needs hearing aids. They're hearing aids are not working as well. Their job performance comes down while they go on our waitlist to get new hearing aids. Why isn't the discussion at closure around this is going to be an ongoing medical expense that you might need down the road? How are you going to budget for this now? That's a loaded thing for me to say because everybody's situation is different. But if we don't at least have the conversation, that assumes everybody must always come back for this service over and over and over. And I'm not saying that nobody should ever come back, but we owe it to all of our clients to have the conversations. Another example, there was a study in 2013. It may have changed, but 47% of job applicants included a credit check. How do we help people understand how their financial behaviors affect job propositions and employability? It's a key part in this ever-changing world. We have clients who may need to move for a job. The amount they might pay for a vehicle or rent could change based on that credit report. These are real world things. It's not something I'm just saying these things actually happen. The rate you get for various loans is dependent on those credit scores. You might be taken out of an interview pool because of your credit report, especially for certain industries. So, from being in a place where our job is to get people jobs, financial empowerment can reduce the barriers to employment. I believe that 100%. And if we're not looking at how to make sure we're doing that, we're missing part of the picture. So that's the other example I would make is it's not just durable medical equipment. We have done a lot in the last ten years using technology. We have helped people program into an iPad, videos of their job or scenarios of what to do when certain things come up in a job. That's not a huge expense. But why wouldn't we make sure that that person is in a position to purchase a new one when it can no longer be updated? Because those things do happen and it's a shame to see somebody have to even worry about will they be able to keep their job while going through that paperwork? Not to mention, time is a commodity, and we keep people tethered to the system unnecessarily, which to me robs people of their agency. I think that's really the areas that that's why that's so important to me personally. That doesn't mean we don't help when we can and we shouldn't jump in when we can, but we help more if we prepare someone and avoid those ebbs and flows. There have also been lots of studies related to lost productivity at work when people are worried about their finances.   Carol: Well, you're very profound, David. I have to say, I like that. Keeping people tethered to the system, making that. Comment that really resonates with me very much. So, if folks are listening and they want to get more information about what Virginia is doing, I mean, is there a good way I don't know if there's any information on your website or what's the best way if somebody is going, oh, my gosh, he just blew my mind and he said a million things. What's their best way to maybe get a little more information about what you are doing?   David: I'd be happy to talk to anyone who is interested in this stuff or send them to the people on my team doing the different pieces. One other thing with financial empowerment and what agencies can do. We as an agency are a member of our state's Jumpstart Coalition. It's Jumpstart, but that SE is like a dollar sign. It's a national organization around K through 12 financial education. Be a great way to get some partnerships going for that print space. But another thing that we're really fortunate to have at least one fully functional version. There's a group called the Cities for Financial Empowerment in Roanoke, Virginia, where they provide free financial coaching and help with credit, establishing bank accounts and savings. And we don't have to be the experts. We just have to ask enough questions to know that someone could benefit and help get them connected. So the other thing that's important with all this is much like with the work incentive services, I would never expect all of our staff to become experts in this work, but I would expect them to understand that if you're working with someone who receives supplemental security income or Social Security disability insurance, that you know enough to make sure you're getting them to the person if they're not asking the questions. And those same things exist in many parts of our states and other states where there are free services, quality services for more detailed, in-depth financial coaching and assistance. And the city's program is a wonderful one. I want to say there's 30 or 40 sites around the country. We've also helped a community start a program through getting ahead and the getting by world. And it's through the bridges out of poverty system. And again, really, we just continue to look for programs that might exist. Is there a way to partner and get some of our clients involved?   Carol: Well, David, I appreciate every single thing you said today. I think it was very exciting. I think it will be fun for our listeners to get their minds around this as well and see what we can do to make a dent in really advancing our work in this area across the country. And I appreciate what you're doing there in Virginia, so thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it. I hope you have a great day.   David: Thank you very much. I love this stuff. I really appreciate being a part of it.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.  

On this episode of Manager Minute, we are delighted to discuss Colorado's Employment First initiative. On the panel, we have: Patricia Henke, Colorado Office of Employment First (COEF) Director Meghan Greene, CIE Manager, CO VR Katie Taliercio, Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF); Colorado's State Medicaid Agency Katie Oliver, Colorado Department of Education Cheryl Carver, Colorado VR They are involved with a very innovative and successful collaboration in Colorado pertaining to their Employment First initiative.  We believe it's an outstanding model illustrating how multiple agencies can effectively partner in an Employment First initiative to serve their consumers better. We have the pleasure today to understand how this is working in Colorado, so you may be able to move in a similar direction.   Here are some useful links discussed in the podcast: Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Colorado Colorado Office of Employment First Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Finance Colorado Sequence of Services for Students and Youth with Disabilities   Listen Here   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Please stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management. The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the Center.     Full Transcript   Leveraging Employment First initiatives to improve consumer services across agencies in Colorado.   {Music} Speaker1: 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, we're delighted to have a whole crew from Colorado with us this morning in the studio. We have Patricia Henke Colorado Office of Employment First. Meghan Greene with Colorado VR. Cheryl Carver also with Colorado VR. Katie Taliercio, CEO with the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. And Katie Oliver, Colorado Department of Education. So welcome to you all. I appreciate you being in the studio today. These fine ladies are involved with a very innovative and successful collaboration in Colorado pertaining to their Employment First initiative. We believe it's an outstanding model, illustrating how multiple agencies can effectively partner with their Employment First initiative to better serve their customers. We have the pleasure today to understand how this is working in Colorado. So you may be able to move in a similar direction. So let's get a little background on Employment First. Employment First is really a framework for systems change that is centered on the premise that all citizens, including individuals with significant disabilities, are capable of full participation in integrated employment and community life. This national effort, formerly originated from the Office of Disability Employment Policy, when on August 8th 2018, they hosted 15 federal offices, including representatives from the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs and Justice, the National Council on Disability, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Social Security Administration to learn about and discuss the newly launched Employment for State Leadership Mentoring Program. Today, many states, such as Colorado, have adopted Employment First initiatives through formal state legislation and dedicated state funding appropriations in an effort to establish this framework so this objective can be met. So let's dig in. Meghan, I'm going to have you start us off with a little background about why the importance of partnering is so critical and a little more about your state Employment First legislation and the state's competitive integrated employment focus.   Meghan: Thanks, Carol. Yeah. So as you can see from all the different Colorado partners here, we love partnering together and it yields really great results for our state. Kind of, along with the background that you just gave in Colorado, priority is really that competitive integrated employment for all working age persons with disabilities. All people are capable of full participation, employment and community life. With the WIO definition of CIA as a shared goal and a shared vision of the supportive employment process across all of the Colorado State systems, with an emphasis on the use of those evidence based practices like customized employment or individual placement and support or benefits counseling to support that competitive integrated employment for the people that we serve in Colorado. This is really shown in the work that we all do that has been completed utilizing a state level systems framework and by aligning employment related policies, service delivery practices and service funding structures between our state agencies. Some of the examples of this alignment and collaboration is in. 2016 Senate Bill 16-77 was passed, which effectively prioritized Employment First in Colorado and required state agencies to convene and develop the Employment First Advisory Partnership between the Department of Education, Department of Human Services, Department of Labor Employment, which is where DVR sets and our state Medicaid agency, health care policy and financing in 2017. This Employment First Advisory Partnership was fully established and in 2018 the Employment First Advisory Partnership developed and publish some strategic recommendations for all of our state agencies and partners to work on and support Employment First in our state. And this also supported our Senate Bill 18 one four five, which was a passing into law which effectively created requirements for training and supported employment providers standards. So really a great outcome and support across our agencies for the people we serve. Of all of us coming together to move those services and support for employment for so long. And in 2019, Colorado State Legislature approved a budget appropriation which effectively developed our Colorado Office of Employment First, and you'll hear later from Patricia Henke and more about that. She is the director of our Colorado Office of Employment First, and it utilized our State Council Cash Funds and DVR match to support these efforts. Federal funds are prioritized for training and our certification of support and employment service providers, and any remaining funds are utilized to provide vocational rehabilitation services to eligible individuals with the most significant disabilities. So all of these partnerships coming together to really support Employment First across Colorado and leveraging different funding sources and different initiatives together, we've had several different examples of what this yielded and one of them was. For employment, first, full time employees within the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation that focused on evidence based practices for supporting people with most significant disabilities with their employment and career goals, this legislation and these efforts supported two positions within our Medicaid agency to start a pilot for performance based services, and we'll hear more about that from Katie Taliercio hear later. We also again have established the Colorado Office of Employment First to support employment efforts in our state, so lots of wonderful things happening from all this partnership and work together.   This also establishes and supports the focus of competitive and integrated employment and shows really the passion and collaboration and partnership among all of us around the value of Employment First within our state and all the initiatives that we're working together on to support Employment First. One of the things that has been a real big focus for the division of Vocational Rehabilitation is that we've set a long term dream goal of increasing the prosperity gap for individuals with disabilities by 10 percent and 10 years, and this is a huge goal for us. And in order to really achieve this, it's imperative that we support all Coloradoans with achieving those goals. We really want to make sure we're supporting Employment First efforts and really engaging with all of our partners on these goals to make this happen. That Employment First advisory partnership that I mentioned earlier that was created through legislation, it continues to meet in perpetuity, actively working on these recommendations that they set forth a couple of years ago to support competitive integrated outcomes in our state for employment and always looking at new recommendations for Colorado and Colorado agencies to support the continued work. So that's kind of a big bird's eye view overview of kind of some of the work and legislation and collaboration that happens in Colorado to really support our shared priority of employment. First for all, Colorado.   Carol: Meghan, this is really exciting to hear. I had come from an Employment First state and we did not. We didn't have that same level of support. I think legislatively for all the things that you guys have been able to create here in Colorado, I think that's super exciting in the partnerships that you've been able to develop and to sustain and carry on. I think that's very cool. So, Patricia, we're going to swing to you. Can you tell us more about the Colorado Employment First initiative and what successes have you had to date and what's the partnership like with VR?   Patricia: Absolutely, Carol. And thank you so much for having Colorado on the podcast today, and thanks, Meghan, for that description of how Employment First initiatives have really evolved in our state. It is pretty amazing and impressive to hear it all over again of all of the amazing work that's been happening for so many years to move these initiatives forward. So as Meghan mentioned, the Colorado Office of Employment First was envisioned by the Employment First Advisory Partnership, and we are just a little over two years old now, so we're still pretty young in our operations and existent really proud about what has been accomplished thus far. And so our team actually is employed by the University Center of Excellence Developmental Disabilities, which is Colorado's, UCEDD and is housed at JFK Partners at Colorado University. I think that's a differentiation I wanted to make because a lot of folks in our state and nationally think that we're state employees and in fact, maybe employed by the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. So I wanted to differentiate that it's a contractual relationship with VR and Colorado University and that we're all housed and employees of CU. It was really important, although we are housed at the UCEDD it was really important for the disability community and the Employment First Advisory Partnership that our work have across disability representation, and this was very eminent when the legislation was coming together in 2016. And so I want to communicate that that we are very much across disability organization and that we work on behalf of all individuals with various disabilities. And so our vision for the Colorado Office of Employment First is essentially to create a culture of inclusive, meaningful and competitive employment for all people. We are charged with changing perspectives on what it means to work, and we are working every day towards demystifying processes for families, for individuals with disabilities who are interested in employment. We are promoting barrier reducing policies and practices. We highlight and create awareness about options for support towards competitive integrated employment. We're continuously researching innovative strategies and technologies and ultimately helping employment providers and job seekers know about strategies that are going to lead to those competitive integrated employment outcomes. So we do this by really three bucket areas, which is our mission statement. And this is leading Colorado toward. Unemployment reaching all people with disabilities through one collaboration, which we're talking about today and why that is so important to systems innovation, we're continuously looking at kind of our existing systems and asking questions about what's working well and what can we work towards changing if needed and three training excellence and technical assistance. As Meghan mentioned, Senate Bill eighteen one forty five was key legislation that really move the needle on expectations around training and provider qualifications in our state to provide competitive integrated employment services. I'm going to transition to talking about some general successes of the Office of Employment. First, it was hard to choose whether there has been a lot of accomplishments over time and these accomplishments that have occurred in collaboration with everyone here on this call and other partners in our state. I want to mention that Colorado Office of Employment First does not do any of our work in silos that we model effective partnering and continue that movement forward to affect change and progress in our state. So I wanted to mention how the Colorado Office of Employment First has worked towards creating an employment for community in this state. When we got started in 2019, I was hired in November 2019. We had six months in our first year and although there was a pandemic that occurred three months into our start date, we were able to reach 3,000 people in 6 months through training, technical assistance webinars, other opportunities to start the conversation about employment. First, create that awareness and essentially try to move the needle and change mindsets in our state. In Year two, which was a full year, we doubled that number and reach 6,000 individuals and we continue to reach more and more people to engage in the conversation around Employment First and really create that employment for community and movement. So we're really proud of that. We do this in partnership with HCPF and the individuals here on the call today, as well as the advocacy community and families and job seekers and service provider organizations. Another area I wanted to mention, which I think really does illustrate the collaboration and partnership and what can occur when individuals come together towards a common goal and a shared vision. And this is really an emerging area for Colorado that we're really excited about, and we think it's really important. And what I'm speaking to is benefits counseling and disability benefits. One, as we know, many individuals are fearful of going to work, or it's not so much going to work, but are fearful around what's going to occur to their benefits or health care. And this can create a barrier to competitive integrated employment. And the Colorado Office of Employment First was charged specifically with bringing disability benefits one hundred one to Colorado. This was a key part of the budget appropriation that the disability community strongly advocated for. And so this was an 18 month long project, and it's just one example of how partners have come together towards the shared vision and commitment. Colorado has been unique from other states that have implemented disability benefits one on one and that we've had an in-house subject matter. Expert Melanie Hornibrook, who I have to mention on the Colorado Office of Employment First Team and through the Employment First Budget Appropriation, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation also had allocated staff person to work on behalf of benefits counseling, which provided the foundation to bring over 20 additional subject matter experts together to develop the content for Colorado's Disability Benefits 101. The core partnership with the Colorado Office of Employment First and the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation has also supported creating awareness about benefits counseling and DV 101. To want to elevate this conversation even further or this movement around benefits counseling kind of under the umbrella of employment? First, as we acknowledge and recognize that we needed to increase capacity with having certified benefits counselors in our state. So we are partnering with DVR to provide the opportunity for nearly 50 individuals statewide that represent urban and rural communities to become certified and benefits counseling. We are partnering with Cornell to create two Colorado cohorts to support this effort, and the individuals that are interested in becoming certified benefits counselors is vast. We have educators, service providers, family members, independent contractors and many of them are already providers of DVR and health care policy and financing. The Colorado Office of Employment for us is also looking at. How to braid these services across education, DVR and Medicaid and other state organizations so that we can continue this practice of grading services, partnering and making it seamless for the customer, the job seeker, and we really see this as a key intervention and necessary service to continue to move the needle about knowing that employment is possible and that work can interact with your benefits and you can actually earn more money in doing so. And there are so many other ways I could talk about collaboration and partnership and that our other partners on the call are going to speak to. So with that, I'm going to just say thank you and we appreciate this opportunity, and I will now transition it back to you, Carol.   Carol: Well, thanks, Patricia. You really packed a lot into that into those few minutes. I loved that you brought up benefits counseling. We actually are going to feature that in our podcast next month with another state and some pretty interesting initiatives. So I was excited to hear what you folks are doing in that area as well. I also was struck when you talked about demystifying processes. We've been talking a lot about that without using those words. Exactly, but I liked how you said that and very excited about what you're doing. So now we're going to transition over to Meghan and Katie T to discuss the DVF partnership with the MOU and the roundtables and your sequencing of support and employment initiatives.   Meghan: Thanks, Carol. I'll kick us off and then Katie is going to jump in here in a minute. But DVR and our Colorado Medicaid agency, I would say a really long standing at this point partnership where we are actively working together for innovative ways to support Employment First and the people we serve, employment goals in Colorado and some of the things that have really helped. Aside from just us being good partners to each other with this is formal interagency agreements. So our interagency agreement is a really great example of helping to foster that partnership and in it has some great information about mutually developing processes to capitalize on our partnership and to support the people we serve. We've designated supported employment leads that really interact and ensure that we're actively meeting and developing processes together ongoing. Our interagency agreement really also outlines that we develop and update our statewide best practices together in partnership and maximize seamless service delivery to individuals with services. We provide training and guidance jointly. You had mentioned Carol, our roundtables, so in our interagency agreement, it states that we will every year go out and provide some roundtables to our providers, our community center boards, our DVR local offices to support the active practices and best practices of supported employment in reaching competitive integrated employment. We just completed some roundtables this last year with our local DVR offices and are jointly talking and having frank conversations about best practices and how to really partner together. Katie Taliercio, who will talk here in a second and DVRs Darby Brumley. We're really integral in making those happen and having really great conversations and training together and doing that in partnership really models that partnership that needs to happen at the local level. I also really talks about how we can support people who have been within subminimum wage and how to help them reach those employment goals and get to competitive integrated employment and provide information and resources about career pathways and is really committed to doing that and agree to work collaboratively with all of our partners across the board, as well as share pertinent training opportunities and really making sure that it's outlining those partnerships that really make the sequencing of services that we're known for in Colorado, that Katie is going to talk about here in a second, as well as our partnership opportunities happen so that AIA is a really good foundational document and then our just general partnership and the importance that we both as agencies place on our partnership and actively meet and support that it has been really integral to furthering competitive integrated employment in Colorado and modeling the partnerships that happen across the state. I will kick it over to Katie to really talk about those specific logistics and partnership outcomes that have happened.   Katie Taliercio: Thanks for having me be a part of this podcast. And of course, as you hear people talk, you think of a million more things you want to maybe touch on. So I will try to be brief and try not to duplicate what's already been talked about. One of the more exciting pieces that's just come to my mind as I hear people talk. And another outcome for this partnership and collaboration, I think across the board is that in 2021, Colorado passed Senate Bill two one 0three nine, then is the elimination of minimum wage in Colorado. Is very exciting for us. But while people are transitioning out of minimum wage, we also get to introduce some new services through the Medicaid waiver. And I think the reason that this passed is because of the collaboration and partnership with all the state partners. And I think it's coming from a federal level to. State level and then to all the people that are doing the work and all the people that are looking for jobs, it's kind of all coming together. But the neat thing about the new legislation is we were able to tackle some of the barriers that can happen within the Medicaid waivers for people to get competitive, integrated employment. And so we're increasing the amount of job development and job coaching people can receive, and we are introducing benefits counseling services into our waiver, which is very exciting. And another thing that we're pretty excited about is the Medicaid buy in, which is going to allow people who are in their developmental disabilities waiver and intellectual and developmental disabilities waiver utilize buy in. So people who are currently having to say no to raises or work more hours or things like that is all due to change coming up really quickly here in Colorado. And that I do feel like as a partnership, we've all come together to figure out what can Medicaid do to partner best with other services around Colorado that are available? Another aspect that's coming to mind a lot, and Patricia talked about this a little bit, but the braiding of services and the sequencing of services has really become a neat tool. And the more we talk about it, I think we've learned that the language we use is really important. Certain things that all the acronyms that Medicaid have is are different than the acronyms that vocational rehabilitation has. So how do we talk about that better? And I think maybe Katie might talk about that too. I think that's been one big lesson that we've been learning is how do we communicate with Medicaid case managers and counselors and others providing services? But also, how do we make sure that people looking for jobs are aware of what's available to them? And the better we do, the more people can be advocates for themselves and say, Hey, I want to do this, and here's what I know is available to me. I think we've been learning a lot about that. And then I just want to mention, too, that any thing that's happened, I think across with the milieu and setting up the roundtables together and doing a lot of collaborative work with all of the state partners and advocacy agencies and job seekers themselves has been that we've learned how to do this virtually, and I think that's really helped inform the work going forward and what Medicaid needs to do. And sometimes I joke around with some of my team internally that I've worked more with state partners and I have with my internal team. And I just think that really speaks to the level of how we're all putting these puzzles together. And when we come up against the barrier, we can pull together a bunch of people that say, OK, can I do this? Can Medicaid do that? How can we make it work together? And ideally so that we're providing enough services that it's seamless for the person receiving the services? So I hope that I tackled most of the things that we're excited about and some of the outcomes in Medicaid. And pass it back to you, Carol.   Carol: Thanks, Katie. It really strikes me as I'm listening to you all talk about what you've done. I mean, this has really been a journey, and it feels like that foundation that was built back in 2016, and you guys keep kind of brick by brick building more upon that foundation. So it's just taking you into such a great direction in such a broader, whiter, deeper collaboration. I think that is super cool. I did have one kind of follow up question. I was just wondering, I'm going to kick it to you, Meghan, just to ask, how did the pandemic affect the work you were doing? Because we know kind of put lots of states in a tailspin. I just wondered if you guys were able to pivot quickly using technology and stuff. I was thinking about the roundtables you were holding and all of that. Do you have any thoughts about how the pandemic impacted your work the last couple of years?   Meghan: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question, Carol. So I would say it absolutely affected people's attitudes towards work and their comfort level towards work. It affected how we approached our work as state agencies and had some, I would say, pros and cons to how we pivoted, right? So like Katie mentioned, we kind of had to pivot virtually in that virtual world, and our roundtables in previous years were people driving around the state and meeting in person, which is always wonderful to me to take time. And you might not be able to reach as many people in person. Whereas one of the benefits of pivoting virtually, especially with that specific initiative or meeting with local CVS and DVR offices together, is we were able to really see increased attendance and rural areas really able to be a part of those conversations more than they had been previously. And I think that extended beyond just those roundtable events, but really also the services that we're able to provide. One of the examples that I use is benefits counseling and benefits planning across our state. People have been able to pivot to provide that service virtually as well, and maybe we can reach more people in rural areas now that that service can be provided in a virtual way. So that's just one very specific example that DVR and service providers were able to pivot. And so really leaning into that virtual world has been a challenge and that we're learning how to do that well and effectively, right? It's a new mode of completing services, but also has some positives in that we really are able to reach people that maybe we weren't able to reach before, but it also really highlights the need and importance of assistive technology and technology. In general and how we make the people we serve and job seekers comfortable with technology and learning that so they can truly access services in a more virtual world and support them with their job goals. So that's been a real focus and highlight for how do we make sure that people are comfortable with that and then it can open doors, right? So if we're really, truly supporting competitive integrated employment, it really opens some opportunities for people who may not have thought about some of the work goals or competitive integrated employment they could do before that. Now they could in a more virtual world and may have more virtual options for employment as well. So it's been very interesting road that I think has opened lots of different opportunities and mindsets and brainstorming for new innovative ways to do services in that virtual world.   Carol: It's a little bit of a silver lining out of all of that kind of craziness of the last couple of years. I love that you said that really kind of that comfortability of the individuals and using technology in that focus and really opening new doors. So I think that is wonderful. So now we're going to pivot a little bit and talk to Sheryl and Katie O about the education partnership with DVR. And I understand that you have an MOU and you do some joint training and there's something called the sequencing services tool and you have a whole sequencing of services development process. So do tell me more.   Cheryl: Thank you, Carol, and you're absolutely right things that we are so excited about, and it is so nice to see them actually coming to fruition now. Since we've been working on the sequencing of services for the past three years now, I think it is to actually have an outcome and Katie O is going to speak to that a little bit greater in detail. I want to talk more about how DVR and our Colorado Department of Education partner as a whole, similar to the interagency agreement that Meghan and Katie spoke about between DDR and health care policy and finance. Colorado has an interagency agreement, but also a cooperative services agreement between CTE and DVR, both of which have been in place and grown and expanded and shifted over the last 30 years. Our interagency agreement at the state level allows DVR and CDC to model our expectations at the local level when collaborating to provide services to transitioning youth, which is something we have upheld as being key to being successful in those partnerships. The interagency agreement itself helps to ensure that CTE and DVR are collaborating for all activities related to transitioning youth to provide technical assistance, support training, even program review to our local education agencies and our district DVR partners, as well as some of our external partners when we can pull them into those activities. The technical assistance, support and training, as well as the program review, also apply to any and all of our school to work initiatives such as Colorado School to Work Alliance program that supports district transition goals through the provision of pre-employment transition services and VOC Rehab Services. Our project search sites, which is a transition program for high school students with more significant needs, as well as our pipeline project, which is promoting career technical education to students with disabilities so that they can begin to see that as a viable career pathway. And currently we have an enhanced services pilot going on with our school districts, which focuses on using the discovery process to develop customized work based learning experiences and will buy next school year offer benefits counseling, which Patricia mentioned earlier. Our interagency agreement has been the precipice for pilots new initiatives, the development of tools and cross system trainings not only between DVR and CDE, but also other partners across the state. Our federally mandated agreement, which here in Colorado is the Cooperative Services Agreement, gets a little bit more into details, right? It talks about our roles and responsibilities of each of our systems. It gets into discussing the financial responsibilities of each agency. It includes a dispute resolution process, talks about how education and VR should be collaborating in the provision of services, how we will work together on the transfer or sale of assistive technology from education to VOC rehab when it's appropriate, and it covers the policies of each system that affect transition, our cooperative services agreement is the model that we have used in the past to develop a template for local working agreements. Those local working agreement templates are currently being recreated, and that is all thanks to the push of sequencing of services. But it will specifically define the transition responsibilities between education and VR partnerships in order to minimize duplication, ensure access to services for youth and support ongoing and effective working relationships. Again, all of this aligns so perfectly with our Sequencing of Services project and our drive to create useful tools for more efficient grading of services with the appropriate providers at the right time for students to improve outcomes, raising those expectations in employment for those students. And the key piece to this, of course, it requires increasing agency coordination and collaboration with an understanding of one another systems. So since I've mentioned it frequently and everybody else has alluded to it, PTO is going to kick us off talking about the process of how we got to sequencing of services and do an overview of that tool.   Katie Oliver: thank you, Sheryl. Just really exciting to be here to talk about the work that's been doing, and I know that Colorado has always been proud of their relationship in, particularly with VOC Rehab, but we've also had a very strong relationship with other state agencies, hence a lot of our presence here today. So we've really embraced our relationships. We cross-train, we kind of talk to each other systems. We've learned so many things over the years due to our partnership and those interagency agreements, whether they're actually formalized on paper or that we've just been together for so long trying to figure out our common missions and visions and having those conversations and building those relationships with other state agencies. It's just been a real pleasure and it's been a lot of fun over the years. We have obviously identified lots of gaps as most states do as well. We want to make sure that we're increasing our outcomes for students with disabilities, ultimately getting them employed and self-sufficient and involved in their communities. And so we know that that has been such a forefront for our partnership over the years. And we've talked about this. We've had different models. We've had different partners at the table for years before and we really had kind of a transition continuum. And so we were still missing the boat somewhere. So we sat down had some conversations back in 2019, and particularly it started a little bit more with the folk rehab and the Department of Education. And we said, OK, for some reason, no matter how much our best laid plans and transition planning, we're still not getting the outcomes we want for our students with disabilities. We're still missing them. So how do we make these connections? We're trying to have that smooth transition process handing the baton to the next system, whether that's other adult services, whether it's post-secondary education or employment. We're still dropping the baton somewhere. We're all speaking different languages. We're not coordinating, we're not braiding and blending funds. Let's start talking about this and let's really beef this up so that we can have more of a presence and more consistency across our systems so that our family and ultimately the youth are knowing what's happening next and really emphasizing and enhancing that coordination and that planning for those students. So back in 2019, prior to the pandemic, we came together and started talking about how we would like to proceed with some sequencing of services. So we created a Colorado transition team or partners for students with disabilities. We have representatives, obviously here today from VOC Rehab from Colorado Office of Employment. First, we had the Department of Labor and Employment, the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing Department of Higher ED, our Office of Behavioral Health. We had career tech ED and community college representatives. We had council representatives from the council, the Developmental Disability Council of Colorado. We've had parents from our peak parent center. We've also had some transition coordinators as well be involved with this work. So we pulled together and started kind of brainstorming about how can we create a shared vision? How can we create consistent language and ultimately help our families and students navigate the world outside of K-12? And so we created a shared state vision, which I think is something really important to share. You know, for years, we've been saying all means all. And so in Colorado, we've adopted that at our department and other departments. But you know, we are still missing very key people and that we're missing those students that we're really not capturing every student. So we changed our shared state vision to represent a little bit more of. Individual presents, so we say each and every student, regardless of their disability, has a right to transition to the adult life that includes, of course, partners at this table. Education, employment, independent living. We want full community participation and the right to make decisions in and about their own lives. So we also know when we recognized why we were creating this work that we needed to start partnering at younger ages, not just in high school. We want to start trading down to the middle school level. We know that there are students that drop or lose engagement around eighth to ninth grade transition. And so we want to keep those engagement efforts happening and keeping those students eye on the prize of that ultimate goal of employment someday and being successful. We know that we needed to create high expectations and create that self-determination for those students. Cheryl mentioned increasing that agency coordination collaboration. Absolutely. We have so many different members and state members at the team, and then we have one hundred and seventy eight school districts out there in Colorado with other partners and their local community. And so how do we infiltrate some of the state level work into the local so that we can create that coordination and having those really rich discussions and focusing on that individual students so that student level planning and of course, creating consistent messaging. So with the assistance of Jennifer Stewart and the Colorado Office of Employment, first, we were able to create kind of a framework and pull these two partners together, as well as partners from our national technical assistance that are on transition, Ruth Allison and Jackie Hiatt. They have been very instrumental in helping us facilitate this process and kind of put it to paper and make sure that all of our voices are heard and that we're moving forward. Hearing what other states are doing, too has been really a cool experience, but we created a framework and so we created six course student outcomes that we all, as state level department partners agreed upon and how that looks. So we have. Building self-determination and leadership skills was a certain outcome that we thought was really important to achieve postsecondary success, build skills, to safely navigate community and access the services, understand post-secondary options, develop competence and computer and digital literacy, having that expectation of competitive employment and understanding disability and health management. And we have a beautiful logo that kind of pulls it all together on our website, which is open to anybody to check it out. It is WWW.CDE.state.CO.US/SequencingOfServices, or you can Google and you can put Colorado sequencing of services and it should get you where you need to. I know that's quite lengthy, but again, that's WWW.CDE.state.CO.US/SequencingOfServices. You will be able to see that framework. The core outcomes from that framework. We actually created ages that these activities should be happening. We talked about who is responsible, having those conversations that we agreed upon at the state level. So what is DBRS role? What is the school's role? What is ticpods health care policy and financing role or the local community center board? And having those conversations and breaking them down into examples of those skills that we would like to see or be attained by the students? What are the parents responsibilities? And having that coordinated conversation that really could help drive that IEP planning process. So that's been really good. So I even lean to my other partners if there's anything else that they would like to add from a partner perspective about this tool before I kind of talk about our next steps and what we've been doing with our pilot. Anybody else have anything else to jump in at?   Cheryl: Not yet, Katie. You're doing great.   Katie Oliver: Perfect. All right. I just wanted to be inclusive because it's their work too. So from there, currently we have the state template. We have a local template. We have currently for pilots here in Colorado that are pilot the piloting this work intensively with our partners, Mesa School District on the western side of Colorado, we have our Denver, our largest school districts. We have Weld County, which is a more rural community up north. And then we have another rural community down on the south side of Colorado Pueblo. And so we've been really focusing on building those internal and external champions at the local level. So we have some people who have identified these goals and particularly most of these pilots started with education personnel wanting to create more interagency collaboration. And so we took these champions who are very excited, have personal goals about it for their district and for their families and their students, and we started discussing roles and responsibility. What are the roles in the community? What other community providers are in your community that we want to bring to the table and have conversation so that we're creating this template, this kind of map or tool that can help these discussions with community members. So despite turnover, you know, oftentimes there's been so much turnover, whether it's in special education or other state agencies is there has been so much turnover, but information does get lost or it's inconsistent. And so that was another focus of our area was we let's get this in writing in our community and put our templates in so that if Joe Smith wins the Powerball next week that we're going to have the same information and the person that's replacing them will have this the same information and understand the partnership so that we can make sure that's consistent, which has been a big hiccup with several different local players as we're a local control state. And so we've we started that. So right now we have the four pilots. That's where the intense work is being done. However, we as a state team want to continue the vision of creating interagency teams around the state of Colorado and other communities that it may not be as intense that we're doing right now. However, we want to continue to build those conversations, making sure the right people are at the table. We do have some sites already, some areas in our communities that already have established interagency teams. So how can we make sure that they have the right tools to make sure that their partners stay at the table, also not just show up to the table, but stay at the table? So that was really the intention is that our families are getting the information or they're able to share that information or be present to share that information for families and students getting ready to go on to whatever system or how do we overlap and so that there is no baton dropping in the future? So that has been a lot of exciting work, and we're currently working on an individual template for a student to work through or maybe an individualized education program at an IEP meeting. They could talk about it and really drive the planning process so that elements of the academics or the school is infiltrated into those conversations so that the course of study is being aligned. The goals are being aligned with what their goals are. And it's been really a lot of great work. We have one pilot ready to do a student level one, and I think once that student level show is filled out that template, then I think everybody is going to really start to see how that connection and planning from all the partners of the table were responsible for the success of that student. So that's what we're really excited about here in Colorado is that all that work that's been done?   Carol: Well, thanks Katie and Meghan. All right, Katie and Cheryl, I should say sorry. And Meghan and Patricia, everybody and the other Katie. But I can tell I get that great sense from you. Each talking, everyone's super excited. You bring a lot of energy to this topic, and I appreciate you sharing that website. I was writing down notes if you all would see my page, I have just dozens of notes about things that you've spoken about and I know others are going to be interested in. I know our listeners are probably going to want to reach out at some point to different folks that are on our panel today to talk about this. But I am going to turn it to Meghan to give us the last words and really to kind of tie a bow on it for our listeners out there. What advice would you give your VR colleagues and how to make this really work in their state because you all didn't just do this overnight? It's very evident the long journey you've been on. But for those folks that are just starting out, what advice would you like to give them? And Meghan, that's to you.   Meghan: Thanks, Carol. My advice, as you can see, is really leaning into the value of the partnerships and the value of the ideas and wonderful work that happen across your state and really trying to build those partnerships and relationships with advocates in your state, state agency partners, the people you serve and really try to bring everyone together and having everyone at the table and those partnerships and relationships be a part of the solution and working towards the solution. As you mentioned, Carol brings a level of energy, a level of excitement and having everyone be a part of that solution to support people with their employment goals really kind of kicks things off and gets those next steps. And what that could look like for your state could be very different or individualized, depending upon those conversations, those rich conversations that happen when everyone's at the table. So really just setting the table and making sure that people are there and then talking about how to keep people there and building that and spending the time on those relationships and partnerships and publicly doing that together really can lead to those coordinated legislative updates, coordinated initiatives between state agencies and coordinated services at a local level for the people that we serve. And just I'm leaning into that. The importance of those partnerships really leads the way.   Carol: So, Meghan, if somebody wants to reach out, what would you suggest? What's the best way for someone to contact or is there a website they should go to or what do you think?   Meghan: We have several different websites and I think they all kind of link together, which again shows that public partnership between all of us. But I think anyone on this call would be happy to receive a reaching out and support. But our information I know Sheryl and I as information is listed on our Colorado DVR website and we can always give you our email contact information, Carol. For people to have that, I know CD's website has lots of. Great information, and Katie mentioned the sequencing of service tool, and I know they have a sequencing of service email, you can email for any specific information related to that. And the Colorado Office of Employment First, as Patricia talked about, has a wonderful website and has lots of great rich information in the email that you can do there. And so we'd be happy to share all those websites and email information as well for you to have along with the podcast.   Carol: Thank you. I really appreciate that you all have been so generous in sharing aspects of this model with us in the past, which we've also greatly appreciated. And I really hope today's conversation helps the VR community think more proactively about how the various employment and first initiatives can be leveraged to achieve to improve partnerships, improve outcomes for our common consumers across our agencies. So thank you all for joining this very important discussion to help us empower one manager at a time, one minute at a time. And I wish you just continued success and all you do. Thanks a lot.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Brought to you by the VRTAC 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!

Welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining Carol Pankow in the studio today is Susan Pugh, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation with the Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities. Susan has worked within the agency in a variety of capacities including, VR Counselor, Assistant Area Manager, and Assistant Deputy Director.   In this episode, Susan discusses Ohio's rapid engagement process and the Lean approach that has reduced onboarding time and ushered in more customers. Susan and Carol cover a lot of the initiatives that Ohio has implemented to enable them to speed up the process so that customers are trained and employed as soon as possible.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Get in and Get er' Done! How Ohio Makes VR Work for Customers!   {Music} Speaker1: 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 Susan Pugh, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation in the agency called Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities. Now that's a mouthful. Susan has worked within the agency in a variety of capacities, including VR counselor. She's been an assistant area manager and assistant deputy director. Susan, it's so great to have you here today. How are things going in Ohio?   Susan: Things are great. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today.   Carol: All right. Well, today's topic is covering this idea of rapid engagement and the idea behind that is getting customers in and moving as quickly as possible. So they are successful in your agency has been using that lean process to completely revamp many of your processes and procedures. And I know that private industry has successfully used Lean for many years to improve manufacturing processes. But I know sometimes it doesn't always translate over to VR because we don't make widgets, after all. But we do work with people, and I know VR often creates really complicated processes to help individuals move through the VR system. So when I was in Minnesota, our governor had brought forward the idea of using lean throughout state government with some pretty successful results. I remember our license bureau for when undergoing a huge overhaul and where it would take weeks and months to get license plates and get your license. They were able to get that down to a matter of days, and so that was excellent. I know we also had to have a lean coordinator in each of our agencies that would report up to the governor on a quarterly basis, and we really put a lot of effort into that and you were able to get exposed to this same concept through your agency director Kevin Miller. And I remember talking with you a little bit ago that you really done a lot to examine your agency's processes and practices so you can do more for individuals with disabilities. So let's chat about this. Can you talk to me a little bit about your introduction to Lean and how it works in your agency?   Susan: Yes. Our director, Kevin Miller, joined O.D. back in January of 2011, and one of the first things that he did was establish a division of performance and innovation for the agency, and now that that division is called our Division of Employer and Innovation Services, and that deputy director was tasked with bringing lean into the organization. And like you mentioned in Minnesota, we have a lean Ohio office that provides all kinds of resources and support for state agencies who want to do this. So the way we kind of started out was members of executive team went to something that was called at the time, a champion training and where we learned and we were briefly exposed to all the different aspects of lean and learned how to champion lean processes within the organization. And after that, we started sending staff because within lean, there are belts like within karate. And so we've had people that have become green belts and black belts in lean processes. Now all of our supervisors and managers and some of our program specialists also receive yellow belt training, which is comparable to the to the champion training that I was mentioning. So now it's really kind of ingrained into all of the aspects of what we're doing. We've done tons of different lean events, which I'm going to talk about here and a little bit, and it's just more ingrained into our culture 10 years later.   Carol: Well, I like the word that you used in grain because you really do have to make it become part of the agency's culture. Otherwise it ends up being this thing that sits over here on a shelf, you know, and employees are like, Well, whatever, you know, here's the latest and greatest. I wondered, though, did you have some skepticism about the process in the beginning? And was there any kind of pivotal moment when staff went, Oh, you know what? I kind of do get this. I see where we're going.   Susan: Yes, One hundred percent at first it was really and I think you mentioned this earlier. It's kind of hard for our staff to think about our processes in these way. We've been trained that our processes all individualized and that's a good thing to meet the needs of the people that we serve. And it was really hard for them to think about standardizing that process as really a good thing. It was really counterintuitive to how we've always operated the program. Know, I think one of the other things that was kind of pivotal was looking at informed choice and how we could look at that differently. That informed choice isn't really free choice to where everybody has to have their path. We can kind of have some lanes. So to speak, that people are going into that will really help them meet their individualized objectives. So staff started participating in these lean events and despite that skepticism, once they really got involved, they were all in. For example, in these events are staff are empowered to make decisions. So it really uses frontline staff and also customers to help redesign these processes. And that really helped staff with buy in and then that team rolls it out to their peers. And so that in really helped, first of all. And then I would say the second thing was once we really started experiencing success and seeing these processes really result in the desired effects that we were looking for, then people were totally in, you know, they saw that it worked and then they wanted to do more of it because it makes things easier for our customers, but it also makes things easier for our staff. That's super   Carol: Cool. I like that about Lean. You know how it involves all these different layers of folks in the process. So it isn't just like some group over here is deciding a thing again, and then they're telling us what we're going to do. You know, I like that. I always remember all the little sticky notes up on the wall, churning out the whole process. And when you start moving sticky notes around and you go, Oh my gosh, great. We have like forty two steps to do this one thing, it is completely eye opening. Now I know when you and I had chatted, there were so many terrific projects that you had done and I'd like to break those down so our listeners can get a sense of what each is about. So can we start with the front door your process for getting rid of the waiting list? Can you tell me about that?   Susan: Yes. So this was back way in 2012, our first Kaizen event. So Kaizen means, I think, roughly break for the better or something like that. And it's really about process, like uncovering what is your process and fixing it. So at that time, as an agency, we averaged 127 days to eligibility from the start of the process to eligibility. And that was really the first piece of this was we didn't really know that that was our number before this happened because it is very data driven kind of activity. And I think we all would agree that 127 days is just unacceptable. And so staff really were like, Wow, no, this can't be we have to do better for the people that we serve. And so then our director said, I know that the federal standard is 60, but we're going to do 30 and our staff, myself included, I will freely admit we all looked at him like he had two heads. This was not possible. There were all the reasons, good reasons that we were at 127 days. We all knew we could do better, but to do 30 days was mind blowing. It just felt like an impossibility. So this team came together and they made all kinds of recommendations. The first thing was they realized we didn't have a process for doing intake and eligibility. We had like 88. So we have 88 counties in Ohio. Every county had their own process, and so this group was tasked with creating something new. And so some of the main things that they did was, first of all, they eliminated a whole pre-application process. We used to have a referral form that was even before the application. They were like, Get rid of that. And that already took off like 20 something days just right off the bat. Like that easy. We also had designated counselors at the time to determine eligibility, which had helped us get more consistent with our eligibility decisions. But they said we have a 4 lane highway and we need an 8 lane highway. We can't do it this way anymore. And so we moved away from that designated eligibility counselor model. And then they developed a process and they put time frames for each step like you have to do this within certain days and this within certain days. And it just helped reframe the pace at which we were taking all of these steps. And there were a whole bunch of other things. But those are some of the examples of what this team had recommended, and our commitment to the team was whatever you recommend, we're going to do. And so we did it. And over the years, we continued with a continuous improvement mindset. We started looking at different kinds of tools for tracking. We eliminated unnecessary assessments. I mean, we had people that were doing psych about us when we had a diagnosis just to figure out the functional limitations when the counselor can do an interview and figure out the functional limitations, right? So there's all kinds of things like this, and this really improved dramatically. And we have been at 23 1/2 days to eligibility for the last 4 fiscal years. And I'll tell you what I. Up for sure, during this pandemic, those numbers were going to go up. Our staff have just done a tremendous job with reducing these days to eligibility, and so all of these timeframes that reduce result in our being able to process cases quicker, get people to their employment goal quicker, which allows us then to have a space for the next person and serve more people. And this, like you mentioned, this was key in our eliminating our waiting lists. In 2014, we had been on order of selection for 25 years.   Carol: That's incredible. I mean, that is incredible.   Susan: Yeah, and in 2014, thanks to this and some other Lean processes, we were able to and we still are off of the order of selection.   Carol: I love that you talked about the data because, you know, it is a data driven world today, but you guys were looking at the data back when maybe not everybody was really looking at the data. So you're ahead of the curve. So WIOA wouldn't have thrown you as big of a curve ball when WIOA, as it did for maybe some other states, I think that's terrific. Now I know fast tracks another project that your agency is well known for. And in fact, it was the project that had me contacting you for more information. And then I found this really great treasure trove of all the cool things you were doing, and we have to talk about all of them, of course. So can you tell us about fast track?   Susan: Yeah, Fast Track was another result of a Kaizen that we did back in 2017. So this was implemented in April of 2017. And really the impetus was, you know, we'd have people come in and they didn't need as much. Maybe they'd worked before. Maybe they only needed something to help them save a job, you know, some equipment or something like that, and we had to take them through the whole thing every time. And our director said we need a fast like an express checkout at the grocery store sort of a thing so that people that are coming in that we can just quickly serve them and get them to their outcomes. And so we brought a team together to take a look at this. And they determined like if somebody needed three or fewer services or services that were likely to take no more than three months, they didn't need lots of assessments or things like that, then they would be a good candidate for this fast track. So we implemented it and they did a fantastic job. We were able to just really get people into a plan super quickly. But let me tell you what happened is that it really begs the question if we can do it quickly for people who are on this fast track, why can't we do that for everybody? And so it really kind of took us down a path with looking more now at time from plan to eligibility and the overall customer service, because we know when people come to see us, they are coming for us to get them a job in six months. They want to get them a job now or they want to get involved with training now. They don't want this long, convoluted process and complicated process. And so this was just a really great project that our field staff kind of designed and came up with. So last year, we had about 153 people use that fast track model. And I'll say that's kind of officially because our timeframes are so quick anymore that really a lot of people are getting rapidly into these jobs. So of those 153 last people, 105 of them are closed successfully. So we really have a strong success rate when we look at that model, which is really again about engaging rapidly people, they stay engaged. They get to that employment outcome at a greater percentage than individuals who were not so intensively moving forward as quickly.   Carol: I love that you're always like challenging your thinking and your processes and taking a look and like, All right, how does this apply to, you know, a different situation? I mean, if you think about how VR typically operates, if those folks that needed to come in and they really only needed like three months or less the services and they were waiting for eligibility, you know, 60 days and then you're going to do a plan in 90 days and maybe in six months, you get around to the first service gets provided or something. It's done like if they were going g to lose their job right, their job is gone. It's done. So this just plain makes smart business sense to do this.   Susan: Yeah.   Carol: So let's see, where do we go next? How about your IPS model and how those principles have leaked out to serving other populations?   Susan: Yeah. So this is another area of focus for us. We've enjoyed a wonderful partnership with our Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services for years and the IPS model individualized placement and support. It's a true evidence based practice model, and there are several different philosophies or aspects of the model things like rapid engagement, which we're talking about today. Open to everyone who wants to work, it's integrated with treatment, all of those things, and so the practice really measures fidelity to that model. We have really been working with mental health and addiction services. I'd say, I think over the last 15 years, but in particular, I'd say over the last 5 or 6, really good traction with implementing this model to improve our outcomes for individuals that we serve with severe and persistent mental illness. We've done some things like we've given accreditation waivers for mental health providers who deliver individualized placement and support models. We've established a supported employment services on our fee schedule that has a 25 percent enhancement in the rate over traditional job development rate that we did back in 2017, all to really help build capacity for this model. And IPS has been around for a long time. And I can remember 15 years ago this conversation, it just was really different. I think we had concerns in the VR system about some of these aspects of fidelity to the model at the time, when we talked about rapid engagement and we had all these processes, we're like, Yeah, that's not the way our system works, right? It's really open to everyone who wants to work. We would say, Yeah, but what about this situation? Are we really going to, you know, whatever? And I think we're just in a totally different place as a system now, and the language barrier between the two systems has been erased. So when they talk about zero exclusion, we're talking about a presumption to benefit. It's really the same concept. And I think as our system has evolved, we've been providing much better customer service to individuals with mental illness, and that has helped our partnership with mental health, which then in turn helped improve the outcomes for the people that we serve.   Carol: I love that, you know, a lot of times people forget to talk about customer service in government. You know, you think, Oh, like you can't have good customer service and government, but we can't afford to not have good customer service. I mean, as a system, when you look at all of the graphs like RSA will come to CSC and put up their graphs, what's happening nationally, you know, you see all these numbers tanking and people not getting into employment. We have to rethink like everyone has to rethink. And so it's exciting to listen to you because I think it will spark ideas and other folks as they're thinking about what they're doing in their own states. Now your state is an employment first state and we are as well in Minnesota. Can you tell me about your counselors working with the most significantly disabled population and being embedded in colleges? I know the stats say you are 4th from the bottom regarding median wages and what are you doing to move the needle on that?   Susan: Yes, we are in employment first state and we have a very robust employment first partnership agreement with our Department of Developmental Disabilities and yes, Minnesota Senate delegation years ago when we were early within that partnership to take a look at what we were doing. And you sent some of your VR staff and some of your partners also came to visit Ohio. That employment first partnership agreement with DOD started back in 2013 and really has been about helping people move from segregated settings into community employment. But in addition, we really recognize that we hadn't been serving individuals with disabilities who are going to college like we had many years ago, and there were part of that was being on order selection impacted that we have financial needs testing for training and a lot of the schools just kind of had written us off, to be honest with you. And we were serving some students, but not a lot. And so we have a program called Ohio College to Careers. This initiative was a part of our governor, Mike DeWine's vision for making Ohio a disability inclusion state and model employers for individuals with disabilities. When he came into office within literally minutes of taking his oath of office, he signed this executive order about this vision for services to individuals with disabilities in our state, which was wonderful. So as a part of the furtherance of that vision, we have Ohio college to careers and it embeds a counselor in the Disability Services Office or the career service officer. Kind of both. At 15, what started out is 15 Ohio State colleges and universities. So in 2019 we started at 15 colleges. 4 of those are 2 year schools and 11 of them are 4-year schools. And in 2021. Just this past year, we expanded to the two historical black colleges and universities in Ohio, Wilberforce and Central State. So now we have a total of 17 schools participating in this program, so it's a real, career focused model, we do obviously pay for students tuition and those investments are important for people with disabilities that we serve. But the most important thing that I think our counselors offer is that career focused model, how to help them get into internships, how to get the job placements once you're done with school, how to give you the technology that you need to be successful in your studies, the additional support and wraparound services, whether that be interview clothes or a computer or whatever those things are, that you need to be successful in your school. And when we talk to the colleges, that was something that they saw as missing, that they saw that sometimes their students with disabilities are the people that they had the most difficulty finding an internship placement for, and they welcomed our business relations staff. So this has in addition to our dedicated counselors, there are two career development specialists that focus on kind of the business relations end of the program. They do employer spotlights career education. They have an internship dashboard. They do specialized hiring events. All those things that really kind of just help those students achieve their career success. It's not going to do anybody any good to get a degree and then not actually achieve the employment that they were looking to obtain   Carol: Exclamation point on the end of that. So I know your kind of earlier on in this project, are you starting to see some like what's the data telling you about it?   Susan: Yeah, definitely. We see a broader array of employment goals that were helping people to achieve definitely higher wages, obviously with people that are getting those credentials, those degrees. And I think that's really kind of you'd mentioned median earnings. We did a great job of getting people into jobs, but we do really need to focus on increasing the wages and the hours and thusly the median earnings of the people that we serve. And so that's really about helping them attain credentials and degrees that are going to move them into those higher wage occupations.   Carol: When you're really living into the spirit of the whole WIOA process, really, I mean, that speaks exactly to what Congress is trying to do back in 2014. I think that's great. So switching gears again a little bit when you and I visited, you know, a month or so ago, there are so many intriguing things that you talked about, but one of them that has really piqued my interest was your team's work with a drug courts, and I really hadn't heard of anything like that. So why don't you tell us and the listeners a little more about that?   Susan: Yeah, this is another great program in partnership that we have achieved. Again, this is part of Governor DeWine's vision and was part of his budget in the last biennium. That kind of established this partnership with Recovery Ohio, our Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. The Supreme Court of Ohio is a big player with this because they manage all these specialty dockets and our Office of Workforce Transformation. And so we had a successful model that had been developed in our Butler County, where we had a dedicated counselor that worked as a member of that drug court team to assist that person in their recovery. And when that person was ready to get started with employment, they would engage our counselor and they would work to help them figure out what kind of job and help them get that job. And then eventually we added an internal job developer that really helped again with that rapid engagement. You know, we're right there as part of the team. We're engaging them rapidly when it's time and we're quickly getting them into employment and that helps support the individual's recovery. This was a real successful model, and one of our governors important initiatives is to really focus on recovery and substance use disorders. And so this was just a great fit for us to expand. So in 2018, we expanded. So this is called jobs for recovery, And so we expanded into 7 counties. And right now we're expanding further into an additional 8 counties. This has been just a great partnership. I think when we talk to the courts, they have lots of people on these teams to support people in their recovery and avoiding the criminal justice system, and this really helps them have a dedicated resource. This was like a gap that they had identified, and people need to get work. Work supports recovery, but they didn't have an expert on the team around employment, and that's what OOD really brings to the table. And so we use that rapid engagement model, we place them into employment. We also can do some of those extra services. Get them transportation that they need to job interviews or again, interview clothes or other things that they didn't have resources for in the past. So it really filled a gap. So this has been just a great program in Ohio and it's still in the kind of ramping up phase, and it's just been a really positive and highly successful model.   Carol: What a difference it makes when you have elected officials that are like putting investments into this area with employment and people with disabilities, it's pretty amazing. I mean, I kind of wonder then where do you guys think you would be if that hadn't happened, if you didn't have Governor DeWine that had some of these initiatives?   Susan: Yeah, you know, I think we really tried hard. We think of our participants as our customers, business partners, our employer partners, but also our state agency partners, our customers. And so we want to be a part of the solutions to help them reach their goals. So whether it's a drug court that needs to help people get into employment to support their recovery, whether it's a developmental disabilities agency that is trying to move people from segregated settings into community employment, we can be a part of that solution.   Carol: I love it. It's exciting. I like to follow you guys. I know I get regular updates through one of my colleagues, Kristine Johnson, who lives in Ohio and subscribes to newsletters and said she's always sending me things she's like. Read this This is like amazing the work that they're doing, so I'm going to switch again a little bit to the pandemic, of course. So the pandemic, I know it's been brutal on VR. And when you look at the numbers over the last two years, it's been really, really tough. However, your agency, again, you're engaged in jobs now. So what is that all about?   Susan: So this was another cousin back in September 2018, we did a cousin to improve our job and candidate sourcing model. We have now more than six hundred and 50 employer partners that we are actively working with. And what this is, is really kind of identifying high demand positions within our employer partners and we make a searchable list available. Then we establish a process for quickly getting a person into placement with that employer partner. So when I rewind years ago and I was a counselor, people would come and say, I just want a job now, and I would say, Well, that's not how it works. I don't have a bank of jobs. We have to do our process and we're going to do a good job so that we know it's a good fit and so on and so forth. And that's just malarkey. You know, if somebody comes in and says, I need a job now, we need to say we're going to get you a job now, and we have six hundred and fifty business partners that we work with. There's not a reason that we can't do that. And so that's really what this was about is how do we as quickly as possible do that match? Still, because that's what our business partners, our employer partners appreciate about working with us is we're going to do that screening, but renew it quickly so that the needs of the business partner are met and the needs of our participant. So initially, that was called job. Now we pivoted a little bit with this when the pandemic hit and we moved to an urgent hiring list because soon after we went home back in March of 2020…   Carol: eons ago!   Susan: yes, yes, we learned quickly from our employer partners that they had just some urgent needs to fill spot. And so we like to say don't ever waste a crisis. So we really moved in a different direction with that. And so we started publishing and doing active candidates sourcing for these urgent hiring needs of our employer partners. And so we moved into doing virtual hiring events to directly source these candidates. So at these hiring events, we're actually doing interviews with the employers for open positions that they are actively recruiting for. And this has been a great model. We've had some that have been for us. We've done them for specific employers statewide. We've done some around certain industries, we've done some targeted for specific groups. We tried doing one for transition students last year, for example. We're about to do our second work from home virtual hiring events that are just employers who have work from home opportunities that are people really can benefit from. So that has been kind of an evolution over the last 5 years or so of this candidate sourcing model that we've had, and we've been tremendously successful with that. In fact, while our numbers are down a little bit with applications, eligibility, new plans, our placements and closures are comparable to or better than pre-pandemic or last year's numbers, with placement really pleased with the work that our staff have been doing to do these virtual hiring events. And continue to place people in light of the pandemic.   Carol: I was going to ask that I'm glad you said that about your numbers because I was curious. I know a number of you, probably in just a cohort with a few that are experiencing good placement numbers. I know a lot of folks it's kind of taint the last two years, so that sounds pretty creative with the virtual hiring and the remote work from home. A lot of people are interested in that, and it really can take away some of those barriers that some of our customers face with transportation and all that. Hoo ha. Right. When you can work from home, which is incredible, I love it. So when you look back and you analyze the impact of all this work you've done. How have the numbers looked for your customers as you reflect back kind of on the value overall of all of these projects that you've worked on?   Susan: Well, number one, getting off of order of selection has been a game changer for us. That's never a good situation to have to sit across the desk for somebody and say, we can't help you. We know we could, but we can't. And so that has been just a huge deal for us. But as I mentioned earlier, we've been averaging 23 1/2 days to eligibility for the previous 4 fiscal years. And we've really seen with all of these things our time from eligibility to plan trending down over the last fou4 years or so ago, we've been from about 60 days to about 49 days. And so that also has been just a tremendous benefit, customer service wise to the people that we serve. I just mentioned our placement and closure numbers. Those have been really great. And so kind of our next steps within the organization is really just to focus on the quality of the employment outcomes that we're achieving the credentials, getting more people into credential programs so that we can help them kind of move out of poverty and increase those median earnings for the program.   Carol: So for our listeners out there, what would you recommend, Susan, as some, you know, tips from yourself as far as if somebody is looking and thinking, we need to do our processes differently, like where do you even start? You guys have been doing this now for over a dozen years, and you have a lot of good learning experiences under your belt. What advice would you give to others?   Susan: I think I mentioned a few minutes ago, but don't waste a crisis. A crisis can really spur innovation. I know, for example, we have been trying to get remote counseling going for years, and it just never took off. But now remote counseling has been going great. Our participants love it. That wouldn't have happened without this pandemic. And so that's just one example. But Lean really is a great tool. It can't make the decisions for you, but it can give you the tools for looking at data and doing the process improvement to help make the right decisions for our customers. Another thing I would mention is just really listening to the voice of the customer, and that's an important component or concept within lean processes. And really looking at things through the lens of that customer experience really helps build a system around the needs and the preferences of the people that we serve, which is critical to our success. And then I think really thinking of ourselves as a workforce agency, we're not necessarily as much of a social service agency and really kind of looking at these processes and how they can raise those bar of expectations for the people that we serve. It's a great tool.   Carol: So I'm sure that there's going to be folks that want to reach out to you for a little advice or some assistance. How would folks best contact you?   Susan: Yeah. So I would welcome a conversation with anyone who wants to talk more about this so you can reach me by email. Probably the best way, Susan, S U S A N dot Pugh at OOD.Ohio.Gov is my email. Yes, please reach out. You can also see my contact information on our website as well, if you would like to reach out.   Carol: I sure appreciate your time. This has been really exciting and I'm sure you're going to get some contacts. I really thank you for your time today and I really wish you much success and everything you're doing, and I definitely will circle back with you down the road as you keep creating new and groovy things that you're doing in Ohio.   Susan: Thanks much. Thank you. I appreciate the time to share the good news about what our staff is doing out there. It's been a great ride.   Speaker1: 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!

Joining Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM Studio is Mark Erlichman, Deputy Director, Vocational Rehabilitation Employment Division, California Department of Rehabilitation. In this episode of Manager Minute, Mark covers the idea of Rapid Engagement. The idea behind it is to get customers in and move as quickly as possible to succeed. The California DORS Team has a variety of initiatives that they are working on. Mark and Carol will chat about a handful of those projects.   Learn about California's expedited enrollment process, resource navigators, and the sector-based service teams.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Please stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management. The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main websiteand clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the Center.     Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Get in and Get er' Done! Making VR Processes Work How California Makes VR Work for Customers!   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAAC 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, Vocational Rehabilitation Employment Division with California Department of Rehabilitation. So Mark, thanks for being here. How are things going in California?   Mark: Thank you so much for the invitation. Things in California are going about the same way they're going across the country. We're coping, we're managing, but I'm excited that we're continuing to look at improving. So in spite of the pandemic, we've been able to stay open and we've been able to sell, serve our consumers.   Carol: Glad to hear it. I'm glad to hear that. Well, today's topic covers this idea of rapid engagement, and the idea behind that is to get customers in and move as quickly as possible to succeed. You'd spoken to me a couple of weeks ago about the saying you like to go by. Our customers are and must feel more important than the process. And I hear a lot of Joe Xavier in that statement and eager to talk more about the variety of initiatives that you have in California. I believe that you have a list of over 20 projects that you and the California DOR team are working on, and so we're going to just chat about a handful of those today. So Marc, can you tell our listeners a little bit more about you, your career, the agency, like how many customers you're serving?   Mark: Sure, thank you. As you mentioned, I'm the deputy director and our employment division here. So we provide services to the general consumers when you have a blind field services division that worked with individual or blind, but we work with pretty much everybody else. And so in any given year, we probably serve somewhere between 80 to 90 thousand participants. So that includes our potentially eligible students with disabilities. So we have about thirteen hundred staff. We work out of about 80 dedicated offices and dozens of other locations, including one stops now called American Job Centers. So I started my career as a counselor way back in nineteen ninety four the dark ages pre-internet and it was right out of college, got my degree in rehabilitation counseling. But since I started, I've been very fortunate to move up within our department and I became a supervisor, a manager, then a district administrator. And then I joined the executive team in about 2012 as an assistant deputy director. And since 2019, I've been the deputy director and like I mentioned and responsible for VR Student Services and also our Business Services team.   Carol: I love to hear that I love it when people are kind of grown up through the system, and I think it's really cool. We've got that good opportunity working with Joe Xavier. I think a lot of him and his really awesome leadership style and his innovativeness.   Mark: Yeah, he's great. It's actually kind of fun working with him because typically I felt people try to be cautious and push back when you're trying to be innovative. Joe actually pushes us in the other direction. If we're not being innovative enough, we hear it.   Carol: Oh yeah, that's Joe for you. He pushes all of us, even if we don't work for him, makes the whole country better. I love it. So you told me when we were having our conversation before that consumers never more motivated in their life than the first moment that they engage us. So can you talk a little about your expedited enrollment process and what that entails and how that's impacted your data?   Mark: Sure, absolutely. And you're right. Our approach to customer service really starts from day one. When I was a counselor working with consumers, I realized, like you mentioned, that there never really are going to be more motivated than that very first time they make the decision to go back to work or return to work. They look us up or they find a department, they make an appointment, they make arrangements for transportation. They may need to make arrangements for childcare. They may take two or three buses to get to our office. Then they sit in the waiting room. They may sit through an orientation and then they're given a stack of forms to fill out and told to come back later. And they go through all of that just on faith alone because they don't know where there's actually anything in it for them. And we did ask that question is when is that individual ever going to be more motivated than at that point? So rather than putting them off by telling them we have 60 days to find you eligible, so don't expect to hear from us, what we do is we actually try to do everything we can that very first day. So we really look at what a consumer or an applicant wants. They really want answer to the three questions, which is how can you help me? Can you help me at all? And when can we get started? So what we decided to do, recognizing that we want to keep that momentum going is that we wanted to make an eligibility determination and start the process, keep that forward progress and keep their momentum going from the very beginning. So about three years ago, we began rolling out what we call expedited enrollment. This process supports our train rehabilitation counselors and they are all trained. All our counselors have master's degree. We use their professional judgment to make a determination about somebody's eligibility, and we started with the understanding of the federal regulations. Support this, then there's never, ever been a requirement for medical or school records to be put in the case file. There's never been a requirement for additional evaluations or sending somebody for testing. So what our counselors do is whenever appropriate, and it's almost quite frequently appropriate, our counselors make a determination based on a readily apparent decision. Ability that they have a disabling condition and through a skilled interview that they can benefit from services for us, one of the things we took a look at is what is the inherent risk in doing that? We found out that less than two percent of our consumers have ever found not eligible for services due to the severity of their disability. In those cases, we would have to do a trial work experience anyway. And the vast majority of individuals come in and are great historians about their disability. So we did a statewide rollout to all of our offices that included staff training and set the expectation that expedited enrollment or finding somebody eligible based on counselors observation is our standard method of determining eligibility and requesting lengthy records or ordering testing or further evaluations will always be the exception here. So we did statewide training. Like I mentioned, we included Joe and we conclude our directorate. Many of US executives went participate in the training, and we even had a staff attorney come out to assure staff that this is consistent with the regulations and nobody's going to get in trouble. We reinforce the message and continue to reinforce the message through a couple of things. We changed our services application form to reflect the enrollment process, recognizing the consumer is the best historians. So we asked them How can we help you? We generate reports of utilization and expedited enrollment, so we see how many individuals are found eligible using this process throughout the state. And we're also going to be updating our regulations to clearly and unmistakably reflect that this is the process that we use. As I mentioned, the counselor has always been able to make that eligible determination on relevant professional judgment. And if they have a readily apparent disability, we just help define that. So how are we doing? You asked.   Carol: I did ask, How's that going with the data?   Mark: All right. So even though cultural change and changing old habits is really difficult, we are actually in that as of the end of December of 2021. So as of this last December, about two thirds of all of our applicants are being determined eligible for services using expedited enrollment, and we're defining that as being found eligible within five days of application.   Carol: Wow!   Mark: In fact, 40 percent of the consumers that apply for services in December were found eligible on the actual same day of application. So they're actually everything was put into the system, including their eligibility determination. And for us,   Carol: that's fantastic!   Mark: Again, from where we were to having two out of three consumers are found eligible within the first five days is tremendous and we did look at the data. I do believe that that's fantastic. But for me, that really isn't enough because a consumer doesn't really care about eligibility determination. That's our process. And like we mentioned, the person should always be more important than the process. It really is about how quickly can we get somebody from interest to services? And so we've also been keeping track of planned timelines, how quickly somebody gets from eligibility to plan, and we've seen a reduction in that as well. So not only people have been found eligible more quickly, but their plans are also implemented much more quickly as well.   Carol: Well, I want to underscore what you're saying because I know a lot of agencies are really struggling with this area. There's a lot of old practices and I remember it even being at Minnesota Blind and people were requesting this medical report and all of that. I'm like, Listen, like you are a trained professional rehabilitation counselor. You can see this impairment as individuals coming in the door. You're going through that skilled interview, you're being able to assess that. We're able to benefit them. Like, why are we running people through these other paces? Because I think sometimes in VR, we're almost exhausting. Like it's exhausting for the customer, right?   Mark: And I don't think any one of us would want to go through the process that we put our consumers through. To me, that's always the best test of where you need to go. Would you accept that for yourself or a family member?   Carol: Absolutely. So how staff have they embraced this? Like, are people really like they're seeing what a change this has made?   Mark: I mean, universally, no. But the vast maj ority of our staff are seeing this as a tremendous boon to their jobs. I mean, they really like making that consumer feel like they're the most important person that they're working with. And really those individuals that are hesitant in this counselor and sometimes have been hesitant. It's been really around habit and it's been around fear. And so as we address those, we're seeing more and more people embrace this, and we did learn some lessons from the very beginning. We thought that everybody would be excited. And after a while when we recognize that there are some counselors that weren't, we went back through and generate a report. Change your application to really got communicated clearly that it's the expectation so people should feel comfortable.   Carol: That's excellent. And I feel like it's putting back kind of that professionalism into VR that counselors may have felt was stripped away from some of the more case management aspects of WIOA and all the data entry and all of that. It's like, this is a classic example of using your skills and what you learned in your graduate degree and making something awesome happening and making such a connection with that customer right off the get go.   Mark: Absolutely. And would also really help was communicating to the counselors that we're trusting your professional judgment and the operative word here is trust, and you're not sure that you can still request. Records, you can't still work with the consumer and do further evaluations. You don't have to and you shouldn't have to. But once councilors understood that it's their judgment and so for us, two out of three is great. I'm looking for more than that. We don't know what the exact right percentage is, but we do know that whenever possible, that momentum that we talked about, that momentum should continue for all of our consumers.   Carol: That's awesome. I love it. So let's shift a little bit to talk about another project you have cooking with your councilors, and that's the councilors getting in and working immediately with those customers at risk of losing their job or needing to retain their employment. So what does that look like? Are you seeing some success with this?   Mark: A great question, actually. I think what you're referring to is what we call our Rapid Engagement. And so I think that's kind of the theme of this, and we just try to find a catchy name for it. But in simple words, it's kind of keeping with Jo's message and Jo's message to us and we've ever heard, and it's been very, very clear that we need to meet our participants where they are. It doesn't matter where we are, we need to meet them where they are. And we're not just talking about physically because that's important too, but we're really are talking about where they are in their lives and in their job search and or in their employment. And so recognizing that not all applicants are at the same place, some could be employed right now. Others may have been unemployed for a long period of time, but they're all in a different place. We wanted to stop making everybody go through the same linear sequential process, which is again, process shouldn't Trump person. And so our pilot involves assigning a specialist counselor within a district to what we call a Rapid Engagement Caseload. So their primary responsibility is to assist individuals that will meet at least one of the following criteria. There were a former QR consumer. We still have available that information from their former case, so we're not starting over or is a referral from a public or private organization that serves individuals with disabilities like a kind of behavioral health program or a rehabilitation hospital or an agency serving the Blind or the Deaf and Visually Impaired? Clearly, they've already been determined that they have a disability or they have a readily apparent disability, which is that we have then go through Expedited Enrollment. So it's one of those conditions, and they either require assistance in regaining employment because they just recently lost their job due to a reduction in work hours or to a layoff. They require some type of job retention services because their personal conditions have changed or their employment conditions have changed. They may have an exacerbation or they may have gotten promoted, or the job duties may have changed and they need some assistance or that there require some services from us to promote within the same business. And so they clearly are eligible for services and they need services immediately. Why wouldn't we treat them a little differently and really expedite their services? And so what the counselor does is using Expedited Enrollment, they are found eligible and typically at that same time, they write the plan because what do you really need to know if somebody wants to keep their job? There's not a lot of planning involved. The effort in the it should be OK, what services do you need? But you're not doing job search. You're not doing research into the occupation. Where you really are doing is you're helping somebody, as you know, if you need to keep your job, you probably can't wait two weeks, three weeks or three months.   Carol: Right. Process shouldn't Trump, person? I love that. I just have to say that statement.   Mark: Absolutely.   Carol: That's awesome.   Mark: And the consumers have been extremely grateful. I mean, the feedback that we've gotten from the counselors and the notes and the thanks not just from our participants, but some of the employers have reached out as well that to thank us for how should I put it in a nice enough way because I'm government, we didn't act like government,   Carol: Which should be the goal of all we are. We don't want to be that bureaucratic government, even though we're in the government. Very cool. So are you seeing some good success from that then with people as far as your numbers, then with helping individuals to retain employment or regain employment, is that playing out in your data?   Mark: Well, we're not seeing anybody drop out pre-plan, which is always fun because it's always so discouraging when you see somebody who comes out to request for services and then before anything even gets started, they change their mind or they go away. So we don't see that for somebody goes online right away. And we're not seeing people drop out of their plans due to lack of contact or which is typically the most common. And so the success rate. And again, this is relatively new, relatively new pilot. So I can't say, look, we have a 65 or 85 percent success rate, which is I'm guessing that's where we're going to end up because of what we're seeing. But what we're seeing is the consumers are much more engaged and the services are getting at the consumer much more rapidly. So we're hopeful. And from what we're seeing, this isn't going to be a pilot for long.   Carol: Well, that's half the battle. I mean, I think the whole country is struggling with this because artists say they will hold up their statistics in a fall or spring CSAVR conference. And you're like, Oh my gosh, you know, all the people exiting before playing and people closing because you can't find them unable to locate and all of that. And so how do you get at this piece? I think there's going to be states definitely clamoring for your number later to try to talk to you about what you're doing because I know I've talked to many people and they're really. Struggling around this area,   Mark: And we continue to as well, that's where we're trying, and we don't expect that out of the 20 plus efforts that we're trying to modernize, that they're all going to work and I hope they don't because if they all work, then we're not trying hard enough and we're not being creative enough and we're not pushing the envelope. We're hoping that some of these do stick for us. It's important to keep data and to track these. In the past, we would try these efforts and never ask the question, is it working? And we're trying to approach these projects totally differently. They all have project charters, they all have evaluation plans, and the expectation is that we do more of what's working and stop doing things that aren't.   Carol: I love that. I love that. I think that's the message right there. Underscore VR, end of our conversation. Listen to Marc, let's do this. I like that you guys are trying a lot of things. I think sometimes people are really afraid and they've been stuck. You get stuck in patterns of doing things. It's taken that step back and taking a look and going, Why are we doing it that way? It is not working. It's not working out. So that's really cool. I know you have another newer pilot, you have a million of them, but this one with some positions that you added to your five districts, I think you called them Resource Navigators as part of a response team. So how does that pilot work?   Mark: We're calling it our Community Resource Navigator position, and we've got 14 districts in the state, and so we're piloting in 5 of them. And these are 5 districts that were particularly hit hard by 1 of our many or a couple of our our many disasters in California, particularly some of the fire impacted counties. And so these Community Resource Navigators and gauge applicants can eligible participants really early on the process. And again, that early engagement, we may not be able to do a Rapid Engagement in terms of providing them plan services because there's still some planning that needs to occur. For us, it's important for the consumers to continue that momentum. And so when our staffing engage with our applicants and our or eligible consumers, the plan is to help them gain the support and assistance that they may need down the road. It's not just telling them, here you need to go. Apply for financial aid if you want to go to school or here's the county welfare program. Or here's the Medicaid office apply for health care services or here in Snap or Food or Nutrition Assistance Program. These are the things you may benefit from. These are the supports that we think would help you matriculate into your employment program. There's no reason to wait to apply for them. And by the way, we're not just referring you there. The Sierra has actually walked the individual through and help them with the application process, and so they get to know your local welfare staff. They get to know the nutrition, the food stamp. When we call our peer the Snap program and they get to know the housing authority staff and they work with our consumers or applicants to help them apply for those services, they'll connect them with Independent Living Center. And so the idea is if somebody is coming to us because they absolutely have immediate needs and we know the hierarchy of needs, you know, if you don't have shelter or food, employment seems really far off. So we have some consumers that'll come. We'll help them. They'll actually get get on some financial assistance, then we'll get some housing assistance and they'll say, OK, let me stabilize and I'll come back so they don't start a plan, then decide that they're not ready for employment. They get the support they need right away. And those individuals that continue with us will have the support and the wraparound supports. And really, it really is what we call the application that whole person approach, which is it's not just about employment, it's about the whole person. So when we're talking about evaluation for us, we're evaluating the crowds by the number of individuals that are closed unsuccessfully. We want to see a reduction of applicants that go through the process just to drop out. And we are we're seeing, I think for us started this about a year and a half ago. So we're starting to see some of the first evaluations. And what we're seeing is there is a dramatic reduction in the number of individuals that were closed out successfully that received the CRN services because they didn't drop out because, well, they didn't have a place to stay. They didn't drop out because they had an exacerbation to their health and they became dependent on family support again and they connected them in the living services. So we are seeing that and I think we're optimistic that that's one of these things that we're talking about and say, Yeah, we'll do more of that.   Carol: I think that's going to be exciting. I think when you look longitudinally at that data and you go, you take it out now you're out a year and a half, you start taking that data out two and a half, three, four, five years. I think you're probably going to see some probably amazing results because like you say, the person doesn't have food. It's hard to worry about. Like, I'm going to get this job, but I don't even have anything to eat and I'm starving, and I have to go to an interview and try to be on my best foot. Or I didn't have a place to wash my clothes or I couldn't take a shower or do any of that. It's getting back to that. Yeah, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like you said, very important. That is super interesting. You also have staff that are embedded in business. I thought this was really cool and you were talking about some staff embedded within an HR department. Can you tell me a little more about that?   Mark: Absolutely. Recognizing that business is a customer of our system, again, that was have been, but it's really emphasized through WIOA. We reached out to employers and said, OK, ask them, what do you need? So we. And one of the things that came back is that they wanted our assistance, they wanted to ask questions, but they wanted a single point of contact because they don't have to call a new person every day. They don't want to hear from multiple people reaching out to them. So we said, Great, will for this business, here's a single point of contact, and that's where we're talking as we were brainstorming. One of my managers pointed out saying, Well, we really are looking at more outstations and we really are looking at more of a mobile workforce and this is pre-COVID. So we actually were meeting people in person. And so the single point of contact and approach that employers saying, would you be interested in having a person come out and spend time with you? And they said, Yeah, that would be great. I mean, would you be willing to give them some office space and say, yes, we would be happy to do that and give her some office space in their HR shop. And this is a really, really very large employer. It's a military contractor. They've got thousands of employees in their facility in that county. And for us, that's ample opportunity to kind of make a difference there so that started with two days a month of office hours. And it's kind of quiet start because nobody knew she was there. And then when she introduced herself, they have a disability affinity group.So she started attending that and talking about rehab and rehab services. And so their employees with disabilities or family members of employees with disabilities became informed about what we did and why we were there. Managers who had issues or questions about disability or accommodations, they would have started approaching her. And so in the first 3 months after about the first 6 months, then COVID hit and then now we've been providing that same support virtually like the rest of the world. But in the first 3 or 4 months, we got six referrals from that employer. There are other self-referral or they're referred by one of their managers. All 6 were found eligible. Developed 5 plans within just within a few days of application because we just met them there at the employment side there, right and the 6th applicant that we didn't write a plan for or we worked on a plan, but we didn't actually implement. The plan was because their supervisor and the employee said, Oh, we can do that. We don't need you. We don't need your help. Thank you for the information. And they went ahead and provided the accommodation as the employee and that employee didn't need our services and the other 5 were serving. And really, we offered them services, job retention, job promotion, but really marketed in two ways. One, we can help them with their hiring needs because this counselor can also set up hiring events, and we want to help your employees remain productive for you as the employer. And so they really appreciated that.   Carol: Everybody's looking for that. I mean, they're looking at ways to retain their employees. And if they're struggling, you may love that where your counselor is able to go in and maybe they're struggling, they don't know the right thing to do. And even though they might have like a disability specialist on staff, sometimes I find those folks really aren't, you know, the people that are kind of charged with that role. So you're bringing this other lens in and really helping support those individuals so they can keep their employment. That is excellent, really awesome.   Mark: You're totally right because we found that most of the time where their disability expert is typically somebody who is a diversity person, and so they've got a wide range of responsibilities. And for us, we like our niche. We are really good with disability and they don't have to be experts because they have access to that expert and really become a really good partnership. In fact, that employer has several other sites in California, and they're asking for the same. There was another really large employer in the Southern California area that we started talking with right before the pandemic, that we have a follow up meeting later this spring to do that as well and were literally looking at having somebody there every week.   Carol: That is super cool. I bet that has to be really rewarding for that counselor again, looking at ways of developing work differently so the counselors they feel engaged in and excited about their work and want to keep working for VR and not leaving us for the VA or whatever else. But that's gotta be super Rewarding.   Mark: And absolutely anybody is thinking of this for us. Just bringing in the employer was really enthusiastic and we actually had to sign non-disclosure because the military contractor, there's a background check. But just offering that free, you know, free service to them and free support to them, they're extremely grateful. And if you want to change an employer's culture, make it really easy for them to hire, promote and employ and recruit individuals with disabilities because that's what changes it isn't wanting to be more disability accessible and more disability friendly. It's actually having the experience and having the employees that reflect the world for us, the rest of the state.   Carol: Yeah, you're spot on. I know when I talked to joe on a previous podcast, I love Joe because he was telling me the microscope and the telescope, you know, be looking down and looking ahead. But he mentioned something really cool that you guys were looking at Sector Based Service teams. So how do we learn a little more about that and how that works? Do tell.   Mark: Really excited about this. We have this concept. We've started working on identifying how we would roll something like this out, and we actually applied for one of the Disability Innovation Fund grants and we got it this year. And so we have a five year grant. And so this allows us to not just take the concept we wanted to try out, but actually create a real research study and bring technical assistance and tools to bear on to see how this may impact really our. And our consumer success, the grant name is the Pathways to Success program, but it is that Sector Based strategy.   Carol: Are you doing it alone or are you in a collaborative with another state?   Mark: Oh, we're doing it on our own.   Carol:  Ok.   Mark: We figured we had ample consumers to work with in California.   Carol: Yeah, that's awesome.   Mark: And we started laying the foundation because we started working on the process. But having the ability to have this a set aside with a study and web have the university partner with San Diego State University and we have other partners as well. We got 15 letters of support across the state, including from our labor agency and our workforce partners, so we're really excited about that. The way I explain the sector based strategy is this typically a consumer is served by somebody from our program based on their proximity. So it's a consumer zip code that typically dictates who they're working with and sometimes through specialization. So you may have a counselor for the deaf, or you may have a counselor that works with supported employment caseload, but typically that's it. If I'm your consumer is because you're my zip code or because you're specializing in the school caseload. And so I remember working as a counselor and I had a transition aide, youth caseload of some migrant farm workers, justice involved individuals and those in support employment. So I had a variety of consumers in my zip code. So I was expected to be a disability expert. So, you know, went to school, you know, got that and learned that the consumer is the best expert in their disability. So, you know, so I didn't have to be an expert in every disability, but it was also my job to help the consumer prepare for employment, and I needed to then know about all these occupations. So at one time, I think I had a butcher, a teacher, a janitor, a software technician, a security guard, dental hygienist and a bank teller. And I think maybe even a line cook. Those are all plans that I had. And so I was expected as a brand new counselor to figure out how a cook gets a job and how a teacher gets a job, or what does a dental hygienist have to go through to get a job? And what is the security guard need? And I did it every time we had to do research, and I was never, never became an expert in anything. I became a generalist but never became an expert. And so writing a really, really good IPE with someone really is a challenge. And so we said, what have we have rather than the proximity? Because that's not really that important, particularly not nowadays, because you can work with people remotely and that's part of our sector based program.   Carol: Absolutely.   Mark: So we said, OK, what if we look at what are the high wage, high demand sectors in California? There were employers are clamoring for employees and why don't we prepare them a workforce by understanding exactly what they need, developing relationship with the sector employers and then having everybody that is interested in those specific occupations work for that same counselor. And so since we can use technology that can be located anywhere in the state because, for example, we have a health care specialist who's working with consumers across the state and helping guide them through how the Irvine Medical Center hires or how Kaiser Permanente hires. But actually doing it because they know somebody for Kaiser. They know somebody at Irvine Medical Center because they've told them this is how we hire. This is how if you want to get in the door, this is the credentialing or this is the training that you need. And here are some programs. So they become experts. So this pilot or this actually this grant now, so we have five specific sectors. One is health care, advanced manufacturing and green energy with information technology and communications and with biotechnology. Those are high demand, high wage sectors in California, and we have one specialist counselor that works with each of those sectors. We call our sector the business consultants that actually work with the employers and develop paid work experience. And we wrote in a component that almost everybody, if they don't have experience in the field already, they're actually all going to get paid work experience in their field. And the employers are willing and we set aside funds to do that because there's nothing better than try it before you buy it on both ends because we know how great our consumers are. We want our employers to find that out as well.   Carol: I love that. I love that. So that's only probably been going a few months now.   Mark: This summer, we put a framework together. We got the grant started October one. We're actually working on our contracts for some technical assistance because we want these jobs to be available to everybody, regardless of disability. So we're working with some specialists that are going to provide technical assistance and training to work with individuals on the spectrum and also individuals with intellectual disabilities. Because we believe skilled manufacturing is skill. I mean, that high wage here in California, we want to make sure that everybody has that opportunity. And it was really interesting. Even though it's been a few years, a few months, we're already seeing quite a few exciting things happen. They've really built up their reputation with the employer. So we're actually seeing some of the employers referring people to us to prepare them for that employer so they know somebody. And so one example is there's actually we actually got a consumer who wanted to go to medical school but didn't have the resources she was working. And so she going have the resources to go to medical school. She heard about us and actually, it's really fun because the question we're getting now is we understand that you're looking for people to work in health care or a nurse and not have a disability. I want to go to work. I hear you're preparing people for these types of jobs. And so when that consumer or that, well, now she's a consumer. But when she applied to us, she didn't really know about it, except. For we prepare people to get into the medical field. She has a significant disability, so clearly right in our wheelhouse, and we wanted to work with her, so we actually found her eligible virtually. They have never physically met. They met virtually through Zoom. The counselor worked with the consumer and actually wrote a plan for a doctor. And so she's actually a medical school now. She wrote a really nice note to her accounts. They're saying for the first time, she actually feels like she belongs somewhere.   Carol: Oh man.   Mark: I got chills because that's exactly what we want. We want people to feel like they belong.   Carol: And you're talking professions, too, that are not food, filth and flowers. You know, it's you're talking above that and really family sustaining wages careers. That's what VR is all about.   Mark: I can't think of a more fantastic role model if going to a physician with a significant disability and recognizing yourself in that physician because, well, I've been going to doctors for a long, long time and I've never really seen somebody who reflected the people that I work with. Absolutely. That's really cool. This cancer, her experience now she can work with anybody in the state, is interested in medical school, nursing a school or other careers in the health care sector. Because not only does she know about it, she also has the connections now. And one thing that's really cool about this when we talk about sector based, if you align all these consumers by their vocational goal in their sector, there's another thing you can do that's kind of fun. And for us, part of the project part of the grant is we're developing some electronic tools, and one of them is a web based online learning management system where the consumers that are, you know, let's say, health care consumers, they're all we've got twenty five individuals looking for nursing jobs and they're nursing. They can actually sign up, become a cohort and like a classroom, and the counselor can share information and job leads with them. But they can also speak with each other and kind of create their own network because we know that's how people get jobs. They can voluntarily put in their own name and communicate to the degree that they want. They can share resources, they can share their experiences and hopefully they build their own network and we're going to allow them to continue to be on that forever. Even though a case is closed. If you're somebody who worked through that and you're a nurse, maybe you can be a mentor. Maybe you can be a reference, maybe you can be a resource, or maybe some day, maybe an employer, one of the consumers that is going through that process. So we're going to roll that out this year. We're going to try that as well as some other things, and we have five years to try this out. We're hoping that over the five years that we're going to serve these 13, at least 13 other individuals that we're going to see if this makes a difference and we really believe it will.   Carol: I know we'll see you at a CSAVR conference down the road talking about all of the outcomes from this very cool project. I do want to get to one other thing because I know you have like maybe 14 more, but I wanted to talk about how you are opening up your operations to serve customers seven days a week and you're looking at outside of kind of the normal eight to four or nine to five type of hours. Tell me a little bit about that.   Mark: Yeah, thank you. And now it's great because we're looking at some of our future initiatives and we've actually started having the conversations and looking into and putting together the proposal to roll this out. And really, this is just one of our continuing initiatives to improve our customers experience with us. And so since we have now through October, we had this force evolution where the world of work has changed and we have technology and we have a great percentage of our staff works at least part time from home. For us, there's no reason to believe that that concept won't allow us to do something else. And even though we are huge state and we've got hundreds of miles in each direction where consumers could live and interact with our staff, the ability to work virtually allows us then to cover the whole state for somebody that could be located in the middle of the state or in the north part of the state. And so currently we're serving participants predominantly between eight and five p.m. a Monday through Friday. Sometimes, you know, there's some wiggle room. We have some offices may start at seven or seven thirty, but typically it's between eight to five. But we know that people who are in school or they're working, that's probably at the same time as they're in school or working. And so it's really hard to connect. And we also know that emergencies, they don't keep an eight to five schedule either. And so using technology and recognizing that people are able to work from home, they can text, they can use FaceTime and Zoom. We want to expand the availability. So we're putting out the option for our staff, for counselors and for our support staff to change their schedules, to work Saturday and take a weekday off so they can work Tuesday through Saturday, or they can work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So for us to start with opening Saturday and having five or six or seven, depending on utilization, we'll figure out what the right number of staff are. And through our website and through what we're building our portal out and through our portal or through our website. Anybody who has a need or a question can actually connect with a counselor and actually get services on Saturdays as well. And so we're going to take a look at that Saturday in terms of getting the technology and the systems to work and see what the utilization is. Plan is, whether it's seven or seven thirty in the morning to seven o'clock in the evenings, and again our staff would be able to work from home. The idea, again, is that if somebody needs something that they should be able to get a hold of somebody, an actual person next month. Actually, we're rolling out our consumer. Payment card is instead of having checks or other processes to get services to consumers, they'll actually going to have their debit card that we issue them. And the way we set it up is that upon ordering it, we can refill that card within 30 minutes of us requesting it from our vendor that if somebody needs books, supplies transportation or they're starting to work on Saturday and they need their work boots, or they need to get something for a work uniform that they can contact us, the counselor, like our counselor of the day, would during the regular week would be able to do the authorization, work with our office technician and then sponsor the card so they can get services on Saturday as well. And the goal for us really is and all these efforts is to both modernize and to improve our customers experience with us because we need to meet them where they are. And this is another one of examples of where we're trying to do that.   Carol: Well, I'm sure many of the things that you talked about today are going to pique some of our listeners interest. So I just wondering what is the best way for someone to get a hold of you if they just want to get a little bit more information about one or more of the things that you've mentioned today?   Mark: I'd be happy to connect with anybody. I mean, we started meeting with several other states, both we're taking information from them and we're sharing with them about some of our initiatives. If anybody else has any questions, probably the best way is, you know, just shoot me an email and I'll be happy to respond. And likely I will connect you with the experts in this because I'm talking like, I'm doing all this hard work is really my team and my team is phenomenal, and I connect with the experts and people are actually living this and be happy to participate as well. Anything I can do and any information I can provide or answer any questions. Really happy to do that. And we recognize that even though we're California, we're all one family. So across the country, we share resource information and we hope successes with all our other programs.   Carol: I've always appreciated that about California. You guys have always been really willing. I know I reached out many times in my time when I was Minnesota. I would reach out for different ideas and just to get more information. And I've appreciated that you guys have been super open and really responsive because I feel like when we lift each other up like it lifts up the whole country. So can you give us your email address?   Mark: Yeah. So it's mark m A r k period Erlichman e r l i c h man at D as in dog o r C A dot Gov.   Carol: Well, I appreciate that Mark. I really appreciate you spending time with me today. I know you're super busy, so thanks for being on the show. I'm definitely going to check back to see how some of these new initiatives are going down the road. You'll have more metrics and fun things to share, so I hope you have a great day.   Mark: Really appreciate it. Thank you. And have a good  day.   Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VRtAC 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!

