APRIL REED: So, if you recall before the lunch break we were talking about all those barriers that we all run into as we're trying to coordinate or keep a program going or start a program.

So what we're going to do this afternoon is list out some of those barriers and talk about how do we try to work around those.

And what things should we try, what can we do?

So one of the barriers we listed was recruitment.

So this is part of the process.

We've got to continually be looking for those mentor and mentee referrals.

We'll guide you through a little bit of how we do that.

We'll talk first about mentor recruitment.

You want to have a diverse active list.

You want to have people that are of all different types of backgrounds.

Cultural backgrounds, different types of disabilities and the way you get an active volunteer list is by recruiting.

So we'll have people call the center, we advertise in our newsletter.

We put it on our Web site.

We do presentations about peer mentoring and how you can be a peer mentor and share your story.

Some of the mentors are people at one point who had mentoring in their lives whether it was with another program or with us.

They come to us when they're ready to give back.

And then we also get referrals from the staff who say you know, hey, I met this great person, I think they'd be a good mentor.

Can you follow up with them?

So that's where our recruitment efforts begin.

Support groups are a big good source of recruitment.

I go to support groups all over.

And you think about it.

Support groups are a natural place where people are sharing, right?

So, if you're recruiting your mentors from some of these support groups, you already know they're probably good about talking about their disability and listening because those are skills you need in support groups.

So I do I often go in and am able to recruit people from different support groups at our local hospitals and different areas.

Your disability resource center if you have a university or college nearby, they can be a good resource.

We will advertise at our disability resource center that we have a training coming up.

A lot of students have requirements where they need to do an internship or do volunteering.

That can be a great way.

Again, like we were talking about earlier with Barry, it's more short-term and I know that.

But, if I can get a student in to come talk to somebody and mentor them for, you know, 60 hours, you know, that's great.

And they can maybe talk to some of our youth that are getting ready to think about college or volunteering or what's next.

I put pictures throughout the presentation to remind me to talk about mentors.

The girl in the pink there, that's Katie.

And Katie is probably the easiest mentor recruitment I've ever had.

When I took the job as volunteer manager, her application was already waiting on my desk.

I didn't have to do anything.

She was already ready.

So she was the easiest person I ever recruited.

Katie has been with me since the beginning.

We're around eight years together and she's an amazing young adult, peer mentor.

So she does a lot of that for us.

Again, where we recruiting mentees, we're getting those from people that are already working with the center staff.

We talk a little bit more about how do we encourage the staff to refer and what are some of the challenges there.

All of you have a copy of our peer mentor training manual.

So I'm going to start referencing some forms and things in that training manual.

So not going to spend too much time on it today because we'll do that a little more tomorrow.

But, if you see me reference a form, you can stop me if you have a question about it.

We have policies for the peer mentors and we have policies for the mentees.

So, when someone wants to request a peer mentor, we have a form.

Page 123, 124, hopefully that's right.

They're filling out why do I want a peer mentor, what goals do I check off that I need help with.

When can I meet with a peer mentor?

What good times?

We're having them fill that out and also before we begin looking for a peer mentor for an individual, we have them sign a release that allows me to give that peer mentor some information about who this mentee is.

The peer mentors can't make an educated decision about whether they want to continue with the match if they don't know a little bit about the person.

So I am never just assigning somebody a mentee.

I'm always going in with information about that person, offering that to the peer mentor and they make the decision about whether they want to try that match or not.

I can't do that unless I know a little about that person and am allowed to talk about that individual.

That's why we have that release norm form as part of the application.

Couple of tips.

One thing that we've learned over the years is that the more specific we can be on our application, the more information we provide people up front about the peer mentor program, the better.

So even little things like you'll see on some of the forms that we have for the mentees, just a little statement about how we're going to do the best we can to find somebody that will match up with you.

But I can't guarantee that.

You know, just little things to do informed consent.

So that as the mentee is signing up requesting a peer mentor, they have a better idea of what they're requesting, what they're getting into.

It helps you avoid problems down the road when I have to come back and maybe I don't have specifically what they're looking for.

I'm not setting someone up for disappointment.

I'm doing that proper informed consent, letting them know ahead of time the limits of what I can do.

We'll talk a little about this later but we do, as you will see on the form, there's lots of things we do to give people a heads up about what our program is like and what they can expect.

So when you're recruiting mentees, it's a good idea to have a sheet or flyer or whatever you can do to tell them this is the program.

I think you guys have that.

It's a form that says welcome to the ABIL peer mentor program and it literally breaks down the rules and what they can expect.

A lot of times people need that information in order to really be able to say yeah, I'll try that or no I won't.

So make sure to have something for your mentees to look at.

Marketing is not my background.

I'm a social worker and even today unfortunately in social work students we don't get a lot of marketing.

So this is something I've had to learn to do.

And luckily, I have colleagues around me that are much better at this than I am.

But I do know one thing.

It's got to be a clear concise message.

So sometimes I certainly have had to edit the flyer, the material I'm using because I'm giving people too much information or I'm using acronyms or I'm not making it accessible to people.

And so the more clear you can be in your brochure, the better.

I'll show you ours in just a sec.

You want to make it easy for people to access the information and you want to be able to easily share that with other organizations in the communities.

So we have we have what we call the empower list.

So we have lots of other agencies on this.

Email server list.

And we can send out announcements about trainings and peer mentor trainings and it's a great way to kind of blast people about up-coming opportunities.

Some of my best marketers are the peer mentors themselves.

They get excited about what they're doing, they're going to go out and talk about it.

So sometimes, you know, they're out there, I met somebody who would really benefit from a peer mentor.

That's great.

As long as they can talk about the program.

They know what it's about and rules and guidelines, they can be a great tool for recruitment.

Same thing for staff.

We want to make sure we do things to make sure the staff understand the program.

And we'll talk a little bit more about how we try to get the staff involved so they can know some of the peer mentors and really have an understanding of what they do and don't do.

As Amina mentioned earlier one of the things we did recently is have a couple peer mentors come to our staff meeting.

As a coordinator, one of my frustrations is our staff don't get to know these peer mentors like I do.

Because a lot of the peer mentors are out in the community.

They're mentoring, they're doing their thing.

They're not in the office every day.

And so we really have just amazing people that do this for us.

But the staff don't always realize the whole background of somebody.

So we had a couple peer mentors come in and we purposely picked some newer mentors so they would be new to almost everybody.

And one of them is a professional chef who had a stroke a year and a half ago and is like, we can't do enough to keep him busy.

He's super excited about IL and helping other people learn cooking skills and he's going into rehab and talking with people who are stroke survivors.

For him to tell his story, I can say use the peer mentors 100 times but him coming in and sharing his story and why he's excited and why he does what he does, I kid you not.

A week later one of the staff said I want to do a little cooking group with my consumers, would he come and teach that.

I was like yeah, he would love that.

So she might not have made that connection if he weren't there in the staff meeting sharing his story.

So --

AMINA KRUCK:  Also the newsletter and we do stories in it.

APRIL REED:  Yeah, we have a monthly newsletter, probably a lot of you guys do as well.

We'll feature different peer mentors in the newsletter periodically and it's interview styles and they can tell their story, how they ended up in independent living and why they mentor.

And so we do that periodically.

AMINA KRUCK:  Or a mentor match so they get the idea how it works.

