PETER DARLING: One thing Maureen and I were concerned about over lunch was that now we start to get into more depth, which I hope will be helpful or useful to you; but also some of what we perhaps have already said to you might get repeated. I think repetition is a good learning tool; but I can also imagine some point after, like tomorrow morning when we do the same presentation three times we're going to start going, did I say that? So bear with us if we are saying things, but again I think some of it is purposeful. Some of it will be very helpful. But I wanted to throw that out there. This afternoon's session I think was each of the three of the presentations that you heard this morning will now start to focus more specifically and this afternoon's question was how the three centers, or in our case, how our center involved vocational rehabilitation in the school district. Maureen is going to speak to the school aspect and I'm going to speak to the voc rehab. Okay, Maureen? MAUREEN O'DONNELL: So the first question is what the schools purchase from Granite State Independent Living? As I mentioned earlier this morning, students come to Granite State Independent Living disengaged in their education. They lack the academic skills. They lack the soft skills. They've been absent from school a number of days. So what GSIL offers the school system is the student's reengagement in their education and their return back to high school. When the students return back to high school, they are much more energized, they are respectful, they are attending school everyday. So one of the pieces that they purchase or the school has funded is their reengagement in their education. The second piece is their academic credits. Over this past year, students went back to school with over 150 academic credits and I mentioned earlier that with the Earn to Learn program they get four to four and a half credits, but again they can stay in our computer lab and get another maybe two or three credits. So students go back to school maybe one grade ahead or at least know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel so they are just feeling much better about themselves. The other thing is the transition services. We do a lot of the career assessments, the interest inventories, they have work experiences out in the communities, they are learning some of those really good life skills, independent living skills. We hope that we're increasing the graduation rate. We are hearing that Manchester has lowered the drop out rate which has been great. And we also get funding from other districts so we provide transition services, so just alone with the Earn and Learn Program we do have other districts that will just call us and say I know you've done employment with us before, I know you've done a lot of placements, can you help some of our students in a separate service. The other piece that goes along with this is how do we even get to the schools to begin with to have them know about Earn and Learn? We do a lot of marketing. So we will send E-mails. We will send letters out to employers, just saying we provide transition services. You know, give us a call. This is what we've done. This is some of our outcomes in different programs. So through the employment services that we've done before in the past with all the different school districts, it's just one way of us to market and get more schools involved with GSIL. Peter? PETER DARLING: I'll add a little bit to that. One of the things when we got the ARRA grant, one of the expectations was that we would do whatever it was we were supposed to do, but was that we would create something that could be moved to scale, which meant it could be replicated, it could be brought to other environments. This past year we had an interesting experience. We went to another larger school district. Had I think three meetings that got progressively or successfully feeling even better. At the last one they brought in two assistant superintendents who asked all the hard questions and then they got to what does it cost and that's always the one where you go, no eye contact. Just told it like it was. Figured if it was going to end, it ought to end here and they went "no problem." However, as we were approaching the next meeting, this is kind of like the bad side of the story, that district was experiencing enough financial stress that they chose at that point not to go forward. We are out there. We're trying to, as I said, replicate it in other environments. I also had a story that I thought was good because there are so many successes or so many things, did I go off? No, there I am. Here is one that was a success but it was tempered. At one of our advisory meetings at one point, we were talking about the students returning and the pluses and minuses and one of the assistant principals from one of the ascending schools said, bumped into Aaron in the hall the other day and I had to confront him. He had done something, there was some behavior that really wasn't appropriate in the school environment and you are going, oh, gosh, he is not cured. However, she said it was the most wonderful experience. I confronted him. I said, Aaron, I understand this happened earlier today. She said, he looked right at her square in the eye and said, I'm afraid you're right. Well, this is what happened. That is what happened. What are we going to do about it? Well, from my perspective I can tell you it won't happen again. So there was, wasn't cured, but she was just so impressed. Here was a young man who never, I mean if you were going to confront him about something, look at you, heck no, eye contact, never. All of those things came about as a result of the experience. It's kind of a little win, a story worth telling. Maureen talked to you about the school funding. I'm going to talk about vocational rehabilitation and why we think they were interested. Beyond the fact that they were the ones who issued the ARRA grant that was to address an identified need, but in addition to that, I think it's important, I hope this is the experience that you're finding. Early transition planning is not something that's happening universally. And our vocational rehabilitation, like probably all others nationally, probably lacks the staff to sufficiently, you can define that any way you like, but I'll just say to have staff to dedicate or allocate across every district at the level of need that is out there. I just don't think it probably exists anywhere. I know in New Hampshire I think they have a counselor staff of either 45 or 47 and we have 87 school districts. Now, it still sounds doable, but if you throw geography and those other things into the mix along with other responsibilities, it does get hard to cover in some school districts possibly as many as 500 kids who easily could fall under transition services. So we all struggle with it. So my point getting back to it is I think voc rehab was excited because this just helped lead to what I'll call early transition planning. They knew that at least in some locations and some schools they could look to potentially having some really good solid referrals who were motivated, who were work ready, had a good job goal and were ready to proceed. They also I think are very pleased with the career assessment. That is something, interestingly enough, at first it was a little, I don't want to say push-back, but counselors said, hey, that's what we do. But I think once it started happening and they didn't have to do it, it wasn't missed. I think they saw that there was quality. It was giving them what they wanted. They had input into it so, therefore, they really hadn't lost anything. In fact, in some cases it was a net gain because there was time found for them with the same result or outcome. Work experience, years ago at a conference I heard a woman make this statement. She said that the single strongest determinant of postsecondary success is a student having had a work experience. That's pretty powerful. I've seen it written. I can't find the literature. I'd love to be able to cite it because it would make it perhaps more valid or something, but I think experientially we'd all agree with that. This morning, I think a couple of you referenced the 22-year-old what we call it in New Hampshire, is they graduated to the couch. Where are they, what's happening. You go from an entitlement to adult services which may or may not pick you up depending on a whole host of variables. Again, they love the fact that here comes some students with solid backgrounds and work experiences. The job readiness skills training, as Maureen indicated this morning, that's what Earn and Learn is all about. It's woven so tightly in there at every stretch, and again, in fact they think they are on the job. We don't talk about school, which is what they are so good at failing at. We talk about work which is showing them is relevant and they can in fact succeed at. Again, all the things that I heard this morning, we also do informational interviews, job shadows, labor market surveys and situational assessment. All key I think