MAUREEN RYAN:  I want to 
reintroduce myself.

My is Maureen Ryan,
director of the state.

And I want to talk about our 
example and our experience of 
what happened in Wisconsin,

hopefully you will find something 
relative to you in your state.

Every state is different.

We don't have all of the answers.

We make mistakes all the time 
and are continually learning but 

hopefully all the things we 
learned along the way might be 
beneficial to you here.

So I want to go through 
with you why it started,

what we have done in the past,

what we have learned in the past,

what we are doing now,

and then I am going to talk 
about three products at the end.

So first I want to talk about the 
history of why this all started.

I am sure you probably heard of 
the term, one bad apple.

We, certainly had one bad 
apple in Wisconsin.

It happened to be right in 
the middle of our state,

right snack in the middle of 
Wisconsin, kind of shaped like 

a mitten and it is right in 
the middle of the mitten was a 
terrible, terrible center.

They had staff, 
they never worked with us, 
they never answered their phones.

You literally went to 
the center a couple of 
times and tried to help them.

Sometimes somebody was there.

They had executive director 
and a couple of staff that 
we heard about.

We tried to find out who 
their board members were,

and this was just a state-funded 
center so there wasn't anything 

online that we could 
glean from RSA.

Our state funders weren't getting 
back to us about it so we were 

very concerned about it, so the 
directors in Wisconsin got 

together informally and started 
talking about changes that they 

wanted to make and a couple of 
things they were focusing on was 

getting more services for people 
with disabilities in our state,

which took some systems 
advocacy and some legislation.

And there were also a lot of 
things happening federally 
at the same time.

This was when, just to step 
back in time, this is probably 
the early '90s.

You now know about 
our federal fund.

We have federal fund Part B,
which usually go in SILC,

and Part C,
which go to the centers.

Why do we have a B and C?  

We used to have a Part A.

Then Part A changed and 
we developed SILCs,

so this was all of the time there 
was a lot happening federally.

There was going to be some more 
money happening federally that 

we wanted to apply for in 
Wisconsin, so we really needed 
to get our act together.

In the middle of all of this,
we had a terrible center in the 
middle of our state.

Where that center was located 
in those counties,

that happened to be where the 
chief of joint finance and 

a state legislator lived 
at that time, not a good 
combination for us.

So the directors were starting to 
meet, as I said, informally and 

decided we really needed to 
get this more organized.

So we started a state association,
and we had all 8 centers invited 
to join the state association.

We developed it into a 501(C)3 and 
we asked all of the 8 independent 

livings or centers for independent 
living to join in Wisconsin,

and that would require 
some membership fees.

We asked for part of those 
membership fees to be of 

unrestricted funds, because 
we wanted to hire a lobbyist.

All 7 joined right offer the bat.

The eighth one didn't join.

This is not what we wanted.

We wanted the eighth one to 
be at the table and of course 

they didn't join so we 
worked about how to take 
the bull by the horns.

We talked to our state 
funders about this.

Talked amongst ourselves.

This time we only had 
three federally funded 
centers in our state.

The other five were just 
funded with state funds.

We knew the opportunity was coming 
up for some more federal funds.

We wanted each of the centers to 
have state and federal funds.

We wanted to apply for only 
state funding, so we had to 
get some quality going.

We didn't have quality.

We couldn't go talk to our 
legislators about more money 
if we didn't have good quality.

So one of the things we 
wanted to do was to do a 
dress-up quality on our state.

RSA had never been in on any of 
the three federal state, three 
federal fundings, funded centers.

Our state funders didn't 
come out to the centers.

They didn't do anything 
about compliance.

So we needed to ascertain 
for ourselves, first of all, 
if we were in compliance 

and second of all, how they 
address quality so we can make 
changes in the state we needed to.

That's what started our 
statewide coalition.

We incorporated in 1995.

We hired a staff person, full-time 
staff person whose focus at that 

point was lobbying and working 
with the state legislature.

The first thing we did when we got 
to the table was to talk about 

quality and what we were 
going to do about quality.

We looked and looked.

Couldn't find anything out 
there that we really thought 

was addressing something about 
quality and in a way that 

we could really talk about it.

And so we decided we would 
develop a tool ourselves 
to use for quality.

The first thing we thought about 
is, we want it to be, whatever 

we did with this tool, it had 
to be developed by and used 
by peers only.

We didn't want anybody that wasn't 
in the IL community to have a part 

of this but we needed money 
to do this and we didn't have 
money to develop it.

So we talked to our statewide 
funder at that time who happened 

to be a previous executive 
director of one of our 

first centers, and he 
was all in favor of this.

Let me give you some money.

Develop a good process.

I am hands off.
This is great.

So we got about $4,000.

We sat at the table as 8 directors 
and a few of assistant directors 

once a month or two and 
a half years while we 
worked on this model.

We had to agree on value.

We had to agree on 
what was quality.

And we are all advocates.

We've got fire in the belly.

We think we know 
what we are doing.

We get to the table and 
there is a lot of argument, 
a lot of discussion,

a lot of egos, and so there 
was a lot of fights.

There was a lot of 
screaming and yelling.

There was a lot of laughter.

We also had a good time.

It took us two and a half years.

[LAUGHTER]

And what we ended up with 
was the QUILS period,

stands for Quality Indicators for 
Independent Living centers for 

QUILS, and in addition to having 
QUILS, we knew this is where we 

needed to start be our quality 
and talk about our quality but 

we needed to keep it going and do 
more than the QUILS in our state 

and I will talk about some of the 
other things we do in our state 

in addition to QUILS but 
QUILS got us to the table 
with our state association.

QUILS is what got us 
talking about quality.

QUILS is what got us to agree,
all of us as the 7 centers.

It was about three months after 
we developed that that we got, 

the executive director of 
that center had resigned.

The board president resigned.

We had another center to take 
them into a cooperative and 
developed a brand new center.

Took about two years, spun them 
off, developed a brand new center.

Finally had our 8 centers,
solid has a coalition 
in our state.

So then we started implementing 
the QUILS peer system.

And I mentioned we had 8 centers 
which we still had 8 centers and 

we wanted to get every center 
through the QUILS process.

I will go through in depth 
what the QUILS process is,

but initially we did a lot of 
QUILS just to get everybody up 

to speed and go through 
that process, so we did 
three every year.

It took us two and a half 
years to go through everybody 
receiving a QUILS.

So from start to finish, 
it took us two and a half 
years to develop the QUILS.

It took us two and a half 
years to get through that 
as a statewide experience.

