ATU648 – Part 2: Vocational Rehabilitation Updates with Theresa Koleszar and Kristina Blankenship

Hi, this is Theresa Koeszar, director of the Indiana Bureau of Rehabilitation Services.

Hi, and this is Kristina Blankenship, director of business and community engagement for the Vocational Rehabilitation Program here in Indiana. And this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson, with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 648 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on October 27th, 2023. On today’s show, we’re super excited to wrap up National Disability Employment Awareness Month with part two of our interview with Theresa Koeszar and Kristina Blankenship from Vocational Rehabilitation here in Indiana. They’re going to tell us some of the great things that they’re doing, including Kristina telling us about some of the things they’re doing with business and community engagement to really ensure that there are great jobs out there for individuals with disabilities.

We welcome back Bridging Apps with another app worth mentioning as well. Listeners, please do not forget, if you ever do want to reach us, you can always email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or call our listener line at 317-721-7124. We always value your feedback. Also, some of our best guests come from your suggestions. So if you ever do have a suggestion for someone we should have on the show, please, please, please do reach out and let us know who they are and we will do our best to get them on so we can learn more about the great things they’re doing around assistive technology and assisting individuals with disabilities.

Also, don’t forget, if you have time, head over to eastersealstech.com. We’ve got lots of amazing content there, not just this show, but also our other podcast, which include Accessibility Minute, which is a short little podcast a minute or so long. Gives you just a little taste of something in the realm of assistive technology, maybe a new device, a new way to use something, or other really cool stuff delivered in a very quick format just to give you a little bit more information on something that might be able to assist yourself, someone you work with, or someone you know.

We also have Assisted Technology Frequently Asked Questions, or ATFAQ, on this show. Our panel tries to answer your questions that we get over the week or month, and we work together to try to figure out answers. For ATFAQ, we rely on your questions, your feedback, and sometimes even your answers, to really help individuals with disabilities, those that serve them, their family members, and everyone else out there in the world with questions about assistive technology, what’s out there to help, how can it help, and what are some other things relating to disability technology and everything that goes along with that? You can find these podcasts not just on eastersealstech.com, but also anywhere that you find your podcast, including this show. But podcasts aren’t the only thing over there, you can also find more information about all the services offered by INDATA, as well as our clinical program, and links to our YouTube channel where you can find our tech tips.

Our tech tips come out weekly. Sometimes it’s a member of our team showing you some cool piece of technology. Sometimes it’s actually the manufacturers and makers showing you a new piece of technology or some cool setting, feature, or other thing that may be able to assist you in your life, your practice, or in many other ways. We also have blog posts as well as links to other Assistive Technology Act programs. So if you happen to be outside of the state of Indiana, you can go to eastersealstech.com/states and that will actually link you to where you can find your local AT act if you are here in the US. Take a little time to go to eastersealstech.com and check out all the great content, features, and things that you can find there. But for now, listeners, let’s go ahead and get on with the show listeners.

Listeners, I know I just asked you for feedback, and don’t forget, you can do that at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or at our listener line at 317-721-7124, but I’d really kind of like to reach out and find out just some information from you for upcoming shows. So one thing that I really want to find out is, for those iPhone users, those folks that use iOS either on an iPhone or an iPad, what are some of your favorite accessibility features? Have you played with some of the new ones? Some of the things to come out in iOS 17? Apple has done a good job of adding new things, including some changes to voiceover, some new cool things that you can do with the magnifier, as well as some live captions, live speech, personal voice, assistive access, and some other really cool things.

So have you used some of these? Do you like them? Where do you find the faults? Where are the gaps? Where are the things that are still not super accessible? We’re always excited about the new things that are coming out about the new features, new settings, and the facts that these large manufacturers, such as Apple, are taking accessibility seriously and building them in. But I think the most important thing and the best viewpoints come from the listeners and the users. So if you use an Apple device, such as an iPad or an iPhone, and are using or have been playing around with some of these accessibility features, what are your favorites? Go ahead and, again, send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or call our listener line at 317-721-7124 and let us know your thoughts. Thanks, listeners. Next up on the show, please join me in welcoming back Amy Barry from Bridging Apps with an app worth mentioning.

This is Amy Barry with Bridging Apps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called TaskRabbit. TaskRabbit is the easy way to find skilled and trusted local taskers for everything from furniture assembly and mounting to moving and cleaning. If physical disabilities are keeping you from tackling home projects, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled help for just about any job, often even on the same day. You can hire a vetted tasker to take on yard work, painting, cleaning, or other chores, and handle payments right from your smartphone. The app is super easy to use. Simply tell the app what you need help with, get an instant list of qualified taskers, select a tasker based on pricing, reviews, and your schedule, chat, pay, tip, and review all through one platform.