to contributing to successful student transition. I know that, again, where counselors can, they do participate in IEPs. IEPs tend to happen in the spring and it's so nice I think for them to be able to go in there and see that perhaps the projected next year's course work, the projected needs, the projected services will be based on something that in fact really is in keeping with a progression toward graduation. Basically, we like to say we help create what I will call prepared VR customers. All on VR, in this state, New Hampshire, we have a couple of luxuries. New Hampshire currently is not in an order of selection which I think helps. As I understand it, was it 36 or 37 are in one. So we're in probably that 25 percent or whatever that makes it that is not. I think it's a great debate point. I think you can take either side and articulate very clearly why it works or doesn't, but it clearly is helpful in this case to continue the funding. MAUREEN O’DONNELL: So how do the schools know that GSIL has the right approach? We have had a 20 year history of working with the Manchester School District ahead of time. Because of federally funded programs. We've had such positive long standing relationships with all the teachers and administrators, as a matter of fact, many of the teachers and administrators knew us by our first names. When we went in and approached them that we have this new project that we're going to be working that we received the funding, they were very excited because of our previous job placements that we did. We did a lot of career assessments. So they were very happy that we're going to come in and provide the service. We have qualified staff. The staff has the expertise, as I said, in employment, career development, job supports, special education and again the wrap around services with the IL portion of it. We have knowledge of special education with the transition services, IEPs and 504 plans. We also have experience in the ELO's. So ELO's just started in 2009 when the project started. And we were instrumental in going to all these conferences and learning about ELO's, so the model that we have in the handout, that was the model that they used throughout the state for ELO's. So we just had a lot of experience. We talked with many of the teachers and administrators to get that coordinated. We are very well connected in the community because of our 30, 40 years experience working with many of the employers. We have demonstrated the positive outcomes of the program and the school really welcomed our person centered planning. PETER DARLING: So flipping it over, how does that translate to vocational rehabilitation? Again, we have an even longer or deeper history working with New Hampshire Vocational Rehabilitation. We are a certified rehabilitation program. Referred to us more often as a vendor. We had a very rich and meaningful relationship for a long period of time and it also happened to be in the schools as Maureen referenced, we had 18 years of projects with industry. I don't know if any of you have heard of that. It was some special RSA monies. We always went in concert with the head of voc rehab. We didn't just make one up and say, here, we think you need this. We always sat with them. We said what at this point would be the most helpful to you? I know we had a mental health period, five years, and then I think school to work, remember school to work? When that initiative was gaining momentum, we were asked to direct our efforts into school to work. And again, that got us into the Manchester schools in a very meaningful way and, again, I will tell you artificially over maybe what you're looking to do, got our employment staff well known, appreciated and creating that positive feeling. New Hampshire just completed a big grant in 2012. That ended up, it was a five-year but ends up being a six year with roll over dollars experience. And part of that big influx of money had all of the sort of partners in the field of employment working together and focusing efforts around employers and how to be better at our approaches and our marketing and addressing their needs. One of the outcomes was that a decision was made that all vendor or CRP staff would become ACRE certified. Anybody know ACRE? It's Association of Community Rehabilitation Educators. I'll tell you from my perspective, I think it was developed to work more with a supported employment population. However, saying that I think it covers everything. I still firmly believe that employment needs are employment needs and what you got to do is address them and there are strategies and ways to do it. So this actually gives some individuals in the employment field more skills than they need. So it's not a bad thing to do. I think probably most of us in the field, certainly all of our staff, are now ACRE certified. We have even gone so far as to have two of our independent living coordinators become ACRE certified. What we're trying to do internally is shift that around so that everybody is talking about employment. It should be employment first. Employment has to be an option in everybody's life. And if somebody now is going, I've got a right to say no, you absolutely, anybody has that right and it's not about being coercive, but it's about being informative. It's about being mindful in how we approach employment and just continually testing. Because anyone who has worked in the past, if you can take them there, suddenly starts relating stories. As much as any given day isn't good for us, let's be honest, it defines us and gives us so much. And if you get somebody to that point, what was it about your work that was meaningful? What was it about it, were there social interactions? Did it create a life for you? It's always, yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, another reason I think voc rehab appreciates the efforts that we do, we have locally received strong recognitions, there is a New Hampshire community of practice transition and we received the outstanding apprentice program two years ago. We've been recognized by the SRC which is the state rehab community, several of our staff have received, I think it's just called the job developer of the quarter which just means we're recognized for exemplary work and practice in the field of employment. It says here that we have 1,000 plus placements. The plus is, it could probably be 2,000. We do not track that. I suppose that's a bad outcome measure and we need to work on it. And again going back I think I've mentioned this, but GSIL very consciously joined the community living or the IL and the employment programs under one administrative unit. Another thing that just, you need to know why voc rehab would ever want to talk to you or will talk to you, you need to be seen as collaborative. So collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. One thing you want to be careful of, and this is in all environments, by the way, that you don't go in every time just asking. Can you fund this? Can you do that? Can you help me with this? You may be able to get to that in a more mature relationship, but if you're just right now starting off, I think what you want to do is just be seen as being helpful, helping address issues that they have identified, mutual issues are always a good place to start. And then suddenly you find, hey, well, could you do this? Sort of what Maureen talked about, the fact that we were in schools and they would say, oh, we've got this horrible situation, we don't know what to do with this person, they are not attending, blah, blah, blah and on an individual basis we did much more than the employment. We did a lot of IL and employment kinds of things. But again that was because we had that relationship and, again, in those cases we didn't even have to ask. They kind looked and saw us more as an answer. Just keep that in mind. MAUREEN O’DONNELL: Staffing, our staffing if you want to take note in one of the handouts, I have the three different positions at GSIL. The staff for the Earn and Learn program, but this is a team effort. I'd love to say that I just do, oversee the program and maybe do some of the instructions, but basically we all do everything in the program. We're sure that's like many of you out there. It's not strictly you do one part and someone does another part. So some of the roles and responsibilities of the staff is we do the referrals, the whole curriculum development that we worked along with the school district and VR. We do the scheduling each day, the exit plans so we have to work with the school district on that as well. In the work sites we have an employment coordinator that does the work site development, but we work along with the school district and the student to say, okay, what career did you decide that you're interested in. Let's go out and find something in that field. And then again the transition support. We usually designate one staff person for one particular school, so there is three schools and each of us do one. So it just made it much easier for us instead of one contacting me about another school that someone