File Name or Event Name



Riehle-2

Speakers: Erin Riehle, Kristy Smallwood, Gwen Turner,

Timothy Lyons, Jill Frambes, Female Speaker

Transcription provided by: Caption First, Inc.

>> ERIN RIEHLE: Hi. It's Erin Riehle. I'm going to talk to you about the second part of Project SEARCH and just tell you a few stories about the jobs and the skills that we teach. I think it helps to illustrate what we're about in a way that makes a little more sense.

In Project SEARCH, we focus on what we call nontraditional jobs so not the perceived easiest jobs, but jobs that are complex and systematic so jobs that are hard but routine. And what we found in the 16 years of having this program is that people with disabilities, people with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities, are very capable of doing really hard work and oftentimes just as long as it's routine. That's the key piece.

I know when I started this program, I was struck by the fact that, you know, had you said to me, what can a person with a disability do, I would have told you what I saw. You know, I would have said, well, I know they can bag groceries, and I know they can bring carts in from the parking lot. I know they can wipe off tables. And that was pretty much my limited experience. And so even if I'd have had a job to offer to a person with a disability, based on what I knew, my lived experience, I would have offered that type of job. And so -- and all kinds of work is honorable. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm essentially saying is that people with disabilities have been pigeonholed into a few positions which may be a great job, but they're capable of so much more, and jobs that may pay more or that they may actually even be more interested in. They don't get those opportunities because we don't know what they're capable of. So Project SEARCH focuses on jobs that are hard but routine, and businesses across America are full of them.

So let me give you some examples. And once again, I have permission from all these folks to talk about the folks you're going to see. This is a young woman by the name of Annie Sublett, and Annie was the very first person I ever hired. And she came through our program. She was very good at -- at things. She loved puzzles. And she worked in materials management on stocking and learned to do that type of work. And I hired her to work with me in the emergency department where she stocked all of the rooms. And she stocked all 58 rooms. She was a standard stocking technician. She did a fabulous job. She did the job the way it was meant to be done. She came to work. She was a great employee.

And about six months into the job, the head of the dental clinic came to see me and said, you know what, Erin. We have this position. It's very, very hard and -- but it's routine. We have a difficult time keeping staff. We have high turnover. We know you have a young woman with a disability, and we also have lots of patients who have disabilities. Do you think that this young woman you have could do the job?

And, you know, this is an honest story about myself because it was our very first year, and I'm a nurse. I didn't know anything about disability. And so the amazing thing is that when they asked if I thought Annie would be interested in the job, sadly, I said, no. And it's embarrassing, but I didn't even ask Annie what she thought, and I didn't call Annie's family and say, what do you think about this job because I thought in my head that a person with a disability couldn't do a job that was so hard. And here's why I thought it.

Annie couldn't even find her locker in our locker room, and she couldn't open her combination lock. And so what I did to her and it was not malicious, and I -- but I didn't even think about it. I thought to myself that if Annie can't even open her locker, then how can she do a critical job. So what I did, though, I judged her whole life on a couple things she couldn't do that I thought were easy, instead of everything she'd been doing in the emergency department that was so hard.

Now, fortunately, I went home and I thought about it overnight and I decided, you know what. I have failed lots in my life, and I've succeeded. But no one ever failed or succeeded for me. I did it for myself. So we decided that in Project SEARCH, we would try never to again fail or succeed for a person with a disability. If they're going to fail, it's going to be on their own, but we're going to give it a shot.

And so I went back and I said to the dental clinic, I don't know if Annie can do this job. Let's give it a shot. And if you look at this slide, what you see is that Annie worked for our hospital for 15 years as our dental sterilization technician. We have a dental clinic. The cases turn over every 30 minutes. We have 15 rooms. Annie was the only person who sterilized and processed every dental instrument that went into a kid's mouth at our hospital. She still couldn't open her locker, but she could do a hard job. They're not related. This is a very complex task that is routine, and we can teach Annie to do this, and she can be one of the best people at doing it. And you know what? This is all she needed to open her locker, a laser lock.