APRIL REED:  So I put this in there.

This is our old brochure which I used for many years.

Many, many years longer than I should have.

And because I never liked it.

Really.

It's terrible.

Because I'm a pretty visual person so I need to see things.

This is our new brochure.

Sometimes we just got to change our marketing materials, change the way we're talking about a program.

This is the brochure we've had for the last year.

And just in our second printing of it, we changed something which did not occur to me until we were looking at it again.

You see right there where it says are you interested in talking to a peer mentor.

I thought that's too wordy.

So we just changed it to do you want a peer mentor?

And then over here on this side which is about being a peer mentor, we said do you want to be a peer mentor.

Just really clear, being really blunt with people.

This is what you want to do if you want to be one and this is what you do if you have one.

AMINA KRUCK:  We're referring them different directions.

We don't want them all calling April which they did for years.

I'd like to say something about the people in the picture.

So on the left there's a couple there.

Gail and Jack.

And they came in and they just really want, this is right.

They just wanted to work with people who were amputees and we didn't have that many referrals.

There's an amputee support group in Phoenix and stuff.

So they were a couple who came into the group for a while to get them involved because they wanted to be involved.

Now they're doing other things.

The person with the red hair is Karen.

She's the one who went out to the rehab centers who came to our center and volunteered for six months and she was living in a rehab center still.

Just an amazing person.

Multi talented.

And then Annette, that's the one that's there when I close the building at night doing whatever to help out.

And she travels.

She's, as some people do in Arizona.

She's in Arizona some of the months and in the Midwest in some of the months with her family.

So when she's here, she just comes in and she'll help us do anything we need.

And can help do registration at events or pack things or whatever.

She's just there.

Everybody's cheerleader, basically

APRIL REED:  I met Annette at a stroke support group and I went and did a presentation there and that's how I met her and she filled out the application right then and there is not usual.

AMINA KRUCK:  Yeah, she came to my women's empowerment group once but she was already too empowered to come again.

APRIL REED:  Couple things too.

We stage the photos for this. 
And the first photo shoot.

We used people we knew and it wasn't actual peer mentors but we were thinking we'll get quick photos.

And I looked at them and said I don't like it.

I didn't know what it was.

And what I realize the later on when we, I said let's just get the peer mentors in.

They're in next week.

Let's take pictures while we're there.

They're willing to do that.

And what I realized is that we want to see emotion and who better to show the connections than to use actual people?

So that changed the look of our program as far as marketing materials big time.

AMINA KRUCK:  The woman on the front of the brochure, IDA is the one who works as a personal assistant and is also a peer mentor.

APRIL REED:  One funny thing about Jack and Gail.

I'd just taken over the program.

I'd probably been about six months, I'd talked to them on the phone but hadn't met them in person.

We were down at the civic center with a disability expo with a bunch of other disability organizations and I was coordinating the volunteers.

Somebody came and found me and said there's two people looking for you.

They said they're not leaving until they get to meet you in person.

It was Jack and Gail.

They were like so great to meet you.

They said we're not happy that you haven't matched us.

I said I haven't had referrals for you to go into the hospital.

I said let me think about it, we will come up with something.

I knew we had this idea of doing the mentoring group.

I called them back and said would you even want to do this?

They're very social people.

Jack is an amazing advocate.

And so hadn't really thought about doing groups.

But they've been big support for our groups since we started that in 2007.

If you can't fill a niche with somebody one way, you can find another skill they have and kind of fill that niche.

AMINA KRUCK:  They've traveled internationally so they have a lot to share like a tourism class.

I was doing a disability awareness panel for them and they were perfect because they could really address those hospitality issues that they'd experienced.

APRIL REED:  This is our Web site so just to give you an example.

We are redoing this right now again to try to make it less wordy, simplify.

And make it a little more visual.

AMINA KRUCK:  You go to our Web site.

You click on advocacy program and then you'll find it under that.

APRIL REED:  Any questions about marketing?

Thoughts.

Our peer mentors must be 18 years or older.

They have to complete an application, you have a copy of that in our peer mentor training manual.

Page 121, 122.

And they must provide us with three character references.

We have a simple form that they can fill out.

One of the things we're a little bit flexible on is, you know, a lot of people maybe they don't have a large social network or they don't have, they're not working any more.

They don't have employer references.

So we'll take references from friends and family and neighbors and we're pretty flexible there.

AMINA KRUCK:  Some of their service providers.

APRIL REED:  Some of their service providers.

We do a criminal check we do a background check.

So we fingerprint and background check all of our volunteers.

And this is a state and federal national background check for all our volunteers.

AMINA KRUCK:  I want to say we do that of all staff now too and we do that because our liability insurance makes us do it.

We didn't use to.

APRIL REED:  We'll talk about that too in a minute.

The application, other things to ask about, simple things, when are you available?

How do you feel comfortable talking to somebody?

Are you okay on the phone, do you want to do it in person?

Could you do Facebook?

All those kinds of questions about what's their interest?

What skills could you teach?

So you'll see on the application literally have checked boxes that people can check off and say I'm not too bad with computers, I can teach this.

I'm really good about home management.

I could do that.

I'm a good budgeter.

So people literally check off things they feel like they could share with somebody.

Once they're a peer mentor, we put all that information in our database so it's there when I get a referral for a mentee, I can look and say, who do I have that's good at budgeting and who is good at getting public transportation and go here?

I know how far are they willing to travel?

Do they use the bus, light rail.

Do they drive?

Whatever.

I have all of that because of the application and we keep that information and put it in our database so I can look at reports and run things about who we have available.

AMINA KRUCK:  It's an Access database and before we had that, we had a spreadsheet.

APRIL REED:  And a lot of centers use CIL Suite.

You know with CIL Suite there's some things you can do to build in reports.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I won't take long.

But we're trying to implement a new way to track casual contact with consumers so people who aren't in CILs first, which we are currently using, and people who aren't in our database and haven't had an information referral.

Just basic quick example.

I'll go out in the lobby area, meeting someone, get let into a room and see someone there and strike up a conversation with them.

And they're just a St. Louis resident.

A community member with a disability and I'll just start chatting with them and basically complete an information and referral.

And I'll refer them to myself.

Do you guys have protocol for that tracking casual contact?

Because we want to show, A, our good work we've been doing, and also that these people have been forwarded through the system and network.

We're essentially providing a service of getting them on as volunteers.

Moving the ball forward.

So I'll shut up and listen.

APRIL REED:  No, thank you.

We do.

If someone is a consumer and they go through the intake process and sign up for services, there's a way to tag them so it's a consumer file in our database.

We do the same thing with the peer mentors.

In our database it's called associate but that's how we separator them.

So there's a peer mentor section and a consumer section.

But we also have this general section called people.

What it lets us do, they're not an open consumer, maybe they just come in for quick I&R.

We put in first and last name.

Email address or whatever.

Phone number, whatever we have about that.

And that person's name will go into the database as a person that we've met with.

When we do our activity logs for the day, we can pull up that person's name and tie their name to an activity log.

If you sat down with someone for 20 minutes you can put that time in, tie it to their name, even make a note on that activity log.

It's the database showing that you gave I&R.

AMINA KRUCK:  But mostly for these we don't do that.

We have what we call tick sheets.

And all staff have those available to them.