Full Transcript Shannon Austin, Executive Director of Vocational Rehabilitation at the Pennsylvania (PA) Department of Labor and Industry and Carole Clancy, Bureau Director of Special Education at the Commonwealth of PADepartment of Education join Carol Pankow and Missy Diehl in the VRTAC-QM Studio to talk about the important partnership between Vocational Rehabilitation and Education and how collaboration and commitment helped create and implement a strong partnership in Pennsylvania.   Check out and subscribe to the PA Transition Resources and Transition Tidbits on the web at https://www.pasecondarytransition.com.   Listen Here   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Please stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management. The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main websiteand clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the Center.     Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Education and VR - Let's Talk Collaboration     {Music} Speaker1: 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, I am so fortunate to have representatives from both VR and education to join me in the studio in an extra special bonus as having my colleague Missy deal helping me facilitate this conversation. Today we have Shannon Austin, Executive Director of Vocational Rehabilitation at the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. And Carol Clancy, Bureau Director of Special Education at the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Education. So welcome to you all.     Carol Clancy: Thank You.   Shannon: Thank you. Glad to be here.   Carol: Today, we're going to dig into the very important topic of the partnership between VR and education that was brought to the forefront through the passage of W Iowa. When Missy talked with me about tackling this topic, you two were at the top of the list for people to connect with. we're now seven and a half years post WIOA passage, and states are at varying degrees when it comes to collaboration and cooperation between VR and education. We know that there are so many linkages between IDEA and WIOA in terms of transition and collaboration, and it's critical for a state as large as Pennsylvania. With well over one hundred and fifty thousand students with disabilities. We're really excited to hear from our Special ED and VR directors in Pennsylvania and how they've been able to not only talk about collaboration but create and implement a strong partnership. So let's dig in. So, Carol, I'm going to kick this to you first. Can you tell us a little bit about your role and your agency and kind of the whole landscape in Pennsylvania around the students with disabilities?   Carol Clancy: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us here today. It's a pleasure to talk about this topic that we are super passionate about. I'm the director of Special Education for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. I am one of many bureaus at the Pennsylvania Department of Education that works collaboratively to support K through 12 plus students as part of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. The role of the Bureau Special Education is to ensure that students eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act receive the educational services they're entitled to, to ensure that LEAs maintain compliance with IDEA and to provide the technical assistance to the local education agencies to ensure they have the knowledge base and the skill set, as well as the best practices to meet those expectations. There are about 300,000 students that receive special education services across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and 500 local education agencies. Each one of those local education agencies are ultimately responsible to ensure providing free and appropriate public education. Pennsylvania is also divided up into 29 regions. Each one of those regions has an intermediate unit that provides regional support and services to those local educational agencies in a variety of capacities. These intermediate units have training consultants that are able to go into the schools, into classrooms and to provide the necessary coaching and training that teachers may need. They are a central support system for that region and a liaison between the local education agencies and the Bureau of Special Education. Finally, the Bureau Special Education also has our technical assistance arm, the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance System Network. This technical assistance provides an array of trainings, resources, asynchronous synchronous coaching supports to intermediate units, as well as local education agencies based on needs that are surfaced through monitoring or need service from the field that is also divided up into three different regions a west, central and eastern region.   Carol: Holy smokes. That is a bunch. Thank you, Carol. So, Shannon, I'm going to kick it over to you. Can you tell us a little bit about your role and about your agency? And kind of like, how many offices do you have, how many students are you serving and all of that good stuff?   Shannon: Yeah. Pleasure to be here with you guys today and just really talk about our partnership with the Department of Education and working very closely with Carol over the last two and a half years. Currently within OVR. I am the executive director of OVR. We have about eight hundred and fifty staff or at full capacity. We are considered a combined agency, so we have the Bureau of Vocational Rehab Services and the Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services. We're serving every disability population. We also are one of the few states that have a comprehensive rehab training center, HTC Commonwealth Technical Institute, where we are also doing training and Pre-ETS and working with young people in this space. We have 21 offices, of which six are co-located in various locations throughout the state. Structurally, when we're looking at doing transition and pre-employment transition services, we have a division that is dedicated to transition services and pre-employment transition services, and they really focus on the policy development training and they're doing training with the VR staff. CRRP community rehab facilities providers that we may on board to do services in this space, employers at times to develop different work based learning experiences and may be key stakeholders that we may have to engage with. And then the crucial part that we're here to really talk about is implementing of programs and services.   We currently have vocational rehab counselors and early reach coordinators that are assigned to all the school districts that we have, and that includes the public, the private and those cyber schools. We have a referral system that is in place where they are working with the school districts, whether they are going in. We have a resource schedule for the cyber schools where we're working with them. We also have designated days where we're going in there monthly, weekly, biweekly into school districts based on just the referrals that we have throughout within a certain school district to meet the needs of those students to implement pre-employment transition services. And with that, some of the structural things that we have that we are really doing with the school districts or the LEAs within the Commonwealth, we have a lot of interagency transition, continual meetings that we're doing. So we really take a team approach. And as we go in a little bit further and talk about some of our MOU work, it's really going to highlight some of the things how we look at transition services and pre-employment transition services within the Commonwealth. Another thing that may make us slightly different than some states, we also have Act. 26, what is a state mandate for over in collaboration with the Department of Education to really collect and report data related to high school students with disabilities and with facilitating the process of job and career development between the local education agencies and employers. And according to the outline of Act 26 in coordination with LEAs, OVR, provides information in developing individual education plans for high school students with disabilities to ensure that job skills training is included in their plans when appropriate and when possible. Overall, our staff will attend education planning meetings, so IEPs, in person or alternative format, whether it's video conferencing conference calls when invited by the LEA's. So that's the basic structure of what we have in over and kind of where we're at. We currently in a year, we're serving anywhere. When we begin to look at the numbers, we have a data sharing agreement between us and VSC where we share data. And with that, in any year, we are serving anywhere from 165,000to 180,000 students that meet that criteria of 14 to 21 years of age in the state that fall under pre-employment transition services.   Carol: Wow, that's a bunch, great.   Missy: Are we ready to dive into the next question, Carol?   Carol: You bet. Missy.   Missy: All right. So can we talk a little bit? Maybe we'll start with Carol again. We'll just kind of yin and yang. You two describe a little bit about your relationship between the two entities, Education and VR in Pennsylvania and what it looked like before what it looks like now. How it's evolved?   Carol Clancy: Sure. Shannon and I started in our positions about the same time, and we are both really motivated to cause a positive change, particularly in this partnership between OVR and education. We actually met three Decembers ago, which is amazing, but I know that we both walked into that room knowing what we both wanted out of that meeting and not sure we were going to attain it. But it was very quick into that conversation. We realized we were on the exact same page and it created a strong synergy not just between Shannon and myself, but our teams. It was really an enlightening moment when we were like, we are in the right place at the right time. So it was that December meeting that we started to really have the conversation about what are the issues in the field and how we wanted to work together to fix them for the better outcomes of students with disabilities and our shared passions. And it was from that time that we set the mission, the vision and the agreement that we were going to have a stronger collaboration. I think what helps this work tremendously is that Shannon and I are direct from the field. We came from the field and we experienced the complexity of implementing and partnering on this work, and we experience what happens when there isn't a strong collaboration.  So bringing that lens and keeping that at the forefront of our minds as we are developing the implementation of the MOU, I think is what is keeping it strong. We certainly are just the run of the work, but we are not the ones doing the work. We have a very strong team beneath both of us that are worker bees that are very passionate, that really are bringing the work together in creating the moment you in a way that can be implemented. I think communication is the key. We have had structure team meetings that have happened regularly, either on a monthly or a twice a month meeting. But Shannon and I communicate regularly. I can commit that we communicate weekly. It may be a. Well, meeting, it may be a conversation between the two of us. It may be a quick meeting. Phone calls for driving somewhere. It could be an email or it could simply be a text. What we communicate minimally on a weekly basis just to make sure the work is moving.   Shannon: I don't want to duplicate what Carol has said because it's all accurate and true. I just want to put it in, probably in a historical perspective of really our relationship. Prior to us coming together and working and doing a lot of the collaborative work over ourselves had found ourselves, and we had an RSA monitoring and we had some corrective actions that we had to deal with and one of them which was updating our MOU with education. With that being said, our MOU had I think it was back in 2011, so it was very outdated and that was our starting point. And prior to that, there really was limited communication between OVR and education. And I think us stepping into our roles, as Carol said, coming from the field brought a real fresh perspective and a commitment on both of our parts, really to come together to make it work. We brought our field perspective, we brought commitment and leadership to our conversations and as we knew that we had to do some compliance stuff, which was the beginning of our relationship and working on the menu and working with the tax center and really coming into a comprehensive agreement with you guys. It was our starting point. And with that commitment of time of bimonthly meetings to really work on the MOU, you start to learn that one. We were speaking different languages, but we have the same intent and collaborating and coming together to really make sure that we were ensuring that we were having a seamless transition of services for the students that both of us were working with coming through our system. And we wanted them to go from school to work and working with both of us as Carroll does her part and we transition them, whether it's to the post-secondary education or to work and through that process. It has been just a growing. At first, I want to say it probably wasn't easy, but it became very organic and it just grew with time and just really our commitment to coming together to implement a very seamless service between both of us and our teams as we developed MOU for the Commonwealth.   Missy: One of the things that I noticed was you too have been so successful in bridging that language barrier between the language and the way that VR works and the language and the way that education works and presented that united front looking at that best way to serve students. How would you say what's that key ingredient, so to speak, in making that happen for Pennsylvania?   Carol Clancy: Sure. So I think that when we brought the teams together, we were able to speak about what are the barriers, what is not working in the field, and they surfaced really quickly on the very most basic level. The fact that sending our students with disabilities or our families with students with disabilities kind of through a gauntlet of fabulousness between the school and adult life was something we didn't want to do anymore. And knowing that this happened because the people that are the front line, the teachers most often who are at the front line are the ones communicating with the families didn't have the information that they need to start. A successful path is where we wanted to start to make sure at the ground level in the trench, the ones doing the work closest to the people needing the support had the information that they need. We wanted to remove those barriers and knowing that if we remove those barriers provided support through the process, we would be able to improve the work that we do. So how did we get to that? I think we really went down to the very granular level. What needs to happen to have this be successful and our building up from that point with the end in mind. It is really important that we are providing tangible supports that can be implemented. So we've developed a series of resources that are accompanied by webinars and training and coaching. Things can't be implemented if you just say this is how it needs to happen, you need to lead the people that direction. So we created the resources and the training and the support, and we want to have the whole group. So with every resource we create, we are creating a parent or a student companion document in the language that they understand and a visual that they can understand. We're also partnering with all of our groups, so I have worked with our PTI and we all have Shannon and myself have done webinars with them, so we're communicating to our families. Any time we have face time providing updates to my special ED Advisory Panel, to all of our advisory groups, to the local education agencies, to the intermediate regional meetings, every time I meet with them, I'm providing an update about where we are in the work, where we're heading. What they can expect, where they need to look for the information so that we are all on the same page and I'll stop there and let Shannon add in as long as she includes the joint website.   Shannon: So just to add on to what Carol talked about, one of the things it truly has been, Melissa, I think you have seen because you've been here kind of from the very start. It is really, truly been a journey for both of us, and we have been expanded by this partnership professionally, but also agency wide in this partnership that we've had. And the thing that we started out from the very beginning is that we said that we want it to be intentional what we were rolling out. But the thing that I think is key is the really the menu was really the glue that brought all of us together and really gave the building blocks and the fundamental pieces that we needed to be clear on what we wanted to do because we were very specific in our planning and the policy and the procedures and coordinating these services for students. So it gave us an opportunity to outline what services look like between the two agencies. It talked about how OVR was going to work with the local education agencies and planning the transition of these students. It really went into great detail on how we were committed to continuous communication. What was planning going to look like, what was the implementation going to look like was the procedures and policies and trying to coordinate these services for students. We're committed to the commitment of our partnership and making sure that we are implementing the services defining real clear expectations between over BSE, the lawyers and families, to the point that on the very onset, when we started to plan and put together and formulate our workgroup, it included various pieces. It was me and Carol and our teams. But it also included advocacy groups, parent groups, a consumer. There was providers that were part of that planning because we really wanted to make sure that we were looking through the lens of whoever was touching the MOU so that there was clear understanding of what we were doing. Roles were defined. We drill down on a toolkit that would make it very implementable for the field because I think our full background coming from the field. We did not want it to just be a document in black and white format. We really wanted to be tangible, something that they could put their hands on and really utilize it as a tool in their toolkit in order to bridge the gap of the services between both of our agencies. And I know we'll probably get more into this, but there were several collaborative areas as we talk about the website appointment connection positions that we've had an opportunity and more things are going to come out of this to really shepherd the view and our partnership and how it's going to increase and expand with time.   Carol: You're teeing us up nicely for the next question. I really get that good sense of that commitment and that collaboration that you all are having. Can you describe the work, now you've given some little nuggets that you all have been doing in Pennsylvania for students and your specific collaboration activities? And Shannon, I'll kick that to you first.   Shannon: So with our 2 years of work, that was the hard part and making sure that we had a planning or strategic MOU in place between the agencies and being clear in our expectations and what we were doing with that, we had a huge rollout here in Pennsylvania and we were able to kind of launch our MOU to the public March 2021. With that being said, me and Carol did a series of ATAND webinars where we introduced the MOU to the public and all stakeholders involved in second transition in Pennsylvania. So the first one had to do with unpacking Demo Q, and the next one had to do with engaging stakeholders and strategic alignment of our efforts. A lot of these were like panel discussions and just laying of information with both our agencies on that. We also launched a new secondary transition website that had various key stakeholders with that, the resources and it really, when you look at the website, it's through the lens. So it's not only done collaboratively, it's through a lens, no matter who the stakeholder is, whether it's the parent, the student, the provider or the school district or individuals from our agency, they really have a sense of the resources that are there and the toolkits that have been built out for them so that they have full understanding of that. We also have some initiatives that I know me and Carol. I'm going to I'm going to leave some of that for you, Carol, to talk about maybe the Navigate Team Navigator position and the youth ambassador position. Those are forthcoming that are really going to support the MOU that we rolled out. But there's been several opportunities where we have collaborated over the last year. We have presented at the transition conference this year to really talk about the MOU. We have a huge presence that was virtually we have worked with. Various agencies like Peel, Hispanic agencies to connect to Hispanic students and parents to really talk about them and the resources that are in place so that it can really highlight all the good work that's going on in Pennsylvania.   Carol: And Shannon, can you share that website address?   Shannon: Yes, I can.   Carol: That'd be great.   Missy: I think it's  PASecondaryTransition.com, right?   Shannon: Yes.   Carol: Excellent. I'm sure our listeners are definitely going to want to check into that. So Carol, Shannon gave you a little leeway there to talk about a couple of things. So please share.   Carol Clancy: Absolutely. I'll comment on 3 joint initiatives. I wanted to say that everything that Shannon is speaking about and that I'm going to speak about is a joint effort. And what I mean is you can't draw a line between what VR did and what education did. It's really just meshed together and collaboration so that the outcomes reflect this joint effort. 3 things I'll talk about is the Employment Navigator, the student ambassador and the Collaboration for Employment initiative we have upcoming this year. So the Student Ambassador Initiative is an effort to create paid work experiences for students with disabilities supported by over to become just that student ambassadors. What their roles would be is to be mentors, role models for other students with disabilities and during the transition world to help guide them along the way. From the student's perspective, these positions would be doing speaking engagements, mentoring, engagement and work experience while they're at the local regional intermediate units or any other approved service provider by OVR. We're really looking forward to this because it speaks volumes to the efforts that we're putting into people with disabilities, meaning that they are the consumers. So what better way to have them be the spokesperson for the services that they are entitled to? So we're looking forward to that beginning. It's in the process of hiring right now. Another initiative that is coming out in the near future are employment navigator positions. Again, these are positions that will be funded by OVR, hired by our regional intermediate units. And the purposes of these positions is to fill that void that occurs between school age services and adult services. We often lose our families or our students in this gauntlet of uncertainty between that path, between school age and adult services. So this employment navigators role will be just that fill that void, for example, benefits counseling. It can be extremely complex for anybody to understand. You really need to be an expert in that area, and it can become a barrier to some people with disabilities seeking employment. So we're going to have the employment navigator become an expert in that area to help support our students or our young adults with disabilities, to navigate that, to lead to continued competitive integrative employment in the future. And the last thing to speak to, which is important, is our collaboration for employment initiative. So this initiative is an adding to the work that's happening by bringing in the Office of Developmental Programs because we know that this support system is a 3 pronged support. How does education, how does employment and how does potential support services work collaboratively to support all students with disabilities to transition to competitive integrated employment? We each have our own languages, our own functions, our own case managers, but our case managers at the field level need to work together.  Education, the case manager and support coordinators need to work collaboratively to support these families, but we all speak a different language. It's difficult for all three to sit at the table at the same time. So through the state initiative between all three agencies, we will build that condition to happen. We are going to build conditions where the last series of trainings and webinars and intentional time to bring those three parties together at the regional level, to have a conversation, to understand the work that each other does, so they can strengthen the work they do together and to look at their regional needs and develop strategic plans based on their region on how to move this work forward for equity of all students. Because if you look across Pennsylvania, what's available in regions is not equitable and the need may not be the same based on the region. So we're going to have these parties come together, learn about each other, learn about the work that we do understand how they intersect just as similarly as we have between OVR and education, and then work to enhance what's available at the regional level across the state. So there's a lot more to come, but those are three of the top level things that will be coming in the next year.   Carol: So I just want to follow up on that for a minute. So for our listeners who are saying, Oh my gosh, I mean, this all sounds super exciting and they want to get a little more information, would you say Shannon is the best to go to the website? Is there a particular person they could reach out to? What would be the best way for other folks to get a little more information if they want to try to mirror something in their state?   Shannon: I think me and Carol have really kind of kept an open door, so. There's other states that may want to do this, we'd be open for that, to talk to them on some of our things that we have done, but the biggest thing is probably to look at the website, a lot of the resources that were developed. Everything from our menu to the toolkit. A lot of the resources are on our website for them to access.   Carol: Perfect. Thank you. I appreciate that.   Carol Clancy: If I could just comment on that on the transition website, there is something called transition tidbits that you can subscribe to. So whoever is interested, they can subscribe to transition tidbits and it'll give you everything updated that we're doing in Pennsylvania regarding transition. And we've already had hits across the world. So we have hits all over the country, but we've also had hits in Europe and other countries based on the work that's happening.   Carol: Good to know. That's awesome. So Missy, I'm over to you now.   Missy: Yeah. And I think you all kind of touched on what we were going to get too next because, you know, I think what we get so impressed by with what's happening in Pennsylvania is not just what you've wanted to do, but the actual implementation of it. So when it comes to the professional development or creating those sustainability pieces with regard to the tools or the positions, what's coming next for you guys? What's next?   Carol Clancy: Well, I think that both Shannon and I operate with the perspective that there really isn't any limit. So we have the 3 things we want to implement over the next year. But we already brainstorming what is the following year. But the priorities are these 3 initiatives coming forward. But we would anticipate as much as we can developing tools for the fields targeting deeper and deeper to our area of needs, such as focusing on particular populations. What students that have blind and visual impairments need is very different than what students with autism may need, or students with very complex abilities that may need some customized employment options. We certainly want to work and focused on developing them and developing the community. There is a lot of work at Pennsylvania, at the state level directed toward employment of people with disabilities. So we're aligning our work with the governor's initiative, which include initiative around preparing model employers. And Shannon, I'll let you talk about that because you've been much more involved in that, but we are going to ensure that the work that we're doing is lined up with the overall work at the state level to support employers.   Shannon: So as Carol said, we have so much going on here in Pennsylvania beyond just the agency. When you're talking about employment and individuals with disabilities like we are probably at the center of our purpose when it comes to WioA, IDEA,, we are employment first state, we have that twenty six. We're also very active, as Carol said, in a grant to really focus on employer engagement and over our course as a dual customer system, and that we work with customers with disabilities, but we also engage with employers to make sure and become that bridge for them. And here in Pennsylvania, we're at any year working with anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 employers. When you look at all the placements that we do here in Pennsylvania, so the commitment that we have in trying to bring it to the next level is always something that we're trying to expand current relationships that we have with employers to see where we can do more, especially with high school students, because I think WIO was really a turning point for the VR system, and some will say that it was earthshaking because we was not working with students 14 to 21 years of age prior to this. So with the implementation of WIO, it really was a key changer for the VR system and the workforce system in itself that we would establish ourselves as part of the 6 core programs in the workforce development system to do more collaboration.   With that being said, we should be strategic planning together. We should be cutting down supplanting of services, duplication of services and there needs to be more coordination, collaboration. And with this during the MOA, it has allowed us over and education to do exactly some of the things that WIO intended in the workforce system. So what are we going to do? We're going to continue to do a lot of professional development. We're committed to that. You're no stronger than your workforce, me and Carol. We're doing the policy. The policy has to become alive and implementable and practical for the field. So we're committed to make sure that they have the toolkit that the tools that they need in order to implement the services and they need to understand the services. My hope is that we are cheerleaders for the staff that we're going to encourage. We're going to uplift them and give them the support that they need and understand what it is to implement the service and work with students and families here in the Commonwealth to make sure that the service is implemented seamlessly.   Carol: Well, what you two Are doing is so exciting, like this is unbelievable, and I'm thrilled and I'm sure our listeners are like going, Oh my gosh, but how do I start? So I want to ask both of you and I'm going to ask Carol first. The advice that you might have for states who are struggling because we still have that, I know we're seven and a half years in, but we still have states like we're not talking the Education Bureau, not talking or there's disagreements. Or maybe there's talking, but they're really not getting anything going. Do you have any advice for those states that are struggling?   Carol Clancy: Yes, I can. I think the number one thing to keep in mind is the students in which we serve. Keep them at the front of every conversation and the mission. Because if you get siloed in your own agency and the rules you need to follow or the missions behind your agency, you really can lose what your focus is supposed to be. So stay focused on the students and the outcomes that you are responsible for together. So that's a mission. Enough to work together is that there are outcomes that need to happen and that you both need to work toward that you're both accountable for. But I think most important and we've said this numerous times, but I'm just going to emphasize that enough. You can't forget the field and how it's implemented. Often at the state. We can create best practice in an ideal scenario, but it loses its translation in the implementation if you don't know what it looks like to be implemented in the field. So if they are on a place where I would say they need to start talking to the field, they need to start talking to the people doing the work right now. What are the barriers? Why isn't it working and working from that point forward to know what should be happening and their language should be? What do you need? Here are some options. What can I do to help? How can we support you and blah blah blah? Not this is how it's supposed to happen and do it. It has to be. What do you need to make this happen? And we're here to help you. And what's the best way we can help you to make this happen?   Carol: Well said, sage advice. So Shannon, I'm going to leave the last words of wisdom to you.   Shannon: So just a couple of things in agreement with everything that Carroll said. My background is business services, so I'm going to start right here. Relationships are key. Unless you have a relationship, you don't do business with people you don't trust. That is the same thing that we have been talking about through this whole process is about relationships. There has to be a starting point. If there is none, begin to get one. If you have one, strengthen it. I think that's our starting point because me and Carol prior to this do not have a working relationship whatsoever. So it was from the very beginning, but the MOU was our starting point. The second thing that made it successful or has made it successful is our commitment to this partnership and collaboration. Commitment has to start from the top. And when I tell you that it filters down through the layers, it becomes a very intentional document when working through and trying to create one, the MOU.. But just a partnership that we have because of the MOU. It created the environment where we were really strategically planning on what our partnership was going to look like. We were very clear on that expectation. Who was going to do what we wanted to make sure that we had supporting documentation for our staff. So we were very intentional in how we were going to roll out the MOU with our staff. We committed to communication, continuous communication. We don't know what we don't know and what we don't understand. We need to clarify, especially at this level, because if it's cloudy and unclear at the top, it's going to filter down through the agencies and implementing a policy. I'm in strong agreement with Carol saying that we did not want this employee to just be a document where it was just a policy. We met the requirement. We met the compliance piece of the obligation. We wanted to make sure that it was implementable, that it was a live living document that we were constantly put in our eyes on because we were committed to the mission of transitioning students that we were working with in both our systems and that we were working together to do that and that we were on the same page. And literally through this process, it continues to grow. And really, the sky is the limit for anyone that's willing to put in the time the work and the effort and the commitment to doing something as we have in Pennsylvania.   Carol: Well, I'm adding an exclamation point to that word commitment that you said over and over this morning. I just think that it's incredible and it's coming through loud and clear. So thanks to you both for taking the time today to discuss this really super important topic, and we wish you the best in all of your endeavors. Thanks much.   Missy: Thank you, guys.   Shannon: Thank you.   Carol Clancy: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR one manager at a time, one minute at a time brought to you by the VRTAC 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!

