Podcast appearances and mentions of joe ashley

Chase bank has been catching some customers trying to pull a fast one. What are people doing to ATMs around the country to steal cold hard cash?

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!

Joe is a Walt Disney fan through and through and was so excited that Disney announced new sequels and features that are going to be releasing... Ashley on the other hand... isn't too big of a fan...

What is one thing that everyone else can do but you just can't do?

Yesterday a listener was blowing up the radio station's text line calling both Joe + Ashley 'woke'... today we call him out for THEjoeSHOW's 'Douchebag Of The Day'.

We had someone text in this morning claiming that Joe is 'weak' and Ashley is 'woke'. We called him up to confront him!

Both Executive Producer Jed and Digital Director Terri have awesome job titles. But what are we going to title Joe and Ashley?

Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently announced additional key administration and board appointments: Board for the Blind and Vision Impaired – Dr. Joe Ashley of Henrico, project director for GWU Center for Rehabilitation, Counseling, Research, and Education; Virginia Board for People with Disabilities – Allison Kay Coles-Johnson of Henrico, registered nurse, retired; and Board for Contractors – Tripp Costen of Henrico, president of Costen Floors. *** Samantha Greene, Lexi Pasternak and Nate Pfeffer of Henrico were named to the spring 2023 dean's list at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. To be eligible for the dean's list, students must earn a semester grade...Article LinkSupport the show

Today is Joe & Ashley's 10-Year Wedding Anniversary! In honor of this special day, Joe [and his audience] convinced Ashley to hop back on the podcast! Together, they discuss a variety of topics including: Highlights from their wedding; The party at the DeFranco's that took place this past Tuesday night; Ashley's new turkey meatball recipe; Update on Ashley's health, hormonal changes, training & supplementation routine; Dating advice for the Industrial Strength Universe; A potential Ashley DeFranco podcast?!? And Lots More! *For a full list of Show Notes + Timestamps goto www.IndustrialStrengthShow.com IMPORTANT LINKS Ashley DeFranco (@ashleydefranco) DeFranco's Nutritional Supplements Team Forever Strong Just Feed Me (Jessie James Decker) Calvin Hartman (@calvinhartman) TODAY'S SPONSOR: Rhone 

Today is Joe & Ashley's 10-Year Wedding Anniversary! In honor of this special day, Joe [and his audience] convinced Ashley to hop back on the podcast! Together, they discuss a variety of topics including: Highlights from their wedding; The party at the DeFranco's that took place this past Tuesday night; Ashley's new turkey meatball recipe; Update on Ashley's health, hormonal changes, training & supplementation routine; Dating advice for the Industrial Strength Universe; A potential Ashley DeFranco podcast?!? And Lots More! *For a full list of Show Notes + Timestamps goto www.IndustrialStrengthShow.com IMPORTANT LINKS Ashley DeFranco (@ashleydefranco) DeFranco's Nutritional Supplements Team Forever Strong Just Feed Me (Jessie James Decker) Calvin Hartman (@calvinhartman) TODAY'S SPONSOR: Rhone 

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.  

Hi, friends! On today's episode, I am interviewing Joe and Ashley Hoover. Joe and Ashley are great friends of ours who are also fellow houseparents. Their story is one of courage, faith, hope and love. When Ashley received a cancer diagnosis six and a half years ago, it turned their world upside down, but brought them so much clarity and so many beautiful moments. I hope you enjoy their story as much as I did and are as inspired as I am not only by their courage, but by their journey. Enjoy. Are you struggling with disciplining your children? Is what you're trying not working? Are you finding yourself stressed out and overwhelmed with discipline? Are your kids not responding? I have hope for you! Check out my FREE DOWNLOAD that contains 6 Steps on Disciplining Your Children Well. It was created just for YOU to reduce some of your stress and overwhelm in parenting. Check it out and start getting the results you desire. Link below! https://www.subscribepage.com/6-steps-to-discipline-your-children-well Questions or comments? Please reach out! You can DM me on IG @ https://www.instagram.com/authentic.kate/ Join the AuthentiKate Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1130336367771619 Email me at authentikate22@gmail.com You can also check out my website at authentikate22.com I would love if you would rate and review me on the platform you listen on so I can be seen and heard by others! Thanks for listening!

This week we can't figure out why we have no friends and nobody wants to chat with us!!!  Since we have no friends, we decide to start a trivia game on our own, but then our good friend Joe Ashley calls us back from his vacation in New Orleans!!!  See,  we have friends!