Some of the things that went 
into that process was to first 

sit down, as I mentioned,
and talk about what is quality.

What do we really mean by quality?  

We couldn't find much 
out there about that.

We had the standards and 
assurances through the Rehab Act 
but that's compliance.

We wanted to go beyond 
compliance, and we really 
wanted to define that.

Then we wanted to figure out once 
we have the definition of quality,

how do we look at that,
what do we use to do that,

and then will it be a once, 
once a time, once a year?  

How do we keep maintaining 
what we have established as being 
quality within our centers, 

and then third of all,
depending on what we find,
what do we do about our findings?  

How do we recommend changes?  

Do we recommend changes?  

Should we go that far?  

Should we make recommendations 
as the just improvements?

And so these were all things 
we are still processing while 

we are working through 
this whole time period.

And then mostly what we wanted 
to end up with was a way we could 

capture our quality and talk about 
it with our stakeholders,

our consumers,
our communities,

our legislators,
our policymakers,

our current funders and 
our potential funders. 

So we sat down and we looked, 
started with the four core 
services.

We have standards and 
assurances for those.

Those standards and assurances 
are for compliance.

We wanted, again, 
to go beyond compliance 
and really address quality.

So we also had to talk about,
what about our other services.

In Wisconsin, we do a 
lot of fee for service.

Currently, we do $58 million of 
revenue generated in Wisconsin 

a year by our centers, and 86% of 
this money is generated by fee for 

services, and one of the big 
things we were concerned 

about is that drifting 
away from the mission,

and losing control of our 
ability to do systems advocacy.

We didn't want to be in the 
hands of anybody's pockets.

We stem wanted to maintain the, 
we still wanted to maintain the 

systems advocacy, with department 
of services, voc rehab, RSA, 
whoever we needed to, legislators.

We needed to do our systems 
advocacy but we wanted to raise 
a lot more money to get 

back into our services so 
we could hire more people 
to do more advocacy,

so we wanted to make sure that it 
really stayed within the mission 
of independent living.

That was crucial and 
very important to us.

Our number one priority.

So we coin this term, called it 
has to be "ILEY," I-L-E-Y, 

and if something isn't ILEYing, 
smell like IL, roll like IL, 

talk like IL, we won't have any 
part of it and that was our number 

one mantra from the begin,
we believed we could do things 

very ILEY and do the services and 
so we looked at the scope for 

services and we had to look at 
ALL services because we feel 

that's where we may have a 
tendency or vulnerable not to 

keep things ILEY if they weren't 
in our core services and we're 

chasing the ballot so we needed to 
also come up with definitions for 

quality around things that weren't 
core services and we couldn't find 

any information about that, 
either.

And I will get into this a little 
further but we have probably about 

six fee for services that 
all the centers in Wisconsin do.

And then of course there is 
individual fee for services 

that some centers do 
and some centers don't do.

So we wanted to start with,
of course, the fee for services 

that all centers do and talk 
about quality for those.

After we decided what the 
definition of quality for 

all of the services is,
we wanted to talk about 
how to measure those.

Because remember we talked about 
data is your friend,

good data is your friend,
because if it's written down 

and we can't find it and we can't 
measure it and we can't comment,

it didn't happen and we are all 
about trying to tell the story 
about what we are doing.

So if we don't have good data, 
we aren't going to be able 
to do that. 

And we have eight 
different centers,

all looking at data with their 
staff in a different way,

and how can we tell the same 
story, a unified voice,

if we're not looking 
at this together?

So that was a struggle that we 
were dealing with measuring.

One of the things that we 
did was talk about our in 
the information systems.

And all of us, I think,
at that time were using different 
management information systems,

and we talked about looking at a 
similar management information 
system for the state.

And we agreed to do this,

and this was back in,
oh, like '96 or so.

There were only a few out there,
and we all did demos on them.

We looked at them,
there are pros and 
constant to every 

management information system 
that we demonstrated,

and we decided we would get one,
all use one and stick with it,
and we did that.

Since then, we have gone through 
three different statewide 
management information systems,

but it eased our issue if we were 
all using the same management 
information system.

That was one of the things that we 
found was pretty essential for us 

in order to be able to count 
consistent data and measure things 

the same way and talk 
about how to do that.

And I'll talk more about that in 
the beginning, later. 

So that was the piece 
with measuring.

Maintaining.

Again, this isn't a one-shot deal.

This isn't like you have QUILS,
we have a board meeting,
you go back home.

This is something we wanted 
to keep fresh and new and 
alive all the time.

Keep people connected.

Keep people on the same page.

Stay together, look and talk about 
what new is coming up,

revise things as we needed to so 
we'd all be talking about the same 

language and same quality to 
tell on you statewide story. 

So this took the statewide 
association to set up a process 

and committees and a schedule 
where we continually met.

If you don't meet,
we weren't having the dialogue.

These days, we have e-mail,
we have social network.

Again, we're talking 
back in the seven, in 1997.

And then again, who would 
we want to market this to?  

Different people, as I mentioned 
before, whoever you market it to,

whoever you're telling your story 
to it has to be adaptable.

People don't hear the 
story the same way.

Legislators don't care 
about your number of I&R's,
for example.

They care about how much money 
you're saving them, so we have 

to find the information we want to 
market and sell to tell our story,

and then we had to identify who 
were we going to market that to 

and tailor our product 
so it worked.

Small project; right?

So in order to do this about 
statewide quality, again,

I'm just going to, I'm going to 
emphasize this over and over.

We're about IL, 
we're about our peers,
we're about a community,

and we need to be 
at a table together. 

I get to do some technical 
assistance around the state,

too, and we've also sold QUILS to 
about eight different states where 

we got to go there and do QUILS 
with, and it's always interesting 

to find out how little 
some states talk to each other 
within their IL community.

And when we talk IL community,
we've defined that in Wisconsin 

as the centers,
their staff,
their board,

their consumers,
the statewide association's 
staff and board,

and our SILC staff and board.

You can decide who your own IL 
network and your own IL community 

is in your state, but please 
take a look at that and get 
people to the table.

Again, you're only strong 
as your weakest link.

The more people you have together,
the more power you'll be.

If you've got one center for 
independent living doing 

something over here and advocating 
for something over here and you've 

got a totally different 
message right next-door,

that's very confusing 
to legislators,

that's very confusing to funders.

So I'm just going to keep 
reiterating the value and 

importance of staying 
connected as an IL community.

You do this in your state 
and we do this nationally.

We've got to stay together.

We're family.

We're part of a movement.

We need all our 
brothers and sisters. 

