St of ca-rehabilitation-cal2 Moderator: Thomas Dempsey February 12, 2015 2: 45 pm ct
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| But it really speaks to - we have to invest in our workforce and our centers in order to have this capacity. And so we need to leverage the other departments, other initiatives to help build some of this and be innovative and strategic in how we can leverage those Medicaid dollars, for example, to build the capacity of centers to be able to demonstrate the numbers that we need.
I think that - speaking as the chair of the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers, one of our major goals is to build the - you know, we’ve always done advocacy, which is really important for our community, but we’ve never really advocated for ourselves as independent living centers to play these critical roles in long term services and support youth transition, serving people of all ages. And we really need to invest in the centers however we can do that. One thing that comes to mind that may not require any additional dollars is also looking at what the requirements are for the Department of Rehab around employment and youth services, what the requirements are for ILC’s, and really find those opportunities to leverage those to help produce their outcomes for DoR on the employment side and help us in demonstrating youth transition services. And so I think things like that - there has to be crossroads and opportunities for us to look at in order to get better outcomes for all of us. And I think that it’s going to be critical to look at those pieces. For (Freed), we are looking at developing employment services, becoming vendorized with Department of Rehab and maybe an employment network. And what’s really important about that is that even though Department of Rehab does that, you can provide some critical support for those employment outcomes and (unintelligible) additional dollars. But I think we also have to look at our employment services for vendors or contracted services and create a better model. I’m not sure going to just vendorized services and getting rid of contracted services with entities like ILC’s is necessarily producing the same outcomes. I think there was a criticism that the contracts weren’t producing the outcomes and I’m wondering if those vendorized - going to a vendorized service model is producing better outcomes or not; and if not, let’s look at that. If centers are complaining about not being able to have the up-front money to do the vendorized type service, maybe we look at a better contract model that will help support the centers in doing more of that work, particularly around youth transitions and also supporting the department with outcomes. So investing and figuring out ways - I’m also (unintelligible) training- wise if there is an opportunity with the department, maybe (unintelligible) and the independent living centers to get some training for staff specific to youth transitions. There’s expertise within the department. There’s expertise within the independent living centers and working together with training and collaboration might also produce those better outcomes. So that’s all for now. Liz Pazdral: This is Liz. Thank you (Anna). Thank you so much. I think you’re one of the directors who has really seized the bull by the horn and is exploring new opportunities to grow your program. I think that that’s something that all the directors need to do, is look at what they’re good at and what their community needs and how they can make that - improve the quality of that, professionalize it. And I know that’s so antithetical to the independent living movement where we’re not about professionalism, we’re not about having degrees; we’re about knowledge. And I think we’re not doing a good job of selling the knowledge. We’re not doing a good job of selling the value of the lived experience of disability. And so high praises to (Anna) and all of your peers who are exploring these opportunities. Irene Walela: Thank you, Liz, for jumping in. And (Anna), thank you so much for all the - so much you’ve given us to consider going forward and for sharing all of that with everybody in the ILC’s. We have lots to talk about. (Anna Cuivas): Thank you. Coordinator: (Norma Jean Viscovo), your line is open. (Norma Jean Viscovo): Thank you. The - I had just had at the top of my list before Liz said it that one of the things that we need to do is receive back for every one that we have gotten out of convalescent home or a nursing home, that that money goes back into the same pocket that we now have at the state level; and therefore, we could all share it. I think it’s - and everybody else can get into that package and work at it. I think it’s very important and we’re doing it, but it’s got to show that there’s a - so we’ve been doing the program and we’ve been very successful. The same way with - in talking about other ways that we could work, I think all the centers need a little bit of training when you talk about professionals. I think we are professional. Yes, we’re old grassroots, but we are professionals. We’re professional in the field of independent living, so there’s no doubt about it. I think that the things that we need to stick together is making sure that we are organized, have our papers organized, have a structure organized of how we’re operating. You can’t just sell or get people into employment and sell that program if you’re not well organized and know what you’re doing, keeping track of it and not having a chance of things slipping up, such as not having - doing your reports right and keeping your money straight. That all takes professional organization and I think that we do that. The boards need to be trained and they should be the ones doing the fundraising. We don’t do the fundraising. The board does the fundraising. We write grants, but they do fundraising, and I think that’s the important thing because they have to have that commitment and they have to be involved in that direction. And so that’s - we don’t have a person that does fundraising. That’s up