Manager Minute-brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode of Manager Minute, host Carol Pankow sits down with Cora McNabb, Executive Director of Kentucky Combined, for an honest, in-depth conversation about how her agency is responding to the rising fiscal pressures in vocational rehabilitation.

Facing skyrocketing service costs in the wake of the pandemic, McNabb shares how Kentucky made the tough but necessary decision to implement an Order of Selection. She walks through the agency’s strategic approach, including cost containment measures like staffing freezes, policy changes, and clear, consistent communication.

Listeners will gain valuable insights into:

·       Using data to drive timely and effective decisions

·       Building transparency and trust through fiscal openness

·       The power of collaborative leadership in times of change

·       Why engaging RSA early and assembling diverse internal teams makes a difference

This episode offers practical advice and real-world examples for VR leaders and decision-makers working to maintain service delivery in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Tune in and be inspired to lead with clarity, collaboration, and a commitment to sustainability.

Listen Here

Full Transcript:

Cora: How quickly things can accelerate, because you can be okay one month and then a lot of case service costs hit in the next month. Oh, you're not looking so good.

Carol: Having that bigger group. Looking at the situation, I think more minds make for better observations about what's happening in perspective. You can't do this by yourself

Cora: moving forward, I think that we're going to have deeper dives into the programmatic and fiscal data at our meetings than what we were having.

{Music}

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

Carol: Joining me in the studio today is Cora McNabb, director of Kentucky Combined. Cora, it's so great to see you. Thanks for being here.

Cora: Thanks for having me.

Carol: Well, so over the last five years, the fiscal landscape for the VR program has been shifting, and the pandemic had led to a slowdown in spending as customer demand decreased. But now things are ramping up again, including inflation. In March, I recorded a podcast featuring RSA in Indiana, combined director Theresa Kolezar on this very topic. CSAVR also highlighted it in a general session, and the VRTAC-QM released a tool to help state VR agencies navigate order of selection. Today, I want to have a real time discussion with Cora about how she and her team are navigating the order of selection process in Kentucky. As one of our more seasoned state directors, she's in the midst of working through these challenges, and I think it's important to hear firsthand what that looks like. So let's dig in. So, Cora, can you tell our listeners a bit about yourself and your journey into VR?

Cora: Sure. I started out in the early 90s in a nonprofit organization. I never finished college. And so about that time, my mom died and I decided to go back to college and finish. And I did a practicum in the nonprofit, and from there on, I was hooked. And it was actually a sheltered workshop at that time. And I started out in vocational evaluation. That was around the time, if you remember, supported employment started to grow. And so I had the privilege of starting that and taking over the oversight of the supported employment program. And I was there for about 14 years, and then we moved from Indiana to Kentucky. And I really didn't even want a job right away. But there was an opportunity to be an administrator for the blind agency. And I took that job. And so 20 years later, here I am and I've been the executive director. This is my sixth year.

Carol: Wow. You have a very similar background to me because I started out in that world too, of sheltered work, and then when supported employment came around, ended up leading actually in our state hospital, one of the programs to get our folks out into the community working in supported employment. It was so crazy. I look back at that and how far we've all come. That's pretty cool. So how big is the VR program in Kentucky? Like how many staff and customers do you serve and what's your budget look like to give people kind of a sense of scope?

Cora: Our budget is probably around 90 million. That includes everything. Last year we served about 40,000, and that would be also including pre-employment transition services in there. And so currently we have about 480 staff, of which around 140 of them are VR counseling staff.

Carol: Wow, you are not a small program. I didn't realize you were quite as big as you are. So how has the fiscal landscape changed for your agency over the last five years.

Cora: Our consumer services has really seen an unprecedented increase in cost after Covid 19. The pandemic and in the last several years since 2021, we have seen increases in all areas, applications, eligibilities, cases, employment outcomes as well as the numbers served. And obviously if you've got increases there, you've got increases in expenditures and you have to take into account how the cost of services have increased. Our applications from 2021 till 2024 increased 95%. Our eligibility is 102% and our expenditures increased 72%. Of course, that also meant our employment outcomes increased as well. So we've increased a lot.

Carol: Holy smokes I haven't heard numbers that big? That is huge. You know, I wonder too. Some people have been telling me that the customers that they're seeing now coming in the door are also different than kind of pre-pandemic that they said, folks that they're serving when they're looking at case characteristics are tending to be more complex. And so in addition to kind of everything going up, the individuals needing service need more things. And so the cost per case has also gone up. Has that been the case for you all?

Cora: Yes. The cost per case has also gone up.

Carol: Interesting. So, you know, during the times of plenty when the message was spend, spend, spend. What kind of strategies did you implement at that time? Because I remember you back then going like, oh my gosh, we gotta, we have to spend all this money.

Cora: Yes we did. We had a lot. We had like a full year of carryover. We increased tuition costs. You know what we paid for tuition. We suspended cost sharing or the financial needs testing. We suspended that we gave raises and we hired additional staff because the demand and, you know, we had long wait times in some of our more urban areas. And so we added additional staff to handle the caseloads.

Carol: Yeah. I remember you saying way back when, I think you had a region where you couldn't get counselors for quite some time. It was way over a year, and you were just dying to get those salary increases to see if you could get folks in. So are you now covered statewide with staff?

Cora: Yes. Since we have implemented the wages and then staff got additional wages as well, you know, annually through the state fiscal year, our turnover went from around 44% to about 2 to 3%. So we have a very stable workforce, which I think also contributed to how many people we were serving in cases that we were seeing.

Carol: So that's pretty amazing. So you can see all the, how the strategies are playing out. You know you are keeping your staff. That's been good. But then all the other pieces that you put into play, like suspending, cost sharing and all of that. What are you finding is happening today?

Cora: Well, we know that agencies rising costs against the estimated expenditures that we have in the available funding has what has pressed us to look at entering order of selection, because we know that at the end of the year, we will have spent more than what we have if we don't.

Carol: So what steps have you been taking to implement the order of selection?

Cora: A lot. We looked at both fiscal and programmatic. We did fiscal forecasting from 2021 through 2024. We looked at four years and we analyzed that data for all areas, referrals for applications. We looked at attrition costs. We looked at the applicants in each priority category by their status. We looked at our assessment cost for that time period. We looked at our attrition cost. We have consulted with our state rehab council. We've held public hearings. We're currently waiting for approval from RSA through the process for the state plan amendment. Through that process, RSA identified that we had duplicative language in our priority categories. For category one and two. We use the word most in both of those categories, but we defined it out by functional capacity. And they had not noticed that before. So they came back and told us we would have to either close one and two, or leave one and two open. And leaving two open is not an option for us. We have to close category two, so we are going to have to close all four categories while we work on addressing the issue with those priority definitions. So that's going to require obviously additional public hearings and a policy and regulatory change. So that has kind of complicated the process for us. But we need to correct that. And we started that process with our state rehab council. On Monday, we had a session where we're beginning to look at those priority categories. We also held training of staff. We've held one training and we have another one scheduled for next week. We've worked collaboratively with our cabinet leadership and the governor's office. They both have been very supportive, developed communication plan. So it's a lot. It's a long process really.

Carol: Well, it is a lot. I was thinking about that kind of the political piece of it because sometimes folks forget, you know, there's the mechanics of it. Do you have your policy in place, you know, and how's that all rolling in training of staff and doing your amendment. But politically, sometimes you will get pushback from the higher ups going, we don't want you to do this. We don't want you to go on an order, but you're not experiencing that. You are getting support.

Cora: No. And of course, we don't want to go into order selection either. So we're going to work as quickly as possible to get those definition changes done. And our policy changed, you know, the regs. But we want to make sure we do that in a quality manner because how you define those priority categories is important.

Carol: Yeah absolutely. So where are you at then in the process with getting your state plan amendment approved by RSA?

Cora: We're just waiting on it. We have sent it back and now we're waiting. We're hoping to implement by May 1st. So we're just waiting to get that back.

Carol: Yeah. So you're coming on kind of quick, too. There's, uh. Well, I shouldn't say quick. You've been working on this for a while. There's a number of states that are in the throes of various stages of working it through. One thing you said is this takes a lot of time. And I know people have called as of late, like, even in the last week or two, and they're like, we need to implement an order right away. Like, we need to go on by May 1st. And this is like an April 1st timeframe. And I'm like, that's not even possible.

Cora: No. And it is a cumbersome process. But when you think about how important the decisions are that you make, I guess it would be hard not to have a process that takes time and a lot of thought, and you need to look at everything thoroughly.

Carol: I know one of the big pieces that folks from the feds, you know, RSA will talk about is cost containment strategies, trying to look at any kind of cost containment strategies you can put in place first, or kind of alongside as you're looking at implementing an order to help, kind of rein in the expenditures. So what kind of cost containment strategies have you put into place, or are you guys looking at putting into place?

Cora: Yeah, back in I guess probably September in the fall was a telling month. We looked at that and went, whoa, our costs were way up. And of course we knew there was tuition in there. But even in spite of that, they were way up. And we saw that trend beginning to be there. And so we started to look at more data. And so in January, we stopped all out of state travel. That was, you know, funded through the VR grant. All personnel actions were put on hold. We are now in the process of looking at our contractual agreements and reducing them where we can. We also, here in Central Office, are going to consolidate some of our space, give up some of the vacant cubes that we have. And another thing that we've been looking at off and on for the last several months, our hearing aid costs, and we did release some temporary staff and some initial probation staff, which was very hard.

Carol: That is hard. None of these things are easy to do for sure. It's very painful. I've been hearing from people all over where they're having to do very similar types of things, and you've had a little bit longer on ramp because you've been noticing this since last fall. It isn't like, hello, today you just got this notice, like, say from Jake going, Cora, you don't have any money, which is happening. Other people, they're not having access to any financial information about the program. And it's really super troublesome because you can't be in control of the allocation and expenditure of your funds as the VR director, when you don't even get a financial report.

Cora: Right. That would be very concerning.

Carol: And you've really had to navigate that because you've had many different structural changes in Kentucky with where that fiscal folks land. I mean, they used to be with you, and then now you've got them way at the cabinet level. So it's a whole different picture.

