Y-TAC



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Today is September 22, 2020. Ensuring Equitable Access - Y-TAC IEL

KARIN GRANDON: Good morning to those of you who are on the West Coast. Good afternoon to those of you who are in Central or Eastern Time. We are going to be presenting on equitable access to VR services and innovative strategies for engaging underserved youth.

It looks like we have a large audience and we are excited to be with you. Just really quickly I want to give you some Zoom webinar instructions. We are recording this session.

The recording and the transcript will be available on our Y-TAC website. It takes a couple of weeks to get that posted. To listen to the audio just make sure that your computer or headphones are turned on to a volume that works for you.

We do have closed captioning available and if you would like to see the closed captioning then there is an icon at the bottom of your screen. There is a CC and you can click on that to get your subtitles.

If you have questions about your technology or if you're having a difficult hearing time then please send us a message in the chat box. Our amazing tech host, Emily, will do an amazing job to take care of you.

We have an evaluation that will come on your screen at the end of the presentation today. We ask that you take a few minutes to complete that evaluation for us.

It is critical that you do so because it really helps us review the materials that are presented. And shows us that the materials being provided are what people are asking for.

It helps us look at and know what people liked or didn't like so that we can make modifications if we need to. We will have a reminder about that at the end.

Obviously, we are the Vocational Rehabilitation Youth Technical Assistance Center. I will do an introduction so that you can find out what Y-TAC is all about.

The Y-TAC is actually housed in DC. We have lots of partners with various expertise as well. The overall goal of the Institute is to prepare and support leaders so we do a lot of equity work and Y-TAC fits perfectly into that theme and philosophy.

If you want to find out more about the Institute for education and leadership which has been around for 50 years then we have some excellent materials there and you can check them out on our website which is listed here on this slide.

We also partner with Cornell University, Boston University, and we have various subject matter experts that are relevant to the task that Y-TAC is serving. We are going to do some presenter introductions. We are going to start with Miss Jackie. Would you like to introduce yourself Jackie what you do and where you are from?

I don't think she is on. My name is Karin Grandon, and I am a technical assistance liaison for the Institute for Educational Leadership. I come from a background of special education and rehabilitation world. I am now working for the institute.

KIM OSMANI: Hi everyone, I am Kim Osmani, and I am a colleague of Karin's. I am a State Technical Assistant Liaison. Why don't we go to Cindy next.

CINDY MURPHY: Hi, I am the Deputy Chief for Alaska Division. I have been in the field for about 30 years here in Boston.

KARIN GRANDON: Tammy, do you want to do a quick introduction?

TAMMY WILLIAMSON: Hi, I have been working for Vocational rehab for about four years. I've been working with youth for about 15 years.

KARIN GRANDON: Olivia?

OLIVIA CARR-ODOM: Hi, my name is Olivia, and I'm the Business Enterprise Coordinator for the state of Alaska. I have worked for the Division of Vocational Rehab for about 20 plus years.

KARIN GRANDON: Miss Veronica?

VERONICA MENDOZA-WILLIAMS: My name is Veronica Williams, and I am the Transition Specialist and I am with Arizona Rehabilitation.

KARIN GRANDON: We also have Kim Gee on our list, and she is one of our presenters that has been recorded. We will get Jackie on line and have a better introduction of her in a minute.

This is what we are hoping you all will get out of our webinar. We really want to share some effective partnerships and the strategies for developing those partnerships that we have worked on over the years as the technical assistance center. We are going to be sharing those innovative methods with you.

Again they are focused on employment and adult independent living outcomes for young people. We’re going to share some of those key concepts that we understand that work best. With young people and their partners.

In order to do that and to move towards those learning objectives that we talked about and we really want to define what our under deserved youth population is like. Sometimes you hear it referred to as disconnected youth and there are a couple of different terms.

Our definition is that these are young people who are between the ages of 14 and 24. They are not involved in any form of employment, activity, or school. They are out of school and we want to get them reengaged in those activities.

Specific to Y-TAC we work with agencies on improving, enhancing, and developing their systems for young people that are in the juvenile justice system who are at risk, who are in the foster care system who have dropped out of school or at risk of dropping out of school or maybe have or are experiencing homelessness.

I'm not going to overwhelm you all with statistics but I'd like to share these next couple of slides with people because they are so impactful to me. I remind myself of these statistics periodically because it is why we do what we do.

Sometimes it is a surprise to learn that 65 to 75 percent of the young people who are in the justice system have reported having at least one disability. Think about how many people are in the system and the fact that more than half -- almost 3/4 of them have reported having a disability.

I also like to slide because I wanted you all to have access to these two links. The ones in the next slide as well. There is some really good information that you can get from these links. When you get the PowerPoints please be sure to click on there and take a look at what is going on.

I said that Y-TAC also works with foster care youth with the state. We have programs to improve those services. It is always surprising to me to see that there are 400,000 young people in the foster care system. This idea or fact that 20,000 of them age out annually.

Every year 20,000 young people are exiting the foster care system and almost half of those, almost 10,000 young people a year become instantly homeless. They may be couch surfing, they may be sleeping at a friend’s house or sleeping somewhere that is less comfortable.

It is a pretty staggering statistic. This line talks about those young people that we just talked about with her living situations that are less than desirable -- they are a challenge.

We also had this impact on our people with disabilities that are dropping out of school. We know that 16 to 24-year-old males have a nearly 60 percent dropout rate. That number is a 108 million students.

I should say the sad truth and I am not telling these facts to be a downer but it is why we do what we do. I love the way that this homelessness in America website phrased this. It really hits home.

On a single night in 2019, 35,000 -- over 35,000 unaccompanied youth were counted as homeless. Again we are looking at really high statistics and we know the prevalence of disability is there for all of these populations.