Full Transcript: Joining Carol Pankow in the VRTAC studio is Felicia Johnson, Commissioner of the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department, and Lindy Foley, Director of Nebraska VR. Today we are discussing how Felicia and Lindy prepared for the RSA monitoring process, what they experienced, and what they learned. They will share how they see monitoring as a continuous improvement process and an opportunity for growth.   The VRTAC for Quality Management has partnered with CSAVR to co-facilitate a community of practice for the cohort of agencies monitored each year. Over the past three years, we have found that much can be learned by those who are going through monitoring simultaneously sharing their experiences with each other. We provide tools that help you prepare for both the fiscal and programmatic aspects of the review.   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/ Please stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management. The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main websiteand clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the Center.   Full Transcript:   Manager Minute - Monitoring: Surviving and Thriving Before, During, and After the Process   {Music} Speaker: 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: So welcome to the manager minute, I am so excited to have Felicia Johnson, commissioner of the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department, and Lindy Foley, director of the Nebraska VR General Agency. Thank you both for joining me in the studio today. Well, Felicia, you've been in your position since June of 18. And when I looked you up, actually, you served as the interim commissioner for the whole year prior. So how are things in South Carolina?   Felicia: Things in South Carolina are going very well. You know, if things are continuing to change, we have experienced a lot these last few years, but we continue to move right along. No complaints.   Carol: Glad to hear it. Lindy, you also started as a director just a few months before Felicia back in March of 18, and you had some big shoes to fill following Mark Schultz as he went to be the commissioner of RSA. How are you?   Lindy: I've been very well. Thank you, Carol, and I appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you, both of you this afternoon.   Carol: Awesome. Well, today we're discussing the 107 monitoring process, and I had the good fortune to work with both of you and your team through this latest 2021 RSA monitoring cycle and with RSA just releasing the list of agencies being monitored this past Monday. You can be a good help to this new group. For those of you who are listening to this podcast, the VRTAC for Quality Management has partnered with CSAVR to co-facilitate a community of practice for the cohort of agencies being monitored each year. We have found over the past three years that much can be learned by others going through monitoring. At the same time, we provide some tools that help you to prepare for both the fiscal and programmatic aspects of the review. And additionally, the VRTAC for Quality Management can help you through the process as you are participating in the visits with the RSA team. This is especially helpful if you're anticipating needing some follow up after the review is complete. So now to you two, both of you had such a great approach to this process, so I wanted to have this discussion. I know monitoring was a topic at the CSAVR Leadership Forum, but I wanted to dig in a little bit more to help those colleagues out there who will be experiencing this very soon. Whether it's this year or next, everyone's going to be reviewed at some point. So let's go. We realize that every agency is structured uniquely, which ultimately may impact the entire monitoring process. So it's important for us to get a feel for how you operate. So tell us a little bit more about your agency and a little bit about you. And on average, you know, like, how many customers do you serve, how many overall staff do you have and how many people are on your leadership team? And Lindy, I'm going to kick that over to you. Lindy: Ok, great. Thank you. So in Nebraska, we have two VR agencies, so a quick shout out to our partners at the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Nebraska VR is actually located within the Department of Education, and something which might be a little unique is that we also have the Assistive Technology Partnership, or ATP, within the department with us. So this really allows us in this organizational structure to work to our advantage to leverage opportunities and partnerships with our schools to expand the way that we look at special education and even kind of some cool stuff with career and technical education and the opportunities, of course, with assistive technology and the impact that that can make for our clients and also businesses, we currently have about 7200 cases open. We are coming out of an order of selection, so we want to get back to the numbers we once were serving prior to 2017, but we're making some progress there, so that's exciting. We've got 12 field offices across the state and 1 administrative office here in Lincoln, so a total of about 200 staff and you mentioned leadership teams just real quickly. We have a policy and implementation team which consists of staff who we call program directors. So individuals who help us to write policy, conduct our case reviews, organize training, oversee the financial operations and quality assurances. The other half of that team are our office directors who help to supervise our field offices. I also include in that leadership team, our client assistance program director, and he meets with this leadership group often to help us provide input. And then finally, but certainly not least, the leadership team that I'm referring to also includes our agency's assistant director. I also want to make a special mention to another leadership group within Nebraska VR because they were instrumental in our monitoring process as well. We refer to that group as the Leadership Council. Those are staff from a variety of roles in Nebraska VR from across the state. They're nominated by their teammates as being recognized leaders in our agencies, and I meet with them quarterly. They advised me on a variety of topics, whether that's the culture of the agency. See our mission and values and then, of course, compliance and monitoring activities and ways we could prepare for our monitoring visit. So a couple of different ways that we look at leadership and that infrastructure within our state.   Carol: I love hearing about that Leadership Council. I will  have to follow up on that at another time. Very interesting. So Felicia, how about you? How are you all organized?   Felicia: Ok, we're organized a little bit differently. We do like Nebraska. We have two separate agencies, so we have the blind agency and course. I'm at the South Carolina general. We are an independent commission, so we are not under any other departments. We have a board of commissioners, seven individuals that represent each of our districts within the state, and we own and operate all of our CRps. We do not contract out very many services, actually. We just began contracting out services when I started as commissioner around 2018, and those services were specific to pre-employment transition because we were still working our way through that. So being that we own and operate all of our community rehabilitation programs, that makes us unique and we're staffed a little differently. We have 31 offices throughout our state and we have 26 what we call job readiness training centers. Some offices have some offices because the county is so big, but each main office has a job readiness training center partnered with it. And what that is is a community rehab program where individuals with functional limitations and barriers to employment, they come and they do what we call contract work. We partner with businesses throughout our state over four hundred and they bring training opportunities in the form of work tasks to our centers for us to produce and send back to these businesses. And then they sell and all of our consumers make at least minimum wage. At least there's no sub minimum wage in any of our centers. We do an assessment, thorough assessment of them. When they enter the program, we set goals and objectives for every single consumer, which is individualized based on their functional limitations and employment objectives. They work towards those goals and objectives. They have at least monthly meetings with their counselor and a member of the job readiness training team to see how they're progressing towards those objectives. And we also begin job search and placement opportunities for them while they're in training. We also own and operate an inpatient 28 day comprehensive evaluation program. We have a center actually on this campus where I'm located, where our consumers with severe significant physical, disabling conditions come for a 28 day comprehensive evaluation to help them see what their strengths are with their barriers are and then how we can help them to adjust to those barriers and identify appropriate job opportunities for them. So when they go back to their home area, their local areas, their counselors and the rest of the team can help to find employment opportunities in the fields that we may have recommended. And we have an inpatient rehabilitation facility, which most folks don't have a recovery center is what we call it for our consumers who struggle with alcohol and addictions issues, which also impacts their ability to obtain and maintain employment, but can mask symptoms from maybe pain and other disabling conditions. So we own and operate a 28 day inpatient addictions recovery center. South Carolina General houses our state's disability and determination services department, so we adjudicate and review all claims for citizens who are applying for disability benefits. And as far as our staff goes, our staffing patterns have significantly changed from when I started in this position. Right now, we have just under 1,000 employees. When I first started in this role, we had over 4,900. We've noticed a lot of attrition, especially during the pandemic, with folks who are eligible for retirement and now coming out of the pandemic into the great resignation. We're seeing a lot of folks changing their career objectives, but that's fine. We're in the process of just revamping the way that we provide services. We've learned a lot with using technology, and we're going to continue to use technology to make sure we serve our consumers as far as consumers go. We have about just under 1,300 active consumers that we're working with. That's a little lower than before the pandemic as well. And our executive team, I think that was the last part of the question. I have 14 members on my executive leadership team. All of my executive leaders, our department heads. So our director of consumer services, director of human resources, director of Planning and programming, now director of field operations. All directors are members of executive staff and we meet once a month to strategize and plan for the agency. And that's pretty much South Carolina general.   Carol: That is complex. I remember during the monitoring process when you were explaining to the team, I'm like, Wow, you both have a ton going on. So I know people had not been monitored for some time, and I just wondered when was the last time your agency was monitored prior to that? 2021 monitoring? And if you don't mind sharing, how did that previous monitoring go for the agency and Lindy, I'm going to kick that to you.   Lindy: Ok, great. Thank you. So the last time that Nebraska VR was monitored was in 2012, so it had been a while. That's why we kind of kept expecting each year that we would be on the list. I was with the Department of Education at that time, but I was actually with the Office of Special Education and did a lot of work with transition at that time with the counterpart in VR. So I was kind of an outside looking in at the VR monitoring. Then later I'll describe we had a core group of people within our monitoring process and three out of the four. Me being the only one had been through RSA monitoring before, so it was obviously great to have their experience and expertise through that process. So I asked them, how did this compare to the previous the 2012 visit? One very obvious difference was just within the last few months, of course, are 2021 visit was all virtual, so that had some benefits, but also maybe some fewer opportunities presented. So in 2012 RSA was on site, they could interact more. They did interact more with our staff, visit field offices and maybe had more of an opportunity to even hear from some of our partners. I think one thing that stood out to just a different time, right, and where we were with providing services, I jokingly said, Tell me, you're being monitored without telling me you're being monitored. I mean, the binders and the paper that my staff gave me when I said, you know, let me learn about what the last process looked like and what we were working on. Oh my goodness, it was so overwhelming. So we still have those binders from 2012. But fortunately, this time sent so much of it was streamlined and was electronic. We were able to be, I think, much more efficient in that process. So those were some of the differences that stuck out. And we've had a very good rapport with our RSA team and some of them have been the same since twenty twelve. So very fortunate to have that historical perspective from our RSA partners from then to now.   Carol: That is good to hear. How about you, Felicia? What do you know about the monitoring? I know you weren't there, but I wonder if you'd heard?   Felicia: Yeah, I was with the agency, but I was out in one of our field offices as an area supervisor. Back then it was around 2010, and from what I understand, the process went well. For the most part, I just kept hearing that they had a difficult time understanding our job readiness training centers and how they operated. That was the feedback I recall back then, and that led to some changes being made in the operation of those centers. But that's what I recall.   Carol: I know when I was at Minnesota Blind, we had had a monitoring in eleven, so they came back in ‘19. And when I looked at that report, when I came in ‘13 and I went, Oh my gosh, like my vow was that we are not going to have a report like that again because it wasn't good at all. So that that was my quest, right when I came in the door. So one other fact about my background is I was a CARF Surveyor for several years and CARF, the national accreditation organization. I always think about it like providing the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for various rehab programs and facilities throughout the country. My agency was also accredited, and so all the surveyors came from the field and you would agree to perform at least three surveys a year. And the philosophy I really liked that I learned from CARF training was that you always wanted to be prepared, like, don't just get ready for the CARF review every three years when they're going to come like you want to always be in this kind of constant state of being ready for a visit at any time. So I just want to talk about that philosophy a little bit more. When you both started back in ‘18 was the idea of monitoring on your radar as you dug into your work. And if it was, what did you do to prepare? Felicia, I'm going to kick that to you first.   Felicia: Ok. Absolutely. When I first stepped into the role, we knew that we were overdue for monitoring, and we kept hearing that the monitoring schedule was thrown off because of WIOA. But we knew we were overdue because it had been over 7 years, so we actually started praying that we would not be called at that fall conference. Actually, this is during my interim term fall of 2017 when the conference was here in South Carolina. We were all like, Lord, please don't let them call South Carolina general because we were not prepared. I was brand spanking new. We had just gone through some interesting times in our agency, and we just didn't need that at that time, but we did start preparing in ‘20. We had our planning and program evaluation department. They started to develop reports based on the 2018 and 2019 MTAGs, and they began reviewing some of the published 107 reports for trends so we can get an idea of what was being looked at. We started having monthly meetings in our executive staff teams to review some of the data trends and walk through some of those impact questions we identified who are subject matter experts would be based on some of the things that we saw in the MTAG and in the published reports. We want to make sure that we had supported employment covered because we knew as an agency that was something that we needed to work on our fiscal. We wanted to identify who our subject matter experts would be for fiscal matters, pre-employment transition services, so forth and so on. So we kind of started in 2019 and into ‘20 is when we really said, OK, guys, we know we're going to get called. So we really started to get intense in 2020 with making sure that we had everything lined up and we were regularly reviewing the MTAG and always looking for other states published reports. Then, of course, the pandemic hit. And so that just pushed everything to the side and we were just trying to survive as an agency. But once we started working our way through that, we had a kick off meeting and we introduce everyone to 107 monitoring and what it was and who our subject matter expert teams would be. We started to have some planning sessions and had each team develop a 107 monitoring to do list for their respective departments. We had meetings planned and scheduled every single month to make sure that everybody was on the same page. This was actually we picked back up during the towards the pandemic. Well, I guess the middle of it because we were sent home, I believe the end of March, March 23rd, but were reopened back. I want to say July the 6th. We continue to work, but we didn't have people teleworking for very long. So once we started migrating back into the offices, we got right back into it in 2021. Then the new 2021 MTAG came out. So we were like, Dang it, but we went through that MTAG and we started working our way through there. We quickly noticed that it had been overhauled to focus on more data and performance than the previous MTAG. No problem. We shifted and we made sure that we went through that step by step. And then we also tried to identify any deficiencies that we knew that we had in our agency. Like, we knew that our policies were outdated. We knew that we needed to update policies. We knew that maybe we need to take a closer look at some fiscal processes. We knew that we need to take a closer look at support, employment and how we were doing that. So we knew where our struggles were and we want to make sure we jumped in front of them and had a plan for asking for technical assistance. So we lined all of that up. So I would say that we spent close to 2 years preparing, thinking every single conference that we were going to be called for monitoring, so we were well prepared or as prepared as I think we could have been under the circumstances.   Carol: That sounds really good. I know I did a similar thing to that with our team. I kept thinking every year they're going to call our name. I just was waiting. They're going to call our name. Then finally, your name gets called. It's like, Oh, finally, but I know what you mean. And having to pivot at that, monitors will change, but that sounds really good. How about you, Lindy, what did you guys do?   Lindy: Well, as I mentioned earlier, we knew we had to be on the short list just because it'd been quite a while since we'd been monitored. So we in 2019, we did start really trying to review and best understand the monitoring technical assistance guide of the MTAG. So what we did and it's been revised, of course, a bit since 2018, but we took that leadership group, our policy staff as well as our office leadership, and we divided up into work groups, which matched then the areas of the MTAG. So we had a group related to VR services and pre-employment transition services. We had a supported employment group and then, oh, by far the most popular, the fiscal and data. That's kind of a joke, but we did get people who volunteered to be a part of that work group, too. And so I thought that was very meaningful and we got good feedback from staff, the teams they met at their own pace. Each work group took the time to go through each of the questions within the MTAG. We had one of our data staff go through and best understand the data tables within the MTAG to make sure that he could actually recreate the data that within those tables. So when it came time, if there were any questions about reporting or consistency that we were well informed about what data went into those tables. So each workgroup got their data tables, they went through their questions. They helped us to identify if there were questions that we struggled to answer. We knew that we needed to flag those questions and then bring them back to the whole group so we could talk about any impact on revision to policy. Or perhaps it was a training and implementation issue that we needed to talk through. I appreciated having that time. Our staff, I think in general, prefer to be proactive, even though we know in our work there's not always that that luxury. But I think that gave us time to really think and reflect on the questions without it feeling rushed, as if maybe what we would have done if we would have done it after we'd been called, after our name had been announced for monitor. So I think that that really did work well, it also created kind of a new level of buy in that I didn't actually expect at the time, of this leadership. They better understood if they were questioning a certain area of our policy, they'd get out their rigs. They'd look in the comments they would alongside of the policy people. They wanted to know why we were being asked those questions and to make sure that we were doing everything within our services to make sure that we could answer that confidently. Again, I think that worked out very well. One other thing I would mention to, in addition to preparing ourselves kind of emotionally there was a component to I was very intentional about calling this process a self-assessment process with the MTAG. I felt like if I was using that type of language, it helped to give the message that this was about continuous improvement. This was a meaningful activity that we can both celebrate our successes, but also identify some challenges and some changes that we would need to make. So again, I think just having that intentional dialogue about how we were referring to those activities was something that we took pretty seriously. So back to the whole notion of this being a continuous improvement process, and I know we'll maybe get into this a little bit later, but we're not done with the MTAG. I think it was a great exercise that we went through in 2018. We revisited it in 2020 one and we'll do it again in a year or two to see how we're doing against those data tables and to see the progress we've made against those questions. So I'm excited that we continue to look at the process and we've found a way to hold ourselves accountable and to take time to celebrate the progress that we've made going through the MTAG.   Carol: Well, Lindy, you teed us up for my next question and both of you are so prepared, and I really think that that topic of preparation helps us transition into the overall sentiment around the monitoring process. And Lindy, you spoke about this, like talking about it in a different way, continuous improvement, you know, words like monitoring, auditing and reviews. They often have a stigma attached to them, and people will usually regard that as some sort of a gotcha moment, and it causes dread in the monitoring process. So I wondered, Lindy, you talked a little bit about your messaging, Felicia, I'm going to kick this one to you. What did you do in communicating to kind of alleviate some of that tension associated with the monitoring process?   Felicia: Well, we did have a kickoff meeting because my executive team either were not with the agency the first time that we were monitored or were not in the roles that we're in now. So for us, we needed to educate a good many folks on 107 monitoring with that was so we had the kickoff meeting introducing 107, but we also were very deliberate and couching it similar to Lindy as an opportunity for us to assess our program, to identify where we're strong and to also identify where there are opportunities to improve. And I'm the type of person that if I'm doing something wrong, I want to know immediately so I can jump on it and correct it. And if there were things that were happening in the agency that we were doing out of, maybe practice, but we should not be doing it that way. I really wanted to know and my team wanted to know so that we could get it right, so we were actually looking forward to it. Only 3 members of my executive team had been with the agency the first time we monitored, and I think 2 of them had minimal involvement. Very, very minimal. We were ready for it. We had been talking about it for years and when we got the call or saw the email because we saw our name in an email, we were ready, we were excited, we were ready to get it over with.   Carol: I want to put an exclamation point at the end of what you all just said because that is great, especially people listening. And if you're one of the directors and your name was called, definitely think about that whole messaging piece. And I really think that's important to not go into it with that fear factor, like you're just assessing, let's get through it. So going to speak about when your agency's name was announced for monitoring and you all were in the email. I know some people had it happen during a CSA conference. What was the very first thing that you did and why? And Lindy, I'm going to go to you first.   Lindy: Ok, well, I remember it was a Friday afternoon and it was an email that came out as Felicia had mentioned, and I had just gotten done doing a final walkthrough because we had just moved out of our administrative office in which we'd been located for about 45 years. So I'm not sure if it was a relief to move on to something else or what, but that's no joke. But I went home that evening and poured myself a tall, cold glass of milk and really tried to reflect in a weird way. There was some relief there, and I think it was. It's just that anticipation of not really knowing. We knew it was coming, but just not knowing when, and I think seeing our name in that email and knowing that it was coming soon then put a little bit more control into then putting our actions into motion. As far as timelines and we've been practicing, we'd been looking and preparing since 2018. So we'd been through the dress rehearsal and we were ready to make our performance. So I did reach out to a core group of staff who I knew would be going through every step of the monitoring process with me when I called and talked to them that Friday afternoon. Their response was pretty much the same. Ok, we've got this, and that's exactly the type of attitude that I think we all went into our monitoring with just that positivity and the confidence. I think that that was all part of being able to pace things in the way that we did that. When the time did come, we would be prepared. It wouldn't be a panic and there'd be some excitement there too. And I think there was.   Carol: I love that. I love that. How about you, Felicia? When you read that email on a Friday afternoon, I'm sure it all came at the same time ...What was the very first thing you did and why did you do that?   Felicia: Well, the first thing I thought to myself was about time, and I forwarded forwarded it to all of my executive team. And I just said, It's time, guys. And what we had done in all of our prep was I identified a 107 monitoring lead. I have been very fortunate there is a member of my team. She is currently still my director of policy and internal controls. She will be leaving the agency at the end of this month. But fortunately for us, she was here during that time and she organized it all. Once she got the email from me, she started setting up regular meetings, emailing data tables and documents, putting binders together for everyone. So she really led the entire process and did a phenomenal job. So we were all on pins and needles. So when that email came, we were just like, Let's go, we got started right away.   Carol: That is awesome. And I'm giving a shout out to Denise because I know your staff and I never saw anything quite like it, and I sat through several of the different monitorings. But boy Denise was. She was organized to a level I had never seen before. That was something. It was a work of art. Actually, it was pretty amazing. It really was.   Felicia: I call Denise my unicorn, and I told her when she told me she was leaving the agency, I'm going to have to build another unicorn.   Carol: No, honestly, I know when she let me know, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I said, I bet, Felicia said. Yikes, holy smokes. She really did a good job. Yeah, so I know you both talked a lot about how you kind of approach this review with your staff. What did you do about communication? Because obviously you have kind of your core groups that are helping to prepare and get that going. So how did you keep like the whole group and the field sort of involved? So they didn't think this was some big, huge mystery. And Lindy, I'll go to you first on that.   Lindy: Well, I think for us it was I can kind of describe it like a like a target, like 3 circles of communication. So the inside circle, the smaller circle. There were 4 of us who, as I mentioned earlier, involved in really every type of precession, every phone call on every email. And so that group was obviously very involved in any type of communication with RSA. The 2nd circle was really that policy group that I mentioned earlier. They had done so much work to prepare to make sure that our policies and staff were at a place and a comfort level consistent with the tag that group ordinarily meets. Often for a while they were meeting quarterly. But then in response to more of our continuity of operations plan due to COVID, we actually move to monthly. So we were able to really keep that team informed all along the way, and they had good questions. They were curious to see where we were in the process, whether it was policies being submitted, initial questions that we were being asked, keeping them informed of the agenda. Perhaps they had a particular programmatic area or something that their office was really doing well. So they were curious about what RSA, how RSA was framing that two week time with us. And then the outer circle, of course, was with our staff, our field staff. And to me, it was a balance of keeping them informed and engaged while also not overwhelming them with the process. I don't know if this is different from state to state, but RSA did not ask to interview our field staff. We did have some programmatic or some of our program directors that were involved during our actual visit and could respond. I'm thinking one particular area was pre-employment transition services, but really it was that core group of people that had the meetings with RSA. One thing that we did was we uploaded the MTAG into Microsoft Teams. Our agency has been using Teams now for a while and. There's a function within Teams, of course, that you can create channels, so we had a channel dedicated to our monitoring process with the MTAG being uploaded, people that were a part of that channel could go in and add notes. They could go in and encourage one another if they knew that there was a topic coming on in that particular day's agenda. There were times that because we didn't have a big team of people meeting with RSA, a question might come up during conversation. We could put a really quick Teams chat in and we had the answer within just a few minutes because that leadership team was really on call during that visit. So I think the communication came in a lot of different ways. The piece that I would say also is the communication doesn't end, right? So this isn't intended to be an episodic process. So even though we don't have our draft report yet and we're not certain what will be included in our monitoring report, our assistant director and I have gone out to all of our field offices as part of our team tour or something we do twice a year. We talk to them about monitoring. We shared knowing that everything can be put in a report. We shared what RSA said that they were pleased to see some areas that they identified as innovative, and we wanted our staff to be able to hear that good news too. We could pick up on maybe some of the questions during our visit, maybe things that we might see in our draft report. I don't know that any of those were real surprises. But again, back to that messaging, I didn't want staff and I don't want any of the staff at Nebraska VR to think that if something is written in a report that we've done something wrong, it's an opportunity for us to improve and to build. And so I think that communication, as long as it's about continuous improvement and not a gotcha that feels a little bit different, we can relate to it a little bit better with always striving to be at our best for our clients and businesses.   Carol: I think definitely the review is different with it being virtual than when they're on site, when they're on site, they're definitely talking to staff and so many more people are involved. So you both did not get the benefit of having that with more staff kind of engaged throughout that process. And I did add your tip, Lindy, to our tip operation sheet that I've just been revising and sending it to CSAVR on Monday for the new group with all the different tips we have because I love that I wrote that down about the Teams and using that to help with communication and just organization. So Felicia, how about you with the communication?   Felicia: We did things kind of the same kind of different when I say kind of different. We had all of our executive team involved in every meeting for the most part and all of our subject matter experts that were not a part of the executive team, for example, our young lady over supported employment services. So I think altogether on every single call, we had approximately 35 participants. The majority were in listen only mode, but we did have a ton of folks on the call for several reasons. For one, I think everyone on the call, like I said, only two folks on the executive team were here and minimally involved in the last monitoring. So we used it as an opportunity to learn for all executive staff or our subject matter experts. We wanted them to learn about the process. It used to be a big secret in our agency, so we wanted them to know that this isn't something punitive. It's an opportunity, as Lindy said, to learn and for continuous improvement of our program. Part of those 35 participants were members of the VRTAC QM, who I cannot think enough. A team member was on every single call and then even had a follow up session with us after every single call to provide feedback and answer any questions and help us prepare and process for the next call. We did have some field staff interviewed virtually. They wanted to speak with some of our counselors, our general counselors and our pre-employment transition counselors, so they were involved in calls with RSA. We selected several of our field office supervisors to participate on the call. They were listening for the majority of the time. But if RSA had a question that was specific about programmatic operations in the field, we would ask one of the supervisors, You know, can you chime in and explain to RSA how you do this in your area or how this works in your area, which was good for them to have that opportunity to communicate their program with RSA and to get a feel for how the 107 monitoring process works? We also provided updates to our board on a regular basis. Our board chair actually participated in every single call she listened in. So that was good for her to see how the process went. We talked about gave status updates during our field supervisor meetings that the director of field operations has on a monthly basis. So we provide an update because, like I said, my staff is slightly under a thousand folks, so we can have everybody involved, but we let the leadership team in the middleman. Gave updates, and then they would trickle those updates down the line to folks in the field.   Carol: So both of you are underscoring the importance of communication. So again, for those of you listening that are going to be going through this review at some point. Communication, communication, communication. So I know you both were just incredible at figuring out this process and how you worked through it. I just wanted to ask each of you, what are the top 3 things you did throughout the process that you would recommend to your colleagues across the country as they're going to get ready to go for monitoring? And Felicia, I'm going to ask you that first.   Felicia: Well, those are three great ones. So I would underscore everything that Lindy just said. So I guess just to add a little bit more to that, I would say, think about what you want the monitoring visit to mean to your agency and then message that if you want it to be seen as a continuous improvement process, if you want it to be seen as an opportunity for growth, make sure that it's messaged in that way. Number two, seek out opportunities during the onsite visit to celebrate innovation and best practice. I felt like we kind of had to work this in whenever we could. It felt like we used the full time every day to the very last minute. So there were times that I felt like I probably just need to let the questions play out. But for the sake of knowing how hard our staff work, really seeking out times to say, Could we take a moment? And I'd like to just share with you some innovative things we've done surrounding pre-employment transition services? Or can I help celebrate what we do in supported employment and the work with our providers? And so I think being really intentional, even if you're the one that's driving that conversation to celebrate the success and innovation, I think that that's really important. And I know our RSA team was open to that and appreciated it as well. And then the third one is just to identify those champions in your agency and to give responsibility to those champions to be very clear and specific about what everyone's role is during the process. The more specific you can be about those roles, what approvals look like, who needs to be a part and what steps. We just found that the more confident we all were with carrying out the responsibility and making sure that things were done in a timely manner. So I'd say that those were 3 important pointers that we would offer from Nebraska.   Carol: Well said So Lindy, how about you? What are your top three recommendations?   Lindy: I will say, and it's not just because this is your podcast, but I really think that getting the VRTAC-QM involved was very, very helpful, especially if you've got a new leadership team who has not experienced one or seven monitoring. I would definitely recommend that that support and guidance and feedback I felt was very beneficial to our team here. Definitely study the MTAG and review monitoring reports from other states, even if your monitoring doesn't go step by step through the MTAG. Ours did not, but the fact that we studied that MTAG for so long, we were able to identify key questions in which departments should answer that question. We've picked out keywords and figured out if they ask this question or if they make this statement, then the data department needs to answer that question. So just studying that MTAG and looking at other reports to kind of get a sense of what the hot topics are. I think that will be helpful. And then identifying those subject matter experts for your agency who can answer those questions at that time that will alleviate having to respond with a Oh, I'm not sure. Let us get back with you now. There's nothing wrong with that, but I just feel like the more prepared you are, the better. You're able to answer those questions when they come about and those subject matter experts who live and breathe those topics are the best ones to have in the room to answer those questions for you.   Carol: Well, said both of you. Well, I know as we're winding down, I did want to find out at the end of the day, how do you think this process is making your agency better? Did you walk away from the table with anything really good that you believe is going to perfect the recipe of what you're cooking up? And Felicia, I'm going to ask you first.   Felicia: Hey, well, ours is probably very simple. Like, there were times during our visit that our team would say, Is there any type of questions that you have or is there technical assistance that you're seeking? And I think sometimes we get just so caught up into our day to day work that we don't always take the time to reflect like we should about asking RSA questions or thinking about what that technical assistance could look like. So I think just the extra ingredient that this added to our process to is just making sure that we know that we're not in it alone and that we have a lot of partners that we can reach out to lean on. So just something that we were able to reflect on during the process, but then also afterwards.   Carol: Lindy, I'm going to kick it to you for the last words.   Lindy: Yeah, I did feel like we learned some things and we did walk away with ideas to make our agency better. It did help us to provide confirmation on the things that we're doing correctly and things that are going well. And also help to identify issues within our agency that we could improve what we walked away with, actually, RSA gave us a very good recommendation on how we could enhance what we do in our job readiness training centers in a way that could set the stage for it to be an actual model for all other agencies to follow. So that's something that we've been working on, and we also walked away with a better understanding of RSA push for using data to make those data driven decisions as we plan and operate our VR programs. Those were two very specific things that we walked away from monitoring with, and we have started putting things in place to follow through with those recommendations. And also, we kind of got a sense in our exit meeting what we would see in our final report. We don't have it yet. We're expected to have it by the end of the month, but we went ahead and started working on the things that we felt RSA might address in the report based on some of the questions that they had during the 107 monitoring process.   Carol: Well, I know John Connelly and I will both probably be inviting you two to come back to the new cohort just to share some words of wisdom, too, as we get the new group kicked off and rolling. And I sure appreciate your time chatting with me today about the important subject of monitoring, and I wish you the very best now and forever, and hope that today's conversation will spark further conversations about surviving and thriving before, during and after the monitoring process. Thank you both so much.   Lindy: Thank you.   Felicia: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker: Conversations powered by VR one manager at a time, one minute at a time brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. 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Full Transcript Joining Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM Studio we have Chanda Hermanson, Administrator of the Disability Employment and Transition Programs in Montana, and Allison Flannagan,   VR Director at Florida General. Chanda and Allison share their experience and challenges while navigating the World of VR finances. Learn how networking and team building improve understanding and develop solutions to VR's biggest financial challenges. The VRTAC for Quality Management has a number of fiscal resources meant to help you and your staff navigate the enormous fiscal responsibilities of managing this complex Federal program.  Go to VRTAC-QM.org, Fiscal and Resource Quality Management. You will find the regulations, topical information, best practices, and some tools we have developed.  There are more are coming all the time and we have a long list in development. Please feel free to reach out to us with any ideas you have for tools that can be of help to you.  Let's help each other navigate the world of VR finances. One Manager at a time. One Minute at a time.   Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Is Your Fiscal Management Managed? Building a Solid Foundation for Financial Fitness.   Speaker: 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, I am so fortunate to have these two brilliant ladies in the studio today for our discussion, we have Chanda Hermanson, administrator of the Disability Employment and Transition Programs in Montana, and Allison Flanagan, VR Director at Florida General. So welcome to you both. So Chanda, it certainly has been a crazy past 18 months. How are things in Montana?   Chanda: It has been a crazy 18 months, things that we've had to manage that we don't think we would have ever even thought about before. But we are coming back. Things are going well and we've learned new techniques and strategies and are coming up better.   Carol: Good for you. Good for you. And Allison, in Florida also has certainly had its challenges over the past year or two. So how are you hanging in there?   Allison: Well, I'm hanging. Sometimes it's hanging by a thread some days, but you could say it's been an extraordinary 20 months, for sure. I mean, everybody knows we've had challenges both personally and professionally, obviously. But I think the pandemic has brought us some good opportunities that we're going to see forever down the road. So I'm thankful for that part, honestly.   Carol: Well, I'm glad to hear that. So today we're going to talk about the VR fiscal situation, and I know that many people have gravitated to working in VR because they love working with people. However, we're not always as familiar as prepared for the business aspect of this work. Yeah, VR is a multibillion dollar industry that is truly a business with a social service focus. Both of you have a long history with VR holding many different roles. Now, I personally didn't grow up in VR, but did have a long history in employment services for people with disabilities. I was also fortunate enough to participate in an RSA sponsored master's program and got my degree in the management of rehabilitation services all the way back in nineteen ninety four from DePaul University in Chicago. And that really helped to prepare me for the business end of this work, and I applied everything that I learned in every job I ever held. And even with all of that, I still remember coming to Minnesota Blind and waiting through the fiscal rules of engagement for VR and thinking, Holy smokes. I mean, this is a bunch. You add on to those new requirements, like the 15 percent minimum reservation of funds, you've got match maintenance of effort, reallotment and then COVID hit. I know that really impacted your ability to expend funds you couldn't find. The students providers were trying to gear up for virtual service delivery, and some of the existing consumers pull back. And I know it was tough finding staff to fill vacancies. There was just a whole lot going on, so I consider you both such straight shooters, and I'm really interested to dig in and find out about your approach for navigating the fiscal picture of VR today. So I want to start by getting a little flavor for the overall setup of your agencies. So, Allison, I'm going to direct this to you first. What's the organizational structure of your fiscal resources in your state? Are they centralized at the DSA? Are they within your division? Can you paint us a little picture?   Allison: Sure. So Florida VR is within the Florida Department of Education, so that's our designated state agency. And even though we have like a grant management and a budget director that those services, the fiscal piece is still centralized within our DSA. We pay for those critical positions, but they're technically the answer to the DSA, folks. So not all states are organized that way, but our grants manager is actually housed within the DSA controller office, so they're still benefits there, whether they're centralized or decentralized, you can get that connection that you need.   Carol: All right. How about you, Chanda? How are you guys organized?   Chanda: Our vocational rehabilitation program has an internal budget analysts in the VOC Rehab Program that works closely with our business and finance division at the DSA, which is the Department of Public Health and Human Services in Montana. Our internal budget analyst works closely with myself and the program bureau chiefs to develop projections and identify errors in the work intimately with the numbers, and then also works closely with the DSA fiscal staff to do all of our federal reporting.   Carol: Sounds good. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of variety in how agencies are organized, for sure. So I think many times we think of fiscal activities being something that the accounting folks have to worry about and everybody else sort of shies away from the subject. But clearly, there's a great deal of value in the non-accounting folks like all of us to speak, you know, understanding the numbers. So I think this is especially true for executive leadership as ultimately the success of the agency is largely contingent on your vision in your direction. So tell us a little bit about your start as a director in the background. You have in working with the finances. And how did you start and dig in to get a handle on the requirements? And Chanda, I'm going to kick that to you first.   Chanda: All righty. When I became the director of the V.R. agency about two years ago, the agency was in Order of Selection with all categories closed and we're in the midst of an interesting financial situation due to two years of significant over enrollment of participants. At the time, there was not any staff with a lot of historical knowledge. About to be our grant, our rules, allowances, etc. Nothing. We were fortunate in 2017 to be selected for RSA monitoring, which might be surprising to hear that that was a fortunate thing, but it was what we needed it and it was a fantastic experience. The RSA monitoring team came to Montana and were on site for one week and we had the opportunity to work and learn really closely with our RSA fiscal partner. That week, she went above and beyond and out of her way to learn about our state systems and our state rules, and then partnered with us to strategize ways to manage forward through our upcoming maintenance of effort, penalties and ways that we needed to manage our budget differently. Our partnership was invaluable to ensure Montana VOC Rehab could persevere through the myriad of obstacles we were in, and we've made sure to spread that knowledge through every level of staff, so every staff member knows their role and the rules which drive our business. As you said, it takes everybody to understand how this impacts their role and where their decision making impacts the budget as a whole.   Carol: I really liked when you've talked about this in the past and you've been really forthright about that fortunate monitoring from twenty seventeen and how it kind of really puts you on that different path. I appreciate that. And the tact that you've taken in your agency to really get all the levels understanding the fiscal sword. It Isn't this mystery over here somewhere to the side? So, Allison, tell us a little bit about your start as director in the background you have working with the finances.   Allison: Well, let me start with the background part of it. As it relates to finances, I'm going to go way back. So in high school, math was like my best subject, and I had a goal of being a certified public accountant someday. So my first year in college, I was actually an accounting major that only lasted one year before I changed my major. But I still always had that internal skill, I guess a math type of things. So that really honestly is like the total background of my finance piece. So any of the directors out there that really don't have that finance background, it's OK. Hopefully, by the time we finish this, you're going to have a little bit of assurance that you're OK if you don't have that finance background. So in the administrative roles with VR, though, I really quickly had to learn more about the fiscal side of the VR part. When you're out in the field doing direct services counselor, you have a budget that you work within, or at least I did as a counselor, but that was really the extent of it. And then when you get to an administrative role, it's wholly different. It's a different perspective, it's a different  approach. So I really had to research for those resources back then. Of course, you're talking about 10, 12 years ago when I first started in that administrative role and I had to ask lots of questions of staff, and I went even a step further than just them giving me an answer. I went further and said, OK, tell me where you got that answer. Where is that answer located? That helped me start connecting with what existing staff's knowledge or understanding is, where it actually is stated in the law regulations, you know, some regulatory guidance, whatever it is, it was almost like a puzzle back then. I started putting those pieces together. But honestly, I don't think any person in VR is going to understand all the fiscal aspects fully and wholly. It's very complicated. It's very complex. The first thing I know is you as a director have to really understand the laws and regulations and all the guidance that's out there. And there is a plethora of resources now versus 10, 15 years ago, and I'm very thankful for all those resources. So they're out there, but you have to take the time to read them and not just read them, but understand them and comprehend them. And I think we all know that if you read any kind of law or regulation, any kind of regulatory guidance, everybody can read the same sentence and we all can come out with a different interpretation. So not only reading it and understanding it, but also discussing it with your leaders so that we all get on the same page. We all have that same perception of what it means. Experience, I think, has probably brought me more fiscal knowledge. But knowing where those resources are and where it says that piece, you may not even know the whole piece of that law. But if you remember that word that stood out like reasonable, applicable, allowable, you know, the cost principles that we hear all the time, you may forget one, but you know where to go. Get it. That's what I had to do as a director, and I think it's helped me in the long run.   Carol : I love that you said that I had to learn that same way because I would find myself getting in trouble it over something. And then I go in and I'm like, Well, What's it say in the regulation? And I go in and look that up? And then that's how things begin to cement in my mind, because stuff was so uniquely different in VR, you know, even the words you use, your kind of like, there strange. And so, to get that in your head, I just think that's a great approach. So, Allison, I don't know if you know this, but you know you were a huge resource to me in the early days when I was navigating Order of Selection and what went into developing this priority for services. I just wondered, was there any particular tool or resource that was helpful to you as you started in this leadership role? Is there something you can point to?   Allison: People. Honestly, people were the best tool. Resource for me, and it's identifying the correct people, the ones that have the greater knowledge and skills than you do connecting  with that RSA liaison, the programmatic or the fiscal liaisons is critical because when you have those one off questions that are not quite addressed completely, you've got to have those folks who go to and say help. This is what we think, but we're not sure. So people to me is the biggest resource today. It's very different than it was back when I first started. But the TA centers that RSA has funded has amazing resources out there. They develop tons of trainings. Any kind of guidance that you need is out there on those different TA centers, and I'm very thankful for that. I do think we have a lot better onboarding for directors now. I guess that's the best way to say it because there's not really a required onboarding, but definitely a lot of good things out there. Our state's website. That's where you're going to make sure that you're getting that legal guidance, all the laws, regulations. And to me, that's kind of that top tier. You know, you go to RSA first, you look at all of their guidance if you need to, you talk to your liaisons, you go to those TA centers that are supported by RSA. You look at all that information. You still are not sure. You hopefully have a really strong leadership team that you have developed as a director that all have that different perspective that they bring to your team. And you're able to say, this is what I read. Is this what you all understand? There's a lot of resources out there. It can be overwhelming. There's so many. So honestly, as a director, it's really finding the style to your learning. Are you a reader or are you a visual? Are you a tactile? Do you need to sit down with your budget guy and actually go through it with your folks? But it's really understanding what your style is and finding the people that you can trust?   Carol: Yeah, I like to call it finding a buddy, You were my buddy and different people connected folks. So definitely anybody listening. You can contact us at the VRTAC-QM and we can help link you up because we understand other directors going through similar situations. And so sometimes it's nice to just have that buddy to talk to and talk through it. So Chanda, how about you? Is there any particular tool or resource that was helpful to you as you started in your leadership role?   Chanda: Yeah, I was fortunate enough prior to getting this position, my previous position, I got to attend and be a participant of the National Rehabilitation Leadership Institute at San Diego State. Through that program as a yearlong program. I learned a ton of things that at the time weren't applicable to me, but when I got this job, I had resources now, materials. They rang a bell at least, and I could go back and refer to those things. But most valuable out of that experience is developing A network of peers that I got to work with throughout that year on projects and experiences and people from all over the country, all different types of agencies. Because of the relationships that we built through that experience, be able to call somebody I knew pretty well and ask the dumb questions, ask maybe embarrassing questions, you know, depending on the circumstances, especially where we were at at the time. So that networking, that experience, was invaluable to me as I got promoted through the agency just along those lines too,, through CSAVR and other opportunities again, relationships, I think the key to all of this is building relationships and finding that mentor, know who to call for what and ask the questions and have honest conversations and point you in the right direction. Also, the CSAVR leadership forums have been really valuable. I have not passed up one opportunity to get attendance. They've always hit the nail on the head talking about things that are important and critical during that time, whatever the time is. So I've always appreciated the thoughtfulness that are put into those forums because they really do influence our work and are great opportunities. And then, of course, the Technical Assistance Centers throughout the years, another great network of people to ask questions, to have hard conversations, get the answers you might not want to hear, but you know it's the right answer. Yeah, networking and relationships through all those avenues has been invaluable.   Carol: Well, you both did a great job plugging all kinds of things and our allies CSAVR, the TACs. We appreciate all of that. That is super awesome. But definitely, yeah, it's the people part of this. The relationships are just invaluable. So now we're going to switch a little bit to dig in a little bit on the state of your finances in your respective state agencies. You know, are you both able to get the match you need to fully access your federal grant? And if you aren't able to, what kind of strategies have you used to work on that? And so Chanda, I'm going to kick that to you first.   Chanda: Thanks. This one's kind of tricky. So historically, getting our match at a traditional grant level funding has not been challenging. Now we did have two years of significant overspend, as I mentioned previously, and that was not able to be matched because it was so situational. But historically, that's not been a problem to us. Our legislative body really sees the value in the work that we do and supporting Montana's workforce needs. We've always been really lucky in that area.   Carol: That's awesome. You are very fortunate. That is not the case across the country in all places, and Allison may be able to speak to that next.   