A relatively new feature, Tasks for Good, connects vulnerable individuals and organizations in need with local volunteer taskers who donate their time and skills to support their communities. Tasks for Good is intended for individuals, immunocompromised, elderly, disabled, healthcare workers, and organizations like nonprofits, government agencies, community-based organizations, and local small businesses who are experiencing financial hardships and in need of volunteer support. TaskRabbit is currently available for iOS and Android devices, and it’s free to download. For more information on this app and others like it, visit bridgingapps.org.

Listeners, last week in our conversation with Theresa Koeszar and Kristina Blankenship, we got cut a little bit short. There just wasn’t enough time to get everything in. So we are going to continue this show with part two of our interview with Theresa Koeszar and Kristina Blankenship talking about all the great things at Vocational Rehabilitation. In today’s show, we’re going to get a little bit more into some of the business and community engagement services and some different things that they do on that front. So we’ll go ahead and jump into the interview right where we left off last week. Theresa, do you have anything else that you want to share with our listeners about VR?

I could talk all day about VR, Josh.

And that’s perfectly fine.

I won’t.

We’ve got time. It is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, so we’ve got plenty of time. But yes, go right ahead.

We’ve got plenty of time. No, I will just share two other special projects that I wanted to highlight. And one is called Individual Placement and Support, or IPS. Some folks may have heard of this. It’s been around for a while nationally and internationally, but not really. We haven’t really gone there in Indiana until recently. This is a collaboration between VR and the state’s Division of Mental Health and Addiction. So IPS, for those not aware, is an evidence-based employment model designed specifically for individuals with severe mental health diagnosis. I think there’s been longstanding recognition that folks with mental health conditions may not see the same level of success in achieving employment as other disability populations. And so the way we traditionally provide services may not be the way to go for this population. And so enter IPS.

So we’ve been working with the Division of Mental Health for really, gosh, probably five or six years now. Most recently, we are jointly supporting and funding two IPS early adopter sites. So two mental health centers that have come on board, they’ve been our Guinea pigs, and they’re actually doing quite well now that we’re a couple years into the pilot. And we just conducted a request for funding to bring on two more sites. So pretty soon we’ll be announcing two additional community mental health centers, and that will give us four of these IPS early adopter sites. So we pulled together a work group several years ago, co-led by myself and a liaison from Division of Mental Health. We engaged community mental health centers and VR staff to really get a better handle on what factors were contributing to, what we were really seeing as kind of a low success rate for folks with mental health coming to VR and getting employment, and to pinpoint some possible strategies.

So we’ve done all kinds of things to try to mitigate that. We’ve really ramped up our training around serving this population. But the most tangible piece is this IPS project. So we’ve worked really hard to figure out how to braid VR and Medicaid dollars and sequence those dollars to make IPS financially sustainable as an employment approach for mental health centers. And very happy to report that our early adopter sites are saying that, indeed, it is. It is a financial solvent approach. So that’s a big win. And really they got there within about one year of implementation. So the program was paying for itself, and my hope is that we’ve cracked some of those longstanding barriers around funding for employment services with mental health centers. Certainly lots of room to go there. We hope to keep growing IPS, but we’re on track with, we’ll have four of those sites come the first part of next year.

And then just one last special project that I want to share, and this one is Supported Employment Plus, or SE Plus. So this is a grant we applied for in, gosh, 2021 now, which we were awarded at the very end of that year, and ultimately is about a $14 million grant for a five-year period. So SE Plus is focused on transitioning individuals with disabilities who are currently working in subminimum wage or sheltered workshop employment and shifting them into competitive integrated employment. So the basic model is supported employment, which most of us know. Supported employment’s been around a very long time. When it’s done well, it is quite successful. So we are really focusing on doing just that, doing supported employment really well. So our SE Plus project is really focused on supported employment with fidelity. We’ve created a fidelity tool. We’re providing targeted training and technical assistance to four different SE Plus pilot providers to help them work toward that good fidelity.

And then the great part, is as they get to good fidelity, we will pay an enhanced payment rate for all VR employment services. It’s about a 20% enhancement in rate in all of our employment services. So there’s some incentive to get to that good fidelity. That’s the core model. And then we’re wrapping around that with supports like further enhancements to benefits counseling to include benefits follow through counseling so people can get the right information right when they need it and as often as they need it. We’re also going to be piloting something I’m really excited about, peer support services. And you might be saying, “Well, that’s not really a new concept, Theresa,” and it’s not.