to the board. And we now, in Los Angeles - because we’re so big and we have six centers here, it is almost impossible to raise funds only because you have a large company that don’t want to give to one center. They talk about - they give them a way out. They all - if we could provide all the centers, we don’t’ want to look bad providing to one. And so if you could figure out a way that we could expand this out and do something - and that doesn’t work. And so what we have accomplished in this last year by getting a development grant from the Department of Rehab, we have created a non-profit with the independent living centers here in Los Angeles to where we can work together, where we can just show that we’re incorporated, that we are running a business that we can actually go to the county, to the supervisors, to other people to show that we can - working together and that we can do things to raise funds as a group. And that’s how we’re working it. We also find that we have no real communication with the state SILC as much. We don’t have the combination with the - of course, we have no communication with CFILC. So this is a problem within the state as far as getting the centers together. So when we’re talking about 51% of the people voting or something, it leaves out the south; and typically, everything does. And I’m not talking about just south to north; I’m talking about communities. We have the largest number of people with disabilities in Los Angeles County. We have the enormous number of people here and we the centers to serve those populations, but we don’t have a say in anything. Everything takes place in Sacramento with the exception of -- once in a while -- coming down here, and most of the time the things are already decided before they come down here as to how it’s going to operate. So there has to be a change in which the whole state has communication. All twenty-eight centers - they keep talking about twenty-eight centers, but I don’t see that they’re communicating with twenty-eight centers. So I think that all has to be looked at. And so if the money that’s going to CFILC - a portion could come to the south, to our area and we can work together so that we have the funding sources and we can work with it, then we would have a full state cooperation. And that’s what I’m recommending. Thank you. Liz Pazdral: (Norma), this is Liz and I want to thank you for your comments. I think it’s great that you’ve got the L.A. coalition going because you have really a lot to offer in terms of peer mentoring. You have a center with a very strong infrastructure that has been running successfully for a long time and that’s something that we should all aspire to have in our communities. So I like your suggestions and I appreciate you participating. (Norma Jean Viscovo): Nobody mentioned that it’s a good idea. Coordinator: (Alan Toy), WCIL, your line is open. (Cozette Cays): Hello. This is actually (Cozette Cays) from WCIL. I was really struck by how we’re kind of talking about some stuff like the ADRC and the CTC and options counseling. I’ll be very frank with you -- we’ve been involved with each and every one of those things almost from their inception, and we have wound up in tremendous debt and not felt very well-received by the AAA. We still have maybe - our lesson been bear with us. So it’s very interesting to me that we’re looking to do those kinds of things as a way to leverage our resources and, if anything, I think those things have not really panned out. Options counseling was supposed to be something we were going to get paid for and instead we wound up having to pay twice for the training for our options counseling. CCT had no administrative funds and I was in the ground - I was the very placement in CCT. There are no - it’s not a cost-effective system. It just isn’t. SO I’m a little confused and a little concerned that we’re promoting these things that have a track record of not doing well. And I don’t know about anybody else, but at least the CCT as it stands is not in line with independent living philosophy. It’s not moving people into the community. And it’s also a sunset program. It’s done in 2016, so I’m a little concerned that we’re not, maybe, representing things in a real way. Irene Walela: Thank you, (Cozette). That’s good feedback for us to hear about those programs and I think we need to do a good job of collecting this kind of feedback and getting it to the right people. Coordinator: (Cherry Burns), Community Resource for Independent Living, your line is open. (Cherry Burns): Hi. Thank you. Thank you for having this discussion this afternoon. This is really good and very helpful. I kind of feel like (Anna) and some of the others that - like where do we start? And hopefully this -- as you said, Irene and Liz -- is a start for us to have these conversations that we can continue them because I am sure there will be some other ideas that come forth as well. With regards to - just piggybacking on a couple of comments already made, I agree with (Norma) - is that if we had some support and guidance with creating some set structures for some programs that we are trying to sell -- for example, the - any of the Money Follows the Person or the Medical managed care funding options -- if we actually were not having to create or develop program and structures for each of these in a vacuum as individual independent living centers and there was more coordination of that coming from DoR and perhaps the SILC leadership, that would be helpful. Many of us are -- as (Evan) said -- limited in our development capacity because we’re the chief, cook, and bottle-washer. And so if there’s already systems in place that could be shared through training, that would be helpful. Also, there was mention about contract services. It used to be in the old days some of the partnerships with Department of Rehab included contracted types of programs, establishment grants -- things like that -- that actually gave us seed money to start off with instead of having a fee-for-service kind of thing where we had to have the funding already in