SOUTHEAST TACE REGION IV TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE and CONTINUING EDUCATION

A Project of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University in collaboration with the DBTAC: Southeast ADA

DISTINGUISHING EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIPS: COMPETITIVE AND CUSTOMIZED EMPLOYMENT

Date: August 11, 2011

Presenter: Michael Callahan

Facilitator: Norciva Shumpert

Overview Norciva Shumpert (NS): Welcome, everyone to the 2011 Southeast TACE webinar series. My name is Norciva Shumpert. Many of you have heard me facilitate and present on calls before, I'm with Marc Gold & Associates. And I'm also the transition coordinator for the TACE southeast.

You have traditionally heard Steffany Stevens make this announcement, so I'd like to be the one today to share with you that Steffany will be leaving Southeast TACE onto new journeys and offering services I'm sure to people with disabilities in her usual wonderful way. So I'd like for everyone if you've got any notes or anything send them to Steffany the next couple of days. We all have appreciated her here being with us. Celestia and I will be sharing the responsibility of coordinating the call today.

The southeast regions TACE centers' mission is really to improve the quality and the effectiveness of vocational rehabilitation services and enhance employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. And most of you know we cover eight southeastern states, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina. TACE is a collaboration with the DBTAC southeast ADA center and both the TACE and southeast ADA center are managed by Burton Blatt Institute of Syracuse University in New York.

Folks, we are really hosting a lot of webinars this year. I hope that you have the opportunity to select which ones you want to hear live and to consider which ones you want to hear from an archive perspective. Remember that all of our archives are -- all of our webinars are archived so you have access to them.

If you're already signed up some of our next webinars, that's great. If not, go to our website to see what we're offering. All instructions and materials to each webinar are posted on our website. Just a quick note about the webinar system. We use a system that is fully accessible to everyone, regardless of their disability and/or their assistive technology needs that they might have with their computer. This system makes it possible for us to conduct workshops over the internet from just about any computer with an internet connection and a web browser. Unfortunately, there may be computer issues inherent in your systems that are beyond our control that is why it's important for you to check your systems prior to the session. Staff are available upon request to work with you in advance of the system. I want to stress the word advance, we're not a couple hours advance because we are trying to get the troubleshooting to the webinar itself, so we need for you to call in a day ahead of time or a couple of weeks you can actually sign up to get further into this.

The -- during today's session you'll have an opportunity to type your questions into the chat area.

I will be looking at that and be keeping up with those questions for the presenter as he is presenting today.

And then I will be able to ask him at different times.

However, he may stop and look at those and choose to answer that question at that time.

Also note that today's webinar was listed for one hour, and then was revised to reflect the actual time of all of our job development exchange webinars, which is two hours.

So understand that this session today is a two-hour session.

Mike Callahan is our presenter and has made some accommodations, we will be able to take questions and answers and other things today.

Also at this time we're advising you to close all of your other applications you may have running on your computer because they may interfere with your successful experience today.

You might also turn off any automatic systems checks that you have running on your computer automatically to eliminate any kind of interference during the session.

Sometimes if your computer is networked it will shut down if it stays idle for too long.

If that is the case, do not forget to periodically tap the space bar just to let the webinar system know that you're still there.

Okay, it's now time to move forward with our webinar, and I would like to really thank all of you joining us on the job development exchange today. I recognize some of your names from previous calls and webinars that we've had.

I know that you are interested in this topic.

This is the second job development webinar that we'll be having in a host of one every month with different presenters.

Last month we had Christopher Button from the Department of Labor and we also had Casandra Holly from Mississippi rehabilitation services.

At that time Christopher really talked about both demand-driven and customized employment.

Two different strategies.

And we talked about the job development exchange really handling and both strategies because we want employment for all people.

Today we've got Mike Callahan, president of Marc Gold & Associates, a colleague and friend of mine.

Mike has had many years in the field with most of his work focusing on customized employment.

Many of those years doing demand employment early onto develop the techniques and strategies in customized employment.

We are today his topic is distinguishing employment relationships: competitive and customized.

I think that you'll find this topic today will really give you a beginning to understand how and when you might use customized employment and your demand-driven employment.

Both strategies are needed for the many populations of people that we've got.

We will take check questions so please keep up with questions you've got.

We're also starting something new today.

If for -- if you have questions that you did not ask during the call, we're going to accept emails for the next two hours after the call strictly on job development and calls from the question.

I'll be working with Mike Callahan and others to get responses to those questions and we'll be posting those on the web so that you can see your question and have it in a written response on the web on our new job development exchange website. So guys, without any further ado, let me go ahead and turn this over to Mike Callahan, I think you'll all enjoy today.

Thank you.

Mike?

Mike Callahan (MC): Thanks, Norciva.

And good afternoon everyone.

Welcome to the TACE webinar and to our topic of distinguishing employment relationships.

And we're going to be getting into quite a bit of depth around both the value of what we've called competitive or demand employment and the unique alternative to that coming from the U.S. Department of Labor and the office of disability employment policy called customized employment.

So I really look forward to this presentation and I hope exchange with as many of you who have questions to ask that would like to.

I'd also like to recommend that if you have not downloaded the article that goes with this, it's available in the packet on the TACE website and there is a narrative white paper that would support this entire presentation.

So if you didn't get that, I would encourage you to go ahead and do that.

And let's take a look at some terms of art.

Slide 2: Competitive Employment And it's interesting the use of the term that you see in front of you on the PowerPoint page: competitive employment.

And you know, it's an interesting term.

It seems to me in my research of the literature and in looking at statutes and regulations that our field, the disability field, those of us involved in rehabilitation services and even beyond those of us, the provider community that works to assist people to become employed, felt the need at some point to distinguish the types of employment that were available to people with disabilities.

I think all of us know that really starting with the fair labor standards act in the late '30s and especially with the passage of -- or with the inclusion of Section 14C of that allowing subminimum wage for people with disabilities, we actually had a class of employment that was different from that class of employment that most workers received or participated in who received regular minimum wage for jobs done in the community. And as time passed the term used to distinguish the differences that existed between subminimum wage employment and regular employment for at or above minimum wage in the community was the term competitive employment.

Many of you may remember if you were around at that time, anyway, around 1980 or 1981, a researcher from Virginia Commonwealth University named Paul Wayman wrote a book titled Competitive Employment.

That book was to really be one of the catalyst books that began the practices in supported employment.

But Paul was also talking about any employment performed by a person with a disability in the community at or above minimum wage and alongside other workers who do not experience disability.

Slide 3 – Competitive Employment (cont.) So, you know, it's an interesting thing, you don't find a lot of reference to competitive employment within the U.S. Department of Labor, but we have -- in other words, that employment is pretty well presented.

If you are working you would be working competitively.

But there's an interesting issue for those of us who work with people who experience the work impact of disability in their lives.

Particularly those of us who work with people who experience the more significant impact of disability in regards to work.

And that is that beyond the euphemism of competitive employment, meaning in the community for regular wages alongside other people who do not necessarily experience disability, there's real competition associated with competitive employment.

I mean, the term really speaks more clearly than I think we often think about the competition that's necessary in order for a job seeker to land an open job.

And when we really look a little deeper, we're beginning to understand that when we use the term competitive employment that the job seeker must compete against the demands of an open job as set forth by an employer and also against the other skills are the skills of other applicants who would also like that job.

That begins to set a pretty high standard.

And from among this set of job seekers, including possibly job seekers with disabilities and including possibly job seekers with disabilities who are being represented by employment professionals, such as people like ourselves, that the employer then chooses the best person for the job.

Competitive employment in no way requires a policy that the employer would have an affirmative action stance about people with disabilities and would choose -- would give competitive advantage to a person with a disability.

That's not the essence of competitive employment.

Now, that's not to say that an employer might not have an affirmative action stance about intentionally employing applicants with disabilities, but that's not really what competitive employment gets at.

This is a -- this is a very high standard, the bar is set quite high, and one of the things that's been I think increasingly difficult for us to come to terms with is that this competitive aspect can create an absolute barrier to employment for some individuals with significant disabilities.