So the first way to do that 
is get your own internal IL 
network strong,

your own center strong,
and go out to your regions,

pick your center next-door,
your neighbor,

stay small,
try to work toward a state wide,

then keep your eyes 
on the big prize,
national.

So within the network, we'll go 
through what we did inside the 

network, but there's also a piece 
outside your IL network.

People in your community.

Who else do independent living 
centers find that's really 

important to work 
with you're community?  

Who's some of your closest allies?  

Let's hear who you think 
are your closest allies.

Do you think you have any close 
allies in the community?  

Who are they?  

Who would they be?

We have a lot of allies, sorry.

We have a close relationship and 
partnership with our ADRC.

We have our transportation 
coalition.

We have faith-based organization.

We have, go, we have Fort Hood,
army base.

We have a, we are very much 
involved in our community.

We have a lot of home 
health agencies, as well 

as we are connecting also 
with our acute care.

We're starting to do that.

We have connections with housing.

So that's a huge part 
of our services,

is being connected 
within our communities.

MAUREEN RYAN:  Great.
Great.

Great examples.

Others?  

Other examples of who you 
think is important and 
valuable in your state,

in your area, to work with 
on a regular basis?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I've worked 
with congressmen and state 

representatives to open doors to 
help people with disabilities.

MAUREEN RYAN: She, 
I'll repeat that.

Congressmen, legislators,
to keep the doors open.

Other people?

How about your P&A's,
your protection and 
advocacy agencies?  


You know, we know there's some 
differences in those across the 

nation just like there is for 
centers with independent living.

Some of them are very strong 
agencies and work well,
some aren't.

They're an important partner,
no matter how, how successful 

they are, they're you're 
protection and advocacy,
so ...

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We also get 
a lot of referrals and tie 
in with the 211 systems,

a only buds men and folks on the 
legislature that are staff within 
the debts, Department of Aging,

Medicaid, so we've developed 
relationships with those folks.

MAUREEN RYAN:  Great.
Okay.

They're out there.

And they're people who are going 
to have similar interests, 

hopefully, the rights of 
people with disabilities. 

Does anybody have a good or a 
positive experience with across 

disability, statewide coalition 
for people with disabilities?  

Anybody in here from, 
West Virginia,

you have one, Anne; right?  

Can you talk just a 
little bit about that?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's called the 
Fair Shake Network,

and it is a statewide coalition 
of different groups that are 

advocacy similar, that we do 
similar advocacy things.

And it's a membership 
organization because we 
use their dues to be able 

to support a part-time director 
and administrative assistant.

But they send out e-mails 
and alerts all the time.

We always have a disability 
advocacy day up at the state 

capital during the 60-day 
legislative session.

Everybody goes up there to the 
sessions, let the legislators know 

we're there, meet with legislators 
from your districts to talk to 

them about whatever the 
legislative advocacy agenda is 

for the year that the Fair Shake 
Network works on getting together. 

So it is a coalition that's 
working well, and are very 

well-recognized by the 
legislators and their staff,

and particularly because 
on the last Wednesday of 
the legislative session, 

we have an ice cream social.

And we provide ice cream and 
toppings and stuff for all the 
legislators and the staff.

And we've been doing this for 
about five or six years.

So they've come to anticipate and 
recognize and appreciate the fact 

they're going to get 
ice cream on that date.

So that's been big for us.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: In Ohio 
we have the Olmsted taskforce 

that is, the makeup of it 
represents the multitude of 

disabilities, disability 
organizations, consumers and 

family members, providers.

It's very diversified, and we 
don't do the ice cream social,
but we do a breakfast.

And so, then we also put on some 
state conferences as well.

MAUREEN RYAN:  Great.

So there are some examples 
out there of statewide,

cross-disability coalitions,
larger groups.

In Wisconsin, we have one called 
Survival Coalition,

and their annual disability day is 
today at our capital capitol.

We get about 400 people or so.

If it's not a budget year,
like this year it's more 
like three year.

If it's a budget year,
which is every other year,

it's more like 500,
550, and that's cognitive,

intellectual disabilities,
that's our, providers,

sometimes the provider 
groups come.

That's our "People first" changes,
our ADAPT folks, our independent 
living folks.

I happen to be the chair, one of 
the co-chairs on survival.

So we stay real 
connected together.

We meet every two weeks all 
throughout the year as this 
cross-disability organization.

And like Anne said,
it really helps our notoriety when 
we want to visit the legislators.

They see us as cross-disability,
and that's really advantageous 
for legislators.

They need to know there's not 
something over here with pending 

legislation, and folks 
over here with an opposing 
type of legislation,

we've looked at this from the 
bigger picture and really helps 
them not divide and conquer,

lets them know we've really 
taken a look at it from a 
disability picture. 

And also, I think what helps us 
with independent living is,

they learn, when we are working in 
this cross-disability groups,

what independent living 
is all about.

What we do, and probably more 
important, what we don't do.

How many of you have ever gotten a 
call with independent living,

how many apartments 
do you have available?

[Laughter].

No, that's not independent living 
and we're not residential.

As a matter of fact,
we cannot be residential.

And, unfortunately, 
over time, that term has 
gotten somewhat co-opted.

I think in Madison, there's 
probably four or five companies 

that have independent living in 
their name, and there's only one 

true independent living, and we 
know that, but trying to undo that 

is difficult, and that takes 
constant recommunication.

Real quickly,
that's one of the reasons we just 
went through a name change.

We were service and center 
for independent living.

We're now Service Center for 
Independent Life.

MAUREEN RYAN:  Ah.
Very good.

That's a great suggestion because 
I know a lot of centers for 
independent living with that 

in their name, if we did a survey,
are probably getting more of those 
calls because of that.

Great suggestion.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We definitely 
decreased the number of.

MAUREEN RYAN:  Did you?  
Great.

So that's our cost, that's 
more of our external network.

I want to back up a minute 
to our internal network.

Again, systems advocacy was our, 
one of our, or the biggest 
priorities.

And how we tried to look at that 
is, we have advocacy surveys 

that are given out in every 
independent living center,

constantly, at all times 
throughout, every day,

throughout the consumers' 
experiences with 

independent living centers,
centers for independent living.

And the consumer identifies their 
top priorities or their top 
barriers to independent living.

And that goes on all year long,
and we tally those as an 
independent living center,

then we tally those once 
a year as a statewide total,

and we take a look at 
what rises to the top,

and those are part, a big part 
of what drives our annual 
advocacy platform.