place - the cash flow already in place to support those programs and services. And when you’re trying to do something that’s new and want it to be successful from the get-go, it’s very difficult when you have limited string-less money and limited capacity to initiate a new program and service without some initial funding support to make that happen. The vendorization services, I think, can be enhanced and improved; and, again, coordinate on a state or at least a regional basis instead of us having to set up those contracts from scratch within our districts. And also to take a look at - if we do have vendorization contracts in place, for certain services to evaluate where we can expand those services so that we, as independent living centers that do a great job of providing support of independent living skills training, can partner more successfully with voc rehab to create those successful employment outcomes for our youth and people of all ages with disabilities. Because as we all know, it’s not just about getting that job. It’s about also keeping that job, and for many of our folks, if they have never had an extensive or even any employment history, they need to understand - what are the soft skills that go into maintaining a successful employment relationship? And that’s something that independent living centers, I think, do an excellent job of and could do more of. Some of the things that we’ve been doing here in order to do more with less, as a couple of our folks said, is - people wear more than one hat. For a long time, our generalists really were IL generalists; but then they’ve also become even more so beyond that in expanding those IL skills to include other kinds of - address other kinds of needs in the community. For example, we were the first one in the state that, I believe, - independent living centers to provide the Vita tax assistant services. And now there’s a number of independent living centers that do that, but we’ve been doing that now for about seven years. So we have tax specialists here and it’s not just tax season that that’s helpful in, but because they have a wealth of knowledge in asset development and asset management, they can utilize those skills to help our consumers outside of just specifically taxes. So that’s one example. My - I’m trying to remember if there was other things I wanted to mention. I think that’s it for now. Thank you. Irene Walela: Thank you so much, (Sherry). We appreciate all of that. Coordinator: (Susan Miller), Placer Independent Resource Service’s, your line is open. (Susan Miller): Hi, it’s (Tink) again. Tagging onto some of what you all have been discussing about other ways to generate funds, I wanted to mention a couple things, one of which is the one-stop career service system because WIOA also has added new mandates for them as well in terms of youth services. And, also, in terms of a higher level of compliance with making their facilities and services accessible and having to have plans in a very formal structured way. So centers should get to know their workforce boards and their local one-stop career center system in whatever form it takes, and look to bid on contracts to provide disability workshop training of whatever kind they need around understanding how to make their services accessible. And in terms of direct service delivery, I just distributed this week a request for qualifications from bidders to provide youth services at our local one-stop career center system. It’s open for any public or private entity that wants to submit their qualifications to get on the list to be contracted to provide services to customers of the one-stop career center system here. Another thing that we’ve initiated -- it’s only been one meeting so far -- but our area just transitioned to Medical managed care, and in the rural counties one of the providers is California Health and Wellness, which is part of (Centine) Corporation which is a huge national healthcare delivery system that specializes in rural areas. So a couple weeks ago we invited three of their staff members -- the newest of which happens to be (Sarah Triano) who we all know -- and they came and spent a couple hours at our center and had the grand tour. We talked about what services we provide that they might have an interest in and they were very excited about peer support groups. We have an exercise program that’s part of independent living skills that they’re very interested in referring their members to. And they indicated they would consider looking at some form of financial support, whether it would be a grant, a contract piece, or what. We’re a long way from those kinds of details, but at least they have a better understanding of what we do and they’re interested in partnering and providing some financial consideration in that process. So you might want to look at your local healthcare HMO type providers that are connected to Medical. Liz Pazdral: (Tink), this is Liz and I really appreciate that you brought up the one-stops - the local investment boards - the workforce investment boards because I think that it’s a really untapped resource for most independent living centers and they definitely have mandates to provide services to people with disabilities. I think that there’s opportunity, particularly with the California Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities being housed at DoR to create some collaborations around accessing those resources. (Susan Miller): Absolutely. Irene Walela: This is Irene. I also am really glad to hear you share those experiences, (Tink), with the one-stop system; and also making that connection with (Sarah) now at California Health and Wellness. She’ll be, as you know, working with specifically rural areas. So this might be really a great connection for folks. (Susan Miller): (Sarah) just joined them about a month ago. She left the state office that she was with and I’m probably getting this wrong, but her title is something like Director of Diversity for the whole corporation, not just the local area. And it’s all kinds of diversity. She’ll be looking, as