And so it's counts a simple I&R and we just check their name off and we check the topic area off.

And that's how we do most of that.

Because most of the people that go in as people in the database are really in there so they will get a newsletter or certain things that it's triggering for them that may not be a CSR.

So that tick sheet is where we gather, that way we don't lose as much as we used to lose with all the stuff that goes on fast.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Are you still able to track them electronically?

AMINA KRUCK:  No.

Just the numbers get counted over time.

Somebody collects them every month from everybody else.

The I&R person does along with all the I&Rs that she's doing.

And she has some kind of a spreadsheet she keeps for those I&Rs, but they're not in the other consumer database.

APRIL REED:  But for your example, if it's somebody you knew and I'm going to refer them to me and I'm going to refer them to a program, you could just go ahead and do that so there's documentation with this person.

AMINA KRUCK:  You could.

I'm just being realistic.

That's why we got the tick sheet because we were losing track.

We weren't being able to account for a lot of things that were going on.

APRIL REED:  Any other questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was writing this down so I might have missed what you guys were saying.

But my question is so you have the access database for the mentor mentee matching, right?

But do you also have our NET CIL where we have our client consumer files and information, so does it, I mean the access isn't really secure.

It's just on your --

AMINA KRUCK:  We're networked and it's all one database that we paid a lot of money to get built and then had to rebuild it once we had it and it's what we track everything, the PAS program.

So we have attendants, we have associates which are people like our peer mentors and so forth.

Each program that had some specific special needs like tracking these qualities, we had to then add fields and create new parts to that database.

APRIL REED:  But I think too, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think maybe what you're getting at is that how do you secure that?

So for example since my program, you know, I'm going to be getting referrals from other programs, once I have that referral and they're working with peer mentor, I go in in the database and I can pull them in under my program and because I have a different level of authorization, access, so I can pull that person under my program and I can send notes directly to their hard copy or their electronic file and I can see what goals they're working on.

I can see their file.

So that wouldn't be available to anybody else.

But once they're referred to my program, then I can access that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Are you having the mentor though keep track on, and then they're turning in reports to you?

And are you going to go over that.

APRIL REED:  Yeah, I'm going to talk about that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.

Great.

But you're entering the data from the reports that they're giving you.

APRIL REED:  No.

They don't.

They do a monthly report or more often depending on as needed.

AMINA KRUCK:  Another thing that takes time for the volunteer coordinator to do.

APRIL REED:  So when we have somebody come up, I usually like to have them fill out the application first and then I will set up a time to do a phone or in-person interview and talk with them  a little bit more.

The application gives me an idea who they are and what questions I should ask them in the interview.

So that's always helpful to have ahead of time.

But really I'm asking them about why would you want to do this?

What skills do you think you can share and trying to get them to talk about more what they actually envision doing.

So for example if somebody said I love kids, I want to work with kids.

I'm going to know hey, this is somebody I'm going to refer on to another program because we don't work with kids.

So that screening interview is important for simple things like that but it's also important because it gives you an idea about somebody's motivation.

So, if somebody is talking to me about I want to turn this into a job and come through the training so I'm certified by ABIL to go and put a plaque up on my door, I know that's not what we do.

I know this person is probably not looking for what we offer and it's not going to be a good fit.

AMINA KRUCK:  Or if they talk nonstop and can't stop and listen, we have pretty good idea they won't be able to mentor very well until they improve their listening skills.

That kind of stuff.

So it's also kind of personality qualities as well as skills and interests.

APRIL REED:  I think one of the things I've learned doing these interviews and screening is it's okay not to be sure.

Sometimes I walk out of an interview and I think well that went good but I still have, I don't know.

They said this and I don't know.

I have to think about that or whatever it is.

I've had people come through the training and I have one mentor who is just straightforward and blunt.

I thought blech, I don't know if that's, really, he has a soft mushy side but you don't know that until you get to know him a little bit.

And that's what comes out when he's mentoring people.

He is not like that when he is mentoring people.

But he can be very direct.

AMINA KRUCK:  Before he came we had one like that and we just, we knew where to use him appropriately and we knew where not to use him.

He knew we knew and we laughed.

But he wanted to be involved and he wanted to do something.

APRIL REED:  That's what's great about training, you get to know people better and have an idea screening gives you a chance any red flags or anything you want to follow up on, you can still do that in the training.

Character reference it's real important to check references even if you feel like this is somebody our center knows or this one is referred by staff, you always want to check those character references and document that.

It's just a good practice.

You would be surprised some of the things that come up when you're doing that.

Our reference asked how long has the individual known the person.

Have you known them to abuse alcohol or drugs?

Things like dependency, are they patient.

They have good care and concern for others.

Rate their level of responsibility.

Those kinds of things.

So again to help us get a better picture of who the applicant is.

Page 108 and 109 of our training manual we have our rules and guidelines form.

We go through this at peer mentor training and they have to sign this before they start mentoring with us.

But the reason we noted this here is it's something you want to think about before you start recruiting people.

Sometimes when we're not getting what we want, as far as recruitments it's because we haven't identified really what we want, we have not written it down.

We haven't said this is what we're looking for.

These are the skills we want people to have.

AMINA KRUCK:  People are looking around.

Just check.

Are people getting copies of the manual for this training, Darrell?

Yes.

And you do have them.

Good.

I noticed a lot of paper shuffling.

I wanted to make sure people knew.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Amina, the large print version has different pages.

That's why.

APRIL REED:  It's just a big monster document.

AMINA KRUCK:  It is.

APRIL REED:  Rules and guidelines, I can't tell you how many people we talked to they're frustrated about recruiting, and I will say, who are you looking for?

What do you care about at your center?

What's the goals you guys need most and that's where they've kind of missed the piece of they're recruiting but they haven't said what they're looking for.

Being able to break down this is what we want in a peer mentor, it sets the ground work for being able to go out and recruit that.

So we want somebody that maintains confidentiality.

We want somebody that is going to understand boundaries.

This isn't a dating relationship.

This is a mentoring relationship.

What's the difference.

We cover all that in training.

And also your rules and guidelines form is important because that's how you hold people accountable.

If something happens that is not part of your rules and guidelines, they've gone against that, that's how you correct someone and remind them of what we expect.

This is what we expect from our peer mentors.

We'll talk more about confidentiality and our crisis policy as well.

Again, the mentors are agreeing to have regular contact but how they do that is up to them.

So, this is one of our peer mentors Jim on the left-hand side.

And when I met Jim, he told me in his interview, he said you know, I really prefer to work with women.

And to me, that's always interesting because I prefer to have people be a little more open.

Do you need me to stop for a sec?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Am I on?

I have a question.

I was one of those people shuffling I was trying to look ahead and make sure I didn't ask the question prematurely, if you were going to cover, but I don't see it in here.

What about turning people down because obviously you do and how do they accept that and also about when you need to get rid of somebody if you did accept them and it was a mistake to accept them.

APRIL REED:  Okay.

I'll definitely talk about that.

Thank you.

Let me finish with Jim.

Jim came in and he was like I just want to work with women.

That's always a little bit of a red flag to me when somebody has a specific idea.

And I said you know, hey, we do mainly male to male, female to female matches.

And I said I'm probably not going to be matching you with a female.

I was real up front with him about this is our program so, if you're looking for that, that's not what I'm going to do 

AMINA KRUCK:  Plus he's about 6'5", he's a big southern drawl intimidating kind of guy.