Allison: So Florida Legislature has not increased our state dollars in oh, my goodness. A lot of years, but we've been OK, we've been able to meet our match, but we are at a point because, you know, your federal award is increased through the cost of living and based on the per capita and stuff every year. So your state match has to go up every year. Well, we're at a point that we're starting to see the shift where we won't have enough match. So we saw this in our forecasting and the fiscal tools that we utilize to prepare for this and we tapped into. There are funding that the legislators do. They fund specific programs is called adults with disabilities grants is what they call it. Some folks might call it legislative pet projects. That's another term for it. So we have recurring ones and we have non-recurring ones and it changes every legislative cycle, so we never know exactly what we're going to get. But the purpose of these programs was some kind of service for adults with disabilities. Not all of them were focused on employment, some were recreational, some was more like a day treatment t type facilities. But what we did was we recognized that we needed those additional state dollars or we were not going to have enough to match. We switch the way we work with those grants and now they're required to work with us, meaning all the customers they work with had to be referred to us. Of course, we had to make sure that we were only focused on those programs that would help employment outcomes. So no matter what the service was, making sure that we could connect that to employment, but it allowed us to take all of those dollars and match it. So that increased our match ability. We did the same thing with our high school, high tech funding that the legislator specifically awards to them and also our assistive technology partners the dollars they get from the state. So we have tapped into that. We still know that down the road, we're either going to have to ask for additional money through the legislators or we have to get a little more creative. And I like to have a plan, a Plan B, Plan C and so forth. So third party cooperative agreements is still in my back pocket. I had TCPAs when I first came here, they were a little bit of a mess. They were audited literally like six months before I started my position, so I missed the audit of twenty seventeen. But I didn't miss the report that came following and part of that was the TCPA findings. It's very administratively heavy for VR to do TCPAs, so we actually backed out of the TCPA because of all the findings with it. But it's still an option and we know that is down the road if we want to do it again. But I will say our TCPA was with our school districts when we pulled that out and only approach them to start as a provider for the school. We have so many more school districts that jumped on board with that approach instead of the third party cooperative agreement because they now don't have to have that percentage. And I think that's what was hurting some of that relationship with the schools. They didn't have that additional dollars. So it actually ended up being a good thing, even though we got rid of the TCPA. But any director that's looking at match challenges, you really have to try to forecast several years out down the road. You can't go to that legislator say, Oops, we need the money right now. You've got a plan out and then who could plan for a pandemic when states were holding money tightly go, no, no, no. We don't know what the next year or two years are going to look like. So always make sure you have plan a, b, c and maybe all the way down to Z.   Carol: Joe Xavier likes to say, You need the microscope. You're looking at the current but the telescope to looking down the road. So yeah, I like that. Good advice.   Allison: I know the Community Reinvestment Act that the VRTAC-QM is going to pile it with a couple of states. Florida is very interested in that because that's a partnership relationship and Florida is very supportive of those relationships. So that's something we're also going to be watching very closely.   Carol: Oh, good. Yeah, we'll definitely be talking about that on another podcast down the road. So since you mentioned the pandemic and we know a lot's happened over the last couple of years, the pandemic has definitely changed. The face of VR in many states have had to adjust to this new normal just by flying by the seat of your pants. So what unique things have happened in your state in the past two years that have impacted the finances? And Allison, I'll have you start with that.   Allison: Well, I know a lot of states have had a lot of difficulty spending their 15 percent reserve for the Pre Employment Transition Services. And I'll say one thing unique with Florida is our governor made sure that our schools stayed open. The Brick-and-Mortars had to be opened last year. There was hybrid options, obviously, to students with health concerns or COVID symptoms. But the Brick-and-Mortar had to stay open for all the school districts, and I think that is why Florida was able to spend our 15 percent PreETS funding. I mean, we were right down to the wire, but we saw our expenditures really go up this last year, that school was in place. So I do think that was a huge benefit for Florida.   Carol: Good for you. Yeah, that has not been the case across the country, for sure.   Allison: Flip side of that, though, the telework option that so many states have implemented for the Department of Education or DSA has fully implemented telework, and that has allowed us just in this most recent fiscal year 2020 one. We reduced our physical footprint across the state, have arranged our lease agreements, put in hoteling spaces, but just this first year, we have saved one million dollars in leases that go back to our customer services.   Carol: Wow, that's big. Holy smokes. So how about you, Chanda? What unique things have happened in your state in the past two years that have impacted the finances?   Chanda: Well, previous to the pandemic, we've been managing things really cautiously. Like I said, we are in Order of Selection, all categories closed. We were starting to invite people in Category one, our most significant disability population and slowly while managing the budget judiciously. And what COVID did is because obviously the spending levels dropped so significantly, so quickly because of school closures, public transit closures, business closures, that was really a silver lining for us, and we were able to pick up the pace of our Order of Selection invites. And we actually got to open Category one this past June after being closed for over three years. So that was a big win, something we're proud of. The pandemic brought a lot of challenges and difficulties, but that was definitely a silver lining for our program and the people of disabilities in our state. They've been waiting a long time to get prepared for and back to work in regard to the pre employment transition services. We're really viewing things as what are the silver linings that came from this? We also were able to expend those funds. Just a really great opportunity to analyze our current service delivery methods and figuring out differently. So we invested in virtual job shadow. We worked with our youth leadership forum and made that platform go totally virtual, which the youth were so engaged and very participatory. Traditionally, that group of students comes together one week each summer. Now they're meeting throughout the year, developing those relationships that are so important, as we talked about previously, and get to work on other Pre-Employment Transition Services outside of the school. But with this group of youth that they've worked with during the summer, so that was really cool. And I think the other silver lining through all of the shift, especially for our students to the virtual world, is we're giving them an opportunity to grow new transferable skills. How do you function in the virtual space? How do you set things up, things that we probably might not have touched on or addressed before, which can all be added to a resume now and be more competitive in the labor market? So I think that's pretty cool because I think some of these youth we might not have ever thought about, let's get on the computer and see what kind of skills we can build here.   Carol: Very cool. Glad you were able to open up that first category, too. That's super cool. Yes. So, Chanda, what do you think is your biggest fiscal challenge right now? And how are you mitigating or addressing that?   Chanda: Well, at this very moment, our biggest challenge is the state of the executive budget and the continuing resolution. We believe this to be our final maintenance effort penalty here. We have not received our penalty letter yet. Last time we received that in June. So it's really concerning November. We have not received that yet. On top of, we don't know what our grand award is actually going to look like because nobody's able to give us that information yet. So we're really managing in the dark of what actuals are going to look like. We have managed forward with that telescope, so we do have some carryover. So we know it's going to be fine, but we're really waiting for those letters and awards to come through. So we know that we're going to be fine. Just the reassurance that what we've done and what we've prepared for is going to be effective.   Carol: Well, fingers crossed this isn't like one of those years where we had like six CRs. You know, where you kept getting, is no good. Yeah. So, Allison, how about you? What's your biggest fiscal challenge right now and how are you mitigating or addressing that?   Allison: I think my budget director will tell you our biggest challenge will be our match, but it is a concern, most definitely. And I know we're going to have to go to legislators eventually, but I'm honestly going to say that my biggest concern is the decrease in expenditures. You know, with Florida being one of the big four states, we have a very large federal award that we have to spend every year. So with the pandemic and the decrease in the customers decrease in expenditures, our carry forward is extremely high. It's the highest that anyone knows it has ever been in Florida VR. So that really adds to that challenge of spending those dollars. I mean, it's typical for state to have a carry forward. Obviously, it's been in that second year, but that percentage that we typically carry forward is almost double right now. So that's just adds a whole lot of dollars when our customer count is still not up to where it was pre-pandemic. So it's all kind of connected because of those customers and spending that money on them. But we know that the VR process takes time. It's not like these folks are going to come in the door tomorrow and we could spend that money tomorrow. So it's really a strategic effort to make sure you're getting the customer in while also spending those carry forward dollars. To me, there are several ideas within my leadership team that we're all pondering. And of course, the first thing is that outreach, that marketing effort rebranding so that the individual disabilities know about the VR resource. Staff augmentation, that's something else that we are talking about here. Florida is. A private public partnership, so we have a staff augmentation through service source, we have about one hundred direct positions that are out in the field that are actually funded through that contract through a private entity. So we are actually thinking about expanding that, hiring more staff through that contract so that we can serve more people and serve them more efficiently is the key. We have a great study that we're getting ready to start. So hopefully that's going to give us additional information about any adjustments we need to make with our rates and knowing that inflation has hit. I think the latest I saw was about 15 percent up from last year on groceries. But knowing that inflation, does that mean as an agency, we need to make some adjustments to our rates or our providers and all of our vendors out there? And then because we have all this big carry forward, it's a great time for us to make sure that we are addressing any of our technology needs or updates there so that staff have the resources that they need. So there's a lot of things obviously that are tangent within this. But my big concern right now is this large carry forward and be able to spin that within that two years or the one year program year.   Carol: Yeah, I think you're not alone in that. In fact, I just wanted to mention to folks. So David D'Arcangelo, he is the commissioner for the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. He was on last month, but he was also talking about these projects they had done, and he was using it with real allotment dollars. But it would apply to carry forward. And if you went to his website, they have like 20 different projects they did that were really cool, like including the Rate study. But there are a lot of very interesting ideas on ways you could spend the money, but that it would be tangible for VR. So I just did want to mention that. So as cliché as it can be, knowledge is power, and I think it is especially true for fiscal matters. You really got to know your money. So how are you building your own knowledge around fiscal matters and also the knowledge of more of your team? And Allison, I'm going to throw that one to you.   Allison: I can sum it all up with one word, “Read”. how many of us have the best intentions to read the information coming out, but then you can never find the time to read it, not just read it, but find the time to read it. To me, that's a critical part is we have to stay on top of the information coming out from RSA, coming out from all of our partners, which is numerous and all the Technical Assistance Centers. But sometimes, that my reading list,, it gets off my priority list and actually during this virtual world, I don't know if you ladies have felt the same way with the last 18 20 months to me has been in a fast paced environment. Virtual is very fast and you don't have time to prepare for meetings. You just jump on these video meetings and you're like, What are we meeting about? So I recently incorporated with my leadership, Field leadership and headquarters leadership, is to designate one to two hours a week to block off your calendar to do nothing but catch up on the reading of those guidance's policies. Go to a TA website. Find those resources as a group. My leadership team is participating in the several of the resources that the VRTAC-QM has posted, like the Twenty For…   Carol: The top 20 tips. Yeah.   Allison: We recently did that the last couple of weeks and we had a really good conversation about it because I have 11 people on my executive leadership team. Every one of them came out of that learning something none of them knew at all. And it was amazing to hear the conversation. But it solidifies what you read and how you interpret it, and then you expand that into how it works in Florida. And then you start seeing these ideas come up this creativity. So to me, there was a real benefit in making sure that your leaders have an opportunity to do that, then you have an opportunity to discuss it.   Carol: I love that you said that about reading. I still remember when those first grant award notice came probably the first time I got one and there's like 40 pages and I'm like, you know, we put it over to the side. And sure enough, there was some like big announcement in there. So I learned really quickly like, you need to read your grant award attachments because those are important, as are all those FAQs that come out. That's good advice. So Chanda, how about you? How are you building your own knowledge around fiscal matters and also the knowledge and more of your team?   Chanda: Well, funny because I also put read as number one, I put read your grant award notification, and I think I actually heard that first from you, Carol. When I heard that I went back to our fiscal folks as like, Have you read these things? Actually? No. So that was wise words from Carol that I brought and read your technical system circulars and read the Green Book. That's definitely these things are piloted right by my desk and flipped through daily. Also, Allison mentioned the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management has helped us problem solve throughout this past year, navigate things and questions that come up again. We're pretty rookie status in regard to our fiscal management and learning a lot, so they've been a great resource to lean into. And also, as we talked about earlier, really making sure that every role of the agency understands that they are fiscal agents and what their decision making and rules are within their role as important. So the TAC has worked with us and we've already done one., Training with just the supervisors, as to, what that means to the supervisor role, so they understand and can accept and embrace their fiscal agent role because we've never referred to anybody that way, obviously, but I think it's important to change that identity a little bit in our next step will be reaching out and training all staff, counselors and administrative support staff. So they understand that they are also fiscal agents and play a role and need to know their roles for the healthy budget for the entire program.   Carol: Here, here, You've been listening to our Sara Clardy. Sara does some really great training around the whole issue of being a fiscal agent. I love that. So, Chanda, when you look at the bigger picture in the long haul for VR, what thoughts do you have on changes or approaches that could overall help the VR program?   Chanda: Well, I think since the passage of the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, that VR counselor role is significantly evolved. As you noted earlier, people gravitate to work in VR because they love working with people, and we're continually looking for ways to ease the data, entry and management from the VR counseling role so the counselors can focus on the transformational guidance and counseling experience that they truly want to do, rather than the transactional data and fiscal management. The data is really meaningful, and I think it's really starting to tell a good story of what VR does, just the breadth of all the work we do. But ensuring that data is collected and rendered accurately has significantly impacted the identity of the VR counselors and the counseling relationship and has customer retention issues. So I don't know what the change would be, but that is definitely something that is happening an impact.   Carol: Yeah, you're probably hearing claps across the country. Other people are saying that very same thing. So how about you, Allison? If you were looking at the whole long haul for VR, what thoughts do you have on changes or approaches that could help the VR program?   Allison: Well, let me flip the question on you a little different, Carol. Let's say you went to your boxing class and something tragic happened, and you all of a sudden found yourself with a significant disability. And tomorrow you have no job, no income. I don't think our decisions don't put our customers first sometimes. And maybe it's because I came as a counselor, but that's where my decisions always try to lie with that customer. And the one thing about VR is we take a long time. If you did not have money coming in, Carol, you would probably be like worried about your house, worried about your food, worry about, you know, so many things that we're not even thinking about that's impacting that customer. Federal law says we got 60 days to do eligibility, 90 days to do a plan. Well, that's five months right there. If you don't have an agreed upon extension, five months of no income, no job, these customers VR is being viewed as, well. It's just too complicated. It takes too long to get where I want to be. I need a job now. So in my opinion, we really need to look at the efficiency and the process of the VR. I mean, how can we get these folks into employment quicker? I know careers definitely are going to take longer because a lot of times that takes training and we know that. But a lot of folks have got to get in and get that money coming in. And there's that workforce need on the business side that we've got to address as well. But I really feel like efficiency. We need to focus on that efficiency and making sure our customers are able to find that employment outcome at a good wage in a timely way, not two, three or four years. To me, that's… that's unacceptable.   Carol: Well said Allison, Well said. And I remember telling councilors at the Blind agency, you know, when they'd be frustrated with people coming in and they're kind of crabby and it's like, think about all the places they've been, you know, just trying to get here and get on the public transit and all the things that they went through just to get into this appointment. And how can we get engaged more quickly? And even though you can take that amount of time, do you want to take that amount of time? Like, can we streamline that? So I agree with you wholeheartedly. So Allison, what advice would you give to new directors and leaders to get their feet on the ground around finances? If you had a couple of good parting thoughts on that?   Allison: I would say find a fellow director kind of like me and you hear all the way we connected, but find someone that can be a mentor to you that's available and willing to do that for you. Because I know not all directors have that time commitment there, but find someone utilize the RSA, the technical centers. One thing we haven't mentioned is CSAVR, the Council of State Administrators for Vocational Rehabilitation. They have great resources and always there to support the directors as well, really finding that person that you can lead on. Like I say, find your tribe no matter where they're at. I have folks in so many states that I would not hesitate to call email, Hey, I have a question, do you have a minute and find out how they're doing that in their state and talk through it to see if it's possible in my state? So finding that person you trust and can lean on, I think, is critical for any director.   Carol: Well said. So Chanda, over to you for our last parting words of wisdom, what advice would you give new directors and leaders to get their feet on the ground around the finances?   Chanda: I'll echo again, what Allison said. Use your peers. Use your network at RSA, use CSAVR and the Technical Assistance Centers, there's so many experts out there you just got to find them. Don't be shy. But I've learned is people really love to share their expertise and people love VR. They want to make sure that your program is thriving and meeting the needs of people with disabilities in your states. So don't be shy. People really want to help to make sure that your programs are doing the best it can.   Carol: Well said, I do want to mention to our listeners that the VRTAC for Quality Management has a number of fiscal resources meant to help you and your staff navigate the enormous fiscal responsibilities of managing this complex federal program. You can go to VRTAC-QM.org Fiscal and Resource Quality Management. You're going to find regulations, topical information, best practices and some tools that we've developed. More coming all the time. And we have a list a mile long. Also feel free to reach out to us with any ideas you have for tools that can be of help to you. So thank you both for joining me today and for helping us to navigate the world of VR finances.   Allison: Thank you for having us.   Chanda: Thank you.   Speaker: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. brought to you by the VRTAC 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!  

Full Transcript In episode 6 of Manager Minute, employment and VR take center stage during October's National Disability Awareness Month. David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB), and Natasha Jerde, Director of State Services for the Blind of Minnesota (SSB), join Carol Pankow to talk about the state of employment, today's challenges, and the initiatives and practices they implemented to improve employment for individuals with disabilities.   Learn how David and his team at MCB increased their customer base by 25% over the last year and how partnerships and creativity in Minnesota are helping to increase the number of people with disabilities being employed.   Find out more about VRTAC-QM at https://www.vrtac-qm.org/.                                                                       Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM.   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.    Full Transcript:   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management conversations powered by VR, 1manager at a time, 1 minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: So welcome to the manager minute, I am so excited to have David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, and Natasha Jerde, Director of State Services for the Blind in Minnesota. Thank you both for joining me today. Natasha, you've been in your position for two years now. So how's it going in Minnesota?   Natasha: Well, first, thanks for having me, Carol. And for others, I'm actually filling in for detail magazine with Minnesota General, so I am representing both. So I will speak globally and with Minnesota. We are definitely going through a state of evolution because not only are we going through COVID, we are also one of the states that really are going through the racial reckoning that's been happening when George Floyd was murdered. So we are having a lot of diversity and inclusion efforts in addition to trying to figure out what VR is going to look like in this new era. So it's been a challenge, but it's also been an opportunity as well.   Carol: Yeah, it definitely has been a heavy load and thank you for pinch hitting for Dee, too. I knew you could represent both, so that's great. And David, I saw you just had your three year anniversary in August. So how are things in Massachusetts?   David: Thanks for having me on. Things in Massachusetts are going well. I'm excited to talk about all of the various programs that we have. We haven't let COVID stop us at all. We continue to move forward. We're doing realignment projects. We've done a bunch of those that we'll talk about. Hiring is up good things happening in Massachusetts. I know we're going to go into more detail.   Carol: Good to hear it. Well, October is designated as a National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and when I was thinking about an October topic, well, it just made perfect sense to talk about employment and VR. David, I remember last year when we were on a call with RSA and they were highlighting VR's 100th anniversary. You presented what was happening at the Mass Commission and you really had some exciting things happening for customers during the pandemic. And I love following all the work that you do on your social media and I saw y'all have a podcast as well. And Natasha, I know your team well, and they're always creating some wonderful ways to build partnerships with employers and create interesting and lasting relationships that have helped to improve employment opportunities. And you're also a really good partner with Minnesota General. I know two years ago we held the roundtable and recognition of employers in Minnesota during this very month to celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I just wanted to talk for a second about some Bureau of Labor Statistics and as I was looking things up as of August 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that unemployment rates for persons with disabilities are 11.5 percent, compared to five point one percent for persons without disabilities. And the labor force participation rate for people with disabilities is 35.6 percent, compared to 75.8 percent for working age people without disabilities. Now, the labor force participation of people with disabilities is higher than it was prior to the pandemic, and John O'Neill, he's the director of the Center for Employment and Disability Research at the Kessler Foundation. He said that this actually has been a bright spot during the pandemic as people with disabilities, and he thought maybe out of economic necessity remained engaged in the labor market. He says the last time that we saw labor force participation at this level was July of 2009. But even given all of that, you know, that bright spot, much work needs to be done to increase the number of people with disabilities in the labor force, which really ties directly to the mission of VR. So I know these past 18 months have definitely been a challenge for you both pivoting to remote work for your staff, figuring out new ways to provide services to your customers and figuring out the reality of this new world of work. And in some ways, I'm really hopeful that the pandemic has proven there are new ways in which work can be done that's going to benefit our consumers in the end. So let's dig in. So, Natasha, can you paint us a picture of your agency? Like, how many people are you serving right now? Do you currently have a waiting list and how are your employment numbers looking?   Natasha: I have both Minnesota blind and general here at Minnesota Blind. We're at about 650 individuals we're currently surveying. And if you look at 2, 3, 4 years ago, we were usually in the 700's. So our applications are still down, but they are trending upwards. We haven't had a waiting list for a few years. All categories are open. Our employment numbers are slowly trending upwards. 2021 brought much higher well, not much higher, 3 higher than 2020. But we are looking to get back our 2019 numbers slowly but surely. And as for Minnesota General, they've had a downward trend. There are about 2000 fewer applications and serving 11 percent fewer applicants than they did in the previous year. Our numbers are pretty on par with the national trends. Minnesota General has been offering services to all people on the waiting list. They reopened their final 2 priority for service categories, which had been closed since the fall of 2014. They have effectively eliminated the waiting list. They are seeing rates of employment at the time of exit decrease overall about 13 percent decrease, which is very identical to the national trends.   Carol: That's big news, though on the waiting list, that's good stuff. That is really good stuff for both of you. So, David, paint us a little picture of your agency.   David: Basically, everything I'm going to talk about is on our website. So let me just start with that. If people hear something that resonates with them, please use us as a resource. We want to collaborate with you. Go to Mass.Gov/MCB Mass.Gov/MCB and find out all that's going on with the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. We've seen a 25 percent increase over our previous year in terms of VR despite the pandemic, so that's really a testament to our team, our counselors, and most especially though, the consumers we work with who have persevered and there's just a lot of opportunity in Massachusetts. Some of that might be related to the pandemic, actually. You know, COVID has put real strain on the health care system. We've seen hiring there. But even other service industry things, we've seen hiring there to go back to John O'Neill's data point, which I believe in John very much and Andrew out Anvil that does the entire program first Friday of the month at noon, I faithfully listen to the number come out and they do a great job since the data has been collected in 2008. Yeah, I mean, we made a great amount of progress that COVID happened. We slid all the way back and now we've slowly regained. So at least we're back to where we were, which I think is a good thing for people with disabilities. Specifically to Massachusetts, though, we've seen that, we've seen our VR program increase and consumers typically we have, you know, somewhere between 850 and 950. Now we're at about 1050, 1038 consumers. Exactly, actually that we served as of June 30 at the end of the fiscal year. And of that, we had 155successful closures, and many of those were six figure closures. We had a significant amount of people that got a high level job, so that's very encouraging to us and we've had some good results. I know we're going to talk about some of the specific programs we're looking at pre X, we're looking at the mid-career professional and even older adults who want to reenter the workforce or continue to work beyond retirement age.   Carol: That is super exciting news. It really is. I love it. That's what I remember you talking about with RSA when we were doing that. Other call it like a year ago, like these six figure positions, that's that's incredible. So now that we've gotten this kind of picture of what's going on in general with your agencies, let's just look a little bit at the overall employment picture in each of your states. So what's your employment rate kind of look like and what are your hot employment markets and sectors? And David, I'll go to you first. I know you started a little bit on this. I'll let you expand.   David: Yeah, as I indicated, health care remains strong. In Massachusetts, we're hovering right around five percent for the general unemployment number. Our labor participation rate among the general population remains strong. Unfortunately, among people with disabilities, we're still looking at around two thirds of all working age people with disabilities who are not in the labor force. To me, that's job one, right? That's job one for our agency, for our counselors, is engaging our consumers and trying to get them resolved to want to work. That, I think, is because before you can get the job, we know how to get them the job once they're resolved, but they've got to be resolved to want to work. So that's job one. Then the second part is getting them a job, which is it's not easy, but it's easier, right? I think we're doing well. We've put together public awareness campaigns to really try to get out there. We use actually real allotment dollars from RSA to launch our What's Your Vision campaign, which we're out on TV with 30 second ads. We've been in print or on social media again, go to mass dot gov food slash MQB to check out the full campaign. I know there was a plethora of real dollars coming from RSA, so if you're looking for something to do with those dollars, we've proved the proof of concept that you can do it and it can be effective because we're having more people come to MQB.   Carol: Very cool. Yeah, I'm looking forward to looking at that link. So Natasha, how about you? What's going on with the employment overall? The picture in Minnesota?   Natasha: Minnesota is looking great. Our unemployment rate is at 3.8percent, which is well below the national average. Our labor force participation rate is 67.8 percent for all individuals and about 48 percent of Minnesotans with a disability are employed, and that's compared to about 38.8 percent nationally. So the numbers are looking great. And when you're asking about hot jobs across the board, everything is hot right now. Job vacancies are at a record number. Employers across the state are reporting difficulty finding workers. The demand is especially high in health care and social assistance. But those other areas that really were hit hard during the recession, including food service, hospitality, those are soaring right back.   Carol: Wow, thank you for that. So it's no secret that the pandemic had a huge impact on employment and the economy as a whole. But can you tell us how the pandemic has affected employment for the customers you serve in particular? And are there any lessons you learned during these past 18 months you're putting into place for the long term and attached? I'm going to punt that one to you first.   Natasha: We actually had a lot more opportunity than challenge when COVID hit, so we did have a number of individuals with disabilities who were laid off primarily because they were in the service and hospitality industry, and that was hit especially hard. But with COVID, it really showed that teleworking is completely and utterly doable, and all of these job postings we're seeing now are for remote workers. And when you're working with people who have transportation barriers who also live in very rural settings, this has been incredible and they're getting jobs and we're able to accommodate those jobs. The biggest struggle, though, is because we are so remote and virtual is accessibility issues, and we've been doing a lot of education of employers, of our own employer, the state of Minnesota, how to make sure everything is accessible so that if someone is working virtually, they can still do their job. And how we implement accommodations in a virtual world look very different. I think our biggest lesson learned is you just need to roll with it. You have to be flexible and you can't get locked into the way you used to do things. So we did things we didn't think was actually possible. We've done virtual adjustment to blindness training. We've even done virtual job site accommodations where they would walk us around on their phone or their laptop showing us the worksite, and we had been able to give suggestions and ideas how to accommodate without ever leaving our house. You just have to throw the book out the window is what we learned.   Carol: I bet your team has been super busy. I bet those guys are just like, Wow, but it's got to make the work super interesting.   Natasha: It's so much fun. I have never seen such creativity as I have these past 18 months. We have tried anything and everything, and it's been incredible. We're going to use a lot of those things from here on out.   Carol: Oh, very cool. So, David, I know you guys are always super innovative at the mask commission. So what about you? Tell us about how these last 18 months have impacted you and employment for your customers and kind of any lessons you've learned?   David: Yeah, really. Just a big credit goes out to our team and our consumers, one for being resilient. And we closed Friday, March 13 at five o'clock and we were open for business Monday morning, 9:00 a.m. Our counselors were already equipped with mobile laptops. Aware, which is our case management system, is all in the cloud, so we were positioned well to be able to work in this remote environment. So that's helped our counselors and our team. But additionally, I got to agree in Natasha's right, and I think you all listening to this podcast will agree the amelioration of transportation as a barrier or at least the significant amount of that as a barrier has been a game changer. It's really a paradigm shift and is unlocked. So many potentials for not only blind people, but all people with disabilities. I think that the permanence of that opportunity is a huge takeaway, a silver lining. Covid is a very serious situation. A lot of people have suffered, so I don't want to say it's a great thing because we wouldn't want to trade that right. But this is really help people with disabilities. And I think in the long term, it's going to continue to help them. I think that's the top of the full thing. And how can we leverage that even further? Is there are things we can collectively go to RSA for or I think, you know, Carol, I also sit on the National Council on Disability. Although I'm here as commissioner today, I'm trying to influence people on the federal level to think outside the box. And let's consider if there are other ways that we can leverage, whether it's being online or any technology that we can use to bring to bear for the benefit of people with disabilities to work.   David: I think more and more of that is coming, and that's a good thing. We're getting some of the other things we've been doing, though we just want an award. I'm pleased to say for our graphic novel that we put together our Patriots Best Practices guide. That's a good thing. We're trying to engage those students and their families who traditionally you know how some of these RSA guidelines go. They're very dry. They're on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper typed print. This is engaging. We find once you put it in the kids hands, they can't put it down and they're learning about all the steps of VR and the families are learning about that. That's a good thing because we really believe it takes a village and back to the other thing we were talking about where you've got to get the person with the disability resolved to want to work. And yes, they come about that ultimately on their own. But if their families are in on it, their friends are in on it, the community is on it and telling them, Hey, this is a good thing. Work brings independence, self-determination and it really, you're going to be contributing to something. I mean, I would assert somebody's self-identity really work is intertwined with that. So we think that things, whether it's the what? Your Vision ad campaign, this Preets practices guide, all of the other work that we're doing, trying to get out into the broader community. We think that rising tide will lift all ships.   Carol: So is that price guide also on your website, David?   David: It sure is Mass.Gov/MCB. Additionally, we have a companion website that goes with it that shows you the graphic novel and is audio described at the same time. And I think that's quest for independence. It's the UWW, AMC B Dash quest for independence. Again, go toMass.Gov/MCB. You'll get the link to it.   Carol: Awesome. No, I'm sure there's some people going to be interested in that as well. That's a bonus tip all listeners for the price guide. That's great. So it might be a little early on seeing this yet, but have you either have you seen any kind of the signs of the long COVID starting to impact customers? David, I'll ask you that first, have you started to see that?   David: Yeah. So in Massachusetts, we haven't seen too much of that, but we have seen hesitancy getting back out into the community a little bit. And on the consumer side, you know, so we're only going to do that when people are comfortable because it's really it's safety first, it's safety first for our team, for our counselors and then additionally for the consumers. We haven't seen too many breakthroughs, fortunately or too much spread in our community in Massachusetts, which we're grateful for. We have a high vaccination rate. I think Massachusetts leads the nation in the percentage of our people who are vaccinated. I think that's contributed and helped really open things up in Massachusetts here. I wouldn't say it's back to what it was pre-COVID, but I think we're trending in the right direction and hopefully sometimes we'll be able to put this behind us.   Carol: Good. Good, Natasha, what about in Minnesota? Are you seeing any signs of like the long COVID in customers?   Natasha: We have not. Between both general and blind. We haven't seen a single applicant or customer who is dealing with long COVID. Part of me is, yes, it might be too soon, and the other part of me is thinking, I don't know if individuals really are realizing that those long term effects are going to have a disabling impact on them, and they may not even realize what VR is or what disability is. They were living and working just as anyone does. And then this happened. So I think there might need to be some awareness out there in the future.   Carol: I can see a campaign coming. I can see David like launching a campaign around this, how we going to serve the long COVID folks. So back in the day, I used to have this personal philosophy. I like to tag to start with, you know, about employment, and I always felt that I wanted our customers to achieve and obtain or maintain family sustaining wages. And I don't focus used to be like, what? Like, what is that? But I didn't want people to just get a job. I wanted them to give more than a job. I was hoping it could lend itself to a career and moving up and having a ladder and buying a house and doing all of that. So what is your personal philosophy around employment and people with disabilities and Natasha, I'll ask you first.   Natasha: My first philosophy is I agree with you, Carol. Any old job does not mean a good job, and family sustaining wage is essential. My other philosophy is I don't believe there should have to be a philosophy around employment of people with disabilities. I mean, frankly, VR is a long term goal needs to be that we aren't needed, that the only factor in any employment situation should be that the individual can do the job and it should not matter if they have a disability or not. And employers need to recognize that every single person brings value and strength to the organization. And we are doing a family sustaining wage study in Minnesota, and 93 percent of individuals with disabilities who are part of the data did not receive a family sustaining wage. 93 percent, there should not be a gap and they should not be relegated to entry level employment, minimum wage employment if they want and need to do more. My philosophy is there shouldn't have to be one.   Carol: I love that here here, Mic-drop on that boom. So David, how about you? Even though we shouldn't have to have one? Do you have a personal philosophy?   David: I certainly do as a consumer myself, having been completely blind multiple times in my life and now being legally blind right on 20-200, there is a significant amount of suffering that occurs with people with blindness, people with disabilities in general. Coming to that acceptance, that disability is going to be part of the natural human condition, I think is the first thing. So once you can come to terms with that, then it becomes the greatest secret right, which is we become what we think about. So if you focus and your resolve that you want to work, you will achieve that and then move up. And so it starts with goal setting and a plan and all the things we talk about in VR, the tried and true methods of sitting down with your family, with your extended circle and drawing up that plan and sticking to it, the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. You got to hang in there for everyone hundred you ask you. I get 99 no's, and you can't give up until you get that one, yes, even if it's at the hundredth time, so you've got to hang in there, that is. The number one thing is that perseverance, because people with disabilities are naturally inclined to solve problems to hang in there. Whether it's the Accenture study that we know that people with disabilities outperformed in terms of being on time in terms of having less absenteeism, in terms of being productive in many ways. Those are all good traits, but it starts with overcoming the inherent challenges that come with disability. And then once you do that, then come into VR. We've got programs and services, and we've got great professionals who know how to provide opportunities for you.   Carol: I love that. Oh my gosh, I'm glad you said it. That Accenture study as well. It's back to the basics. I always think we used to talk about that. Going back to the basics. I know sometimes it's like, Oh, here's a flashy new program that's going on, but really, it is back to the basics. I am going to ask you, though, have you had any other types of initiatives or practices that you put into place around employment that you're hoping are going to help to move the needle forward? And David, I'm going to kick that to you.   David: So let's talk about some of the realignment projects that we do. I think year one realignment projects that we did. Twenty four separate realignment projects, we follow that up with another six this year. I think we're doing another 6. So we're talking everything from the graphic novel that we talked about to we launched an employer challenge during the pandemic. We get great response on that from the business community, where we challenge the business community to, hey, do one more thing. That's the name of the campaign. Do one more thing. Everybody can be a mentor. You can offer one more internship. How about interviewing and then hiring and then promoting and retaining all of those things? So that's what that campaign is centered around. We launched our Career View podcast. We've got twenty one episodes there on all types of VR topics. We have special guests and staff and counselors sharing their insight, by the way that's available on our website Mass.Gov/MCB. You can also find it on SoundCloud, Apple and Google. So we have our nationally recognized summer internship program. This year, we had nearly 70 individuals participate that joins more than a group of 700 that we've had over the years. In October, we had our job fair. We do that annually at Radcliffe and with partners like Perkins School for the Blind, Carroll Center for the Blind and other community stakeholders. This year we had 40 career ready candidates who pitch themselves. We did reverse pitches, which seem to be a very effective model in the 20 personnel executives that we have loved it and we're getting placements out of that job fair. We did the 60 second elevator pitch, so if you want more information, contact me, be pleased to share it. We did a reach for the stars, which was in that event where we gave out gifts to the people that had the best pitches. And then for Nadeem, we created blogs and worked with our sister agencies, MRC and Match Commission for the death of Hard of Hearing to get it out through their communities to make sure that people know that, yeah, it's about blindness, but it's also about people with deaf blindness and people with blindness and other disabilities as well. So whether it's the virtual town halls that we're doing, I came day celebrations. I mean, we've got a lot of events going on. My team has worked so hard and I think we have the advantage, though, of such institutional knowledge and just great human resources here in Massachusetts with our team at MCB and the consumers. I mean, you just got to have a willing consumer group that wants to take part.   Carol: Well, I think you need to have a session at NCSAB or CSr CSAvR and all the things that you're doing because I could just see, like my old director, wheels are turning. I am sure colleagues from across the country would be like, What are you doing? I want to know more about that.   David: Sign us up. I mean, there is a number of other studies that we did realignment projects. I think in total, Carla and I, who's our communications director, Carla Cathy, does a terrific job. I think we stopped at 52 different projects that we've done over the past 24 months or something like that. So we've got a lot going on. Check us out. Mass.Gov/MCB to find out more.   Carol: Holy smokes. Thanks for sharing that. So Natasha, I know you're representing you and Dee, so are there any other initiatives or practices that you all are doing around employment to move the needle forward?   Natasha: I got sent a whole list that Minnesota General has been doing, but I think the biggest thing I wanted to share first is that we are doing most of these things together. I think Minnesota General and Minnesota Blind had had a long history of being very isolated from one another and siloed. That is no more. We do almost everything together and as one voice, and so a lot of the things I'll be talking about, we are doing this as a team, but with employment, I think pre-employment is the first place we start is when you build that. Relationship between a student and work, so a couple of things that we're doing at SSB is bring your a game where students are meeting monthly and they get information about an Alexa game and then they play that game with their family and friends, and then they come back together with their peers to talk about the game and how it relates to jobs and job skills. And then we also did an open mic night so that we can encourage the artistic side of our students. And they came, Well, they're going to be coming on the 28th. They're singers and bands and poets and comedians and storytellers, so they'll be able to share their talent. We're also expanding our pre-employment transition services programs. We're adding another work opportunity navigator who's going to be focused on providing work experiences in the northern region since we have a ton of students up there and a lot of need. We're also entering into a contract with the third party to host liability insurance so that we can get more students out there for work experiences. That's been our biggest barrier, so we figured let's get over that so we can get students paid work experiences. We have a program in Minnesota called the Connect seven hundred program, which is great but could be better. But Connect seven hundred is like Schedule A, where a person with a disability can come in and have a noncompetitive interview. And the Connect 700 program has just soared this last year. And the stats are that someone who applies for Connect 700 with the state are nearly twice as likely to get hired than someone from the general public firsthand. SSB has had a number of vacancies in every single vacancy, has had to connect 700 applicant and almost every single vacancy has been hired from a Connect 700. So that's been a really great experience. Another huge project, and I'm going to say it's 2 projects. The first is the elimination of subminimum wage. Legislature created a task force to eliminate it by 2025 and going hand in hand with that is our collaboration with the Department of Human Services to help people who are on waivers and receiving vocational rehabilitation to get jobs. We're doing something called service provider alignment, so if someone's on a waiver and getting vocational rehabilitation services, they can have the same provider from start to finish. We have a new framework called Engage Plan, Find and Keep so that it helps people move through that process without any delays so that they can get into employment. And there's no back and forth of who's paying for what. So it's a seamless experience. And then I could go on and on with 50 more things, but for sake of time, I won't. But the final thing is we have increased our collaboration with our WIO partners tenfold because they have connections. We don't we know disability, but they have connections with the business community we often can't replicate. So we've been doing a lot with our title 1 and title 3 partners. And so with that, I'll turn it back to you, Carol.   Carol: Well, I know that's been on your heart for a long time. You've always talked about that partnership with the WIO partners, and that is so critical. You both have so much happening. And so I want to lead us into our National Disability Employment Awareness Month, little part of our discussion and how each of your agencies is drawing attention to this month. So, Natasha, I know that I was following on social media as well and saw that there was an employer event earlier in the month. So can you tell us a little bit about how that went?   Natasha: Yeah, we had over 400 attendees. We invited the creators of the windmill training. If you're familiar with windmills, Milt Wright is the company, and the two owners of that corporation actually came and presented. And the topic was music within disability inclusion in a business world, and that recording is available on YouTube. And if you go to our Career Force website, it's available on there. We also unveiled something called disability inclusion bite-size learning modules for employers, and they are 20 minute modules and there are five of them that employers can go in and learn about disability inclusion, and there's tip sheets and tip cards and how they can incorporate it into their business. We've also done a number of blog posts and of course, we celebrated White Cane Day and we posted three videos regarding White Cane Day and what it means for people with vision loss. And fortunately, our governor is very much in support and issue two proclamations one for NDI and one for White Cane Day.   Carol: Yeah, that was awesome and I loved it. I saw your video too, promoting White Cane Day. I thought that was really well done. Both of you are good at the old social media and David, I follow the mask commission all the time on social media and I saw you were part of a panel a couple of weeks ago for National Disability Employment Awareness Month.   David: Yeah.   Carol: and also I saw there was a podcast dropped and you had a couple of other tweets out and some really cool things with customers. I just wondered if there's any things you want to highlight about the special month.   David: Again, just a shout out to our team for doing such a great job with all of the social. Media, Caller Kath is doing a great job, but did a VR panel with the state exchange for employment for people with disabilities, a seed project which counts on state governments, has an affiliate. It's the National Association of State Personnel executives. So NASPE they had their conference in Boston, so they wanted to hear from me. So we were able to present there about hiring people with disabilities. So we're a model employer state. We talked a little bit about that and how they could do things in their state. So that was good. But we kicked off the month with our vlog and our ad campaign that I mentioned previously. What's your vision, which is on TV and it's in print and it's really getting a lot of traction. We had our job fair. We had our employer of the year and then our Reach for the Stars contest, which we talked about. We had our virtual town hall with our transportation authority, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, about barriers and making sure that people with disabilities have their free or reduced Charlie card in Massachusetts. If you're blind, you have a free travel pass to be able to travel throughout the public transit system. So we talked about that we had a white pain awareness day and celebration where we had some mobility awards within that program. That was fun, but we had a provider's council presentation with the disability commissioners all throughout Massachusetts about human services and things like that. We presented to higher education professionals at Lesley University. We did an event for parents of children with blindness and visual impairments for the Boston Public Schools and New England College of Optometry. Again, just more of the reallotment project. So it's very busy at MCB, but it's a good thing. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing the amount of consumers coming in for VR is up. The amount of closures is up. So it's a good thing. I think it's working.   Carol: I'd say so, David, I think you need to train your peers. I have never seen anyone quite like you and how you've promoted and really gotten traction in Massachusetts and have made some really cool things happen. I think it's amazing. And Natasha, I just wanted to say so that if people wanted to follow what you were talking about with the mini modules for the employers, I looked it up and it's CareerForceMN.com. So if anybody wants to listen to that, definitely. David's promoted his website to a number of times, but folks should definitely go to both because I think that you will get a lot of rich information that is applicable in any state. It doesn't have to be that it was developed for Massachusetts or Minnesota. What's being said are things that are pertinent anywhere. So I know we need to close up here shortly and I just want to ask you each. So if you had a shiny VR crystal ball and you could forecast what is happening with VR 5 years from now and how would employment for VR look? And what do you think needs to be done to just overall improve employment for individuals with disabilities? Natasha, I'm going to go to you first and then I'll go to David   Natasha: O if only I had that crystal ball. You know, I think we can't have VR look the same in 5 years from now as it does 5 years ago. I think we have hung our hats on the old way of doing VR for so long, and we really, really need to reimagine across the board how we work with our customers and everything that David says. This is what I hope that all VR agencies embrace. We need to connect people to not just any old job. We need to be focusing on advancement. We want people to never have to come back to VR. But yeah, that's the majority of our cases. Are people returning. That's why we need to invest people for the long haul and we need to make sure that they have everything that they need so that they do not come back. And the way that we approach businesses, I think, has been kind of archaic and has been from this. Well, we're going to convince you to hire people with disabilities, but we need to be driving home that the expectation is if employers want talented, loyal staff, a strong business model that embraces diversity and inclusion and a workforce that actually reflects their stakeholders and customers, then they cannot disregard the disability community. And VR needs to be the leader in that message. And it cannot be. Just please hire someone with a disability that's not going to work, and that's not our approach anymore.   Carol: Well said. Well said. So, David, how about you? Do you have a crystal ball?   David: Wish I did. But the great poet Santayana said those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, so I think we need to look back. Let's look back at starting with like Smith's best act and all of that and see how much progress we have made. And even it just contemporarily when we're talking about we did away with homemakers, that was a big VR thing. Right now, it's imminent that we're going to get rid of. 14C, that's another step. You know, I look at programs like the SBA8A program. Let's get included in that. I look at Randolph Sheppard as we've seen the pandemic just crushed so many of those vendors there. What can we do now to expand that program or to get that program into other sectors or industries to keep that alive and keep people entrepreneurial? So I. I think the future's bright for VR, I believe in incremental change. These are long standing challenges that are profound. And so to me, it's like, what can we do to look at the existing program, incorporate all of the good things that we've talked about, all of the things that we've been hyper accelerated to learn as a result of COVID. It's the transportation piece that we talked about, the technology piece that we talked about. Let's keep that going so we can provide our people with access to the opportunities. And I'm just very confident that we're trending in the right direction. I want to keep it going.   Carol: Well, thank you, David, for those positive words at the end. I really appreciate that. I think you two are both such a visionary and just talented leaders, and I'm really looking forward to the work you all do over these next five years. Very excited. Thank you for being on the show. I appreciate your time. I know you're both busy.   David: Thank you, Carol.   Natasha: Thanks to you all.   Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR. 1 manager at a time, 1 minute at a time brought to you by the VRtAC 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!