Cora: Yeah. Through looking at those, we get a weekly report, we get a lot of reports. And it was looking at that where we begin to see the percentage of differences start to change. And I think, you know, if you get regular reports controlling your administrative costs are not that difficult. It's those case services costs because plans are written and money is obligated. And once that starts, unless you're running that data and really looking at it ongoing, in which this is something that we've learned, we will be looking at more data and different data going forward as we maneuver through this. You know, how many plans are in place implemented. All of that is really important to look at ahead of time, because you can see what's coming, because once they're implemented and those services are on the plan, the trains on the track and it's going.

Carol: That's right. You're talking about this and looking at this, who's the we? So I know it's you and Susie, but who's the we that's looking at the data? Do you have an expanded team looking at it? Who do you include in that?

Cora: Our leadership team, my division directors. And then also the cabinet fiscal staff.

Carol: This is sage advice because I think some leaders have had a tendency to want to keep this close to the vest, like they know there's a problem, but they're not wanting to include a bigger group. And I just need to, like, make a pitch right here. Having that group involved, like your leadership team and the fiscal people in the cabinet and having that bigger group looking at the situation, I think more minds make for better, you know, observations about what's happening in perspective.

Cora: Right.

Carol: You know, you can't do this by yourself.

Cora: No you can't.

Carol: Yeah. I'm really glad that you're doing that. So what kind of advice would you have for your colleagues across the country who are wrestling with these similar issues? What are things that you found that have been helpful for you working through this?

Cora: Well, I think to know that you're not alone in it, and it is a very difficult decision. Once you make the decision, I think it's important to act quickly and be confident, because it's really easy to blame yourself that you know you didn't do a good job, or that you have let the disability community down in your state. The grants very complicated and all the processes surrounding it, I think are complicated and challenging. I think the more people that you surround yourself with and making all those decisions, the better. It's very important. It's kind of like we ran a data set today and sent it to Jake, and I didn't think about did it have pre edits in it? And Jake came back and said, does this have presets in it? Because the data can be deceiving in itself too. And then know that how quickly things can accelerate, because you can be okay one month and then a lot of case service costs hit in the next month. Oh you're not looking so good. And the fiscal forecasting group has been great to be a part of all of those groups. The new fiscal forecasting tool. There's all kinds of tools that are out there. And then I know I always say this for those states where they don't have those relationships somehow be working on them, because without them you're not going to be successful.

Carol: Yeah, that's all very good advice. I do want to dig in for a minute on the data, because I know folks like to look at different things. What have you found to be most helpful to you and the leadership team when you're talking about the data? What are the kinds of things you guys are looking at that have been really impactful? And is there any way that they're displayed or something that has been more helpful to you?

Cora: Well, I think the annual cost of services over time, looking at that historical data, how many referrals that you have, how many applications that are currently in the hopper, the attrition cost, looking at those help. Because if you know about 38% of your cost, that is going to you know, those authorizations are not going to go to payment. That helps just all kinds of data, really. And looking at it by priority category. And one of the things Susie and I have talked a lot about is, and RSA mentioned to us is, are we too top heavy in one priority category over another one? Because then that makes it difficult as you are looking at closing. And that's kind of what happened to us, by the way, that we define those functional limitations. Now we're kind of stuck until we get our definitions changed. We have to close both one and two, and that's not what we wanted to do. We wanted to leave one open and just close two.

Carol: How many categories do you have?

Cora: We have four.

Carol: Okay. Because I know I've seen people have even like 5 or 6. And I feel like the more you finely slice and dice those, they end up almost becoming irrelevant in a way, because you might have a half a percent of people in a category. So you go, you're closing this. And it's confusing to the counselors, like, how am I finally finding this? It makes it harder to implement and it's causing you more grief really.

Cora: Yes. I think that we're going to try to simplify ours as we move forward.

Carol: Yeah, that sounds really good. Have you had to do anything in particular to help people get comfortable, like in understanding and interpreting the data? Because I know sometimes folks, you know, everybody's minds just work differently. And so you could have a report. And for some people it's super obvious. Oh yeah. Like you can interpret that and it says x, y, z. Other folks are like it just looks like Greek on a page. Have you had to do anything to help kind of with like data literacy?

Cora: Well, it's interesting that you say that because informing the public and the public hearings, I think that was difficult for individuals because and part of that is probably they just don't simply want to see it because they don't want us to close the categories. You know, because it's not it's not a good thing to do. But I think once we presented the data and would show what large percentages of increase that we had, that people would go, oh yeah, and our state rehab council, they were very supportive and could see that. But I think just the general public, it's more difficult, probably because it's their child or their, you know, grandchild and it's just more difficult. So that has been difficult getting everyone to understand it. That's a good point, though. The data sometimes is difficult to accept.

Carol: Well, it definitely lends to that whole when you have a communication plan, you're really talking differently to different groups because you've got obviously kind of your higher ups in the politicals and you've got your own staff and the consumers and then the other stakeholders. So the messaging may look different just because you're trying to communicate in a way that people can understand what's going on. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So what are you projecting for the future? Now we've gotten the, you know, continuing resolution came, the money came, which is good. What are you looking at when you look out a year or two? What are you thinking.

Cora: In my crystal ball? I don't know really what to expect. So hoping that our funding stays stable. The cola was great. That was a great surprise for all of us. And getting that and you know, moving forward, I think that we're going to have deeper dives into the programmatic and fiscal data at our meetings than what we were having, making sure that we're marrying those two together. Because if you just look at one and goodness, if you're not looking at it at all, then you really are having difficulty. I feel like we have some hope knowing that the rest of the award did come, and we need to build that carry forward money back up, not to the point where we had it, but we have to have that.

Carol: Yeah, I know RSA said recently about, you know, building that money up, but they were like, you really should in this time of continuing resolutions, their rule of thumb is you should have at least two months of kind of cash available so that you're not scrambling when we're waiting to see what's happening with the CR or whatever. And I know some of the agencies have been closer to the vest, like they're kind of right on the penny with every dollar that's come in is getting spent. So it is good to have a little bit of a reserve.

Cora: I think this is the first time in six years that we've gotten to the, you know, and I imagine there are other states that have really expended almost all their money because we were, what, six months in?

Carol: Yeah.

Cora: Yeah.

Carol: People cried. People cried. When the new GAN came out. I talked to over a dozen directors. People were yelling and had tears of joy. People were just overwhelmed because it has been so stressful. And folks, not sleeping at night. You know, it's it's been tough, very tough. So I definitely think you have great advice for folks. So if you're not looking at your data, you need to. And if you're only looking at it one way, and I know a couple folks were caught off guard that way, they really weren't kind of marrying up what was happening programmatically with the fiscal data. They weren't looking at both sides of the picture. And like you said, you had that just Ginormous increase of applications and eligibilities and all these folks coming in the door and the people have changed. If you aren't looking at all of that through that lens and then looking at what's happening over here financially, you're kind of missing a really critical piece. And it does bring your fiscal side of the house together with the program people, which is so important.

Cora: Right.

Carol: Yeah.

Cora: When you see those increases, then you should mentally note right away you're going to see expenditures increase.

Carol: Yeah. Well, and I like that you said to Jake was able you weren't sure on the one data. You know, did it include the Pre-ETS or not. And Jake, at the cabinet level, RSA knew enough because he's gotten so involved in the program, knows enough to call you and go, hey, Cora, does this data include the Pre-ETS? That's what we want across the country. We want fiscal staff to understand enough about the program that they can have that realization to ask a darn question like, what is this inclusive of? Above, right? Yeah, that is great.

Cora: And care.

Carol: And care. Absolutely. Like that leads to a lot. Oh my gosh. Well, Cora, I just I think the world of you, you've been one of our longer term standing directors, even at the amount of years you've had in now doing this. We've just had such a turnover, and I continue to see that, we had two more directors leaving last week. It just does not stop. So I think one great piece of advice from you, though, is including that leadership team. You can't just have one person in the agency that understands everything going on because that person walks out the door. It is tough to recover because everybody else left behind has no clue what's going on.

Cora: Right.

Carol: Well, thank you, Cora, I really appreciate you having this conversation. And for folks that are listening, definitely remember, you can always reach out to us at the QM. You can also reach out to your RSA state team. They are super helpful as you're facing these really tough decisions you're making. And if you're considering going on an order of selection, I say involve RSA early. Early in the process. Cora knows it's a long road to hoe. There's a lot of things that have to be covered, but it's important because you're making a very important decision, so you don't want to leave any stone unturned for sure.

Cora: No. They've been a great support for us. We have a great team at RSA that we work with.

Carol: I love that. Well, thanks, Cora, I hope you have a great day.

Cora: Appreciate it. Bye bye.

{Music}

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

We’re celebrating a major milestone with the return of our very first guests: Kristen Mackey, Director of Arizona Combined, and Natasha Jerde, Director of Minnesota Blind.

As Vocational Rehabilitation leaders navigate rising demands, shifting funding, and major structural change, Kristen and Natasha join us again to reflect on the post-pandemic landscape—and how it’s testing directors like never before.

From managing centralized services to sustaining staffing under fiscal strain, they share the real-world challenges that keep them up at night—and the strategies they’re using to adapt.

With transparency, persistence, and a mission-first mindset, these leaders dive into:

·       Navigating state and federal priorities

·       Responding to workforce volatility

·       Staying connected to data and purpose

Their insights are a must-listen for anyone leading in today’s VR environment. Tune in and be inspired to lead with clarity and resilience.

Listen Here

Full Transcript:

Natasha: Our program income is significantly dropping. The inflation, the cost of services. We've had four and a half and 5.5% salary increases with no additional state appropriations. So all of these things together keep me up every single night.

Kristen: We want job placements, we want employment, we want independence. If somebody's saying increase your job placements, fine, we can do that. It's how do we then take what they're giving us and make it not be a distraction, and we can mold to the thing that they want, but still do it at the base level.

{Music}

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

Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today is Kristen Mackey, director of Arizona Combined, and Natasha Jurdi, director of Minnesota Blinds. So how are things going in Minnesota, Natasha?

Natasha: I think the Minnesota word for today is going to be interesting. It's interesting. How about I leave it at that and I'll talk a little bit more as we dive into the questions.