APRIL REED:  After getting to know Jim.

The reason he preferred women is because he'd been attacked by somebody on the bus and it was a male and he was still dealing with his own post traumatic stress about that.

AMINA KRUCK:  Like a big teddy bear.

APRIL REED:  I said hey, Jim, this is the limits.

He said let me think about it.

I said you come through the training and you think about it.

Afterwards he said Okay.

I'll try it.

And so he did.

He's been with us for four years and what was cool about Jim is he has continued to work on himself.

And when I first met Jim, he said I will not do any phone mentoring.

He said I got to be in person with somebody.

So that was okay with me.

I was like that's great.

We can have you just do in person.

And he wouldn't even spend two minutes on the phone with me now we're up to about 20 minute conversations.

So he's somebody that's continued to grow and progress carrying a lot of these things that have happened that have shaped how he feels comfortable but we were able to work with him on some things as long as I'm clear on what I can work with somebody on, fine, we can meet in person, that's okay.

But I was clear what I couldn't do which is the male to female.

A lot of times being up front with people to your question, it's always difficult.

If I have somebody come through and I think wow, they're not appropriate, they're not ready.

For me I have hard and fast rules.

In order to be a mentor, you have to have some skills.

You have to be organized.

You've got to show up for your appointments.

I'm not going to put somebody in a position where because of their own lack of organizational skills or their lack of communication skills that the mentee would be hurt by that.

That's what helps me be really firm about what we're looking for because I know on the flip side of that they're going to be working with our consumers and it's my job to make sure this peer mentor has the skills they need to be able to do that and to successfully work with our consumers.

It's a hard conversation.

A lot of times it's sitting down with people saying this is what I noticed.

We mentioned that the lady who came through the training that is a very good advocate but just does not have good people skills.

And so I sat her down after the training and I said you know, everything I heard you talk about is your community work.

And how you love doing that.

We started there and I said I don't want anything to take away from what you love doing.

It doesn't seem like this is what you love doing.

So I talked about other things and I referred to David and Amina who are advocacy specialists and I was able to kind of channel her that way.

That same training class I had another gentleman who came in and he has a traumatic brain injury and just going through the training class just things I heard from him that sounded very angry and he would kind of launch into Social Security is out to get me kind of things.

And --

AMINA KRUCK:  Extremely bitter person at that point in his recovery.

APRIL REED:  At that point, yeah.

After the training I sat down and said I heard you say this and I heard you say that.

I see so much emotion.

And so that's how I started the conversation.

Where we ended up was him saying hey, maybe I need to work on some things before I do this.

He agreed.

AMINA KRUCK:  He keeps coming and he smiles more often now.

He doesn't argue with me when I say why it's important to vote or whatever I go in there to do a prep talk.

It's really interesting.

He's really moving through it.

I wanted to say a couple more things about Jim because number one, Jim turned out to be the number one sight guide for our chair, chair is on the Council of the Blind person who has been a prominent member of our Arizona disability advocacy coalition.

So much so that we've now hosted their last two annual conferences and taught other mentors how to be sight guides for Barbara who is a female.

As it turns out.

And he escorts her to all kinds of meetings now.

And then on his own decided to start taking all of those ADA webinars that we always host every month.

And that's interesting and he came and did all the get out the vote calls, I didn't know he had a problem with phone calling, he did just fine on those calls.

People change over time.

That's what you love about independent living is that chance to meet people at these really important transitions and walk through it with them and watch the transformation.

It's very inspiring.

APRIL REED:  I think I have one more to do.

Okay.

Actually, I'll let you do this one.

AMINA KRUCK:  Well, okay.

All right, whatever.

Transition.

Go ahead.

You can ask but I don't have to tell.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.

Thanks.

So I noticed that your mentors are covered under your liability policy.

AMINA KRUCK:  They are.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And I also note that you give a lot of freedom, relatively, for them to develop relationships and natural friendships with people.

How do you address the question of consumer wanting to get a ride with someone or a mentor offering a ride?

Do you leave them the freedom to work that out 

AMINA KRUCK:  Not rides.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is it a relationship or are you strict about you don't give rides to people, it doesn't work under your liability 

APRIL REED:  We do not allow people to transport each other in their vehicles.

AMINA KRUCK:  That's not saying they don't do it sometimes but we're very clear that they shouldn't do it and it helps also that, we don't know everything they're doing.

Let's say we've never had an accident reported about that and it's never come back to us.

And that also protects the mentors from needing to turn down a mentee to get them in that situation.

I say that because they were no longer mentor and mentee, I know of a pair, I'll say a pair of two gentleman who became deep long time friends who rode across country together.

But it was after they were no longer in our program but they started out as mentor and mentee.

APRIL REED:  Again, it's about getting the right people in the training and we truly find they're pretty conscientious and try to follow the rules.

We have rules about gifts and things like that and I'll have somebody inevitably around the holidays, one of the mentors will call and say my mentee knitted a blanket for me.

Is that okay?

So they're really careful a lot of times about following the guidelines that week give them.

AMINA KRUCK:  I'd say the big one that's legal and our staff are not supposed to transport consumer either.

And I am not supposed to either.

Okay.

So in that class I took at San Diego State University we had this whole big thing about duty to report policies and how you need to have that at your agency?

So we developed that for our staff first.

And then basically just modified it a little.

It's very similar for the peer mentors.

And they have to read through that, go over it with April and sign that they agree and know about it.

It outlined requirements of what to do if their mentee was expressing some ideations about killing themselves or hurting themselves or any homicidal ideations or any incident of abuse that they have some information about staff or another mentor or anything like that.

So we let them know and again this goes back to the volunteer coordinator having an open door policy so that they know they can come in and let her know.

What we let them know is we don't want them to be alone.

Their job is not to solve that problem.

Their job is to call April with any of those issues and she takes it from there and then follows through on our policy.

And our policy goes level by level so that it gets reported all the way up to her supervisor and to the CEO.

Because where you can get into problems as things get hung up midway because whoever midway in management can't believe that could be happening.

Could be part of the problem.

More often can't believe it's happening and they want to protect the staff person or whatever is going on.

They don't know what to do.

All of our supervisors are not trained in what to do if somebody is suicidal.

This helps them calm down because their mind worries about what if something comes up they can't handle as a mentor.

That's their biggest worry except for a few people who are so narcissistic that they don't think about somebody else and then those people don't likely make it through the training to become matched as mentors because that's not a good quality to have in a mentor.

So we have it if writing.

It's very clear, we talk about it in the training and she talks about it one-on-one with them too so that's very clear and they sign something, they get a copy, we have a copy so everybody knows we've done that.

That's not because we don't trust them but to help them feel more secure.

That's not their job, but that it is important if they notice it, to say something.

That's all that's their job.

Because we don't want ignore it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It looks like you stop short of having them report to APS.

APRIL REED: What is APS?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Adult Protective Services

AMINA KRUCK: No, they do not do that, we do that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So April are you on-call 24/7?

APRIL REED:  We have a system in place.

We'll talk about it later on but we do have a system in place for what they'll do to report if an after hours and if I'm not there like today.

We'll talk more about that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.

If there's suspected abuse somebody has to report it and it can't necessarily wait if you found out about it Friday and you don't hear about it until Monday.