Now, obviously, those, that 
information is a little skewed 
because it's centers who are 

Coming, it's consumers 
who are coming to where 
centers are responding.

And, obviously, there are a lot 
of people with disabilities that 

we're not reaching by 
the centers yet.

So it is somewhat skewed 
by people's needs who come 
to the centers.

So we realize that, and it's 
part of our advocacy platform.

We also realize there are other 
components that go into our annual 

advocacy platform, but we use that 
information and set an annual 

advocacy platform as 
our IL network.

And, again, our IL network 
includes the centers,

it includes our coalition,
and it includes our SILC.

And, you know,as Paula mentioned 
yesterday, those issues,

unfortunately, still seem to be 
pretty much the same issues; 

housing,
transportation,
employment,
access to acute long-term care.

But every once in a while,
we will see some new issues rise,
depending on the climate.

We've gone to managed care in 
Wisconsin, so, obviously,

that was a big concern for a lot 
of consumers, how is this going 

to change am I life, am I going 
to get services, am I going to 

continue to get services,
will they be different.

We've also had a big increase in 
mental health funding, so a lot 

of people with mental health 
issues are involved in the 

centers, wanting to hear 
more about those opportunities 
with funding.

The centers for independent living 
all have the assistive technology 
contracts through the state,

which comes from the federal 
government, through the state,

to all the eight independent 
living centers.

So we get a lot of requests 
around assistive technology and 
home modifications. 

So sometimes those issues rise 
really high, depending on what 

the flavor is, which is 
request we take those consumer 
surveys all year long.

We found that when it came 
time to do a new state plan 
for independent living,

sometimes the SILCs would go out 
and do focus groups right before 

that new state plan was 
going to be happening.

And it was whatever was the hot 
topic right then, that's what rose 
to be included in the SPIL. 

Well, that's a six month 
process when IT got down 

to details and the dSU 
didn't meet state approval,

those topics can change so we 
found it more effective to 

continually look at it throughout 
the year and tally the information 
all yearlong. 

Jason.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was 
going to mention the way do that 

when we open up CSRs we have the 
survey form and you click on each 

CSR intake and a lot of centers 
will put the link to the survey 
on their websites.

We promote that and so you can do 
that aggressively throughout the 
year?

Thanks, he is assistant director 
to Madison, independent living 

in Madison and one way we 
state connected is the state 

association, center for 
independent living and SILC all 
are in the same office.

Why with other people?  

It helps our communication and 
helps us stay connected.

Do we always get along?  

No, but we have to work together 
and I think it really makes sense 
to be under the same roof.

So any time you have anything to 
chime in, Jason, please feel free,
or anybody else.

So that's the internal 
piece and external piece.

We give it a big whirl and have 
to be connected to all of it.

A couple of components of quality.

We wanted to look at, it is not 
just your programs and services 
that have quality pieces.

The things we really need to look 
at and value and are crucial to 

the success of independent living 
is also the infrastructure.

And as infrastructure, we are 
talking about your finances,

your HR,
your resource development,

sound governance 
and good practices.

Sometimes you see centers that do 
really great advocacy but their 

doors are going to be closed 
soon if they don't pay attention 
to what is going on.

It takes both pieces to do that.

We wanted to start with the 
infrastructure and make sure 

we had good practices and we took 
a look at that with all of the 

executive directors sharing what 
they thought were best practices,

and sharing all of their 
policies and procedures,

discussing that,
looking at what was best.

I think almost every executive 
director I ever met has learned 
something the hard way,

and we are trying to avoid 
that for our peers with other 
executive directors.

So, again, sharing best practices,
being at the table,

talking about that all 
the time and defining that.

Those are big components in our 
QUILS process, our QUILS peer 

process and we also keep 
up to date and keep current 
by our state association.

Meet every month.

We meet face to face every 
other month, and on the 
phone every other month.

So one month we will 
be via conference call.

The next month we will be face 
to face, and we move our 
meetings around the state.

We find that really helpful.

First of all, we have, I think 
quite a distance but probably not 
so much as the other states.

But it's 7 and a half hours 
between our centers, 

our farthest apart are 7 and a 
half hours so we don't want people 
to always have to travel.

We thought it was 
fair to get around.

So we move our meetings 
around the state.

That also gives us a feel, 
a really good sense to know 

the staff, our other members 
of our IL network, our brothers 

and sisters when we 
were at the center.

We meet right at the center.

We save money by not 
meeting at the motel.

We can use the copiers and we know 
we have accessible rooms and 
conference rooms to meet in.

Again, we meet the staff and 
we learn about the uniquenesses 
of the center.

We found that very valuable.

Again, we meet all of the time and 
keep this discussion real and 

alive and talk about our best 
practices in this format. 

The second piece, which I will 
talk about next, is a program and 
services piece and I will 

tell you how we meet about that 
but things under examples of 
quality that I wanted to mention,

we talk about staff a lot 
when we get at this level.

H.R. and staff, and how do you 
know if you have enough staff 

and a lot of times the staff 
will say we can't do outreach.

We can't even take care of the 
I&Rs coming in our door now.

How do we know when that's 
real and how do we know when 
that's not real.

You have some staff probably 
will never say they have 
too much to do.

You probably have a few staff 
that will always say they 
have too much to do.

How do we look at that?  

And so we talked about trying to 
capture data again and one of 

the things that we found was 
helpful tool is to try to get your 

staff to report realtime and some 
centers do it 100% reporting.

We try to get all of the centers 
do at least 75% of their staff 

time is documented in the 
management information system.

So no matter what their job 
description is, because we all 

have different job descriptions 
within the center,

we should be counting your time 
for something at least 75%.

These are issues that we ran into 
when we looked at travel time,

when we looked at prep time,
when we looked at being out 

in the community that wasn't 
direct consumer service time.

How do we capture all of that?  

How do we write that down?  

How do we really ascertain if 
staff are really working and how 

do we get them to enter 
things into the management 
information system.

So we really encouraged having all 
of the centers have their staff 
document at least 75% of the time.

I know that was kind of crucial.

I know some of the 
centers really fought that.

I will stop for a second and 
see if there are any big 
comments on that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Paula had 
already mentioned 
(Indiscernible) in Kansas 

but our designated state unit is 
demanding we put 100% of our time 

in the system and including 
it as part of the part for 
the time sheet.

You always give them 
that argument. 

Okay.

Any other thing?  

Feelings that's really a wrong 
way to go or that's a really 
great way to go?  

Any big issues about 
that in the room?  

I know we certainly had 
them at the table when we 
started the discussion.

Something for you to think about.

It may work.
It may not.

