DARRELL JONES: I surprised everybody and you're still chewing. Let's go ahead and get started. We had a few things that we wanted to delve into just a little bit more and we had a few questions that came in. So we thought we would cover those and some folks wanted to make some comments. Let's start by continuing the conversation from earlier today about the person who is going to talk is over here having his photograph taken. What we thought we might want to do is continue the conversation just a little bit more about relationships. This is big stuff. This is important stuff. And maybe some of you feel like we've hashed it to death at this point, but I think there probably are a couple more things that we might want to share. So Rick Walters I think had some thoughts that he wanted to, come on up. RICK WALTERS: This was a very meaningful meeting for me to meet so many folks from so many CILs that are interested in partnering with VR. I really encourage you to take the steps necessary to do that. I think you can find yourself in an exceptional partnership with people who care just as much as you do about independence for people with disabilities and keep in mind that I'm a baby boomer just like David was saying earlier. I will be going soon. I am now the, let's just say the oldest DA in Pennsylvania. There has been a huge turn over. There may have been people with grudges from the 80's and the 90's who are leaving now from your states and being replaced with young, new individuals who will be much more interested in partnering for the betterment of our mutual customers. So I wanted to thank you all for being so kind to me and I hope you have a successful collaboration in the future. DARRELL JONES: Thank you, Rick. I think it was very brave of Rick and Abbie to come into this environment. So thanks very much to both of you. Abbie, did you want to add anything to that conversation about relationships? ABBIE WELLS-HERZOG: You know what Rick said was absolutely true is, you know, I'm a baby boomer, too, and there are, and especially in Minnesota, we are just having this huge turnover of counselors and I suspect it's happening all over the United States. So you have a whole group of counselors and who will be become managers who don't know that much about you. So here is your chance to really get your foot in the door and, you know, just remember that we're all just people, too. And you know it's the relationships that are going to build and change the system. So it's better for our folks and can help them get better jobs and live more independent lives. Just keep at it. Don't give up. So it will work out. DARRELL JONES: Thanks, Abbie. Do any of you want to add anything to this discussion about relationships? Any insights? Any remaining concerns? Daryll? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was just sitting here thinking about the future and I think it's really important to get the young people involved. The people that are transitioned out into the community, the people that are 21 to 27 or those folks that are, that have received our services and need to be a part of the dialogue and growing the leadership for IL. I think nationally, you know, as we're saying a lot of the leaders are either getting gray or losing some of their hair, Dave, and we need to, we need to look at involving the young people because as somebody pointed out to me the other day, that a 24-year-old does not know life without the ADA. And that's a whole different world. And so if they're going to be the leaders in the IL movement, and working in these positions in this field, they're going to have a different perspective. And we need to foster that leadership in whatever way that we can in our own communities. DARRELL JONES: Thank you for that, Darrell. Anybody else? Comments about relationships? Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks. I just wanted to say that I felt impressed a few months ago to just start building a relationship with our local VR office. We're kind of rural, so we're the only thing in quite a vicinity. And we just collaborated and we had a lunch for our staff and, you know, they did the sandwiches, we brought the salads and everybody just went around the room and said this is what I do. This is my job. And ever since then, we have had more referrals from VR than we ever have. Now, coming from this conference, I can see a much larger collaboration, but we started somewhere and we didn't have to start at the top. We started local. So just a thought. DARRELL JONES: That's how it starts isn't it. Absolutely. Anyone else? Okay, Abbie, you had some thoughts you wanted to share with us about job readiness that I thought were very insightful. ABBIE WELLS-HERZOG: Over the last few days, well, first of all, I want to disclose that I'm an unusual voc rehab counselor in case you guys haven't noticed. I am ACRE certified, I'm the only one in voc rehab in the state of Minnesota that is ACRE certified and I also lead discovery assessment and customized employment for voc rehab. I'm a little bit of a maverick. So that being said, I've heard over the last few days people talking about being job ready. And I just want to plant a little seed for you to think about this. What would happen if we don't expect people to change to get a job? What would, what would happen if we just