APRIL REED:  So what we're going to spend this morning on is actually going through the training manual.

So, if you'd like to pull it out, you all have a copy of the ABIL Peer Mentor Training Manual.

And I'm just going to walk you through some of the sections you can get an idea of why we put it in there.

Why we feel it's important.

Feel free to ask questions about the section.

We'll get to some forms you can actually look at those.

And I apologize, I know the large print has a different page number.

So, if you have that page number, holler it out at me, okay?

So we're just going to break this down and go section by section.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  The large print version of the slides page number is correct.

APRIL REED:  Okay.

Oh, thank you, Tim.

So Tim said the large print version of the slides, if you look there, that will refer to the correct page number for the training manual.

So you have that in your large print copy of slides.

Okay.

So on pages 8 and 17, we included section on independent living philosophy.

And there's a reason why we do this right at the beginning of the training.

Because this is who we are.

This is what we believe.

And so I've been a volunteer.

And from my perspective when I volunteer, I want to know who are these people?

Why should I give time to them?

Do their beliefs line up with my beliefs?

So that's why we start very first with independent living philosophy.

So we show the Ed Roberts 60 Minutes interview.

Anybody familiar with that?

Yeah.

Our media guy and I used to joke that we could probably act it out because we've seen it more than anyone anybody at the center.

It's a very good video.

It's available on YouTube if you don't have a copy of it.

Unfortunately, CBS doesn't make it any more but you can click and get it on YouTube.

So very, very good.

We introduce them first to Ed Roberts.

He's the father.

He's the one who started this.

And that video even though it's older, it really, everything he says is so spot on.

So it really gives people an idea of where are are we in the movement?

What's the history.

Usually the person who teaches our independent living skills section is our CEO, Phil.

And so yes, of course, I could teach this but I want them to meet Phil.

And it really means a lot to the mentors, surprised me but it really means a lot to them that Phil would come in and take the time to meet them.

And he spends a good amount of time and really walks them through some of the history pieces.

And so that really means a lot to people to meet him, to hear what he envisions for ABIL and also to have him walk us through independent living philosophy.

Occasionally if we have time, maybe at a lunch break, I might show module 1 and 2 of the ILRU history video that’s available on their Web site.

So I use that as well.

Because most of the people that we have come through the training are like I was.

You know, I had no class on disability history in high school or college, I didn't know my own history.

So this really kind of is a way to really give people a foundation of where are we going, where have we been.

Pages 18 to 23, that's the ABIL section.

So again, it's that who are we piece?

What are the programs?

How long have we existed?

What are our funders?

Really volunteers want to know all of that.

They have questions about how did you guys come into existence?

So we can really spend some time and give them kind of the history of ABIL and we focus on the programs that their mentees are going to be working with.

So it helps them kind of get a lay of the land so to speak.

Information referral, that's a real brief section that's on page 24-25.

The reason why we moved that, it used to be towards the middle of the training.

But when we saw our evaluations, we do evaluation with people at the end of the training, and I started doing evaluations with people before the training.

And what I noticed was the questions that people had, the fears, were a lot about what do I do if I don't know the answer?

What if somebody has a question and I have no idea what the community resource is so it really made sense for us to move that earlier in on the training so that we could take that worry away from people.

Really affirm to them that they're not on their own in this, they don't have to figure out the resource.

They can call me.

They can talk to the information referral coordinator.

We give them different resources.

So it really relieves the fear that I've got to figure this out.

By myself.

And then we do a little brief introduction on page 27 to 30 about just the volunteer program.

So we go over some of the basics of the peer mentor program.

And, again, we had that later in the training.

And over the years I've moved that closer to the front because, again, people have some basic questions that they really want to get answered right away.

They don't want to wait until day 2 until they find out how do you make a match?

How do I know if you have somebody for me?

You know, how often do I have to meet?

All these kind of basic questions.

It's great to be able to relieve people's concerns or fears right away.

And then we get to lunchtime and we bring in a couple of our peer mentors, our long time peer mentors.

And they come in and you know, they'll talk about their experience briefly.

And then they'll answer questions.

And then they stay for lunch.

So it gives people a chance if maybe they're not comfortable to ask questions in front of a whole group, they can kind of pick the mentor's brain over lunch.

And again, this helps them get an idea of who are the mentors, what would I be expected to do?

It relieves a lot of concerns and fears.

And it's a great way for them to kind of get an idea of where are we going.

We developed our adaptation to disability, you'll see that on page 31-36.

Based on the ideas of Kubler Ross.

Is everybody familiar with Dr. Kubler Ross?

So what she did is she did a lot of research and study around death and dying.

And she noticed that through her work in hospice, that there were certain stages that people went through in the grieving process.

And so Amina actually originally wrote this piece and over the years we've tweaked it and changed it as we needed to.

But the idea is that somebody newly diagnosed or newly injured, there is a grieving process they're going to go through.

So we really try to educate the mentors.

You'll see in the manual that we give them the stages of grief.