At Y-TAC we like to talk about youth voice. We also encourage all youth service professionals to be aware of how to use and implement trauma informed practices. We’re not going to be able to go into that today.

We have a lot of information there were going to cover and share today. This is a little dip of your toe.

This is a reminder that we really need to look at how we are interacting with young people and recognizing that most often they have experienced adverse childhood incidents in their life.

They are young people who are typically -- adolescence, right? They have their foot on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time. They have all of these intense emotions going on.

It is really important for us to keep in mind that there may be triggers in the school environment, there may be triggers in the work environment. When you know your young person because you have developed a rapport with them, then you can plan for things that may be a trigger.

Talk to them about it to make sure that you are working on those ways to engage them that take into account this trauma-informed methodology.

A big part of that is what we call Youth Voice. We talk about it all the time at Y-TAC. Jackie is going to talk some more about it and we will do it more towards the end of today. It will be a threat throughout the presentations that you were going to see.

It is really about handing the microphone over to young people. Giving them a voice whether their voice is by painting a mural or by literally having the microphone and speaking.

Recognizing their strengths, giving them the power to share their experiences. Reminding ourselves that adolescence is also a time when these young people really -- their brains are developing; they are very creative in their decision-making processes. It is also a really good time to incorporate and empower their voice as much as possible.

At IEL we conducted a Youth Voices Community Forum. We did this back in July. The next slide is going to tell you a little bit about how many people we had participate.

The really great thing about this Youth Voice Forum is that we use this trauma informed engagement process and what came out of this is Youth Voice in many ways. The list of the presenters here because they were not only our Institute staff. Dahlia and Gabriela that are youth participants, Jason Hovis and James are also all co-owners on the publication that came out of this youth forum.

We're not going to open it but the link is here on this slide for you. It is there so that you can open it yourselves and get the full conversation that happened during that forum.

What we heard mainly from the young people. All of those youth were participants. They were cohost of the breakout sessions that we did during this forum. They facilitated much of the conversation and what we found from them specific to the pandemic because that was one of our key themes of discussion. It is kind of our world right now for everyone.

Their biggest barriers were accessing technology -- you can see them on here. It is more difficult to do a job search or to even do a job shadow. Now that we have all of the social distancing changes. They were much more impacted and we heard this in PR this morning, that 60 percent of the population has been emotionally impacted by the pandemic.

This is a list again that will be available again in your PowerPoint. Those things that they really call out that have been more of a difficulty during this time of COVID.

This is actually quotes from what the young people said. I'm not going to read all of them to you although they are really good. You can hear their voice and you can hear their challenges and hat they are empowered about. I'm just going to share a couple of them that were impactful to me when I heard them said.

Especially when young women said it is something that she will look back on and that if nothing else was going right she was able to attend a meeting and be heard. It was really helpful for her just to know that someone was listening.

We’re going to talk a little bit more about that for me go over our learning map in a second -- or more towards the end of our presentation.

Moving onto the next slide. We are going to go into some examples of what state VR agencies are doing to engage these few youth populations. The most exciting part of this. You will get to hear some other people and not just my voice.

This next slide we are going to start with Florida. Y-TAC develop these videos and one of them is this program out of Florida. We are going to show you this so you have sort of an emerging practice. This is a unique program that works with young men who are actually housed at a military base.

VIDEO: Learning a trade at the Hilton. Inside the Pensacola Naval base is the Escambia boys base where young men spend six to nine months. The director is Mr. Jones.

>>: I would like to welcome you to Escambia boys base. We are the only residential facility in the United States that works with juveniles that's housed on a military installation. So if we want hope to materialize in front of them, they need to be exposed to as many different experiences as possible.

>>: Pensacola Beach is a vast stretch of white sand and hotels. Gina Dudley general manager of the Hilton Pensacola explains.

>>: You come into a hotel and it's not just a hotel. It is a city itself.

>>: The Director of this tells us.

>>: When you work in hospitality you have to have a giver's heart. I see it all day long and the guys at work under me. If you guys are ready we will go into the classroom.

>>: He leads them up the stairway.

>>: We hope to spark the boy's curiosity.

>>: The boys stand at tables laid out with PVC pipes, pipe fittings. The teacher is John Gerseth.

>>: See that P-trap, that is a shower and that is what we are building. So that system that we got here basically this would be a drain for your shower and this would be your overflow.

Plumbing is never going to go away. I don't care if there is a recession, it's never going to go by. If you have a trade then you have a job for the rest of your life. Sometimes you want the pipe down so that your excess will run down instead of in your pie.

When you're gluing a pipe, you want it nice and clean. You don't want the glue and fingerprints all over. If someone sees a sloppy job and they're going to question your work. Look for something to fill you one so you want to do all your joints nice and clean.

>>: We can teach the skill that we want you to fix the toilet but a personality that is not afraid to speak to anyone and make you feel comfortable, that's what we’re doing.

>>: Each week we go to a different hotel and they can see a different environment. We try to keep it as professional as possible. But we always have something planned out so that we are not wasting their time.

>>: At the end John Gerseth walks the boys to the front of the hotel.

>>: When they see that they had the work in themselves to make some good things happen. Turn a bad situation into something good then they will move forward and start taking those steps one at a time to get to where they want to go.

>>: Dedicated to the memory of Donna J Munday, 1946 to 2018. Without Donna's vision and leadership, this program and many like it across the country would not have been possible. She dedicated herself to creating opportunities for youth -- particulate youth with disabilities -- to make a successful transition to adulthood and meaningful work.

KARIN GRANDON: Thank you Emily. We have several other videos at Y-TAC where you can view these emerging practices as well. Now we are going to hand it over to Alaska.