expect people and respect their abilities, talents and skills, met them where they are at, got them a job based on all that information and do you think things would change? Do you think our outcomes would be better? I think that's the basis of kind of customized employment and one of the things I keep hearing about, when I go to trainings and other folks have had been ACRE certified too might have heard these. You have to go shower more often. You have to wear appropriate clothes. You have to get a hair cut. You've got to do this, change your whole self and then you go in and you have to be somebody else during the interview and then you get hired and then the person goes back the being who they are and then it doesn't work out in the job. And we kind of think, well, why didn't that work out? Well, duh... how about if we just take people where they are and place them in jobs where they can be who they are. That's all I have to say. DARRELL JONES: Thank you. What an interesting concept. Dave talked a little bit about that this morning, too, when you were talking about your God daughter and the IEP meeting where initially it was only what was wrong with her that was being discussed. I think one of the really beautiful things about Independent Living Centers is that we do tend to focus on a strength-based approach to working with people. We want to find out who they are, what they want, what their dreams are, what skills they have, what competencies, where they want to live and from that we try to move forward. So it's a way that really supports people the way that Abbie is talking about I think. We also had just a brief comment that Richard Petty wanted to share about program income. RICHARD PETTY: I'll stand back here and apologize for that, but we probably don't need to get away without talking a little bit about the flexibility and some of the requirements that are related to resource development. I think most of you in the room probably know that funding for centers for independent living is unique. SILCs will soon be treated in a somewhat similar way, we believe, based on the new WIOA, but right now at present, centers are one of the few federally funded programs that are not only allowed to use the Title VII funding that they receive to generate other income, but it's also a requirement to use those funds for resource development. It's an expectation. And that's a very fine thing, and you certainly can use those funds to create programs and generate other income. You can use them for writing proposals, the time your staff spends writing proposals. You can spend those funds for development time in developing programs and that's certainly useful and worthwhile. The caveat to all that is that when you do, the money that you generate from the program that you have created becomes program income. And program income then is treated very similarly to the Title VII funding that you receive. It has the same kinds of restrictions. There are limits on how long you can keep it. You can't put it in the bank. You need to spend it within a certain amount of time and so you need to be cautious about that. It may be that you want to use other funding for development if you have a program that is going to exist for a long time. For example, if you, if you use the funds to develop a Medicaid-funded personal assistance program, if you use the funds to develop a transition from school to work program, that restriction could exist for a very long time. At least for the time that, for the length of time that the grant funding that you have for Title VII exists. And that's an RSA interpretation that there is, that the limitation extends for as long as the grant extends. There is some discussion about whether or not the renewals that are done every three years are considered to be the close of a grant period or not and I would say stay tuned. But I would say that at present it's our understanding that they're not considered to be new grants, that they're simply considered to be a renewal of an existing grant that has been in existence for however long that it's been in existence. The things that we would encourage you to do is continue to check our website, ilru.org, as we receive interpretations and especially with the coming uniform guidance for federal grants, that that's at a level above the funding agencies. That's the old office of management and budget. There will be some interpretations and changes that could affect this discussion. We're looking for regulations to be promulgated by December of this year. We will be updating the financial management sample policies and procedures and we'll be addressing this in those, in that material. That's also on our website. As you're using time to develop other programs, be in very close communication with your accountant and it's probably a discussion to have with an auditor also. The auditor that does your A-133 audits. Most of you probably fall under the single audit requirement and that's where, that's one of the first places that this might arise and where it might be flagged as a problem. The other occasion when it might be flagged as a problem is if you have a monitoring visit from the federal agency that funds you. And at present that's RSA. In future that's going to be the Administration for Community Living, ACL. All of this is important. This