Full Transcript   In this episode of Manager Minute, Joe Xavier, the Director of the California Department of Rehabilitation Services, and Jane Donnellan, the Administrator of the Idaho Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, join Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM studio to discuss the importance of succession planning and knowledge translation for VR agencies.    Joe and Jane highlight how they tackle the challenges of losing quality employees by utilizing strategies such as long-term planning, adjusted hiring practices, cross-training, and promoting from within.    This episode's conversation will encourage agencies to have more discussions about succession planning and to think about the significance and dynamics of knowledge translation -- one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Listen here    You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/                                                                       Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.    Full Transcript   Announcer: 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: So welcome to the manager minute. Today I'm joined by Joe Xavier, Director of the California Department of Rehabilitation Services, and Jane Donnellan, Administrator from Idaho General. Thank you both for taking time to join our show today. So, Joe, there's a lot happening in California right now. You had fires, floods, drought, all on top of the continued pandemic. So how goes it in California?   Joe: First of all, hello to everyone. It's great to connect with everyone. And certainly I know that what we're experiencing in California, everybody else is experiencing in some fashion. But Carol, I must say it's not that we had. It's we have all of those disasters are all taking place at the same time. And I think the good news is that we're working through it and we were able to get a state budget this year that really addressed the gaps that were exposed and accelerated through COVID 19. So I think on the grand scale of things, we're moving in the right direction. Many, many challenges, lots of work to do. But these are the times we're in and we're leading and navigating through them, and I'm confident we'll come out on the other side.   Carol: That's good to hear, Joe. So Jane, as Joe would say, you also have your share of things going on besides the pandemic. You had that incredible heat wave out there. How are you doing in Idaho?   Jane: Well, I'd like to say yes to everything, Joe said. He articulated that very well. Yes, we continue to have some challenges that are going on between the pandemic and a lot of smoke from the fires for sure, as well as excessive heat throughout the summer. But as Joe indicated, we're resilient. We're a resilient people here in Idaho and particularly the Idaho Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. I am just so appreciative of the committed staff that I have to the mission and really seeing beyond all those barriers.   Carol: Well, I love to hear it. I was so excited to talk to you both. I know with all the moving pieces and parts in VR, succession planning can often take a backseat or even just finding time to plan and manage the continued churn that VR is experiencing. Sometimes the focus is only on top leadership when I get the statistics from CSAVR. There's been seventy seven director changes in seven years in VR, and it's really easy to focus that succession planning for top leadership. But we also need to think about those individual contributors. And I think it can become easy, you know, to get comfortable with having your subject matter experts there to make sure everything runs smoothly. But what happens when those subject matter experts are no longer there? How can you translate knowledge when the owners of the knowledge aren't around to translate it? So we're going to take a little deeper dive into that conversation today. When I was at Minnesota Blind, I remember H.R. handing me a document my very first week that I was there and it had the names of all the staff and the dates that they were eligible for retirement over the next five years.   Carol: And when I looked at the list, it was over one third of our staff could leave within the next couple of years. And I remember thinking, yikes, like everybody's hopefully not going to retire on that exact day, but quite a number did or really close to those dates. And in addition to the retirees, we had other individuals, you know, moving on for more pay or other opportunities and then a small agency. I had a lot of subject matter experts that were over a single area and we had zero backup. So believe me, when they left, it really left a void. So we started working on developing processes and procedures that would document what they did. And when I talked to folks around the country, you two are both known as being amazing leaders and all around good human beings. And you both have done so much with a lot of thoughtful thinking around managing your organizations. I couldn't think of two better people to chat with, so let's dig in. So, Joe, I'm going to go to you first. I know you had a big retirement with your deputy, Kelly Hargraves, in the last year. How did you handle that move?   Joe: Yeah, thank you for asking. So real story. Kelly started, and I think almost immediately I sat down with her and I said, So Kelly, who's going to replace you when you retire? And she's like, Well, how about if I move into my office before you kick me out? And I said, Well, fair point. But literally the way you handle this is as a leader, you have to do two things simultaneously that are very difficult. You have to put a telescope in one eye and look way down that road and see what's coming and playing for it, like a retirement, like somebody that has opportunities to go somewhere else. And you have to put a microscope on the other eye and put existing leadership, existing development, existing acts under that intense magnification and make sure those two are aligned. I often find that people will focus on one, but not the other. Rarely are they focusing on both simultaneously. So I think you start planning for the way, way ahead of time. And I would just add one piece here is a teaser. It's not just a knowledge transfer. That's not what scares me the most. It's the relationship and the experiences that you need to draw on so you can appropriately act on the knowledge that scares me when that is lost.   Carol: I love that, Joe. That is a really you are always profound. But I like that that thinking about the telescope, the microscope and the relationships, you're dead right on that. So can you paint us a little picture of what's happening in your agency regarding both retirements and general turnover? Like what does it look like, your numbers? What have you been experiencing?   Joe: I've been the director since February of two thousand eight, so every single person on our 14 member executive team is new to the position, meaning lots of turnover right now in this current year. We expect three and as many as six executive turnover senior leadership team. We expect to see anywhere from five to 10 members of our senior leaders turning over. And that is exemplified throughout the ranks for us. One of the things that we know is that that retirement wave that was coming got a bit delayed and frankly pushed back a little bit for a couple of different reasons, but certainly the pandemic included in some of that. But we're feeling it and we're going to start feeling it very quickly. We see that in our rank and file ranks, we see that in our counselor ranks. So this is it's a real deal. It's a real issue. That's a scope of what we're dealing with. And the benches are never as deep as we'd like them to be.   Carol: Yeah, I'm here in that. I mean, it is a real deal. It's all across the country. So how about you, Jane? Can you paint us a picture of what's going on in your agency with retirements and also just general turnover here?   Jane: And I think, as Joe stated, I we have a mixture of retirement as well as some significant just general turnover, specifically in our counseling staff in our FY 20 or counselor turnover was about twenty three percent and I anticipate that it's probably higher at this point. We haven't analyzed it quite this year, but we do have regions that I'm seeing are aging out in both management and in counselor senior counseling staff. And so recruiting new individuals to really fill those slots has been quite a challenge. Currently, we have a region that doesn't have an assistant regional manager and we've tried to recruit for that position three different times and have had a failed search on that. So it certainly is something that is continuously on our mind. And therefore, what are those strategies that we can identify to either help recruit or help retain qualified staff that we can grow from within for that point? As for my executive leadership team, we're a little bit small, but we're a little bit smaller of a state in terms of population than California. So I have five on my executive leadership team and I anticipate in the next two to three years losing about half of them to retirement. So we really are looking at that lens of where we need to go for the future to make sure that we have a strong and vibrant agency.   Carol: That's amazing what's happening with both of you and it's indicative of everything going on across the country. We're just seeing such a shift. So how's that pandemic played into staff decisions to move on and what have you done in response to that? I'm going to ship that to you, Joe, first.   Joe: Yeah, I think initially the pandemic there, those people that were thinking of retiring and moving on, and they kind of held back a little bit because of a lot of uncertainty. And thank goodness they did. We really needed that solid, steady leadership over the last year and a half plus. But now they're leaving, as I described earlier that leaving at all levels of the organization, and it's great that they can. So a number of years ago, one of the things that we had done is create some positions in our service delivery that allowed people to come in from different pathways. So not necessarily through the master's credentialing and vocational rehabilitation business engagement specialists working central planners as an example. So that helps because it broaden the candidate pool that we can bring in. Of course, we then have to sort of tailor the functions and activities to better align with each of those individuals. So we have our master staff credentialed staff on VR focusing on more of the complex aspects of VR, we have the other folks focusing on the other aspects of delivery, that's sort of one of the strategies that we've used over time. I think remote work is going to be a nice piece on the recruitment side. It'll offer the challenges, but I think it'll do some of that. And frankly, at the end of the day, just the shortage in the workforce in the vocational rehabilitation field as a whole is going to cause us to continue to have to be creative on how we staff up. And I think it'll change a lot in the coming one, three, five years or so.   Carol: Yeah, I agree. I agree completely. I keep thinking, what's VR going to look like, you know, just five years down the road? So Jane, how about you? How's the pandemic played into staff decisions to move on and what have you been doing in response?   Jane: You know, as I looked at this area? I thought the pandemic really has had less of an impact to our staff, I believe, than some other factors that are going on specifically in Idaho. We have really strong economy in Idaho. Our unemployment rate is about two point six percent and we have a shortage of a workforce which plays into that competition. We have a difficult time recruiting and retaining qualified staff because they can go and get a job in another business, utilizing some of their skills and talents than to stay and work for the wages that we can pay in our restrained from with what the Legislature has appropriated for us. For example, I had an administrative assistant come on board in March. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Skilled individual. And she left in July because she was offered a position with one of our hospital systems earning five dollars and fifty cents more an hour. I could not compete with that. So that has probably been our largest challenges the competing with private industry, as well as some other state agencies that have less educational requirements and have higher entry level wages. The last thing that I've really noticed, particularly in what we call the Treasure Valley area and that's where Boise is, is our cost of living is significantly higher. And so our wages don't always afford individuals to live in a manner in which they can afford to live, either through a rental or purchasing of home. It's just exploded in terms of the cost of living. So although I think the pandemic had maybe a slight impact, I'm not sure it's really been our greatest challenge.   Carol: Yeah, you're leading us into my next area I was thinking about because I know some directors have talked about having hiring freezes that have been imposed, limitations on the public merit system or union contracts, or some other state edict that might be going on. And so, Jane, you obviously had been talking about what you're experiencing from that vantage point. Joe, have you experienced anything like that in California as well? And what are you maybe doing to address that?   Joe: So yes, we have this last budget cycle. So about a year ago now we had what's called a soft hiring freeze that really fully new positions was pretty challenging. So we did two things to immediately respond to that one was we used our delegated discretion to limit the freeze on the non-direct services position. So in other words, get a direct services position vacancy. You were able to fill it. If the position vacant was not direct services, then that was less so the case. The second thing that we did was really get more nimble at redirecting staffing resources to where we needed them within the organization. So if there was a function that needed to be performed and staff that could deliver on that function, we're in another section slash division. Then we just redirected them for that period of time because just the need is you have to be nimble, you have to be flexible in these challenging times. Thank goodness we're out of that short term hiring freeze right now. But here in California, we deal with that fairly routinely, fairly frequently. You know, we do the best that we can with it. We adjust the volume between what we can provide directly and what we might be buying from our partners and services that we procure across the state. So it's juggling of a lot of different methodologies to ultimately today make sure people are getting the service they need.   Carol: Absolutely. Juggling is good. That's a good word for it. I know folks have talked about, you know, counselors starting at thirty thousand with their master's degree in some of the state agencies and having to take a second job just so they can afford housing in the area they're in. You know, it's kind of like what you're talking about, Jane. It is. It's been pretty wild. So I know the pandemic had certainly brought out some different things to light in the way we think about the world of work. I know in just even five years ago when we were talking to our HR about. Allowing for remote work, everybody is like, Oh my gosh, you can't do that, there's going to be workers comp issues and all of this. Wow. You all did it overnight, you know, people went to working differently. And there are still some really good old fashioned attention that can be given to staff development, you know, and looking at how to grow your own, so to speak in the organization. So, Jane, I'm going to kick this one to you. What practices or processes do you use to help grow your own talent in the organization?   Jane: Sure. And I think that's always evolving because we're always looking at various ideas and practices so we can grow our own and retain our own. Piggybacking on a little bit of what Joe said about being nimble with our staff. We really looked at throughout the state when we have positions come open, how we can repurpose that for another purpose. Another thing that we actually I spent two and a half days last week with all our managers and our assistant regional managers throughout the state having discussions really about the future of our agency and what we want to do and how we need to do that. And one of the things because staff are so there's so many detailed parts of the counselor job that we're really looking at. Are there areas that people have greater expertise in? Am I a better pre-employment transition counselor and specialize in that versus a general counselor? So we're really trying to be again, to Joe's point, nimble in that regard. One of the things we did several years ago, we created permanent assistant regional position manager positions in all our eight regions. Prior to that point, we did not have permanent assistant regional managers. We at first thought it was a great way to get people interested in management if we had rotating assistant regional managers, but then realized there were some complexities with that by making them a permanent position, it really gave them a track to upper management if that was something of interest. We've also been engaged in certain leadership training that we find really beneficial, specifically the Emerging Leader series, which is run out of the Center for Continuing Education and Rehabilitation, or Caesar, as we call it, out of the University of Washington.   Jane: And that's really directed by Paul Jay Jack. And we love him, and he's really created opportunities for staff that may not even be in management yet, but have expressed some leadership how we can raise them up in those areas. We provide other tools for our managers to include supervisory kind of academy training so that they really are equipped with tools and resources on how to best support the staff that they're managing. One other area that we've been really committed on is cross training. So within different areas, for example, our fiscal department, they all have a primary job, but they also understand the jobs of their peers that they're working side by side with. So that's been a great opportunity for us as well. So we're always looking at where we can provide growth with our current staff and opportunities to strengthen our program. We created some area transition counselor positions. We have a Social Security cost reimbursement position that actually was an admin staff who just said, I really am so committed to helping the agency with cost reimbursement. Allow me to take this on. We created a position she brings in over a million dollars a year to our agency, so all those that helps the agency helps that staff to be really committed in their positions.   Carol: I love that that is super creative. I could see it firsthand to when you were going through that monitoring, talking about people were cross training and all those really cool ways to understand. In that fiscal year, I was super impressed. Super impressed. So Joe, what about you? What practices or processes do you have to help kind of grow your own talent in the organization?   Joe: Yeah. So a lot of what Jane mentioned, I think, applies to us as well. One of the things that we've been we're piloting right now that we're working on is instead of aligning our caseloads based on population based on disability as it were, we're really looking at aligning our caseload based on sectors, employment sectors. So you have a team that focuses on individuals that want to go into the health care profession or sector as an example. And we're really looking to see how we can use that to really get a better connection between the individual work, preparing for employment and the available jobs, and they're being skilled up into that. So that helps staff to focus their development on a specific sector as an example. Lots of internal trainings, lots of webinars and those kinds of things to keep people skills up to date, as well as introduce other elements that they can be including in the work that they're doing. And then. More broadly in terms of upward mobility and leadership, when we talk about the positions that I mentioned earlier, creating them, some individuals have used that to then catapult themselves into the counseling profession. So that's a win win. We hope that would happen more. But salary is always, of course, an issue. As Jane mentioned earlier, lots of semi-formal, informal, formal leadership development. I think that is one of the big things. And earlier I mentioned the experience.   Joe: A lot of times we focus on the transfer of knowledge, and I think it's important. I think it's essential to what we do, but it's really when you miss someone, if the experience they have in applying that knowledge, it's the relationships they have to draw on to really know when to make what judgment call. So for us, exposing individuals that have an interest in leadership to the why behind what we do to understanding the benefit of that relationship, not only getting the experience but learning how to draw that experience through others where they don't have a direction. We're finding that to have as much or more value than just the basic knowledge of delivering the services, because where things fall apart is not always where the knowledge is, not it's where you don't have that judgment call taking place, that experience being applied, those relationships to draw on. And then, of course, leverage like the National Rehabilitation Leadership Institute, every chance that we get and similar trainings that expose folks to that. We send a number of staff to participate in the forums, especially now that they're virtual. That helps a lot with gaining perspective and gaining awareness, especially the leadership issues around VR. So those are just a couple of the things that we do. I'm sure if I think about it, there's probably another half dozen, but we'll save that for another time.   Carol: Well, I know you're always cooking up ideas. I think I borrowed your team model concept back several years ago to help us through some sticky times, and it really did work well because we wrapped around that whole team around an individual. But I liked your sector approach. That's very unique. I think that's interesting. I've not heard of anybody doing that before.   Joe: Yeah, it's one of our deputies for our field services is really been focusing on sort of changing the mindset from geographical boundaries to this whole sector approach. And we'll focus on the sector that is really aligned with where the district is. So for example, we have part of our state that really focuses on agriculture. And, you know, those are folks that can lead that and anybody else in the state that is interested in that arena. We can move the caseload into that direction. And you know, the beauty of the virtual services now is those boundaries become much less needed to be physical than they can be virtually engaged.   Carol: So cool. That's cool. So Jane, I know you did some really good work because the monitoring team kept raving about how you were documenting processes to help in transitions and staff, and they just gave such glowing praise in that whole area. Can you tell us about your approach and how that's working here?   Jane: And is it work in progress. But we specifically are fiscal, and our planning and evaluation team really started this practice several years ago in which they developed desktop manuals that specifically outlined a positions job and what they did in a very detailed format to include screenshots and descriptions links. So if it was something that needed to go to the state controller office or if it was an RSA report, all the details that position needed to perform in order to get their job done. So if somebody won the lottery and didn't show up the next day at work, somebody could go in and actually have some step by step guide on how that job was performed, and that has been really helpful for internal control purposes. That's been really important and we recognize that, but it also helps in that keeping that continuity of the job if something were to happen. As I said, it's a work in progress, our fiscal and our planning and evaluation team, they really have perfected it. We do have assistance that also have desktop manuals. They can get more complex with some of the other positions, but we're looking at developing one for our regional manager positions and our assistant regional manager positions. So it is a work in progress, but certainly it's been a fabulous tool for us to use internally and as well as to highlight the work that we're doing from an internal controls perspective to RSA.   Carol: Well, I know Jane too. I really appreciate that you all had shared some of those examples with us at the VRTAC for Quality Management. And so we could share with other states as an approach on how to do it because it really is very well done, very well done. So I know both of you are super creative like you guys are talked about so many cool things that you're coming up with. But I'm sure you have some frustrations or challenges in planning for change, whether it's that longer term succession planning or navigating just that fast pace of employee movements. So what kind of what are your biggest frustrations or challenges and how are you addressing that? And Joe, I'm going to go to you first on that.   Joe: Yeah. So it's a really good question because it is not always peaches and cream by no stretch. So I'll use a real life example. You guys have heard me talk about this at conferences in the past expedited enrollment. The concept is really the consumer shows they're maximally interested in going to work. And that says the determining eligibility and beginning services now not waiting 60 days and 90 days to develop a plan then and do all that kind of stuff. And branches are in teams around the state. They've embraced that. They've jumped all over it and it just took off without a whole lot of push in other places. It's just really slow to get traction. And what we find is that groups of folks develop their own norms in their own culture, and a lot of these processes that you would think would be easy to change, even though somebody may not have embraced it when they showed up pretty soon. That's what they know. So getting folks to let go of something they've been doing for years to grab on to something different is not always as easy as we would like. The other one, of course, is that we layer on layer after layer after layer of do's and don'ts in the work as we approach it.   Joe: And over time, you look up and you're buried under all that. So peeling that back just takes way too long and way too much energy. And I think one of the things for us. One of my frustrations is identifying those things that we can do and then realizing they've always been there, and we just had not thought of a way to do it. So. Another example we are now instituting a debit card or credit card approach for consumers to procure certain goods and services they need. We've been wanting to do that in this organization for decades. Can't go. It can't do it, can't do it. Pandemic shows up new faces and one of our executives said, Well, we can do it tomorrow morning if we approach this as a service and not an IT modernization approach. And it's like, Oh my God, and that's been in front of us for decades. So it's knowing that there's things that can be done unearthing them and finding the people to champion them. And then when you do getting people to let go of the old and grab a hold of it, that's brilliant.   Carol: I love that. You know, it's so funny how people want to hang on to something, even though it's like awful and they've been doing it forever. But we've been doing it that way. Yeah, they don't want to give it up. No.   Joe: Don't they complain about it to you routinely and you say change? No, it's like, Wait a minute.   Carol: I know, I know. So Jane, how about you? What have been some of your kind of bigger frustrations or challenges as well?   Jane: And kind of piggybacking on that because people don't want to change in, there's constant change and then they're saying there's too much change and holding on to the old and just feeling completely overwhelmed. But I think probably one of my biggest struggles is just not having enough time to really thoughtfully carry through some of those initiatives. I mean, almost like Jo's story, you know, decades ago, you talk about a concept and finally something happens and you're able to do it overnight. So but just having that time to thoughtfully think about what we need to do to strengthen the agency and move forward, at least. And I'm sure Joe, this never happens to you, but I feel like I am constantly being hijacked with my time about something that totally takes me off the track. And so I just, you know, I'm like, I had the whole afternoon for this and something else happens, whether it's the Legislature or we have other programs under the division that sometimes do seem to get more attention than the VR program, even though the VR programs are largest program. Those are things that are really frustrating for me, but I instituted an annual planning with the LTE. Every first of every year we get together just as our core group. We go off site so that we can't be distracted by too much, and we really talk about things that are outside of the state plan goals. They're just really internal things that we really want to focus on and try to accomplish. Sometimes we're really excited and we celebrate those accomplishments, but we have an initiative right now that. We actually have talked about for a couple of years now, and that is for a CRP manager, and we have not been able to accomplish that in the two years' time because something has taken our time where we haven't been able to really put the time in to really find the right person for that position. So if anything, my biggest frustration is not having enough time to do all the things and then getting kind of sideswiped by other people's agendas. It can be frustrating.   Carol: Absolutely, Jane. I know you were exploring some different initiatives when I was talking to you that you were exploring with your H.R. So can you tell us about some of your thinking around that on offer? Or maybe it's all secret, but I don't know if there's anything you can share.   Jane: I don't know if it's legal. No, I'm kidding.. We certainly are always trying to find ways in which we can maximize our employees in terms of again, going back to maximizing on their expertise. We did create area transition counselors about a year ago. That really works. We work more closely with school districts and parents to help have them understand the importance of pre-employment transition services. So again, looking at the expertise of staff that we have and how we can maximize those. One of the things that we've done for our counseling stuff because based on our CCPD, we do require that our counselors achieve a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling or related field within five years of being hired if they come in as an under fill. One of the things we instituted about a year or so, maybe going on two years now is tuition reimbursement for those staff that are seeking their master's degree. So we do ask them to look and determine whether there's RSA scholarships and how they can utilize those funds prior to our own. But for those who may only get a partial RSA scholarship or can't find one, we will do tuition reimbursements and there's some caveats to it. We're just not giving away free money for them to get their education and then leave us because we don't want that either. But that's been an initiative. I think we started that at about January of 2020.   Jane: We also have been utilizing some of our retired counselors when we have open positions and we're having a tough time recruiting. So if we've had a recent retired counselor and they've been separated from the state with the defined time the state makes them be separated before they come back, we have re-engaged with them and some of them are thrilled to come back on a temporary basis to fill in while we're recruiting and training some staff. The last thing that we really worked on in the past year was informing our division of human resources about how underpaid our counseling staff was and to try to help increase the entry level wage for our under fill and then our counselor and our counselor senior position. It was certainly a challenge. A lot of documentation was required to demonstrate that we are well below the market and what we're paying our professional staff. And again, going back to some of the initial conversation, when you have turnover that impacts the bottom line, our customers, they're not going to get if there's gaps in counselors and we have other senior counselors trying to fill in caseloads that does ultimately impact the effectiveness of the service delivery. So we were able to impact our entry level wage. We'd like to see it impacted more because we're not sure that that really is recruiting people still at that, but we're always looking for different ways of impacting our staff.   Carol: Well, good for you and good for trying. I might have to send a couple other state directors your way that are newer in and they're trying to figure out how to do that. They've been looking at trying to get that entry level wage up, and they're having some trouble.   Jane: One of the things, Carol to that and I wanted to mention, I sit on our Workforce Development Council as representing the VR program, and we talk a lot about how we develop a strong workforce in Idaho and out of our Workforce Development Council. There's a majority of our business representatives in the private sector. I have talked with our executive director of the Workforce Development Council about state employees, the state employees of Idaho. We're the largest group of employees were twenty five thousand employees. And I said if we can't impact how we retain our own staff, but yet we're always talking about the private sector needs somewhere we're failing. So I'm trying to get her and. She and I are good friends, so that's a real benefit for me about how we can really impact that at a higher level through legislators and through our governors was to say, Look, we are the workforce of Idaho,   Carol: Bravo, Joe and I are not in our heads. Yes. That is awesome. Yeah, definitely. So, Joe, you know, I always think of you as the idea guy, and I know you like to plan that just for now, but for later in your whole microscope telescope example was the right spot on him. Like, that is awesome. I remember when the pandemic started, and I remember you planning for the end like everybody else was talking about the right now, and you're like, Hey, we're doing some planning for when we come out of this. And I thought, Wow, OK. But you're smart to do that. So how are your wheels turning right now? And can you give us a glimpse into your thoughts about the future of VR and how we're going to ever ensure the continuity of services going forward in the next three to five years? I wonder what's your magic telescope, saying Joe?   Joe: Yeah, there you go. So there's a couple of things, I think with an eye towards that future. It's leveraging the flexibility that the pandemic showed us could be done right. And I truly mean that. So earlier, I mentioned as an example the consumer payment card initiative that we have because of the pandemic, we were able to go to the Legislature and the administration and get 20 million dollars to engage business to think about hiring people with disabilities in a very, very different way. So how do you leverage the opportunity to COVID presented and run hard with it, not just tinker around hard with it? So a couple of other things are hybrid workforce, right? We first see in this department 50 to 70 percent of our staff being in virtual remote work at any one time. There's a lot to that, but that's the way the world is going. So if we try to anchor ourselves in brick and mortar, we're going to be left behind. And more importantly, think about the people that we're preparing for tomorrow's jobs. If the world is shifting to a hybrid workforce, work from home, work from anywhere and we're preparing people for the brick and mortar, what kind of jobs are they going to have? So we need to really just stop thinking about where VR wants and start looking at where business going. Where are the people who are making the hires going? There's so much to that. Let me think about the fact that we're all sitting here doing this podcast remotely, watching them remotely, right? This was always possible.   Joe: We in VR has never done it in the way that we have in the last year, year and a half right as an example. And then the other one that I think is huge is what I call a systems alignment and that is really looking at an individual from where they are very person centered and VR is excellent at individualizing to the individual, but we got to take it further. It's a whole person. Somebody comes to us needing a job, but they may need housing, they may need transportation, they may need food, they may need a number of other things. When we have true systems alignment, we're able to look at that person as a whole and bring all of the systems in a seamless way to bear around that individual, which I think only ensures their success and employment and gets them the hell out of poverty that much faster. So really, really leaning into engaging with other systems, and I'm going to borrow a term from our dear friend Robert Doyle. It's specialization without isolation and this coordination and collaboration without fear of consolidation. I'll go to anybody's table any time, any place, as long as we're talking about employment for people with disabilities as part of that mix exception. So that's a couple of things that are going through my head on where we're going and what I see VR needing to do and moving forward.   Carol: So you're always super profound. You are. I love that. I think I took a bunch of notes. I'm like, I love all of that. I was excellent. And Robert Doyle, yes, I've heard him say that. That was really that's really cool. Absolutely. So, you know, you've got colleagues across the country struggling and people are feeling even though we're virtual, but people still feel isolate like we're all having a wild Monday and lot going on. So are there any words of wisdom or advice you have for other leaders that are wrestling with the same topics you two are wrestling with? And Jane, I'm going to go to you for some last parting words of wisdom to the field?   Jane: Well, I love so much of what Joe just said in terms of being flexible, being nimble, thinking outside the box. But I do think it's leaning on your peers outside of your own organization, whether those be the other systems in your own state or your peers. We have a very strong what we call Region 10. We're connected with Alaska, Oregon and Washington and Idaho. We have our coalition. They're my peeps. I can turn to them, I can talk to them. I reach out with them if, hey, what do you think about this? Or what are you doing over there? We meet monthly, and of course, that's been great with a virtual platform to be able to do so. Our chief of field services with their chief of field services, our fiscal meets with their fiscal. And so that connectedness with your peers there, it's so invaluable. And then when I got this position, somebody said, You know, Jane, it's lonely at the top, so find the people that really can help support you. She wasn't kidding. I didn't realize that I came from the field. I was a counselor, trained and had those connections. But when I changed to the administrator, something happened. I don't know, but I really turned to my peers in the industry and those who are actually part of those systems within the state of Idaho to gain that kind of support.   Carol: And Joe and I were vigorously nodding our heads. It's absolutely I always tell people like, you've got to find a buddy, you know, you need that buddy. And Joe was always my buddy. So was Allison Flannagan. I got lots of ideas from Joe over the years, and Allison had helped me when we were facing some pretty tough stuff because it's like you have to get out of your own head. Yes, you know, you kind of think your way and then somebody gives you these other ideas and you're like, Oh my gosh, that's like brilliant, you know, to take that collection of good thinking from around the country. I love that. How about you, Joe? Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for other folks?   Joe: Yeah, I I'm just did ditto ditto ditto to what you and Jane just have said. I promise you, if you're going through it, somebody else has gone through it and somebody else can share a lot of experience with you about that. That will be invaluable. Sometimes you don't even know who that person is, right? And it's like, you know, I'd call somebody if I knew who it was. Well, if you don't know who it is, pick up the phone and call one of the three of us and say, Hey, who could I talk to about this? You have your CSAVR team, you have your TAC teams, you have folks you may not know, but they will know. And I promise you, those conversations are going to be well worth the time that you make for that. That's one thing. But the other thing that I think is really important and that is tomorrow time, tomorrow time, you have to make the time to sit back and think about tomorrow because today's problems will bury you, right? But if all you're doing, you're shoveling out from under today's problems. That's a microscope telescope. You got to make the time to put that telescope in focus because a lot of times when I do that, it takes that problem of the day and it just changes that whole focus and it changes that whole mindset of how we're going to approach it. We're not going to solve it for today. We're going to solve it for tomorrow and the day after that. And there's a very big difference between solving for today and solving for tomorrow. So building those triggers that help you be the one that looks up and out because you're the lead in your agency, you're amongst the leaders across this country, in our respective profession. And if you're not the one looking up and out and down across that horizon, nobody else is going to do it for us, folks.   Carol: Well, said Joe. Well said, I really appreciate you both being on the show today. Thank you so much and I wish you both continued success in your states. You're great human beings, and I'm really pleased that you took the time to be with us today. Thanks again.   Joe: Thank you,Carol.   Jane: And fun. Thank you.   Announcer: Conversations powered by VR one manager at a time, one minute at a time brought to you by the VRTAC 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!  