Carol: Awesome. That is interesting. I want to know about that. How about you Kristen? How's it going in Arizona?

Kristen: You know what? I think I might steal Natasha's word. There's so much happening. We're trying to keep managing and keep abreast of all of the changes that come out on the news and everywhere, trying to keep centered and just keep doing what we do to get the work done. It's been a lot of fun.

Carol: Well, I couldn't think of two better people to bring on because this is super exciting. This is actually our 50th episode of The Manager Minute, and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate the milestone than by bringing back my two incredible guests from episode number one in May four years ago. It's so crazy. And back then I just laughed. We were diving into the world of post-pandemic VR. What's it gonna look like? How are we going to navigate all these changes? You guys were working on things like electronic signatures and how you equipped your staff, you know, to work remotely and all of that. So a lot has changed since those early days, and I'm excited to catch up with you both to see how far that you've all come. So just reflecting back to my time as a director, I remember many a sleepless night and Natasha can attest to that. I remember coming to a meeting like, I don't sleep at night and I keep a pad of paper by my bed. And it was so funny. I heard a director tell me they did the same thing.

This was a month or so ago. They were like, you know, I keep this pad of paper by my bed because, you know, we were worried about so many things. There was WIOA implementation back then, and we had a less than stellar monitoring report and a financial picture that was super tough and it just wasn't very pretty. And so I kept that notepad because in the middle of the night was always my best thinking I'd wake up, I'm like, oh, I gotta write this down. And so I can remember in the morning. So I know now, four years later, from talking to you all last on the podcast, the pendulum has certainly swung in a new direction, and I'm really eager to see how things have evolved for the both of you. You know, like what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what lessons have you learned? So let's dive in. So, Natasha, will you kick us off and just give our listeners a little snapshot about yourself and the agency that you lead?

Natasha: Sure. So I have worked at State services for the blind since I was a baby intern 2008. I have been a deaf blind counselor, a supervisor, the director of our policy and program administration, and I became the director in August 2019. Our agency, we have about 140 staff across the state. We have a Voc Rehab program, an older blind program, our Randolph-sheppard program. But we also have a communication center where we do braille audio transcription and have a radio reading service. So we have a little bit of everything at State Services for the blind. We've grown a bit since 2019. Yeah, there's a lot of fun.

Carol: It is a lot of fun. Blind agencies are always near and dear to my heart. And since I came from Minnesota blind, Natasha knows that I just love that whole variety and all of the work. It's so fun. Kristen, how about you give our listeners a little snapshot about yourself and the agency that you lead?

Kristen: Sure. Similar to Natasha, I started as a VR counselor in the field transition. That was my first job in first entrance into VR. I moved into policy manager policy and then became the director of the Arizona Combined Unit in 2016. Arizona is combined and we are also under a safety net agency. All of the VR, IL OIB, BEP is in a division. That division is in a department. So our DSA is really rather large and we are kind of shuffled 3 or 4 deep down. So we have enterprise services, shared services, which makes things a little bit more difficult to manage than it was when I started the job, when we didn't have some of those other items. So it's been a learning lesson and trying to figure out how do we get done what we need to get done with all these people involved now.

Carol: Yeah, your structure makes me nuts. I'm just saying, full disclosure, but having gone on site with you and your team several times, I'm like, what? You have to always explain. We had DIRs and we have this other thing and all these different levels. I'm like, oh my Lord, I just don't even know how you do it. So I know there's been a lot of big changes since we spoke last, so I'm going to kick it to you first. Natasha, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in your program since we last spoke?

Natasha: I was actually talking to one of my outreach coordinators, Lisa Larges, and she's like, I think you brought some bad juju because the timing when I started and then everything that happened since I started has just been wild. So since we last met, I've experienced a global pandemic, a civil rights movement that essentially started literally down the street and around the corner from our headquarters. A roller coaster ride of funding at both the federal and state level. We went from having too much to now we don't have enough. We have a new federal administration with very different priorities than we have seen before. We have settled into this new hybrid work, which isn't new anymore. It's kind of our new normal. It's just been, I think you name it, it has changed or it's different or it feels different or it looks different. I think the biggest question right now that we're all faced with is, in light of all of these changes and challenges and opportunities, how do we maintain the integrity of the program, continue to provide high quality services that get people into competitive careers and retain the staff that we have worked so hard to get. While these past few years that's been a focus of a lot of our agencies is how do we recruit? And now with everything happening, is all of that recruitment efforts going to go to waste?

Carol: You know what's kind of funny when you talk about that? Because I look back to when I started at SSB, you know, and so in 2013 I become director. You go at the very end of the year, I was the interim and then made permanent in 14. And you just go, okay, I thought I brought bad juju with me to because WIOA went into play and then we had all this wacky stuff going on. We owed all this money for the case management system. So now, you know, just hearing you, it's like, well, maybe it's just the cycle of the program. Like there is no spot in time where everything is ever just copacetic and all smooth sailing. I think it just continues on.

Kristen: I think that I really feel like that's so good to remember because I think you can in this position, you can take a lot of things like, oh my gosh, am I not doing this right? What skills don't I have? How am I not doing this, that or the other. And it just is a constant. Like it just changes constant. And you have to constantly readjust your focus and your priorities and your strategy. And so it's helpful to remember that our environment is constantly changing at state and federal level. And we just have to be able to manage and navigate and not beat ourselves up over it.

Carol: Oh, that's a super good point. Natasha's going to laugh at this, but I'm actually going to hold up so our listeners won't see it. But I still have my Strengths Finder. So we used to always do strengths Finder at SSB. I still have my top five strengths. And staff used to ask me one of them is adaptability. So my fifth strength was adaptability because people would be like, how can you just roll with the flow? Like you need to just tell like Central Office, we're not going to do that thing that they want for the legislative session. And I'd be like, okay, we're going to pick our battles. That is not the battle we're going to pick right now. We're going to answer the question they need, because the sooner you do that, you get that off your back and then you get back to your business and do your things. And so for me, it's easier because in me is adaptability. I've always been able to kind of go with the flow, whether administration changes or, you know, any of that, where that is more difficult for other people when you want things to be very set and it's hard for you to pivot and make that move. So, Kristen, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in your program in the last four years?

Kristen: Wow. Well, as I indicated, the state was kind of in that move and shift to centralized services, you know, some of those shared service models. So, you know, it started with our training department and, you know, but we got to keep our policy and we got to keep our contracts and procurement. And the next thing you know, like air moves out and then, oh, we're going to move out all of your facilities management. And so slowly, piece by piece, the staff that you had working with. You have been now pulled to a different reporting structure and a different requirements to do their job. And so when, you know, we used to have a staff of like 500 people that were fully dedicated on board, directly connected with me, I had direct relationships with them. I was able to really work with them. And over the last five years, I've seen that direct connection and relationship with people fade out because those folks are no longer in those positions. They've graduated or moved to other things. They didn't stay within the agency. So, you know, within our VR program, IOB program, BEP, those program staff super dedicated and want to really fulfill the mission of the work in serving individuals with disabilities. And then we have all of our shared service team dedicated to their job to don't necessarily have the same focus on the mission and the outcome of serving individuals with disabilities. It's been very difficult to try to figure out how to play nice with them, because they got to do stuff for you, right? I need you to manage my budgets. I need you to manage my contract. But I also, you know, don't quite like the way you're doing it or you're not doing it fast enough or you're not following my vision for how that would work. So it's just been a real challenge to see how to grow and manage the different structures that are in play now.

Carol: I think you hit the nail on the head on that with that centralization, because it's happening across the country. I mean, we see it everywhere. Every director like just struggling as your people move out from under you, whether it's the IT, the HR, the whoever you had. And now they're centralized, which Congress allows. It was written in the rehab Act, like you can structure that way. But they lose that connection to the mission and what you're trying to do. So when you're doing that work sort of in isolation of what's the end game and how you impact, you know, the staff person having their computer so they can do the work with the customer. You don't see that urgency in it. So it's like, yeah, so we get to you in two weeks, you know, really need your computer or whatever. It's just hard. It makes the job so much harder. So I know not only those changes have happened, the financial landscape is shifting drastically for the VR program. How has this impacted your ability to serve individuals? And Kristen, I'll send it your way first.

Kristen: We've been fortunate in that Arizona with the formula grant. You know, we still receive a little increases every year. So the not getting the cost of living this last year was not as impactful as it had been to some other agencies. So I do, you know, knock on wood for that a bit. Now if that continues we're going to have another, you know, constantly evolving story there. We have had to take a look at for our cases. How do we spend more money faster. And that's been again the challenge of working with shared service opportunities is, well, they don't have capacity to put these contracts in place that I need in order to be able to spend the money that we have, right? We have been successful in keeping it in the VR bucket, but now we need to spend it on our consumers and our clients. But I need a contract to do that and don't have the resources or the capacity from that team to be able to put that out the door. So it's super challenging to know that you're sitting on money that you could spend and do a lot of good things with, but there's then that external factor of not having the capacity to put all of that together to get that money spent.

Carol: So you're in actually a pretty lucky position. You know, other people listening to this podcast are going, What? Kristen Mackey, you've got all this, you've got all this money. Because almost all the calls I get on a daily basis with my list of people all going on the order of selection, I keep a little sticky note, you know, and everybody calling and just frantic. They are literally like tapped out. There is no money, but yet you're trying to spend your money and you don't have the resources to really help you get some of the plans in place.

Kristen: It is challenging, but I feel fortunate that I'm challenged on that end of the spectrum versus the end, where there's not enough money or capacity or staff resources. One of the other pieces, too, is, you know, in this current landscape, budget wise, can't bring on as many people as we would like to, you know. Can't do all of the support services that we or support staff that we would like to. So downsizing your footprint, right? All of that, those are our major expenditures. And we're asked to shrink that. It creates a really kind of a nightmare for projection and and budgets all of that.

Carol: Oh, 100%. How about you, Natasha? How's the finances looking at SSB?