might have been in that day, so we made it simple that there is a point person for each school. We also have the advisory group that we all participate in that advisory group as well with VR. The location, as I mentioned the Earn and Learn Program is how the Granite State Independent Living, but we are at the schools, I would say, at least 3 or 4 times a month. And they always have an office available for us. As well as VR. We're at VR several times again, 3 or 4 times a month. And there is always space available for us. Predominantly our jobs are at GSIL, but we're constantly at the schools and getting referrals of who might be there, one week, two or three days, and then doing the exits plans and setting that up is another whole day. How is the school involved in our entire process of the program? So from the get go, with the application process, we sit in an advisory group meeting and we go over when the program should start. So we try to coordinate it with the schedule. Initially we started out having a nine week program. And the advisory group said to us, you know, it doesn't really fit with the schedule here, with the school schedule. Can you set it up so it starts in October and ends in January at the end of the marking period. So the kids can go back at that particular time. We set it up so that we have the schedule together. The other piece is the interviews, when we set up the interviews for the students, we have to coordinate with the school staff, usually the guidance counselor, to set something up. We set up specific days for the three different high schools. So we really work in collaboration. Transportation, initially, when we approached the school district, a lot of students were coming to us using a special transit service. And they came to us and said, you know what, this is costing us a lot of money to have individual 15 students come here using a special transit, and because it's written in their IEP, can you do anything? And that's when we came up with the public transportation. So now instead of the school district paying that full amount, they now pay for a bus pass once a month which is probably one fiftieth the cost of someone picking the student up at their home and bringing them to GSIL and bringing them back. Again, when I said the exit plan meetings, that is another thing that is set up and we have advisory group meetings that are held once a month. And VR staff and GSIL and the school system all attend. Documentation of disability, we have to collect all that from the school, along with the transcripts, because we sit with the students, we go over what is your disability, what are some of the accommodations? Let me look at your transcripts. How many credits? What kind of credits do you need? And we look at some of the courses that we offer as well as documentation in disability which many of you know VR needs to have that in order to put someone in a plan. In the development of the extended learning opportunities, we met with the school. We went over all the competencies, does anybody know how many schools have competence-based or is it just according to seat time? Does anybody know? AUDIENCE MEMBER: in California there is competencies. MAUREEN O'DONNELL: I didn't know if any other schools – AUDIENCE MEMBER: Virginia as well. MAUREEN O'DONNELL: Is competency-based. What we did is we had to sit with the school and see what each of the competencies were for each of those subject areas and put a good ELO together to make sure it was rigorous, what the school needed and then we had to contact and find a highly qualified teacher in that specific subject area. So some of the subjects with careers it doesn't have to be a specific teacher, but if we have a math class and the English, it has to be a qualified teacher in that subject area. So we had to find who would be the best teacher for that. And then at the end, who gets those credits? How do they put it back into the system? So at first it was ELO's were new. Who signed off on them? Did the administrator have to sign off? Initially when we started out it was a long process to figure out how do we do that. And again, as I mentioned, there were seven courses that we do and the independent living service coordinator is part of everything. So they might be doing the referrals. They might be doing some of the teaching. So they're just integrated into the whole program itself. PETER DARLING: I'm going to pull a trick on you here. I that was really quick. I guess I have a strong left thumb and I skipped over some things. I apologize. Mentally you're going to have to say where are we going? I was talking about collaboration and the reason I was trying to figure out if I was going back or bury it and I'm going back because I'll tell you why. Because, again, if this segment is about anything, it's about how do you make yourself known? How do you demonstrate value? How do you get someones positive attention? And again, collaboration is the way to do it and I say that across all activities. Again, I talked about the PWI. The Earn and Learn is obvious, because that's why we're here. I talked this morning about the fact that we have the WIPA project and different states handle that service differently. I know in the northeast there is a lot of vocational rehabilitation programs that have taken on and had people trained as CWICs so they have that expertise internally. New Hampshire VR has two individuals who they have chosen to have certified, but because we have the contract we work very collaboratively with them. And provided at times technical assistance because our staff tends to have a little more training and certainly more access to things. So we've done that with them. And New Hampshire voc rehab will pay for that service on a fee-for-service basis. So it's a way to sustain it. WIPA programs which to me are so critical and so poorly funded. We get, by formula we get $100,000. You don't buy a lot of staff to cover a whole state with a $100,000. So anybody who can step up and recognize the value and contribute are important. And here is the real reason that I wanted to go back to this: There are so many other ways you can get involved with VR that are positively and contributory. Many of you probably are on the SILC. That is a good thing. Are you on the SRC? You should be. Somebody from your staff would be a good consideration. New Hampshire has always been open. They want that perspective and they want individuals with disabilities so that they can be sure that they're getting the right representation. And SBVI is just Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired and in New Hampshire we have, it's all under New Hampshire VR. Some have a commission for the blind that's separate, but they have an advisory group and we serve on that also. So, again, it's a way, if you don't have any other way to make your presence felt, it's a very good avenue to get on board with them. And the last thing, I'm just going to talk about because soft skills are really the key to employment. I think we all learned 10 or 15 years ago, employers were saying things like I don't care what they know. Give me somebody with soft skills. We can train them, but if they don't have soft skills they're just, two weeks and they're done, they're gone. So we all recognize the value of soft skills, but I just wanted, as much as we talk about it as a CIL, I want you to know we haven't forgotten empowerment and choice, but I'm going to also tell you I don't think there is any difference. If you're doing good soft skill training, I will tell you what, you are making a heck of a good advocate, somebody who has great skills and judgment and decision-making and all of those other things that are really relevant to personalized growth. So just wanted to do that. Almost done. Okay, in closing, New Hampshire VR has taken a very conscious role in helping develop a strong youth transition approach. I think we will see that grow with the changes that have been noted earlier. How that will happen, we don't know, but I honestly believe they will. They are currently choosing to financially support one-third of the cost to our program and have not wavered on that in any way. When we started, they provided that one third financial support, but they did it over 15 students. Now, they are choosing to do it over a smaller number because what they found is they wanted, as Maureen said, to be able to choose who they were. They wanted to make sure they were getting good candidates for post-secondary support. And we're also involved with the New Hampshire Voc Rehabilitation in that large Department of Ed grant that I referenced, which is a personal development where we're going into high schools across the state to help work on family engagement, transition practice, ELO development and stronger connections with postsecondary. That would be us. Questions? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, sorry I'm so wordy today. You mentioned, just in your last little bit there at the end, about a good candidate. So how do you define a good candidate? And please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to offend you, but I'm just thinking you're not cherry picking, right? Or are you? Do you need to? Do you feel, are you losing some kids that have potential because of the criteria that you feel like you need to meet for them to qualify for the program? PETER DARLING: I would tell you we are clearly not cherry picking and not creaming. We have no entrance criteria? We don't as a program, we'll take on all takers. What we've found though, so that's why it's a good question. We got a couple of 15-year-olds. We found that 15 was too early. They weren't mature enough. I hate to say that, but you could be mature enough at 15 so we could talk about that. 15-year-olds just didn't have the ability to grasp that. They just hadn't had enough life experience so that that relevance thing could kind of click. They weren't seeing adult life in their mirror yet. So that was one thing. MAUREEN O'DONNELL: And the other piece was that, is trying to find employment at 15. It was just really difficult. So what we found is, I think we probably had a handful, maybe 10 or 15 students that were 15 that the school is like we really need to have this person in and I'm a sucker, yeah, we'll take them all. I need to cut it off, but it was because of the work experience as well. PETER DARLING: The other thing, many of these students are coming to us from court ordered placement. So they're not easy. But one thing that we talked about, and we haven't put as an entrance criteria, but was that it's possible for a student to come to us with emotional and psychological needs that we were not qualified to handle and deal with. And so we just said let's just, they would just not come or they would, and there would be nothing we could do. So it's almost wasting a slot. So again it wasn't part, and again I get it. If it wasn't part of the cherry picking, and we just don't have the clinical, if you get somebody that's really just, we just couldn't do them the service that they needed. But that's the only thing that was done. And those came about with experience. AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is when you went to your school district, did you have to present a lot of research and data and statistics to show that this actually works? Or was it a trial and error? PETER DARLING: Because it was a grant, and tomorrow we'll talk a little bit more about it, it was a gift to the district. They hadn't necessarily asked for it, we just appeared and said we're here to help you. And as Maureen said, they were happy. Where it became I think something we had to work on and negotiate was that whenever any of us go from grant funding, we love grants, don't we? I hate them. Because sustainability, if you don't start on day one, and I will talk about that tomorrow, on day 1 with sustainability, you're probably dead in the water. So that had to be part of it. And again whether you understood it or not when Maureen said it, we had the 18 or 20 months of ARRA dollars. Then we wanted the school to pick up some share of the funding and VR the other, and the district just said, we can't. We just don't have that money and it's the wrong time of year in the budget cycle. We don't have that money. We love it. We're so sorry, this isn't about you. They asked for a year reprieve. VR, out of their trust fund, it's not called trust fund anymore, but out of their dollars they get back from Social Security paid for a year all by themselves. Kudos to them. But to get to the outcome data, too, we didn't have anything going in. We now have what we think are incredibly strong outcome data in a whole across the board so if people ask us, I think we can demonstrate that it is powerful. AUDIENCE MEMBER: A couple of real quick questions and sort of a comment. The questions are: Do you think these extended learning opportunities or something like ELOs are available in most states? It seems like that's a really good incentive for the school districts to get involved if there is credits involved. My second quick question is that highly qualified teacher who came and evaluated whether ELO units were to be given, did you guys pay that teacher or did the school districts pay the teacher? And my comment is: I think New Hampshire's vocational rehab is a lot better, nicer, less stingy than California's Department of Rehabilitation. So our experience, so this idea of helping to create a prepared VR client, I just don't see California's VR ever paying to help do that although it's a good idea. And the idea of soft skills are the key to employment, in California they call soft skills PVSA, personal, vocational and social adjustment. Kind of a weird term, but they don't pay for this unless there is a job identified and they are worried you don't have the soft skills to keep the job. Paying to help instill these soft skills in a 15-year-old like I just can't imagine them ever doing that. Also California likes to separate IL from employment. So that collapsing those two areas into one, that wouldn't fly in California. CIL is vendorised to deliver employment services and also ILS. They are separate vendorizations, they like to keep those, they say never the twain shall meet. MAUREEN O'DONNELL: Are there ELO's in California or other states, I'm not sure, but a lot of schools do have internships that they get credit for. It could be similar to the same credit as an internship. That's maybe one way to ask the school district for that. The other one was -- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who pays the highly qualified ELO? MAUREEN O'DONNELL: The school district does. But matter of fact, they probably only pay for one or two teachers. A lot of teachers volunteer their time. I know it sounds very unusual maybe for a school district but they do. They come in and they really love this program and they know what happens to kids and how they return back to school so they said we will come in and evaluate their work and they spend like maybe a day and the presentations are typically a half hour to 45 minutes. So they have to really present and when they present they do like a poster board or a PowerPoint presentation of how they demonstrated their knowledge. JUDITH HOLT: I think that's probably all the time we have. Can we give them, tell them thank you. This is great. I noticed a lot of you taking notes and when they changed PowerPoints and went to another page I heard all the pages turn. So thank you. You're staying alert, awake. This is good. Remember the post it notes. Now, if Lehigh Valley can come up. Again, some of the things you'll hear from them are going to sound similar, but I think that it's important that you hear the different perspectives. And I have to say having been in the disability field a long, long, long time I'm amazed at how far we've come. Sometimes I'm appalled by how far we have to go, but I'm amazed by how far we've come and how many things have really happened and are happening. So keep the possibilities open, even in California. Okay? JOE MICHENER: Hey, all right. So we're going to start off, this is kind of a different order than we went in earlier when we talked about our three transition programs. We'll talk about Career Path first, it being the largest of our transition programs at this point. I want to take a step back to remind you that this program started with an ARRA grant. And is now a fee-for-service program, and I was really appreciative of what Peter and Maureen were talking about when they were talking about partnerships and the right staff and all those kinds of things because without our partnerships, without having the right staff in place, Career Path would have not worked at all. So obviously primarily we needed to have the consumers have the need and the want for this type of program, but then we had to have the relationships with our local VR to get it off the ground. Fortunately, for many years our CIL, LVCIL had a long-standing relationship with VR which made it a lot more feasible to start up something like this. So what's good about this part, and Peter and Maureen did as well, we get to dive deeper into what services VR actually purchases from us and have an explanation of how those services look and how each one is kind of structured funding-wise. For Career Path, the majority of the young adults that come to our Career Path program start with an eight week stills training. And this skills training, the majority is done in a group environment with some individual time as well, and I'll explain how that kind of works out. But the eight weeks skills training, the focus is to prepare the young adults for competitive employment. So really the over-arching theme as you go through is what are the differences between your school environment and the expectations you had in school compared to that competitive employment environment? And I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences, but my example I always give for that is I often meet with a young adult and typically their parents for the first time and I'll ask them if you were sick and couldn't go to school, who would