I'm just going to let you know that there is a portion of Alaska's presentation that is going to talk about the Business Enterprise Program. That is for you that are unfamiliar, the Shepard Act and I will put a link in the Google chat box, that want to get more information while Olivia is talking.

Watch for that and I am going to hand it over to Cindy and her fabulous team who I was fortunate enough to work with over the last year. I want to say that we could do an entire webinar just on the accomplishments of some of these states including Alaska.

You are just getting a little taste so we will give you resources to connect with people at the end of the webinar if you want more. Okay, Cindy I'm going to stop talking and handed over to you.

CINDY MURPHY-FOX: Thank you Karin. Just a little bit about Alaska we are quite unique in comparison to the rest of the world, I like to say.

One of the things that can pointed out is that we have been able to establish a pretty robust relationship with Y-TAC to help develop some different emerging practices. In the state of Alaska we have many things going both in school and out of school.

I don't want to neglect the fact that there are pockets of excellent work all over the state. Today were going to highlight just a couple of them.

How we really got motivated into two of the projects that we are talking about is that we were able to take advantage of a learning lab through Y-TAC. That was September of 2019.

I had the opportunity myself and Tammie who is also on the presentation today to attend the learning lab in California. After being a part of that presentation we actually asked could we bring that to Alaska. Alaska is just very unique in comparison to some of the other states so we found it really valuable to have them up here.

One of the things we found with our learning lab was that we were trying to pack three things in, in one week. We had a learning lab and we were very fortunate to bring up a young person, Jackie who is also on the presentation today and she helped host a lab.

Which I think really aided in the understanding in some of the youth that were present and our staff that everyone needs to be involved in this. At the same time there was a youth leadership going on in the common house which is one of our published shelters for youth.

Board members were also meeting in Alaska so we were quite fortunate to have an onslaught of people from around the United States and Y-TAC and young people. We had them all in a room and we probably had a good 50 Alaska VR staff available in that so it was a pretty amazing program.

Primarily why we have wanted this to occur in Alaska is because we are looking to increase our unemployment and education for our young people.

We were trying to identify what are the most significant barriers and we had a general idea that there is always new things that arise that we need to place emphasis on. We wanted to look at the population of youth and what is causing some of the homelessness.

Again, we had a general idea but we wanted to see if there were other members in the United States or other programs in VR that had different experiences. Different ideas that they were using. Then of course Alaska is always looking for a systems change and we always want to be the ones on top.

Alaska, we look at innovating and empowering our youth. We have made a commitment to our youth and some of the things that we are trying to promote right now are re- engaging our out of school youth and replacing our education.

We are looking at barriers to success. Some barriers are not only about the person but there are also some barriers when it comes to publicists, homelessness, and our climate. Young adults being out on the street with no place to go. The large population -- or the large miles across the state. Kids that are hiding and then trying to find them all the time.

Were also looking to propelling our youth into getting better education. Our commitment to them to move them forward in life. Most importantly along with our youth we want to build a collaborative partnership.

In the state of Alaska we have been fortunate because we have some really positive partners. I will just name a handful because there are many on this list. We have Nine Star, Covenant House, Rights of Passage, we work with the office of Children's Services, we worked with investment Board, OCS, and some of the foster care systems.

On the next slide I am just going to put into perspective some of the homelessness statistics. I'm going to speak more directly toward our youth.

Interestingly there are 731,000 people in Alaska. The only other state in United States that has a lesser population is Wyoming and they are a quarter the size of Alaska. The number of miles in Alaska is 663,000 so we have about a little more than one person per mile.

You can feed the immense size of the state causes us issues and being able to reach all of our youth. That is a significant issue. Just some brief statistics because it is something we always want to talk about.

In the state of Alaska according to the Department of Education ending in 2018, the number of homeless students in Alaska is 769. Also 875 are unaccompanied youth. We have 351 only looking for nighttime shelter. We have 678 going in and out of shelters we have some students in hotels, roughly 222.

The significant amount of youth and those that are runways are doubling up and couch surfing. Those kind of things.

One of the programs we work quite closely with is called Covenant House. Tammie will actually get into more detail with that. They gave me some interesting statistics.

They are saying that one of five other individuals is being seen homelessness are under 18. One in 7 children will be (inaudible) before they are 18. Six out of 18 will have had to have engaged in homeless 62 just to make ends meet.

I think that is important when we look at how we deal with our youth and what we want to do. One thing is that many of our youth we serve has a disability. It may be disclosed disability so our outreach is very important.

Alaska VR at this point in the last fiscal year -- so we are looking at July 2019 through June 2020, we had 373 open and closed out of school youth and 33 were placed from unemployment. That was just talking about youth that were eligible consumers for educational services.

We also have about 800 plus students that were actually students that we served in a preop situation which is somewhat different than our discussion today. In looking at Alaska were going to highlight two of our partnerships and how we are promoting and empowering our youth at this time.

I'm going to pass this on to Tammie.

TAMMY WILLIAMSON: Hello. We can go to the next slide. As Cindy mentioned we have a lot of partnerships. The most significant one is with covenant because we are working with those out of school youth.

I've been working with Covenant House through the Department of Labor for over 10 years. I had a previous position with the youth center. I have worked with them even in their previous old building and then the wind that they bill. What I have discovered over time is that it is important to be flexible to adapt and what is going to work.

When I came into VR four years ago they had a system of setting up a resource table at mealtimes. It just did not seem like the youth were come comfortable coming up to the VR table. There were things that I tried -- setting up job groups but then it was not a requirement anymore so there was no one coming to them anymore.

Part of an effective partnership is just finding out who your champion is going to be. Finding out who is going to be the one that really believes in what DVR can do and has the time to make those referrals.