But when you look at the peer support structures that are currently in place, they really are not employment-focused. So that’s what we’re going to do different. We’re going to have employment-focused peer support specialists. And then we’re also doing a lot around family engagement to help with that buy-in. So we started our official implementation, year one was a planning year. And official implementation was earlier this month. And we’ve got another four or so years to really implement and roll this out. But we think very replicable concept. Hopefully, we’ll see some success with that SE Plus fidelity, and that may be something that we can look to roll out more broadly in the future.

Well, definitely more great programs because, yeah, I know that mental health seems to be a very underserved, and sometimes it’s harder for those unseen disabilities to get accommodated in the same kind of ways. And then moving folks out of sheltered workshops, I know that’s always been a goal of a lot of folks. But the steps from there to integrated employment is not usually a very straight line. So I love that you guys are thinking about that and moving that in. Well, Kristina, we talked about a lot of the great new things going on at VR and everything else. But without business and community buy-in, none of these things really always work. And considering you work in business and community engagement, what is that and what are some engagement priorities that you have now and in the future for the program?

That’s a great segue, Josh. Thank you. Business and community engagement really for the state of Indiana, it’s important that everyone realizes that it’s an employer and community facing role, which is not typical in the VR program. So we focus on sharing and connecting resources with employers around diversity, hiring specific to disability. And the key to the engagement in the community and with employers is relationship building. We want to ensure a long-term relationship with an employer. That’s our goal, to establish ourselves as a resource and a value add. And there’s four parts to engagement, four goals, if you will, is really increasing that public awareness of the benefits and services delivered by VR. And in that community, we also want to increase the awareness around resources for potential participants in that VR program. And as we talk to employers, we want to really ensure that there’s an awareness on the part of executives and decision makers on the success and services of working with VR and supporting individuals with disabilities in the workplace.

And finally, one of the fourth goals is really greater awareness of business and industry of the untapped talent pool of employees that we have with disabilities. The VR program is focused on getting individuals ready to enter the workplace with our supports. And if people don’t know about our services and how they can benefit, there’s a lot of missed opportunities. What’s really important is that people know that engagement with those employers looks different. Every person or every employer that we’re meeting in the community, they might just need one resource or they might just be interested in having a lunch and learn, or for compliance purposes they want to meet with us. So what we do as a team is meet that employer where they are, connect with them, and hope to build that engagement and relationship for the future.

And I tell you what, we are all so happy, I mean, that you do that not just from an AT standpoint, but I know job coaches, everyone else. Just because how you do that little bit of, I mean, relationship building is definitely the big word, but also just the introduction. So many businesses seem to have that, I don’t know the right wording to put this and I’m probably not going to pick the right words, but just that pullback. Almost have fear of, if I hire someone with a disability and it doesn’t work out, oh, what’s going to happen? And everything else. And I know when I talk to them, as soon as I talk to 25% of the population might have a disability and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a talent pool I’m not even touching.” Oh my goodness, I definitely have to get them in here so I can get more employees is a great thing. So thank you so much for doing that. What are some of the ways that you get out this disability awareness?

[inaudible 00:17:21] a great question. We found are important months for us are, which you had already mentioned this month is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. And then March every year is Disability Awareness month. And so those have been fantastic opportunities for us to leverage relationships with employers and sharing resources. And whether it’s through a panel conversation, through a networking event, a resource fair, those are all opportunities for us to connect. And even when we’re not on the job, we’re able to be out in the community and connect with individuals with resources that help them specific to disability [inaudible 00:17:58].

Nice. So tell us some of the things that you’re doing to celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month besides coming on this show.

Well, thank you for that opportunity to share what we’re doing. Across the state, I’ve been able to connect with our local area offices and hear about some of the great things that they’re doing. In fact, today, Evansville had a fantastic panel conversation that they collaborated with, local mental health authorities in the area to give resources to hiring managers and employers around supporting individuals with mental health diagnosis. And that was a breakfast, not necessarily a lunch and learn, I guess it’s a breakfast and learn. And so what is really neat is that, out in our community, our area supervisors and VR field staff are out connecting, doing employer and community engagement just naturally through the relationships that they have and the stakeholder partnerships that they create.

Nice, nice. We got a little bit of time left here. Could you tell us about some new projects that you have coming in 2023?

Absolutely. I was afraid you wouldn’t ask. This year in January, we started with a goal in the Marion County area to connect with community rehabilitation providers. As you heard, Theresa mentioned the staff capacity is waning in some areas. And so we thought to connect directly with those employment service teams and to connect them with employer initiatives that were coming out of the gate fast and furious. And one of them was Walgreens. And we are lucky enough to have one of the national disability incentive coordinators here in our backyard in Indianapolis. And I was able to connect with her. She reintroduced a couple of the initiatives that Walgreens has with the goal that they’ve added for every business unit to have a 12% hiring rate of individuals with disabilities.