Now, as a businesswoman, I didn't even know this existed. It was a teacher who said to me, let's just give her a laser lock. And so it's about combining what I know as a businesswoman with what educators and VR people know. That's how we get the absolute best for a person with a disability.

This is another young woman. Her name is Gretchen. Gretchen doesn't read or write, and I used to think, jeez, how can you do a job in a hospital. You know, aren't we all so incredibly important? How can you -- how can she do a job if she can't read or write? And what a teacher taught me was that you don't have to be able to read or write to put a single thing where it belongs. You have to be able to match. I know -- you could

have -- I never in my life would have figured that out. I'm not an educator. I had to work with one to learn this.

The other thing is that everything you count -- everything you count can be broken down into fives and tens, and there are dozens of ways to count to five or ten, but I didn't know that. And I remember the first time someone said, well, there's lots of ways to count to five or ten. I'm, like, well, show me one. See, this is the difference. I understand my business. I know the names of my jobs. I know the skills. I don't know how to work with people with disabilities. You do. And it's only when we combine that knowledge that we get the best of what we can be.

So here, you'll see on this slide, Gretchen, for a while, used a counting board and then she used a piece of paper that had many, many pictures of an item -- of items on it. And she just covered up each of those items. Gretchen has worked for our hospital for about 17 years now, and over time, what has happened? Well, she's learned to count because it's become necessary, but it wasn't necessary to get a job or learn a job.

I'm going to show you this slide of Kristy. And Kristy has worked at our hospital for about twelve years. She had one position, and she wanted a promotion. She got bored because people with disabilities, just like everyone else, they get bored if they do the same thing all the time. And Kristy wanted a job where she was with more people so as I show this video, you're going to hear her say, this is why I came down here. What she's referring to is that she wanted a job where she had -- was in more of a social environment and so she transferred. And this is Kristy talking about her job.

KRISTY SMALLWOOD: I have Williams syndrome and so it takes me more longer to learn than others. That's why they put me down here so I can react with other people. I never got that opportunity before so that's why -- that's why I came down here.

GWEN TURNER: Kristy is a Project SEARCH employee that just in my short time have gotten to know her, she has a wonderful personality. We did our performance review just recently. She was so excited that she got a raise, and she had such positive feedback, and it was wonderful for her that she has now decided that she's old enough and responsible enough that she would like to apply for a coach to give her the opportunity to live on her own. She's really feeling as though she's making a way for herself.

KRISTY SMALLWOOD: I always wanted to live on my own. That’s been my dream for a long, long time. That's just part of life. You know, you don't live with your parents forever. You want your freedom because I never did that before so this is my opportunity because I'm 32 years old, and I want to be around people my age, you know, so they understand what I'm all about and I understand what they're all about.

GWEN TURNER: It's a big step, and I think it has everything to do with Project SEARCH because she has gained that independence.

ERIN RIEHLE: This young man, his name is Eric. Eric has severe autism. And you know what? I laugh about this all the time. And Eric and his mom and I talk. Eric's quirky. But you know what? I'm quirky. And there are lots of people in every business in America who are a little unusual and quirky. And so we don't have to apologize for Eric; we just need to find a setting that's a little quirky, or it has some people in it that understand that. And no matter what type of business you're talking about, I can promise you they exist. And part of it is just getting inside that business and teaching the business how to work with a person like Eric, instead of just going in, you know, to a business where you're not known, asking them to hire Eric, and then -- I mean, it just doesn't work with us. Teach us over time.

I'm going to -- you know, this is just a great slide. In this drawer is how we used to stock diapers. And in this drawer, there's actually five different sizes of diapers, but I'll bet no one listening to this can tell me -- can pick out a size, and Eric couldn't either. So he just said to the teacher, you know, I don't know what size I'm supposed to put in the drawer. And so the teacher and job coach, out of $40 of Plexiglas, created 58 drawer dividers and put them in every room. That's all Eric needed to stock the diapers when he was going through our training program. But the end result was really that it turns out the nurses didn't know what sizes of diapers were here either, and they've been using the wrong size and then having to throw it away. And so as soon as we hired Eric, and we got his system, we immediately saved tens of thousands of dollars in supplies because it helped everyone in the department.