We walk them through that.

I usually don't teach this section.

I usually bring in our early intervention coordinator to teach this section.

Why do I do that?

Well, he's the one who every day all day is working in the hospitals talking to people who are newly diagnosed, newly injured.

So he really brings a perspective and can answer questions.

What do you do if somebody is in that anger stage?

And he can share stories.

What do you do when someone is very depressed?

How do we talk to them?

So he brings a whole different perspective because that's what he does in his job every day.

Now, one key change that I want to point out is that you know, the last stage of the grieving process for Kubler Ross is acceptance.

And we've modified that.

Because I don't know that that's possible for disability.

I don't think that there's a day where the light shines down and we're like yeah, I'm glad this happened and I'm okay with it completely.

It's a little different when you're talking about disability there and death and dying so we've changed that to adjustment or adaptation.

We think that's a little more realistic.

Where we want to see people end up not that they have a great day every day but they always have the awareness that I can do what I need to get done.

I'm going to be in pain.

There might be bad days, but I can still accomplish what I need to do.

And so that's more about adapting to our disabilities versus having some sort of acceptance or you know a complete journey where we're okay with everything.

We're going to have good days and bad days.

So we do change that and clarify that in our training manual.

This is a huge section for us.

So we, on page 37, I think, excuse me, 38, 39 we have a self evaluation that we use with the mentors which is kind of fun.

We take a break, we have them flip through the self-evaluation.

I kind of do it informally.

So I just have them check off something that jumps out to them or something they wish they did better.

So for example, somebody says gosh, I don't make good eye contact and I need to do better about that.

Or I formulate my response to somebody and I stopped listening to them because I'm coming up with my response.

So we can have a good conversation with people about what are those habits that we can change a little bit that we can work on.

I tell the story about my brother whom I love very much.

He's a wonderful person, but he has the ability to be watching a football game, and still hear everything I'm saying.

Which really annoys me because since we've grown up, it always annoys me.

I do not have that ability.

So for me, if I'm going in and talking to him, that's really frustrating that he does that.

If he is hearing, he does respond appropriately usually.

Sometimes it's good to highlight with the mentors.

There's things that maybe you're okay with that's really going to be hard for somebody else.

So your job as a peer mentor is to be able to identify what you do and how you might modify that or observe in your mentee, something that you do and how you can adapt to what they do.

So, if you have a mentee who is distracted and not looking at you, understand that maybe that's the way they communicate and figure out how can I work with that, how can I adapt that.

Maybe you have a mentee who is better at communication via email.

So the important things are something they need time to write out and think about.

So it gives people an idea how do I communicate, what's specific to me? 

But how do I adapt that so I'm working with my mentee in the best way possible and communicating the best way possible.

Any questions about that section?

Okay.

Language and etiquette, people first language.

Page 50-52 is our people first language.

We have an article in there by Kathy Snow and we have copyright permission for that.

She has a great Web site that has a lot of good information on people first.

And she's a mom of an adult child with a developmental disability and has been a leader in writing about people first.

And so we have some articles from her in there.

Sometimes I think we make the assumption that because we're training people with disabilities that they don't need this.

Really, most of the people I train this is their first time being exposed to people first language and really having conversation about language and etiquette and how do we work with each other and how do we provide accommodations to each other.

We're kind of the expert on our own disabilities.

So, if I'm talking to somebody with CP, they might not have any idea how to talk about a mental health disability but as a peer mentor, I need them to have those skills and that language in etiquette so they can comfortably interact with other people with disabilities.

I remember a training I was doing once, this was not an ABIL training but I was going to a hospital and doing a training.

It was really reinforced to me how important this was.

There was a person in the training class and in the middle of my presentation she started having a seizure.

And so you know, we did everything that we needed to do and she was okay and we were calling the ambulance and stuff.

And I looked over at somebody else attending the training, a gentleman with a spinal cord injury.

Very young, athlete, tattoos, you know he was a young guy.

He was mortified.

Freaked out.

You can see he was not okay with what was happening here.

I thought that's so important because his world has been spinal cord injury.

Now he's being asked to kind of take that first step into the world of other disability and you could see how uncomfortable he was.

Really nice guy but just that was a whole brand-new experience for him.

So this is why the language and etiquette stuff is so important.

We don't want to make the assumption that people are going to know what to do, know how to respond to each other.

One of my favorite things to do is really walk people through low vision etiquette because that can be very confusing for people.

How do I help? 

How do I provide assistance?

How do I talk about low vision and blindness? 

So really it is, we break it down.

It's very specific and we walk people through and give them specific ideas of the language that they can use, how they can help.

What questions should they ask? 

So we really want people to hopefully feel a sense of confidence or comfort in going forward and being around other people with disabilities that maybe they've not had exposure to before.


So any questions about that? 

Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So I'm looking at page 50.

People first language.

And it says, "Don't give excessive praise." 

Why would you not give excessive? 

Is it patronizing kind of thing? 