it was explained to us, at all aspects of facilities and services for personnel as well as serving their members, and looking at how to ensure maximum access and quality of services that are culturally sensitive and responsive to everyone they serve. So it’s a huge challenge for (Sarah) and it’s very exciting to hear her talk about it. So at some point, maybe - I don’t know if it would be appropriate to have her do a workshop for everybody in the state because they don’t serve everybody in the state, but I’d like to suggest that somehow we tap into her once she’s more situated into her new position. Irene Walela: This is Irene again. Thank you for that, (Tink). I am in touch with (Sarah) who was just exited from the Department of Rehab position serving the California Committee for Employment of People with Disabilities, so I have the opportunity to talk with her about her new job and have been in touch with her since. So I think we’ll be able to continue those connections. (Susan Miller): Great. Thank you. Coordinator: And as a reminder, to ask a question from the phone lines or to make a comment, please press star one. (Lilibeth Navarro), your line is open. (Lilibeth Navarro), with CALIF, your line is open. (Lilibeth Navarro): Can you hear me? Coordinator: We can hear you now. (Lilibeth Navarro): Okay. I had myself on mute and I was talking up a storm. Anyway, I think it’s important within DoR and the ILC system that we have a common point. For example, in our ILC’s, we have the ILC and then we have employment services. And sometimes we were on two separate tracks. I think if we are working on one goal it will be good if IL staff can be familiar with what goes on in employment. And I’m talking about that because I was just reading - there’s a new innovation down here in Los Angeles where the DoR EC’s -- the employment coordinators -- are meeting (unintelligible) and they share a lot of great stuff that I as an executive director of an ILC get very excited about. And I just don’t want to be the one excited about it, nor just me and my employment specialists. I want the whole IL staff to be excited about it. So I think it’s useful for IL staff to know about these things. Sometimes IL people are - we are fixated on survival. You have to have your consumers get housing benefits, and then you forget employment. If it’s employment, let’s refer them to the employment specialists. But if we were thinking one along the same area, then we get excited. And then there are other - and we look at the terrain for the disabled. Colleges and universities have the office for students with disabilities that can engage with them. Let’s get them involved in the ILC’s. And also, when it comes to funding - so there’s the Department of Education. There’s whatever funds the war, whatever funds the Department of Labor. I think we have to be proactive in the search for funding and squeaking really loud because if we have all this money to fund the war, we have to have the money to have the people coming back from the war or the children of people coming back from the war, or the disabled kids who become disabled because of the war. So I just think that we need to be looking at what we have, connecting the dots, being positive, and being very aggressive and very excited. Even if we don’t have the money right now, when we’re together we can find it. Thank you. Irene Walela: Thank you so much (Lilibeth). Absolutely we can work - we need to be working in the same direction. Keep sharing those conversations that get us all excited so we can support each other. Coordinator: (Jim Baker), SCR SIL, your line is open. (Jim Baker): Hi. I wanted to talk - go back to the youth a little bit. Down here we have had a program dealing with youth for the last several years and I was just looking at our AB tool for report. And for the first quarter of this fiscal year, we’ve served 150 fourteen to twenty-six year olds and it doesn’t always seem like a lot when we’re doing day-to-day work; but when you look at a report like that and you see how many are actually coming through our program, I’m very proud of that. But one of the approaches that I see that the whole WIOA - in order to be successful is using a whole life approach including housing, education, medical services, transportation, socialization, skills training, and employment. And in the current DoR system of reimbursement for employment, it will never work for transitioning youth. The soft skills are not there. The experience is not there. If they want - if the DoR goal is twenty dollars an hour by 20,000 people in 2020, the way that we’re going to reach that is investing in our youth. I believe that it feels like DoR vocational is leaving us out of that. we’re able to - we’re the only provider that really addresses all of the components of the whole life approach and until - I think that we should, as a group, be approaching the vocational side of DoR, and (Joe) and whoever else we need to approach, and be letting them know that we have something to offer, that we’re much more successful when we bring in the whole person than if we just go after a job. That’s it. Liz Pazdral: (Jim), this is Liz, and I like the fact that you brought up the whole person approach because I do think that is exactly what independent living is about, and I think that some of these changes that were passed in WIOA speak to that. It needs to be a broader approach than just singular about employment. Irene Walela: This is Irene, (Jim). I so agree with you that the holistic approach has so much value and those conversations that we need to have between the ILC’s and DR are on my radar. So we will keep that going. Coordinator: (Dani Anderson), Independent Living Resource Center, your line is open. (Dani Anderson): Hi everyone. How are you? I didn’t have a question, I just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for this open dialogue between the ILC’s and the DoR. I know that WIOA is what started these calls and I appreciate that for the information around WIOA, but I noticed that this one went way beyond that