Natasha: It's getting tight. It's getting tight. We were on the other side of that a few years ago. We had more money than we could spend, and we used that as an opportunity to do things that we've always wanted to do or needed to do, and we never had the funding to do it, but we always did things that we could course correct quickly on them or aren't forever. So we didn't make a lot of permanent decisions with that money because the writing was on the wall. We knew that once the pandemic shifted, we were going to see an influx in applications. Inflation was already on the wall that prices were increasing. So we made some, I think, pretty strategic and smart decisions with the money we had and how we spent it. However, it's still tight because we are getting an increase in applications. The cost of services is increasing. We ended our order of selection September 2021. I have no desire to go back there for me. I don't even want to speak it out loud. I know it's an option. I know I may need to use it one day. I can't say never, but I don't think that is the best direction for us because people need our services just as much as before, if not more. And for individuals who are blind or low vision or deaf blind, there really aren't any comparable options available, at least in Minnesota. And we're here for a very specific reason. And so I have always said it's my responsibility to ensure that we can continue doing what we are here for. That may mean that services are going to take a little bit longer to get started.

We are increasing our supervisory oversight. We have a ton of financial reports, which I'll talk about in another question that have helped us get ahead of sudden spikes that we're seeing so we can do those course corrections. This also may mean that we're not backfilling or we're freezing some of those positions for a little bit that aren't essential. I'm using the term we're going to freeze, flick or fill, and every position that's our litmus test will freeze it, meaning we don't need it right now. It's not essential for service delivery. We'll revisit this.

Flick means you know what? This position really isn't serving its purpose anymore. Let's figure out a different way of doing the work or fill. And we've prioritized counselors and VR techs and anyone doing direct service provision. But it's also all of this is going to force us and continues to force us to find new ways of doing things, which I don't think is a bad thing. One of the goals I've put in place this year is that all of the extra noise. You know, that can happen when you're working in a state government agency. Things that pretty much distract you from what you're supposed to be doing. My goal is we don't do those things if it doesn't stem back to our mission and actually help people get jobs or live independently, we're not going to do it. And I told that to the commissioner's office. You can ask me all day long to do all of this extra stuff, but it's not serving a purpose for us. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it. And they've been okay with it so far.

Carol: That's awesome. Until you get a legislative request that they need you to answer in ten minutes and analyze.

Natasha: Yeah, I can't say no to those. Yeah, all these extra work groups and task forces and let's do this and that. We got other things we gotta do.

Carol: So what's the biggest thing, Natasha, that's keeping you up at night right now? Because I know there's always something, something is niggling somewhere. What would you say is the biggest thing keeping you up at night?

Natasha: Well, I have a few, but the biggest one is that. So we're not a combined agency. We have a separate general agency and that separate general agency is an incredibly tight budgetary situation. I would go so far as to say they're in a budgetary crisis, and because match maintenance of effort and carry forward determinations are at the state level, not agency, it is very possible that their constraints will impact our funding. And specifically I am very worried are Carryforward is in jeopardy. And we had a scare where we had a very high chance of losing all of our carryforward this last end of the federal fiscal year. Because of those budgetary constraints, the general agency is doing workforce reductions and doing layoffs, and they have the same type of staff classifications that we do. And we are a union state, which means bumping, which means my staff are in jeopardy. And so I'm up every night between 2 and 3 a.m. thinking of ways that we can help in any way possible. Our program income is significantly dropping. I think I've heard other states experience something similar. The inflation, the cost of services. We've had four and a half and 5.5% salary increases with no additional state appropriations. So all of these things together keep me up every single night trying to figure out how do we sustain.

Carol: Now they're going to keep me up at night, too, because of course, I worry about you all. And of course, I really worry about SSB. So I always hold that near and dear to my heart. But oh man, that is a lot. But I know you instituted some things, though, between you and the general agency, just to make sure you guys were communicating better about those financial reports and such, didn't you? Like, what did you do?

Natasha: We have an amazing relationship. We review our federal reports together. I sat closely with the VA's fiscal team, walking through what I know about the fiscal processes, the federal regulations. That's something that Carol taught me very well. I understand it quite well. So we worked hand in hand. We've been doing that since October.

Carol: That's good. Good stuff. How about you, Kristen? What's keeping you up at night?

Kristen: We had a recent monitoring that monitoring. We get through it, Right? And, you know, you haven't always have an inkling of things that need to be fixed and things that we should address, right? And sometimes those get shuffled because priority is whatever. So we had the monitoring very much highlighted certain areas that we need to address and take care of. And one of those was our fiscal management and continue as managed outside of my direct staff and even two and three layers above me. So it's one of those concerns of like, I wonder what's going to happen next. I never quite know what the fiscal situation is going to be. Emails flying around, you know, I'll get an email at the end of the day and it's I need more information. What is this about? How did you come to this conclusion? Who was involved in making this decision? It's kind of just a plethora of items that, you know, any given night, and mine is usually between 3 and 4. Like, oh, wake up and go like, oh, shoot, that sticky note fell off the roster somewhere. I need to go and send that email or this project. We started it, but now it's like kind of hanging, languishing. I need to poke somebody about getting that back on the roll again. I don't know that it's one specific thing, but it's just kind of just the size of the job is not a 40 hour a week job. It is a all encompassing. I dream about work. I it wakes me up at night, you know.

Carol: Well, my newest trick with not having my notepad beside my bed, but I actually been waking up more just because I've had so many more phone calls. Things have been really crazy lately with our fiscal team and people just reaching out. And so maybe end of the day or, you know, people's time change, you could get a call from Guam. You know, it's a way different time. So people are calling all the time. So now at night when I wake up, I text myself, you know, a note like, just so I remember, like remember to get back to so and so tomorrow. So now I just am picking up my phone. I don't have the pad there anymore, but I had two messages from last night for today that I didn't want to forget.

Kristen: I sent texts because I don't put my work phone by my side, but I have my personal. So my work cell phone is embedded in my personal and I just send text to myself.

Carol: Yeah, my work and my personal are all together, so it makes it a little challenging.

So I know we're going through an administration change on the federal level right now. And a lot of state administration, you know, that changes every four years to with governors, sometimes you keep a governor twice in a row, but a lot of times not. And it will bring these shifts in priorities and just all of this change. How do you guys navigate and adapt to those changes, whether it's on the state level or federal level, when you're approaching your work? And I'm going to kick that to you, Natasha, first.

Natasha: I think the biggest thing, at least for us, has been a lot of communication and transparency, not only with our staff, but our customers, our community partners and stakeholders in the face of unknowns. People look to steadiness and information even if you don't have a lot to share. The absence of information often speaks very loudly, and people will fill in the blanks, sometimes not in a way you want them to. So we are communicating frequently, even if we don't have information. People look to me, am I panicked or am I calm? And know if I am panicked, it will not be good. People feed off of that and so I am always calm. I am always just. I can't guarantee or promise anything, but I can say we're in this together and I remind everyone why we're here. We have a mission. As Carol knows, the mission is on the wall. We look at it frequently and nothing has changed. No matter what happens federally or at the state level, that mission has not changed. We have proved that during a global pandemic. VR agencies are adaptable, creative for us in Minnesota, SSB was one of the first agencies, if not the first, allowed to go back into people's homes and provide services. That's because we know how to do things quickly and strategically to respond to whatever comes our way. We don't wait for people to tell us what to do or how to do it. We take charge and we lead the way. And I feel that is how VR is across the country. We tend to be leaders in faces of crisis and urgency. We tend to step up when others don't.

Carol: Yeah, good advice. That's all good advice. Kristen, how about you? Because you've had major shifts. I mean, you've already alluded to this, this whole like take away your people. And that's been all shifts in the structure within the state government and such. You know we've got the federal different priorities. So how do you navigate and adapt to those changes in your work and for yourself, even, like how are you taking care of yourself through all this.

Kristen: Being able to adapt the work that we do? Natasha says that we have a mission. We have a very clear outcome that we have whatever side, whoever's telling you what they want to do or how they want to do it. You need to be able to mold what that strategy looks like so you can speak to it. And I always talk about it. It's a spin. I don't like the terminology of spinning, you know, for the sake of trying to hoodwink anybody or not be transparent. But at the end of the day, we want job placements, we want employment, we want independence. So if somebody's saying increase your job placements, fine, that we can do that. It's how do we then take what they're giving us and make it not be a distraction and we can mold, you know, whatever we're measuring to the thing that they want, but still do what we are doing at the base level. And so I do feel like that's really part of our job as leaders is to and Natasha spoke to this earlier is take that noise and then see how we can like get it to stop with us and push it back in a way that still supports the work we're doing, whatever comes to us in terms of work group where you need to measure this, or we want some kind of change in X, Y, or Z. Okay. I can give you this back that will meet your needs. And it doesn't change or distract from what I'm doing in our department or in our programs. I think it's just being flexible in your thinking, being able to not have to have a certain way of approaching things, because you got to understand what that landscape is. You got to speak the words that they're speaking in order to get them to listen to you and kind of play with you so that we can all get to the same end goal.

Carol: One thing I've seen from you, Kristen, just working with you these past years in my TA capacity is I'm like, I love your persistence because you've had to navigate this really tough, internal, weird structure. It just is weird. And you are super persistent in messaging. Okay. Like you send a message to this person, oh, I'm not the person. Okay, then who is the person? Okay, I'm going to go to this person and you will not let it go till you find till the end the little trail of crumbs you get to and you're like, all right, I'm finally getting to the person because I have to get this thing answered. Some people just give up. They're like, oh, I don't know. And then staff ask and you're like, well, I don't know. We don't know who's doing what. Oh not you, you. You don't let that happen.

Kristen: That is one piece of advice I give to people when they come on. This is a state government, federal government, there are all sorts of red tape, barriers, hoops. Everything will get in your way if you let it. You're going to have to be persistent. Don't get jaded with it. Don't give up. Just know that you're going to have to be persistent with getting to the thing that you want to get done.

Carol: So switching a little bit. There's a lot of different structures in hiring VR agency leaders. I mean, you can be a political appointee. You can be more of a career professional where maybe you have some protections, maybe it's not a full blown union, but you got something. And we've had 14 new directors in the last less than ten months. Again, 14 new directors in VR. You know, people don't always realize like, how does that and each of you represents a different bucket here. How does that distinction, whether you're a political appointee or you have a little more protection influence your agency. Kind of how you approach the operations and your decision making. And I'll ask you first, Natasha.