flexibility that we have with Title VII is wonderful, but there are some caveats and some restrictions that we need to be aware of and those are the big ones right there. So proceed with caution. Have a very clear understanding of where you are. Know that in fact if you have used the funds to, funds from Title VII to develop these programs, that you may be under a restriction for how those funds are spent. And finally, I would say we know of at least one center that at one point gave the funds back and said we'd rather not have the restriction over time and that seemed to solve that problem for that center. I can't tell you that that's a precedent, but it certainly is at least a possibility for you to explore. So I think that's all I've got. If there are any questions, I'll try to answer them. DARRELL JONES: Any questions about that? I don't see any, Richard. Everyone is probably on a sugar lull from the gluten free chocolate cake. We had a few questions left over from our post its the other day. One of the concerns that someone has is how replicable these wonderful programs are in rural areas. Would any of our centers care to respond to that? Dave. DAVE HANCOX: I will. Speaking specifically about the IL VR collaboration, that collaboration in the state of Minnesota does not take place just at the METRO Center for Independent Living. That collaboration is in place at all eight centers in Minnesota operating under is the same model. So there is either, and collocation, i.e. having their IL specialists embeded in the that workforce center or in some other kind of collocation is an essential part of each of those eight separate projects. So in many of those, many of the centers in Minnesota, I would say at least, well, I would say probably at least five of the eight serve a predominantly rural population. Darrell is nodding over here because he used to be from Minnesota. So that project is, it's already being replicated in rural areas. At least in Minnesota's case I would say, I see that Peter wants to add a comment as well. PETER DARLING: I hope at some point I referenced that moving our project to scale was one of the expectations of the grant. We continue to struggle with that, and I want to tell you why. I kept looking around the room when he said we have 100,000 people. We're the largest city because I knew almost everybody in the room were just chuckling. But it does have bus service, and it's helped us immensely. The rural question is a great one. To move our project to scale as it is now would almost be impossible to do rurally only because smaller school districts would have difficulty coming up with the dollars as we're currently structured. However, one of the things, and you don't have ELO's or the opportunity perhaps to convince educators that there are alternative ways to grant credits. So put those aside. I think smaller scale, the vocational or the career focus piece should be part of the transition planning, the IL piece should be part of the transition planning. So that's two doors for at least a small opening, and I can't imagine that every state doesn't have some mechanism that allows students to, you know, cyber school or to gain credit or academic experience online. So in a smaller way, having that little piece but take the career and the IL piece and package it into a smaller thing. We have three staff basically just to make it easier, full time, to do this. So maybe a one person or whatever. So I think it really could be done rurally. Where you will have the biggest issue is where we've all come back to time and time again is transportation. And that's very expensive. But I do believe it could be replicated but just on a smaller and different scale. DAVE HANCOX: Just as an additional caveat to my earlier comments, every one of those eight collaborations in Minnesota includes a transition piece or focus. It is included in that collaboration. So that we stay in the context of why we're here these few days. DARRELL JONES: Okay, thanks. Lehigh Valley, did you want to add anything to that? DAVE HANCOX: Refusing to speak. DARRELL JONES: That's okay. There was another question for you guys. How do you address the lower income families needing your S2L, LIFE, Career Path program? Do you offer scholarships? Do you have a waiting list for your program? SETH HODEREWSKI: Well, for the school to life group and the summer program, too, we've received some funds from United Way to do a road to graduation portion which was looking at young adults with low income. And that being a portion of the bigger, the S2L group program and the Real World Lehigh Valley program. But then also we look at with the fund-raising and that type of thing that we do looking at scholarships to help some of those costs, too. Now, Career Path, I'll pass it over to Joe for that. JOE MICHENER: Cara said I had to stand up. Fiscal people are the boss, just so you know. For Career Path and LIFE, that is not really an issue for us. 99 percent of our consumers for Career Path are OVR customers. So that's, yeah, there are situations where if someone doesn't have interview clothes or things like that where we have, actually we're fortunate in our area to have some agencies that help with things like that. Some places where you can get free stuff. And OVR also purchases necessary work equipment even if