and just had an open conversation. I think that’s great and I hope that that can continue throughout the time with a broader subject than WIOA. So, again, I just wanted to say thank you. Irene Walela: Thank you (Dani). We appreciate that. Coordinator: I’m showing no further questions in queue. I do apologize. (Norma Jean Viscovo), your line is open. (Norma Jean Viscovo): Yes. I want to have a second chance to say some other things. I talked about some of the major issues and I confirm with - that we are definitely a full service entity and we’ve been that for a long time. We’ve been providing services in all aspects including transition as well as employment. And it takes that to meet that person’s needs, but the concerns we had at the beginning with fourteen and sixteen year olds was here getting into the school system because Los Angeles is really tight and they don’t - they’re not very easy to work with to get in. That’s what I had said the other day about education; that we need to work in partnership because we can do that. And we can assist them in independent living. We do that anyway when we go to talk to groups. I go all the time to talk to different groups for autistic and the different groups that are looking for help for their teenagers; but what we need to do is get them as a group. We get them individually and we really need to be able to pull them in groups where we’re coming from - where they’re actually being taught and somebody could be part of the curriculum. I think that’s really important. This - we have done a great job. We work with one-stop and we work with the - my staff in our vocational track and so all those things are great. And I think that most of the vendors are really doing a great job, but now we’re asking everybody to do things with less money - to do more. And it’s a more rigid process of all the accounting processes that’s being changed or the services or the numbers that have got to be changed. And so I think that all of these take a little bit more money administratively to change. And again, it makes it difficult. So - but I think the program will be great. I think we’re already doing it. So I don’t think we have to make that much change, but we do have to cut back on some things that are being done because we don’t have enough staff to do all the things that they’re asking. But we’re going to work with that. I think that most of the centers are doing a great job on that. Thank you. Irene Walela: Thank you (Norma). Coordinator: And I’m currently showing no more participants in question queue. Thomas Dempsey: Thank you, Operator, and this is Thomas Dempsey again. It looks like we’re coming to the end of our question and answer portion because we’ve run out of questions. So with that, I’m going to turn it back over to Irene and Liz to help close this out. Liz Pazdral: Thank you very much, Thomas. In closing, I want to thank all of you who took the time to participate in this conversation. Knowledge is power and over the next three years a lot of terminology that is central to our work and what we believe in is going to be legally defined or redefined. You need to be participating because you can shape the results. Thank you. Irene Walela: Thank you Liz. This is Irene again. I really appreciate all the people that gave us these great comments today and are working with us on this open conversation so we can continue this type of dialogue with you. Your input today is very valuable to us and the transcript will be posted soon so everyone can take a look. You can also, as I said before, join the conversation by emailing the WIOA mailbox at WIOA@dor.ca.gov. We welcome your comments and please know that you will be hearing from us on additional opportunities to move forward on and have these conversations. Now we’re going to turn it back over to our Director Xavier for his closing remarks. Joe Xavier: Irene and Liz, thank you very much for the presentation and engaging in the conversations, answering the questions. And of course to the callers - we had up to eighty-five lines on the call. So thank you for making the time and multiple people at that end. It’s very important that we continue to have a conversation and continue to be informed. Continued engagement, as Liz has pointed out, will be key. Regulations are one aspect of that -- a lot of conversation around rethinking and new ways of thinking of how we approach this. I started by pointing out Congress’s call to DR and to IL and what we need to think about differently. And it doesn’t mean that we’ll get to keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. All of us collectively are going to have to figure out how we do a better job with the limited resources that we have. We certainly share the concerns that come with more demands for the same resources, and we all have - continue to move forward on that. Again, keep in mind the opportunity to engage with the various bodies. (Dani Anderson), who is on the call, is on the SRC so I’m sure she will take a lot of this conversation there - the State Independent Living Council or other advisory bodies. Please engage in those conversations. That’s where policy is being informed. And then, of course, keep your eye out for the additional forums. There’s one final point that I would like to make. A lot of conversation has taken place about state level coordination, but we all know that the real work occurs at the local level. So please take advantage of looking at your existing local partnerships. Where you see an opportunity to advance them, please do so. Where you see an opportunity to create new ones, please do that as well. And please bring our local offices into that conversation. We provided the same message to them (unintelligible) about engaging with our local partners and making sure that everybody’s involved in the conversation. So with that, thank you everybody for making the time. Have a great rest of the day and a great three-day weekend coming up. Coordinator: That concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating and you may disconnect at this time. END |