Natasha: I am a career professional. I'm the highest level you can go before you start hitting the politically appointed positions. So that means I get the privilege of bringing some stability to the agency. Granted, that doesn't mean I can't get fired or laid off, but I am not politically appointed. So when the administration changes, I don't change with it. So that means staff can expect some consistency, and they don't have to wonder who's going to be coming in now to shake things up with their own ideas and views. They know what my priorities and goals are. They know how I work and they know what to expect. And so I have the luxury of time to create a culture that will sustain anything that comes our way. I have the time to develop that succession plan, offer professional development and mentorship opportunities. But when I was thinking of this, I can see the value of Having fresh new faces, coming in with different perspectives and experiences, and that they may have a better idea for how we do things. You know, we talk about people who have been in the position for 30, 40 years. Is there some value to having that new life coming into an agency? So I recognize that being a career professional could also be a limitation of mine, which means that I really need to surround myself with people who think differently from me, and I can't get stagnant.

Carol: Yeah, that's a really good point. Although there are very few 30 year or 40 year career leaders in the VR program anymore, I think we got Diane Delmas out in Vermont and Greg Trapp, those are the two I always think of. Otherwise, boy, people have been coming and going pretty fast, but that is good advice because you can get a little stuck.

Now, Kristen, you're on the other end of the spectrum because you are a political appointee.

Kristen: I am not a political appointee, but I am an at will employee.

Carol: Oh, you're an at will though.

Kristen: Yeah,.

Carol: So it's very similar. So you're an at will person, does that impact you at all, like in decision making or as you go about doing your job?

Kristen: Well, certainly. You think, you know, is this decision going to make me the scapegoat for something that goes south, right? So, you know, it does impact my thinking. I don't let it impact whether it's right or wrong. To do that is just my base. You know, you just have to have that gut kind of commitment to. This is what I said. It's the truth. I don't have any qualms about how I do the work or the transparency that I have in the work that I do. So keeping it all above board, hope that that serves you in the end. Natasha, you had a very positive outlook on new people coming in. In my tenure, I've experienced a lot of changes in different people at different levels coming in and not having any idea about the rehabilitation programs that we run. And so it is a kind of a continuing education of individuals who are coming and going to have them see the value of the programs and the way that they need to operate.

Carol: Yeah, I appreciate that. So let's look a little bit at kind of leveraging both of you like this leveraging your data. And we're kind of skipping around a little bit here. But how do you guys like to leverage data to inform your financial and programmatic decisions? Now remember we've got a lot of new directors. We have listeners out there that are they don't know we I get this question all the time. You know, we talk about data informed decision making. People are like, yeah, we talk about it, but what does that mean? And how do you really do it in practicality? So Kristen, what would you say do you have like an example or how do you like to best leverage data when you're looking at making decisions, whether programmatically or financially?

Kristen: Just because I have a little bit more programmatic data that I have access to and ability to manipulate, we really look at that in terms of, you know, when we're setting our annual strategic goals, what is our five year goal? Take a look at what have the last three years look like. You know what the percentage of increase or decrease is? How are we adjusting those things? Use the data to understand where are the gaps, what's not working, and something we expected the needle to move and it didn't. What's not working in that process. And so you know, what lever do we pull to say this is going to be quote unquote a countermeasure for that thing, and then measure that data over the next three, six months. And if there's a change, then we can kind of understand then did that work or didn't it work? I think far too often in our workforce we say, well, this is a problem, but we don't really have any data around it. Should we gather a ton of data for the program to being able to use that data to help inform what decisions or what changes to processes should we be making and how should we make those. And then we can track it to see did it make a difference or what difference did it make? And is it something we should replicate? Is it something we should pull back. So I really like to use our data from our program, you know, participant program data to inform our strategy on what we're going to be doing in the next 1 to 5 years.

Carol: I know before you have presented at CSAVR and showed like you had some really cool ways you were able to look at data and you did a lot of it by your region so you could start narrowing in, because you can have this tendency to go, oh, you look at the data broadly and then you're like, oh, we must have this problem everywhere. Well, you realized you had regions, you know, in your state you're like, well, why am I like spanking everybody? What we write, we need to focus over here.

Kristen: Yeah, we have those metrics. And it's a metric per counselor, per rehab tech, per purchasing specialist. That unit of counselors rolls up to the supervisor. The supervisor rolls up to the program manager. So I can drill down from a state level perspective to a region perspective. Is it a supervisor office problem? Is it a person problem? And that has really helped us understand. Also, where do we need to direct the energies and efforts in terms of making changes.

Carol: Yeah, I really like that. That was really good stuff. How about you, Natasha? What are you doing with leveraging data? Because I know that's in your wheelhouse, too.

Natasha: We actually hired within, like, the last year or so, a data analyst who is skilled in data visualization and being able to take a bunch of raw numbers and tell a story. And we have been working with her to develop not only the programmatic data, which we now have a ton of that we can look at, but also our fiscal forecasting and what's happening on a budgetary level. It is because of those reports which I am getting weekly, monthly and quarterly reports, depending on the nature that we were able to suddenly see this huge, unexpected spike in case services authorizations. Within just a month of it happening, we were able to drill in. What exactly is going on? What are the bucket items that are the red flags we were able to look at by staff member by region, and we found that our interpreters have gone up over 300%, which then led us down to, okay, what's going on with that? What's the story behind the data? We also are every week meeting as a fiscal team. So the three fiscal staff that I have and myself, we meet every single week. I am intimately involved in our federal reporting. I look at every single report that they put together before we submit our 17. We walk through it. I know where we're at with match. I know where we're at with maintenance of effort. I know exactly where our 15% set aside is, and I can tell you that every single month how we're doing and what issues we're going to be facing. And that's because we have the data. If a director never looks at data and doesn't know what's happening in their programs, they're not going to be able to spot issues. You have to know whether you're doing good or you're not doing good. You need to be able to catch those things.

Carol: Yeah. And unfortunately, you have many colleagues across the country. And I will come in and they're being told by like the DSA fiscal staff, hey, don't worry about it. We got it. And so there have been directors of programs of 150 plus million dollars, have never seen a budget report. Zero idea. So literally anything they want to do. Hey, can we send a staff to training? They're asking this group of fiscal people sitting over here because they don't even know what's in the budget. It is the most insane thing I've ever seen. So you really hit the nail on the head. Like, you have to have access and it is required in the law, in the act, in setting up the agency org structure, you have the sole responsibility over the allocation and expenditure of your funds. And how can you have that sole responsibility and not have any data that goes with it? So I preach.

Natasha: I will say, data is if you have a legislative ask and you are requesting more funding, the stories are important, but they also want to see the data behind it.

Carol: 100%. And it can't be data that's changing by the day. Oops, we forgot this because I've seen people get burned on that as well. And then the legislators are going, okay, well, this data now is suspect, and I think they need a legislative audit report and review because what are they doing over there?

Kristen: From a data reporting perspective, like having historical data to the same reports they pull, they cannot keep changing the reports that you're changing the methodology of that. That was a lesson learned for us is we had to understand what data we were pulling, how were we calculating the numbers we were calculating. And now we have data since 2018, and we can tell when we've made any changes. And so then we can see what are our trends. What does that look like. How can we use that to help us predict in the future. So that was a lesson learned for me. We came in and it wasn't much in terms of data. We built some reports and then it was like, oh, but now we need to kind of be able to track, oh, well, this thing happened. And that's why maybe that spiked or dipped or we did this thing and here's the change we saw. So we were able to speak to that year over year as well.

Carol: Well super cool. So what advice would you guys have for other leaders out there? All the lessons you all have learned. We can try to read the tea leaves, like where is VR heading in the next few years? But what do you all think? Like what do you think where's VR going? And what advice would you have for other leaders? And Kristen, I'll go to you.

Kristen: I just think remain committed to the mission and the purpose of the programs that we have. we're here to serve individuals with disabilities. We'd keep that at the forefront. And, you know, I heard Natasha say to you, the mission is on the wall, right? We all have our missions. We all have our visions. Just don't let that get buried in all of the craziness that is happening and continue to be persistent. Carol mentioned the persistence. I think that is key. You don't let it drag you down. Don't let it burn you out. Just be persistent and know that all of the work that you're doing is for a good reason, good outcomes.

Carol: Good stuff. Natasha, I'm going to give you the last word.

Natasha: Don't get comfortable with how things are going right now. Speaking to what Kristen said earlier? Things will change, and probably for reasons completely outside of your control. And also remember that easy decisions aren't always the best decisions, and the best decisions aren't always the popular ones.

Carol: Well said. Very true. Well, I appreciate you both. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to see what you all have done. You're two of my favorite directors. Don't tell the, don't tell the other directors that are listening.

Natasha: Yeah, cut that out, Jeff. Don't have that in there.

Carol: Thanks for joining me today. Sure appreciate it.

Kristen: Thank you.

Natasha: Bye.

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Go behind the curtain at the National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials (NCRTM) with Heather Servais, Project Manager. Join us as we delve into the vast resources available to vocational rehabilitation counselors, supervisors, and VR professionals. From employment navigation to disability-specific resources and cutting-edge training, Heather reveals how the revamped NCRTM website is a treasure trove of information and tools to enhance your practices and improve services. Tune in to explore these new features and see how the NCRTM can support you in your vital work. Don't miss this opportunity to unlock the full potential of this dynamic platform!

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Heather: This is made by people that have done the work, like it's just so relevant and timely to what's happening in the field.

We have resources on a Microsoft Word and PDF, PowerPoints. There's a whole bunch of information on the NCRTM page, which is a great starting point for when you're thinking about how can I make this information accessible for everyone?

If you have a customer who's thinking about work, or you want to have some reputable job-seeking tools, it's a great tool for those counselors to be able to give to their customers.

If you want help locating some resources, just email us NCRTM at New Editions dot Net.

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

Carol: Welcome to the manager minute, Heather Servais project manager with the National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials, or the NCRTM, will join me in the studio today. So, Heather, how are things going?

Heather: It's so good to be here. I'm great. I'm so excited to be on Manager Minute.