I did outreaches to case manager meetings but I found they just did not have the time to make those referrals part of the person that was assigned specifically to the unemployment part of the case management was my champion.

At this point we have moved to a model where I go to Covenant every month or more often if needed. She will handpick referrals. We will sit down together, go through our orientation materials and I will help them with some of the paperwork just to make it easier for them.

Go over if they have any questions or things like that. Didn't set up our intake appointments. That case manager is very helpful in making sure that those cues come to those intake appointments.

I start on their comment -- you know where they feel comfortable at Covenant and then transitioned them over to our DVR office. Covenant is resourceful but they are there for you. Matter how many times they mess up they know it is a safe place to come. At some point they will age out of those services.

The youth, sometimes they will come back even if they have aged out because I don't know where to go. Showing them that DVR is someplace that can assist them throughout their lifespan and the relationship to work then it is important to make that transition.

Our office staff definitely works to make sure that they feel comfortable, that DVR is a safe place and we select we had a lot of success in that. We work closely with their -- they've had some work experiences. They have a small café that serves coffee and snacks.

The youth learn how to make coffee and things like that. They also have a culinary program associated with the food service within Covenant. Working with those supervisors to look at the appropriate referrals and also those opportunities for being ready for work and workforce preparation has been a very important partnership, t0o.

As far as ongoing difficulties I'm sure a lot of you encountered this with youth -- especially homeless youth. Their phone is not always reliable, their service, so getting a hold of them can be difficult. I have found coordinating with certain case managers that know how to reach out to them.

Some of them can use mean such as Facebook or other means to make sure that they meet with them. Then setting up a joint meeting with those case management teams that are already happening. It has been a good way to reconnect with those youth or stopping down during meal time to track people down has been effective.

Next Olivia is going to talk about our partnership.

OLIVIA CARR-ODOM: Good morning, this is Olivia. I am the state of Alaska Business Enterprise Program Coordinator. Those of you unfamiliar with the Business Enterprise Program, basically the Enterprise Program is for individuals that are legally blind or significantly disabled. We offer training for them.

We currently have sites in state and federal facilities. In order to qualify for our program -- in order to be in a federal site they have to be legally blind or completely blind. Then to be in a state facility they have to be severely disabled in order to qualify for our program.

They have to be part of our Division of Vocational Rehab because we offered that wraparound service there. They have to be a United States citizen and at least 18 years of age.

How our program can partner with VR and the Alaska entities as we did with this slide that we are looking at now, we did a partnership with the WIOA transition can't. We did this in Anchorage just back in March. The youth that participated in just this particular training, they were all visually impaired.

Again, that was very exciting for me because currently are licensed vendors that are in the program at this point are at the age where they are starting to look at retirement.

Any time that we can partnership with youth that have number one, and interest in food service or working in this type of environment then it is in an individual that expresses a disability than we are very excited about that.

For one it gives them exposure to our program. Tammy was talking about at the Covenant House they do have a culinary and a barista training program that they take their youth through.

It is one thing to train and be amongst your peers but it is a whole another ball game for these young people to be exposed to a federal facility or either a state facility. It gives them exposure working with individuals that they may have interacted with in the past that may not have been a positive interaction. Meaning in the court systems, police officers, lawyers.

Working in this environment is giving them exposure to that that number one, they can maintain themselves in a professional manner and number two they can put those skills that they have learned at the Covenant House into action.

We think it is an excellent partnership because again it is giving them experience in the Enterprise Program because even though they might come in during the training or as a work environment then they may not be old enough to be part of the Business Enterprise Program.

They can definitely work as an employee. Not only would that work for a visually impaired use but also a youth with a disability. Giving them other options then working at McDonald's or not working at all.

If they choose to go down that path than they would go through the training with the Business Enterprise Program. Once licensed then they would have an opportunity to have a permanent site.

With that permanent site they are getting medical benefits, they have a permanent employment opportunity not only were they can be hands-on but they can also see the business side of that as well. Then glued that into something much bigger than a common job would give them the opportunity to do.

Along with this handout there is also -- in my presentation, I'm sorry, there is a handout that gives you additional information as far as the training, how VR services would come into play. If someone was interested in utilizing the Business Enterprise Program.

If you have not tapped into the service within your state that I definitely encourage you to do that. Again it is an opportunity to grow our own. Thank you for your time this morning.

KARIN GRANDON: Thank you so much Alaska. This idea of incorporating the business in the Enterprise Program I think is something that could really be expanded in other states. I encourage you all to connect with VR services for the blind, the VR agency and see if you can do something similar.

I want to thank Alaska and now I'm going to hand it over to Kim to introduce Arizona.

KIM OSMANI: Thank you Karin and again thank you to the Alaska team. Amazing information. Between the statistics that Kim shared and Cindy shared about these various opportunities with these populations and you can understand why the workforce ensuring act there was this to ensure we were connecting them with rehab and educational services.

We began working with them and they really communicated a desired and a need to collaborate with other services to learn about the services and eligibility criteria of other agencies. So more students and (inaudible) could access those services. Potentially eligible students with disabilities.

We realize there are definitely challenges and reaching these populations, serving them. Sometimes they move around the state quite a bit. Sometimes there is a delay of getting paperwork, if it even exists, or for it to make to one school to the next.

Specifically if we are talking about those kids in foster care. In some cases it may be lost because one school thinks that the next school has connected them with rehab and then it never gets connected.

But we end up doing was were brought together partners from the Vocational Regency, their foster care unit and that agency, the Behavioral Health Partners, the Center for Excellence for Developmental Disabilities, their current education partners, and some local school districts.

We did a full day training where we did cross training between partners to really share a lot of information about what is available.