It seems to be a really good 
measuring tool, also.

Another thing that we utilized 
is going to 80% of goals set 

should be, we should meet 80% of 
the goals set and so we look at 

that as a center, so if you have, 
I am not very good at math,

so if you have 800 goals set 
in a center of the year,

you need to meet 80% of those 
so somewhat find a way to measure 

the success of what you are 
doing with your consumers.

Now, that isn't exactly 
a perfect system.

We realize that.

There is lots of things that 
are out of our control when 
we work with consumers.

It isn't always a reflective, 
a reflection of the true quality 
of the work that's happening,

but it's a very strong indicator 
and it has been very helpful,

and one of the tools we found 
out about that is sometimes, 

and we talked a little bit 
about this yesterday as a 
consumer will come in.

Joe comes in and wants to 
rent a house who has terrible 
credit history.

He doesn't know about 
housing authority.

He doesn't know about section 8 
subsidized housing,

but he wants to rent a house.

So he comes in the door and he 
says, I want to rent a house.

Put that down as the goal.

Well, that can take four years,
and in the meantime, Joe has got 
that same goal for four years.

He's not feeling any success at 
that goal if it's taking him four 
years to get to that.

Jane, the staff person,
who is working with him,

still got this one goal, she may 
have many, this one goal that she 

is still working on the 
same goal all this time.

So we talked about, and this is 
kind of a popular term that we 
didn't really like but it's 

a different way of interviewing 
and talking to your consumer,

some people call it motivational 
interviewing but they really 
like that term.

Again it has to be ILEY,
the consumer decides and 
talked about it.

But studying the goal as,
let's talk about that,

let's talk about making sure 
you know different kinds of 
housing is available.

Goal one.

There is a thing called 
subsidized housing and you 
can fill out an application.

Wow, goal two, we could be into 
the third month and we could have 
had success on two goals.

And this isn't to inflate,
make really easy goals just so we 
all feel good about ourselves.

But it's a way to look at 
that you don't set the fly 

to the moon scenario and 
nobody ever reaches it.

So that was one thing that we 
thought is, if we have this 

dialogue with consumers in 
a real way and break the steps 

down because we need 
to break this down.

There is lots of 
components to that.

There is other options out there.

Maybe they find out they truly 
want to own a home and it wasn't 
renting after all.

The continual dialogue with 
the consumer throughout the 
process is really important.

Again, sometimes what happens and 
what's real when they come in the 

door changes a month later,
changes a year later.

This constant discussion 
about goals should happen 
all along the way.

It doesn't have to be 
real lengthy and real formal 
and have checklists.

It's just true, let's talk about 
this and this is what is going on.

It doesn't have to 
take a long time.

Keep it real.
Keep it alive.
Keep it active.

That is one of the things we 
looked at when we set the goal.

Centers averaged around,
I think, 45%.

Now we have all but two 
centers reaching the 80% goal, 
if I am right,

Jason, you have your hand up.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes,

I was going to add to that.

Part of the surrounding 
association that we have is 

that the program meets in how we 
talk about how to measure it and 
define it and we work as directors 

and assistant directors to make 
sure we are counting the same way 
and providing a system of this 

throughout the process and this 
sets the standard in how we 
achieve that through our 

association as well as tools like 
tracking through ILRU and other 

things available I would suggest 
centers look at and also work 

collaboratively as 
an association on.

Right.

Yes, that gets a little bit 
into the programmatic which 
we will get into soon.

The staff wages, somebody, 
Paula just mentioned something 
about staff wages.

One of the things when we were 
looking at and talking about H.R.,

it seems like the directors 
were saying, gosh, I have 
so much turn over.

I go through all of this work to 
get somebody trained and do some 

counseling and then they are gone.

We've got the referrals 
built up and quality going 
and we don't have any staff.

I have to stop, referrals and 
hire somebody, post it, hire, 

train them, and it was, it was 
hard to maintain, it is a really 

big piece to maintain 
quality is to keep staff.

And having all of your eggs 
in one basket with one staff 

person knowing how to do something 
is risky because we know staff 

come and go, so one of the things 
we looked at with this staff 
turnover was staff wages.

Let's be honest.

Nobody goes into IL 
for the money, right?  

No one. 
[LAUGHTER]

And we really did see this one 
when the ARCIs came to Wisconsin,

we are statewide with them and we 
found they were paying for their 
INA person as opposed to what we 

were paying our IL specialist 
or IL coordinator and it made 
us go whoa.

So that's one of the reasons that 
we try to build up our fee for 
services is to try to really make 

sure we can pay staff well and 
give them good benefits and 

good training and really support 
our staff, because that really 
does pay off.

That is a return 
on your investment.

It costs time and money when you 
can't provide the service.

It costs time and money to 
stop and at the post and 
hire and interview and train. 

So we really wanted to 
take a look at staff wages.

We surveyed what people in each 
of the independent living centers 

were paying staff at different 
levels, even executive director 
levels, all different levels.

We looked at those through our 
workforce development with our 

regional cost of wages,
and it's been real useful.

I don't think there's a center 
that's paying what they wish they 

could and that may always be an 
issue, but we at least know what 

somewhat comparable 
centers are paying.

We're all unique and different,
but when the ADRCs came in,

it really woke up or 
opened up our eyes.

It was a good HR tool. 

Staff development plan, I want 
to take a minute to look at that.

Again, that's the HR piece that,
don't wait till the end of the 
year and do an annual eval.

Talk with your staff all the time,
all the staff should have a 

development plan that makes sure 
that they know what their current 

job description is, 
that they understand 

their essential functions,
that they've signed and dated that 
position description.

As we know, people who work in 
independent living centers 

sometimes get lots of new 
projects thrown on their plates.

It's not enough really to hire a 
new person, but there's some new 

opportunity that comes in that 
gets thrown on their plate.

Oh. There's nothing in the job 
description that reflects that.

You've got to really be careful 
about that and keep making sure 
that what we're looking at as 

essential job functions is really 
what that person is doing 

in a day, and keep those 
fresh so they understand the 
expectations about them.

Along with the essential job 
functions, and what their job 

description is, is to please 
address their training plans.

Again,
train,

train,
train,
train.

It seems like people in 
independent living centers have 

to know everything about everybody 
with a disability all the time.

I mean, and it never ends,
and it's always changing.

In we're in a really changing 
business if you want to call that,

a lot of assistive technology is 
happening every day and there's 

new resources out on the market 
and our staff are looked to to be 

up to date about those ethics,
and it takes a lot of time 
to know that.