And that is a -- it's an issue that has been difficult I know for me personally to come to terms with in the sense that I wanted it to be so that with good job matching and effective support, good counseling -- I'm sorry, if you can hear me again, there’s word that I’m not able to be heard.

NS: It seems we are not able to understand Mike, he seems extremely muffled right now.

Give us just a minute to see what we can do.

Celestia can you provide some assistance too?

[inaudible]

MC: Is this any better?

I mean, I don't know.

NS: Yes.

MC: Folks, I very, very much apologize.

Let me know if this is -- oh, good, I'm seeing again and again that this is much better.

I'm not really quite sure exactly what happened, but something did, so I really apologize.

What I'd like to do then, I know that the first part of my comments were probably not heard clearly, so let me just give an overview of the comments that I was making. The term competitive employment has been used as a term to represent other features or factors of the employment relationship which in a lot of -- a lot of times did not necessarily relate directly to the competitive aspect of employment.

And because of that we were thinking that competitive employment was used to define employment in the community for wages at or above the minimum wage alongside other co-workers who do not experience disability and with a job that belongs to the individual, rather than to an agency or an organization.

And the shift began to occur when we began to see that for some people, people particularly with more significant disabilities, that this competitive aspect of disability at the way we were using the label actually had other implications for job seekers; in other words, job seekers not only are looking to work in the community for wages at or above the minimum wage alongside others, but they also must actually compete with both the demands of an employer and other job seekers probably who do not experience disabilities who would like that same job.

This sets the competitive bar quite high.

And this is known as, at least from U.S. Department of Labor perspectives, demand employment. And one of the things I think as we have progressed in what we could think of as the modern era, the last 20 years or so, or maybe even especially for people with more significant disabilities, since the -- the amendments to the Rehab Act in 1986 in which supported employment was added to the act, we have hoped that with good support ala job coaching and good job matching that all job seekers with disabilities could be competitive.

In fact, the Rehab Act at this point anyway, guides a rehab counselor to presume benefit in terms of the rehabilitation outcome.

But one of the things we've noticed, and I think many counselors have had to deal with this, is that the reality is that for some people, as their disabilities become more significant in their lives, may experience an absolute barrier to employment when competitiveness is the standard.

And that's created all sorts of tension, all sorts of problems related to vocational rehabilitation services and other services in the field that -- I'm seeing that the sound is getting bad again.

It's interesting to me to try to figure out exactly where the problem is, but I hope I'll look at the -- I'll keep looking at your feedback and try to make sure that I keep an eye on it, but right now I'm hoping that you can hear.

So if you are – if you’re having difficulty, please just keep the notes to Celestia, we’re trying to keep monitoring as best we can. I'm going to move -- okay -- folks, I'm going to try to do is click my microphone off and on, hoping that that would maybe assist. Slide 4 – Supported Employment So again let me -- I'm seeing better, so I'll really apologize, it's hard to know what the issue is during a presentation.

So I'll just keep looking at your comments and keep trying best I can to communicate clearly.

Sorry, guys.

No, we don't have any battery problems whatsoever, this is not a battery system, it's direct wired system.

None of the responses to this potential competitive barrier to employment was supported employment, it's been a great good idea allowing access to employment for tens of thousands of people with disabilities since 1986.

One of the interesting things that many of you who are rehab counselors during that time realized, however, we began to see a plateauing of supported employment by the early to mid '90s and actually in many states, a decline.

And one of the things that's important for all of us to realize is that in the Rehab Act and indeed in most state definitions, whether it's in state plans, by voc. rehab agencies or if states have a separate plan, possibly within developmental disability state agency, supported employment is referred to as competitive supported employment.

In other words, we're hoping that the support dimension will be sufficient to enable people to be competitive in relation both to the employer's demands and to other job seekers of their needs.

Slide 5 – Supported Employment (cont.) Competitive supported employment often focuses on open jobs – provides a job coach to assist both the employers and the employees -- most of the supports associated with supporting employment occurred after employment begins, and that your pre-employment services that may be delivered either by a voc. rehab counselor or by a provider agency under contract actually not stipulated in the statute, that most of those services can be done in whatever way is necessary to get the person their job goal.

Slide 6 – Customized Employment One of the things that this created -- excuse me.

Okay.

One of the issues that was created during the '90s occurred when projects funded by the rehab services administration of the U.S. Department of Education began to extend supported employment services to people who were felt not to be [inaudible] -- [Lost audio]

I'm actually losing my --

Celestia Ohrazda (CO): Hello, Michael, this is Celestia.

Can you please call in using the phone lines?

MC: Yeah, hold on.

I am so sorry, I have no idea what is happening.

It's like something has taken over my machine and is amending my -- my microphone level.

So we're going to try to hard wire me in.

Celestia, can you hear me now on the handset?

CO: Yes, I can hear you just fine.

MC: Okay.

So we'll –

CO: Let’s proceed.

MC: Celestia, am I where you and people listening to the teleconference can hear now?

CO: Yes, we can hear you, Michael.

MC: Okay.

And folks, again, I very, very much apologize for the problems.

It's just one of those things that I guess occasionally happens, and I'm certainly not going to go back and cover all the ground that I've covered, I'm sure some people heard some things, so I'm hoping that we're at a point that I can continue with the point on customized employment.

Let me just make that one again and we'll move on from there, again, with my apologies.

The issue of customized employment began to be necessary when in the mid '90s, through projects funded by both the rehab services administration and in other sources in the U.S. Department of Education, began to target people who were probably not thought to be appropriate or feasible in terms of benefiting from a rehabilitation outcome.

Even though the amendments to the '92 Rehab Act required counselors to see people as being able to benefit.

So as we began to use supported employment as our main tool to work with people with very significant impact of disabilities, we began to run against that competitive demand that I've been describing hereto for.

And we had to -- we had to do something, either we had to just say, well, these people are indeed not employable or we had to begin to look at the employment relationship, and thus began, I think, the beginnings of what later in 2001 would be referred to as customized employment.

And the distinction that is important here is that customized employment takes the time prior to employment, whereas supported employment primarily focuses on services delivered after employment, customized employment takes the -- that time frame prior to employment and seeks to tailor a relationship that will reflect both the best features of the job seeker in relation to their needs and interests and unique skills that they can bring, along with the employer's specific needs and benefits.

And that's really what we're going to talk about today.

And as such, customized employment seeks to meet the old definition, the euphemism definition of competitive employment in the sense that it's in the community for pay at or above the minimum wage, alongside other workers who do not necessarily experience disability, and having the job belong to them, but to avoid the demand or the competitive standard set within a job description and by the competition with other job seekers.

And this is accomplished through intentional voluntary negotiations with employers.

Slide 7 – Unbundling Demand And it has significantly opened the door for job seekers and people who go to individuals who go to vocational rehabilitation for services.

The strategy is one of unbundling demand.

When employers bundle demand into job descriptions, inevitably job seekers with more significant impactive disability will have areas that they simply are not able to perform, even with reasonable accommodation and job site support.

In the past we used the concept of job carving, a term of art that we need to understand and distinguish from customized employment is job carving. Job carving looked at bundled demand within a job description and sought to negotiate those aspects of demand out of the job description on behalf of the job seeker.

And as a facilitating concept, it worked pretty well, this is my personal reflection, but only half well.

The side it worked well for was the job seeker side.

The job seeker had a clear advantage of having the difficult aspects of a task to be negotiated out of a job description.

But I think it didn't work so well from an employer perspective.

The business model of job carving depended on an employer who would somehow see a benefit to removing certain aspects of a job description, usually more complicated ones, out of the job description and still pay the new employee at a wage somewhere near what they might have paid for the original demand job description.

And while there are stories and maybe better said folklore of employers doing this, it really didn't create the kind of business model that really matched both sides of the equation, the job seeker side and the employer side.

What customized employment tries to do is to unbundle demand based on a different perspective than simply the job seeker's not able to do this.

Slide 8 – Employer Needs Analysis And on this page right now we have -- we know of three primary kind of legs of the stool of customized employment that creates the business model for this concept.