APRIL REED:  Yeah.

Exactly.

Sometimes we caution people about, you know, oh, you're so special.

You're amazing.

AMINA KRUCK:  I could never do what you do! 

APRIL REED:  I remember being in my wheelchair one time and I was shopping.

And somebody was, like, oh, good for you.

And I was like Okay.

Thanks.

You know, so that kind of stuff.

Where praise and encouragement about things that somebody's worked hard for and that's important.

You know, that's what we want to do.

We want to be careful about that condescending kind of patronizing.

AMINA KRUCK:  And there is as much misperception about disability within the disability community as there is outside about other disabilities you're not familiar with.

So the same patronizing stuff that happens in the outside world happens on the inside world towards each other.

So we're trying to inoculate them from that experience.

APRIL REED:  You know what? 

And I think this is probably something I've gotten tougher and firmer about over the years is that, I used to have people that would come fill out the application and then quietly say well I'm not good with mental health.

Don't match me with that.

Or I'd have somebody that was in a wheelchair and would say I have learning disabilities.

Intellectual disabilities.

That's not okay.

And you know what? 

Some of that I can teach and I can train.

That's why we do that part.

But ultimately, I need peer mentors that have an awareness and ability.

Anything I can teach, you know if they're willing to learn, I can teach it.

But they've got to have an understanding of, we're a center for independent living that works with all disabilities.

So my peer mentor program has got to be for all disabilities and I need mentors who are comfortable and can adapt and work with anyone with a disability.

So we really work, I'm a lot firmer about you know, let's address those stereotypes.

Let's get rid of that bias because that can't happen in our peer mentor program.

I mean, I remember looking through, and again, different time.

But you know, an application that was from, like, 20 years ago.

And somebody put on, you know, no gays.

And today that would not happen in our program.

The world has changed.

Our program has to change with it.

And again we've got to have people that are willing to work with anyone.

That's the skill a peer mentor needs to have.

AMINA KRUCK:  So this starts to happen in the orientation training because there are people with different disabilities in there as potential mentors and as trainers.

But we know what makes the difference is familiarity.

So that's another good point for your mentoring group, which is a way to do ongoing skill development.

But also more of that interaction.

I don't know about you guys but no matter when people come to our center for and when we do an evaluation, more than the topic it's always the first thing people say they love the most is meeting other people with disabilities.

APRIL REED:  It really is true.

That's always one of the things on our evaluations that we get back.

The good news is the vast majority of people you work with, they'll say to you, I don't know but I'll try.

Can you teach me? 

You know, I'm a little nervous, but you know, I'll give it a shot.

So that's where you have the opportunity.

Those are the people you want.

Not that they have to know how to do everything.

That's why we have training.

That's why we have ongoing training.

That's why we do disability liberation theory which Amina will talk about later.

Because we can educate people and get people comfortable with these kind of issues.

Any other questions? 

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I'm under the impression that the truest enemy of disability is ignorance, just not knowing.

Because there's a staunch difference between ignorance and stupidity.

Ignorance is not knowing.

Stupidity is saying well I don't know but what I think is probably right anyways.

So do you guys do anything to address what happens when you assume kind of issue? 

Do you bring up effective and efficacious question asking, things like that? 

APRIL REED:  We do.

We touch a little bit on our communications section and we also touch on that in our helping versus dependency section about how do I go into a situation and not make assumptions? 

What am I listening for so that I can make sure that I understand? 

Give people cues about active listening.

And reflective listening.

So they're saying, we actually give them a statement.

You know, an example statement.

Where it's let me make sure I understood you.

Did you say this? 

Am I hearing you correctly? 

So we actually train them on some of those statements so that they're not jumping in.

They're assuming, that they're stopping and using some reflective listening, active listening to make sure they're hearing what their mentee is truly saying.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And those sections to an extent as long as time allows will be sort of interactive.

APRIL REED:  Absolutely.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Where you say what might be an example of effective listening and what might be an example of just barely hearing.

APRIL REED:  Exactly.

I like to do case studies with them.

This is something I've done for the last two or three years with our peer mentor training class.

And it's really, I take real life situations that have happened and I'll walk them through so they each get assigned a case and they're in their team.

And then they'll, you know, be walked through and a lot of it is about language, about you know, how do I help.

One example I like is just simple things where it's, Okay.

So the mentee states they want to learn Dial-A-Ride.

That's paratransit.

But they got tired of waiting and hung up and didn't ever request the application.

So what might a mentor say to this.

We teach them what are some of the questions you should ask? 

What are some of the emotions behind that.

It's frustration.

Maybe it's impatience.

Maybe it's I don't even understand what paratransit is.

Somebody told me I should do this and I don't know what it.

So we real teach them to think through a situation so, if somebody says I don't want to do this or this didn't work that they can follow up and make sure they understand the situation.

So maybe nobody's ever filled out an application with them because you know, the person just thought they didn't qualify or something.

Or maybe it's I can't read the application.