Emily, if we can go to the next side then we will talk about what we found. We’re not always looking at the negatives and what we need to work on but what do we need now or put together a group that exist. There is an amazing array of things.

We realized our positives in the state. Lots of fantastic services exist across agencies. There are the Arizona DDDs Hero Program and Arizona Young Adult Program. Services in Arizona can start as young as the age of 14.

That was exciting for many of our partners to know because there was a misconception that you only get connected with VR when you're exiting high school. That is definitely not in this number.

There are definitely processes in place for different agencies for looking at career planning, goal setting and making those long-term plans. We are seeing collaboration happen and mostly in Arizona from what we were discussing and this was more than a year ago.

There is a lot of collaboration that happened with schools in VR and schools of another agency but really trying to get those agencies to work together. That was really key and trying to make that happen. Schools are a really great resource.

They have a ton of information. Special education teachers have a wealth of knowledge and skills. We also realized something that was interesting and that was that all of the partners that were present. Transition was a part of what they were all supposed to be doing so why not come together as a new net and start coordinating services with one another.

On the next slide we will talk about things that we identified. Needs and things that we can be improved upon. So, let's look at that Emily.

What can we improve on. As a group, we talked about communication across the board. Not only internally in our own agencies better across agencies, across schools.

Specifically who look in agencies at what one office is doing as compared to another or array of staffs to see what agency you work for is able to provide. To increase those steps of clarification and being clear and those communications. Not having any gray area it possible to be specific and concrete.

What we did for schools and agencies, bringing together their developmental disabilities managers and all talking together and learning together. And our collaborations because we did see some vibrations happening then just looking at what we’re going to do. Then following through with the commitments that we aspire to.

To have a seamless transition in our work within our agencies and across agencies. There was a lot of conversations about case training management.

When does it have a start, when is a have to start and when can it? That is a big difference. As well as our documentation efforts.

Are we documenting what we are doing, are we documented the services that are provided, who is providing and who else could be supporting the students in their transition planning.

We are also talking about some needs for what happens when students are exiting school. They have provided the services that can provide, the case gets closed, this person isn't eligible for long-term support to the disability developmental agencies so then what?

Getting a more idea of what the then can look like. They really expressed a desire to have more knowledge about what those can be.

These systems were not talking to each other and it was very apparent. The VR agency could not identify who they were serving that might also be in foster care. The foster care agency was in the process of getting a new case management system that was supposed to be helping with this.

Then some other things of being an entire group of people together from across the state but then we realized that every single school district in Arizona has a foster care or liaison. That was a lot of new knowledge for some people.

Then (inaudible) that there is someone designated at the State of Education in Arizona. To connect schools and serve the kids that are in the foster care system. We have really identified that we have had this communication internally and externally.

What Veronica is going to talk about next is a little bit more of what Arizona has got, what is taking place in Arizona as well as what the next step is.

The next step was taken this larger group and going into a smaller local community and saying what can we do? They developed a process and I'm going to turn it over to Veronica so she can tell you more.

VERONICA MENDOZA-WILLIAMS: From our statewide event we pulled together a small community of practice in Tucson. We have representatives from the Department of Child Safety, the Division of Developmental Disabilities and some of our local school districts.

Our community of practice, we are optimistic but collaborative. I am happy to report that from our community practice. We were able to open the lines of communication.

As Kim mentioned, some of the representatives in the school were not a foster care liaison. The technical title is every student succeeds at the Essa that would call it in Arizona. Every school district is required to have this Essa requirement.

If the state Department of Education was not aware that in their school district there was a person tracking all of the foster care emanation. That we were also able to assist the Department of Education with filling out the (inaudible).

If they were having difficulty meeting with the case manager than they now have a DCS point of contact that is the education specialist.

Also from our community of practice, the members recommended that I do some outreach with some of our community agencies. To begin with I met with the Department of Child Safety. They have a young adult unit that specializes with the young adults ages 16 to 21.

These case managers work on independent living with these foster students. When I met with the case managers I asked him to look at their caseload and identify the students that have an IEP work and benefit from Preemployment Transition Services and VR services.

We understand that the of Department of Child Safety have a lot on their plate. It would be also important to work out to other agencies that are working with the foster students to try to increase the number of referrals.

I did some outreach with Foster Ed; Foster Ed is a state-funded program that reports to the governor's office. I believe the Governor's office is now working in New Mexico, California, and Indiana. It is like the public of child safety in the local [education.

I also did some use on their own outreach. Of these on their own is a nonprofit organization here in Tucson. With the homeless students in foster students, they provide monthly attendance for good attendance and good grades.

They also connect the students with resources in the community. I also did some outreach with Arizona Child's Organization. Since some of the topics that we cover with preemployment transition services aligned with independent living skills then we thought maybe we could fill in wherever there was a gap for the foster students.

I'm also thankful I was able to do a presentation to Pima County Juvenile Court. I was allowed to speak to the judges and even the attorneys. I just wanted to make sure they were aware of the resources and things available with it.

Those of you who are not familiar, these are the representatives that are tracking the fosters in the school. Previously this was the mechanical representative at the school. Since 2015 a lot has changed and the school districts has this represented.

Our local points of contact along with our state representative. Recently I was able to do some outreach with Intermountain, they are the main foster care provider in Arizona. They provide regular and therapeutic placements in comfortable settings and foster homes.

I realize these are all Arizona specific that hopefully this will inspire other states to explore what is happening in their community for students with disabilities. What we identified as a team is that we need to do some more work.

To the brim with and in voc rehab we need to create our initial forms. That way we can track the information there and we need to update our forum. We also realize we need to provide additional counseling for our counselor and providers. Safety is invited to different training events.

Right before shutdown we were provided invited to in advance that was going to discuss trauma care, youth resiliency and adult development. However, with the shutdown I think it is important for all of us to participate in these trainings to understand the foster care population.

