DARRELL JONES: So now I would like to introduce two people, the first is Brian Mosley from Walton Options in Augusta, Georgia.

The other person is Danielle Mimitz from Stavros Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.

These are two of the centers that indicated on their registration form that they had existing youth transition programs.

So we thought this might be an opportunity for you to learn what some of your other peers are doing who have actually started programs and some of the experiences that they're having.

So Brian, let's start with you.

Why don't you come on up here.

BRIAN MOSLEY:  Okay, first, I want to say thank you all for being here.

I'm glad to be here.

This is such a wonderful training.

I'm really excited about it.

And as mentioned, my name is Brian Mosley.

I'm from Augusta, Georgia, and Walton Options for Independent Living Center.

We also have a center right across the bridge from us in South Carolina which is also Walton Options for Independent Living.

And my co-workers is here with me, Robbie Breshears and both centers we do, we are initiating a transition program.

Before I briefly get started on that, I do want to tell you acronyms.

Everything is acronyms for me.

And when Barack Obama told me the acronym for disability was Distinctive Individual with Skills, Ability, Brains, Intelligence, Life, Insight and Talent Yearning.

I knew he was talking about me.

Now, on the Augusta side what we're doing is a program called OH, YEA.

It's an acronym for Occupational Horizons Youth Empowering Activities.

What it's all about is we go into the school system.

One school system, one middle school, eighth graders are who we are focused on.

The eighth graders and we want to help them with preparing to transition

to high school as well as think about life after high school and so forth.

Sorry, y'all, I'm going to hold this mic.

So what we do at OH YEA is go in once a week and we believe from the Independent Living Center perspective that sometimes the best motivation is others that have disabilities.

So I'm one of the individuals who goes in on Fridays just for an hour and a half.

And we meet with the special needs students and we talk about things from independent living skills to employment partnerships which we have, community resources, and we try to actually cover that holistic approach as well because, like that acronym for disability, it's not just one thing, I'm not just unable to do one thing, but I have a lot of talents and we have to try to find those.

So we try to do from the CIL perspective is, again, motivate some of the students ahead of time by presenting with individuals like myself with disabilities who have either successfully made it through the academic side or the educational component of independent living.

And we try to share with them information about the resources that are out in the community, how to take advantage of those and what the importances are of going to school, finishing school, understanding what you're going to do after school and actually being independent.

Now, in conjunction with that, across the border there we do another program called, well, we're implementing it for next summer.

It's called QUEST.

And what we do, it's a week summer camp for students and we expose them to different mobility devices, assistive technology, whatever individuals with disabilities use to make their lives a little bit more successful or improve the quality of their life.

And our main goal is to supplement the educational program, but more so to pre-prepare the individuals with disabilities.

I've heard someone up here speaking about getting calls where after they're 22 or they've maxed out in school and they're like what do I do now?

And they weren't preparing for it the whole time.

So we feel it's real important to prepare for it ahead of time.

So we want to go in to the eighth graders and present to them an actual model for how they can prepare for transition and while they're preparing for it, they can be working on it at the same time.

So we call it OH, YEA.

That's really all we're about is actually helping ourselves help ourselves.

And with the QUEST program, we know how important it is with the assistive technology.

I have fun in my office all the time because I use what's called JAWS, Job Access With Speech.

It's not a special computer.

It's not a computer for the blind, it's a regular computer, but it has a screen reading program on it.

So I can turn that joker up and read, I can read so fast no one can hear what I'm reading.

But I've been doing it for so long that I actually understand it.

So I can really read fast and get things done really fast and it's amazing to me how people think it's more than it actually is.

All it is, is a supplemental program that allows me to be able to use the computer just like the sighted person.

And what we try to promote through OH, YEA and QUEST is the understanding that it's out there.

It's just a matter of either finding it or getting the right training so you can learn how to use it and make it, and put it into your curriculum or your resume, how you do things.

That's how I like to say it because I will turn my screen off, but I can still read and hear everything that's happening on there and look stuff up.

How are you doing that?

Sometimes they think I'm sleeping in my office because I'm just sitting down reading something.

But we're really excited about OH, YEA because it is a collaborative effort with our school system and we haven't gotten VR involved yet, but we're looking to get them involved with signing of this Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act.

So we're going to try to get them involved as well.

And the whole objective here is to show how collaborative efforts can create a stronger community amongst us all.

So we really want to promote inclusion, but also promote the ability of individuals that are limited in one way or another with some difficulties or some challenges or a disability.

Outside of that, again, I can only say we are just extremely excited to go into the schools as individuals with disabilities, but working from their side to help the students better their education, better their academic situation, but more than that, better their independence so that they can become the Distinctive Individual with Skills, Abilities, Brains, Intelligence, Life, Insight and Talent Yearning.

Any questions?  Thank you.

DARRELL JONES:  Let's go ahead and have Danielle come up and do our next presentation.

Join me in thanking Brian for his presentation. [APPLAUSE]

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  Okay, Hi, everybody.

My name is Danielle Mimitz, and I work at Stavros Center for Independent Living which is in Amherst, Massachusetts.

We also have an office in Springfield and Greenfield so we serve kind of the western part of the state.

There are 11 IL centers in Massachusetts and six of them, seven of them now currently have a youth transition program.

So the program that I currently coordinate is a Transition to Adulthood Program and then we also have a Transition Internship Program.

So we have TAP and TIP.
So TIP TAP.

So I'll start out by talking about our Transition to Adulthood Program, that is our TAP program.

And that program is geared for students between 14 and 22 who identify as having a disability and what we do through that program is we really look at where that student wants to be once they transition out of the school system, whether it's going off to college or entering employment or whether it's living independently, whatever that means to them.