So I never filled it out.

I remember one gentleman, he was couldn't figure out, he had the phone number for Social Security and he said he'd called it but it never kind of was getting resolved.

And so you know, the mentor and I had talked about it and we had had a conversation with the mentee, come to find out it was.

He would be on hold and his anxiety would go up.

And he would get stressed out and he would hang up.

And then he'd say well, I took care of it.

Well, he never actually got to a person.

So what we did is we said well, hey, we're not going to make the phone call for you.

We're not going to speak for you.

Because this was certainly a gentleman who could speak for himself.

But why don't you come into the office, sit with a peer mentor while you're on hold for 15 minutes, you guys can chat and hang out and have coffee and then you're not getting so stressed out.

And that's what he did.

So he was able to get through to that operator.

He knew the questions to ask and that's how we resolved the situation.

But it was about following up and making sure we understood what it was.

Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I was wondering if you've ever used this or adapted this curriculum for reception staff? 

APRIL REED:  I don't know.

AMINA KRUCK:  Well, certainly parts of the language at people first, they get.

APRIL REED:  Our employees do that.

AMINA KRUCK:  They get at orientation.

AMINA KRUCK:  Sorry, I'll repeat it.

Certainly the People First language and adequate ?

is part of every staff member's orientation.

And one of the groups we've had to do a little extra training with is the van drivers.

They have close consumer contact and we've had issues with them not really understanding and not being as comfortable with disability.

They tend to be not people with disabilities.

And have come from other kinds of careers and it's just the driving job when they start out.

And so that's on an as-needed basis.

But we have pieces of this that we pull out in different places.

And that's a really good, it's really good to have all your staff get oriented in this.

And we have this right on our Web site, too, for people.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We use at our agency for some of the reception it's a program called Experience Works a federal program for people who want to go back to work over the age of 55.

So I think having the communication piece will be pretty helpful.

We go through, we show videos and talk about the IL movement.

But this will be great, thanks.

AMINA KRUCK:  Good idea and we've had customer service trainings for our reception staff, too.

APRIL REED:  You mentioned the van drivers, this has been something that's been an ongoing, we have two great van drivers right now.

And just recently I was thinking about it.

About how much they have shifted to, you know, really understanding that it's, the event continues when they go home.

They want them to have a good experience on the way home as well.

I'll get updates from Mike the van driver about call so and so.

They wanted to chat with you after the group and he really helps me kind of know how our people process.

AMINA KRUCK:  Yeah, they're great spies for us.

Tell us, on the other hand we have one van driver we had to let go because he was just too easily moved to frustration and anger.

He didn't have the patience that was needed.

And some of those communications skills.

APRIL REED:  And they talk a lot with the mentors about tone.

If you're, working with an individual with a developmental disability, tone and the way you're speaking.

That's very important to them.

I have a volunteer who has traumatic brain injury.

And he is constantly, because it's very obviously that he has a brain injury and it affects his speech and he has very loud speech which he can't modulate.

So every single interaction that he has with strangers all day are uncomfortable and he feels talked down so.

So when he came to volunteer at the center, he and I really had to work on you're safe here, I'm giving you instructions but I'm not going to talk down to you.

The other volunteers want to help you.

We're not here to tell you what to do.

Because he is very, very sensitive to that.

That tone and the way people talk.

We want to be careful about that.

That's important.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I was wondering how, I know our disability community in Portland, even though it's a big city, it's pretty small.

And so everybody kind of knows each other.

And I know when I first started working at our CIL, I was probably one of the first people with a master's degree in clinical training.

And so there was some resistance to that.

I would say I'm a peer with specialized training.

But in doing some of the volunteer training, there was a lot of resistance to the idea of boundaries and rules and that's not peer mentoring and that's not the independent living movement because you know, they had that idea that if, yeah, it was just a medical model.

Boundary issue.

Not a good thing.

APRIL REED:  Sure.

I mean, occasionally I'll have somebody who comes through the training and pushes back and says well, you know, maybe like when we get to the language and etiquette piece, I remember somebody was like well, April, I'm okay if my friends call me a gimp and that's okay with me and I'm not going to stop using that word.

I said great.

That's okay in your life.

Do that.

I'm not telling you what to do in your own time.

But I'm telling you when you're acting as a peer mentor that if you use that word with somebody, that could be very harmful and think of it that way.

So a lot of times when people come back about boundaries, you know, why can't I drive somebody, you know, they need to get to this.

I'm coming back and saying well, you're not going to be there for ever.

We want them to learn how to do it so when you're gone, they can continue doing it on your own.

So really kind of coming back and reminding people that the boundaries are really there to help keep them safe, to help the mentees be safe and learn.

Sometimes they can come back and push and pull with people.

I remember there was one mentor though when I took over, she was very adamant that this was her calling, which I appreciated.

A lot of my mentors feel this is their calling and I get that.

Because we feel that way about our jobs, too.

But she was also very adamant that the people she was going to work with she would say things like I'm here for you forever.