We also recognize that we need to engage the foster of youth. We don't want VR services to be another recommended service by an insult team member. We just need to do a better job of engaging the students.

If you could go to the next slide.

Our next steps, we plan to expand our community of practice to other counties. Our next move is we plan to expand to Northern Arizona because we already know that they have collaboration going on with the community nonprofit agencies, the local school districts.

We plan on continuing our collaborative efforts. We are still employed in our community practice. We are hopeful we can increase the number of foster students receiving services with Vocational rehab.

It is going to take some time and assistance to reach our goals but we are committed to helping foster students with disabilities in Arizona. Thank you.

KARIN GRANDON: Thank you Arizona. My hope is that those of you who are listening are getting little nuggets of information.

That is what I am always looking for when I go to a training or attend a webinar. There are some really good nuggets that you can take away from these good nuggets and hopefully apply in the work that you are doing.

Next we are going to watch a video about Missouri. I'm going to let Kim do a little introduction to the Missouri program because she is the technical assistant liaison with that state.

Just know that the recording for Missouri -- I'm sorry, following the Missouri we had the PowerPoint slide so that they are in the presentation for you. You will be seen dust lies in the videos that you see. Hopefully, I did not confuse everyone so I'm going to hit it back to Kim again.

KIM OSMANI: Thanks, Karin. It's really excited to see what we got started in Arizona. The pandemic has really put a kink in the evolving plans and plans for expansion.

What we were going to do in Tucson really gave people opportunities and the chance to know each other. Who their partners were on a daily basis.

For the next steps were going to be working on his words for expansion and may be press the Flagstaff into other parts of the state to continue a model. Then we are going to focus on serving students or crossed foster care the Missouri.

Vocational Rehab Agency said now that we have this all under our belt statewide. Then we want to look at how we can expand our client base and expand our outreach to some students who are in foster care or the juvenile justice system.

Really ask them to access preemployment services for access too. This is the first time that the VR for Missouri combined with anyone across the state.

With the support of Y-TAC or our center, Technical Assistance Center then the agency was able to go through a training for their staff from Y-TAC on their ready to achieve. Actually developed to pilot mentor programs specifically for students who were in an either/or both systems.

One is in Springfield, Missouri and one is in Kansas City, Missouri. They also partnered with a couple of universities within the state and some independent living centers should be able to pull this off.

It required to have mentors and those mentors had to be trained. A lot of planning had to go into place. I am bringing these partners together for the first time. Looking at each other's policies and procedures, looking at service codes, funding and looking at how we pay for these services.

There was a question of is a state using these pre-employment funds? I think it is different in every state how they did it. Pulling people together during training, no Missouri did not use or pre-employment service for that. That is where the payment comes into play.

In the video clip that we are going to watch now, Kim Gee who is the service coordinator. Unfortunately, she is not on the service with us today but if you want to post in the chat then she will be happy to answer them.

KIM GEE: Missouri VR was excited for several reasons. For one thing we knew that following an employment, peer mentoring was a weak spot for us. We've also read articles about the possibility of impact. Family we thought we were not accessing involved in the justice and foster care systems as well as we had like.

On the whole we thought there was an issue that we could add risk through the technical system. We did not want to move forward without having buy-in from our partners (Garbled audio).

KARIN GRANDON: Small clinch there.

KIM GEE: On the whole we thought there was a problem or an issue that we needed to make sure. We didn't want to move forward without having buy-in from our partner and we certainly did not want to provide our program around a conceive need forces and actually typical.

Reaching out to our transition counselors to make sure they were reaching the student population as we had identified. They agreed that there were a number of barriers including that they often do not even get a referral for these particular students.

We thought about agencies that already have SEPs and independent living. Our goal is that during this early on will establish that connection for the student.

We also personalize our personal contacts to reach out to be center for independent living and try to see how many they discussed within their goals. Secondary education, employment following education.

How we can partner together to provide a new service for the students? We included job centers in the position of law because of the unique services that they provide to youth.

There is investigative process that took a while. Eventually we identified two centers for Independent Lane that wanted to be involved in the project. Began coordinating the viability and moving forward.

To assist participants in developing an individualized mentoring plan as it was outlined for their individual success in developing their life. This objective has maintained many individuals in the center of their life and his help them in discussion.

We had developed partnerships in Springfield and Kansas City. They were large enough to have a population of Justice and foster care law students that were potentially participants.

There were also VR specialist and descriptions ready for the state. Regardless of the discussion points, our eventual goal was employment. The team work together to develop job descriptions for -- as well as their peer coordinator who would oversee their work.

An MOU was developed for each location, and it was mainly in the involvement of the local university. There were ramp in, mentors within the state or university. The Institute for Educational Leadership for leading partners in both Kansas City and Springfield.

The team developed matching tools to help connect mentees and mentors and developed forms for service delivery including an individualized plan that will work as a mentor empty. The team identified this and got the program in each location.

Procedure code and fees were developed and pre- and post-surveys of effectiveness. Because the program was created to help guide the work then I peer mentoring handbook was also developed.

Most of all but the team developed was a program that got the individual student a disability into the program. It was envisioned in the wraparound approach in supporting approach about students with their future career path.

This is combined with the Missouri beyond and statewide previous provider. The local center, our business specialist, and employers.

We feel we have created a constant that can provide a student with a well-rounded and robust expanse. One in which they are supported by multiple entities all working with the student to help them create a business by.

Each partner has a different perspective and brings a different expertise to the table we. We worked hard to have an open and collaborative discussion at each meeting.

The program is entering its first full year this fall in both locations. This was launched in late fall of 2019 and Kansas City launched in 2020 right before the pandemic too.