So say their goal is living independently.

We kind of look at where they are now and kind of what they want to learn.

So whether it's learning those basic independent living skills, cooking, cleaning, learning how to navigate your community, budgeting your own money and take those big goals and break them down along the way.

If their goal is post secondary education, we explore the different types of colleges that they're looking at, the different types of program, it's getting them connected with the disability resources at the different colleges.

We also offer a weekly social and recreational group for our youth.

We call it Community Service and Friends.

And what we do during that group is we have started a series of community service projects where the students are out in the community.

Right now the project that we're working on, has everyone seen the new accessible icon for like the parking spaces?

So what we're doing right now in Massachusetts is we're trying to spread that new icon across Massachusetts.

We just painted our first parking lot on Saturday actually.

So we're kind of in the process to reaching out to local businesses and all of that so that the students can go in and paint the parking spaces.

We also during our weekly group do a series of independent living skills so whether it's cooking, cleaning, going out into the community, whether it's going to a local restaurant and teaching the students how to read a menu, they all come with their own money.

So teaching them how to budget their money, calculating their tip, those type of things.

We also do a lot of information and referral just letting the student and family know what else in the community they may benefit from.

We do a lot of advocacy through the IEP meeting, teaching the student how to advocate for themselves, making sure their voices are heard at the meetings.

And then we also have, and I'll quickly talk about the TIP program, which is the Transition Internship Program.

This is our fourth year receiving an extra grant funding through Mass Rehab which is our state voc rehab agency and that's also who we receive our funding for TAP through their Supportive Living Program.

The Transition Internship Program is geared for students between 16 and 22 who are either still connected with the school system or have recently graduated.

What we do through that program is the students go through a series of kind of pre-employment workshops where we focus on job readiness skills, resume writing, disclosure and a series of different activities.

And then once the student completes the soft skills training, we then are able to place them at a job site in the community.

We do it based off of the student's interests.

So we actually go out into the community, find a place that the student is interested in working and then we work with the business to get them employed there.

We pay them through us.

So minimum wage, which is eight dollars an hour for 15 hours a week and then we are also able to provide on the job supports.

So like a job coach if needed.

We do a lot of fading support so a lot of the students will start with a job coach and won't need it at the end.

That pretty much sums up both programs.

Does anybody have questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  First question is where do you get the eight dollars an hour that you pay them?

And then the other question, I really love that idea about changing the old parking symbol to the new.

Do you actually paint over the old symbols that are on the asphalt and paint the new ones?

And if so, how do you get a template for that new one?

I think that's the greatest idea I've heard.

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  If you go to the accessible icon website, you can order the stencils and we do the whole prepping.

We have the students paint over the old ones and paint on the new symbols.

So, yeah, we kind of do start to finish with that.

And then regarding the eight dollars an hour, so that's when we're given the grant, we have to kind of factor in how we're going to use that and pay the students for employment.

So we kind of do it budget-wise.

So eight dollars happens to be minimum wage in Massachusetts so that is where we come up with that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I guess my question is who gave you the grant?

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  So that comes through Mass Rehab as well and their Supported Living Program as well.

All the funding comes from both programs.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Are you the fiscal agent for the eight dollars an hour? 

Are you the ones that actually pay?

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  Yeah.

So when we approach the businesses, they kind of look at it as a volunteer position where the students looks at it as a job.

All the pay is run through our agency.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So do you have to do FICA and all those things?

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  Not FICA, in Massachusetts that's more of like a PCA and all of that.

We fill out the tax paperwork and all that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So I like the repainting of the signs.

I was wondering though since not everyone that has a disability drives and so everybody sees parking lots, have you thought about doing the other signs that might be near bathrooms or in the buildings?

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  Actually on the accessible icon page as well you can purchase like the stickers to place on the signs or on doorways and so we're in the process of doing those as well.

Any other questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  My question is I know with at least our vocational rehabilitation system in Tennessee we're currently under a priority order of selection, and I'm just wondering since you're receiving the additional funding, is Massachusetts under that same funding constraint or how are you getting that money from them through the SPIL?

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  When we get the money from the voc rehab, it's not necessarily voc rehab funds.

It's kind of through their supportive living services and their turning 22 program.

So they have different guidelines as opposed to the voc rehab funding.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I just wanted to ask you about the accessible icon.

Where do we have access to it?

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  There is a website called the accessible icon project.com I believe.

If any of you are FaceBook friendly, we do have a tap FaceBook page as well and I can make sure to give you that information where we have the link to of that.

But it's all online.

The accessible icon project.com I believe it or accessible icon.org.

Thank you.

Anything?

DARRELL JONES:  There is one in the back.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I don't know if we're going to be able to talk about this more, but I am interested in specifically your program about credentials of your staff.

And this is kind of like a philosophical question, too, in terms of independent living about, you know, how we believe that folks don't really need to have an education, that just having the experience of having a disability to be a qualified individual.

However, when you're talking about supportive employment, job coaching, blah, blah, blah, what is your take in terms of your Independent Living Center on professional degrees and certifications?

DANIELLE MIMITZ:  So I guess that kind of depends what position it is and kind of who is doing the hiring.

Through TAP a lot, we focus a lot and kind of more of the peer mentor ship.

So a lot of the TAP counselors are all people who identify as having a disability themselves and who have kind of been through that process.

So we do a lot of peer support through that.

When it comes to the TIP program, obviously we focus more on kind of the voc rehab experience perspective and all of that.

So I guess to kind of briefly answer your question, it depends on the position we're looking at.

DARRELL JONES:  Okay.

Let's thank Danielle for her contribution, we appreciate it.