APRIL REED: I'm going to start off with going through just some of the basics and I always think it's important for us to start with what's the definition. Thank you, Tim. We'll talk about what's the definition of peer support. We all know peer support is a core service, right? So it's something that we do. As part of our core services we do this. But the way we do it really varies from center to center. So some centers use paid staff. That's how they do peer support. I'm the staff person with a disability. I'm going to sit down with one of our consumers, I'm going to support them. I'm going to talk about disabilities and I'm going to talk about living well with disability. That's peer support. So that may be how some centers do their peer support, that core service requirement. Other programs will use volunteers as peers. Like we've heard, some of us are using groups. Some of us are doing one-on-one. Some of us are doing both. Each center we each have to figure out what works for us. And so you know, I work with a lot of rural centers who say listen, groups are amazing for us because we can get one staff person with 10 people and we can do peer support with all of those people at the same time which is great. We can't imagine doing one-on-one. How would we do that? So we have to figure out what works for us and that will be a conversation that we have throughout the day. So what do the regs say about peer support? Well, Title VII and standards indicators, they talk about what does that mean. So it's cross disability. The regs do use the word peer counseling. Amina and I are not fond of that because when you say the word counseling, people think of therapy, counseling services. So we prefer the term peer support but the regs do call it peer counseling and peer support. It's got to be cross disability. It's going to include IL services can include peer counseling. The program your CIL is supposed to support the philosophy of peer counseling, peer support. It also says the CILs should promote the development of peer relationships and peer role models. And that you should provide evidence in your annual report that you're developing peer relationships, peer role models and you are using individuals with significant disabilities. So for example, one way you might indicate you're doing that in the 704 report might be that you're using an individual with a significant disability as an instructor or as someone who's teaching a class or support group. That would count as peer support according to what the regulations say. For purposes of this training, we're going to be talking about an organized peer support program. So that word organized is very important. We're talking about a program that trains, that supervises, that matches, that supports peer mentor volunteers. We are not talking about paid staff, we are not talking about part time staff. We're not talking about what your advocates do that are paid or your independent living skills specialists that are paid. We are talking about peer mentor volunteers. So we're not talking about replacing what your staff do for peer support. Every day I do peer support as some part of my job. As a person with a disability, I work with consumers. So the volunteers aren't replacing what I'm doing. They're adding to it. So we're talking about an additional service to support the consumers. So again, this is not replacing what our staff do. This is additional support for consumers. What is happening nationally? What are centers doing? It varies from center to center. In 2008, CIL-NET survey. 61% of the respondents stated that they offered an organized peer mentor program. About half of them said that they had a program or curriculum for those peer mentors. When I see that number that only half of them have curriculum or training, that freaks me out. Because I know that if I don't train, if I'm not providing guidelines, I'm really just throwing people out there who yes, they have lots of skills but maybe they hadn't had guidance about how to use that. So that freaks me out as coordinator. 38% respondents indicated that they did not have a group and of that group 50% said it did once have a program and they found it difficult to maintain, they're not doing it any more. So we know a lot of people tried it. And kind of abandoned the effort. So this word peer mentoring, peer support, what do we actually mean by that? Well, it can be one-on-one. Some of us mentioned we are doing that. It can be in groups. Some of us mentioned we're doing that. It can be, for us it can be in person, it can be by phone, email. Social media. There's lots of ways that we can get someone peer support. We're also doing a mixture, about 65% of us are providing one-on-one peer support. About 90% of us that are offering peer mentor programs are doing the group support. The cool thing about this is if you look at any of the research about peer support, it's one of the easiest things to advocate for. Because we know it works. You don't have to look very hard to find tons of studies and surveys that show peer support works. Think about AA. They've done this for 100 years, they know it works. This is a model they use. Weight Watchers, another model. Get people together. Get them to support each other, share experiences, talk about struggles. We know this works. For us at ABIL, as Amina mentioned the mental health community really was our example of how to do peer support because they've done this for a long time. When you are talking about going to the board or talking about funders, we know this works. We don't have to work hard to find evidence that this works. Any questions for me about that? Everybody good on the definition of what we're going to be talking about? We're not getting rid of staff. We're not taking over the IL skills job or taking over the advocates job, we're talking about additional support using volunteers. Okay. Right. Amina, I'll let you take over. AMINA DONNA KRUCK: Thank you. Thank you, thank you. So April is the earth element of our program and I'm the wind element of our program. So I want to say something about why we don't call it counseling. In Arizona, to call it counseling, you have to be licensed. It as a word that's been grabbed up. And I also want to say something