We are lucky. Here, Walgreens has not only thousands of retail stores in their Ready Training Initiative, which is the retail employees with disabilities training program in their stores, which is not new, it’s just been reintroduced. But we also have a return warehouse in Valparaiso, Indiana and a micro pharmacy fulfillment center here in Plainfield. And after connecting with Walgreens and meeting with the local employment specialists, we have been able to connect VR participants with long-term community employment. And it’s only through those relationships of engagement that we’re really seeing the benefits of getting out in the community and sharing resources.

Nice. And I know Walgreens, Walgreens has been a big supporter of hiring individuals with disabilities for a long time. I just know even when I was a job coach I had a relationship with a couple of different stores. And they definitely have had that initiative for a long time, so great to hear that they’re still doing that. We’ve got a little bit of time left here. Can you tell us about the Workforce Recruitment Program?

Yes, thanks again for asking. The Workforce Recruitment Program is also been around for several years. And I think it’s one example of a resource that is underutilized. And through my work with employers and in the community, I really try to tap into the resources that we know are solid, that are good in our communities, and can benefit not only employers but our VR participants. And this one is specifically for individuals that are enrolled in post-secondary education that may be graduating soon. In this particular instance, in spring of 2024 or a graduate in the last two years. And they’re interested in exploring employment with the federal government. And there are some private employers connected to this as well.

It’s an opportunity for them to go on campus for those employers to have a recruiting program of individuals that are getting ready to enter the workforce. And it’s a direct connection for individuals with disabilities specific. And if anybody wants to contact me, we’re making sure that we get that information on our website and to employers that are interested in getting connected. There are certain universities where the program in Indiana is already a part of. This is an annual program. Unfortunately, the deadline for students has passed for spring graduation. But in the coming year, the deadlines remain pretty much the same. Ball State, Butler, Purdue, and IU and Notre Dame are the universities that are participating in this and helping to connect individuals with disabilities to federal employment and federal contractors.

Awesome. That is awesome. Kristina, Theresa, if our listeners want to find out more about vocational rehabilitation, about some of the services available, and maybe even who to contact maybe in their area as far as especially here in the state of Indiana, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Yeah. That’s a great question, Josh. Our website is a great place to start. It’s just vrs.in.gov. And there’s different pages based on what people are looking for. So we’ve got Kristina’s work through business engagements, we’ve got a page around pre-implement transition services. And then among other things, just some basic information, whether you’re a vendor looking to work with us or a participant looking for core services. So the website is a great place to start. We do also have an online application form if people prefer to initiate their application or referral to VR that way. And then just if I could just add one more thing.

Most definitely.

There’s a couple of feedback opportunities coming up that I’d love to share. And one, I briefly mentioned our state plan earlier that has been drafted and will be coming out for public comments. I don’t have a specific date. We’re working with a larger group with all of Indiana’s workforce programs on that plan. Probably December, or at the latest, early January that state plan will be out for public comment. And then we’re also kicking off our, what’s called a comprehensive statewide needs assessment, which we do every three years. The next one is not due until January 2025, but we usually get that started, get that rolling a year, year and a half ahead of time. So we’re going to be providing some opportunities for focus groups and surveys to get that important feedback from individuals with disabilities from a wide array of stakeholders coming up here, again, over the next few months. So if you’re interested in telling us what’s working well and what’s not working so well, and what brilliant ideas do you have that you’re willing to share with us, those are a couple great opportunities to get that feedback in.

Awesome. And definitely, listeners, if you are part of the program or you’ve experienced the program, had experience a good, bad, ugly, whichever kind of way, definitely that feedback is a great way. Because I will say, a lot of times you feel like maybe I fill out a survey, I fill out this stuff, it just disappears into the void. No one looks at it. They actually take this stuff to heart. I’ve seen actual changes made because a lot of times they will come out with the results and some things that they’ve found were patterns of what’s working, of what’s not working, and they make those adjustments. But they can’t make those adjustments if they don’t have that information. So-

Absolutely.

… very important to get them that information so that they can improve the services that they provide, which, again, I do talk you guys up on this show. You do a very good job with the work that you do. And a lot of that I know is because of your leadership as well as just the amazing services down there in the trenches of the counselors and everybody else that provides the services. So thank you both. Theresa, Kristina, thank you so much for coming on the show, for telling us all about VR, all about the business engagement services, all about the amazing stuff that you do every day so our listeners can get a little bit better idea at least how it’s done here in the state of Indiana. Now, if you’re outside of the state of Indiana, it might be done slightly different in your state, but there’s still going to be a service like this out there to go out and find. So thank you again so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me, Josh.

Thank you for the opportunity, Josh.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or Intrac. You can find out more about Intrac at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole Prieta for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.