The first we refer to as unmet workplace needs.

Here we look at a workplace not in terms of job openings, not in terms of demand, but in terms of tasks that need to be done but for whatever reason are not getting done in the way the employer would like.

And I think one of the realities, one of the truisms of the modern workplace is that workplaces have needs.

Now, employers don't necessarily have to address those needs, they may over look them, they may say I don't have any money to address them, they may say these needs are not important, but virtually all workplaces have needs.

And when those needs rise to a level that it really benefits the employer to have those needs met, then one leg of the stool is in place. We also have the concept of many times tasks are included or bundled in job descriptions for very highly-paid members of a particular workforce that could be unbundled and performed by someone who has a more significant disability at a much lower pay grade but still above minimum wage in the community alongside people who don't necessarily experience disability and actually benefit an employer by taking that sort of task out of their -- out of their job description.

Let me just give you a brief example.

I was making a presentation about a year ago to a human resource manager in a major hospital system in Louisville, Kentucky.

I had started the presentation and was beginning to talk to her about customized employment and was mentioning this aspect of benefit to a -- a possible benefit to an employer. And she stopped me and said you know, let me see if this is what you're saying: Just before you came in, I spent 30 minutes doing a certified letter to one of our customers that needed to be sent out.

She said, I'm paid an awful lot, way too much to be sending out certified letters.

You probably have someone who could do that task for me, do you not?

Well, that's -- see, from an employer perspective, that employer was already thinking about how to better utilize of time of a very highly paid employee by assigning duties that could be done by someone, frankly, at a lower pay grade but understandably at a lower pay grade.

This is in no way demeaning the employee who would be paid at a level commensurate with the task being performed.

And unfortunately in this situation the human resource manager was being paid much, much higher than the task really demanded.

And employers are really thinking about this idea and I must tell you I just want everybody to know in case it seems you've heard of this before, this is right from the business model of project search, which is sweeping not only the country, but is quite prevalent here in the southeast region for TACE, particularly those of you in Georgia, I know, and I'm sure in some of the other states in the region will have project search experiences and project search products about this unique approach to meeting employer needs.

The last leg of the stool is engaging the employer to consider areas of specific benefit to their company.

Have you thought about ways to improve your employee's performance, what would help you do your job better, you could say to almost any employee in a setting. Again, all three of these concepts are outside of demand.

They exist as true business benefit and needs if an employer feels like that it would be beneficial to their company to have these sorts of things done and then can be negotiated to fit the unique skills of a job seeker and therein you begin to get customized employment.

Slide 9 – Competitive: A Term of Confusion So the confusion that's occurred has been the very confusion we've talked about.

We've used competitive employment euphemistically, and many times people would say, well, we really don't mean a job that you have to compete for that's open, but I think most of you realize that when, you know, people actually go to get a job, they're primarily going to get competitive jobs in the community.

Slide 10 – Competitive: A Term of Confusion (cont.) And when an employer hears that, they are then thinking of the demand that they have and the other job seekers that they have and this concept again has resulted in, for some job seekers, an absolute barrier.

Slide 11 – Competitive: An Absolute Barrier for Some Job Seekers The customized approach that I'm talking about can significantly open the door for virtually any job seeker for which we can find a area of potential benefit for an employer and an employer who has a commensurate need.

It opens up job development particularly in tough economic times such as we're in now when most job development efforts are being responded to with I'm sorry, we're not hiring at the moment.

Slide 12 – The Employment Matrix What you see on the slide that's on the screen right now is an effort to try to bring the things that I've talked about into some focus and some understanding for all of us here on the call.

And also, as I referred to the whitepaper that I had posted that has been posted on the TACE website, the whitepaper really refers directly to this employment matrix.

And I think it can help us understand where we are in the full scheme of the options that are available.

And one of the things I'd like to say before starting this matrix is in no way am I sending the message that competitive employment is bad or that supported employment is not effective and should be replaced. In fact, what I'm sending the message is that a counselor needs to have access to the full range of possibilities to try and best fit the strategy to the person.

After all, that seems to me to be the essence of good, individualized voc rehab services to an individual who would like to become employed from us and through our service.

So there's a four-part matrix that's presented here.

Let's look at the columns first: The left-hand column, both top and bottom cells, are referred to competitive or demand employment.

And that's going to relate to jobs that are open in the community, for which a job seeker competes not only against the demands of the job, but other job seekers that would like the same job.

The right-hand column refers to customized employment.

A negotiated interaction with an employer focusing on the three concepts that I just discussed: unmet workplace needs, tasks better performed by others at a lower pay grade, and areas of specific benefit to an employer.

So those are the columns.

The rows relate to whether or not support is needed on the job.

The top row references the kind of support that most people get when they come to voc rehab of our prediction that if I can get this person the job, they can probably work on the job with what we might refer to as the natural supports available to any employee with the benefit of whatever reasonable accommodation might be available, either through voc rehab or with the employer in relation to the demands of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The lower row, the second row, refers to those individuals that we perceive to need support in order to be successful on a job site.

So let's take a look and see how this matrix plays out, and let's start with the most typical quadrant of the matrix for voc rehab, and that's the top left.

I think most people who come into Title I services in voc rehab are people who we feel like can successfully meet the demands of employers and they will not need supported employment.

I've just gotten some figures from a VR state agency outside of our region in the southeast, the state of Wisconsin.

88% of all of voc rehabs closures in the state of Wisconsin would fit in the top left quadrant. In other words, it's competitive employment without support.

So if -- you can take a look in your own states, it would be pretty easy to find, I'm not saying that every state would have similar figures, but I think you're going to find that most of what voc rehab does is in that top left quadrant.

Starting in 1986 and continuing right up until today, we have supported -- competitive supported employment where the job seeker is in a demand situation but receives post-employment support usually in the terms of -- in the form of a job coach.

And what our hope is, is with that post-employment support, the person, the individual, now the employee, can be successful in meeting the competitive demand of the employer.

And this is the -- this is the tool that we've had since 1986, and it's used in every state in the country to meet employer needs and to meet job seeker needs with more significant disabilities.

It's when we move to the bottom right concept that we have the real focus of today's call.

And that is: when we began to realize that even with support there were individuals who were not successfully meeting the demands of an employer, we have what we could call as a term of art, supported customized -- customized supported employment instead of competitive supported employment. So again, top – bottom left quadrant, competitive supported employment, bottom right quadrant, customized supported employment.

For those individuals, they would not only need post employment support, they would need to have their employment relationship negotiated with an employer based on the three concepts that we've been talking about.

This is a focus that in many ways opens employment, at least conceptually, to any job seeker who wants to work.

The power of the lower right quadrant is really dealing with those -- those individuals who come to voc rehab who have the most significant impactive disability and the counselor just knows in his or her heart competitive employment, supported or not, is just not going to work.

That bottom right quadrant is very, very important to us.

Obviously that leaves the top right quadrant. In the top right quadrant we have customized employment, the exact same concept as in the bottom right quadrant, but there's a possibility, a presumption, that post-employment support would not be necessary for this person.

Now, at this point you need to know that nationwide, the entity most enamored with the top right quadrant is the Office of Disability Employment Policy within the U.S. Department of Labor. And for those of you who heard Chris Button in her presentation, I'm sure, knowing Chris well, she probably pushed the equivalent. She may not have used this matrix, but I'm sure she pushed the equivalent of this top right quadrant, because what labor feels is that as a workforce issue, when people with disabilities come into the workforce system, that if the workforce system had customized employment as an option, many people who are struggling with competitive jobs really may not have anything to do with disability particularly at all, but instead complex lives of one sort or another, might really benefit from the top right quadrant and would probably not need a job coach in order to do post-employment services.

I believe that's true, but I also believe something else is true: I believe the top right quadrant could be potentially of great benefit to voc rehab.

That there are people that we could -- if we could customize, I know there would be some job seekers who would not need post-employment support.

I believe there are some people going right into supported employment that if we could customize, spend the money up front, we would not have to spend the longer-term money that occurs in post employment.