too, Doug, we don't want to change the support group you have. We're talking about how to use peer mentoring in another way to add on. So we don't have any desire to take away those groups that are going fine and supporting each other to be run the way they want to be run by peers. No. Not at all. In fact. We've started a group. We started a whole theater company because out of a women's support group that I had, someone had a dream to not just be a spectator but be a performer and the whole support group got so behind supporting her that she created Improbable Theater Company which has been going for 10 years now. So we're offering something in addition as a way, as another way. And I'm excited, I'm going to be excited to hear about some of the other things you all have experience with that we don't yet or haven't been as successful with. So we're not successful at everything we do. But we're one of five centers in Arizona. So I'm glad nobody's here from Missouri because that's like, for 20 years they've had 20 centers. We can't get one penny out of our state to help with independent living centers. And Phoenix is, Arizona, ABIL is in Phoenix which has over 50% of the population of the state. And then we have another center that's down in Tucson that has another quarter of the state. And then we have one up on the Navajo reservation that has a pinky part of the state and, but a very important and often left out area and then one in Yuma. So we, we're spread out all over. So we have like I said, over now 100 staff members in the personal assistance. And that's our mission. These are different programs we have at ABIL. Improbable Theater isn't listed on here. So we're always leaving something out. But in my unit that I supervise, we have the benefits to work program. We have a bond project. We're going to have a promise grant coming on soon and we have the work incentive planning and assistance program. Community living options is not in my unit. It is, was developed with our division of developmental disabilities. It's a program that serves a lot of it is through mentoring and peer support. People who qualify for DD services by definition of disability but not financially and in our state if you don't qualify for Medicaid, you don't get any services because again, there's no state money for anything. And so those folks were only getting help if they were victims or victimizers. So we created that program. Community Reintegration. That's our program that's helping people move out of nursing homes that Fernando Cruz works in. Early intervention outreach to the rehab centers, employment services we have a ticket employment network. Empowering youth and that's all of these are not in my purview. Empowering youth and transition so that's one person. Half an FTE goes out to schools to work with the special ed kids about independent living and disability awareness and that kind of thing. I'm saying that because it's not even a piss in the bucket for the need that's out there. It's just horrifying and we're really aware of that. So pardon my language. Home modifications. We have contracts with the Medicaid agencies as well as many cities in the valley. Living well with a disability that's in my shop. Teaching that 10 week class. Personal assistance services is a whole business of itself. Reintegration from nursing homes is in there twice. Oh, that's supposed to be community integration, maybe. I don't know. This is my life. That's in my shop. So that is Robert Wood Johnson grant to move the DD system towards self-determination. And we've now, we have the Robert Wood Johnson for five years. And then we've had contracts with DD we just got our third contract so we've been working, like, 17 years pushing that system towards self-determination, pushing it towards self advocacy. They've got the language down great but they're still grabbing people great and telling them it's time to go pee. Focusing on bodily functions this morning, sorry. But it is shocking that still how down you get to the level of the staff, little training or understanding they have. So we our grant is all about teaching people with developmental disabilities self-advocacy skills. And then pushing policy towards that direction as well. And we help start people first in the state of Arizona but they're going on their own now. Socialization through recreation. Sports and fitness center and they left advocacy off of this which is funny. They is me, because advocacy of course I got somebody who is an advocacy specialist and that's all he does. He creates advocacy trainings based on what do people need and want to know that will help them move along. And some big events. He just got the NAACP Humanitarian Award, David Carey did for his work with Renaldo from Center for Disability Law to do annual African-American disabilities summit that people come from out of state to go to. So he's really into now that we've moved to the disability empowerment center into creating really big events. And he has an annual self health and wellness fair he has over 80 vendors that comes to. He turned out to be a mastermind. We've never been good at raising money. This guy raises $30,000 to spend on bus signs and billboards to advertise this. Because we just never did it that business model. But he gets sponsors for these booths. It's, like he, he turned out to be a sleeper that woke up in a way I never knew before. He's just amazing. He's a really tall guy who is a quadriplegic uses this huge power chair. When he goes to the legislature, he's always noticed and he has gained a lot of respect down there. So that's also in my unit and a monthly newsletter too. This is a picture of our new place of disability empowerment center that we built about six years ago. It was like a 12 year dream. Light rail in Phoenix which is pretty new goes right by it. Doesn't stop for a mile either direction. It goes right by it. So we're, you know, we just found out it will only cost $16 million to put one near us. So that's one of our new advocacy pieces. Founded in '81. This is my by line because no one knows, Arizona Bridge to Independent Living, they think we're a nursing home or assisted living center. I realized when I left my cards nobody knew what it was. So we added this little byline: provides advocacy and programs by and for people with disabilities and now we're looking at a whole rebranding thing and our mission statement. So the peer mentor support program actually I started in 1990. The program started a year before me. I got hired by Jerry Dalrymple because of my peer counseling background, I had this, that and I'm a long time 12 step person and I'm very committed to that peer relationships way of growing. And I have a counseling degree and there's some very sick things about me being a professional and you being the one that needs help. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people who go in thinking they have good intentions but they have control issues and they don't have such good intentions. There's really helpful people in mental health system and I know wonderful ones and got help from some of them. But this peer thing did for me what no counselor could ever do for me. And in my own personal empowerment. I told you this already. Huge area. Not enough people. Also, the person who hired me was, he had paraplegia and he was an ex cop and he didn't get peer mentoring and he was also a member of the PVA, Paralyzed Veterans Association. And they were, he really wanted to create something he didn't have. And then about a year later, our new director had been injured in Detroit and had gone to Kessler and had had peer mentoring. So that's when the program really got bumped up because, so we had to have leadership who believed in it. That's what I'm trying to say, you have to dedicate resources to it. I went around, I used to be community integration director, I went around and interviewed people who were running successful peer programs. And what I got taught is that you know we had, of course, staff who also had disabilities. But then, you know, like even now as big as we are, we're big because we have 50 people working in the PAS unit. You know what I'm saying that are managing 2,000 other people. We still have independent living skills advocates. One, for the East Valley, one for the West Valley. One for Casa Grande. It's not enough. One is a male African-American chair user, one is a female. You know what I mean? They don't fit everybody's needs. So it made sense to want to have a mentoring program where you could people could get matched maybe on disability or maybe on goal or expertise or maybe on sex or, you know, gender, thank you. Or maybe they needed to be matched on because they both had reoriented to Phoenix which that is a big issue for people because there's always so many people moving into Phoenix. So I had this masters in counseling. I keep that licensure up although I don't use it for anything very often. So peer mentor, the program was meant to support people's independent living goals. So a person, a staff person will be working with someone and you know, people come in with more than one goal. And so, and isolation is often a part of it. So then that staff will refer somebody over to get peer mentoring. So the peer mentors have really, the program has morphed a lot over time. And some of that has to do with the needs and the changes in the center, the needs and changes of the population that we serve. But they use their own personal experience living with a disability and are you supposed to be doing this part now? I don't remember. So they use their own personal experience living with disability to empower others to reach their independent living goals. So we know that, we know that is what we are doing here right? The volunteers are the same thing. So the real, in the beginning what was hard was two things. One getting the powers that be to support the idea. We started out having somebody that was an independent living advocate part time and volunteer coordinator part time. And at that point people were coming in. They needed mentoring, they were going to that same person and that person was being both the volunteer coordinator and also the staff person that was working with the mentee. And that didn't work very good. And what I got convinced by somebody else that was running a mental health peer program and had done for quite a long time was she said you've got to get to your board and your director to get their commitment to support a volunteer coordinator. Full time. And what they do, if you really want this program to work, to really take charge of it. And at that time we only had, you know, four direct service people. So asking them to commit that much of our Part C dollars took some convincing. But because we had a change, so fate, I always say about advocacy, you can have your plans but you have to be a good opportunist. So then when Susan became our director and she had peer mentoring, she got it so like there was the executive director, which was Bob Michaels at the time. Bob wasn't a peer at the time. Had never had peer mentoring. Came from DD as a person. Good guy. Moved independent living a million miles but this is, I knew him back when, okay? Then there was Jerry, who was the community integration director who hired me. With that goal in mind of getting this program going knowing my background and knowing at some point he was going to be leaving and I could maybe take his place. So then Susan switched and came in instead of Bob and so I could start talking to her but she was a business woman. So she said you can do it if you can get as many volunteer hours out of the volunteers as you would get out of one FTE. If you're going to dedicate one FTE of time, you have to be able, and I think that was 1500 hours or something. So that was our first goal when we were able to get that. So that's the getting the numbers and hours to justify staff time. So that's talking business to a business woman about how we could afford to dedicate precious Part C dollars in that direction and then getting the staff to buy in. Because staff is so involved in their role as helping professional and they don't want to let go of people because they really are helping people and having a groovy time and getting them to trust. So either they would want to throw at us the people they didn't know what to do with or they wouldn't want to let go of somebody. You know? So getting the staff to understand. And it continues to