AMINA KRUCK: That's right.

We do have that in place.

Remember, they're not liable, they are not staff.

We're liable if somebody tells us.

At the point it gets to us, we then have a duty to report.

To whoever it is that we would report to.

APRIL REED:  We'll talk a little bit more, have more specifics.

AMINA KRUCK:  This rarely comes up in all these years.

It has come up in this last year.

We had somebody who was a real issue who had that concern and making sure they had enough staff support.

It's very rare, interestingly.

As we said, we have that criminal self-disclosure form indicating they have no felony victims.

In our state, they need to fill that out while they're waiting to get the background check approved.

So we asked them to sign that statement that's a legal document we've been given that is that statement.

It's the same one the staff have to fill out and then mentors must do the fingerprint, background check.

That's always interesting for any of those who have tiny fingers like me trying to get the background check done.

I always fail on these fingerprint things.

Yeah?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So the volunteers then are not mandatory reporters?

AMINA KRUCK:  They're not by our state law in Arizona they're not mandatory reporters.

We do in our state have something like a good citizen law which means that nobody can be held responsible for trying to help somebody in an emergency.

Which is another thing that supports them but they don't have any, no, just like anybody on the street as far as that goes, they don't have that.

But with our program they do have that rule, that they need to tell us.

We don't want them to hold onto it.

Because we talk about it out loud.

I'm an old crisis counselor, so when you talk real frankly and out loud about these things.

Then of course anybody who has experience with these things will come and talk to you more about their own expense usually because they know it's safe to talk about it.

Because you are not pretending it doesn't happen.

We may find out the mentor has a history or whatever.

But because it comes, and in the mentor group if somebody has an issue going on, they're not talking specifically about who it is.

It will come up sometimes and then it's a good chance for everybody to have that reminder why we have these rules.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I think in Oregon, the ORS indicates once they're trained as peer mentors they are required to report.

AMINA KRUCK:  We don't have anything in our state about who is a trained peer mentor.

For OHA

APRIL REED:  Remember we talked about checking with your state to see what the definition of peer support is.

That's why you do that.

In some states they already have that where peer support is the definition of peer support is different.

They're going to have different requirements.

Colorado is in the process of changing or looking into changing some of their stuff.

So in Arizona, right now it's a voluntary position and are not mandatory court reporters, that's why you want to check with your state and figure out what's their definition and what are they calling it and what are their individual requirements.

AMINA KRUCK:  However, the peer mentors in the mental health system are getting paid and they have a different requirement.

APRIL REED:  You have to check with your state about what the difference is between paid and volunteer.

AMINA KRUCK: So people are always nervous about this.

It hasn't been an issue.

But I believe one of the biggest reasons it hasn't been an issue is because we talk about it and it's up front so, if it does arise, there's a chance to problem solve early on.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So, if you find that one of your mentors has done something inappropriate, what is, do you have a, like a procedure as far as are they discharged instantly or do they have some kind of warning or 

AMINA KRUCK:  If they're accused of an abuse situation, then they are immediately taken off duty just like the staff person would be while there was some kind of investigation.

They are asked and the mentee would be told that they're not able to be a mentor at this point and we do an investigation.

I don't think that's ever happened except for one time prior to April coming I said this guy was dating around.

We were worried it would get into other kinds of taking advantage of.

APRIL REED:  Just to mention we'll talk about this more in depth but just to reassure people.

I mean, we do have kind of a committee, our CEO, Amina, Gwen our PAS director who does a lot of background check stuff with the attendant.

So, if we get something that comes in, we're looking at, I remember if you saw this lady, you'd think sweet little grandma and she was.

She was about 70 when she came to peer mentor with us, but when she was 18 years old, she had a felony shoplifting.

Here it is all these decades later and she was able to mentor with us because we were able to do some documentation that this person is, has had a clean record for so long that this isn't applicable.

AMINA KRUCK:  Even our PAS program is like that in some cases even if something comes back on the background check.

They may be able to continue with the program depending what it was, when it was, how long ago it was.

Was it harm to person?

APRIL REED:  Absolutely no one would be allowed to volunteer if they harmed others.

AMINA KRUCK:  As I said, liability.

The procedure, if they don't pass the background check, is we call them in and up front with them about why.

There was somebody we had to turn down who had a felony, right?

APRIL REED:  Yeah.

We've had.

In our state and I think this is true in most states if certain types of convictions someone can appeal to have that removed from their record so we have a peer mentor something when he was 18 and now he's 50.

So he went through the process with the courts.

And to have that removed from his record.

We knew he was doing that and he was on hold until he was finished.

AMINA KRUCK: Same thing they need to get their right to vote back so we encourage people to do that.

They might just need a little support and direction to know how to go about doing that.

It's not that hard.

All they have to have done in Arizona anyway is they have to have served their sentence and paid their fine, if there is one, if they have done both of those things.

If they've done that they can move out of that limited status.

APRIL REED:  Just real quick, the ones that are the hard calls are where people where you can see that they have really good intentions and care about people but they just don't have a skill.

They're not able or willing to conform to the rules.

There was this gentleman, this was years ago when I first took over.

He believed that people with spinal cord injuries, could, if they did certain things like he had done, could have return of feeling or movement.

I sat and talked with him.

Amina sat and talked with him.

We really felt like he was kind.

Not malicious but we could not convince him that a peer mentor's role was not to give medical advice.

That could not be something he would talk to someone about.

That was difficult.

He cried when we told him that we couldn't have him and we were very clear about why but we just didn't feel like we could take the risk that he wouldn't do that and it wouldn't cause harm to somebody.

AMINA KRUCK:  As you all, that's a tricky quality to be really passionate person when April is and very protective of her volunteers and at the same time be very matter of fact and clear with them about what the boundaries are.

That's the quality I talk about that's just so valuable in this role because you know, we have to turn people down occasionally.

We to tell them why.

Nobody likes to do that.

APRIL REED:  No fun.

AMINA KRUCK:  We always check character references as April said.

We do the background checks.

Check your center's liability insurance to see what it is they are needing.

Like I said, we didn't used to do that.

There are different kinds of background checks.

We had always done one particular kind.

Then we found out from the sports and fitness center staff.

The recreational staff that they knew there was a way to go through the City of Phoenix instead of the state to do it.

Any of us who do WIPA, we have to go through this federal thing, I thought that is why they let me go through a special line when I went to the airport this time, but they let her in too, so it wasn't that.

So there are different kinds of background checks.

You have to know what it is your liability insurance is requiring.

If they're requiring for years, they didn't but now they do.

So we didn't use the background check staff either.

Once we started doing it to staff, we started doing it.

That was an additional monetary commitment.

I think it's about $45.

APRIL REED:  $65 now.

AMINA KRUCK: So before we launch into the next session, we're going to do a little thing I like to call think and listen.

And so you can just get a partner.

Just turn to somebody that's next to you.

So find your partner and find out who is going to be A and who is going to be B.

If you're uneven, then you can travel.

This person needs a partner.

Would somebody come be a partner with her.

You're getting an A and B person and you're getting partners.

So who does not have a partner.

Come right over here, Pam.

You're going to, you two ladies have the same kind of power energy.

That would be good.

Anybody else have a partner, you know who is A in your partnership?

Raise your hand.

Don't make me choose.