That would be very, very positive.

And then there's some people who just simply aren't successful at competing in the top left quadrant, the demand employment done in the typical way, but a counselor would feel, you know, this person really doesn't need supported employment, but they're just -- they're just not successful out there competing for the open jobs.

There would be access for those people for an alternative, even though it was clear to all that job coaching was not necessary.

So I'm at a point, I'm wondering, I'm going to just stop just for a second, first I'm glad that people can hear, I'm not seeing a lot of -- a lot of questions about this, but I'm wondering if there have been any questions at all to this point, and I'm -- I'm really not seeing any -- I would be glad to stop along the way right here to begin to accept some questions, but not seeing any, I think I'm going to go ahead and go forward.

NS: Mike, there are -- Mike, there are a couple of questions?

MC: Yes. NS: One is -- was sent in a little bit earlier, could you give an example of the customized employment natural supports?

You say you think that's where a lot of the supported employment -- where you feel like that voc rehab could use more, that's one question.

And then we have another one that ask us about, can customized employment be billable as supported employment, and then we have one more, I'll read all three and then you can determine how you want to address them.

And then we've got another question that really gets to -- and I can't see who wrote that, but it's what strategies would you recommend for accessing employment for persons with disabilities in a collective bargaining environment, where a customization is not - and then the person said initially - an option, and the person with a disability is not 100% competitive?

So three kind of different questions if you want to address them now.

MC: Yeah, I will, and you're going to have to read the second two for me as I address each one, because I will forget the question.

NS: No problem.

MC: And each is important, obviously.

And I think I'm understanding this first question which you -- responds to the natural supports issue.

When I put this up here, I'm really only using the phrase “natural supports” as a placeholder for that which employers typically do for any employee with or without a disability.

I'm not really referring at all to a strategy to improve natural supports that you see in the literature at times regarding people with disabilities, but just those typical supports available to any employee, but of course a job seeker with a disability also has access to -- in a competitive relationship to reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act in order to assist that person to perform their job as an otherwise qualified employee would, and of course we know -- obviously we don't want to get into an ADA training here, but I think most people on the call are very up on that anyway -- but I -- or whatever services are available through voc rehab.

And voc rehab provides accommodation outside of the concept of reasonable accommodation that the employer should be obligated to provide under the ADA. So and again, I think the confusion probably was in my use of the term, “natural supports” here just referring to those typical supports available to any employee without a job coach coming in and augmenting them in some way.

So that's really the -- and I hope that that answers that.

If not, then that person should write back and clarify.

Norciva, what was the next question?

NS: The next question really gets into the collective bargaining.

Tom Hess is asking this: What strategies do you recommend for accessing employment in a collective bargaining situation where you don't see the person at all competitive?

MC: All right, Tom has reasonably predicted one of the areas of -- my first thought was to call it vulnerability, but because I'm an optimist, I want to call it challenge, but the implicit in the question is that you can't just go to management in a place that is represented by a union.

Make a deal with an employer the way you might in a nonunion place and then expect a union to just pick this up.

You know, and one of the -- not only is there the traditional and historical union management skepticism, cynicism, but there's also just the notion of a bargaining agreement in and of itself from the union perspective stipulates clear expectations.

It doesn't stipulate a lot of flexibility.

And so Tom's question, I think anticipated that.

And there's at least two strategies to answer the question, I think.

And they're actually quite similar but they may be somewhat unique.

And first is to -- my preference, my main strategy is in doing research and when we talk about job development in later webinars, we're going to talk about the issue of doing employer research, and one of the things I'm likely to find out -- I must find out in employer research is, is this a union job.

You know, are the employees organized and represented by a union.

If the answer is yes, I still may carefully approach the employer, but just to say, you know, here is a concept, I'd like to just put it on the table, but please don't give me an answer, I'm not looking for a yes/no, but I am looking to say, I would also like to make the same presentation. And by the way, Tom, the whole job development issue of customized employment is presentation-dependent. We have to put a concept out there rather than just presume people have an intuitive understanding of what the idea is.

So after presenting with management, I would then go to what I find out in my research would be the most logical place.

It's likely to be the local president.

That would be my first -- I would probably choose the local president, say, over a shop steward within the company itself because I think the local president needs to be related to like this.

You might also choose to go to the local president before even approaching the company.

And I think as a strategy you've got those two options available to you to try, you know, to put it in front of management but don't ask -- I don't even want an indication of interest other than talk to the union, you know, because what you're having to do here is figure chicken and the egg.

I guess there might even be a possibility to get both parties in the room at the same time.

And -- but I would probably prefer not to because, you know, if we just took the -- if we just took football players association and owners group as a clear example, you wouldn't want to get those guys back in the room together too quickly, there's probably some tension there.

So my preference would probably be to keep them apart.

And I think each entity gets something different out of customized.

The employer is getting these three legs of the stool, these unmet needs and these tasks better performed by others at a lower pay grade and specific benefit.

But the union is getting different things.

And one of the things I think the union gets is that almost every union that I've looked at their website or done any kind of surface-level research on has an affirmative action for hiring people with disabilities as union members.

And almost all struggle.

It's an idea, but then they say, but it just hasn't worked out.

But we've got this affirmative action. It gives the union the opportunity to actually do what it says it wants to do.

Now, whether it's genuine or not, you find out.

But I think many are.

I think it also gives the union a possibility of dealing with what happens when union members who do not now have disabilities for whatever reason, either by work disability or by accident, injury, illness sort of thing, become union members with disabilities and are now no longer able to do the demand of the job that they once did.

Right now I think it's very tricky as to how that -- how that gets played out, you know, maybe that person then just doesn't have a job any longer because they can't meet the demands.

So I think there's a value there.

There are -- there are a good, strong, handful of examples that unions have accommodated customized employment, but in no way do I want to tell you there is this overwhelming positive response.

It is challenging.

So I hope that really helps Tom's question.

And Norciva I think you had one more question I would like to try to deal with as quickly as I can.

NS: This one is pretty straightforward.

It talks about can customized employment be billable as supported employment is.

MC: Yeah, that's a great question too.

And here is the good news, and I have some experience with this in a couple of state efforts around the country.

The answer is basically, and I think most counselors know, that, you know, that states have various strategies for paying the way through supported employment.

And most of that has to do with the -- that period of time from the time the person starts the job and paying job coaching for the time -- limited time that VR does that, you know, up to 18 months, but I think most of you know in most cases it tends to be much, much shorter than 18 months of job coaching that VR pays for.

So it's not that area that we would look at. You know, customized employment doesn't try to take any money away from that.

But one of the things I want to suggest, and we've seen this now in a number of state rehab agencies, they've looked at whatever it is they typically pay providers to do, and this is presuming you have a provider network within your state.

Most states do, but like my home state here in Mississippi handles this in-house, so it works a little differently, they're going to handle it in-house, but most states, most of you are in a situation where you have a provider network that you pay for certain things prior to employment.

And what has worked very well is to look at those -- look at those structures -- let me give you a for instance.

I've been working for four years in the state of Wisconsin, and I had access to, with the state agencies' full awareness and approval, to look at their technical specifications for how counselors paid for supported employment services prior to employment.

And they paid for what was called a “supported employment assessment.”

And they paid for a plan, and they paid for a job development outcome.

Well, what we did was look at those specifications and in terms of time and money, and this is one of the critiques of customized employment that I want to tell you need not be a true critique, and that is, we looked in both time and funding and matched whatever the state had for supported employment services with new customized employment technical specifications.

The difference was the time was the same, the money is the same, but the services were unique.

Whereas the state did a supported employment assessment in customized, we do discovery and a profile.

Whereas the state had a certain planning process, which was not the IPE, by the way, we now do a customized plan for employment.

The state had a payment for finding the job, and we reflect the same payment for customized job development.

So that's what I really want to recommend.

And, you know, I would say from a counselor perspective, counselors have -- again, depending on where you are and your situation, you have a great deal of leeway in making sure that if you're paying for services that lead directly to an employment outcome and the accomplishment of an employment goal, you've got a good deal of leeway.