Carol: I love it, I love it. We've been doing lots of fun stuff lately, so it's kind of fun to do this collaboration. I want to give our listeners a little bit of a background. So the NCRTM is a central clearinghouse for vocational rehabilitation information for individuals with disabilities, and it offers VR and education communities an opportunity to contribute new knowledge to their specific fields and gain visibility for their work. Now, I remember Heather, when I was still with Minnesota Blind, and I stumbled across this website and it was full of information, I was like, what is this? I had no idea it existed. And back then we had this internal like a little intranet. And I remember linking up staff to different materials because back in the day, and I know you went through a big refresh of the website back in the day, it was a little complicated to get through. I was linking folks to some really specific things that existed out there, and I thought that was so cool. Now, I know since you've been on, you've been working really hard on promoting the website and everything that NCRTM does, and we wanted to just take our listeners behind the curtain at the NCRTM. I also wanted our listeners to know, too, that Heather and I have been collaborating for the past few years on a lot of different items, and she has been fabulous in promoting our podcasts and all our materials for the VRTAC for Quality Management. So with that, let's dig in. So, Heather, would you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your journey into VR? You didn't just like land at the NCRTM out of nowhere. You came through kind of a fun journey.

Heather: Yeah. I'd love to tell you a little bit about my journey in VR. Well, if you would have asked me when I was growing up if I would be a VR counselor or know what the field of rehabilitation counseling was, I would have told you no. I actually landed in this field by happy accident when I went to college. I was majoring in history and was considering being a teacher, or maybe pre-law, and I was looking for ways to get involved on campus. And I came across a club called Best Buddies that pairs college students into 1 to 1 friendships with individuals with disabilities. And I just loved being a part of the club. I loved my buddy that I was able to be paired with. And then while I was volunteering, I got asked by one of my co volunteers to consider working with this new company in town that worked with individuals with disabilities on independent living skills and non-residential support services. So I started doing that when I was in college, absolutely fell in love with it. And then when I graduated, I moved on to work for a community rehabilitation provider, where I started as a job coach, moved up to an employment specialist. I dabbled in vocational evaluation and then eventually became the employment services manager. And while I was there and working in the field, I absolutely just fell in love and I knew that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So I actually went back to school for my master's while I was working full time.

I was really lucky to be the recipient of an RSA scholarship. That helped me be able to go back to school to get my master's in rehabilitation counseling, and I was able to do that, which I really felt like helped my career and was really able to be beneficial to me. When I made the jump from community rehabilitation provider to the state VR side, it was like there was all these names and terms and theories behind the work that I was actually doing. So it really kind of tied it all together in a nice little bow. I worked for that community rehabilitation provider for about seven years, and then I decided to make the jump to state VR to be a counselor. And for a long time I had a general caseload. I also worked in a rural county, and then towards the end of my time in the field, I worked with youth. And then I made the jump over to VR headquarters, where I took a supervisory job as the supervisor of at the time was a new unit called the Field and Provider Relations Unit, and this unit did training and technical assistance with both VR staff and with the community rehabilitation providers that were providing those employment services. So I really enjoyed it because it got to pull together the field experience that I had and then also the provider experience. And then my last stop at Florida VR was as the assistant chief of Field Services, where I oversaw a lot of the programming.

So I oversaw learning and development, Ticket to Work, the employment programs team and the deaf hard of hearing deaf blind team and business relations team. I worked there and I loved building programs and loved being part of state VR. Towards 2020, I started to study for my Project Management Professional, or PMP certification. We were managing a lot of projects and building a lot of programs, and I felt like the PMP kind of helped me have a better understanding of some different methodologies to be able to do that. So it really helped pull the programmatic experience with the project management experience. And that's what really landed me here at NTM. So in my role, I get to work with a lot of technical assistance centers and training centers, and I'm able to have both the VR program knowledge and then also the project management knowledge to be able to understand the terms of the project and the contracts and the business aspect of this too. So it's been a long journey, but I'm so happy to be here because this role I get to work with so many different stakeholders. I love working with the VR agencies, the counselors, the rehabilitation counseling students, the parents, the families. I get to see it all, and not just from a local perspective. I'm getting to work with state and nationwide programs, and I think that's just a really big joy.

Carol: And it's so cool. What a great fit for you. This explains a lot. You crack me up, though, because I was considering being in pre-law like back in my undergrad as well. I feel like we have kind of similar journeys. I was a job coach. I'm like, we both come from those humble beginnings, kind of fall into VR, and we find a lot of our guests on the show have been from different backgrounds and sort of stumbled into VR different ways. So that is so cool to know about you. Thanks for sharing that. Now, I know sometimes people are maybe confused a little bit about the NCRTM can you ground us in like how all this works, how you're connected with RSA? Like who do you actually work for? Because people are like, is this an RSA thing? What is this thing? So give us the skinny.

Heather: Yeah, sure. So the NCRTM has actually been around for more than 40 years. When I found that out, you know, I was a little history nerd. So I did some digging and I was shocked. I was like 40 years. I mean, I think I've, you know, been around in the field for a long time and I didn't even know about the NCRTM until I was working at headquarters as a manager. So I think about the first basically half of my career, I didn't even know about it. And that's one of the things about this job is like, I want people to know. And so when NCRTM originated, it was a paper based repository that was basically where RSA grantees would submit their products at the end, and they would be stored and used and to what it is today, which is this really dynamic and engaging platform that has a website and a YouTube and social media and lots of connections. And so it's kind of continuing to grow and evolve. And the driver of NCRTM, where it actually originates is section 15 of the Rehabilitation Act. We are in there. And what section 15 says is that it creates a clearinghouse, and it says that we have to deliver three things. One is information about the location, provision and availability of services and programs for individuals with disabilities.

We also need to have information and research related to recent medical and scientific developments bearing on disabilities. And we have to have information about the current numbers of individuals with disabilities and their needs. And so when we look at NCRTM, that's our driver. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to share that information, the NCRTM itself and how it relates to RSA. Right now, NCRTM is funded by a contract through RSA and is operated by New Editions Consulting. So technically I work for New Editions Consulting, which is a fantastic company to work for. We just won one of the top places to work for the Washington Post, so they take wonderful care of us. It's been one of my favorite teams I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of. It's just been a really fun place to work. So we work very, very closely with RSA. We have a coordination team, so there are a big group of folks from RSA and the different units there that add and contribute to the content and the planning and the strategic direction for NCRTM. And then we also work really, really closely with the Technical Assistance Centers with other RSA grantees and federal partners to build out the content to deliver to our users through the NCRTM website and our platforms.

Carol: I had no clue that that had been around for 40 years. Holy cow. I had no idea. That is amazing. And I can imagine, you know, when you think about the paper based, you know, products in the day.

Heather: How do you get that out into the hands of the field? So we live in a great time,  you know, we have this technology and we can use it because the products that are coming out of the technical assistance centers and some other RSA grantees, you know, this is made by people that have done the work. Like that's one of the things that I love so much about the clearinghouse is it's just so relevant and timely to what's happening in the field.

Carol: Yeah, I love it. That advent of social media, too, has helped so much with us all being able to kind of cross plug and promote each other's tools and activities and things that are going on that has been so great. Now, I know since you arrived there, I feel like, no, I'm not disparaging anybody from the past, but I feel like you've brought this just fresh, different look at things and you've been really doing a lot of cool stuff. So would you  talk about some of that cool stuff that you've been doing and kind of where are you getting your ideas from? Because it's been really fun to watch.

Heather: Yeah, I came onto the scene with NTM in late 2021, and there was a lot of this stuff that was already in progress, and we launched a new version of the website in 2022. So not only do we have, you know, pretty robust content, NCRTM has mostly been known for the library. When you say NCRTM, people think library, library, library, and that is a big part of what we do. We have more than 3600 items in our library. When you think of a library, it can be anything from podcast episodes, research papers, blogs, toolkits, guides, trainings. There's such a diverse array of materials in that library. So that's one of the things we were most known for. We started with some of those library enhancements, so we had an enhanced filtering. So now our users are able to locate by topic area, disability type, audience type. There's a ton of filters that you can select to really zero in on materials of interest. We also added some recently viewed features. So if you go to the NCRTM and you're poking around looking for some things and you look at it, you can go back and you'll see some of the items that you recently viewed. We now have the ability to share the information from the website so you can email it to yourself. You can share it directly on social media. Also, as part of that big website launch, we updated our training and events page. This is one of those plugs that if you are new to the website, I love directing people to the training and events page because I know time is of the essence and there's so much training and information available, and NCRTM collects training and events and post them from the Technical Assistance Center.

So if there's something happening from those, those are going to be on our site, from federal partners, from grantees. So a grantee could be a university, could be a nonprofit. There's lots of different types of events that are out there on our site. You can sort by live, which means these are like live upcoming events. So you're going to want to log into those or on demand. So that could be either a training module that was made to be an asynchronous learning experience, or it could be a recorded event from one of the previously featured live and upcoming events that we had hosted prior. You can also sort on that training events page by CRC Credit Availability. So for those of you that are counselors or administrators or managers that are looking to get those CRC credits, this is a great way where you can zero in on finding those trainings that are of interest to you, that offer that CRC credit for free. It's a great resource. We also added some new pages to the platform so that we're really the result of user feedback. I think that's one of the things that I'm most proud of with NCRTM team that we do is we are serious about user feedback. So we are collecting feedback from surveys. We run user advisory groups a few times a year. We also are really out in the community talking to VR counselors, talking to rehabilitation counseling students. We're talking to grantees about their needs and what they're doing, really wanting to get the feedback so that we can curate content or we can build content that's meaningful for folks. So in the spirit of section 15, one of the new items that we launched on NCRTM was a programs and services page. And this page focuses on job seeking resources. So for individuals with disabilities. So all processes from when you're considering employment. So maybe you need to do some assessments. Or maybe you're just thinking about going to work all the way through the hiring and retention and career advancement phases of your career. So this is a really great starting point. If you have a customer who's thinking about work or you want to have some reputable job seeking tools right at your fingertips, you can use it there. It's a great tool for those counselors to be able to give to their customers as a starting point. And we do update that page regularly. So if you would like to see like a national level resource on there that you found, that's not, email us. We're here. We want to add things to that page. We are constantly growing the page. We are adding new information to the library and to the website regularly.