be. Because staff changes, right? It's an ongoing process. So why don't you talk about this part? APRIL REED: I think that obviously I was not around for this part of it. But I think one of the interesting parts about the fact that our executive director at the time said you need a certain amount of hours is you guys never did that for years and years. You never hit that 1500 hour mark. AMINA DONNA KRUCK: Right. We set the goal but it took us a while to get there. APRIL REED: It was a long long time. But what I think that they did that was so smart is they went back and said let us tell you stories. They talked to her about who are these peer mentors, what are they doing? She's a smart business woman but she also loves IL and she loves, you know, seeing people move forward and I think that maybe is what got her to say Okay. Well, we'll let this go on and come back and tell me what you're doing. So, so the peer mentor program today we try to keep about 40 active peer mentors. Last year they did about 2100 volunteer hours for us. And they did that by one-on-ones. Group mentoring. Giving presentations for us one of the fun things that we liked to do with our mentors is to take them out with our youth transitions program. And so they'll go into the schools and talk with students. What was your first job like? How did you talk to your employer about your disability? How do I get my first apartment. All those questions that students in that transition time have. And so that's really fun for us to do. And then also a lot of our peer mentors and volunteers do other things with us. They'll come in and help with events. They'll help at health and wellness fair and come in and fold and stuff envelopes. What ever we need. Work at our sports and fitness center and give tours, things like that. They did an additional 10,000 hours that way. And this is the most hours our program has ever done. Like I said, we have many, many years where it was not about any significant amount of hours. It was about the change and so that's what I appreciate working with Amina. Because I don't have the pressure of, you know, reaching a certain amount. It's about tell me the stories. So that still is kind of our philosophy. AMINA DONNA KRUCK: The volunteer coordinator is all these things, they're a coach, they're a cheerleader. It helps to have good mothering skills sometimes. They're a boundary setter. A supervisor, and often mentors the mentors themselves. So like I had said, the quality of who is the peer mentor, our programs connectedness of having really good mentoring partnerships between mentor and mentee has ebbed and flowed over the years based on volunteer coordinators I hired and supervised. Some of them were frauds and making matches but not really making sure they got connected. They were untruthful. It takes a while to figure out somebody is lying to you and not doing their job. Every time that would get discovered it happened in a couple situations, the next person who came in had to rebuild it up all over again, build trust all over again. So that's just the reality of again, people. Peer mentoring is like match making and that's the same thing when we hire staff. Sometimes we do a better job than others. I'd like to say we're always successful but we're not. So we designated a full time staff person. And you know, effective qualities are those things we talk about before. Presence is everything. Somebody who is really present and conscious and noticing what's going on. Somebody who is willing to then come and talk with you when they have issues. What I love about April is she'll come and tell me, if she thinks anything is going on, she comes and tells me about it so we can talk about it, problem solve it before anything gets to be more of a problem. So I could say we, you know, over all these years, 24 years, we've only had a couple of peer mentors being inappropriate. And one of them it wasn't taking anybody's money or anything he was just a Romeo kind of guy and liked tickling our girls and some girls got bothered by him. What was the other situation? There was one other situation that was iffy but it got nipped in the bud and we can show you how we go through the orientation and training process how you start to notice people who would be good and not so good. So that tells us that's a really good thing because that's one of the first things that administrators worry about is liability and that kind of thing. It is Part C funding we use and they coordinate, just our volunteer program. So she has people who do general volunteering, people who do peer mentor volunteering. And then some people who do both. So she is responsible for recruiting, orienting them, training them, organizing the matches, conducting the program evaluations and creating support and recognition for the volunteers, which someone said how do you keep them engaged? That's a balancing act right there. Some volunteers are ready to go right now, do you have something for them to do right now? And are they in the right roles so they're feeling satisfied and feeling appreciated? And something we talk a lot about is now that we have so many general volunteers that could help other staff, is uh-oh, now we have to train staff how to work with volunteers because they may not have such good management skills and managing volunteers is different than staff anyway. They don't have to be there. And they're really sensitive to if I made you unhappy kind of thing. We would like to think staff would be like that but they're not always. You don't get many oppositional volunteers. Like you do, you can get, you know what I'm saying? So this is what I'm saying. There's skills with human resource and that's what this one woman who mentored me about a volunteer program said. Think of them and teach your board and director to think of them as a human resource person. They need the same kind of skills as any human resource person would and in essence, she's supervising more than anybody except maybe the PAS unit director in our agency. Because she's, she has the responsibility of all of those volunteers. Counseling, social work training and now there's human services type of organizational development degrees that are that kind of background. April has an MSW. So