But we've also seen that if you work with your regional manager, first maybe your office manager, then your regional manager, you can really get some support from this.

And now any number of states have this possibility.

I know for instance it's possible in Kentucky for counselors to pay for discovery in lieu of an assessment.

And Kentucky is in the southeast region.

So those are just some examples, so the answer is yes, however, at this point there is no dedicated funding to customized employment.

The changes that are in the proposed language to the reauthorization amendments that many of you know are in front of Congress right now and it's questionable as to whether it would be dealt with this year, now reference and customized employment.

So you're going to find it much easier, I think, once these amendments get passed, but who knows when that will be.

So I hope that that helps anyone plan how they might do that.

So I'm going to go ahead and go forward here and, Norciva, if you get a batch more questions like another two or three, just feel free to stop at any point.

NS: Okay.

MC: Okay, great.

Slide 13 – The Employment Matrix (cont.) And one of the things I've done on this matrix is to give you just a little bit -- I tried to reference it in terms of funding, you know, that the -- that Title I -- [inaudible]

[Feedback]

MC: I'm hearing some feedback, I'm sorry I stopped because I don't know if that was a question, Norciva, do you know if it was a question or -- or not?

NS: No, Mike, it was your initial conversation being repeated, I don't know how that happened, but I don't think it's occurring anymore.

MC: Okay, good.

Thank you very much. I'm not sure why it happened either.

I've gone forward and put the quadrant in just a little bit different perspective that the top left quadrant is typically Title I of voc rehab services, Title VI currently of VR is part of the lower quadrant.

U.S. Department of Labor and ODEP are really interested in the top right quadrant.

And in the lower right quadrant where we're talking about customized supported employment, right now this is a blend of supported employment and the ongoing employment services and there are a number of states that are -- that VR and Medicaid are cooperating to make sure this quadrant is fully funded, so that VR still does its work as per the Rehab Act, we're not really asking for VR to go beyond anything, but to just embrace, you know, the distinctions that are here very much like I was answering the last question.

So it's just a little different cut on the same quadrant in terms of where the primary focus is at this point.

Slide 14 – When to Consider CE? So one of the most difficult questions I think that faces a VR counselor is when to consider customized employment.

It's almost in some ways a triage question that can be asked, I mean, you can ask it certainly after services have not been successful, but it would be -- it would be very helpful, I think, to know as early as possible.

And I think this is something there's still -- there's still, you know, paths to be cut here to understand all of the nuance and all of the depth of customized employment.

But we are learning some things.

So here is some -- I've got a couple of pages of considerations that counselor might use for when to use customized negotiated employment rather than a competitive demand employment approach.

And almost every state is -- Norciva, I'm still getting feedback, can you help?

NS: I think it's quit.

I'll talk with Celestia while you're talking.

MC: Evaluating in a hopefully a competence-based way of people, but still we know that some individuals do pretty darn well on an evaluation, some individuals kind of squeak by, and others just do very, very poorly. If a person that goes through an evaluation, that person’s a good candidate.

But there's a problem for that because then you have paid for the evaluation and then you still have to pay for the supported employment process or the customized employment process and that is going to cost more.

So you want to try to avoid that.

If you're looking at an individual who has numerous unsuccessful jobs I would almost immediately think customizing rather than just another, you know, another one of these job-open jobs that's a revolving door sort of thing.

If you have a person who has gone to numerous interviews and is always overlooked for one reason or another, you know, that they're different from the previous person, they're not -- they're not having unsuccessful jobs because they're not even getting a job, that would be a person I would identify for customized employment.

And I think I have kind of a perspective about customized that goes like this: The more life complexities a person has, the more difficult it is to meet arbitrary, competitive demand from an employer.

Everything from when you have to get up to how far away the workplace is, to how you have to act or dress or whatever, become difficult as your life is more complex.

So if you already know from the beginning with a person coming into your office and you know, just in the vernacular - this person's life is a mess, then customized employment is probably the right approach for that person.

And simply because you have a pretty good idea already that if you go the demand approach, that the person might not even show up for an interview, you know?

Slide 15 – When to Consider CE? (cont.) In practical terms, if you have someone on your caseload for a certain period of time that begins to be problematic for you, and I've put for over a year, but I would say that you could -- you could either lessen that time frame or increase it just depending on what your reality is as to when, you know, the open case really starts wearing on you as a counselor, I think at some point when that person has not successfully moved off your case for whatever reason, customized might be a good idea.

When I'm looking at a person who has apparently significant and multiple disabilities, the likelihood that that person is going to meet a competitive standard is going to be lower.

And I hope you'll understand I'm not trying in any way to be handicappist here or have a low expectation, but these are the people who aren't employed now, so it's just, you know, really important that we have an approach for these individuals. When a person comes who has very, very specific passions or interests, I mean like “I'm not going to give this up,” and, you know, stereotypically right now, some folks with autism are coming with very, very specific interests, and you need to follow those and demand jobs are going to be difficult or maybe even relatively nonexistent, I would go a customized approach.

And when the individual and everything they bring to the job is just really outside of your experience and your comfort zone in terms -- I mean, I really think counselors have a pretty good -- in fact, a very good kind of barometer, you see an individual, you know what it’s taken to get people jobs and you're looking at a person and you're going “I just don't see it,” you know, I mean, you're not being negative, but you're just saying “I just don't see it.” That could be a good time to think about customized employment.

Now, of course, I mean, the reality is we have to have -- we have to have someone to take us through the process to make it happen.

Slide 16 – Consider employment services for Kim… (Etc.) Well, let me give you some perspective about this: I've included three examples and it's always helpful to see visuals, and for each of the people that I'm going to be showing you, voc rehab has played a major part in these people's jobs.

And for the first two, the concept of customized employment wasn't even around.

Kim is from one of the states in our region, I really don't want to -- it's a compliment, but I don't want to -- I don't want to give away one way or another, just one of the states in the southeast region Kim is from, and as she came out of a high school program, she had lots of disabilities, she was evaluated, and did very, very poorly on the evaluation.

But then because of the nature of a project, you know, again, as I said earlier, funded by the Rehab Services Administration, we were able to bring services to Kim.

But the problem was when those services started we basically had supported employment as the strategy.

That was the approach we had available, competitive supported employment.

We did our best to get to know her, to get her employment goal, which I could wrap up or I would condense, in terms of -- her goal had to do with working in the area of fashion and working with computers.

So you put those two things together and you could -- you could begin to form a pretty clear goal for Kim. Slide 17 – The demands of competitive supported… (Etc.) And interestingly and fortunately, we were able to develop a competitive job in a distribution center of a mall-type store’s regional distribution center.

And what Kim's job was to do was to enter in pricing data into her computer and then from her printer, would print out the spools of prices that would be shot into each garment that would be distributed out of this southeast distributing center for this particular store.

And Kim goes to work with good job coaching funded by VR, with a great attitude, with a supportive employer, and she works her heart out and gets nowhere near the competitive demand of the employer.

She was given twice as long to finish her probation period to reach productivity as an accommodation.

Over the course of time, she was offered input assistance devices such as a key guard, which she did utilize, and other things, like a very expensive chair that allowed her to move from her scooter or wheelchair into a positioning chair.

Positioning work in the work environment.

All of those things were done. And Kim was still less than 50% of the required performance.

And it really raises a tough question for us.

I mean, you know, people, we had spent money, we had done the process well, we had excellent job coaching, there was good relationship between the voc rehab counselor and the provider agency, and it's all falling apart, you know?

And maybe it's just the job, but, I mean, this was almost a perfect match of her job goals.

I would congratulate both the counselor and the agency of getting as close to her job goals as possible.

Maybe you're thinking somebody should have said that her job goals were beyond her ability, as stipulated in the evaluation.

Maybe so.

But then she was very, very clear about what she wanted.