If we don't allow time for them 
to look up and research and be 

good resources on that,
it won't happen.

If we don't value that with 
training, it won't happen.

So we need to build that in our 
staff development plans.

It's really important.

Another piece within our staff 
development plans that we utilize 

in Wisconsin is addressing 
committee involvement.

Again, that's internal committees 
within our IL network and external 

committees out into some of the 
local, regional, state, and 
national committees.

Really be thoughtful about that,
the committees they're on,

are they relevant to what 
they're doing in their work?  

Are they relevant and of 
benefit to your center?  

Think about those things when 
you're working on your staff 
development plans.

It's kind of committee 
involvement.

You have people that like to be on 
every committee they can so they 

don't have to be 
back at the office.

That information is not being 
shared at all if they're just out 
there being on these committees.

We'll talk a little bit more about 
tying that back in in a minute. 

The point is, we're trying 
to stay connected and keep 
real and keep alive.

So that was kind of from the 
executive director infrastructure,

H.R., sound government piece. 

The other thing we want to 
look at regarding quality is the 
programmatic or service piece.

As Jason mentioned, we have what 
we call a program committee 

meeting that meets right before 
our state association meeting,

and typically those are people 
from assistive directors,

program directors, they meet right 
before the board meeting every 
other month, face-to-face,

and they talk about services and 
best practice in services.

Remember, we've already 
defined best practice.

We've already defined value.

And we know what we're 
supposed to be doing.

But if we don't schedule time to 
sit down and talk about that,

it all can get 
dissolved very fast.

So we build this in. 

It's also really, really 
good for your support.

Again, we're really the only 
ones out here doing this, and it's 

really, really helpful to get our 
people together to talk about new 

things that are coming up in the 
community, struggles, what the 

staff are coming up against, and 
keeping it ILE, in this world with 

other competitors that don't have 
that value of having it be ILE. 

We talk about, again, 
how to measure things 
and how to do reports.

One of the riskiest things I see 
centers doing, as we go around the 

state, is waiting till the end of 
the year to run their 704 reports.

Oh, my God.

There's a Katrillion things that 
can go long with that all year,

and if you wait till the end of 
the year to do what you need 

for your 704, I can pretty much 
guarantee you're going to have 
a problem somewhere.

We really encourage running those 
reports with whatever management 

system you use, whatever outside 
reports you use, to do your 
management information system,

and collect the data and 
information you want in your 704,

to be doing that on a regular 
basis, first of all, to see if 
there's any technical glitches,

to see if things are 
tallying an upgrade.

Why does it say you have 700 CSRs 
over here when it says there are 
only 14 over here.

You do not want to wait until 
December to find that out.

It also helps when you /run 
reports to look at what your 
individual staff are doing.

There's always going to be a few 
staff who just don't get it or 
just aren't applying it.

And it really helps to be 
on them earlier and talking 
about that with them.

You've always got some staff 
that just despise paperwork,

no matter how much you work 
with them, but you can be on 
top of them earlier.

So run those reports regularly,
consistently, and often,

and look at those from a 
management perspective to see if 
you think you're running on track.

Any questions so far about that?  

Randy.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: How would 
you come to a resolution 

between the centers, we have some 
centers that would do a consumer 

service record on everybody they 
provided wavered services to or 

everybody they provided attendant 
care to, so when you looked at 

their numbers compared to another 
center's numbers, who received 

similar amounts of funding, 
I remember one, 1100 relocations 

in the area, when you figured out 
their FTEs, it was less than .5,

or .50 per hour, times that per 
each person on relocation.

MAUREEN RYAN:  Great question.

And, you know, honestly, we don't 
have that perfect, you know.

We always talk about 
best practice.

Will it occur a hundred percent 
all the time?  

No.
I'll give an example of that.

Work incentive benefits 
specialists, we have one, 

at least one of those in all the 
centers, hopefully two.

We try to have two staff, if we 
can, because as we talked about 

that, a staff person 
can easily come and go. 

There are some centers 
who say, we're not going 
to open that person.

And the majority of centers do.

And we talk about that,
they've agreed to the best 

practice, but every once in a 
while there will be one of these 
that just don't do that.

And their rationale about that is,
they're coming in specifically for 
just that service.

We're going to do that service,
it's going to be time-limited,

and they're going to be gone. 
If there's other things they want 
other than work incentives,

Any, you know, any other thing,
we will open, we will have a CSR.

But if it comes in for one thing 
and it's a short period of time,

they're not, they've chosen 
not to do a CSR on that.

Again, we've agreed 
on best practice.

Is it a hundred percent always 
followed all the time?  

No.

And would we rather, when we run 
reports at the end of the year,
which I'll show you later,

we will have one of those blips in 
the screen where we actually look 
at this from center to center,

then we can delve down and figure 
out why and say, oh, that's right,

they don't open these, or they 
don't open this we understand why.

Do we wish it was consistent?  
Yes.

One of the things I'll bring up 
right now is, we can talk all we 

want about best practice and 
agree on best practice.

Centers go back to their center 
and they have a governing board 
who decides what to do.

The things we're talking about 
are on a level that we hope boards 

don't have to have 
all their fingers in.

That would be somewhat 
micromanaging,

but every once in a while,
we'll say, well,

we'll have a decision made 
amongst the state association,

but they'll say, I have to see 
what my board thinks about that.

We rarely ever, I think there's 
been two instances in the 20 years 

I've been involved where a board 
has said, no, we're not going to 
play on that.

Some of that was the way the 
director communicated to the 
board when they went back.

But it is pretty rare.

Good question.
Let's see.

So that's, this is 
the program committee.

We work on best practice.

We have best practice committees.

We run about an average 
of five best practice 
committees every day.

That means they're current.

Those will come and go.

As I just mentioned a while ago,
we've got a recent influx of new 

mental health funding in our 
state, and there's a real 
opportunity for independent living 

centers to play a greater part in 
that than they ever have before.

Do we want to, and can 
we and keep it ILE?  

That's 
when the mental health best 
packet committee meets and 

looks at what's available and 
decides if they can really,

truly offer that, keeping our 
core principles and values about 

IL real, so they have met a couple 
years ago when we had we had a new 

service come up to look to see 
what that would look like,

going to an independent living 
center, going forward in an 

independent living center,
it looked like it could.

One of the things we did at that 
point was to stop and back up and 

think how friendly it was for a 
person with a mental illness to 

receive services within an 
independent living center.

And we had some work to do.

Some of the centers were very far 
along with recovery principles,

and some of the centers were still 
really old school with how to work 

with people with mental illnesses.