You know, we had a woman with Williams syndrome, and she went through our program, and she wanted to -- she loved food, and she wanted to stock the kitchens and the breast feeding rooms and the staff kitchens, but she was a nonreader. And so our teacher and our job coach took pictures of everything in our hospital: Miracle Whip, chocolate chip cookie, mustard packet. And that's how she learned how to stock everything in our hospital, and we went on to hire her and she still works with us.

Same thing here. We had a young woman who -- she was a student and she wanted to work with things and so we put her in our materials management department, our storeroom. And we have hundreds of these bins, and they all have this teeny little label on them. And she couldn't read it. And so the teacher and job coach said, can we relabel every one of your bins? We'll do it for you. We don't want you to do it. And so they made these big labels that had exactly the same information, and they were polite and they taped them underneath. And within just a few weeks, we noticed that the staff in the department had taken the big labels and were covering up the small. This is not rocket science. The big label is easier for everyone to read.

Here's a thing about this that I know and, again, as a businesswoman. Had you come into this apartment of the street doing standard supported employment, and, you know, brought -- a job developer brought a person with a visual impairment in to this department to look at a job and said, hey, I've got a great candidate here. They have a visual impairment. This department head would have been scared to death. And instead of seeing a person as talented, they would have immediately thought, what am I going to have to do. I don't know what to do. Am I going to have to change everything in the department? How is this going to work? The only thing they would have thought out is how scared they were. That’s all. But by going through Project SEARCH, what happens is it's a win/win situation. We bring young people into departments. We teach them that sometimes for a person with a visual impairment, it's as big as having -- it's as little as having a bigger sign, and we're going to help you make that. And suddenly what seems so scary and insurmountable isn't a big deal. And you have these managers were kind of -- it's like an aha moment. Oh, yeah, you know, a person with a visual impairment can work here pretty easily, and they're going to help me do it. So, again, it's part of that culture change.

This young woman, really significant disability, and she wanted to work with babies. Well, we're a hospital, and we have incubators and isolettes. Each one of them has over 40 parts that need to be taken apart, sterilized, and put back together again. She has to check the wiring, the filter, the water level. This is how she learned her job. We had a year and a bunch of internships to teach her skill development, and she learned it with a series of pictures.

This young woman, her name is Jill. Jill puts together trays that are used in surgery in the operating room. And the tray you see here has 151 instruments in it. And it's going to be used for abdominal surgery. It's a laparoscopy tray. And she's going to put it in exactly the order it's going to be used by the surgeon in the OR. Jill has worked with us for about 14 years, I believe, and we're going to show you this video, and you'll get to hear Jill talking and explaining what she does.

TIMOTHY LYONS: Jill is excellent on trays. She's very thorough. She enjoys putting up trays. She's really focused when she does -- when you actually watch her putting them up, you can see how focused she is. Some of our trays are 130, 150 instruments per tray, and she can put up probably 30 or 40 different trays.

JILL FRAMBES: This tray has got 141 instruments.

TIMOTHY LYONS: So what we did was we had books that are set up with each tray and has each instrument on it and a picture of it so she can pull the book off the shelf, flip through the pages and actually match up exactly what she needs to put in. And after a couple of times, she usually has a memorized.

TIMOTHY LYONS: How many trays do you fill in a day?

JILL FRAMBES: Do my age, 32.

TIMOTHY LYONS: What does that mean? Next year, you're going to have to fill more trays.

JILL FRAMBES: Next year that's because I do 33. This is per tray with a first, second, third, fourth, and fifth.

FEMALE SPEAKER: The disabilities can present challenges for the employee and the supervisor, and Project SEARCH job coaches help supervisors address special issues and make adjustments.