Well, the interesting thing about Kim's story that for me really turned my way of looking at employment around, her supervisor actually took on the issue confronted here. We were worried about what was going to happen when Kim got laid off because of low productivity, but her supervisor saw it differently and began to look around this work area, a sprawling distribution center, and began to ask a question that I had never thought to ask, and that is asking colleague supervisors, do you have unmet needs in your area or specific unrated tasks that need to be done or that would help you if they were done?

And, see, our perspective was looking at job openings, and here Kim's supervisor was actually negotiating within a business to identify ways that an employee could contribute to an organization.

And the result was a very dramatic offering of a customized position that we didn’t even have a name for.

Slide 18 – By using customized, supported, employment… (Etc.) There was not -- there wasn't a term of art called customized supported employment, but what we had was the beginnings of a model that if we could say, “let's don't just hope a supervisor on behalf of an employee figures out how to meet need and benefit of a workplace, but could we be intentional about this in the same way that the supervisor was?”

Kim's work career was nearly 20 years.

The company -- the job ended when, you know, after way more than a decade when the company was bought up by one of these, you know, ravenous department stores that come around and buy up competitors, and the location was closed and everybody in the entity lost their jobs.

But, I mean, as far as being virtually a life-time job, it was really that.

And then her unique skills were blended with -- I'm sorry, my screen has just gone off this, so I'm going to go back to this slide -- her unique skills were blended with the needs that the workplace had.

So here is an example of kind of for me the beginning of understanding customized employment.

Slide 19 – Michael found a way… (etc.) And in a similar situation there's a gentleman, Michael, that even had a tougher go with his evaluation than Kim did.

His tested performance of inputting data into a computer was about one and a half percent of what would be presumed to be an acceptable rate. So, I mean, imagine being a counselor and looking at that on an evaluation and trying to figure out how in the world anything -- for anything other than charity, could a person, you know, have a job in a competitive situation.

But Michael was able with, again, kind of standing on Kim's shoulders and moving forward with this first, meeting unmet needs on a contract basis.

In other words, he was assisted to start a contracting business to meet needs at a time when jobs weren't open.

And then in working for a public entity employer for nearly a year, he was one of the first people offered a position, a customized position, when the hiring freeze ended.

So we're kind of in that same situation right now.

But again, we began to understand that by meeting these specific needs, unmet needs in areas of specific benefit, as opposed to job openings and demands, we were looking at huge improvement in the likelihood of employment and access to employment for people with very significant disabilities.

Slide 20 – Andrew was able to get a start… (etc.) And the next story and the last I want to tell you is just an interesting situation from a young man in a local high school down in our area on the Gulf coast, in a project that was supported in a partnership funding by the Social Security Administration, the grantee was the Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services, so our state rehab agency, and local school districts.

And I want you to really look at the lower right photograph.

This is a young man with autism.

He is kind of in a classroom situation, was perceived as really being quite child-like, you know, and so he responds by responding in kind, you know, and this is just, if you will, kind of a typical special education classroom that at that time was not really focused on really seeing the best that young people might have and the possibilities that they might have, you know.

And as we began to look at employment with Andrew, when he started stating his job interests, he only could state kind of the realm that he knows, the world that he knows.

And he basically, with both his voice and his mother's voice, basically saying, “I love movies, I love movies.”

And you hear that so often with young people. And of course one of the first things that you might end up with was, okay, if we follow this guy, he’s telling us what he wants to do, then we need to have him maybe taking tickets at a cinema or maybe sweeping up popcorn between movies or something like that.

And not that that would be anything bad, I'm not in any way saying that that would be bad, but that's more a demand thinking.

And as we began to look at his skills through this process of discovery, really taking a look in his life, not at how maybe the school perceived him, but how he perceived himself and what he does as an individual and his skills, he ended up working as a video editor for our local power company, editing training video taken by supervisors of high-tension workers, and it turns out that Andy had the component skills, not the -- not the competitive skills to be a videographer, but the component skills to put video together.

And that's the great value of customization, I think it gives people access potentially to far more sophisticated work settings and workplaces. And Andrew, by the way, is featured in a film on youth transition that the U.S. Department of Labor has done, they came down to the Gulf coast and featured a number of young people who were successful in meeting unique employment needs right here on the Gulf coast in this project that was led by the Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services and in conjunction with the local school districts.

Norciva Shumpert and I had the opportunity to work closely on this.

It was a real eye-opener to see some of these distinctions that occurred.

Slide 21 – Value Added to All Parties: The Customization Process One of the things that we’ve learned through now the maybe 20 years of coming to terms with customized, and the decade since 2001 when it first was articulated in -- by the U.S. Department of Labor, is that we know that a unique process is necessary.

One that starts with discovery as an alternative to comparative assessment.

With these people that I'm talking about, if we assess, we're going to get kind of the difficulty people have in competing successfully against standards or others.

But if we look into their lives, like with Andrew, the young man I just showed you, we can occasionally find real component skills that can then be considered in relation to unique employer needs.

And that opens the door in a significant way.

And we're not talking about paying for a touchy-feely process; that would be nice, but we can't pay you for just getting to know someone. Discovery is very intentional, very professional, and results in a comprehensive written report that I think stands alongside any assessment report.

It is written very differently, but the system actually sees what it's paying for in terms of both the activities of discovery and the results in the profile.

The customized planning process says that if we just go out in the community, the likelihood what most job seekers and most job developers will do is look at open jobs.

We have to really create a blueprint very similar to somebody building a custom home after getting approval from the bank to have the money necessary to build our custom home.

We don't just start by -- if we're building our custom home to go out and see what's on the market, we start with thinking about who are we and what we would like our home to look like.

And similarly, the customized employment plan really takes the lead from discovery and the profile to create this blueprint for job development.

And it reflects very, very clearly, the wishes of the individual, all throughout.

And by the way, now in a number of states that have worked with us, one of the sticking points, obviously here, many of you who are counselors probably are thinking this, you have to -- you have to identify your IPE at a certain point of time so that you're within the time frames established by the Rehab Act.

And one of the things about the plan here is that this comes in the process.

So we work closely with counselors to find solutions to resolve the tension of targeting an IPE at the appropriate time, and also driving the process by this customized plan.

And at least for instance in the state of Wisconsin, we've been able to actually get our plan done in time for the counselor to use the plan as the basis for the IPE.

So there's no conflict.

I mean, obviously the IPE is still done in the way that voc rehab does an IPE, we don't try to substitute, we try to inform it so we don't then have to come back and do a refit, although that refit is possible in most states, it's better to have the plan inform the IPE rather than just create the plan just for a time sensitivity and then have to come back and revise it.

We also, in the process, realized that this concept needs some boosting from a imagery perspective and a communication to potential employer perspective. So we look at unique ways to present the concept of customized employment and to present the job seeker in a unique and innovative way through what we call a visual résumé.

And then finally, job development representation references a presentation and very interestingly, a needs and benefit analysis for the employer, a no-charge service that helps the employer look at their workplace in relationship to the potential benefit from the individual.

And with those -- with those -- with that process -- I apologize, my computer has got a mind of its own today -- with that process, we then now, at the development of a successful customized job, we then dovetail with supported employment services.

And they proceed just as supported employment services would typically proceed.

So Norciva, let me come back to you and see, have there been any other questions before I do the final slides and begin to wrap up? I'm just going to leave this up to see if there are any further questions that you've gotten.

NS: Michael, you've got a question from Patrick asking will voc rehab pay for discovery, and after assessment has been done?

MC: And, again, you guys ask the hard questions, don't you?

Well, you know, the -- it's obviously going to be a counselor decision around Patrick's issue.

They obviously don't want to, and nor do I blame them, you know. That if you've already invested money in an assessment and then particularly if the assessment is not proven to be as successful for the individual as you hoped it would be, you're not enamored with using yet more case dollars to pay for discovery, and I truly understand the problem associated with that.

And I also feel that it's why an effective triage prior to assessment is usually in the person's best interest, you know, so we don't have to deal with this.

But the interesting thing is -- is that many, many counselors, I hesitate to say most, I don't have anything other than anecdotal data on Patrick's question, but many counselors find it worth their investment to go ahead with discovery once they realize the results of the assessment are simply not giving them the kind of direction they need to go forward.

