ANNE WEEKS:  What I have 
now to talk to you about 

were some specific things,
specific changes that happened 

as a result of different 
data that was collected in 
various forms.

We do medical.

We keep medical information 
basically their doctor and 
their medicine in file.

Not because it's part 
of a medical model from 
our perspective bike,

just so that we have this 
information in case we need 
it in there's an emergency. 

But when we were doing the 
consumer forum down in Beckley,

somebody said that they would 
like to have a class on how to 

make sure that they were 
dispensing their medicine 
safely and so forth.

And out of that,
came this aha to me,

because of just recently 
changing some medicine 

that I was on, that if we 
do an intake on someone and 

they fill out the 
medical form, that's it.

And we don't, update it.

Unless they come to us and say,
"I need to change that."

So, as a result of that,
we've, we do quarterly 

reviews on all 
of the consumers.

It's just a rolling quarter.

And so, now we have it 
as a policy that whenever 

they're doing their quarterly 
review, they need to say to 

the consumer, if they ask 
them if they've had any 

changes in their medicines,
if they have any changes in 

their doctors and so forth,
just so that we can keep it 

updated, because everybody's 
medicine usually changes.

So that came out of a 
question or a request out 
of the consumer forum.

This came out, state access.

People will come up to us and 
say I need help paying my 

utility bill or can I 
bum cigarette money 
and so forth and so on.

And, they want bus 
passes and so forth.

So we started looking at some 
ways that we could possibly 

come up with some money that 
would be an emergency fund that 

we could help with, which helps 
some with transitioning if you 

have to pay utility bills 
or deposits for someone 
who's transitioning.

So we have something 
called the freedom fund.

And the freedom fund is 
something solely,

money is made, put in there by 
activities that the staff and 
consumers do.

I mean, it's like bake sales,
rummage sales.

And so one of our goals last,

I'm sorry.

So the medicine I changed 
to keeps my mouth dry.

One of the, activities that we 
had for last year is that we 

wanted to increase the freedom 
fund amount by the 25%.

So that we'd have money.

Because it was starting 
to get depleted.

So they decide to have 
a hot dog sale, and we 

have a lady who's in our 
employment program who is 

really good at getting 
stuff from people.

Bumming stuff from people.

So she was able to get,
you know, about 95% of 
everything donated.

The hot dogs, got a cut rate on 
the sauce, got the buns,

got chips, all those things,
that we put together to sell.

And so as a result of that,
we made $1500 profit on the 

bake sale, which based on 
how much money we had in the 

freedom fund at the time,
it's actually a 750% increase.

So we were, we were 
really happy with that.

So. This, again, is 
information that comes 
basically from staff access.

Some, we, our transportation,
when we provide transportation,
we charge for the rides.

Just like if you 
were riding a bus.

You're charged for the rides.

And it helps us pay for gas,
pay for repairs.

We don't make any money on it.

We don't even break even on it.

But we do charge.

And so they'll say, "Well,
I can't go out to eat with 

the socialization class because 
I don't have any money.

I don't have money 
for lunch or the van.

I don't have any money 
for the van to go look at 
the Christmas lights.

I don't have the money,
I don't have the money."  

Whatever.

And so a lot of it comes 
down to money management,

and we have money-management 
classes, and, you know, we even 

go to a bank and talk about 
checking accounts and we show 

them checks and we help 
do check-writing and 
all this stuff.

But they still don't 
have any money.

What we thought we would do is 
that we are wanting to work 

with one of the savings and 
loans there and actually take 

people over and open 
up a savings account.

So that they will have that so 
that when they, get a check,

either from their benefits 
or if they're working,

that we're hoping that 
we can get them to put 
a dollar in there.

Or two dollars in there.

So that we can help 
them see that you have 
to plan ahead for this.

So if you know that you want to 
go to something that's gonna 

happen in two or three months,
start putting some money in the 

savings account so 
that you can do that.

So that, idea we're still 
working on for this year,

because that was one of the 
comments that, or one of the 

activities that came out 
of developing the work 
plan this year.
This is something that came out 
of the satisfaction survey.