This is just going to be like for a minute and a half.

You're going to take turns being the thinker and listener,

I know some people are natural thinkers, out loud talker talkers like me and I know some are really natural listeners but we're going to trade.

So while the talker is talking, the listener is going to listen to the person talking like they are a treasure box opening up in front of them.

Okay?

You're just going to be beaming at them while they tell you their story.

Then you're going to switch.

I am going to time it.

Then you're going to switch.

It's not very long so you can surely us talkers can listen for a minute and a half.

Right?

Then you'll switch and then listener will be the talker and talker will be the listener.

So now you know the topic.

You don't know the topic yet.

Pardon me.

I haven't said who is the listener.

I haven't gotten to that part.

First, I have to tell you the topic.

So the topic is going to be what you've heard so far or what's on the top of your head right now.

Listen, listen, ask them a bunch of questions, what's boiling up in you right now.

It might actually be about, you know, whether you're going to go with me shopping after this.

I don't know.

Whatever it is.

And the listener, when you're the listener, everybody's going to be a listener eventually.

So what are you going to be like as a listener?

Quiet and what are you going to be, enthusiastic.

Listening to them as if they're a treasure box opening up, right?

Which they are.

It is an opportunity.

I'm going to make you move around more next time you do this so you'll be doing it with somebody you don't know more.

So in this case, As will be the listener and Bs will be the talker first.

So Bs job is to just talk.

What do you think so far, you've been here, you've been having stuff crammed into your brains and your brain is zipping around or maybe it's going to sleep right now.

So A is going to listen.

B is going to talk and I'll say switch and then As will talk and Bs will listen.

So, and when you're listening, don't think of what you're going to say next.

It's only a minute and a half.

Just listen, beaming at the treasure box opening up.

Okay?

Are you ready?

Questions?

Go.

You guys did such a good job.

Weren't they really a treasure box opening up in front of you?

Yes, how great is that?

So we are going to carry on.

This is the last part this afternoon.

Tomorrow we're going to go over the whole training process in more detail.

So April is going to start talking to you about the beginning of that.

This orientation and training piece and then we'll still have a little closure time for follow-up questions and wrapping up the day, too.

So thank you.

APRIL REED: So our peer mentor training class is mandatory for all of our peer mentors.

Whether they're going to do the one on one mentoring or if they're going to do a group, it's mandatory.

What's great for me as a trainer, it's not me standing there for two 1/2 days talking.

But our staff come in and take turns and we get our early intervention coordinator who goes into the hospitals.

What a perfect person to do the grieving and adapting to disability piece of our training.

That's his whole job.

He'll come do that piece and different staff will pick and choose what section they'd like to share.

It's always staff that are going to be working with the mentees.

So it's their chance to start getting to know the new crop of peer mentors, putting a name with a face.

So when I call them and say I have a match for your consumer, they're going to know who this peer mentor is because they've already met them at the training.

It's also a great way for the mentors to learn more from the staff more about what they do and kind of get oriented to ABIL in a deeper way.

We also do something fun.

At lunchtime we bring in long time peer mentors and they will come in and answer questions.

It's a free for all and I let people shout out questions and they get to pick the peer mentors brains and talk to somebody who has really done this for a while and can answer questions so that's always fun.

And then of course they receive that peer mentor training manual which is something that you have a copy of as well.

So some of the things we put into the training manual are things that we have learned that we needed over the years.

Even though most of the participants in the training have some sort of disability, many people it's their first time to IL.

So we do include pieces about independent living philosophy and people first language and disability awareness because a lot of people that we're working with, this is brand new information to them.

So it's our chance to kind of indoctrinate them, get them excited about what is independent living.

We also will at the training go through each of the forms that we're required for the peer mentor to sign as we mentioned earlier.

The volunteer duty to report is something we go into in detail.

We kind of call this our pass the buck policy.

And the reason why is literally, legally, ethically, morally, the volunteer's responsibility is to pass that buck so to speak on to me.

And so we really train them that their responsibility is to report, to get help for their mentee.

They're required to notify me about any expressions of threats to self, suicidal threats, or homicidal threats, and if the supervisor, me, cannot be reached, my voice mail prompts them how to contact a staff person directly.

So right now while I'm at the training we have a staff person who is a licensed clinical social worker who is on-call if there's an issue with one of our matches or one of our peer mentors needs support.

So we have a plan in case I'm not available.

For them to do that.

To break down our manual we'll go more in depth and you'll see we do that more tomorrow.

But we include a bunch of different categories, self-advocacy, that's so important.

Goal planning.

But we really look at this as, again, our opportunity to get to know these people.

Who are they?

What do they care about?

What are they excited about?

And we will really try to keep in mind that we don't want to be afraid to train people.

It's okay to have rules and guidelines and really talk about those hard topics.

I remember the very first training that I did, probably talking with Amina and saying I'm nervous about this crisis intervention piece.

And I was.

I thought what kind of questions am I going to get?

Are people going to give me a hard time?

Are they going to be freaked out?

And really what I learned was as long as we are able to guide people through the process, they're relieved.

It's usually one of the quicker sections I do the training on because the way the policy is laid out.

It's black and white.

They know what to do.

Okay.

Got it.

So you can't be afraid to kind of have some of those more harder conversations.

That's what the training is about.

And people need to know who we are and what you believe.

So what an opportunity to really get people excited about IL and what we do.

How can they volunteer with us if they don't know who we are and what they believe.

They have to make sure their philosophy lines up with our philosophy.

Right before I came, I heard about this training when I came over.

They had a lady come in.

Very nice lady but through the training, she discussed that she believed that in euthanasia.

So she brought this conversation out and she was a person with a disability.

So it gave us a great time to say well this is what IL says about that.

And you know, in the end she decided we weren't a good fit and that was okay.

So it is your chance to make sure that people really understand who you are, what we believe.

We do a disability history piece which is fun to stuck in there to educate people about our past and where we're going as a movement.

Some of the mentors need to be treated individually.

So some of them need very little supervision from me.

You know, they've done this a long time. 

They know what they've got to call me about.

They know how to report.

Others need a lot more assistance.

And so, you know, I might be talking to somebody every week if they've got a challenge.

But, if somebody has really got it, they might be calling me at the end of the month to report and catch me up.

I might be talking to somebody every day if they're dealing with a lot of challenges.

It's kind of having an open door policy when they need assistance, they know we're going to provide that support.

Again, that individuality is figuring out what do they like, what do they want to do.

Some people, the groups, they love it.

Other people I don't get to know people as well unless I'm one-on-one.

People have preferences and we do try to take that into consideration.

For documentation you do want to document in the consumer service record peer support, peer mentoring was provided, and whether it was provided individually or in a group.

So you're going to want to track those mentor/mentee contacts whether it's in peer support group that you do or whether it's one-on-one.

As we mentioned earlier you're going to want to track the goals.

And do updates so we can run reports from our database about when are the goals needing to be updated.

Have we done our documentation for goals on this match.

We also track our volunteer hours.

We had a question about that earlier on our documentation.

We have a simple form in your book somewhere.

I think in the form section in the back.

And it's, you know, what we did.

I always tease the mentors, I don't need to know what coffee you drink at Starbucks when you meet with somebody.

But generally what goal was worked on and what's the plan for next time.

How many hours.

And then as Amina said, we also have them track any travel reimbursement.