And, you know, obviously you need some cover from your manager, you need to explain why this is happening, as all good counselors would need to do to, you know, kind of pay two times on one basic service, but I guess, Patrick, I'm not seeing -- other than the common sense “we don't have a lot of money” or maybe differently said, “money is a real problem, there's just no way can we pay for discovery if we've already paid for assessment,” I'm not seeing barriers built into most of VR systems that would say you simply can't do that.

I mean, many, many times, and for many individuals with an array of issues as they work toward their journey to become employed, will need duplicated services.

So we know that and it happens, we wish it didn't happen, but, you know, when it does, I'm not seeing any major barriers other than the common sense ones that you don't want to just do that as a matter of course.

And I do have a bias, but you’d please understand this, I'm saying yes, it is my bias, if I were in that position and I was unsure whether to use discovery or an evaluation, my bias would be to go with discovery.

What we found is that -- I mean, that evaluation works very well for a good number of job seekers and a good number of individuals who come to voc rehab services.

And many of us on this call are people who might take tests well and hence it would be a value to us.

But I guess my point is so, again, I'm not saying evaluation bad, discovery good, I'm saying that if you're not certain because of your professional experience, and some of these triage questions I've given you earlier, if you're not sure, my advice would be to err on the side of discovery.

Discovery can help someone get a demand job just as well as a customized job.

So, you know, if you were -- but -- and so discovery is going to work for somebody who does not have a significant impact of multiple disability, it really would, it could work for the school valedictorian as well as it works for the person in the developmental disabilities class who's laying on a mat and who needs assistance to eat with a G tube.

I mean, it's going to work equally well for both people.

Whereas, assessment is not going to work well for everyone.

So if I were in a situation where I was unsure I would opt for discovery.

But then once having used the evaluation and it didn't work, then you're going to have to come to terms with does -- is the investment likely to work out.

And I hope you'll be able to find a positive answer to that one too.

Norciva, do you have another one?

NS: Yeah, I do, Mike. And Mike I would like to respond to that.

I think what you're seeing right now across the southeastern region is pretty representational of the rest of the United States.

And that is is that voc rehab is requesting discovery of providers if they have providers that offer it.

And states are really looking now to try to formulate discovery as a -- and the individualized job development to be done for people.

So those of you out there, you are really in the cusp of us formulizing this as part of a state-wide effort because we're working in many states looking at codes, thinking about what the funding should be and cases implementing several different projects to look at that.

Mike, there's a couple of questions more: One is from Doug Warren who has been in on many of our presentations before, hi, Doug, and he asks in your development representation, are you going to employers to look for only the need that this client can fill, or do you do a comprehensive needs analysis?

MC: Again, the questions have been very astute today and this one gets at the heart of an issue within customized employment.

So, Doug, I'm going to tell you how I do it, but I'm also going to tell you that there are people who do it differently.

So, I'll give you both shots of it.

My feeling is we always do discovery and plan prior to a needs analysis so the job seeker we are representing creates a lens through which we see employer need.

And that's really important to me, and I think it's going to be very important to most counselors in the sense you know exactly who your individual is, they're on your caseload, they're not necessarily interchangeable, I'm not saying that some people get jobs before others, they do, but, I mean, when you really start working with a person, you want it to be their job.

So I target my needs analysis through the lens of the plan that relates back to the individual.

And that does what I'm betting in your question, implicit in your question, the value of that is we don't just identify a whole bunch of needs that we then say to the employer, “but my person really can't meet those,” it gets I think somewhat confusing to the employer also. There are people that I respect a lot and who feel pretty strongly exactly the opposite way.

And that is they go into an employer without really putting forth a job seeker as a lens through which to see need, and just let the employer conceptually think about their unmet needs.

And then you turn to a, if you will, a pool of job seekers and use employer needs as a template.

I am less enamored of that because I think that template, even though it's based on employer needs, is tantamount to a job description, it's a form of demand, and it's going to be good for some people who can meet those, but one of the things I've found in a typical needs analysis, you might identify upwards of 40 unmet needs, of tasks better performed by others and areas of specific benefit, almost no one would want a job description 40 items long.

So there's always -- you always have more than people can do anyway.

But my point is that the job seeker with the more significant disability is likely to get left out in that strategy.

Now I want to tell you the truth because you deserve the truth, and that's this: It's probably true that most employers would like you to come in without a job seeker.

They would like to keep it theoretical until you go back and see their needs and then come to them with what they would presume would be here is the person best suited to meet all your needs or as many as possible.

That's an understandable business model, it's an understandable reaction.

However, our job is to -- we have to decide who is our primary customer.

I think voc rehab probably does a better job of that than almost any human service entity.

Your primary customer is your individual.

And because of that I wanted to take the somewhat more difficult road.

It's not -- it's not a -- it's not hugely more difficult, but it is somewhat more difficult because in this case, you actually are presenting the individual with their reality as the lens through which you're seeing the employer's needs.

It's a little more challenging, but a lot more successful in finally getting that person a job. So it's a great question, and everybody has to decide that.

And right now, the field of customized employment kind of divides between the two camps that you implied in your question.

Norciva?

NS: Thank you. And we'll take the script and your questions and several of us that work with TACE as consultants will be answering it, so you'll get lots of feedback on these types of questions.

Mike, you've got one more question that really asks, are there discovery specialists available in most states?

MC: Right now that's still a -- that's still very, very uncertain.

Yes, they're available in most states, but they're available still right now sporadically within states.

You need to know that at some point we chose not to trademark or make discovery a proprietary concept, we feel like it's like public interest software, it's available to anyone.

So any number of entities could teach discovery and could certify discovery.

We're not the only ones who do that.

And one of the things that I know that Southeast TACE would like to do is to work with any counselor who was in an area who had an individual for whom you thought customized was the way to go, but didn't feel like you had that kind of trained person. One of the things that happened about a year and a half ago, we work closely with a professor from a local University here in Mississippi to create a -- kind of a self-paced checklist that an otherwise untrained person could go through.

And I don't want to -- I don't want to say it's the equivalent of good, certified work, but it's the kind of thing that we could share within this region, with any counselor who said, you know, if -- couldn't someone kind of come to learn to do this?

And this is going to sound a little crazy, but I'll give an example: Back when I was quite a bit younger, a friend asked me if I knew anything about plumbing.

And I did, but not nearly enough to plumb a house, but I agreed to plumb his house.

And I got a step by step book and some of my experience and passed every single mustard that had to be done from inspectors and local stipulations, we were able to completely plumb the house, it's still working today, 30 years later. And I want you to think of the checklist as some approximation of what I just said.

If we can get in people's hands, how to go through this in a way that would minimize the counselors' effort but maximize the adherence to a good process, that's at least one of the options we could use to help you if you don't happen to have someone who has either been trained or in quotes, “certified in your area.”

Norciva, any other questions?

NS: Thanks, Mike.

Not now.

MC: Let me wrap up here with my -- yes.

NS: Go ahead, I was saying there are no more questions right now.

MC: Good.

NS: So we'll finish up.

MC: Yeah, well, let me finish by covering these last few slides.

Slide 22 – Benefits of CE to Job Seekers And I want to talk about the benefits of customized job seekers and to VR.

And just kind of let this resonate with you as you're considering this.

Customized employment gives us a way around the barrier associated with demand.

And I've really spent most of this webinar talking about that.

That in no way do I think demand is a bad thing, but it is a barrier for some people.

And we need a way around it other than the charitable sort of “can't you just give this person a job,” you know, and I hear lots of job developers still saying, “can't you just give this person something.”

That's not a business model at all.

So customized provides a bona fide business model to get around the issue of demand.

And, in the same way, the barrier of comparative evaluation, when evaluation is a barrier by using discovery. Very much in keeping with voc rehab law and values, it allows the individual and family as appropriate, to drive the job search, rather than just having the reality of local demand say what kind of job you get.

Now, in and of itself, customized employment doesn't create jobs. Job creation is a little bit of in my opinion a misnomer, but it gives huge flexibility that employers can use to -- for us to get as close to people's interests as possible. And this next issue is so important.