We are family and I am never going anywhere.

Whatever you need.

And so, really I was trying to work with her on that.

Say listen, you know, this is, I'm not making a marriage.

You're not, you don't know that you're going to be there for ever.

That's why you have to teach the skills.

And we went back and forth and we kind of agreed to disagree and we, she amicably left the program.

And occasionally I'd invite her to a party and I'd see her every once in a while.

I kid you not.

The very beginning of when I took over the program.

2006.

Last year she called me, the person who was going to be here forever, and never leave.

She called me and said April, what's the center in Texas.

She's like I'm moving next week.

And I just had to laugh because I thought you know, that was the whole point that I could never get through to her about was you don't know what's going to happen.

You're not going to be here forever.

So sometimes people push back about the boundaries.

And you're not going to get them and I have to just know that I did my best and let it go.

But I can't use them.

I've got to have people that understand the boundaries, respect it, you know? 

They could have questions about it.

That's okay.

And even some of it they might not like.

Like I'll have a mentor who occasionally will say I'm going to buy them a cup of coffee.

I'm really annoyed that I can't do that sometimes.

Or I want to get a Christmas gift for them and I'm bugged that you don't let me do that.

And so we'll have that conversation.

So it's okay for them not to agree with it and it's okay for them to come talk to me about it and sometimes we can work through it and other times we can't.

So as the coordinator, you have to decide what you can reasonably let go and what you can't.

Helping versus dependency.

A couple years ago we did a survey with our peer mentors and we asked them, these with people who mentors with us for at least one year.

We asked them what was the most important part of the training for you or what piece did you struggle with the most or have to refer back to and it was helping versus dependency which totally makes sense when you think about it because I think this is what we struggle with as staff sometimes.

Have I done enough? 

Have I given enough information? 

Have I offered every opportunity? 

Am I helping too much? 

Am I helping too little? 

All of those kind of judgment things that we all struggle with.

The peer mentors struggle with that, too.

And so how do I know when I need to respect boundaries and respect their right to choose? 

One of my long time mentors had been working with a mentee and her husband.

And the mentee was about ready to lose their home.

The mentor called me and was very frustrated.

She was frustrated because we'd given resources.

Things that they could do to try to save the home to get some government help and they had gone and sat in those meetings and took the information.

So we knew we had done everything we could.

And I said what are you struggling with right now.

She said I'm frustrated their losing their home.

So I started talking to her about it.

And she is a, she's a home renovator.

So she has 10 different properties by chance.

And so homeownership and property, that is the American dream to her.

But when I got to talking to her about it and asking questions, I said wait, I hear your mentee saying, though, that they're overwhelmed by having to care for this home, they can't get the yard work done.

It's overwhelming.

They're tired of it.

I hear them saying that.

Are you hearing that? 

And so she stopped and thought about it and she was like April, they want to let this home go, don't they? 

I was like yeah, they do.

That was the root of it.

So she had a completely different philosophy about homeownership and, you know, the way she thought about the world.

They were looking at it from this is too much.

We're tired.

We don't want to have to worry about when the plumbing breaks or the weeds are growing.

We want to go to an apartment.

We just want to have somebody else take care of it.

That was the bottom line.

So here she was offering all this help, frustrated that it wasn't working but she was just not hearing what they were trying to say to her.

So that's always, those kind of boundaries are always hard.

So that's when you want the mentors to call you and talk it over.

I have another mentor right now that his mentee is on his 5th or 6th employment network.

So he's almost done all of them that he can do in our area.

And so he always gets the first job.

And you know, it starts well but then he gets frustrated and quits.

So this has gone on for a while.

The last time he quit was because no one should smoke at the office.

So he quit the job.

And then another job he quit because people were buying too many books at the bookstore.

Stuff like that.

You know? 

So of course this is very frustrating to the mentor to hear because he's saying, he's saying to me, April, but he needs this job if he wants to move out of his parents' house.

I'm like I know, I know.

I said to him, the other day, I said you know what? 

Until your mentee is actively regularly taking his depression medication and doing what he needs to do with his counselor, he's going to struggle with this because he's overwhelmed.

So he's going in and getting overwhelmed.

It's like any excuse to get out of that job.

So the mentor is like that's it.

That's what I need to think about.

So it allowed him to release the frustration of you know, I've got to find him an employment network.

Where can he volunteer? 

Where can he get a job next and really release that and understand that his job is just there to support the mentee and to you know, facilitate some of that discussion about frustration.

So again, sometimes it's about understanding where the mentor is coming from and where the mentee is really at.

Amina is going to talk a little bit more about this section, which is disability awareness and liberation.

Again we're walking people through what are the stereotypes and things that you believe about your disability.

How does that impact how you interact with the world? 

How does that impact how you interact with each other? 

As people with disabilities.

And so we'll talk a lot more about that.

It's a really powerful piece and I'm not just saying this because Amina is my boss but because I know this is every training I do, it's always the highest rated section.