Carol: I actually have your site up right now. I love it really did change with that refresh that you guys did in 22 I remember having. Well, I'll say it, I tried to search in the library before and it would bring up like either 50,000 things or no things. When you put in word search or something, it just seems like your capabilities on here are so much more robust than they used to be.

Heather: Yeah, we've definitely added a lot of enhancements to make it a lot more user friendly. We were trying to make it more streamlined. We wanted things to be easier to find, easier to get to material. And then we're also trying to be a little bit plainer in our language. Some of our users felt the language was way too academic, and we wanted this site to be something that's useful for all. So we're trying to do better with using plainer language and getting straight to the point of what the document is or what that material is, so that it's easy for people to digest when they're reading it. We also added a business engagement page. So for those counselors or even those folks who work for VR agencies that are on the business relations or business consulting team, this is a great resource to kind of help you understand the business needs and how to work with employers. When you're thinking about things like job placement and job retention and accommodations and the process for hiring, that's another great tool that you can use and share in your work. But you can use it as a counselor to educate yourself. It's also helpful when you're engaging with businesses so that you're using their business language.

Carol: Excellent

Heather:  One other thing for counselors to consider. I know sometimes when we're VR counselors, I always say it was the hardest job I ever had. There's so much that you have to balance. There's so much to learn, and it always feels like there's things on your plate that you need to do. And sometimes we're so focused on our individual customers, our individual caseload, that we can forget that we're part of something so much bigger. It's not just our caseload or our office or even our state. We're part of a national VR program. Every state has a VR program. There's programs and the territories. There are so many others that are in this field along with you. And I think that's one of the great things about NCTRM is it can kind of help connect the dots so that you get to see the bigger picture. You can find materials that are created by other folks that are doing this work. You're able to see what innovative practices are working on caseloads that may be similar to yours. It may give you strategies that you can better know how to work with your customers. So I think that's one takeaway for NCRTM is just it's a different perspective. You can find things from your peers to help improve your work, and it just connects you better to the VR community around the country.

Carol: Do you guys agree with that page at all with like CSAVR and the NET?

Heather: We did. We were very happy that CSAVR and Kathy West Evans was helpful with us when formulating that content and reviewing that content. So yes, absolutely. We partnered with them to help put that together.

Carol: Excellent.

Heather: We also have I know you mentioned the Disability Innovation Fund and I'm a Manager Minute podcast listener. So I know, I know you've done some episodes with some DIF grantees, and we have a whole page that's dedicated to the Disability Innovation Fund grants. And so this is one of those pages that we're working on. It's definitely still a work in progress. So if you're interested in learning more about those Disability Innovation fund programs, we have each iteration of the grants there so that you can see kind of a little bit about what the purpose is and what those grants are doing. And then as those grantees are submitting products, we're going to be linking those products in the library right to that page. So you can kind of start to see some of the outcomes from those grant programs. So that's a really exciting page that we added. We're looking forward to being able to continue to update that pretty regularly, as we're starting to get some of those products in from those grantees.

Carol: I love that. Those Disability Innovation fund, let me tell you, since we started doing podcasts, you know, featuring the different years and the States and what they're doing, I had no clue, you know, you'd hear about them. But unless you're really, like, talking to the people and finding out what's going on, man, there's some awesome stuff happening across the country that is going to be so helpful to the rest of the VR. People put out their products. It's good to know you're going to have a page dedicated to all of that, because I just envision these really amazing things coming from that, that are going to be so useful to VR as a whole for years to come.

Heather: Absolutely. And there really is a lot of innovation coming out of the agencies that have these grants. And that's exactly what we want. We want others to be able to access those materials so they can think about how that could work in their state, and how that could work in their program, and be able to connect to resources that can help them on their journey to implementing and improving and streamlining their services.

Carol: For sure. 100%.

Heather: And then lastly, I have to plug here for the Accessibility Resources page. So accessibility is such a huge part of what we do. And coming from the field of VR and coming from a provider background, I knew about accessibility in theory, but it really wasn't until I got to working at the clearinghouse when I realized all I didn't know about accessibility. And this is definitely an area where I've had a lot of personal growth and a lot of personal learning to do since I came on board here. But the NCRTM has a page for accessibility resources. So if you are with a VR program or you're a VR counselor, or if you're an RSA grantee and you're looking to make your products accessible. So if you're thinking about having a PowerPoint, how can you make that accessible so that the information is accessible to all users? We have resources on a Microsoft word and PDF and PowerPoints. We have guides, we have video tutorials. There's a whole bunch of information on the NCRTM page, which is a great starting point for when you're thinking about how can I make this information accessible for everyone? And so we encourage folks to check that out too, because it's a really great starting point.

Carol: Yeah, I think that's been an area that maybe VR has not done as well with. You would think we'd know better and do better and be better with that. But I've been amazed over time, different places I've gone or, you know, folks I've talked to and people still struggling with accessibility. So your having those resources out there is super timely and really important.

Heather: Yeah, absolutely. And it really is one of those you don't know what you don't know until you kind of get into the thick of it. And I'm thankful now that I know better and I'm starting to do better. But it's definitely a journey and there's a lot to learn. And I would encourage folks not to be intimidated because you can start small and just learn a little at a time. And over time, that makes a really, really big difference in what you can do with your materials.

Carol: Absolutely. Now, I know we have a lot of counselors that listen in, and you and I had talked about this a little bit. What advice would you have for counselors who may be exploring your website for the first time? I know you and I talked about you felt like you'd be a whole different counselor had you known about the cool materials that are out there for them.

Heather: Yeah, man, I do. I feel like I would have been totally a much better counselor than what I was. When I think about going back to being a VR counselor, it can be overwhelming. I always say the hardest job I ever had was a VR counselor. Just because there's so much to learn. You have a lot of cases. I had to travel a lot for mine because I was in a rural county. You have a lot on your plate and it can be kind of overwhelming and you kind of start spinning your wheels sometimes because you're like, well, I don't even know if I have time to find out this information to help me do better. And I think, you know, what I would tell counselors is NCRTM is here and you can plug in. And so whether you're a new counselor and you're coming into VR kind of cold, maybe your background is in something different. You know, maybe you came with a social work background or a business background, and you may be kind of struggling to learn the VR part of counseling. Or if you're a seasoned counselor, you know, you may feel like you've been doing this a long time and you know a lot. But if you're not learning, you're not growing, and there's really always something more you can learn. And so we have resources for you in every stage of your career. And even as you continue to grow and transition, we have a lot of resources for those who move into management or supervision and program administration. So it's a really great resource to be able to support you when you are out there in the field looking to do, I think about like motivational interviewing and how much I really wanted to do that and use that technique. And I went through some trainings and it was like, okay, But the trainings, I always felt like they were just kind of never really got to the nuts and bolts like it was overviews. And one of my favorite resources in the NCRTM was actually this motivational training series that was created by Oregon VR and it's, you know, several years old now, but it's nuts and bolts. It's how to do motivational interviewing in a VR setting. Like it's amazing. And I wish I would have had that when I was a counselor. And there's also all kinds of different toolkits and guides. There's so much available. There's also another place on the NCRTM team where you can kind of as a starting point. We produce these things, which is a fancy word. We call it a curated list, but basically we have more than 20 curated lists on various topics, and most of the topics that we have selected these curated lists on were user driven.

These were given to us. Ideas came from the field, came from our users. And these curated lists usually have, you know, 10 to 25 different resources on them about various topics. So for instance, we did one on VR 101. So for those folks, it can be counselors, it could be parents. All of the curated lists are segmented by audience. So if you're a counselor and you're looking for resources for yourself, you can check out these lists and it'll say for VR professionals. Or if you're looking for resources that you can share with your customers, you'll see for individuals with disabilities and families for general audiences, some of them are for specific disability types, like we have a list on autism and employment. We have a list on mental health. We have curated lists on work incentives, financial incentives, labor market information. So there's more than 20 of them out there. We add new lists pretty regularly. Right now we're in the process of updating some existing lists. So these lists change and they grow. But that's a really great starting point. If you're not really sure where to go or what to look at, I'd also highly recommend plugging into those training and events pages.

So I know with the variety of information and training topics that are available, sometimes you really don't want to sit down and do a training, but you can look and a lot of the trainings are available on demand, so you can do it at a time that's convenient for you. As nerdy as it sounds, I like to listen to trainings in the background sometimes, so most of the trainings that are on the site I've listened to, I've taken myself and there's some really good stuff out there. So I'd encourage you to not be intimidated. But I'd also like to offer is just support. There's a team behind the team behind this curtain that's there to help you. So if you want to get acquainted with the site or you want help locating some resources, just email us. Our email address is NRTM@NewEditions.net, and one of our team members will be able to help you right away. So don't feel like you're in this alone. Like we can help you navigate and help you learn how to explore and show you what's available on the site and how it can benefit your work.

Carol: All excellent advice that you've given that is super cool. I know that curated list. When I found that, I'm like, oh my gosh, that literally is what I felt like I did back in the day when I was at Minnesota, was create a curated list from your website. It was like linking counselors to these different really awesome materials on particular topics. So it's so awesome that you guys have done that. I feel like this is advanced so much and I know your team can do other cool stuff for VR agencies. So I heard you say, you know, obviously people can email you and you can do some support, but what are kind of trainings you could do for a VR agency on supporting using the website and such?

Heather: Yeah, absolutely. So we are happy to do in-service trainings and system demonstrations for VR agencies. In the past we've had agencies where we've done executive leadership, where we've shown the executive leadership how to use the site. Not only do we show you how to use it, we talk to you about it. We tell you about it, and then we show you it. So you get to see a live system demo and then, you know, we can take requests. So if it is of interest or particular parts of the website where you want to learn a little bit more information, we can focus on those areas. We've also done it with teams or units. So we can do any type of training like a 1 to 1 setting or like small group setting for your teams. If you're interested in learning more about NCRTM and how you can use it in your work, we also help agencies with locating materials. Well, not just VR agencies. We help individuals so we get emails all the time about people. I just had one last week from a parent who has a child that's transitioning into the workforce, and they're really interested in learning more information about customized employment. And so the parent reached out to us because they really weren't sure where to go. And we were able to pull together a list, kind of walk the parent through what was on the list and was able to share that with them.