We feel very strongly that personal interest is the primary guide toward employment.

It provides the primary direction.

And I think that's in keeping with exactly what we want from people, that's the focus of an IPE, I believe, and it's certainly the focus of customized employment.

We maximize best skills and then when there are areas of deficit, we use customized to make sure those are not part of expectation.

And so therefore we minimize those either competitive aspects or those things that people don't do well or have problems with.

So those are some of the benefits.

Slide 23 – Benefits of CE for VR And I think to VR there are significant benefits, that increasingly in the last 25 years VR is being asked to employ people who are harder and harder to place and we know many of these people linger on caseload.

And every time there's a reauthorization of the Rehab Act there's -- you know, you hear from Congress and written in the statutes and then later in the regulations that come out of the act, of targeting people with very, very significant disabilities.

And we really need to have a process that is that it really gets an option for those people, this process.

And as we ask for payment, as providers and individuals want a process, counselors aren't just paying for like, “Okay, I'm going to give a provider all this money and I hope something happens.” We have a clear process so that a counselor knows what he or she is paying for and you should be able to check this and my advice is if the provider doesn't do what they're supposed to do, for instance, in discovery, they shouldn't be paid.

I'm just real serious about that. So this clarity is so important that if we're going to go in this direction, counselors know what they're paying for.

And we all have I think had to deal with the terminology of employment for all.

I personally completely believe in it, but I know how daunting it is, how unlikely it is, how difficult it is.

It is not something to be taken lightly when we embrace this.

And I think too often, without having an option that really makes it possible, many people have just said, “Well, that's nice to think about,” and maybe it's one of those -- maybe it's one of those nice phrases, but is it really real?

And I think it can be, at least from the perspective of having a concept that can address the option of employment for all.

And here I'm also saying, just so you hear me clearly, all people who want to work.

I mean, I do not know how to get a person who doesn't want to work and who refuses to try to go to work.

So, I mean, any of you that find that one, trademark it and make sure that you carefully dole it out because you'll make a bunch of money.

I think we also have a new way to open the door for employer relations.

Employers have seen us as yes/no people, people to whom we say yes or no to.

And this way, by engaging an employer to look at ways to benefit their business, it's a really different message than “Do you have a job opening and would you accept an application?”

Well, of course they have to, from an individual with a disability, but would you consider hiring this person.

And here, we're really changing the dimension of what it is that we're saying to local employers, and I think this really is -- it could be quite a boon to a rehab counselor’s and local employer relations.

And then finally, we have always had within the VR entity, tension at times with the DD community, and probably I should put here, the mental health community and the other -- those other communities of funding and service that depend on VR to be the source of getting people jobs.

And one of the things that I've seen in this cooperative approach that customized employment can bring is real bridge building. And I would really encourage any of you to look at some of the things that have -- that are happening in Wisconsin between the Medicaid funding of the developmental disabilities community and state rehab and its willingness and leadership in really putting forward a concept where you have a partnership toward employment for people with very significant impactive disabilities.

Slide 24 – Benefits of Customized Employment for Employers And also in this, employers come out too, you know?

That employers could never afford the equivalent of discovery in recruitment.

We can actually come to an employer saying, “We've taken the deep look at the strengths, needs, and interests of this person, and we have a person coming to you, we feel like could meet specific needs if we can negotiate and come to terms.”

The plan really makes sure that we're not just going to someone who has a job -- a help wanted sign in their window or a job opening, but really the job seekers are coming based on their interests.

That's a very important and powerful thing to say to a local employer.

And then the employer can look at their work site in a unique way and say, “I need these tasks done, do you feel like this job seeker can do those?”

And then we can really negotiate to meet critical and important needs of a workplace.

Slide 25 – Benefits of Customized Employment for Employers (2) And this -- the thing that's changed the body language of many employers is what happens when they hear this is completely voluntary.

There's no obligation for an employer to customize.

It should only occur if it benefits the employer.

Folks, I build that into my job development presentation and you literally see body language shifting to comfort, it's like wow, this is different.

And even encouraging job seekers to allow positive disclosure of issues related to the impact of their disability, so employers aren't wondering, “What am I facing?”

Now, of course again from a job seeker perspective, this must be voluntary and they must explicitly give permission, but it turns out to be very positive.

And then the pay is a negotiable also. But we start at minimum wage as a threshold, but we're finding many employers paying right up to typical wages for the kinds of contributions that job seekers are making.

Slide 26 – Benefits of Customized Employment for Employers (3) And, you know, we could just look further with this by looking at really any system could benefit from this kind of customized focus and when people need support to be successful, they should get those.

And some employers are responding to this and have actually said, you know, we've been trying to figure out how to welcome job seekers with disabilities into our business.

This has finally given us the way to do it.

And I think that's a positive thing.

I don't think that's a -- anything negative when an employer says this has really helped us achieve in - a business way - the goal of increasing diversity in our workplace.

Slide 27 – For Additional Information: So I'm going to stop right there and Norciva, turn it back over to you.

Folks, I really apologize for the problem we had early with the audio, hopefully we can clear that up for the next webinar, and we'll look forward to seeing some of your questions or maybe even taking one or two in the minute or two left, but probably we're right about at the time frame, so Norciva, let me just turn it over to you.

NS: Thank you so much, Michael.

Really do appreciate your in-depth discussion of how we need to think about customized employment and demand employment.

And I think the important issue for all of you that are both providers and counselors and other partners that are there, is that we need all the tools that we can have, because we do all have a goal of employing the folks that really come to us seeking employment that's there.

Please note for the next two hours that you guys will have an opportunity to send me your questions and Mike and I will be looking at that. Slide 29 – Contact Information Here is my email, please send those to me, I'll be coordinating the questions that look good -- not look good, but that are there, and we'll really talk about answering that from different view points as we go through this.

The job development exchange really wants to be some conversation between you and us, so if you've got comments to make about – aha, you've had a moment in which you feel like you could see a strategy in which could be used in a certain way, please don't think that we only want questions.

We're going to just put up, over the next two hours I will collect emails, I won't be actually live answering those, but I will go back at the end of today first thing in the morning and look at putting all those questions, comments together and then posting them so that you'll have access to this information.

Slide 30 – Thank You! Guys, thank you for your attention, your willingness to think about what it is we have to do as a mission to employ people in each of our states and the people that come to us.

Slide 31 – Job Development Exchange Webinar Series I'll note that we will have another presentation next month, September the ninth; it will be job development in rural areas. Allen Anderson, who is from another organization out of Canada, will be presenting and looking at rural area issues, what some of the issues you might be able to use, and once again, each one of these calls, I'm going to be on the call or Abbey, and we're going to try to keep the focal point to where you can think about being rural and from a demand perspective what's open, and then what about from a customized perspective where you have to think about who the job seeker is in wanting to do other things.

There is some -- there is another webinar this month that also has something from the DBTAC that we have already put up and made available so that you guys might want to register about online applications.

It's very demand approach, but it's a good strategy to look at how to get through some of the demand issues that you're going to be seeing.

Slide 32 – TACE Talks Transition (TTT) We still have our email out, email list that goes out, our TACE Talks Transition, I know our other networks also have email blasts that go out.

Please sign up for all of these.

I'd like to remind you two things right now if you'll look in your chat room, Celestia has been nice enough to post the evaluation, and we've really tried to redesign our evaluations so that they're interactive for you to tell us about what topics you would like to have, what you felt like was helpful in this call, what you felt like we could do differently.

So really looking at that.

And so your evaluation is not just more of a good or bad, it's us learning and trying to learn about what your needs are.

Slide 33 – Education Credits If you'll look at the PowerPoint, you've got access to getting credits.

That is the website that you've got there, it's here, you can pull it up.

Slide 34 – Southeast TACE (Region IV) And once again, this is the Southeast TACE Region IV coming out of the south, I'm Norciva Shumpert with Marc Gold & Associates and also with Southeast TACE.

Thank you, that's it for today, and we will end this session now.