Full Transcript   In episode 4 of Manager Minute, Bill Robinson, Director of the Michigan Bureau of Services for Blind Persons, and Cora McNabb, Executive Director at the Kentucky Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, join Carol Pankow, host of Manager Minute, to lend their experiences on navigating the critical DSA/DSU relationship so that VR's mission doesn't slip through the cracks.   Learn how Bill and Cora dealt with the challenges and the most significant challenges they faced. These challenges included cultural challenges and keeping the blind agency identity alive. Find out how the mergers are going today and what Bill and Cora share about the successful strategies that worked for their agencies.   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/                                                                       Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.    Full Transcript: VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Bridging the Gap Between the DSA and the DSU so that VR's Mission Doesn't Slip Through the Cracks.   Speaker1: Manager MINUTE brought to you by the VRTAC for quality management conversations powered by V.R., one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host, Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute. Today, I'm joined by Bill Robinson, director of the Michigan Bureau of Services for Blind Persons, and Cora McNabb, executive director at the Kentucky Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. I know you are both so busy. Bill, you're the president of NCSAB and Cora, you're in the midst of federal monitoring right now. So thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show. So, Bill, how are you and how are things in Michigan?   Bill: It's great to be here. And I want to thank you for this opportunity.  In Michigan, we've actually returned to the field as of July 12. And so our line rehab instructors or field teachers are out there serving the blind VR customers and pre-employment transition customers. And then our training center has been open and our counselors are also seeing people in person. We're hoping to continue that and continue to serve our customers.   Carol: Very cool. Good to hear you're back. I'm sure folks are really enjoying that in-person training and interaction. So, Cora, always a pleasure to talk with you. How's it going in the Bluegrass State of Kentucky?   Cora: Carol, it's going great. Like Bill here. As of June 11th, we went back to in-person services and brought everybody back. Everyone's on a hybrid schedule that they're all working and serving individuals. Both of our centers are open and serving individuals, day students. But we haven't brought anyone back residentially as yet. And we have been talking about it. And of course, the rise in numbers is concerning. And so we would make sure we do the right thing. And then, as you said, we're in the middle of federal monitoring. So things have been very busy here.   Carol: Things are happening for sure. Well, I thought of you both as we're unpacking the topic today of navigating the critical DSA and DSU relationship so that VR's mission doesn't slip through the cracks. I know both of you have undergone changes in the past five years and have some really good expertise to lend to this topic. Both of you oversee a designated state unit that is housed within a larger designated state agency. Bill, you came from a recent change in DSA's and Cora, you just lived through the combining of the blind and general agency as well in the last three years. I was doing a little digging and since 2014, there have been two states where the VR agencies combined the blind and the general together and 12 agencies moved DSAs with you being the 12th, 10 of those DSA moves were to the workforce Labor Department. So it does make some sense. And coinciding with the foundation that was set by WIOA that really forced the issue for VR to partner with the other core partners. The VRTAC for Quality Management is working on a webinar in conjunction with RSA to unpack the Technical Assistance Circular 12-03, which is organizational structure and non-delegable responsibility of the DSU for the VR program, and then also TAC 13-02, which is reorganization of the DSA and DSU for the VR program, and we hope to have that webinar out this fall. So, Bill, I want to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about the change you most recently lived through with your shift in DSAs? And where were you located before? And where are you now?   Bill: We started out in a State Department that was very unique for rehabilitation. It was the Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Department. So we were asking, hey, this is great being in this department. The department was very supportive, but at the same time, it was kind of interesting because we really didn't have much to do with licensing businesses or regulatory affairs, but yet there we were. And so when the governor changed over to the new administration, so we went from Republican to Democrat, the new administration looked at some reorganizations and the move ended up going from law or licensing and regulatory affairs to the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.   Carol: So you're one of those labor moves as well? That's interesting. Yeah, really interesting that you started out. I don't think I've heard of any other state agency being in a department quite like you were in Bill.   Bill: Yeah, it was kind of interesting. And our general agency was actually in DHS. So neither of us were really sitting at labor at the time.   Carol: Cora, I can still remember back when Kentucky was going through the idea of combining the blind in general agency, and I remember that was going on for quite some time while the fine details were worked out. And unlike Bill's situation, your situation was a little different in that your two separate agencies were now combining together under one DSA. So can you tell us a little bit about the changes you went through and what designated state agency you are under?   Cora: We are under the Department of Education and Workforce in Kentucky and it did go on for quite a while. We actually took our time in combining the two agencies and involved a lot of the stakeholder groups that were involved, especially the blind advocacy organizations. And of course, I had been with the blind agency for at that time around 12 years. So we wanted to make sure that we protected those specialized services. And so we worked together. And about the time that we merged and combine the two agencies, they decided to abolish our fiscal unit in our agency and they moved it to the Department of Workforce. They moved it under the department later, which a couple of years later down the road, they actually moved it to a cabinet level. And so we had more change. But that resulted in the loss of a lot of veteran staff and veteran knowledge. So we not only went under a combining of two agencies, we also went under an additional change that involved our fiscal unit at that time.   Carol: Wow. I know you've lived through a lot there, so I want to take you back to that moment. You were notified the change was definitely going to happen. How were you notified? Cora, I'm going to start with you. And how much lead time were you given saying, all right, we're going to combine these agencies now?   Cora: Well, we knew that there were some discussions that were occurring. And at the time, the leadership was they also at that time? Well, it was a little bit later. They also moved adult Ed under the workforce program. But they wanted to have all the workforce programs under one department, which they were successful in doing at that time. And then also they wanted to centralize the operations, those back door operations. So we had kind of heard the rumors a few months before they actually approached us and told us about it. So at that time, I had a call with the Rehab Services Administration and the commissioner of workforce at that time was on the call and I was on the call along with Becky Cabe, whom at that time I was the interim director over at the blind agency, and Becky Cabe was the interim director over the general agency. So they talked to us in person. And then we had a call with our RSA to inform them of the changes.   Carol: So, Bill, how about you? How were you notified and how much lead time were you given?   Bill: That's a pretty funny story. In June of 18, the general agency director and I were giving a presentation for the leadership forum for CSAVR. And I had just finished on stage and was stepping down and my cell phone goes off and it's my immediate department director of Laura calling me and she says, hey, you're going to see a press release in about a half an hour, then announces the fact that you're moving from LARA to this new Department of Labor and economic opportunity. And I was like, oh, how is this going to work? So it was a complete surprise to me and the general agency director.   Carol: Holy smokes, Bill. That is a crazy story. So you literally found out with a half hour notice that boom, you're moving.   Bill: Yes. And then that was June. And the actual moving day for the department was August 12 and the fiscal year for us ended September 30th. So we just had a couple of months to try to figure out what the heck are we going to do here? Plus, we were looking at two closings within our fiscal year and we didn't know how that was going to work.   Carol: Holy smokes. Cora, I know you said you had reached out to RSA right away. Bill, did you reach out to RSA right away to help you with this move?   Bill: I think I was in such shock that the general director and I got together and we just got our teams together and pulled out that TAC 13-02 and started going through it together as. Leadership on both sides. We also had contacted RSA to set up a joint call. I don't know if I remember calling, but I called as many directors as I could that had gone through something like this. I know I talked to Alan McClain at the time because Arkansas was in the middle of it. And I talked to Cheryl Fuller, who was about two years into it. So I was reaching out to everybody at that point.   Carol: Smart move. I know in I work on the webinar we're developing, we're stressing how important it is to involve RSA early to ensure that that transition can happen smoothly and that all your bases are covered. Things like you got to change the state plan and ensuring your grant award is set up so you can draw down money in a new agency and more so what were one or two of the biggest challenges that you had to overcome and I'm going to start with you.   Cora: I think that because we were not very happy about them moving our fiscal unit. And so we did have a conversation about that, but we knew that it was going to happen. So the best thing that you can do is figure out how you can make it work and for your agency to get through the changes and accomplish what you need to. And we did work with our state liaison at RSA through the whole thing. And it is a lot of work to get your state plan updated and depending on when needed, your comprehensive needs assessment, all of that things don't always come together and match the way that you would like them to. So you just have to figure out what the best way is to make it work. And then I think it was probably involving the stakeholders in the process because it was a really difficult for the staff to come through those changes and adjust.   Carol: Yeah, I can imagine that was really tough dealing with all of that. So, Bill, how about for you? What are one or two of the biggest challenges you had to overcome in this move?   Bill: Well, I would echo some of what Cora said and just build off of that, because the short time frame we had, we had to really get moving in. RSA was very helpful in that process. Our state liaison, the fiscal folks at that point, there was not a RSA commissioner. So we were working closely with Carol Dobak as well as our liaison staff. And I think Cora touched on one key point is that for staff, this is a big change. And we had to over communicate with staff. We had, like we said, we have to open up the state portal for the state plan amendment. We had to communicate to our stakeholders. We have to ensure our vendors that they would get paid despite the kind of awkward closing within a fiscal year and how that was going to work. And then we had to make sure our counselors and our staff understood how to stop services within one period of performance and take that little six week period of performance that we had to the end of the grant year and make sure that that was handled correctly. So logistically, there was just a lot of logistics and we actually had spreadsheets and checklists and all kinds of a set up. And we were running that stuff by RSA and our fiscal folks and collaborating with our general agency to make sure we're on the same page. And that we were not missing something. So it was a lot of communication and collaboration.   Carol: But I think your background was well suited then with your accounting background for dealing with all of that, because you had that added weird complexity of that little bit of time, you know, where the switch over in the period of performance and all of that. So you knew how to address that. I don't think everybody could have done that.   Bill: Yeah, I think also in my business experience, I was in charge of a lot of mergers and acquisitions with different companies and would take operational control of the acquired entity before merging. And then this was no different than a merger or acquisition. And you're putting together organizations that don't know each other very well and accounting systems that are different, procedures that are different. It's really it can be overwhelming. And I think the checklist certainly helped.   Carol: I'm glad- glad to hear that. So I know many times when we think a change, I think we think about change at a higher level. We think about those concrete things, such as change in structure or the hierarchy. We think about changes in the fiscal activities like you were talking about Bill, and all of those are relevant considerations, but it's also critical to consider those smaller, abstract, but really important details, such as the shift in culture. So to start with, you might imagine that combining of two of our agencies has completely altered the identity of blind services in Kentucky. Cora, can you speak to that is a huge shift?   Cora: And we had separate agencies, separate policies and practices. Sure, both of us were a VR agency but it was very different. We had two separate categories for order of selection, so we had to look at that and come up with the best of the best in moving forward is how we kind of presented it to the staff. There was a huge loss of at least the staff felt like from the blind agency, a loss of identity. They spoke of that quite often. And I would try to emphasize with them that you're the same. The services that you're delivering are the same. So the only way that you can lose your identity is if you lose who you are. And you're not going to do that because the consumers are still there and you're still serving them. So that was probably one of the most difficult things. And they talked a lot about how even now there are still things that come up and there are still things that we're dealing with. And they mentioned obviously we always hear there isn't enough communication. But I realize that for the staff that we're in the smaller agency, communication happened a lot differently in the smaller agency than it does in the large general agency. And so a lot of times when they would say that we're seeing that smaller organizational feeling of family that was there. So that's a big thing for individuals to adjust to. And then they want to make sure that you still emphasize how important those specialized skills are so that they don't lose that sense of who they are in their profession and what they do.   Carol: I love that you said that, Cora, and you were the right person to be in that role with that transition. You came from that blind agency. All of us here came from that kind of blind agency experience. And we get that small sense of family and rolling in. I just love that you were we're talking with staff about not losing themselves and what they do and how critical that was. So you both were in the right place at the right time with this move. So, Bill, you were able to maintain your identity, but has your culture shifted in any way due to the reorganization into a new DSA?   Bill: Yeah, I don't know if our culture shifted because we've had a really good culture. When I came on board, we kind of did a shift at that point. And we've stayed true to our mission, vision and core values. But what was interesting is we had to shift in terms of how we communicate with our department and also how we work with our department. And just to give you an example and common touch, small, specialized services, which certainly is where VR is and especially where blindness, as I remember sitting down in a team with the new department director and I was talking to him about our services and I mentioned the training center where we do adjustment to blindness and we serve two hundred and fifty one and the prior fiscal year. And he looked at me and said, two hundred and fifty one thousand. I said, oh no, no, two hundred and fifty one individuals. And it is kind of that work force kind of thought where we serve the masses. Whereas Cora pointed out VR is very specialized services, especially blindness services. And because the specialization, we look at the individual and we're laser focused on the needs of the individual and customizing those services around the individual, where I think from workforce standpoint, it's more about how many people can we serve and what kind of mass data can we accumulate to tell our story. That was kind of the cultural shift for me. When he said two hundred and fifty one thousand, I said, well, wait a minute, I think we're going to have to have more discussions.   Carol: Oh, yeah. I bet that was a big shift for the DSA folks when they're talking about that. I came from a workforce agency too, and I always remember the people in Title one your and the Wagner Peyser side, when you think they've got massive numbers of people they're dealing with and our small numbers of consumers. They just they didn't always get that we did so we led a little exercise with our DSA staff where we had them actually just do a little simulated exercise under sleep shades. And it was led by one of our instructors. And it was really interesting just to give them a little peek into what we were dealing with. And it did help. It helped that whole group have a little better understanding of what we were about, thinking about all the changes you've both undergone, both larger concrete changes, also smaller abstract changes like culture shifting. How did you navigate through the challenges you faced and what were some successful strategies you used? And, Bill, I'm going to start with you.   Bill: The biggest thing I could think or recommend to individuals is you have to communicate, communicate and communicate. And really, you're looking at all your customers from internal customers to external customers to your stakeholders and your community partners. And you're really having to make sure that there's an understanding of how this is all going to work. And also, you know, I move to labor with the other core of your WIOA partners was very impactful and could be for the future and for a positive spin on that. That was a really great thing. And to be co-located with our general agency as well. We thought there was some really good things that came out of this. But one of the things I think was helpful was RSA and the problem solving that they engaged with us as well as just our DSA and helping us in that transition process and then the whole collaborative effort that it took.   Carol: I can't think of a better person to do that, Bill, than you like. You are the master at communication and collaboration for sure. So Cora, how about you? What were some successful strategies that you used?   Cora: I think that we tried to be as transparent as possible. We tried to share and involve everybody as much as possible in the processes. We made sure the field staff were involved in the policy development and the state rehab council. So I think that keeping it as simple as possible, I think probably knowing that you're not going to make everybody happy no matter what you do. We certainly had a lot of problem solving and decision making that we had to make. And you have to sit with that and be comfortable with it because you just can't please everybody and not everyone is going to come through on the other side after you're like that and all that change. You have those people that have a difficult time dealing with change anyway, but maybe do the best that you can and just know that there are going to be people that aren't going to be happy. And you can do a lot of time trying to make them happy and they're never going to get to that happy place. So you can hope that they'll maybe go somewhere else and find that happiness. Those would be the two things that I would remember from everything like that.   Carol: I really like that. So. So I know some time has passed now since all of this happened for both of you, cause I think you've been in there like three years now and I think it's been over a year for you. So how are things going now? Cora, I'm going to have you take that one first.   Cora: Well, I did mention the year that are combining of the agency was in two thousand and eighteen, so we did it effective October 1st 2018. So we are now three years past. And I think that you have to give yourself time because you'll have list after list after list. You have to do this. You want to begin to check things up. But I think we've tried to take our time. We do have policies that we're still working on, still writing policies and procedures, still working on the vendor process. Lots of things that we have in play. And one of the things that happened with the fiscal reorganized mentioned that then a couple of years later, they moved the fiscal operations to a cabinet level. And now we've undergone another reorg in our cabinet where they split the workforce programs. And so part of them are under labor and then part of us under the department and in the Department of Workforce. So that's been a major upheaval that's just happened over the last year or so. It was more change, and especially with the fiscal operations the way that they were, there were a lot of things that. The cracks because of how complicated the VR program is, still trying to pick up the pieces of that as well, and then by them doing another reorg where they have moved part of the program under labor, they moved to line Wagner Peyser, farmworker,  veterans, but they moved the operations under the Department of Workforce. It's kind of split right down the middle. So that's change that culture from what it was 30 years ago. So we're still undergoing lots of changes and then you put the pandemic on top of that. So just a lot of changes. And we've had to be very, very flexible even when we weren't happy about it.   Carol: So how has that impacted you with the partnership? So it seems like they wanted to have the people all together and now you're sort of split up again, which is really interesting. How's that going with partnerships?   Cora: Well, I think the partnerships on the local level have continued. It's probably more on a state level where there are still lots of things to be worked out and it's kind of in flux. But then with the onset of the pandemic, it's disrupted things as well. So right now, it's kind of hard to tell exactly what will be there after the clouds clear, you might say. We're dealing with so many different big factors that are going on.   Carol: Sure. And I completely understand that. So, Bill, how about you in times past? So how are things going now?   Bill: Yeah, so it was probably been about a little over two years and really the first eight months or so. And the new department was really about the new department just adjusting, everybody adjusting, because there was a lot of movement of not only V.R. but other agencies. And then as we had that first full year, I think the main thing was that we found like at the higher level working on the MOU use that we were all interested in, those seemed to work very smoothly because everybody was under the same umbrella department. The one thing that I think was the benefit of the pandemic was we were so new to each other. The pandemic increased all this extra communication via teams and the ability to meet more often. And so all of a sudden, we're getting to know each other better, even down to the counselor level. We're starting to know each other and the other programs a lot better. And I think that's been one of the benefits, as well as the fact that being in the Department of Labor during the pandemic with a lot of states were cutting other programs in the Pentagon or wherever it was, they were not immune to that. Our area was somewhat protected because labor was so important in terms of coming out of the pandemic. So it's going well. I mean, we're still learning from each other and we still have our growing pains, but it's going pretty well.   Carol: That's good to hear. That's good to hear. At least there were some upsides from the pandemic as well. Holy cow. So looking back on all this, what we've talked about, are there any other lessons you've learned or any words of wisdom you have for folks out there that might be facing this? Because it seems like this is a continued trend if the state hasn't done it yet. There are these continued moves that keep happening over time. So, Bill, I'm going to I'm going to give you the floor on any other parting words of wisdom.   Bill: Well, great. Thank you. I was just reading an article about successful business the other day. It wasn't about the structure or where the business grew out of. It was about serving the customer. The bottom line was, if you're serving the customer, you will be successful. I think the main thing is for us wisdom. I would pass on to anybody going through this to be true to yourself. Make sure that your mission as vocational rehabilitation does not get lost in this process. And also there's mission creep and mission drift. And it's easy to get into a new department. And there's a lot of excitement, a lot of other things going on. And you can have mission creep and mission drift. But if you're serving your customer and you're staying true to that, your mission, I think you can come out of these types of reorganizations really well.   Carol: I had a write that down-mission creep and mission drift. I like that. Holy cow. That's a good thing. Yeah, I love that. Good words for folks. How about you, Cora? Any parting words of wisdom?   Cora: And I think that Bill said. Very well, and that's really what I tried to emphasize, what we merged into the two agencies, that you're still here, you're still serving people and people are still benefiting from those services. I think that it's important you can dig your heels in and resist or you can work with everyone that's around you to make the change and make it work. And I think that's very important that you work together collaboratively to figure it out and make it work for the VA program.   Carol: Well, as always, it was such a pleasure to speak with you both. I sincerely hope that today's conversation helps our community think about navigating that DSA relationship.  We hope to see gaps bridged in a meaningful way. Thank you so much for joining us, and have a great day.     Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple podcast, Google podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Full Transcript   In episode 3, Dave Doukas, Connecticut General VR director, and Nicky Harper, director of Wyoming Combined join Host Carol Pankow to talk about state rehabilitation councils and the V.R. partnership, through the lens of a newer director with Nicky and a more seasoned director like Dave. From roles, responsibilities and overall effectiveness, you will learn how they are working through and building colaboritive partnerships through communication and by building trust through understanding and transparency. Learn about the modules launching in October that will help to provide training for state agency staff and help SRC members in the regulatory background of the SRC roles and responsibilities and that partnership.   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/                                                                       Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.    Full Transcript:   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for quality management. Conversations powered by V.R., one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host, Carol Pankow.   Carol Pankow: So welcome to the show today I'm joined by Dave Doukas, Connecticut general VR director, and Nicky Harper, director of Wyoming Combined. So, Dave, welcome to the show. How are you doing and how goes it in Connecticut?   Dave Doukas: Well, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk with you today, Carol. We're doing OK in Connecticut, coming back from the impact of the pandemic and reopening many of our offices just this month. So things are moving forward for us.   Carol Pankow: Cool. Good to hear it. Good to hear it. So, Nicky, how are things rolling in Wyoming?   Nicky Harper: Good morning, Carol. Well, morning for me, I think. Afternoon for you. Things in Wyoming are going well. Today actually is our first day when everyone is pretty much back in the office more or less full time. So we're ready to get back to some sense of normalcy. I would say hopefully. Fingers crossed.   Carol Pankow: Wow. Sounds good. Well, both of your agencies came up as good agencies to talk to about our topic of state rehabilitation councils and the V.R. partnership. And so I don't know if you guys know this, but I did a little digging and there have been 76 director changes since November, 2013 through December of 2020. And there's been a large turnover in SRC membership and it really is kind of a timely time to explore this topic and look at it through the lens of a newer director with Nicky and a more seasoned director like Dave. So we've heard about wide swings in the level of partnership between V.R. and the SRC and also the level of effectiveness. I know that sometimes relationships can be strained between the council and the agency. There can be misunderstandings and roles, and things aren't always operating as effectively as they could. And in fact, our VRTAC for Quality Management is working on a project to update four different modules that will help to provide training for both SRC members and state agency staff in the regulatory background of the SRC roles and responsibilities and that partnership. And we're looking at launching those by October of this year. So, Dave, I'm going to start with you. Let's get a little lay of the land about the SRC for your agency. So can you talk a little bit briefly about how they operate, meeting schedules and generally of how it works? And do you have a staff person dedicated to primarily working with the SRC as a liaison to them from the agency?   Dave Doukas: Sure. In general, the SRC operates underneath bylaws. They follow Robert's Rules. There is a chairperson, a vice chair, secretary and a treasurer are confirmed annually by membership vote. We meet six times a year, generally three hours per meeting. The agenda is set up by the SRC staff and approved by their chair. I attend every SRC meeting, either myself or if I can't make it, I have my assistant director go in my place, but most of the time I'm able to attend. And yes, we do have a dedicated staff person who she's not a one hundred percent dedication to the SRC. She has many other responsibilities, but she's primarily assigned as the liaison and works with them very closely on setting the agenda and organizing the meetings. We have a twenty five thousand year budget set aside for the SRC, so we do create a small pot of money for them to be able to run projects. And things of that nature. I think it runs really smoothly.   Carol Pankow: That sounds really good. We had done a similar thing as well. I liked having that staff person dedicated to helping kind of smooth out all the things, the logistics that go into each of those meetings. So, Nicky, how about you? Let's get a little lay of the land about how you guys operate and your SRC, how they operate?   Nicky Harper: Somewhat similar, Carol, I guess, to what Dave said. We have about four to five meetings. So prior to COVID with the pretty regular quarterly meetings and we had a dedicated chair, vice chair. But like you mentioned, there's been quite a bit of turnover and we've had some recent turnover. We also so not have a dedicated assigned person, but we do have a program manager who is the SRC liaison. So connecting between the field, their staff, and the governor's office and so on and so forth. It does help to have an assigned person for that role. We have a twenty thousand dollar budget set aside for SRC needs and again, for most people, travel and some projects. But this year, because of travel restrictions of quite a bit of that budget hasn't been spent. And I'm guessing it might be the case in some other areas as well. So like I said, they were doing in-person meetings, but currently everything is virtual.   Carol Pankow: All right. So, Nikki, you are a newer VR director. How did your understanding of the SRC shift from your role when you were a VR agency staff to that of the director? And did you have any surprises or that kind of an Aha sort of moment?   Nicky Harper: Well, I guess I would say I didn't quite understand the scope or the entire responsibilities of the. SRC so as a field person, I mean, Wyoming is a tiny state, so we've been pretty fortunate where we've always had an idea who the SRC was. We've always had the opportunity when their meetings would meet in person, depending on which community they were, and we would have the opportunity to sit in on meetings. So I had some concepts, but when I first came on, I was like, oh, my gosh, why are they asking me all these questions and am I answering to them or do I have to answer to RSA? And part of me kind of. It was hard not to get sideways about why are you asking me about, you know, the program planning and the program effectiveness and just more input into the state plan. So I tried not to get all fired up, so I just kind of dug into the CFR and really tried to take a good look at the scope and responsibility of the SRC and that helped. And then I also reached out to Paul Jedinak, who is with the Center for Continuing Education in rehab at the University of Washington. I had gone through a program with emerging leaders through them. So I kind of felt, you know, I need to reach out to someone to figure out, am I going about this the wrong way? So I did have some of those. Oh, this is why they're asking me all these questions moments. Sorry for the long answer.   Carol Pankow: No, that's a really good insight. And hence our wanting to focus on this. And we're working on these modules because we realize the information that had been out there. There used to be modules. They were done about 20 years ago. They needed to be updated. And we realized, you know, directors don't have very good information about the SRC. So I'm hoping what we create is going to definitely help other folks that are coming in new to the field or just new to that role. So you understand what is happening with the SRC. You had to learn kind of on your own, and I'm hoping we'll be able to help people with that.   Nicky Harper: That'll be really helpful just to have kind of a director guide, so to speak. You know, RSA has some guidance, but about these are some additional guides to help you navigate the way.   Carol Pankow: Yes. So, Dave, you were once a new director and now you're more seasoned. I mean, you're six years in now. So how is your approach and working with SRC shifted over time?   Dave Doukas: You know, what kind of building off the last question, you really don't appreciate the spot you're in as a director until you're in that chair. I've been in VR for thirty years and I became director six years ago and I had attended SRC meetings over the course of the twenty four preceding years, but never really appreciated the spot that my predecessors were in until I assumed that responsibility. The thing that's really changed for me over the course of the last six years has been my comfort level, put a lot of effort into into building trust with the SRC, took the time to really try to educate them as to where we were coming from, what our strategies were, and what the logic is behind our decisions that we're making. In turn, the SRC was very skeptical of me when I joined because they had seen I had a track record and had been involved in things that maybe weren't. They were done out of necessity, but weren't the most appreciated as in, get it popular decision ever had to be made. You know, you get into things with order of selection or changing of policy, implementation of cost containment measures out of complete necessity. And they don't always play so well if you're on the receiving end of services. There was the skepticism on the part of the SRC and who they thought I might have been. But over time, I think that they've learned a lot more about me and where I've come from and what I'm aiming to do and in turn have built a lot of trust with them to be able to say, here's the honest deal, here's transparently this is what we're doing and why. And what do you think about it? What would you do if you were in this situation type of conversations? And they've really helped. And it's built a pretty good relationship over the period of those last six years.   Carol Pankow: Yeah, I love that you said that that word trust because that resonated with me. I just remember coming into Minnesota and, you know, they had different directors that have been there a really long time. And you come in there like, who are you and what are you going to do and what do you know and what's your approach going to be? So I completely, completely can understand that. I love that you said that. I just do remember back to my time in Minnesota and feeling like our leadership team really understood the role of the SRC. But, boy, it was a huge mystery to the field staff and they seem to have this misunderstanding of what the SRC was all about. So, Dave, do you feel like your staff has a good understanding about the purpose of your SRC?   Dave Doukas: I think that my leadership staff and maybe even field level managers understand the SRC and the role. We talk about it a lot and the liaison I mentioned before and myself are in these leadership meetings. And we we give a quarterly update on what's happening with the SRC and we let them know. So I think that they have a pretty good understanding of the role. But if you asked your average bear field level council what their understanding of the SRC is, it's going to be minimal. I think they know of its existence, but they in general don't really have a true appreciation for why they're there.   Carol Pankow: Yeah, I could I understand that, you know, our folks, they were kind of like sort of they were sort of suspicious or see what you guys doing or what are they doing, what's their role, whatever are they doing to us or something. So it's hard to get that out to that field level understanding.   Dave Doukas: Yeah, well, one of the things that we've done to try to mitigate that is we invite the SRC to obviously all the public meetings that we have and we invite our field staff as well. We try to get them to mingle together a little bit to so that they can they can understand each other a little more. Yes. Our Council also invites our field level staff on occasion to come to our Council meetings to present on what their day in the life is kind of like. So sometimes it can be more topically specific. Other times just like, well, tell us what it's like working in this small local office and what your experiences in dealing with your consumers. And I think that really helps a lot as well.   Carol Pankow: That's a really cool idea. You're kind of into our next question. The cool thing is your agency doing. But I'm going to back up a second to Nikki. So how about for your agency? Do you feel like your staff has a good understanding about the purpose of the SRC? And maybe I'll just jump ahead to any kind of cool things you guys are doing to help them understand about the SRC and its purpose?   Nicky Harper: No, Carol, I think I would piggyback a little bit on what Dave just said in terms of senior leadership or counselors who've been here, maybe, you know, say senior counselors five years plus probably have a decent understanding, like Dave mentioned or I mentioned earlier, to many sources were held regionally. There was always a component. So this might be a cool thing we do or maybe every SRC does this where I staff are invited to come in and talk about different projects that they're doing. So the SRC could have a better understanding of what was happening in VR. But also this will talk about their role and their purpose and their involvement in advising and guiding. We are. So that has helped some. But again, like they've said, maybe the newer counselors, maybe two years. And under that, probably like just another acronym that we use in, we are some entity that we have to give reports out to. But I did pick up something from what Dave mentioned, just about the quarterly updates to staff that we do monthly. We are all on calls which started that with COVID. Then I was thinking, oh, that'll be nice to incorporate that and maybe invite the SRC chair to share a little bit about what they are, a little bit about some of their projects or ideas, or ask the field for where they need help.   Nicky Harper: So thank you, Dave. As you're speaking, I'm like, oh, I'm taking down tidbits on what we might be able to do. So in terms of other cool and stuff to ensure that we have the knowledge of SRC and its purpose. We are, like I said, trying to do more regional stuff. And then the SRC also sometimes they'll host different community meetings with maybe community providers, some of our crps, maybe. So they have an understanding of who we are. Or some time ago they did something with benefits planning, where they were inviting the community to talk more about VR. And at that time they would invite the VR counselors for that region as well. So that was more connections happening. But since COVID, a lot of that stuff kind of has been put on the back burner. But I'm hoping that with restrictions being eased that we can start maybe getting back to doing a little more of that really so that folks see SRC and we are really working in collaboration. And not that this one entity and we are another entity and where we kind of get a little sideways sometimes.   Carol Pankow: Well, yeah. So I can see why you two were I was told to talk to you to about SRC. I think that's really cool. I'm learning a lot too. I wish I would have been talking to you guys a long time ago. So we've talked about is VR understanding the SRC, but on the other side of the spectrum is the SRC's understanding of VR. So I'm going to go to you first, Dave. Do you believe that SRC understands VR and their roles for VR purposes? And can you tell me a little more about any thoughts you have   Dave Doukas: Sometimes SRC members have a great understanding of VOC rehab, but other times they're really coming in cold. If they just joined, you know, you have everything really in between. Perhaps the most difficult situation is when a new member has an impression that's been on an outdated fact or just being misinformed. So there's a lot of work of having to undo some preconceived notions about about the program or what their expectations should be. So what we really do is to try to put the team members in a position for their thoughts to be heard on things. You know, we phrase questions or discussions in a way that's going to empower them for the opportunity for them to offer what they're. Might be you talk through issues and we try to present them in a way that enlightens them to the implications of the decision you're going to make and the possible implications for other consumers. So there's a lot of education that goes on. And certainly most SRC members don't have the really nuanced understanding of how it all works. But you have a wide range of capabilities because of the required distribution of your SRC membership. You have people coming from with different agendas and different fragments of knowledge of someone who's representing community rehabilitation providers is going to have a purchase, a service scope of frame of reference. And they're going to come at everything from that direction where a board member from American Jobs Center or Workforce Investment Board is going to have a different slant on things. So try and establish the common base of knowledge is an important thing. And really, I think just talking about things in a way that allows for people to have the discussion is really the most helpful thing that you can do.   Carol Pankow: That sounds really good. It's kind of the beauty of the answer. See all those people coming at it from all those different perspectives? It's what makes for a really rich process because you hear all of that different opinions from different ways. I love how you said that about helping them with the way you're even phrasing the questions so you can draw that out as really good. So, Nicky, how about you? What do you believe about sources and their understanding of V.R. and their roles and SRC's purpose, basically, and kind of what your thoughts are about all that?   Nicky Harper: Gasps Dave just gave a really eloquent answer. And I'm going I'm struggling a little bit. So this is actually a concern area for me, for Wyoming in general. We had quite a bit of senior membership on SRC. Yes. I'm just going to backtrack a little bit for historical purposes. So several years ago, that wasn't overly functional. Then they'd put quite a bit of work into it, had a chair who was phenomenal, just did a lot of work, really got the membership going, really did a lot of education to understand. And then, you know, folks served second terms and then terms were up. It's like, OK, this is what this is the time you can serve. So we have some very new SRC members, six months new SRC chair, the wise chap. Gosh, I don't I don't know, probably about the same time frame. So in terms of the knowledge and their understanding of we are, I think we really have to do some building ground up again, really start engaging in more conversations and being open to feedback and thoughts of, you know, what are your thoughts? How do you feel this is going? What are some of your needs? Like I said, sometimes we tend to I don't want to say get sideways, but depending on where that person is coming in with the recipe or the coming with that lens. And it's like, well, there's a whole lot more to be than just that lens. So let's talk a little more about education. Let's talk a little more about what you see, how you understand our role or how we're doing things. And I liked how Dave said it's about, you know, phrasing questions a certain way as well. So we do try to encourage attendance at NCSRC and CSAVR. See, and one of I think the membership is ending actually was a board member on NCSRC, so was able to bring back a lot of rich information to Wyoming. Like I said, there's a lot of turnover and a lot of new members. So I'm struggling to answer that question a little bit.   Carol Pankow: No, you did just fine. You did just fine.   Dave Doukas: I'd like to add something. I mean, I need to give a shout out to my liaison who who works with the SRC. She schedules an annual retreat with them every fall to set some goals for the upcoming year and that it's a daylong event and Connecticut's a small enough state that most people have been able to actually make it for a single day event. I think that does a lot to kind of build the culture of the SRC. It allows them to spend time together and to really be able to understand the purpose of their being there, to get some reassurance that we're all in this together and trying to to build the better mousetrap of a VOC rehab program. And I think that sets a really important tone for the relationship for the year that follows especially important with so many new members. The term limits definitely is something that makes it difficult, because just when someone's starting to get to the place where they're really productive, their term is up and they have to move on. And I think that being able to keep the culture going through those retreats and have a transition period is really helpful and it keeps momentum moving forward.   Carol Pankow: I love that idea of the retreat. I know different states have talked about that. We had done it in the past and then it kind of depended sometimes people, depending on the group that was in I mean, it takes some obligation on their part because the. Volunteering to come for a day to do that, but I love that thought and where it's possible to make that happen. I think that's really great that you guys are doing that,   Nicky Harper: Stealing that one day. I'm going to pass that along.   Dave Doukas: Absolutely I'm really excited about the training that Carol's working to put together. I know that my liaison has invested a lot of time in that, too. So I think that it's going to be really helpful to have those modules put together and in a way, for people to start building their knowledge base even really before getting engaged.   Carol Pankow: Yeah, we're really excited about that. And we are working with the NCSRC, so we're actually meeting with them this week about that. We've got it kind of stepped out across the summer into September and we wanted to be able to have them ready to launch for the fall conferences and be able to talk about that. So we're hoping, fingers crossed, nothing goes wrong. We're hoping to have those all done. That's awesome. You know, you talked a little bit about this, but sometimes there can be this conflict between the SRC and an agency. And I just wondered if you've addressed any moments or situations where that happened and how did you get that to work out. So, Dave, I'm going to shoot that to you.   Dave Doukas: I think the first thing is just having patience with the personal or professional agendas that I was referencing before hearing people out on those things, understanding their world, understanding where they're coming from so that you can answer things from a position of, OK, I hear your point. I think that diffuses a lot of things, being able to say, well, yes, we could do this, but this is the impact it's going to have elsewhere. So you sure we really should be doing this? And that's the chair that we find ourselves in so often. I think that's really helpful in times where it's gotten really dicey and it has probably the most strategic thing we did was invoke the SRC leadership to address their members on. Do you want this to be your agenda for these meetings that we're all having together? Because if you allow this type of behavior, it's going to alter my ability to continue to be as transparent as I am and to talk as openly and freely. So sometimes people will grab on to an issue and they just will bring up meeting after meeting after meeting it. And it can be very exhausting and not only for those of us in the VR side, but for the other SRC members to trying to encourage the strength and their chairperson to set the agenda and follow the agenda when necessary and try to really manage their group is a is a good strategic move, I think.   Carol Pankow: Yeah, I love that. That's great. That's good advice to Nicky. I've taken that one too.   Nicky Harper: Yes, and I am furiously trying to write notes.   Carol Pankow: You could write a manual on this like holy smokes. So Nicky, how about you? Have you had any kind of situations you've had to work through or there's been some conflict?   Nicky Harper: We have actually it was like right as I came on, so I was trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. And then it's like, oh, and there's this entity that's asking me all these questions. So what worked for me and just my style, I guess, was just setting aside some time out of the SRC meetings. And like Dave said, I tried to attend every SRC meeting, if possible. If not, one of my deputies attends to make sure information is flowing back and forth. And really, I try to understand the why, like, you know, Dave indicated trying to understand, okay, where are you coming from? Where is this stemming from? Is this professional or personal? And that's where, you know, and we've been in the real world. We have we're counselors at heart. So it's like put on that counselor hat and listen and try to figure out, OK, what's going on and how do we how do we partner and this how do we come out together? It's really had to have some of those conversations and understanding about, OK, what are you trying to get at and what is your goal and how is this aligning with the agency goal or with the SRC goals and the agency goals to advocate for our people to make things better for staff, for clients, so on and so forth. So really boiled down in my case to being able to have some offline chats. You know, sometimes conversations get a little bit derailed during a meeting. And again, sometimes it's a personal agenda that folks want answers and they want it right then right there. So it's served us well to kind of go back and kind of regroup, talk things through, and maybe we come up with a solution. We compromise saying, OK, something maybe the agency can do. Is this something the staff is willing to do that has seemed to work for us, at least so far it's working.   Carol Pankow: Yeah, I know. I like that. That is great. You both are so wise. So I know we've talked about director turnover and we know there's been turnover in the SRCs. And I know, Nicky, you talked about turnover in your state. I'm actually going to address this to you. Sometimes there can be issues with just even getting the governor to appoint people and you've got all that going on and changes in administrations. So I just wondered if you were having any issues with recruitment and appointment of positions in your state, and how are you addressing those?   Nicky Harper: If my camera was working and she may see me shaking my head, yes, that is quite the challenge, actually. And I'm not exactly sure where the breakdown in communication has happened in terms of getting some of the appointments. So we've had some members frequently talking to the liaison in the liaison is constantly communicating with the governor's office. OK, the application has been submitted. Where are we with this? And also it's just a committee that volunteered that commitment on part of the SRC member. And Wyoming is just a small state. And sometimes you find the same folks being tapped for different councils. And it's like, oh, this person is pretty active in that community. This person is a really good advocate for individuals with disabilities. So then they're kind of tapped out and then I can't serve on one more council. So we try to work with other state agencies trying to have, you know, when we have director meetings or leadership meetings, another director says, hey, I need representation for this council. So then in turn we say, OK, then I need representation from your agency. But this council, these are the roles, again, sometimes there are advantages to being a small state that most folks know. Most folks, we can reach out, pick up the phone, send an email, say we need some assistance for representation of an individual who will be committed to speak up to help meet the needs of this population. And sometimes, again, because of turnover, an individual may serve for for a year, that they start understanding the roles and responsibilities they get attached to a committee. They start, you know, doing some work and then they move on from that position. So then it's like, OK, great, now we're back at square one. So it is a challenge. I'm really curious what Dave's doing. He says he has some awesome answers and I'm ready to take notes again.   Carol Pankow: Yeah, Dave will kick it to you. Do you, sir, do you have any issues with recruitment and appointment of positions and what are you doing about that?   Dave Doukas: Well, if I had my camera on me shaking my head to the issue of the governor, being able to appoint people is it's a really difficult one and it's a historical one. Changes with administrations, the personnel that you have to work with at the governor's office. And it certainly changes even more frequently than that. And just when you think you have a viable path to getting everyone appointed who you need, something happens and it doesn't happen. It's really frustrating on that front. Appointments can be held up for years. So that being said, what we try to do is have an ongoing recruitment where if we see someone who seems to be advocating for the program, have some knowledge or interest in the program, who's an outside stakeholder of some sort, we'll just reach out and say, hey, how would you like to talk to our SRC chair? And here's an opportunity for you to contribute to us in a meaningful way, in a structured environment. So we do that. We will go after different groups. I mentioned earlier the workforce investment boards. We just put it out to them that we need membership, we need someone to represent you, and someone step up and join this council. So we'll go after it in a targeted way like that as well. And just keeping our eyes and ears open all the time.   Carol Pankow: That sounds awesome. That's great. So you guys are talking about a lot of things. Nicky's taking notes. I'm going to go and Nicky to you first. You have tips for directors and things that have worked for you or other words of wisdom and working with SRC.   Nicky Harper: I'm not sure I say words of wisdom, but I guess, you know, back to the communication. And I think sometime ago Dave mentioned about trust. Dave came up through the process, as did I. And like I mentioned, Wyoming is a small state. So I did have a little bit of an advantage coming in that at that time, the SRC chair and I, we just go back years where she worked for the school district and I was a transition counselor working in the school district. So we already had an established relationship. So I just built on that. And it was about, you know, having some really candid conversations and being open to feedback. Sometimes the feedback was not always pleasant. And it was it's hard not to take it personally, because I think when the director of a program, it's like, this is my baby. This is, you know, and now you're saying that we're not doing this right or something else. Right. Or we could have done better. It's a little bit of a sting, but it's trying to take it as, OK, this is just constructive feedback and how do I stay open to it? How do I not get defensive about it? Again, another thing that helped us was talking about what work that way, instances of things that did work and there were times when they were not happy with us. So, for instance, working on the state plan collaboratively at one time, they were frustrated that we didn't always take feedback that was given. And looking back, I do see that they are putting in a lot of time and effort into giving constructive feedback or asking certain questions, and sometimes we're just, you know, buried in trying to get the state plan done and all the edits and all the corrections and making sure that we're hitting all the areas we need to hit.   Nicky Harper: And, you know, suggestions are coming in every direction. And you're just like, oh, my gosh, OK, I don't have space to squeeze this in. I don't have time. I just need to move on. And it's not fair to folks who take a lot of time and effort to really give you valid feedback. So having that conversation about, you know, they felt appreciated and that we heard them out in some areas or areas, that they gave feedback in policy development and they felt that we didn't take that feedback and was like, oh, it's not that we didn't take the feedback. We submitted it to our SRC. It was good for us to move forward. So being proactive about some of those conversations and saying, OK, we are looking at this policy and we are looking at updating these areas, we'd like for your input. We'd like to work in collaboration. I think that seems to help some. So I don't know if there's a magic source. And maybe Dave has some magical words of wisdom on how how to make things better. But for us, it's a work in progress. And hopefully by the time I get to six or seven that I can say, yes, we have looked through and these are some of the things we're doing to make things better.   Carol Pankow: Yeah, that's awesome. So, David, do you have a magic source that you want to share?   Dave Doukas: Well, I don't know about the magic part, but I can tell you that you can think of it in a way almost like a college class. Go back to your freshman year at college when half the battle was just getting out of bed and showing up. And I think the SRC can be like that when you're starting out saying, I don't care what fraternity party I was at last night, I'm going to go. And I think it makes you human. And if you go in and are trying to be open and I'll say accepting of criticism, but also saying, well, this is what I think about our program and here's where I think our deficits are. And here's what I'm aiming to try to do something about it. You're going to build that trust with them because you're coming from a position of saying it's an imperfect program and I'm trying to manage a lot of aspects of it. Here's one that I know of. Here's another that I know of. What do you got? Just be real talk about the data and the performance of the program and say let them know what you think of it at that moment in time. And I think those kind of candid, transparent conversations about things are really going to have the best benefit in terms of them saying, OK, well, I can talk to this person and I can share what's bothering them because they may not like it either. At least it gives you an opportunity to respond fairly and to let them know this is on my high priority list or oh, maybe this should be on a high priority list. I didn't know it. I didn't see it. And it gives them an opportunity for you to value their opinion and contribution.   