Of our training.

What did you like best, it's always at the top.

People really connect with this information.

It's been a way for us to move people from some of those barriers and stereotypes toward more independence advocacy.

So we'll talk about that more later this afternoon.

Self-advocacy we give tips.

We give advocacy resources.

It's really important to me that the mentor understand some of those self-advocacy skills that they can use those in their own life.

I've got to have a peer mentor that has the ability to really advocate for themselves so that they can in turn advocate for someone else.

We walk them through what makes a good advocate.

What do we do wrong sometimes when we're advocating and we just told off our doctor's office for the third time and wondering why they don't call us back.

What do we do sometimes when you're frustrated.

Who are our allies, how do we do documentation.

If you called and talked to somebody at Medicare, did you write their name down? 

Did you write when you talked to them.

Those kinds of things.

So the mentors really understand you know step-by-step what they can do for themselves as self-advocates and then how can they in turn advocate for others.

We also include a piece about systems advocacy because we want to start roping our mentors into really a global perspective thinking about the community and really thinking about how educated are they about disability issues.

Some of them are.

Some of them are not.

And so a lot of them get excited about the workshops and classes that we offer about different programs, different advocacy issues.

Things going down at our legislature.

And so we start from the beginning talking to them about that because we hope that that will be something that they will become aware of and get involved in.

Goal planning section.

Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I'm sorry to put the brakes on.

I was curious.

Our particular agency has something we do.

It's a volunteer training orientation and we assess a lot of what you guys talked about in terms of IL philosophy.

It's in the more basic communication skills.

And what we're kind of looking at doing is having a second day where we address more peer specific, whether it be peer support groups or, which ours are all community-based now, like, organic peer support versus just direct peer mentorship.

Do you think it's sufficient if we address some of these more you know, your HIPAA stuff, your, you know, informed consent kind of things.

And your, you know, suicide prevention kind of stuff in the initial volunteer application orientation? 

Do you think there's too much to do in a day for someone? 

APRIL REED:  That's a lot.

This is a debate we have too.

AMINA KRUCK:  We have a separate orientation for general volunteers than we do for peer mentors.

And the general volunteer orientation is 

APRIL REED:  Two hours, we offer it twice a month.

So it's more what are their tasks, we do talk about language and etiquette.

AMINA KRUCK:  We always do that, yeah.

APRIL REED:  And communication and working with others with different disabilities.

AMINA KRUCK:  I was going to ask if you had kind of laid out how you do the training yet, in terms of how many days or that piece of this what we're calling orientation for peer mentor training maybe that overview would be helpful.

APRIL REED:  If you look in your ABIL Peer Mentor Training Manual, we've given you an agenda in there.

So it maps out where the time frames we use for each thing.

So it kind of lays it out for you a little bit.

AMINA KRUCK:  So it's like three, 4-hour segments or three 3-hour segments? 

APRIL REED:  It's 10 hours.

AMINA KRUCK:  Total spread out so it's not all in one day.

APRIL REED:  5 and a half one day, 4 1/2 the next.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Right.

And that addresses the issue for us.

A lot of our participants are dirt poor.

What we're moving away from is that you know, we're, we provide transportation.

We provide food.

We provide all these things for you.

We provide all these incentives for you to come and do something that you say is really important to you, something you say is going to be a career builder and is going to enrich you directly.

We're trying to go towards a model that says something like if you can get here, we're going to try to simplify and streamline it for you but there's an in between, right?

They're saying we're going to try and streamline this for you and get as much of the documentation done as possible and everything and save your call a ride money because $8 is a lot of money for some people.

AMINA KRUCK:  We do provide that transportation if we need that and as we do provide mileage reimbursement and the ones who need it ask for it and a bunch of them never ask for it.

And so, but we, as I said, we started out in the early days having a 40-hour training and nobody has that time for that commitment.

And as it is, sometimes we have somebody really raring to go but she's kind of on the fly and will on the fly do some training for them.

But that's why we don't do it all in one day, number one.

You can't absorb.

You can only absorb so much and you want them to have time to think about it and come back with their questions.

And so this is the compromise that we've come up with that's a pretty good deal.

And it's a commitment they need to have if they, the first commitment they have to have if they want to be a peer mentor is they have to come through the training.

APRIL REED: Right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just to clarify that then, so you guys do a 2-day specific training 

AMINA KRUCK:  For peer mentors.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Right and volunteer training for peer mentors rolled into the first day? 

AMINA KRUCK:  No, we have 

APRIL REED:  Two separate.

AMINA KRUCK:  They come in to do administrative help or whatever.

That's a 2-hour orientation, totally different.

If they've applied to be a peer mentor they've gone through an interview, filled out their application and the next step is to come in and go through the 2-day.

Often it's not in a row, it might skip a day or sometimes it's two days in a row, training.

And that's the commitment they make.

And sometimes there is literally a justifiable reason because of medical issues or whatever.

But that's a basic requirement.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That's just the peer mentor, volunteer.