TIMOTHY LYONS: We were finding that when she worked 8-hour days, it was too hard on her. The last hour, she'd be very fatigued. She almost -- she'd cry sometimes, but then after we switched her to seven hours, she's very happy all the way through the day, and she's it worked out wonderful.

ERIN RIEHLE: I want to clarify a few points. Jill has worked in this department for a long time, and there are a couple things that happen in this video that always make me smile. First of all, you may not hear it, but what the man says to her is how many trays are you doing now. And she says, I'm doing 32. And he says, how many are going to do next year, and she says, 33. And Jill decided on her own that she wanted to do as many -- the number of trays each year that match her age.

Well, it just so happens that the productivity required in that department is 30, but Jill is increasing that one each year because that's what she wants to do. So not only is she overachieving, but she's made fewer errors in the whole time she's been with us than just about anyone else who works in this department. So she's meeting real production levels, and she has great quality. She's a great employee in this department, and we see it all over the world people doing this type of job now through Project SEARCH. Is it a hard job? Absolutely. Is it a critical job that needs to be done correctly and safely? Absolutely. Is Jill one of the best people who's ever done it? Absolutely. It is hard, but it's systematic. It's hard but routine.

Now, the other thing you heard in there that I love is that at one point the manager says, you know, we've got these books and we gave it to Jill and that's how she learned. And I bet you he's forgotten who really put those books together because the training manual they used to use was just word pages. And our teachers and job coaches went in. They took the manuals. They added pictures to it to every manual used in that department, and that's how we taught Jill. But guess what. Now, whenever anyone is hired in that department, disability or not, which manual do they use? They use the manual with the pictures, and the department has forgotten. It's so much a part of their being that they talk about it as though they created it which I totally love.

You know, this young woman works in a bank. She has to file 300 files a day with 98 percent accuracy, the exact same number of files and accuracy that everybody else in the department has. So in Project SEARCH, we don't say wow! We have people with disabilities here. Can they do less, or can their accuracy be lower? We start with the presumption that if we have a year, we can teach people with disabilities to work just as well and be just as productive, and that's what we aim for with every person we work with.

I do want to say to you, having shown you these slides, that we have programs in hospitals. We have about 250 programs in the United States, and about 60 percent of them are in hospitals. But what we're really looking to do is to diversify by industry sector because not everybody with a disability wants to work in a hospital or learn a hospital skill. And so we have programs in banks, in universities, in manufacturing companies, and the federal government. You know, we have a program at the Department of Labor, inside the Department of Education, the Department of Interior, National Institute of Health, Health and Human Services. We have a program in sheriff and government offices around the country. We have a program at Shaw Industries, at Medtronic, two Medtronic campuses, Embassy Suites. We have three great programs. We have programs in Chesapeake Oil, "Variety" magazine out in Hollywood, magazine to the stars, Walgreen -- or Wal-Mart distribution centers. So just about any business that has at least 200 employees can have a Project SEARCH program.

I want to end by just running through a few stats with you. I think we try to be as transparent as possible and to talk about the good, the bad, the ugly. Are we a perfect program? Absolutely not. Do we look at our data every year and try to do better? We absolutely do. We're trying to be the best program we can be so we change expectations for people with disabilities. They're getting jobs that lift them out of poverty and into independence that they deserve.

And so these are some of our numbers. This number -- these came from California. They're from 2010, and they looked at what was gained in supported employment in California, Californiawide, versus Project SEARCH in California. And if we just look at wages, supported employment was averaging about $11 an hour. Project SEARCH was about 17. Now, I always have to laugh when I look at these California numbers because that's a lot higher than it would be in Ohio so part of this reflects California. But it's the increase we're looking at here.

If you look at hours per week across all standard supported employment, it was about 23. Our Project SEARCH employees were about 30 hours. If you look at retail and food, I'm really pleased about this. Nearly 70 percent of everyone who got a job in supported employment out in California went into some type of retail, the bagging groceries, the bringing the carts back in, the wiping down the tables. Only about 15 percent of the folks who were employed in Project SEARCH did. And if you look at benefit status, most -- 60 percent, almost 65 percent in California of supported employment folks got benefits, but 100 percent of the people who went through Project SEARCH were benefit-eligible. That's huge.