call the school? And 95 percent of the time the response is mom. Dad. Right. So we're focused on changing that and having the young adult take more responsibility for those things. Not because they can't, but because they were never really asked to before or never really had the opportunity to do so before. So the eight weeks skills training is a lot of that, talking about scenarios and going through scenarios that can happen in competitive employment. What do you do when you have a difficult co-worker? What do you do, we all know, we all work. There is always one person, for me it's Seth, who you don't get along with and then your boss sticks you in the same office and makes you get along. No, how do you deal with that? In the school environment that's dealt with in a very different way. And not only how do you deal with it, but how do you deal with it to get a positive response? If somebody is being mean to you, how do you deal with them to get a positive response? It can be a very challenging thing for a young adult especially if they have no work experience in the past. So the eight weeks are modeled after competitive employment. The young adults come as if they are coming to a job, okay? For the group setting, they are there three days a week for about six and a half or seven hours a day, filling out time sheets when they come through the door. They are taking appropriate breaks just as you would on the job, 15 minute break in the morning, half hour for lunch, maybe another shorter break in the afternoon and they're asked to treat it like a job. So I did mention it includes some individual skills as well. There are things that you can't do in a group setting obviously. Resume development, specific practice for interviews, the person centered planning piece is done under our individual fee structure. So, again, and VR is paying for all this. So VR provides this authorization for the group time and then, a small amount, not a lot, of individual time to work on those individual things. Another big piece of this, and what we found, and this comes again from our original transition program, the S2L program is the community piece. The young adults get together. They are in a group for eight weeks together. They are struggling through these things together. They are going out and trying different types of jobs that they've probably never tried before together. They are facing all these things as a group and by the end of that eight weeks they are, they are huge support team for each other. And that was an unexpected result, actually, that they would bond together. Our young adults, we still get together and have a social aspect of this, too, we get together every few months in our Career Path club and just do something fun and the young adults who have been through the program years ago from when it first started, come back, and they all know everybody. They are on FaceBook together. Hey, I got a job interview. They are supporting each other. We just didn't see that as an outcome and it just happened and it's been one of the strongest pieces of our program. So a lot of peer support. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. So, again, going back to the person centered planning, the young adult will come into our program and will meet with me or our coordinator, and kind of discuss the program and go through, but we don't do the person centered plan, which is an actual event in time we get together. It's a pretty lengthy meeting and it can continue after that, but the first meeting is a one time event. We don't do that until about six weeks into the program. So they've actually completed the majority of the skills training before we have that person centered plan. And we do that for a specific reason, as facilitators for the person centered plan, it's really difficult for us to facilitate it if we don't know anything about the young adult. So really that first six weeks is a get to know you period. Really starting to see your interests. I remember one of our first young adults who has been successfully employed for a long time came to the door and didn't talk for the first four weeks she was in the group setting. She is now, can't get her to stop talking, but it took that time for her to feel comfortable with us, to learn to trust us, to realize that we weren't, no offense to any school district people, but we weren't school. We were just kind of a different kind of perspective on what she was able to speak up for herself and that's a big part of the getting to know you. So we do that person centered plan about six weeks into that skills training and then that's the platform for of course the last two weeks of the skills training to make sure that we focus on the needs that come up during the person centered plan, but it also is our jumping point for the next phase of the program which is the community-based work assessments, again, funded by VR. And these are, this is where the program gets much more individualized. So during the person centered planning, the young adult will identify some areas they think they might be interested in. That can be a wide variety of things. So then it's our job to say, okay, you want to be a C. and A? You want to be a graphic designer? We're going to try to provide you an opportunity so you can see what that job is like. And to perhaps get to try some pieces of that job and figure out what educational requirements you would need to go through and all those kind of things. That's a big piece of the community based work assessments. We get to go out and try typically three to four jobs with each young adult in a competitive setting. The vast majority of them have to be hands on as much as possible. Some of them are shadowing depending on what the particular field is, and it allows the young adult to really in-depth explore their interest. It's typically just for a day, okay. We'd love to do more than that. Typically what our funding allows is one time to go and experience it. And estimates the best ones are when the young adult comes back and says I hated that. We're like, good. Thank you. An example I use is I had a young lady who wanted to be a C. and A. because a family member was a C. and A. and she looked up to that person but she never really knew what the person was about. We shadowed a C and A and she went halfway through and said I don't do blood. So she realized pretty quick, that's the experience our young adults need. They need to really see the jobs. Typically in schools they're getting experiences that are, well, that are stereotypical. Cleaning, food service, things like that, and you know, we want to kind of broaden those horizons a little bit to see what else is out there. So we do the best we can with that. Now there are plenty of young adult who just want to clean. That's okay. We can provide those experiences, too. So typically do three to four, two to four assessments based on the person centered plans. The other big piece of that is the staff are vocational coaches are kind of evaluating what supports could be provided to help that young adult be successful in whatever field they choose after that vocational assessment piece is done. So we go out and do the three or four assessments and say, okay, Mike tried these four jobs of the-this is the one he really ideally wants to pursue. This is what we would recommend as support for him to be successful in a competitive job and maybe that's going to training, maybe that's going to school. Maybe that's having support to find the job and then maybe initial support on the job through like a supported employment model. Again, VR is funding everything. So after the assessments are clear, I kind of jumped the gun here and started talking about this, we can help a young adult locate a competitive employment position. This is again funded by VR and this is a little bit different of a funding style than the first two phases I talked about, the skills training and assessments were a fee-for-service on an hourly basis. When we get to here, we talked to VR about benchmarks. Benchmarks of we get some funding to initially help the young adult find a job. To initially find a job and then when the young adult obtains a job, then we get another piece of that funding. That's another benchmark, five days on the job and then 45 days on the job and 90 days on the job. It's performance-based. We do our job and we get funding. Can you hold on one second. So the job development we do is, I think this is appealing and why our program has been successful despite the fact we started in a very poor economy. We use an empowerment model of job development. We are not a staffing agency. We don't go out and find somebody a job. We work very hard to teach the young adult the skills they would need to find a job and then to be able to do it again in the future because we're not looking for the last job the young adult is ever going to have, right? We want to see them continually advance and move on. So trying to help them learn the skills that they would need so they can do it again and again and again and independently, of course. And