APRIL REED:  The peer mentor volunteer.

AMINA KRUCK:  Because our peer mentor program is a volunteer program.

APRIL REED:  Think of it this way:  I think of it as two separate things.

That I coordinate two separate programs.

General volunteer, basic application, character references, fingerprinting, two hour orientation.

Those are people who are going to come help in the offices, those are people who are going to come to events and hold stuff, stuff envelopes.

AMINA KRUCK:  Whatever the staff want them to do.

APRIL REED:  Peer mentor volunteer, higher level skill, higher level training, higher level requirements.

AMINA KRUCK:  Higher level responsibility there for higher level of commitment.

And we used to have hardly any of those general volunteers.

It was when we moved into the DEC Disability Empowerment Center that we just moved into five years ago that we went from having, like, five volunteers to 40.

Because people love to come to the center.

There's 12 other organizations collocated.

It's beautiful.

And they just love it.

And so we always, before our other center which was divided in littler offices and stuff, there was never anybody there.

They were all out in the community.

But now it is seen as a community center in the way that it wasn't before.

And so her job has gotten harder and more full time because of this explosion of general volunteers.

And we have a general volunteer group that comes in once a month to do a big project.

So it's like there's packets to be developed for conferences or something or different things, because they like the camaraderie, something to do.

We give them food.

And we'll give them free transportation that day to come if they need it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Could I ask what the training is, the two-hour training generally for regular volunteers? 

APRIL REED:  Yeah.

Absolutely.

And I was thinking about it this morning.

We have our policy procedure list, which maps it out.

So, if anybody wants to see that.

AMINA KRUCK:  We could email that to you.

APRIL REED:  So the general volunteer, they're first going to fill out an application.

They've got to provide three character references.

They're going to send that back in to me and I'm going to give them a call or meet with them to generally find out what they're looking for, how often can they work.

That kind of thing.

We're going to have them come in through our training.

So the training is Ed Roberts video.

And it's short little video we did probably getting maybe too old for me to use it any more for our 25th anniversary but it talks about our programs.

And then I go through what's independent living philosophy, people first language and disability awareness and etiquette and that is literally the same stuff from this training because that's the most important stuff I want to give people before I throw them in with our staff and other volunteers.

I want to make sure they're comfortable and understand that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you feed them?

APRIL REED:  Not for the training I don't because it's only two hours.

Then I'll do a fingerprint with them while they're there in the office.

So that's the orientation training.

Then on their first day, sometimes they're working with a staff person that has the project.

So, like, one of our staff, she's a filing clerk.

So I will actually go and introduce the volunteer to her.

They're going to be her helper.

They want to do filing.

And I'll sit with them, help them get oriented to their project.

And then she's there to supervise them as they work through the day.

AMINA KRUCK:  Another one just helped us, we just redid our disability survival manual.

It's a guide, really cool magazine about independent living, programs, lots of photographs for people who are newly injured and in the back there's an I&R section.

It was a volunteer who worked with the I & R person who to do research to make sure the contacts were updated so they could be working with the finance department.

They could be working with anybody in the center.

And then there's that one group that comes in or for special occasions they'll call in people to help us.

Sometimes she's got 20 volunteers at one time on that project one time a month.

So she created all that.

Not me.

APRIL REED:  I made a lot of work for myself.

AMINA KRUCK:  But yeah.

APRIL REED:  But you bring up a good point about really this is, has forced us to be aware of what we can manage.

So there are times where I'll come to Amina and say I'm out of projects.

Just want to let you know, I'm not going to take any more new general volunteer applications for a while.

The most important thing is for the staff, I don't want them to feel like they're having to hunt projects for somebody.

That they're, it's not supposed to be stressful.

It's supposed to be if somebody comes in we have work for them.

AMINA KRUCK:  We don't want group homes dumping people at our door en masse and we had them try that including for our living well program and that doesn't work so we had to set boundaries also.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Stuck here.

Sheri Burns with Corell, Hayward, California.

So this peer mentoring training that you're doing with us is part of our overhauling and restructuring our volunteer program which includes the peer mentor piece of it.

So I appreciate the questions about how you separately handle volunteers.

I notice that you have a pretty generic peer mentoring job description that you included in the packet.

Thank you so much.

With your other volunteers do you have individual volunteer job descriptions? 

Because that's something we're looking at now as should we put together specific job descriptions for different duties and responsibilities or activities that we had in order to try to match better when we have an application come in from someone? 

APRIL REED:  We do have that, yeah.

We have a job description very similar to the general one that we have for the peer mentors, we have that for general volunteers as well.

What's their process and then we list out it's general but it lists out what programs they might work with and how we refer to that program.

It's more for the staff for us to know how would we refer, who does the training, who does the supervision of the day-to-day stuff.

It does outline that for us.