They do that at the end of the month.

My job is also to meet regularly with the staff that referred this person.

The staff, once they refer, they don't want this person to go in a black hole and they never

know what the peer mentor and mentee are working on so my job is to facilitate that communication and keep the staff up to date.

Last week we had a mentor email an update.

He was concerned that his mentee might quit this new job.

So he called and said hey, he's just really frustrated.

Let the staff know.

So I sent that staff a quick email and said hey, contact him.

He's really struggling this week.

So it was like pulling in all the team.

Somebody's in trouble this week, they're really frustrated.

Let's let everybody know so this person can have support.

My job so to collect the updates from the mentors and then let the staff know what are they working on, what's going on with somebody, what's the progress.

As Amina said earlier, I'm the primary contact for all the mentors and, for me, it's the best part of my job is talking with them and watching them use their experiences and share their stories.

The trusting relationship.

They know if they have a question that I am going to get back to them as quickly as I can.

If they call and say April, I need a number for the food bank in this area.

I'm going to get that information to them.

Because we don't want them to feel like they're the only resource for somebody.

We want them to know that this is a team effort and when they need something, you know, that I'm going to be responsive.

One of the things we found really helpful over the years is that we've got to help the mentors focus on what we're accomplishing.

So a lot of times, as you all know, when we're working with somebody there can be times we see somebody just click, click, click, reach that goal.

Other times it's more about the baby steps.

And so we really take many opportunities to celebrate accomplishments.

We do that with the matches.

We also do that as an agency to really honor and celebrate the peer mentors for what they do.

They're volunteers, they don't have to do this.

They're choosing to do this.

So for us, we found a lot of value in taking time to celebrate and recognize them and so we do that a couple ways.

We have an annual holiday party and it's in December, of course.

So we get the mentors and mentees together.

They invite a guest.

A lot of them will bring a family or friend and we, you know, sometimes we have a small grant that we get to do a little extra.

Other years we don't.

So it's focused on having a fun celebration around the holidays.

Occasionally we have funds for a gift card.

Last year we had a little bit of money to do a T-shirt, just little things like that to let people know that you're thinking about them.

It's not really the monetary value of the item.

I write 5 or 6 thank you notes or thinking about you notes every week.

It's about saying to somebody hey what you did really mattered.

A couple weeks ago when the Living Well class one of my peer mentors cofacilitates that group.

And I was in training and presenting that day.

As he was talking I thought everything he said was good, good.

He was spot on and I had to send him a card and say I appreciate you.

That was amazing what you do in that group.

Sometimes it is about that phone call or email to say thank you.

We have an annual event called the spirit of ABIL awards, this is a reception where

we honor the peer mentors and volunteers.

We have usually have a peer mentor of the year.

This year we did something different, we did the match of the year.

So we honored a mentor and mentee who worked together and had amazing progress and something we were really excited about what they were doing together.

We also recognize people for 1 year, 5 year, 10 years of service.

We haven't had a lot of people get to those milestones and funny, last few years we had our first 15 year.

We had our first four or five 10-years.

So that's pretty cool

AMINA KRUCK:  That's amazing to have volunteers that last that long.

APRIL REED:  Seriously, yeah.

If I was doing this training with just volunteer coordinators, they would all be pretty jealous because that doesn't happen in the world of volunteer coordination, you don't usually get people to stay that long.

We also do a plaque.

We do certificates.

We try to get a gift card.

It's really about regularly recognizing what people are doing for you.

And this is something that we are always trying to get better at.

Amina and I just talked about let's get these stories added in into our report.

We sometimes know what's happening but maybe our board members don't fully understand what's happening.

That's something we're always working on.

And we will do stories that are in our newsletter up on the Web site to give people the idea about what the heck are we doing?

So getting pictures to remind me to talk about people.

This Wendell on the left, he is one of our peer mentors and talk about screening and looking at somebody.

Wendell came through and he said well, I don't know if I'm going to have anybody I just want to work with stroke survivors and I want to work with somebody around my age.

Most of the stroke survivors I know are really a lot older and he said I want to connect with people that I can help get active.

You know, I said, Wendell come through the training and let's see what happens.

So he started mentoring with us.

He mentors at a couple other hospitals and and he got matched up with Steve.

And you know, Steve was just a few months out from his stroke.

And they really connected cause they had the same type of injury, in the same area of the brain.

You can even see from that picture.

But Steve, a whole new world opened up for him because Wendell can drive, Wendell is working.

Just last week Steve or two weeks ago Steve got his driver's license again.

It's those kinds of things, the kind of work people do and commitment they make to each other, to share and  support each other and Steve has now gone through peer mentor training and is doing a lot of work for us.

So very cool.

Then this is a group of our other honorees.

We honor people for their volunteer work so people who come in and help us at events and different things we'll honor them for that work as well.

AMINA KRUCK:  The third woman in, Carmin started out in our This Is My Life program that was out reaching people with developmental disabilities.

It was stagnant for a while.

She took the Living Well class and got through half of it.

She doesn't read very well at all.

And just kept hanging around and she started doing general volunteering.

And then she ended up going out to the schools.

And changed.

Bam.

That was her button.

She's great and they love asking questions because she's a person with a developmental disability.

She is married.

She's living on her own.

She gets some help from family and other people.

She's had support from ABIL off and on, a little here and there teaching her self-advocacy skills and that kind of thing for probably off and on 10 years but basically living independently.

But who knew.

She was like a mouse.

She would never speak out loud in front of anybody.

I'm sure she had gotten crap in school and that kind of thing.

But with the students she lit up and I didn't know that was going on.

I found out later.

From her when she said that was who she was going to nominate.

I didn't even realize that she was now doing that.

So another just great example and the one next to her, Sammy, Sammy has loss of vision and it's progressive.

And she's just determined to learn how to be independent.

And her issue is her family that doesn't think she can be independent, right.

So she's somebody who has learned a lot from the other mentors and is a mentor herself.

So just an amazing group of people.

APRIL REED:  Sammy is a good example of one of those people I interviewed and wasn't sure.

That's because with her low vision, Sammy is constantly trying to orient to a room and to lighting and situations.

So she has a very blank flat affect.

So I'm just, I'm not sure if I'm getting through.

I don't know if she likes this.

And so she went through the training.

She came up to me after and said I think I'll do the groups for right now, I am not ready for one on one.

I said great.

She came to the groups for about a year and a half.

I see little things happening.

Her connecting with people, her jumping in and supporting somebody.

You know, flip to a couple years later and she's amazing.

She has a very difficult match right now, where she is matched with somebody who has a terminal diagnosis.

And I'm thinking I imagine them because it's both progressive, well, Sammy was a caregiver for her husband who died of cancer.

So what they've really connected about is Sammy understands some of those end of life issues.

And so the mentor is like how do I help my kids.

What did you do grief support.

And they are just amazing, really beautiful the way Sammy has stepped in and been able to support this lady.

So you know, sometimes you give people a chance to grow and then before you know it, they're just surprising you.

AMINA KRUCK:  She turns out to be one of those people with she's a slow burner but persistent and stubborn and she's really explored a lot of technology that's available to people with vision loss.

And now shown a lot of other people technology that could help them and kind of spur them on to think about how can they get help to pay for it and this kind of thing.

Because she's been quite assertive about getting that for herself.