then I had already mentioned this through VR we can provide support on an as wanted, as-needed basis for the first 90 days on the job. That does not mean we go to work with somebody for 90 days and sit next to them and on our phones texting or whatever. That is initial support. We're there usually typically, doesn't always work this way, but typically we're there the first few days providing full support as the young adult learns the job and meets the right people on the job, developing those natural supports and then we're fading away throughout the 90 days. By the end of 90 days, that young adult is really comfortable and is close to independent on that job as they can be. We do have, I think I forget to put it on the slide, we do have another piece that sometimes we can get funding to continually support that young adult on the job post 90 days. That can sometimes come through VR or another funding source. That may be, we've seen that be very effective for a young adult who maybe has a job and they get a new supervisor and the new supervisor and that young adult don't click very well. We call it follow-along. We have the option of going in there and help develop that relationship with the young adult. Our Career Path services have been really successful and part of that now the Career Path program has really expanded. I think I said earlier when we were in the grant period we had 25 young adults. We actually started with 14 young adults in our program. We're now at 125 active participants. We were also chosen, I don't know how many people are familiar with project search, yeah? Good. Project search for those who haven't heard of it, national program, very creative program started in Cincinnati in the children's hospital where young adults in their final year of high school are placed in nontraditional jobs and given the opportunity to learn those jobs in a competitive environment, and they do internships. So they'll spend a couple of months in one position, move to another position. Well, we were chosen as the provider then if that young adult did not keep one of the jobs that they interned at, we were then able to help them find a competitive job somewhere else in the community. So just another thing that Career Path is doing there. And I'm going to ask Seth to talk about LIFE services. SETH HODEREWSKI: We work very closely together on many things. You know, the whole Career Path thing, getting that altogether, but then the LIFE program came about and it came about out of the blue for us. We were really kind of surprised. We weren't sure where we were going with things. We were actually looking at a transition house of some kind, and we checked out all, as many as we could around Pennsylvania. They were cool and we had this grand idea this is what we were going to do. I guess for the good that didn't work out and we developed our LIFE program. We actually had a special education attorney come to us and they knew what we were doing in our Career Path Program. And they knew about our independent living skills and our ability to do those types of things and she put two and two together and said that they were having a bit of a problem with a local school district and would we be able to provide services instead of them for going through due process. We were like, sure. I think we can do that. Yeah, that's not the school district we brought. I just wanted to make sure. We were getting there. To talk a little bit more about that, but that came about, I mean just because of the lack of services that were around, around for school-based services around our area, it was a challenge for us, but it was something that it worked. It worked with our philosophy. When we saw it was something that we could do and something that we could provide, we had qualified people to be able to do that, so we did that. And it ended up, just great results from that. And then for the next year where the folks from our school-based services reached out to us and from our School To Life program, our parents saw that we were doing this and things went well with that and they were able to convince their schools to be able to come and work with us in that fashion. And those, that LIFE program ended up being like Joe talked earlier, ended up being whatever the student needed it to be. If it was a couple of hours, it had to do with more employment skills, we could do that. If it had to do with independent living skills, we could do that. So it was great to the point where schools then were reaching out to us. They heard about the good work we were doing. They saw the positive results that the young adults were getting, how they were empowered to do the things they wanted to do. So schools were then searching us out. So that's how the school districts with us today, that's why they are here. Thank you. And like I said, they could take part in as much or as little as they want. We had students come for the entire week where we were teaching them to use public transportation. We were supporting them at local colleges because they wanted to take classes there. We helped a young lady pass her driver's permit test. You know. So it was a really wide version of the things we could do with that program. So that's kind of like Career Path and the LIFE program. Those had direct connections with schools and with OVR. And we got into the S2L group in the Real World Lehigh Valley that was initially one grant that was funded through the Developmental Disabilities Council from PA and when that came to an end, we really weren't quite sure what to do. We knew we needed to continue on somehow but what we wanted to do was to make sure we could be as attractive as possible to those funders. So that's why with our S2L group we ended up switching things around a little bit and breaking into two different programs, in our S2L group and Real World Lehigh Valley. Making our S2L group more about those pre-employment skills, those soft skills, things that we have learned from Career Path to be able to kind of put them in further futures and be almost an automatic referral to Career Path. So we ended up doing things like a peer leadership, peer voted in leadership group, with regular meetings group, goal driven, so at the beginning of the year we would come down and have what does the young adult, what do they want to work on? What do they want to work on in this year? Seminars about different topics. We volunteer out in the community as much as we can. The young adults love to do that. Advocacy and legislation, we had a group just today meeting with Representative McKenzy to talk about employment and how important it is to have different employment-related programs out there. Different team building activities, social activities, fund-raising, that's a huge one. We set fund-raising goals and one of the great ones that we like to do is at Applebees. Applebees does their flapjack fund-raisers. I don't know if people have seen this. It really gives, but we love it. We do it at least once a year. We end up making pretty good money. We kind of go in there and we take the whole place over. The only thing we don't do is we don't make the pancakes. We do all the serving and busing and everything else which is really cool and it really opens the eyes. It opens the eyes of the young adult. I could see myself doing that. That can be a really great job for me and it opens the eyes for the parent. I didn't know my kid could do that. It was great that we were able to do that. It opens the eyes to Applebees, maybe we'll give these kids a chance. That kind of stuff is great. We get into our parents meetings for parent support, help to provide us direction for where we're going with that S2L group, too. Again to our Real World Lehigh Valley our summer program. Again, being more attractive to schools, to potentially OVR. That was certainly the thinking, but that is a summer six week summer program. Most of the young adults from the S2L group are part of the Real World Lehigh Valley also, but it's very employment-based. And we try to think about every single angle that we have when it comes to employment and really go with that. You know, everything from employment skills, learning those mock interviews, filling out applications to volunteering in the community, to seminars, businesses like the Gap would come in and talk to us about what do they expect from their employees and what does that look like? We had various work groups like I was talking about the one that went out to, to do the legislative advocacy today around employment, that was one of our work groups for the summer. One of the things that we love to do as part of the group is to go to, there is a big conference in Pennsylvania, Community Owned Transition which is just awesome. We've actually become more integrated into that conference where myself and my staff are working with the conference to provide activities, seminars to the young adults at the conference. So there is about 800 people there, teachers, OVR, students and we've been able to get in there and work with them to do that kind of stuff. And then