AMINA KRUCK:  So she works with the staff, she has to know, again, one person in the whole agency more than anybody else, more than any other program manager or our CEO knows other staff and other units because she needs to get, she takes it on herself to get to know who that, whoever that person is that's going to supervise and make sure they did a good job supervising because everybody doesn't have management skills like a filing clerk who thinks she owns our building for instance.

APRIL REED:  She's very territorial.

AMINA KRUCK:  Very territorial.

Which is what they, she's so detail oriented.

But working with volunteers we had to work with her a little bit about that to get it clear.

And same thing with the volunteer.

They may need stuff written down about what their job is.

So then we do that because it's just been so individual what they went or what they did, we haven't created separate jobs to go with it.

APRIL REED:  One thing we did that was really separate general policy agreement so what we did later I'll show you in a minute.

But what we did for the peer mentors as well as policy improvement, what they can expect from us, we did that for the volunteers.

So we go over that in orientation.

You should expect that you were trained on your job.

You should expect that there's a sample, an example for you.

If you're making a packet.

Staff will return your phone calls.

If we need to cancel, this is what we're going to do.

So it really outlines for them.

And that's been really helpful for the volunteers.

So they know you know, this is a drug-free, weapons free environment.

This is a harassment free environment.

We expect that you would be treated with respect and if there's a situation you're uncomfortable, this is who you talk to, this is what you do.

AMINA KRUCK:  Any staff that's going to supervise sees that same document.

To help remind them.

I need to check in.

There's five minutes before a break and 

APRIL REED:  I know, we're okay.

AMINA KRUCK:  This is fine because this is important but I want you to know where we're at.

APRIL REED:  I know.  We're okay, thank you.

So crisis intervention, that's on page 98.

We talked about this a little bit that you actually have the form.

There's a signed copy that they sign-off on peer mentor training with and they also have a copy for themselves but we have them keep.

Volunteer form section, that's 105 from 116.

We have our peer mentor volunteer description so that's what are their duties.

We have our rules and guidelines form.

So that has things like you know, I don't drive my mentee.

This is not a dating relationship.

AMINA KRUCK:  I don't give them money.

APRIL REED:  I don't give them money.

How much contact do I have.

So it really outlines for the peer mentors and they have to sign that sheet as well in the training.

AMINA KRUCK:  That's been developed by the scientific method of trial and error.

Always continually, it gets updated periodically when something new comes up.

APRIL REED:  We have our volunteer time sheet in there.

We recently changed that so it's an Excel chart which people like more.

It's a time sheet and reimbursement sheet.

AMINA KRUCK:  They can do that on the Internet now, right? 

APRIL REED:  Yeah.

And they do that at the end of every month.

And again, I think we've talked about this a little bit.

There's always follow-up training that we can do.

If I have somebody coming in that I know they've never worked with an individual with a particular disability before we even match them, we'll come in and do conversations and training and I had a lady that was going to be working with an individual with Asperger's.

And so we had a couple conversations and she said, "Do you need materials to look through?" 

And she just got really excited and she called me in one day and said you know, I think there might be a few people in my family that have this.

You know, she just really got excited about working with that group of people.

And so it was completely new to her but it was something that she really became comfortable with.

So that coaching, that kind of training, that's something that goes on all the time.

Last week I went to training on technology with one of my mentors because her mentee is going to be needing that.

So we went and sat in on a training that ABIL had from other agency.

So a lot of mentors do that as needed.

We talked a little bit about the group which we'll go on and talk about later today.

But these are all the kind of follow-up opportunities that we offer.

So classes, workshops, classes on self-advocacy.

Specific community resources.

We have volunteers, sometimes we have them come to our conferences because we're doing conference, they come to the African-American disability symposium.

They'll come to, maybe there's a conference and we got a couple extra tickets.

We'll have them come.

They usually jump at any opportunity to come and hear and get more education about topics 

AMINA KRUCK:  And give us ideas about what else we need to be doing.

APRIL REED:  Right.

They've been very helpful in saying hey, we need this training.

Like I mentioned yesterday, like someone said we need a training on end of life issues and living wills.

So we did that.

AMINA KRUCK:  Or more recently, oops, I'm not on.

More recently one of the persons on the IL council who, is he also a mentor.

APRIL REED:  Who are you talking about? 

AMINA KRUCK:  Maria and Hector.

APRIL REED:  He's a volunteer.

AMINA KRUCK:  He's a general volunteer but he wants to get more involved.

So he recently, was it his idea to do the gardening group? 

APRIL REED:  Well Hector and I, he's looking for more opportunities so him and I were talking and I said what about doing a volunteer a group with the volunteers and consumers on gardening.

AMINA KRUCK:  He was a general volunteer and also went through on the independent living community integration side through the IL council decided to move on and do something different but he did not know what, and  really want did not want to do one-on-one mentoring.

That's not his thing.

So he did this and now we've got plants growing, lots of window space in our place so now we've got herbs growing.

APRIL REED:  He comes and checks them.

I'm not near them because I have a brown thumb.

He takes care of those for me.

We're going to head for break.

I think it's a 15-minute break.