She's a really good advocate in that area.

APRIL REED:  We've seen her definitely get more in tune with the advocacy piece.

She's come to legislature and got stuff there.

AMINA KRUCK:  Yeah.

She went down to the capitol with us.

APRIL REED:  Couple things about program evaluation.

I mentioned that we do evaluations after we match someone.

So we're going to do an evaluation with the mentor and the mentee.

So I have peer mentor evaluation forms.

The staff have mentee evaluation forms.

After we match somebody we're going to do a one month evaluation.

Three month, 6 month if the match goes that long.

We're asking things about, like, how often have you met, are you comfortable.

Are you working on goals?

So he evaluation is really critical.

That helps me know are things working?

Do we need more resources?

Do we need to change something?

What we really found is that 1-month evaluation is really important.

Even sometimes I'll do it sooner than that because if there is a problem, if something is not clicking or personalities aren't gelling, you know, the quicker that I can step in and fix that and provide support or even rematch somebody if I need to, the better.

So, if we kind of let things go on and people aren't comfortable or aren't satisfied or happy, we're probably going to lose them and that's true for the mentor and the mentee.

So early consistent evaluation is really, really important for us.

And this is the piece where you get your outcomes.

How do I know if this thing is making a difference?

How do I know if the peer mentor is working on goals?

How do I know if we're making progress, we have to ask people and we have to get their opinion, we have to do these evaluations.

So we record our evaluations and what people can do is send a link to evaluation it's uploaded into Google Docs and I copy it into an Excel chart that we program to run reports.

I can look at what are people saying about I was matched quick enough.

Or how many times on average are matches meeting every month?

Or how many people said they made progress on their goal.

We can look at all of those things and run reports to know whether we're actually doing what we're saying we're doing.

Another fun thing is what kind of goals are we getting asked to do.

I can tell you the most requested goal this last year is self-esteem.

I want somebody to support me and help me grow more confident in my disability.

That's the number one request.

It wasn't public transportation.

It was self-esteem.

If you're tracking all these things, it's not all that hard to do if you know what you want to track.

That was kind of our hard part is we continually have times where we go back and say well, let's modify this a little bit.

We've never asked this before, let's track that.

Figuring out what you care about, what you want to know, questions about what's working, what's not, that's how you're going to get your out comes is by doing these evaluations.

AMINA KRUCK:  I would say, how we, why we learned about that one month, I had a couple volunteer coordinators who weren't doing a very good job.

That's where I learned the hard way why it's so important that there's more than one side checking in to see.

So, in other words, the staff checking in with the mentee and the volunteer coordinator checking in to see is this match actually working?

Have they really connected and are they being in touch with each other because that's, if it goes on and is not working, goes on and is not working, it gives the program a bad name.

Causes dropouts of mentors and mentees both.

Because they don't need another rejection, right?

They already came here with enough problems.

So that turned out to be very important.

And this evaluation piece is a little bit of a struggle to get the staff to follow up and do these evaluations as well.

Some staff are on it like a dog on a bone, because they want to know what is going on.

The notes that April puts in about what the mentor has been working on goes into the database and the staff person working with that consumer is under the consumer's name so they can see what's going on if they want to go look there.

But we want to know from the mentee's point of view, right?

And so we really encourage them.

So some staff are really good about it because they want to know what's going on.

Outside of their control.

Other staff don't, it is hard to get them roped into remembering to do that so that's another thing April does with her time is cajole the staff and kind of gently bug them to get that done so we can see from both sides how is it working?

APRIL REED:  We all have a lot of paperwork to do so sometimes it's one more piece of paperwork.

But when you're talking about really knowing whether this is working or not, this is the only way we can know is by asking people what worked, what doesn't?

AMINA KRUCK: She triggers the report to let them know who it is that's coming up for one of these evaluations.

And the other thing is Okay.

The information was overwhelming to put together and to do something with.

And so we had a volunteer and an intern that worked on, and a staff person who is really good with a computer that helped us get it into Google Doc documents and then be able to take the data that comes out, which is still a bunch of data, and make it into some reports that are actually useful.

So it would be something I could give and look at and know what's going on a little bit from it.

So that we've just done over the last couple years.

And it's made ability to again speak about the outcomes and know the health of the program much better.

APRIL REED:  We also have evaluations that we do with people in our mentoring group.

Just because they're coming into a group doesn't mean you shouldn't be asking them what's working in the group.

What do you like, what don't you like.

What topics do you want presented.

All of those things you still want to know.

Are you getting something?

Are your goals being met from this group?

So again, we can't know that unless we're asking people and using those evaluations.

AMINA KRUCK:  And usually about annually I will send something out to staff to see from their perspective how is the volunteer program going.

And again, it's going so well, they don't bother to respond half the time, right?

But partly how I know it's going well is by how many people are participating in it on a regular basis.

And that kind of thing helps me know that.

That's the other piece is trying to get some objective information to be giving feedback to the volunteer coordinator that she needs to know about how she can improve her job, too.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I am sorry, when you talk about a program that helps keep track of everything, are you talking about Access or is this a certain program.

AMINA KRUCK: The evaluations, we make like a Google Docs survey.

It's like a  survey.

What is the other one?

Survey Monkey, yeah, I like Survey Monkey.

That asks the question, so now it is in that, and that puts it all together for us.

And you can take that data that can come out in a spreadsheet but it's all individual data.

And you can do some summary reports out of it.

And that would just, that was a long range project 

APRIL REED:  From a peer mentor

AMINA KRUCK: We are happy to share how we did that with you.

APRIL REED:  From the peer mentors perspective it just simplified the whole process.

I might have to mail something out to them or email

AMINA KRUCK: Or call them

We would want a third person to call them because we wouldn't want April to call them, we would want a third person to call them to get objective information.

It used to be a lot more time consuming.

Plus over the last few years much more of our mentors are computer literate and using that kind of stuff now.

If there's somebody that isn't we will do it manually and have an intern or different staff person do the call.

APRIL REED:  Obviously that's one thing I won't do with peer mentors, that's a questionable outcome.

AMINA KRUCK:  That's anonymous, well the program evaluation is anonymous.

It is not anonymous asking how the match is going because that's we know who's doing what with who.

We want them to know they are communicating with us and we are checking it.

So they know we care about what they're doing.

We're not throwing it out to the wolves.

APRIL REED: So again, I mean really, this, early evaluation of regular evaluation really does lead to more successful matches, more successful outcomes and we modify the program based on the feedback.

You know, so, if somebody's in our group and says you know why haven't you done a presentation about this.

We need this.

I'm going to take that feedback and if I can't do it, I'm going to figure out how we get it done.

So a good example of this is some recently done surveys and asking people what presentations and a couple people came back and said we need, we need a presentation on living wills and documents that do not resuscitate and I'm like well, I'm not a lawyer so I'm bringing somebody in that's specializes in special needs trusts and documents like that.

And so that was them saying hey we need this why haven't you done this.

So it's my job to follow up and make sure we have it and figure out how to offer it.

So, plus it gives me a lot of ideas because, we'll talk more about groups tomorrow.

But at some point when you're facilitating groups, you're doing presentations and have topics, you run out of ideas.

So why not have the people you're working with give you ideas about what to do next.

So I get a lot of good suggestions from the people in the group about what they want to see happen in the group.