this year we've been really thrilled about doing a microbusiness and trying that out. We never know what's coming next. That's the other great thing about things. One of the things we've done things like cookie sales and a deli, that kind of thing just to get those employment-based skills, to see what they are like to do it on a hands on and practical way. And the idea from the young adults this year was to do a microbusiness. So they came up with, I don't know if you folks have ever seen, they almost look like the decorative jars and have bean soup and the different levels and it looks really cool. They really did a nice job with that this year and they went out and they came up with a name for the business. They found ways to market it. They came up with all the sheets do that. They did all the selling, pictures, whole nine yards. They developed it all. So those are the kind of things that we're kind of trying to become more attractive to our funders and again looking at every area of employment and how that, how things relate to employment around that. So one of the other things that we've really had to do was become, integrate as much as we can with schools, with OVR, just as much as we could in every single area. We were fortunate enough to hold two conferences that we called "Have You Thought About Life?” The Have You Thought About Life transition conference and OVR was a sponsor for that. We also invited a number of schools and OVR to help us plan, put things together for the conference, so taking them into account with things that they felt that they needed to do, inviting their students to come to the conference, that type of thing, too. We do something called have you thought about life presentation where we go into schools and we usually take the young adults with us to talk about, give little tidbits of information about what to expect once you're done with school. We have, those collaborations like you were talking about earlier and how important that is and, the same for us, too. We've been able to develop a number of local and statewide partners, including PYLN, which is Pennsylvania Youth Leadership Network. We were able to actually hire their president who brought a lot of contacts with him through places like the Department of Education and one of the other really cool things that came out of it is, we received another grant from the Developmental Disabilities Council to do leadership in schools. That is looking at standards aligned resources on a website where teachers can go to pull off resources they can use in their classroom. We've been working with the Department of Ed on that type of thing. And then working with things that are called intermediate units in Pennsylvania. And those are specialized education services where schools can contract with them to provide whatever services they may need. They are huge. But working with the intermediate units to provide different kinds of activities and different kinds of transition-related things. You know, to our transition advocacy work and what we've done there. We've actually received some funds from OVR and the SILC, the PA SILC to do, there were certain pots of money that were available where that could be around advocacy and we were fortunate enough to receive funds to do transition-related advocacy. So social media campaign, that type of thing, like us on FaceBook, that type of thing. And getting into transitional legislation. JOE MICHENER: I just wanted to jump in. I think it's important for context, this is a little challenging for Seth and I. We're used to presenting in the state of Pennsylvania. We realize that we are talking to an audience that has a lot of different scenarios. Until the last few years in Pennsylvania the school districts and adult service world, there was not much of a connection. Okay? This is really recent in the last four to five years that we've seen, starting to bridge, VRs are in the schools now and that wasn't something that happened years ago. So we've been able to be a part of that growth and I think that's important for you to understand the context. I realize some of you come from states where the adult service world and the school districts never talk to each other. This is really just starting to happen in Pennsylvania. So just providing some context. But we also wanted to talk about relationships as Peter and Maureen did and just, you know, when I came to start to manage the supported employment program, Career Path, one of my greatest fears was that we'd have to start and create all these connections with employers and that's hard thing to do. In fact, it's something, if you start a program like that, if you have one, you know that it's just a constant challenge no matter what, but to start from scratch, but the great thing was we had a solid relationship with VR. We had the LVCIL's connections with employers already and we also, it started to happen in Pennsylvania too where agencies are starting to work together a little more, it is not as competitive as it used to be. When I started in this field you weren't allowed to talk to another agency. That was naughty and bad. So agencies are starting to be a little more collaborative realizing that it takes all of us to provide great service. So a lot has changed in Pennsylvania over the last few years and I just think that's a really important part of why things have been working well for us. That it's not just the CIL, LVCIL, trying to do everything by itself and I think you have to have that perfect kind of pot ready to go for something like this to get off the ground and do well. So we did do a lot of outreach initially. I know Seth did tons and tons and tons of outreach for S2L to get that up off the ground, but the great thing was once things got going and you can see with our progression from S2L to Career Path and the addition of the LIFE program, word of mouth helped us so much. Parents in the S2L program, excited about what was going on there, they would go back and talk about it in IEP meetings and then the teacher knows about it and they are talking about it to their colleagues and it's spreading, spreading, spreading. We were getting so many phone calls and just interest in everything, it was initially really hard to keep up with. SETH HODERWESKI: The young adults being the ones that are doing the referrals, too. We actually reduced some of our advertising budgets because the young adults were talking to other young adults that were coming to us to find out the information. JOE MICHENER: And then we did have families and schools and other, other agencies who felt that they couldn't do what we could do. They were coming to us and saying we are working with this young person and we don't feel like we can provide what this young person needs, will you help us? Sure. Okay, thanks. And going, and just, it's really important to understand that that initial S2L program which was started with a grant from the Pennsylvania DDC with 25 young adults initially, that was the launching port for everything we do. So because that success, that made Career Path much easier to get started off the ground. The infrastructure and the staff capacity of Career Path then made it possible for us to provide the LIFE services with the school districts. So it really did kind of grow and in a really interesting way and it's interesting to go hear Maureen and Peter and David talk about their programs and how they kind of grew and just different ways to get to very similar places. And then we just kind of think that this is really important for the crowd we're talking to. We think we're really appealing to funders because of our philosophy and because of the way we approach things. In fact, when we were chosen to be the provider for Project Search, that was one thing we were specifically told, I think when we interviewed for that to be the provider for Project Search, I think I probably said person centered about 50 times during all the questions they asked us. And I thought, boy, that was over kill. And they were like, no, that's actually really what attracted us to you to be the provider because that person centered approach, you know, if a young adult doesn't buy into what they are doing, forget it. Right? So that person centered approach is really key. The holistic approach, having the multiple services under one roof and then the willingness to bring other agencies in as needed. Our culture and environment, I think one of the other things that's really attractive to our funders, our staff in Career Path, we have quite a diversity of backgrounds. We have two teachers on staff, certified teachers on staff, we have some voc rehab people. We have social workers. We have psychology, so it's a really diverse background of staff people that can meet the specific needs of the young adults that are coming through the door for our program. And then incorporating best practices and the hardest one for me, because I have OCD, flexible. It's like what keeps me up at night, how are we going to do that? But somehow we have an amazing staff that says, okay, you need me to be a job coach to somebody on a Friday night third shift, I'll be there. Wow. Okay. You have to have that willingness to do that and you have to be flexible. Especially when it comes to the school districts because that student has that IEP and that is a really hard thing to handle if you're not flexible and if you can't fit in the pieces you need to fit in that match up with that IEP. Qualified, dedicated staff and just the reputation that LVCIL has developed long before I got there. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, we have an employment department already that works with VR. And so trying to build that collaboration so that that department doesn't feel like, because our boss wants us to do a transition department. So I was thinking of like the soft skills, those kinds of things because when our employment department doesn't feel like they're employment ready, they usually throw them over to us. So a way to still have that partnership with, or develop a partnership with VR in a way that wouldn't feel like we were stepping on the toes. JOE MICHENER: I can tell you for our skills training is really unique. We're the only provider in our area that has something like that for young adults and my background is supported employment. That's where I started more than ten years ago. And I've never been part of a program that has something like that. Typically, we were doing soft skills on the job, right? And that could be a really hard thing to do. It could be effective in some ways, but could also be a hard thing to do. So when we originally went for that grant, that was a big premise of what we were doing that we needed to have some ability to tackle the soft skill issues before we got out there and I think, I think VR was totally on board with that. And I'm not just saying that because Rick is in the room. They realized that the young adults needed that kind of preemptive little bit of boot camp so to speak to really get to that point. So I don't know, maybe we can talk after and talk specifically kind of how we approached that. I'd be happy to do that if I'm not hiding in my room. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, this is Michael from Mobile. This partnership that you all have going with the school system and rehab and all, do you all have a signed contract in place with both the school system and VR and for how long? JOE MICHENER: I can speak to the VR. We have a letter of understanding with VR. And it is removable in a five-year period, but through that letter of understanding we established our rate for our different services, each service we provide has a somewhat different rate depending on what it is, group services or individual, and that letter of understanding kind of encapsulates what we're going to do with anybody who comes through the VR funding. SETH HODEREWSKI: I can speak a little more about the contracts with the schools. The stuff with the schools really depends. It depends on the school, it depends on how long. Was it for the entire year or just a trial period? And each contract is written very specifically and very differently. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you guys go to the school system yourselves and basically sell your program to them? JOE MICHENER: Partly. Yeah, we did a lot of outreach but then eventually the schools were seeking us out and I think you'll get to hear from Commonwealth Connections, which is the school district that came with us, kind of how they heard about us and we're like, okay, we think they might be able to do what we need. As Seth mentioned, every contract we have with every school district, every agreement is different. It's different based on the student. It's different, I've literally had half a page agreements with a school district and I've had 20 page agreements with the school district. It just depends on what they're looking for and what they need. SETH HODEREWSKI: Right down to the documentation they require. Some schools wanting very little to some wanting a heck of a lot. And everywhere in between. It's really specific to the school. JOE MICHENER: Coming back to the flexible, being very flexible. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Finally, most VRs, you know, their counselors or under unit supervisors and these guys, they meet typically every Friday and go through stuff and all that. Did you have to go through that process with VR? And then finally do you guys provide transportation to these events or does VR integrate the resources as part of the deal and you all get them there? Thank you. JOE MICHENER: Really good questions. Just to kind of tackle the first one, we're really fortunate, and again I'm not just saying this because Rick is in the room, Rick has an amazing staff of counselors at VR that are very down to earth and very realistic that we work very well with. When we go to them with a specific need for a young adult, and advocating for that young adult or that young adult advocating for themselves, the VR counselors are not ever shutting us down. They are working with us to try to figure out, even if VR isn't the funding option. They are working with us through their connections to try to figure out a solution to whatever the situation is. We are very, very fortunate in that matter and I know that's not the case all over the country. I think, I think that's where VRs and CILs have to come together, have to come together and if that means the CIL being the first to make that attempt, then so be it. The transportation issue, we do have public transportation in Lehigh Valley. It definitely has its weaknesses. For our VR programming, there are certain things we do provide transportation for like the community-based work assessments where we go out and try the individual jobs and then there are elements that we can't provide the transportation for, for example, the group skills training. It is the young adult's responsibility or their family's to get to our location and then within that day we can then transport to different events, different things that are going on. SETH HODEREWSKI: Again that's part of the reason as we moved into a new location, we made sure we were on a bus route and to be able to help teach those skills and that type of thing, too. So that was really, really important to us as we moved locations. JOE MICHENER: And the other thing about the Lehigh Valley, where we're located, it is very much some city and a lot of rural. So we are actually continually trying to expand out into those more rural areas. Right now we're located kind of centrally into Allentown, Bethlehem, east end and the main hub of Lehigh Valley, but there are areas that have no transportation options to get to us. So we're working to try to move our services to those areas in the near future actually. AMY BECK: I wondered if I could just comment on one thing a question that was asked earlier. I just wanted to comment. One of my colleagues in the back I know she was talking about coming from the CIL perspective that we hire people with disabilities. They don't need to have other education or experience. Okay, so I've been associated with our CIL since 1990. I've been the director since 1999 and I don't know, I had my disability before I pursued my education. I always thought they went hand in hand. And so we've had staff who brought a lot of life experience. Some staff with disabilities who brought education, too. But I think some of what happens, has had to happen for us to provide some level of comparison and reassurance with the VR system and with schools is that we have a minimum base skill, education, clearance credential set. The schools are paying us a fee for service. This is different than being program funded. So we do require, I believe our job description requires a bachelors. I think there is some allowance that there is life experience with some education; but in a way, you know, we want to play in that system, work in that system. So to have the respect and to meet that minimum standard where parents and schools feel, we feel good about the fact that our young adult is going there. We know the staff are experienced now, that doesn't mean there aren't other jobs and places and staff working inside that program who do not have all of that, but I don't know, I almost felt it was a reverse discrimination over my career at the CIL. Does this mean I'm not supposed to hire people who have a disability and who have pursued education as well as having life experience? So it has benefited our CIL to have a variety of employees and we would not be as attractive for doing this fee-for-service work if we did not have a cadre of staff with education as well as life experience with disability. JUDITH HOLT: Thank you. That was a great comment and I think that's the important concept, especially as we start playing with folks who really do expect certain levels of education and expertise. I just want one little quick side note. I said that I do evaluations. And I evaluate the online classes that are offered to IL Net and NCO one of the things we ask is what are your years of education.