it's steel tipped boots and things like that. The LIFE program is funded primarily by the school district. There is not a lot of private pay in Career Path and/or LIFE. DARRELL JONES: Okay, the next question is addressed to you guys also. Actually it's addressed to Cara, Seth and Joe. If you dare to take this on in public. I think it gives us a hint as to perhaps the situation this person is in. How do you tell your CIL peers and Amy things that are not what she wants to hear so that she hears it? They fight over the microphone. That's how they do it. CARA STEIDEL: We are really fortunate that we feel comfortable that we can pretty much say anything to Amy, Joe, Seth. I feel we really do run an honest ship and I don't want to kumbaya a lot. We do disagree. We disagree a lot, but we are in an environment that we are able to say what we're thinking. Maybe not immediately. Maybe we need to go back to our office and reframe it in a way that will be accepted. Maybe we need to reframe it in a way that it will, that I won't be angry when I'm saying it. But I can't recall ever not being able to be truly honest. It may take some time, but eventually it is placed on the table. And that's just the culture of our CIL and that starts with our Executive Director having that open door policy and encouraging us to be disruptive when we need to be disruptive. DARRELL JONES: Thank you. I think what we might do at this point is see if you have any questions from the floor before we break. We have kind of an active afternoon planned for you where you're actually going to start doing some planning that you can take home with you. AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is Christina. One of my last questions I had was, and I think it might have been Joe and Seth from Lehigh Valley. We have somewhat of a youth program and one of our issues is that the consumers enjoy the program so much that they have technically aged out of the program by maybe 10 or 15 years and we have trouble figuring out where they go from there because they don't want to move. So how do you get your consumers to transition when they don't want to? JOE MICHENER: Well, I think there is a couple of pieces to that. Sorry, Cara says I have to stand up again. The first piece I think is keeping everyone involved. We talked about, I think yesterday our Career Path Club, so even though somebody's services may have technically ended through Career Path, they are still engaged at a certain level. It may not be that intensive service that they were provided up front, but they're definitely still engaged and especially for a person who is motivated to do so. And the benefit of having that peer support and mentorship from that person who has gone through the program for the young adults who are maybe new to the program. SETH HODEREWSKI: Thanks, Cara. Part of it is they don't necessarily have to go away. Like we try to really find ways to keep people involved. We do, we have a peer support group that meets regularly. We have all kinds of activities and things going on where people can stay engaged and be a part of the CIL. We try to find specific ways if people like to continue and volunteer with us, we try to do that, too. So we really try to keep people engaged in how they want to. And possibly potentially develop more and other programs to meet the needs of them also. AUDIENCE MEMBER: If I could just add an experience to this. I was working in a very rural parish in Louisiana and they had an even start program which is for mothers, generally mothers who are living in poverty who have young children. And they work with the children on child development, but with the moms who work on literacy, getting a GED, kind of being able to move ahead. The program started, it was a small parish. We had about 20 women who were involved. And of those there was a core of six or seven that absolutely loved the program. They came to everything. They worked really, really hard and after five years it was evident that they really probably weren't going to be able to ever get a GED. But they made great progress in a lot of ways and so then another five years went by. And I was the evaluator and I finally said, you know, maybe you ought to think about graduation. And the staff were very, very concerned because they could see all the good things the program was doing, but on the other hand we reached a point where they really did need to find something else and so they decided, they announced a year earlier that those who had been in the program for X years were going to graduate. They had a big graduation activity. They brought them back in to mentor other women, much like some of the things that you were suggesting from Lehigh Valley, but worked very effectively, but it had to be acknowledged by both the staff and the participants that there was, you know, a definite closure or an end to this part of the program and that helped everybody a lot, especially as new folks came in that there was kind of, they ended a five-year kind of time limit on this. Just an idea that sometimes if it's discussed and identified and clear to everyone, it makes it a little bit easier. The first group through is tough though. DARRELL JONES: Thanks Judith. Somebody tell me what time it is? Let's break and why don't you take ten and reassemble for your next assignment.