So let's look at Monroe County, New York. It's Rochester. We have three programs there, and three weeks ago, they sent us this data so it's hot off the press. So far, since they started their program, which is four years ago, they've had 74 students who started. Eighty-one percent of those 74 completed the year. Now, those who left, left because of -- they were exited because of poor attendance, or their families moved. So attendance is something we do look at, and we're constantly looking at how we can get our completion rates up to 100 percent. But of those -- of the 81 percent who finished, 87 percent of them went on to competitive employment. So 52 of our 60 young people in Rochester, New York went on to get jobs which is much higher than any other transition program or VR-related program, especially for this population.

If you look at it, in Project SEARCH, what we want is we want to see growth in terms of hours and growth in terms of salary. Project SEARCH is focusing on getting a career, not a job, but a career. And so that's what we see. At hire, the average number of hours worked was 23. If you look at 30 months out, it's 36 hours. At hire, the average rate per hour was 8.49. If you look at 30 months out, it had gone up to 10.64. So we're seeing growth in terms of average hours and average salary.

This is probably the ugly part, but, again, we try to be transparent because we're always trying to be better. We also looked at the number of people who maintain employment. And at six months, 83 percent of those people who got jobs kept it. Twelve months, still 83 percent or 27 of 32. I'm sorry. That should have been 52. At 18 months, 66 percent, but at 24 months and 30 months, we start to drop off. And now, part of this -- this number here is that a lot of our classes hadn't even

gotten -- weren't far enough along to even look at 24 months out so you're looking at only -- our numbers are only 2009 cohort, but we still are seeing a drop-off in the number of people who are getting jobs. So 42 and 40 percent at 30 months, clearly, that's something we need to work on. And we are.

We're creating programs to address that. Most of these clothes left because of moving or medical conditions, but we're still looking at how we can increase that number. The only thing I will say, and not to paint a rosier picture of this than I need to, but 40 percent of those young people still keeping their jobs is still better than the nationwide percentage of people with significant disabilities who leave school and go into a job. We're not happy with it, and we're working on it, but it's better than some states.

This is New Hampshire. It's their developmental services data. So New Hampshire looked at everyone who had a developmental disability across New Hampshire, and we have six Project SEARCH sites. They're listed here. And there were 79 people who were employed from 2009 to 2012 for a total of 74 percent employment in all of our Project SEARCH programs. Their average hours employed were 17 hours a week, and their average pay was 8.68 an hour. That's across our six programs. So 79 -- 74 percent employment, 17 hours, and 8.68 were averaged.

Here's the interesting thing. In all of New Hampshire, they served 3,266 people with developmental disabilities. Now, granted, we only served 106 so we're much smaller, but only 35.9 percent of those young people were employed, whereas 74 percent of ours were. The average hours worked per week for the 35 percent that were employed were nine hours a week. For our cohort, it was 17, and for those 35, 36 percent who were working, their average salary was 7.75. Ours was 8.68. So -- and we're getting this feedback from across the country. We're seeing increases in hours and salary and a huge increase in the number of people employed.

I'm going to end there. I just want to leave you with this last slide. It's probably shameless marketing. But if you're interested in our program, we have a book that just came out in July. It's called "High School Transition That Works, Lessons Learned From Project SEARCH." It really walks you -- it gives you the details, the everyday details, that go along with the technical assistance we provide and teach you how to have the best Project SEARCH program that you possibly could.

I will say that we're getting lots of comments from parents and school teachers who are not running transition that it's also been very helpful to them because we talk about setting expectations from birth, and we talk about what parents need to do to help their young people become employed. So it's got a lot of information in it that is more about transition than about Project SEARCH. If you look on , there's some reviews on there. And any money we make from this go directly back into our Project SEARCH programs. Thank you for listening to my presentation. I totally appreciate it. We love what we do, totally interested in getting good outcomes, and trying every day to be better and better. Thank you very much.

[End Video]

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