Catch the video stream of the show LIVE on Twitch every morning! Click here and then "follow."Topics:*Omicron and the usual dumb reasons to not get vaccinated*I'm supposed to go see my Dad soon for Christmas, but he's hesitant to have us because of COVID.*I did PA for the Grand Rapids Gold basketball game last night. One of the dumbest things happened at the game that caused me to comment onto the microphone about how dumb it was.*The team hates it when I'm not at the games to do PA because of a scheduling conflict.*Some giant 7 foot man had to teach me how to say his name.*I learned what a "moving screen" was.*Great Food Giveaway 2 update. To help, venmo @eric-zeitunian Papal @ericzaneshow*I had audience member known as StyxSwimChamp on Reddit join me on the show. We discussed our disagreement with how I handled the whole Joe / Ashley segment. He's another one of the dipshits who thinks Ashley should not be allowed to be on my show to discuss this. *Kroger is doing what every American business should do when it comes to dealing with the pandemic.*A female substitute teacher in Florida is in the news, and it's not because she's good at her job.*I have a fool proof way to eliminate kid diddling by teachers.*Young women needed to dress appropriately at the gym.*Dear Meathead brought to you by JM Synthetics.*Asshole of the Day BTYB JM Synthetics / TC PaintballBosco's Pub, Dumpster Divers, Shoreliners Striping, Bennett Flooring Installation, Johnson Carpet One Floor and Home, My Policy Shop.com, Full House Comedy, Baldwin Ace Hardware, Horizen Hydroponics, TC Paintball, Ervine's Auto Repair/ Grand Rapids Hybrid, VanDyk Mortgage Mario Flores Lakeshore Team, A&E Heating and Cooling Hey! Business owner! email eric@ericzaneshow.com and let me design a marketing plan for you. It's easy and FREE.Subscribe to my YouTube channelHire me on Cameo!Tshirts available herePlease subscribe, rate & write a review on Apple Podcastspatreon.com/ericzaneInstagram: ericzaneshowTwitter: @ericzaneshowSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-eric-zane-show-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We dive into some very controversial topics tonight and we don't mind doing it!!!  

On this episode of SPx, Joe & Ashley welcome a lifetime agent of systemic change, Randall Russell. Russell is the President & CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg. In its third year, the Foundation is seeking to create a holistic picture of where Pinellas County is today - to catalyze collaboration with nonprofits, government entities and religious leaders that fosters transformative change. Russell shares insight from a lifelong career in social justice and the importance of leaning into tough conversations.

On this episode of SPx, Joe & Ashley sit down with Station House owner, Tampa Bay Investor, and curator of St. Pete's cool vibes - Steve Gianfilippo. His company, Gianco, is poised to open two new locations of his beloved St. Pete co-working and community space in the next year. The Station House Arcade, soon to open on the 600 Block of Central Ave in St. Pete and Hyde Park Village in Tampa, set to open in 2019. In this jam-packed episode, we dive into his inspiration for the design of his unique spaces from his roots in New York and his travels around the world. He shares what work-life balance looks like as an entrepreneur in St. Pete, and how St. Pete can further elevate its brand.

Dr. Tom returns and as usual he's got a lot to talk about! This week's topics include: Whey Protein ISOLATE vs Whey Protein CONCENTRATE; Supplement company manufacturing practices [Buyer Beware]; Dr. Tom reveals Joe's "Love Language"; "Bilella's Greatest Hits"; Joe & Ashley take the DISC Personality Test; Another sale for you spoiled bastards...and MORE!  For Show Notes & Timestamps go to www.IndustrialStrengthShow.com

Dr. Tom returns and as usual he's got a lot to talk about! This week's topics include: Whey Protein ISOLATE vs Whey Protein CONCENTRATE; Supplement company manufacturing practices [Buyer Beware]; Dr. Tom reveals Joe's "Love Language"; "Bilella's Greatest Hits"; Joe & Ashley take the DISC Personality Test; Another sale for you spoiled bastards...and MORE!  For Show Notes & Timestamps go to www.IndustrialStrengthShow.com

On this episode of SPx, hosts Joe & Ashley sit down with iQor CEO Hartmut Liebel to get to the bottom of iQor's unique business model. They discuss how St. Petersburg won out over cities like Chicago, Charlotte and many others for iQor's global headquarters, and what the company is looking for from a talent perspective. Liebel shares his passion projects, local business heroes, and "selfish" morning routine, along with his secret to beating the "lonely CEO" problem.