Some were leery to do that.

We had an executive director who 
actually said, how will we know 
when it's not a crisis time,

how will the center know 
to back out of services and 
refer to crisis?  

Where's our liability for that?  

That's a lot of, 
that just took training.

So we had to really have some 
open dialogue about that.

We had some focus 
groups with the staff.

Then we had separate focus groups 
with the management.

It had to be a total 
buy-in of that.

We tried to dispel some myths.

We went through a lot of training.

We developed a checklist,
checklist with pointers about how 

to be more IL friendly and ready 
to work with people with mental 
illness in your centers. 

We took time to build that general 
knowledge and comfortableness 

before we started to want 
to think about adding on 

specialized services for 
folks with mental illness.

And we did that a 
couple years ago.

Now we have this new opportunity,
and so the mental health best 

practice committee is back 
up and alive again, looking 
at the new opportunities.

So the best practice committees 
can ebb and flow with need.

There's a couple that have been 
around since the beginning and 

haven't ever found an opportunity 
to stop their work.

Those are the assistive technology 
and home MODS best practice.

And I think that's because in 
Wisconsin, we are looked to as 

the people to go to about 
assistive technology and home 

mods, so we always have a lot of 
issues to work with there. 

The other one is personal 
assistance services, the centers 
that provide personal assistance 

services seem to always have 
concerns and issues to look at.

A big one right now is the overlap 
of the affordable care act.

We have these best 
practice committees.

We have a toll-free number.

They typically meet every 
month or every other month.

That's up to the committee.

We try to get representation from 
numerous centers of different 

layers of staff,
some management,
some direct services.

It's a good way for leadership 
development, get people in,

accept the agenda,
get call information in,
take the minutes,

facilitate the discussion,

so it's a good tool for 
leadership development. 

Let's see. 
I think that's good 
on the quality.

I will try to move this along.

Oh, I am running way behind.

Sorry about that. 

SILC, yes,
we work closely with SILC.

I will mention 
something about that.

Again, communicating our message.

People were so confused.

What is the difference in 
independent living,

centers for independent living,

the coalition of independent 
living centers and your state 
independent living Council,

who are all of your IL 
people and what is the 
difference and does it matter?  

We were taking a lot of time 
trying to explain that for 

the little return we got on that 
so we just call it the Wisconsin 
Independent Living Network.

We have the same website.

We have the same brochures.

We have links to all of the 
centers that have individual 

websites but we developed our 
materials to be that way and the 

advocacy committees that 
I mentioned before are, 

our advocacy committee are 
Wisconsin Independent Living 
Network committees so coalition 

staff, coalition work staff,
independent livings were all 
on it together.

It was too hard to 
get them separated.

We wanted to work together to be 
on the same page, anyway, so we 

started branding that as the 
way to describe ourselves.

Don't worry about the intricacies.

That's our issue internally.

We took the independent living of 
Wisconsin to the outer world.

I am ready to talk about 
the three tools.

As I mentioned, we have three 
tools that we use.

One of them is this 
704 and beyond.

You have to do a 704.

We don't just want to do a 704,
sends it in to RSA and complain 
about it.

We wanted to really use the data 
that we had to work so hard to put 

in the 704, but also data really 
told a better picture of what we 
do in independent living,

not just what RSA was asking,
so we developed a 704 and beyond 

and we will talk about that.

Our second tool was the QUILS,
which is following for the peers 

for independent livings and 
also ILC is our great investment 

and that's what we work R 
used for another audience.

So the first tool,
704 and beyond,

looks a lot demographics and 
statistics because,

again, we are talking about the 
704 and that's what they seem to 
really value.

We have, I think the report, 
we will have a link to all of 

these reports, the full reports at 
the end of the presentation.

I think our report on this is 
about, looking at about 25 
different things.

We have been doing it over 
time, so we have trends on 
every one of these.

But one of the biggest 
things we wanted to look at 

and one of the things we used 
this for is our underserved.

We are supposed to have statewide 
coverage in Wisconsin.

We don't have enough money to do 
that obviously.

But everybody is receiving 
something, so we determined 

no one is unserved but there are 
definitely some areas of the state 

that are more 
underserved than others.

And our analysis and our process 
for this, we will admit is 

definitely statistically flawed.

We are constantly looking for a 
better approach out there but this 

is what we have been using and it 
has been a helpful guide.

Is it totally accurate?  
No.

But here is what we looked at.

We have to look at CSRs.

Another fault of RSA, they only 
value the CSRs when we do tons 

of great work in community and 
we do tons of great work through 

I and R but we are only talking 
CSRs right now, so anybody who 

has an open plan, and we thought 
about the statistics for the 
number of people that are supposed 

to be in every county with a 
disability based on the census.

This is institutions and 
out of institutions.

We found those numbers for every 
county and we realized that not 

everybody with a disability 
needs services.

Not everybody with a disability 
needs independent living services.

So how many do you think, 
how many people with disabilities 

do you think need independent 
living services?  

We already know it's not everybody 
so we just picked a number,

1 out of 1,000, how about that?  

Probably not accurate,
but what we can come up with.

But what we are looking at,
right in the middle of the state, 
I know you can't see it right now.

We have a map up of Wisconsin.

In the middle of the state,
there is a county that looks 
somewhat blue.

That's FORAGE county,
that was an area where we were 

talking about earlier about the 
area with the worst independent 

living center and now it changed 
and it is in the middle of the 

state and so Forage county we have 
150CSRs in a year and that means 

16.38 persons with disabilities 
per 1,000 people are being served 
by a independent living center.

Is that good?  
Is that great?  
Is that awful?  

This is the standard we are using 
and using it consistently across 
every county so it at least can 

demonstrate the standard range of 
where we are in the state,

so in the left-hand corner we have 
a standard deviation and you can 

see that the pink is like when you 
are really serving more people 

based on your population,
all the way down to the gray, 

which we don't have anybody that 
year that is that low.

So we can find, so we can find 
where we think we are best serving 
the population in our state.

That's the best we can come up 
with for a way to look at 
underserved geographically,

but we also know that there are 
other ways to look at underserved.

And that could be by age.

It used to be years ago, people 
thought independent living centers 

didn't work with old folks and 
they didn't work with young folks.

They only worked with people in 
their 20s, 30s, 40s.

We know that's not true.

What we did again was did a 
statistical analysis based on the 

census on what is available in 
Wisconsin per age by disability.

And we ran our numbers for state 
and we came up with are doing 

a really good darn job at all 
age breakouts except for people 

under 5, which made sense to us,
at least we could understand that.