The statewide satisfaction 
survey last year.

The questions on there,
they're asking different 

things, and they're saying 
did you get the resources 
that you needed and so forth.

And when, when I looked at the 
graph, and Danetta [ph] had put 

on there all three centers,
and they talked about your 

satisfaction, accessibility,
questions answered, all these 

different questions that she 
put on a graph, everything,

everything was up above the 94 
percentile except resources was 

down in the 85 percentile.

And I'm like why is that?

You know, West Virginia doesn't 
have a lot of the resources 
that bigger cities have.

But, my question was are the 
resources not there or is it 

that staff do you want me to 
the resources that are 

available and so therefore 
they're not helping them as 
much as they could.

So, as a result of that, we 
have a community-resource 

class, we have expanded that,
and we have included the 

consumers in helping kinda 
teach the class kinda as 

a peer mentoring type thing.

Because they know some 
resources that we don't know.

In fact, we were talking about 
some transportation issues 

once, and I had a couple 
consumers who told me how 

I could get on a bus in 
Huntington and change in 

Putnam county to this bus and 
go to Kanawha county,

which is where Charleston is 
and take this bus and get all 

the way down to Logan, which 
is way down in the coal fields 
of West Virginia.

And I was like wow.

That they had figured out how 
they could finagle and get on 

these different buses 
to do that.

So that came out of me 
questioning why is the 
resources so low.

And so, it's still 
low this year.

So I still don't 
necessarily know.

But this is something that we 
also put on, our activities 

and our work plan for this 
year that we're working on.

So hopefully maybe 
next year it'll go up.

I, the activity, like I said,
is in this year's work plan,

and we have worked on 
expanding the module for that.

We have skills-training modules 
for stuff that we teach,

and one of the things that 
you have to have, somebody 

may come and say, "Okay, 
I want a module on how 
to use an ATM machine."  

And that's perfectly 
legitimate, but they need 

to have a pretest and post-test 
and have learning objectives.

Because how do you measure 
whether somebody has been 

successful in learning 
how to learn how to use 
the ATM machine.

So we always say that you have 
to have those elements,

and then we have the learning 
objectives you, you know what 

steps you may need to take in 
order to get somebody used to 
using an ATM machine.

This is a comment that was on,
several comments that were on 
the outcome feedback forums.

We have a training kitchen 
that we got a grant to build 
in the Huntington office.

Because we moved back in '93 
and we've never had any 

kitchen facilities to 
do skills training with.

And so, when they're cooking,
now that they're having cooking 

classes on a regular basis,
they want to take advanced 
classes.

You have people doing basics,
people now they know the 
basics, so they want more.

A couple people came to Kathy 
and said, "You know,

I'm really a diabetic,
and I really don't know 

what I should or 
shouldn't be eating."  

And so forth.

And so out of those, we've 
added a diabetic cooking class.

The, people that have been in 
the advanced cooking class are 

now serving as peer mentors 
to the people in the basic 
cooking class.

So that they can help 'em as 
they're learning how to use 

a knife to chop and learning 
the different elements that are 

learned in the basic 
cooking class.

The other one, and I kinda 
lumped it together, because,

well, here's the indicator,
but.

The activity also was developed 
out of a consumer in Beckley 

saying, "Well, you know, we 
have gotten a lot from the 

center, and I think it's 
time that we help other 
people, too."

And, so we're promoting 
this pay it forward.

Which I believe in, just 
because, you know, people 

are so used to getting services 
and there are other people out 

there who need services or 
need assistance and so they 
need to be aware of that.

So we have a couple pay-it-
forward projects that,

that have been running 
for a few years.

And the one in Beckley, the big 
one in Beckley has been a food 
drive every Christmas.

And they coordinate with the 
food line there, and they set 
out barrels and so forth.

And the last couple years 
they've actually filled up 

a small U-Haul truck with 
food that they've taken 

to the homeless shelters, 
because of that.