Regardless of some of the struggles that the program has had in maintaining the student engagement in this new world, we have been able to create a local partnership or co-creating independent conversations that would have not have occurred otherwise.

We have also identified gaps in local service delivery. One of these is that we have brought VR services to those who have missed out before. Because these are pilot mode we have been working together to make pages and changes to strengthen the program.

All team members have understood that this is new to all of us so when something is not working then they have a responsibility to work together to identify a solution.

Sometimes what we thought we knew how I process or concept might work was not quite right and we have been able to correct or change the aspect of the program that no longer make sense.

One of the best things we have to report is that one of the students participating in the palette got a job in the community and is also continued to participate with their mentor.

This has also allowed for an additional collaboration. Helping students reach their potential and walking alongside them while they grow.

This program is a work in progress but of course not everything goes as planned. As I mentioned the team has maintained are pilot program mentality which has given us the flexibility to make changes as necessary so that the programs are for our students how we hope they will be.

Unfortunately, they'll have value and they differently seek the support of the program. We are trying to expand the program in other parts of the state and we would have already done so for the fall if not for the pandemic.

We are reaching all of the students that we want to reach in both locations the teams plan to expand the program to include homeless students or with housing and disabilities as well as students living in a group home setting.

We are also discussing students who have been adopted from the foster care system who are at risk of the juvenile system.

Both Y-TAC and Y-TAC as well deserve a great deal of credit and our sincere appreciation. For the guidance and support they have provided in building this for the students. Thank you for opportunity to share a little bit about our program.

KARIN GRANDON: I have to do a shout out to Kim Gee who was so amazingly patient with me as I recorded her. I have to say it is much easier to do an increasing webinar than to record and listen to yourself afterwards.

I'm going to ask you to scan the next couple of slides. Is there anything else him that she wanted to add into what Kim Gee shared before we move onto the fabulous Ms. Jackie?

KIM OSMANI: Only thing I would say is that as they have been doing this for the past year and identifying with their model would look like than they have course had to make changes along the way.

They are looking at pulling in new partners for this coming year and possibly expanding on reaching out to some group homes for the students in foster care program.

Also considering how they might be able to incorporate students who are experiencing homelessness as another population.

KARIN GRANDON: Really great work and some great nuggets from there. So now Jackie and I are going to talk with you about this model that we developed at the Y-TAC. We call it the learning lab.

I was fortunate to work with Jackie and California -- it has been over a year and a half ago now I think Jackie?

As I said early on in the presentation Y-TAC is really about incorporating youth voice. Jackie is a voice for young people in many parts of her community work of I'm going to -- Jackie, do you mind starting since we did not get to introduce yourself?

Do you mind starting with that and then we will move onto the next slide, Emily?

JACKIE CARRILLO: Hello everyone I'm a youth leader in San Francisco. I'm (inaudible) years old and I have dedicated myself to using my voice to uplift the voice of those in silence.

A little bit about how I came into contact with Y-TAC. As Karin mentioned I was invited to a learning lab in Oakland California in May of 2019. That is also when I met Cindy and a few other folks it was such a nice experience for me to be there because I was asked to be a participant.

I just came in and spoke my truth. I was given the opportunity later. Thanks to Cindy and Karin I was invited to help facilitate the healthcare learning lab in Alaska that Cindy had requested. That was all just a really great experience.

KARIN GRANDON: Thank you for that introduction. Jackie, you are my girl and I'm so excited to have you with us today and talking about this. You have now heard us reference the learning lab a couple of times. Initially it was by Cindy.

Cindy and the Alaska folks were at my first Learning Lab. I'm going to tell you about what this whole Learning Lab concept is. The first one that we did was in Oakland, as Jackie said. That is where we first met.

Jackie was one of the youth participants. Doing a Learning Lab is about having youth participants throughout the entire event. You will see I'm going to share a couple of slides with you but they are all in a publication that will be coming out shortly through Y-TAC.

We have a guide that helps agencies implement, the Learning Lab model then we also have a philosophy brief that goes along with it that really extends into why youth voice is so important. It goes up low bit more into the techniques that work best. Trying to make sure that you're using some of those trauma references.

Jackie and I talked about the engagement that we experienced there. A really quickly I'm going to talk about the Learning Lab.

It is really all about bringing in people from outside the circle into the circle and understanding that they are the core of what we are doing. So much of what we do is decided for young people. Is should be decided with them and from them.

I grew up in the VR agency as a counselor. I thought I really knew what I was doing. This has exposed me to completely different world. I guarantee you if you use this model the you will learn something new every time. We are brain young people together and we are didn't find a question basically.

What is that that the state or the partner wants to get more information about. Making sure that we get that information from the young people.

You may be looking at a question -- in Oakland we really wanted to talk about and in Alaska how we can access the voice of young people who are experiencing homelessness.

We bring in professionals, family members. You can tailor this to meet the needs to whatever the question is and the systems that you want to make changes.

Is there anything you want to add Jackie? I have to say this is my favorite picture because this was the Oakland session.

JACKIE CARRILLO: (inaudible).

KARIN GRANDON: Turn up your mic, Jackie.

JACKIE CARRILLO: It's really just the time set aside for everyone to lift up just the young people. These are the people experiencing things firsthand as well as people with other barriers in their personal parts of their life.

It was really nice experience to initially meet the participant, sharing my experience and then later becoming the liaison between service providers and the youth. Really making the conversation flow and working as a mediator.

Thank you for that Jackie.

KARIN GRANDON: These are key components and it's really about finding out the question that you want to ask. We call it a line of inquiry then determining who needs to be there to help you answer that question.

The next slide is going to talk a little bit more about what we call a site visit. There are learning labs that are based on more of a school model. They do a lot of them at the Institute and they are really good at implementing this Learning Lab model where professionals go to a site.