So that was a way to say, Wow,
you really do serve old people 

and wow, you really do well 
with transition-age folks.

So as I mentioned, we have been 
doing all of these about five 
years now.

We have them more individually 
by center, and then we run a 
statewide report.

Our SILC puts this compilation 
together and they do it year after 

year and we have been able to show 
the trend and the trend is very 
helpful in us looking at patterns.

We have a trend on every slide 
but obviously I am not going 
to go through that.

The same thing with ethnicity.

We have a responsibility to look 
at race and ethnicity.

Again, we use the census numbers 
and then we looked at what our 
numbers showed.

Statistically, again, we were 
doing a really good job.

Now, for some folks that, for some 
centers, that means only serving 
one person who is Latino.

Because that's what 
their census data is.

So it's basing it on reality,
 real numbers from a census,

not just to guessing, it feels 
like we need to do more outreach.

It sounds like disability types.

Everybody seems to think the 
centers for independent living 

should do more with 
that population.

The DDH say how many independent 
living centers do we have and the 

folks for mental health say can 
you do more for us, you only work 

with PHYS/dis and we were a little 
low in mental health and I think 

12% is because of it is multiple 
disabilities and it is probably 

a person with, for example, a 
physical disability and an 

illness, and it's really 
hard to capture for RSA and 

for many measurement management 
information systems.

Again, we think we 
are doing a good job.

Could we improve?  

Yes.

So that's the, that's an example 
of the 704 and beyond tool.

Things you have to do for 
the 704 that we took a look 
at and utilized to help us.

That's the way we looked 
at our underserved.

The next example,
the next tool I want to 
talk about is QUILS.

Again, I mentioned a little 
bit about how that started 
and why that started.

We have copyrighted that 
tool and that process.

First we developed a tool and we 
copyrighted it and a the reason 

we did that is because we didn't 
want anybody to mess with it.

We didn't want any DSU to mess 
with it OR state funder or 

compliance referrer 
to mess with this.

It is totally voluntary and 
totally confidential 

and we wanted to keep it 
that way and we thought we 
needed to copyright it.

I think it was, I am trying to 
remember the year we did that.

It was '99.

So we have a tool and we used the 
same standard assurances as in the 

rehab act and indicators and we 
looked at a demonstration of that 

happening and again, Paula talked 
about we put a checklist by some 

people and what we want 
to do is we want to see 
if that's happening.

We believe there is a lot of value 
going beyond compliance and we 

believe people who came 
in to do compliance reviews 
didn't really know IL.

It took a peer to be able to 
really understand what is truly 

happening in an IL center 
and a peer to actually 
provide recommendations.

So it's a very intense process.

It takes around a week.

The center picks the team.

The team is a mixture of a of what 
is relevant in your center.

If you have a PAS program,
for example, you want someone on 
the team who is familiar with PAS.

We try to do a mixture of people 
who can do financial oversight 

well along with direct services 
so we get a lot of involvement 
from the centers.

That's our pool that we work with.

We have trained facilitators 
that facilitate the process 
in Wisconsin.

It's about 60 hours apiece per 
person; the size of the team 
depends on the size of the center.

We looked usually at all programs 
across that they provide.

We interview staff,
volunteers,
consumers,
board.

We looked at materials.

We traveled to the outside 
agencies that's very,
very in depth.

And it's looking at things to see 
if they are that ILEY thing,
do they pass the ILEY test.

Does it look like an independent 
living center or maybe you worked 
into an ARDC.

And as Paula said, it is a new set 
of fresh eyes and can't pull the 

wool over us and there are a lot 
of different prices in here that 

gather information all throughout 
the day that are on the team.

In the evening we come back and 
process it as a team.

It's not one person's opinion 
about whether this is really 
happening in the center or not.

We glean information,
evidence in a demonstration 

whether it really has or not and 
we put this through the process 
with team findings during the day.

We go through this process and we 
report out a verbal reporting at 

the end of the week, and then we 
send a full written report to the 

executive director and 
the board chair.

We feel that's very important.

What when we first started it out,
we used to send it to executive 

director and we found in a couple 
of cases, particularly in other 

states but it wasn't
passed on to the board.

Not a good move.

So we make that clear up front,
that the final copy is going to 

the executive director and the 
board chair, the center,

they can decide how to use it,
what recommendations they want 

to take and work on from 
what we have suggested.

We typically talked about 
maintaining the good stuff 

that they do and ways that maybe 
they can tweak it to improve it.

Make recommendations on 
ways they can improve.

I think I have done 28 QUILS peer 
reviews and we always found great 

things and we've always 
found things to improve.

I want to get through 
this last one.

It is called,
ILCs are a great investment.

Again, when we found out 
we had to market our message 
differently to legislators.

We have an IL day every 
year the second week of 
February in Wisconsin.

All the independent living centers 
come down, get around 125 people.

We bring staff and we do 
a training the first day,

the second day we visit all 
of the legislators and drop off, 
and meet with them.

Invite them back to the centers.

On the third day we have 
our board meetings.

We found out the way we talked 
to legislators needed to be 
different.

They really, frankly, 
don't care how many IL skills 
trainings we do in a year.

That didn't mean anything to them.

We had to talk to them first 
of all about what independent 
living centers are,

why we are unique,
what we do differently,
so we had to explain this,

because we have been doing this 
every year, the legislators get 

this now, when they are 
new legislators we have 
to start all over again.

We talked about what we are 
required to do and what we can't 

do and then we turn this more 
into upcoming reporting.

We turn this to how many people 
were assisted with housing issues,

how many people were assisted 
with transportation issues and 
employment?  

These are things that the 
help comes with legislators 

because that's what 
constituents call them.

I have a transportation problem.

Don't start drafting legislation.

Call your independent 
living center.

We are your friends.

Call us.
Talk to us.

So these were the outcomes 
that we found was a much 
better message to do.

We also talked about, the way we 
do it really saves money.

It helps get people off public 
assistance, it helps people reach 
employment and get off benefits,

it helps people become more 
independent, less reliant on 
personal services, more reliant 

on assistive technology, getting 
people out of nursing homes and 
expensive institutions.

That saves money.

That demonstrates that the money 
that we get is a very, the public 

dollars that we get in independent 
living is a very good investment,

so we want more so we can do more.

That resonates with the 
legislators and we've 
been very successful. 

So those are my three programs.

This Wiki link has the 
full reports of all the 
materials available,

I think, or it will.

So thanks.

I'm sorry I had to go over a 
little fast.

[Applause].