Huntington is in the process 
of, trying to be involved with 

a project called Huntington 
in bloom, because there's some 

national, group and some 
national recognition that 
comes with that.

And so as a part of that, 
keeping the city nice and 

attractive and so forth 
is part of their goals.

And so, we've started adopting 
areas in downtown and in 
different parts of the city to 
make sure they're clean.

And so, a group of the 
Huntington consumers 

have decided to adopt 4th 
Avenue, which is where 

our office is, from where our 
office is by the courthouse,

which is 8th Street, all the 
way down to Marshal University,
which is 16th street.

So once a month, on a Saturday,
they go and they pick up,
trash and everything.

And one of the things as a 
result that; because there 

are several bars, because 
you're getting down towards 

the University, and they're not 
allowed to smoke now in,

in the bars and restaurants in 
West Virginia, and so, they're 

outside smoking and just 
throwing their cigarette 
butts everywhere.

Kinda nasty having 
to pick those up.

So we're hoping to, through the 
downtown partners, to convince 

people they need to be 
providing ash trays and 

things outside for their 
customers so that they can,

so it's not quite so messy.

This one is, came from the 
consumer forum, again.

And they said that they needed 
younger people at the center 

and increase the number of 
people coming to the center,

and we need to, increase 
the number of IEP's that 
we can assist with.

So, we have created the 
outcomes that the parents 

will request that mountain 
states participation student's 
IEP meetings.

We did not put a number there.

But that we also put as an 
indicator that staff will 

assist ten students when 
transitioning from school 
to work.

And part of this also has 
to do with not only the IEP's, 

but also the fact our 
employment program,

that we need to be helping 
with that transitioning.

So, we are starting to conduct 
some classes, we're starting 

to go to the high schools 
and talk to different 
teachers there.

One activity we've already done 
this year is that we had about 

30 students and teachers and 
some parents who came from 

Huntington high school to,
a, meet-and-greet and 

question-and-answer 
period at the center.

And we had different stations 
set up where different people 
talked about different things.

And one of them we had an 
employer that we use down 

at Marshall University's 
food service, and she talked 

to them about as an employer,
these are my expectations.

As far as if you, 
if you are on a job.

And we had people from 
the Division of Rehab 
Services there.

They place a counselor actually 
in each of the high schools,

and so, she was there.

And some of 'em already knew 
her, but some of them didn't.

So they all got to meet her.

Because she's fairly new.

We didn't get, I put on here,
because it was gonna happen 

in-between getting the deadline 
for the slides in and stuff,

but the CED people who were 
gonna talk about the benefits 

counseling weren't able 
to come.

So we'll do a special 
workshop on that.

Because obviously benefits 
is always an issue if you're 
going to work.

And that's what I have.

Any other questions?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Great ideas.

How is the Freedom Fund that 
you talked about monitored?  

Do the consumers maintain it?  

Or . . .
ANNE WEEKS:  No.

We, we have it, and it's in a 
separate checking account.

We have a little checkbook.

It doesn't run through our 
regular accounting system.

Our accountant just keeps,
a spreadsheet of, you know,

what the, what we spend it on,
and take notes that way.

But it's maintained there in 
the accounting office.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  How is 
it decided who can get 
money out of it?  

Is there a process?

ANNE WEEKS:  We have a 
committee that includes 

a couple staff and a couple 
consumers, and they look at 
different requests.

Sometimes they're a 
little far-fetched, and.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That's 
what I was thinkin'.

Yeah.

ANNE WEEKS:  Sometimes 
they are.

But most of the time we 
get legitimate requests.

For things like, I got kicked 
out of my apartment and now 

I need to find a new one, 
and I need help with, you know, 

utility deposits and so forth.

Or "I'm just getting an 
apartment for the first time 
and I need help with that." 

So.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And that,

I guess there's some limits 
through, some limits throughout 

the year if someone 
continuously –

ANNE WEEKS:  Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: asks for more?

ANNE WEEKS:  Right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That's 
awesome.

ANNE WEEKS:  Any other 
questions?