What we have done with this model is because we have individuals or professionals who are coming to meet for the train then we have brought the site in essence to them.

We have the young people like Jackie come and sit with the professionals. There are key components of this Learning Lab.

Sometimes we call this portion of the Learning Lab where young people talk about their experiences -- we used to call it a fishbowl but we have found that that is not really a term -- it's like you are looking in at young people instead of participating with them.

We call it a speak out. It is again like giving them the microphone literally. There is a couple of movements that we learn, there is movement and there are details on exactly how to do that.

Gallery walk is where you are moving from group to group and it is like you are in an art gallery but you are looking at programs and where each breakout group has been.

We can go to the next line. These are really the ones that are at the core of what the Learning Lab is about.

I said this often and it really is about giving young people a microphone. Jackie, I don't know if you remember Steven from Oakland. He was so shy to speech and we were reluctant to take the microphone. Then we could not get it away from him. You will be surprised just as much as we were and your very reluctant to saying what you want to say.

I want to talk a little bit about Alaska -- Cindy and Tammy feel free to jump in as well. When I was talking to Cindy after the original Learning Lab in Oakland and they wanted to do a Learning Lab and in Alaska. She said I am only going to do it if Jackie comes. So we made that happen.

Jackie went to Anchorage and facilitated the Learning Lab that we did there. I often share that experience because my note to people is that you have to be flexible and realize that when you are listening to young people then you may hear things that you don't want to hear because they are the truth.

Jackie, I don't know if you want to share but I was so thankful to have Jackie they are to relate to the young people.

That's why it is critical to have a facilitator who can relate to what the young people are experiencing. Because at one point when we were doing a speak out then all of the young people got up and went to the restroom sort of at the same time.

Jackie, do you want to talk about that incident or that situation and how it came about. And sort of how we brought it back together?

JACKIE CARRILLO: In my experience of having community work and experience and I knew the importance of having to speak my truth and really bring everything that I have to the table.

However, it was different for these youth because if anything they are probably more discouraged by service providers then motivated.

They were like -- initially at the beginning of the day we started with having basically the same kind of fish exercise but with the board, meaning the adults were being listened to.

You could tell there was a change in engagement once there was a youth starting to speak. The youth were very funny actually. Very charismatic in their own way.

Cindy is definitely right when she says that Alaska is very different from any other place. It was such a privilege to get to see it. These young people were fantastic honestly because I saw a reflection of myself in them.

It was really wanting to speak your truth and be unapologetically do tutors true to yourself. They were cracking jokes in the middle of the exercise, telling the service providers that there was coffee if they were interested in taking a sip.

Then the kind of atmosphere in the room died down once it was time for the adults to listen to. Then afterwards the bathroom incident.

I went to go find them and I was like what are we doing out here? I was like what is going on? They were like they were just so bored and they were not paying attention to us. We decided to all come to the bathroom at the same time like it was not a big deal since they were not paying attention to them.

I said thanks for letting me know how you feel and we can gather back in the room to voice that. On the way to let young people know how they feel in a space or that they are feeling neglected is to uplift their voice and let them say what they want to say about their stuff. Which is also a great experience with winding back to Oakland. Just being able to speak my truth.

I wasn't really given any instructions on what to say or how to say. I was asked to speak my truth in these words came from a mentor named Ivan who works with focusing on providing employment opportunities to disable to use.

I was invited, I came in and I just brought my story with me. I am a daughter of a deported immigrant and also of an alcoholic. I have been essentially raising myself and living independently for the past two years of my life.

On top of that -- my relationship with school and education just was on and off for a while. Until I was able to ground myself -- but you know it was difficult being that I had an incarcerated parent and later being deported.

This is all happening while I was starting high school. I went to allow high school -- some of you don't know that because we're in different states but it's ranked number nine in California and number one in San Francisco.

It is a very prestigious high school of which I was a minority. It made it very hard for me to feel like I could fit in being that I saw that most of these kids came from suburban households with two-parent families. Making anywhere from like middle to high class incomes.

It was very interesting for me to be able to bring my truth to the table and really let service providers know that on top of being disabled, on top of having these different challenges, it is really hard to speak your truth when you feel as if there is a façade in front of you.

You're not being taken seriously or your opinion is not being neglected. I was really honored to speak at Oakland, are usually excited for that. Then Karin and Cindy's invitation took me by surprise because I was actually visiting my parent out of country when I got the e-mail invitation.

It’s really exciting because it has opened opportunities. I am just excited to be here. I love being the person to uplift other youth voices. Because other youth that I have come across are not really fortunate enough to really reclaim their self in the spaces and their voices overall. Thank you.

KARIN GRANDON: Thank you, Jackie I could listen to you all day and I wish we had more time for you. We are at the end of our webinar time.

We do have -- if we could advance to the slide where we share contact information for folks. We obviously don't have time for the questions but we have Cindy from Alaska if you want to contact her or if you need this before the PowerPoint it is posted on our Y-TAC website. It takes us a week or two to post all of this.

Take a quick picture with your phone and you can get Cindy's e-mail as well as the books from Arizona as well as myself and Jackie. I'm sure folks are going to want to ask more questions as several of the panel members. Feel free to send us an e-mail. We love talking about this stuff.

We are lucky to have access to Jackie as well. Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you, Jackie, for sharing and to all of our panelists.

You will see on our screen as well, please really quickly don't forget to complete this evaluation. We are going to paste it into the chat box for you so that you can go -- we really want your feedback about this so that we can make it better or give kudos to a great job.

Hopefully get nuggets because we have learned about some innovative practices since we were really lucky as Y-TAC to get to join these fabulous people and groups. So, thank you, again.

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