because of that, her background is different than mine. And because of that and because she's also, we're both licensed, we have to take ethics classes regularly and that kind of thing. So she's keenly aware of the liability issues and things to protect the center which also ultimately protects the consumers we work with. This idea of having to be intuitive about people. So it's a hard job to hire in from outside if you don't know that person already. You can do it. If they've done it before, maybe. But it does help to look around and see really who on your staff is the person who has these skills and arrange things around to use the personnel, what is the right word. Not collateral. What's a human resource word about personnel. Capacity. Skills and tools, basically is what I am looking for. Capital, human resource capital to do it. Organizational. Needs to be organized. She's strategic. She thinks ahead of situations therefore, she problem solves before problems happen. Really good communication skills. She, more than anybody works with more staff in the center than anybody else does. And across units which means across directors. And you know, everybody's territorial. You know, in centers we don't hire people who don't care about their jobs. They're dedicated to their jobs. They care a lot about their jobs. So she's got to have really good communication stills and personnel types of skills to deal with so many different people. To get where they're coming from and do what they're doing with their job, because we take referrals from all the different units at ABIL for peer mentors for consumers they work with. Motivational skills. Really good judgment. And boundaries. Good boundaries. So that's been another problem I've had sometimes is you get a volunteer coordinator who doesn't have good boundaries. Boundaries need to be very clear to everybody. That's very important. And commitment to ongoing professional development is really important. And it's not usually in the volunteer coordination area. We've found that things that are offered by the volunteer center in Phoenix have rarely been useful to us. It's really knowing what your mentors are knowing and needing and getting the skills to serve what they need. Whatever that might be. Of course, good independent living philosophy is essential that they're a good role model themselves about that and really get the difference between helping and codependency and developing dependencies. And not everybody knows about that in the helping professions no matter what the profession is. So that's the end, right? Any questions about what we've talked about so far? Yeah. Please use the microphone. You're so good. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you give a little bit more background, Amina, on getting started as far as the funding? I realize you said you utilize VII C funding now but you had a very small staff. Even with the buy-in, philosophically, did the center decide to decrease services in an area in order to bring on funding or to fund a volunteer coordinator or did you get seed money elsewhere or a combination of the two? AMINA DONNA KRUCK: I'm trying to remember if we did. For many of our programs, we did get seed money to get us started but I don't remember us getting any money particularly. But I will tell you in the old days our personal assistance program helped fund a lot of our programs. That was the sugar daddy in our organization that was like a business that brought in a little bit more than it spends and as you know, most other grant never bring in all that it takes to run a center. And so but literally, she reallocated Part C dollars. And I don't remember the exact circumstances around that. But that's why I had to make a promise or commitment to have the goal to at least get that same amount of volunteer hours. So she got it how valuable it was. She got it that we could serve people so much better by having these choices. You know, different races, genders, sexual identities, you know, and disabilities and goals and stuff. But I just had to keep talking about that it was like a human resource position. I had to get it elevated to a higher pay level than the IL staff. I could do it because she'd had the experience and knew how valuable it was because they have a very organized peer mentoring program at Kessler and had gone through that and made a difference for her. So that's all I can really say about it. She had to reallocate where those dollars went to and what gave us some flexibility was those PAS dollars that we had at the time. But I don't think we had any other dollars. But then again there was a long time ago and there was startup dollars for different programs, like was startup dollars for different programs, like This Is My Life for instance and CLO that came from United Way and different places like that. Any other questions? I have one. Microphone please. Thank you for remembering. AUDIENCE MEMBER: So are you saying that your volunteer coordinator is a paid staff now? AMINA DONNA KRUCK: Yes, she is. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. So she's paid staff. So when you talk about different volunteers coming in and expanding it, are you expanding projects and getting more paid staff or are you volunteer coordinator with other volunteers to work AMINA DONNA KRUCK: She's recruiting volunteers. So her whole job now is recruiting volunteers, orienting them, training them, supporting them and doing volunteer recognition. That's her whole job. And helping like we just opened a brand-new accessible sports and fitness center and they have their own volunteer going on because they're getting, like, interns from phys ed, different places like that. But we shared our basic program, our forms for tracking whatever hours and our agreement that they signed because you won't have, things you'll learn about later with them as a model. And then they manage their own volunteers now. That's the other volunteer program going on at ABIL. But April worked with them in the beginning and they figured out well they really need to do that but we provided that structure for it. They are volunteers and you'll hear later why we decided they are unpaid volunteers but we do pay for mileage and transportation. Yeah.