Carol Pankow: Well, you've always been a straight shooter. I like that about you. You just call it like it is, which is great in that whole transparency. I think that's probably served you well there. So we're going to close up. I'm going to ask you each for one thing you think would help improve the work between sources and agencies across the country. And Nicky, I'm going to go to you.   Nicky Harper: It feels like it's a loaded question and I'm like them, has all the magical answers. So from a new director, I would say if you're coming from VR, I think you do have a slight advantage of maybe having some basic concepts of what is exactly what they do. I mean, you're trying to read so much information coming at you. You're like, OK, SRC, there is this CFR that you're trying to dig in. I think for me at least, what really worked was just sitting down and having some candid conversations about what are their goals, what are my goals for the agency, what are the priorities and do they align and sometimes understanding that, oh, OK, I did not see this as a priority at this point in time. And this is why and it always helps to explain the why behind why the agency is making this decision or if they feel that they want to know that the agency needs to do something. Asking for more information on why the SRC thought that that was something we need to focus on. I'm also learning to ask for more support and help from the SRC. So when certain topics are brought up sometimes that maybe the agency needs to address, I'm pretty straightforward to in saying at this time, we don't have the bandwidth. We we're trying to do the best we can with the resources we have. And that's the SRC sees it as a priority that would, at the end of the day, help the client. Can we have a small group of field counselors and a couple of SRC members maybe take lead and develop something and pilot something? So again, just conversations and choosing to be real and authentic and say, hey, in theory, this sounds great, but in practice, is this feasible? This may work in a logistics. Or another state, but is this going to work in rural Wyoming and just like they've said, being real and just having real conversations, sometimes hard and awkward conversations, but having it nonetheless and figuring out how we're going to move forward?   Carol Pankow: It's all about the communication. So, David, you get the last words.   Dave Doukas: Well, if this was 10 years ago when purchasing food was a little bit easier in the VOC rehab program, I know that oversized chocolate chip cookies used to work really well for the previous administrations. But today I'll say that I think the one thing that would really help would just be being present to show up for the meetings, let them get to know you as an individual and as a leader if you're the director. And that would help set the tone for the entire relationship. Again, I think everyone's here for a common purpose and being present for those conversations, listening, actively listening, and whether you agree or not, just treating the membership with respect and giving them an opportunity to voice their concerns and react to them. That's the basic angle that I've taken here and doing OK with it.   Carol Pankow: Well, thank you both for joining me today. This was great. I can see why you two were suggested to talk to you both did a great job and I really appreciate talking about this subject. So thanks again. And I wish you the best with all this opening back up and good success with that.   Nicky Harper: Thank you.   Dave Doukas: Thank you, Carol.   Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple podcast, Google podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Full Transcript   Employment retention for VR Staff has been challenging for many agencies, Host Carol Pankow sits down with Kristen Mackay, Director of Arizona Combined, and Cynthia Speight, Director of North Carolina Blind, to talk about how the newly revamped Operations and Personnel committee for CSAVR and are embarking on some further work to tackle this issue of recruitment and retention.   What does employment retention look like in your agencies? Have you found it challenging to get and KEEP really good Staff? What cool things is your agency doing to select and retain top talent? How has recruitment and retention been different for your agency during this pandemic? What mistakes did you make in the past with recruitment and retention that drive the way you approach recruitment and retention today? What are your hopes for the future with the work of your committee? Turnover may be as high as 60% every year; what stories are you hearing and what do you think is driving this high turnover?   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/                                                                       Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.    Full Transcript: Episode 2 Speaker1: [00:00:02] Manager MINUTE brought to you by the VRTAC for quality management conversations powered by V.R., one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host, Carol Pankow   Carol: [00:00:18] Well, ladies, welcome to the show. I am so excited that we have Kristen Mackey, director of Arizona combined, and Cynthia Speight director of North Carolina Blind. Kristen, I have to start with you. Thanks so much for the great conversation last month. And I know I said I would not be contacting you for a show for a little while, but you are a part of so many initiatives. I just had to reach out for this month's topic. So how are you doing?   Kristen: [00:00:44] Well, thank you. I need a coffee or something for the double duty. Two months in a row, people are going to get tired of hearing about me.   Carol: [00:00:51] I know I owe you Starbucks or something when I get to see you in the fall, I hope. Yes.   Kristen: [00:00:56] Yes, for sure. I'll take you up on it now.   Carol: [00:00:58] To you, my friend, Miss Cynthia, how goes it in the great state of North Carolina?   Cynthia: [00:01:03] Well, I want in on the coffee deal, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. Things are just crazy. That's crazy.   Carol: [00:01:12] Now I'm willing to bribe you both with coffee. Some good coffee when we get together hopefully in Savannah. And Savannah in the fall will be super awesome. Sounds good. Today we're going to tackle the topic of staff recruitment and retention. In industries all over the country, recruitment and retention has remained a hot button issue because let's face it, the work can't get done if there's no one here to do the work and it's no different for VR. I sincerely believe the greatest power of VR is its people. But I feel like VR talks so much about employment retention for our customers served without addressing this great big elephant in the room, which is employment retention for our staff. And that has been so challenging for many agencies. I still remember co-chairing the CSAVR Human Resources Development Committee, with you, Cynthia, and we were seeing issues popping up five or six years ago and we were conducting surveys back then with states on counselor retention issues. I know I was facing those issues at my agency at Minnesota as well. We had found three trends at that time. The field was different than what new counselors expected. Longer term counselor didn't like the new WIOA requirements, and we were finding the VA and private rehab, paid more and had more flexibility with work hours in a work life balance, although that might have changed now with the pandemic. So now both you and Kristen are co-chairing the newly revamped Operations and Personnel Committee for CSAVR and are embarking on some further work to tackle this issue. So, Kristen, what is the current work that you two are up to?   Kristen: [00:02:45] So I'll speak a little bit to the salary schedule. We did a survey of the directors and we really wanted to see what is the salary level being offered to counselors across the nation. I know when I started as a director, I was searching for information like this and there was a previous survey that had gone out. But it was I think it was in 2016 perhaps. And so we wanted to update that information. So it was probably building on the great work that you and Cynthia had done prior. And so we did update that salary repository. So that's available for the directors to take a look at and see what levels of staff are in each agency, how much each agency is paying across the nation, and really just to be able to provide that backdrop so that if administrators are looking at trying to get an increased wage for their staff, what is the national salary look like? And you can compare that to national salary to your local economies and really make a good case for why we should pay people better to do this important work.   Carol: [00:03:46] So did you get a good response rate for that survey?   Kristen: [00:03:49] I think we had fifty. Remind me, I think it is about fifty. Seventy five percent of the directors reached out and provided information. So yes, we did. I'm going to say we smashed the record from 2016. We were able to get a lot more directors to respond this time around. So very thankful for the input from the directors.   Cynthia: [00:04:06] You didn't tell her that we badgered them after our pilot on retention and recruitment.     Carol: [00:04:17] Yes. So Cynthia, what's going on with that?   Cynthia: [00:04:19] So we have a couple of things going on with that. We sent out to directors, actually a survey, I don't know, maybe a month or two ago that we wanted their perspective on proven strategies for recruitment and retention. And we also ask a few extra questions in there. And we got a pretty good response. I think it was maybe twenty seven directors or states, rather, responded. And then there were a few others that we knew had taken a look at it. And so, yes, we did browbeat them and asked them to go back to pull it back up as it. OK, we know you still need to finish it, and they were kind enough to do that, but there's still an opportunity if directors will hear this podcast. Want to go back and provide us that information. We would greatly appreciate it would be very helpful to us. So you need to reach out to Kristen or myself to let us know so we can get it reopened and sent directly to them for the input. And then another thing we're doing that we're excited about is a pilot study. And that pilot study is going to be focused on retention. And it's two phases to it. The first phase will involve telephone interviews with a few randomly selected our counselors with the states who are agreeing to participate with us.   Cynthia: [00:05:48] And the whole purpose of the telephone interviews were randomly selected counselors is to give them the opportunity to be very transparent. And that's what we're hoping for with us, is share their perspective about what's important to them, what factors contribute to either their decision to stay with VR state agencies or to leave. And the interviews are going to be conducted by our partners from the University of Pennsylvania who are helping us with this study. And we chose to go about it that way. And thankfully, they agreed, because we really do want counselors to feel free, uninhibited and honest in their responses. We need to know. And then the second part to that is going to involve counselors completing an online survey. Take about ten minutes and they'll just be answering questions about their satisfaction with their employment, what state they are in. You know, are you happy with the level of compensation? We know what else is going to be is never going to be enough caseload size. We probably know what that was going to be too many. But anyway, we're going to ask those kinds of questions, client contact, work, relationships, whatever. And of course, we're excited about both projects. And we will be sharing our results with the membership   Carol: [00:07:00] On super cool. So, Cynthia, if somebody is listening and they want to get involved with that pilot, what should they do?   Cynthia: [00:07:07] Easy peasy. We welcome as many of our programs that are interested in participating as they are to get involved and get engaged. And all they have to do is just reach out to myself by email or to Kristen. And so my email is Cynthia.speight@dhhs.nc.gov.  And kmackey@azdes.gov. Did I get it right Kristen?   Kristen: [00:07:42] Yes, you did ma'am. Thank you.   Carol: [00:07:43] That was awesome. You do all the alphabet.   Cynthia: [00:07:47] Right. And most of the time when I'm spelling my last name, I just go and spell out the number eight because people want to say in all sorts of craziness though.   Carol: [00:07:58] Yeah, that is great. Oh my gosh. So I know you guys are probably hearing lots of stories and I know I've heard from different agency directors that we're talking about their turnover rate being as high as 60 percent every year. And so I just wonder, Kristen, what stories are you hearing?   Kristen: [00:08:15] You know, I hear the high numbers. I know for myself in tracking hours, you worried about 12 to twenty two percent over the last six to twelve months. And so, you know, even when you consider your 60 percent is incredible. I don't know how you even manage to do good work with clients when you have turnover to that rate. Twelve percent. Twenty five percent is difficult to manage as well. So much time is spent in onboarding and teaching and really getting the culture of your program and how you want your clients to be received and treated. All of that work from supervisor training department peers. It's just a ton of work that goes into onboarding. And so when you are spending so much time constantly revamping that and bringing on new people, it's really the outcomes for the clients are being impacted negatively. So it's really a critical problem that needs to be addressed. And so trying to figure out what is the what is the root cause here for why are people leaving in droves? And I think really that's what this survey is about to figure out. What can what is the real I think we anecdotally know and having this pilot study by people that are data minded, I like to say I'm a wannabe data geek because I really like the data, but I don't have that background.   Kristen: [00:09:44] And so having the professionals, if you will, do that research for us, will really hopefully give us some insight into what is causing that kind of mass movement. Ouch. Anecdotally, we hear too much data. You know, more. Management and counseling, I've had a lot of conversations with others about why WIOA isn't new, we know what the data requirements are. How can we, as we are director shift or service delivery model, do we need to shift our staffing model to be able to accommodate for those now more remote data entry case management activities and free up the time for our counselors to be able to do what they want to do and what they should be doing and counseling and doing that career information with our client. So really taking a look at what is our case, what is our staffing model need to do in order to shift to accommodate now the new requirements? I say new right and air quotes, air quality, you know, but how can we accommodate the requirements that we now have with the staffing that we have, but we may need to shift responsibilities. So those are some of the conversations I've been having internally and, you know, as we talk in different groups.   Carol: [00:11:03] So, Cynthia, do you think the pandemic has impacted this in any way? So maybe the turnover is not quite as high. Just wondered if you're hearing anything from your colleagues around the country regarding that.   Cynthia: [00:11:17] Sure. So first, I want to know what Kristen, just in response to that other question, I have read somewhere where it was announced that about 30 percent of the current workforce intend to leave the employment within the next year. And that is alarming, especially with all of that investment we put into onboarding and training staff. I'm also envious of Kristen's turnover rate because for our division we are at 20.., it was around twenty five percent. And what I'm also hearing is that it isn't even just the issue of turnover. States are struggling with just recruitment and have shared that, you know. Qualified staff, and most, if not all of us are trying to ensure having a diverse workforce, and that's a big challenge in states as well. So it's just a challenge, challenge, challenge everywhere. So the for the response to your question about the impact of the pandemic, you know, in our division, I can't say that I've seen and I don't even have data to support my response. So I apologize for that. But I can't say that I've necessarily seen an impact, but I can say is attributed directly to the pandemic. I will say staff have enjoyed being able to telework. I will say that positions in areas that have been difficult to fill continue to be difficult to fill during the pandemic. But I believe and I have absolutely no data back to something to say, but I believe that. We did not lose. Perhaps as many counselors doing the pandemic as we were before, and again, perhaps it because I don't have my data to back it up, but here it is.   Carol: [00:13:37] I've been hearing that, too. I mean, I just I've talked to a few folks in there like this last year at least, it slowed down the spigot of people just flowing out of the agencies. So maybe that curtailed it for a while, but they aren't sure it's going to stay like that. That's going to the depend, you know, especially depending on the return to work kind of plans that agencies have. Right. So we've been talking a little bit about national perspective and you both have been talking a little bit about what's going on in your agencies. So have you found it really challenging to get and keep really good staff? And I'll shoot that one to you Kristen. Do you?   Kristen: [00:14:18] First, we did a recent look at our demographics, and we have very tenured staff and we have either very, very tenured staff here, 20, 30, 40 year staff, counselors, and we have brand new staff, one to three years, not a whole lot in between. So it has been challenging. You know, once we get them to kind of 10 years, then, you know, the 10 year mark seems to be where people are just like, yep, I'm dedicated. I have a passion for this job. I am going to do this work. I kind of regardless of all of you, what state V.R. doesn't provide to me, you know, but that younger generation, the new folks coming in, that's really where our challenge has been to get them engaged and really seize the opportunities that are there for them to become, you know, kind of lifers. That doesn't sound nice, but, you know, really in the state of our workforce for a long time, and that's where we're focused now. We are in a rapidly evolving technology world and we have been as a state agency. I'll speak for Arizona, slow to adapt to those things. And I think if we were better at bringing on some of these technologies, that we would be able to connect with those younger generation counselors coming right out of school a little bit more quickly and really get them to be involved. And we're trying to do other opportunities, such as an advisory panel. So we're going to bring out a new process and we're going to tap these folks in our advisory panel to test it for us and give us their feedback and let us know, is it working? Isn't it working? What would you tweak? So giving them a sense of involvement in the community and the agency as a whole to help really kind of ground them in the V.R. State Service work.   Carol: [00:16:04] So something you said, Kristen, makes me think about you. Cynthia, I remember when you were first having staff go home and technology was this big issue. You were like, we don't even have laptops for people. And so I wondered what's been going on with you and any challenges you're having in helping to keep good staff.   Cynthia: [00:16:22] Ok, so pat myself on the back. You can see me do that right now. But I'm patting myself back because one of my goals had been to equip all of our staff with laptops, docking stations so that they could, in fact, regardless of the circumstances, whether the pandemic or here in North Carolina, air quotes what we call bad weather, which might be a dusting of snow because we don't get it. But in any event, in any situation where working onsite is not possible. And so we achieve that goal for staff who did not have the equipment to work remotely and that everyone from counselors and specialists to administrative support staff have now been equipped with those technologies. We have purchased virtual conferencing platforms that got approved by private security. All the support staff have been provided training and some train on their own and how to use it. So I think we're in such a much better position now than we were in March 2020. I'm really excited about that. And staff are too.   Carol: [00:17:33] Say, well, that is super awesome. I know I talked to both of you and you were both really helpful when we did our remote supervision training. I had talked to you about all the different practices and really cool things that you had going on in your states that helped with that whole remote supervision. So I just wondered if there are any cool things going that that you're doing in addition to anything else you've mentioned already about selecting and retaining top talent during this pandemic. If you have some other cool practices you've tried or anything else, how about you, Kristen?   Kristen: [00:18:04] I'm you know, I was thinking about just quickly what we've been doing and we've really worked to develop a career ladder and to Cynthia's point, looking to diversify our talent as well. So having a career ladder so you don't have to come in with a master's degree in a CRC in order to be able to work for us. You know, so we have developed a career ladder, which has been a wonderful opportunity we've seen. A lot of his staff really take the opportunity to enhance their training and their certification in order to move up that career ladder and get some more money for the work that they do. We have an agreement to offer some graduate courses to staff. So it's a rolling we determined to get graduate courses we would decide to to offer out to our staff. And that is available to any of our counselors. You know, it's kind of a rolling enrollment cycle. So very excited about that. We do see that our teams, we reimburse for the CRC exam and the renewals. So we offer that opportunity. And then the last thing that we do, I think that helps us is we offer CRC credits to repay the CRC to be able to put in for those credits.   Kristen: [00:19:10] And we actively engage with partners to be able to provide those CRC credits to our staff so that they can maintain their credentials, because that is the pinnacle. That's what we're going for. That's what we want. Every one of our staff ended up in that top tier counselor level. We would be thrilled and so wanting to continue to offer those. I think those have helped. And then quite obviously, the flexible work we had portions of staff that worked in the community and had, you know, shame on us. I hadn't thought about well, gee, is most of our staff could do this. And I talked about this in the last podcast, I think outside of the office. Where can you go? And staff really feel that that is a nice opportunity. And I'm looking forward to being able to offer that a little bit more broadly as the numbers for covid in the pandemic seem to be a little bit more under control.   Carol: [00:19:58] That's excellent. I mean, I feel like you're following along of the big businesses are doing that, too. They're realizing I think I was just reading an article and they were talking about why are people not coming to work or they can't get people. And they said this whole work life balance and flexibility this last year and a half about has taught us that we need to look at that seriously. And Americans just haven't done that before. And I think especially V.R., we were always so like, you got to be in the office. Look, if you're not butts in the chair, you're not doing work. And so I'm excited. You know, it's a drag. The pandemic's been a terrible, devastating thing for many people, but it's open up so many really great opportunities. So how about for you, Cynthia, any kind of cool things going on in your agency, helping with your selecting, retaining staff?   Cynthia: [00:20:43] So for us being services for the blind, our professional staff were never in the office to begin with. We're not concerned with clothes and their workplaces that there's training program size and out in the community. So there were only a maybe two days a week that field staff, as we refer to them, we're actually in the office. And so I guess they've learned to help with this effort is that during the pandemic, the silver lining is that contrary to popular belief, we have found that we can work effectively, remotely, and we just got the thumbs up to begin transitioning our staff back to work on site. But we also have received support from our department to continue to allow telework to some degree. So right now, we're real busy trying to frame that up. And what would that look like for us and our staff? And I stole something from Kristen where she created   Carol [00:21:43 I stole ideas from Kristen all the time   Kristen: [00:21:45] we all steal from each other   Cynthia: [00:21:48] We had created a really great survey just to test the pulse of the staff and how they're feeling about their experience over the year telework and how they feel about the return to work on site. And so we are sending that out to our staff to help us with this plan, because we certainly want to do whatever we can to retain top talent.   Carol: [00:22:15] Well, I would like to see that survey, ladies, because we can share that with other folks across the country. People are asking me all the time about how can I handle like now we're doing the return and we get so many calls I would love. So if one of you all could send it?   Cynthia: [00:22:32] Ok, ok, but can I send it. And then you say it came from me and I did it.   Kristen: [00:22:39] It came from the CSAVR Operations and Personnel Group.   Cynthia: [00:22:43] That's OK.   Carol: [00:22:46] Credit, that would be awesome. So I know that pandemic had really forced us into this trial and error kind of way of life. And I think we often forget sometimes the greatest lessons come from trial and error. And this was the case even before the pandemic. But I just wondered if there's any mistakes you all have made in the past with recruitment, retention that drive the way you approach it today, like kind of those lessons learned. And Cynthia, I'm going to turn to you first on this one.   Cynthia: [00:23:12] Yeah, I would confess to, I guess over time and not necessarily because of the one of the things I've learned for me is that in desperation. Some hard to fill positions, you know how to look at an application and there's a gap in employment or an applicant has responded, no, you may not contact my supervisor in those kinds of things or a bit of a red flag for me. But then there was some good stuff in that application and a person interview. Well, and I was like, well, we got a probationary period. Let's just get mature. That has me. So one thing that I pay very close attention to is discernment. I don't excuse the red flag so readily now because it's important to get a good candidate, even though we have a probationary period with folks who are not already career state employees. The investment we make, as Kristen described before, and bring it on, folks, training up for jobs. You've got to minimize the risk. So I've learned how to do this.   Carol: [00:24:23] That's right. How about you, Kristen?   Kristen: [00:24:25] That's a great point. I know that as a.. I was a new administrator I don't know how long, how long I can keep saying that I've been doing this for four years now. You're done with that now.   Carol: [00:24:33] You're an old administrator.   Kristen: [00:24:36] But I do remember coming in and being feeling like, oh, my goodness, look at this vacancy rate and the teams are struggling and the hiring managers and staff of 500, the hiring managers across the state are just trying to, as you said, it can reach them. But and we really had to analyze that and say, you know what, having a warm seat is not beneficial to anybody. So let's just do our due diligence and really make sure we get the right person in here. The other thing really that we learned also, and this was really hard for my field team to accept, is just because you had a position in a certain place doing a certain thing doesn't mean you have to fill it the exact same way again. And so I really challenge the team to what are your numbers telling you? Where does that position need to go? Do we need to offload it to another office that's more slammed with clients in your offices right now? Do we need to readjust that to be a different kind of position to support your office? And I, quite frankly, and still sometimes challenge with that, you know, a person leaves and they just want to get the same thing right back in there. And so we need to really, you know, again, they want to be data nerd in me. What is your data telling you from your field office and how can you best support your team and your clients? And so that was a big lesson learned in an ongoing lesson for us as our needs continue to shift.   Kristen: [00:25:58] And then the last one that I really feel like when we think about what our lessons learned is that we can be flexible with our business model, our time that people are in the office or out of the office. If they're doing it remotely, are they doing it on site? It was always eight to five. You got to do it during eight to five. You know, now we're where you are really to the greatest extent possible, really trying to flex and see where can we really meet the needs of the community and the clients. And do we have the staff that can meet those needs maybe outside of those eight to five? Right. We know we have to staff the state office location during those state business hours. But if I got eight people in that office, surely we can make that work. Some people starting at seven and ending at three, some people starting at nine and ending later. Right. So just the ability to be flexible while still meeting the business needs was something that we really had not fully explored in the past. And we're forced to do so was a pandemic and really going to continue to do that because it seems to be a really good business model.   Carol: [00:27:03] I think that has been the silver lining of this pandemic. Is that flexibility for sure. I still remember being in talks with our H.R. before I left and just looking at that remote work and everybody's like, oh, you can't because there's going to be so many workers comp situations. And I said, you know, I actually have more workers comp events happening from people walking outside the workforce center, you know, on the icy sidewalks than we do with somebody working from home. But that's all changed now. And I'm also really glad you said about taking a look at those positions. That had been my viewpoint for a long time. If you want to change and get some of the new positions that are really required under WIOA and getting those kind of quality assurance and business specialists and so really analyzing each position and taking a look at it and going, gosh, what else can we do with it or where else is it needed? I love that. I think that's great. So I know we're kind of wrapping up our time shortly, but I wanted to get from both of you what your hopes are for the future with the work of your committee. I know you've got this newly reformed committee. I think it's awesome. I've sat in on the meetings. I'm excited about the work you're doing, but I know each of you has different passions about this. So, Cynthia, I'm going to start with you. What are your hopes for the future, for the work of your committee?   Cynthia: [00:28:16] Yeah, thanks, Carol. I just hope with all my heart that we are able to continue to provide meaningful and useful. Information and resources to the membership to help them with their recruitment, retention personnel matters. Any particular effort that they feel might need to be raised to the membership and perhaps funding partner or is they and others to bring about change in this area. And what I also hope is, you know, we tell them all the time we want to hear from you, but I don't know, we really mean that. So I really hope I really hope that I feel empowered to share and speak up and be brutally honest with us about is what we're doing helpful to you? And if it is it, tell us that and tell us what you mean, because that's what we're here for and that's what we want to do and that's what we want to provide.   Carol: [00:29:15] All that is, if anybody can make that happen, it will be you, Miss Cynthia, for sure.   Cynthia: [00:29:21] Ok, thank you so much.   Carol: [00:29:25] What about you? What are your hopes for the future of the committee?   Kristen: [00:29:28] Know Cynthia said it so well as far   Kristen: [00:29:30] As wanting to hear from the membership. I also want to just really put out there that while we ask a lot, we do we and we badger and give us the info. Right. We recognize the value of the peer membership with other directors and other states. We learn so much from each other. Every one of us is in a slightly different situation, but we generally have many of the same or very similar activities that we're doing. And so we've all developed different proposals and actions and spreadsheets and surveys. And we, when we're asking for things, really value the contributions of each other. And just to understand that it may take an extra 10, 15 minutes or shoot it out to somebody to provide an answer on your team. But that response is so very valuable and just really appreciative of the folks that take the time to do that, because it just adds to the comprehensiveness of the information we're able to share with everybody. And then the other piece of it that I was drawn to and I'm looking at, you know, I was a region rep and region rep should be a part of committee. That really the other part I was drawn to was the data and the actual evaluation of this public V.R. program. So how do we really get our hands around evaluating the program and then looking at what we can do from a continuous improvement lens to continue to make this just such an even better program for the individuals that we serve?   Carol: [00:31:03] Well said. Well said. Well, I'm so glad you two have each other on this committee work. I think you're in the right spot to really lead this work across the country. It's going to help so many agencies really excited to hear about what you do. And I know I have to invite you back later on, even though now, Kristen I won't do it now Later on to hear the results of the pilot and all that information and be so fun to talk about it. Can't wait. I appreciate you both joining me today in the studio. And I just wish you the very best of luck.   Kristen: [00:31:34] Thank you.   Cynthia: [00:31:34] Thank you so much. We appreciate you, too. And all the work you've always done on behalf of the public, your programs, and you keep doing even in your new fancy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.   Both conversations powered by VR. One manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR attack on quality management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple podcast, Google podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Full Transcript Below.   Hosted by Carol Pankow, Project Director-GWU Team-VRTAC-Quality Management.   Carol is joined in the studio by Natasha Jerde, Director at State Services for the Blind MN and Kristen Mackey, Director of Arizona Combined. How is VR going to look Post-Pandemic? Carol sits down with Natasha and Kristen to talk about how they approached the impact of the pandemic and what they and their teams are doing to bring the best continued service and what VR is going to look like post-pandemic.   What lessons did you learn from the pandemic you want to carry forward? What have been the pros and cons of remote supervision? What is your biggest challenge moving forward? How do you think employment for customers and the overall VR service and supports will be better with the realizations it seems the whole world has made? Remote work is possible. There are lots of new directors and leaders across the country. What is one piece of advice you have for them?   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.   Full Transcript   {Music} Intro Voice: Manager Minute-brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center 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 and thanks for being on our very first inaugural podcast. I'm Carol Pankow, part of the VRTAC and Quality Management. And I'm joined today by Kristen Mackey, director of Arizona combined, and Natasha Jerde, director at my old stomping grounds at State Services for the Blind in Minnesota. So how are you both doing? Natasha: Good, doing good.   Kristen: Hi, Carol. Doing well, thank you.   Carol: Awesome. Well, I'm super excited about having these important conversations impacting VR today, and I wanted to delve into how we are going to look post pandemic. But I think to get there, we have to go back and have a chat about this past year. And I still have two vivid recollections that involve the both of you in the earlier days of the pandemic. And I can still remember back to chatting with you, Kristen, near the beginning of the pandemic. And I think we were maybe going into month three. And you said something about we've got to quit calling this a crisis. It's the new way of the world and we have to march forward. How did that approach help you navigate this past year?   Kristen: Yes, there was a kind of an aha moment for us and we started talking amongst our leadership team and it was this crisis, this crisis. And we just really thought, you know, we put on our counseling hat and we thought we need to turn this. And it is different. It's unusual. It's something that we don't exactly know how to address right now. But instead of putting that term crisis on it, it made it feel like, oh, my gosh, we can't do anything about this. And so we just started to change our language about this is what's happening. How can we address this right now? What are our opportunities to make things better? And that's really helped our focus shift from crisis management really into solution driven, opportunity focused. How can we do better with what we have at hand right now and where can we minimize the gaps? And so it did really help our team kind of make that shift from, oh, my gosh, the sky is falling to OK, we got a lot to deal with, but we have a definite path forward. So it's been successful in terms of just folks feeling a little bit more comfortable with the uncomfortable situation.   Carol: So do you feel that that was able to get relayed then to your field staff as well? I mean, do you feel like is it just your leadership group or do you feel like your whole group is really feeling kind of like the path forward? This is going well?   Kristen: Yeah, I think, you know, it took a little bit of time, but the teams really, as soon as we took that word out of all of our conversation, it felt like the level of anxiety just tended to drop a bit. You know, we started really enforced with our communication and more consistent communication, weekly updates and letting folks know as soon as we know anything, we'll let you know. Please continue to be flexible. And I do feel like the tension level just seemed to kind of drop just a little bit. Folks realize that we all were not scrambling around crisis mode and that we intended to continue to make that conversation and the communication very transparent with our teams throughout all of our decision making processes.   Carol: I know it really helped me because you actually you kind of reprimanded me. We were doing a webinar and the title of one of our webinars, the million we put on in like six weeks. I had, you know, the crisis of the pandemic. And you said, wow, you could change that language and maybe think about it had stuck with me. And it really did help, like, reframe my brain, too. So I appreciate that. I thought that was just a super tip. Now, Natasha, I remember you jumping right in and coming up with resources. The first was around that whole signature issue. I think we probably had one hundred phone calls or emails about how is everybody doing signatures. And you had the very first process that we shared on the WINTAC covered resource web page. And I know you you're an achiever. You like to get things done. So how did that approach help you in navigating this past year?   Natasha: Oh, goodness. I think every day it was just I think my motto was we're going to roll with it. And much like Kristen had said, it was all about opportunity. We had an opportunity to reshape how we did things. And in a creative way, we were flexible. But really, there was really not a lot of time to just sit and ponder and think it was we're going to try something and if it doesn't work, will shake it up and try something different. When the first challenge of how do we get signatures came up, it was OK, well, let's figure it out. Let's try something and we'll talk to RSA. We'll talk to some other states. But we're going to we're going to go with it. And then after a month or so, we're going to see how it works and then we can change if we need to. And that's how we approached every single challenge. And I have to say, we didn't have to do a lot of backtracking. We were typically on the right path most of the time. We did get a lot of engagement from staff and from partners for things as needed. We just roll with it, and that was our motto, and it still is.   Carol: I love that. And you're rolling with it really helped a ton of other states. I think I either had you or your staff and a number of those early webinars as well, because you guys kept coming up with such great solutions to different issues that everybody was having. So that was awesome. I really appreciate it. So it might be a good time to chat just a little bit about remote supervision. Now, I know you two know it's been a hot topic during the pandemic and both of you contributed information we used in our webinar, "Seven Secrets of Effective Remote Supervision". What do you think have been the pros and cons of remote supervision this past year? I think we'll start with Natasha.   Natasha: Well, I was fortunate. I think I was fortunate to have a new staff start two weeks after we went remote. So I had to learn really quickly how to be creative with onboarding someone when I had only met him one time during the interview. So we set up a clear plan. I sat down and actually just took a few hours to imagine what it would be like to be a staff coming into an organization where I had never met anyone and wouldn't even have known what my office looked like. So I pretended I was the new staff and I asked myself what would be valuable to me, how can I feel welcomed and part of the team when I'm not physically part of the team? So we assigned a mentor, someone that could just pop in and have a coffee or a tea a couple of times a week, someone who was not me, not the supervisor, but a peer or a colleague. I also set up a weekly touch base and then every day I would send an email, Hey, how are you today? Tell me how things are going. Tell me what some of your challenges are. And then we would connect over Zoom or via phone just to socialize and build that connection. Because when you're remote, one of the biggest things is isolation from your team and really having to be intentional about building those connections with peers and colleagues. We had all staffs and every all staff. We would introduce new staff. We'd have them tell a little story about where they came from, who they are, what they're going to be doing. We started building at happy hours and social time so people can get to know one another who are new and really I'm going to say the word again. But it's being intentional and really building in time to build those connections, all while also trying to learn the job.   Carol: That's super fabulous. So have there been any downsides to this past year that you ran into?   Natasha: Oh, goodness.   Carol: As you were working maybe with working with your supervisory team and such as?   Natasha: Well, yes. I mean, you could probably imagine how hard it is to train someone on very complex things. I was onboarding a Fiscal coordinator Assistant and a lot of what we do, you really need to be sitting down and walking through your financial documents and spreadsheets. And it is incredibly challenging to teach someone the complex thing over Zoom, especially if you have a technology issue, if you can't hear what the other person is saying. And the staff that we were onboarding wasn't very vocal. So if he wasn't able to hear something, he just kept going. So he missed about 20 to 30 percent of what we were explaining. And you could see that from his work. So we had to do a lot of reconnecting, being really flexible with the tools we're using to connect, like picking up the phone while also seeing each other on Zoom, sending follow up emails to recap what was said. But it's a whole different experience, trying to do something virtually and walking someone through a process. We did have to come back in person a few times and put something up on the projector and actually physically walk through it in person, and that was much more effective. So there really isn't a lot that can replace that one on one face to face human interaction.   Carol: Absolutely. I heard that from so many people this past year missing the people. Oh, my goodness. I know. I miss the people, too. You're when you're on Zoom from eight to four, you feel like you're with people all day, but yet you're not. And so it makes it tough for you. Kristen, what have been pros and cons of the remote supervision this past year?   Kristen: You know, as Natasha was saying, that really struck me, too. The communication piece, you know, we're all communicating, we're all talking. But when you're on Zoom and you're just seeing those little boxes on the screens, right. You're not seeing people, you're not picking up on that body language to see and confirm the understanding. And so we've really learned that as much as we're communicating, the level of understanding has really dropped. And so it feels like we're having to go back again and again to confirm the understanding of certain topics. And on Natasha's point, some things are just really you got to sit together and go through it. So that's been one of the larger challenges for us. And we continue to try to work on finding other opportunities, know what are those things that are out there to help us engage folks. And so there's other tools in Arizona. We use Google, and so that they're jam boards, there's white boards, there's different opportunities for us to engage people in a meeting. And help them to really get their hands on persay that material and to increase the understanding, one of the other things that we found is those opportunities for your random social interactions that happen. You're passing somebody in a hallway. Those types of activities don't happen anymore. And I think that's really where you get those personal connections with each other. And so the sense of loss almost not having that anymore. And really, do we need to build some time one on one with people that are comfortable going out and meeting and when it was safe to do so, try to be a little more intentional around that or picking up the phone, scheduling, quick chat, random instant message chats throughout the day to different people really seem to help mitigate that a little bit to some extent. We also had some managers that were super innovative and looking outside and kind of really thinking outside of the box and had one region do a month of an attitude of gratitude. And so they journaled every day, what are we grateful for? And then teams share that information with each other. So, again, really trying to rebuild that personal connection with each other has seemed to be one of our largest challenges, but also an opportunity for really cool stuff to come out of it to provide those ad hoc personal options.   Carol: I always think of you two as being some of the most creative people I know. And I really appreciated all the things you shared with us this last year. So as a provider, we were able to share those with other folks. It was so fun. And Kristen always resonate with me because of that positivity. It's one of my five strengths, finders, pieces. And you always came with that approach. I loved. I love hearing about that. So when you think about the past year and you looked at the lessons learned and all of that, and we're looking at the future of VR, and I know I still remember back when staff were asking, gosh, can we work remote? And I remember talking to colleagues and people are like, oh, I don't know if we can do VR. Well, obviously we proved that false this past year. So what do you guys think? Any lessons you learned from this pandemic that you want to carry forward into the new world of VR? Like, are you going to stay remote? Are you going to come back to the office? What are you thinking about what you're going to carry forward?   Kristen: It's a great thing to consider, Carol. We are absolutely going to continue there and continue with remote work and mobile and I'm saying mobile because it is not going to be the same as we're going to make clients come to our office and sit across our desks. We're going to be is we are now fully equipped to work mobility. And so where can we meet the clients to serve the client's needs? Our staff should be traveling to meet our clients. And so that's going to be our new approach. As we're able to continue to get out into the community safely, we will be increasing our community visits. We took the opportunity at the very beginning of the pandemic to get everybody fully equipped laptops, Internet, cell phones, whatever you need in order to work out in the community. And so now it's really think outside of the office. And that's going to be kind of our new tagline. Where can we meet the client to be the most successful for the client and really looking forward to seeing how that will work in the future.   Carol: I love that I just wrote that. Don't think outside of the office fully. So are you thinking about Kristen then shrinking like your physical footprint?   Kristen: Yes, leases are coming up and we're reevaluating how much space is needed. Nobody has a designated office anymore. All personal belongings went home when we did the, you know, a year ago. Now we're saying, OK, this office is a 15 person office. We don't anticipate that it will ever be fully staffed with 15 people, eight to five. The office will be open. We will be open for walk envisage and for one on one client visits as needed. But we won't need 15 designated office spaces. We'll have some hoteling spaces that are fully equipped for anybody to drop in and get the work done that they need to. But we don't need the amount of space that we used   Carol: That is super cool. How about you, Natasha? What's cooking over your way?   Natasha: Much like Kristen saying our new normal isn't new anymore, is going to be a hybrid approach between virtual and in-person service delivery. There's always going to be a need to meet with people face to face in some shape or form. But there's going to be more instances where instead of spending hours on the road to drive to someone, we can accomplish a lot when we use some of our virtual meeting tools. This is also huge because we work with people who have transportation barriers and not adding an unnecessary barrier of having people have to come to us. We're going to have more remote staff and a lot less space in our one-stop than our American job centers. We have already started the process across our entire department and what that's going to look like in the future as leases come up, we are going to be getting out of quite a few spaces, are moving towards satellite offices or hoteling, all of our field staff. As soon as the pandemic hit, we made sure that they have cell phones were actually going to be moving away from even having a desk phone and everyone will be mobile ready. Everyone got a laptop if they didn't already have one and an iPad. The real benefit of this, though, this remote work is we're going to be able to attract and retain staff. People love teleworking. They love remote for the most part. The one thing they have said and that I'm taking to heart is not everything needs to be a meeting. So that's something we are still trying to work through with less meetings, more time interacting with our customers. I think along with that, we are going to be saving some money by reducing our footprint, which means more opportunity to use that money and invest in our customers and our staff in a totally different way.   Carol: That is so cool. So what do you think Natasha's your biggest challenge, though, moving forward with this? I know in the past when we've talked about shrinking space in the American job centers for one that's always brought a lot of tension, you know, with the partners. And of course, money is involved. It gets a little dicey. So what do you think some of your biggest challenges are going forward?   Natasha: Well, you hit the nail on the head. One of our biggest challenges is not everyone is on the same page as us. We have a lot of engagement work we need to do and we need to work hard and getting Buy-In from our partners and helping them also move with us and not against us. And the other challenge we still experience is really our own technology. Great. But we also have accessibility challenges and issues. And if we want to get this right, we got to resolve both those things as well. But the biggest piece is making sure our partners are with us alongside of us and not against us.   Carol: That's good advice. That's really good advice. How about you, Kristen? What's your biggest challenge moving forward?   Kristen: Specific to the work with the American job centers are really understanding to their requirement to have staff and be able to refer. And so similar to Natasha, how do we forge ahead together and know that our infrastructure agreements and our milieus may need to change because we're all doing work a little bit differently than we were before? So working together as a team to make sure that the clients are appropriately and adequately served from all title partner perspectives. And what does that look like? And so each of those are local areas are going through those conversations. Now, how can we be the most supportive and ensuring that our clients are able to get the services as well through those American job centers? And then again, we're a combined agency and have found that through some of our voices of the customer surveys and through our surveys and interactions with staff, that accessibility and ability to use the technology is really one of those points that we have found. We just need to do better at providing guidance tools and ensuring that all of the technology that we use is accessible. And so that's one of our big challenges that's in the forefront of our minds.   Carol: That's awesome. So how do you think thinking about accessibility and thinking about everything that's happened this past year, how do you think employment for customers and the overall be service and supports? How is it going to be better? Like what do you think employment's going to look like for folks or that you're already seeing in your services right now? What do you think is going to change or do you have any predictions or things you're seeing right now, like new types of jobs people are getting into or what's happening for those customers?   Kristen: I'll tell you that specific to our work rate, I said this earlier, I don't know that we would have on-boarded somebody had they said I need to work from home three days a week previous. And now we're like, OK, that's doable. Right? So we think other employers are doing the same thing. They're realizing that can be done remotely. And so we have seen a few positive employment outcomes because the work can be done mobily or remotely reduces some of those transportation challenges, reduces some of the other accommodations that need to be made potentially through ADA because folks are able to work from home. And so I do see that as a positive as we move forward. I see as a positive others are learning about technology and the challenges that are sometimes inherent in using technology. So as employers begin to learn and use this more as their daily work, I think that we will see technology become more accessible just by virtue of the masses using them. And I'm really looking forward to those opportunities to launch that and grab a hold of those new opportunities moving forward.   Carol: Very cool. I know, Natasha, thinking about the blindness population. I know that there's always a lot of fears that employers have been hiring an individual who is blind or visually impaired. How are they going to do the job? And I know working at SSP as well, you know, we combatted that a lot. The staff did, and really helping individuals advocate for themselves. So are you seeing a shift for customers in, like, acceptance or ability to get employment? What do you see on the horizon for that?   Natasha: Perfect timing because on Friday, we actually hosted a roundtable for employers and we called it an untapped labor force for rebuilding the economy, and it was our general agency and state services for the blind. And much like what Christine has said, accessibility is becoming better and better as more people are embracing technology. One of the biggest barriers for our customers who are looking for work is the transportation piece. And as businesses are adopting teleworking and remote work, putting in more accessibility, it's becoming a lot easier for people to get in and start working. There is a huge demand in Minnesota and probably across the country for workers. And I think the stats for Minnesota is for every vacancy there is one point one people. So there's almost a job for every person who is looking and employers are posting positions and not finding candidates. So we are using this as an opportunity to swoop in and market the talent pool that we have and also providing resources for accommodations. Even with being remote, our assistive technology and employment specialists have been working with employers a lot more than ever, helping them build in reasonable accommodations. And employers have been embracing it because they've also been helpful for their staff without disabilities. Some of the different virtual tools out there, they're adopting a more universal design standard for those things. So I see really, really great things for these coming years for people with disabilities and work   Carol: That's very cool. It makes my heart happy. I'm sitting here nodding to you all and you can't see me and smiling. It's just it does make my heart happy to see this change. And for all the staff, I just think about everyone going through so many personal issues this last year, whether it's with homeschooling kids or taking care of parents and all kinds of things happening. So I feel like there's really been a silver lining in the pandemic for sure. Now there are a ton of new directors and leaders across the country. I think when we did a presentation a bit ago, we had counted up since 2013, there's actually been 79 director changes, I believe something like that. And you know, up till was January of 21, it was either 76 or 79. I'm going holy smokes, as well as all the other various administrators or people in supervisory positions and such across the country. So what would be one piece of advice you would give for this group? Because some were new. They started with we just the beginning of a pandemic. And you guys have been around for a while. You know, your staff. What would you tell other people piece of advice you'd have for them kind of going forward into the our new normal, which is not really new? It's been the same now for 14 months or so.   Natasha: I think a recognition that being a director can be very lonely and isolating and to combat that, reach out to other directors, build relationships, you have your buddy. And I think, Carol, you've mentioned this before. You have your people that you go to and that you can ask questions because sometimes you may not have those people internally that you can connect with, but you have us and you can reach out to Krista and then you can reach out to myself. And even if it's just to say, oh, my goodness, this can be really challenging, we've been there and we can work together on that and just help one another out.   Carol: That's awesome. I love that because I always say phone a friend, you got to get a friend. And you guys are my people for sure. So, Kristen, what about you? You got a piece of advice?   Kristen: I should know. I would just echo Natasha. I know that you jumping into the director role and really understanding the connections that you have and definitely VR and your regional reps. I think you're a regional rep. I am a regional rep. The connection between the directors is so valuable and everybody is willing to give advice, provide resources, and maybe it's not even that. Maybe it's just the opportunity to kind of commiserate with each other and know that I'm not crazy about going through this all alone in my own silo over here in Arizona, we are all kind of working on the same things and maybe just a different slant. So reach out to your fellow directors and We are all Very receptive. And I think it's a great group of individuals from the director level. I have not yet met one person that would absolutely not hand over anything that they had to help me be successful and provide with additional information.   Carol: Well said. Well said, ladies. Well, I know you two are incredibly busy and I really appreciate you spending this time with me. I just think you're both fabulous. And I can't wait to hear about cool things happening in your agencies going forward. So thanks for joining us today.   Kristen: Thanks for having us.   {Music} Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR. One Manager at a time. One Minute at a time. Brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management . Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.