So if you've got a topic that you're interested in, or maybe you're looking to compile a curriculum of trainings that are available to support you, there's a ton of great resources out there for the training. So those on demand training modules are very common. So if you're an agency and you're looking to build out a training curriculum without like basically rebuilding and restarting and rebuilding the wheel, let's take a look and see what's already out there. You know, this stuff that's coming out of the Technical Assistance Centers and RSA grantees. It's really relevant to what's happening and what's needed in the field right now. And we really want folks to be able to connect to that so we can help you locate those. I had an agency that was asking about financial literacy training, and I was able to send them, Carol, to the financial literacy training from QM, you know, so it was really great. So we have these kind of resources and these requests coming in all the time, and we welcome that. We want to be able to help you navigate resources that's out there. It's up to us to know where to point you and we're happy to do that. And then another thing that we do.

So for those agencies that want to submit products to NCRTM, or maybe they're a DIF grantee or another RSA program grantee, we do accessibility technical assistance. So the team behind the team is we have a 508 team here at New Additions, and they help us a lot with accessibility work and making sure that the products that go onto the NCRTM are accessible so we can help provide technical assistance. We do accessibility reviews on materials, especially if they're the result of an RSA grant. And then we can offer if it's like remediations or complex accessibility work, we can provide technical assistance on that. So for instance, we had an RSA grantee who was really interested in doing some new video work, but they really weren't sure how to do audio descriptions. And so our 508 team was able to provide that technical assistance, to be able to kind of show them and walk them through how to do audio descriptions in work. We often do a lot of document remediation, so we're able to kind of review your PDF and word documents. If you're submitting it to the NCRTM, to let you know if it's accessible or not, and then what kind of steps need to be taken to make sure that it's accessible. So that's another service that we offer.

Carol: I had no clue about that. That is fabulous. I hope people take you up on that for sure. Oh my gosh. You've talked about the website and the materials posted there. So I know that the RSA grantees can put information out there. Are there other people that can put information on your website?

Heather: Yeah, technically anybody can submit materials to the NCRTM. It's a public website. So anybody can what we recommend if you're interested in submitting, we have an online library submission form. So when you go to the NCRTM website home page, if you navigate to the library using that top navigation bar on the far left hand side, it says library. When you go into the library, then you will come across a link on the right hand side of the page. And what that link says is submit materials to the NCRTM library. You can go ahead and click on that link. And there's a form that you can fill out. And you'll just have to put some very basic information about the material that you're submitting. So maybe this is something that your agency created, that you're very proud of and would like to be on the NCRTM website. Or maybe it's something from a federal partner that's publicly available, that's not in our library that you think should be. That's another thing you can do is you can submit it to NCRTM. Every material that's submitted is reviewed by our team to make sure that it's accessible, and then also that it's appropriate to be on the NCRTM, and then we can go ahead and publish it and make it available on the website. So anybody can yeah, anybody can submit, which I think is pretty cool. And we really encourage folks. So if you're a VR agency and you have tools and you have success stories or you have trainings you want to share and you want them to get the word out about it, send it our way, we will help you figure out a way to put it on the site and help you amplify that material. Like, we really want these products and these materials that you're working on that are really meaningful for the VR community. We want to get them out there.

Carol: Well, we're definitely better together. You know, everybody's creating all of this great stuff. We don't have to all reinvent the wheel. Like, let's use this so each other can get like all that great stuff. Everybody's producing. I think that's wonderful.

Heather:  Yeah. If you're afraid to use that form, you can always email us like we are small team, but we're very responsive. We take a lot of pride in making sure that we're responding to folks quickly. So if you have questions about submitting materials or you want to walk it through, you can email us at NCRTM@NewEditions.Net, and we'll walk you through that. For those RSA grantees we have a whole guide that's out there, the guide for product submission and websites about submitting products to the NCRTM. But that's more for RSA grantees. If you're an individual or you're a VR agency, definitely email us or use that library submission form and we're going to be happy to help you.

Carol: Very cool. So I know you have a lovely newsletter you guys put out. And then I saw recently kind of a little different format. You were doing like a news blast or something. Sort of groovy. How can folks, because we do have a lot of counselors that listen into and they don't always have access, you know, maybe the directors on your mailing list or something. But how do folks subscribe so they can get it quickly?

Heather: Yeah, we have a lot of ways that you can connect with us. Carol, you mentioned the newsletter. We do put out a monthly newsletter. We are trying some new things. So we are starting to do some news blasts. So if there's some really important announcement or might be an event reminder or something that NCRTM is doing, we're going to start sending some more regular communications to our subscribers. The best way to do that is to sign up for the NCRTM newsletter. And you can do that by using the web page. You use the top navigation bar and click on join the NTM network tab. That's going to take you to our page, where you can start to subscribe so you can subscribe for our newsletter. Like I said, it goes out once a month. We also have another subscription where if you're really interested in keeping up to date on what's new, what's happening with the library materials, you can subscribe for library updates. So once a month, you'll get a list of all of the new items that were added to the NCRTM library. And it really varies month to month. Sometimes we have a lot of folks that submit products, other times it's just our team out there looking and finding what's new and putting it onto the site. So some months you'll see a lot, some months you might not see as much. It just really depends if you're really interested in staying up to date, we encourage you to do that. We also have social media. You can find us on X which is formerly Twitter. Our handle is at RSA_NCRTM. So we encourage you to follow us on Twitter. We do a lot of amplifying new products. We talk about some of the events and trainings that are going on. And then we also have a YouTube. So whenever NCRTM hosts a training because we do host trainings ourselves too. Right now we're doing a series of lunch and learns. Carol, you were a big help with moderating what our first Lunch and Learn event last November with Doctor Herbert. We had a panel discussion about recruitment and retention. We also just did a really wonderful lunch and learn session that we did alive. And then we just released the publication earlier this month on managing counselor workload guilt. So for those of you counselors who are out there maybe struggling, feeling a little guilty because your workload is high, and this really looks at strategies to kind of find balance and prioritize wellbeing. It was a really fantastic event. And so that video is available on our YouTube channel. And then earlier this month we hosted a lunch and learn where we partnered with NRIC, the National Rehabilitation Information Centre, and really kind of zeroed in on research. And how can you navigate with NRIC and use research in your work. And so the video of that will be coming out very soon too. So if you're interested in looking at some of the trainings that NCRTM has done, definitely check out our YouTube channel.

Carol: Yeah, folks, definitely need to sign up because then you get everything. I love it because I must be signed up like three different ways. I get it, you know, from RSA, Joe Doney. And then I get from you guys, I get it all the time. So I make sure I have all the current information and the lunch and learns are fabulous. They're really fast paced. It's nice. There's just great guests that have been on there. I think they're really a good product that you've developed.

Heather: Yeah, so definitely the newsletter. I think you hit it. That's the best way. So if you're looking to connect, we have a lot of ways. But the newsletter you're going to see a lot of the new stuff that's coming out. You're going to be able to see any of the lunch and learns that we're hosting. You're going to get to see NCRTM materials. You'll also get to see all of our new library materials. We usually feature 3 to 4 new library materials on that newsletter, too, so you don't sign up for library updates. You can still see that in the newsletter. So yeah, the newsletter is really a great source to get the most information about what's happening at NCRTM.

Carol: Very cool. So is there any way our listeners can help you? I don't know if you had any particular ask for them. Or are there ways that our listeners can help you guys?

Heather: Yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned, we are very serious about user feedback. So we want to hear from you. We want to be able to curate content that's meaningful and helpful for you. So we want you to share your ideas with us. So if there's library materials, if there's a webinar or training topic that would be helpful for you or idea for a new curated list, we want to hear from you. That's how we continue to build and grow the NCRTM to make sure that it's meaningful to our users. So really reach out to us, email us, NCRTM@NewEditions.Net. We also have a customer feedback survey so you can connect with us. That way you can fill it out if you have ideas for content or things that you would find helpful, and then also just connecting with the NCRTM team by signing up for the newsletter would be a really big help. It also helps keep you up to date on what's happening. Those are some of the bigger ways that your listeners could help us is really those connections. Tell us what you need, how we can help you, and then connect with us and stay up to date. Connect with us so that you know what's going on, because I guarantee you your work will benefit.

Carol: Awesome. Thanks for joining me today, Heather, I really appreciate you being on. This was great.

Heather: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was awesome I appreciate it.

{Music}

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

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

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Full Transcript:

{Music}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: And which state was that in? Britt.

Brittny: That was in.Indiana.

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

Brittny: Yes.

Carol: Very good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: So eight months is probably a little aggressive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brittny: Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: Excellent. Sarah, how about you.

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

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

Brittny: Thanks.

Sarah: Thank you.

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

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

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Full Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: Okay.

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

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

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

Carol: How about you, Amanda?

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: Excellent. And Amanda, how about you?

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

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

Tyler: Thank you Carol.

Amanda: Thank you Carol.

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

Welcome to VRTAC-QM Manager Minute! Today, we're joined by Brandy McOmber, Project Director, Ashley Banes, Counselor Specialist, and Paul Fuller, Counselor Specialist, all representing Iowa General.

Our focus is Iowa's Blueprint for Change DIF Grant and its creative use of the collective impact approach. This initiative aims to amplify opportunities for competitive integrated employment through strategic partnerships and pilot programs. Its overarching mission? To phase out sub-minimum wage employment in Iowa and revolutionize the career paths of individuals considering such options.

As 14(C) certificate holders decline, many individuals find themselves without employment, often spending their days at home or in day habilitation programs. Stay tuned to learn more about how they're transforming lives with DIF!

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Full Transcript:

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

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

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

Paul: We're DIF'ing it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ashley: Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul: Way too, yeah, way too late.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandy: Thanks, Carol.

Ashley: Thank you.

Paul: Thanks, Carol.

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

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

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Full Transcript:

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Lynn:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Full Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: Wow!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: Well thanks Mark. Talk to you later.

Mark: Take care. Bye, Carol.

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

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

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

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Full Transcript:

{Music}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: So when did this all roll out?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol: That is super cool.

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

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

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

Carol: Absolutely. Yeah, Cassie?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cassie: Yeah. Thank you, you too.

Sven: Thank you so much, Carol.

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

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

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Full Transcript:

{Music}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diane: You're welcome.

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