Shelley Kraft, participating in VR Workforce Studio, from CSAVR
[music]
Male Narrator: Welcome to a special episode of the VR Workforce Studio, recorded live in front of a studio audience from the 2017 Fall Conference of the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation. On today’s episode, Courageous Stories of Vocational Rehabilitation.
[dramatic orchestral music]
Male Speaker: My name is David Kelly. Seven years ago, when I was released from prison, I went through voc-rehab. They helped me find a job.
Narrator: Voices from the career pathways for individuals with disabilities.
Female Speaker: Today we had a stem camp at Big Sandy Community Technical College at the Mayo campus.
Female Speaker: I was interested in nursing. I was wanting to be an OB/GYN.
Narrator: Top experts explaining new models and innovative strategies that are filling today’s talent pipelines with individuals with disabilities for business and industry. Now here’s the executive producer of the VR Workforce Studio, Anne Hudlow, along with the host for today’s show Rick Sizemore.
Voiceover: [whispering dramatically] Four, three, two, one—
Anne Hudlow: Welcome to today’s show. We’re blazing new trails on the career pathways for individuals with disabilities.
Rick Sizemore: We have VR consumers. We have—these folks are from several states. We have business owners that we are bringing into the podcast. We have a top-notch panel for you and top executives from our country’s VR program. So we’re really excited to be here today, Anne.
Anne Hudlow: You know we really do. And you know what? I just love doing these live podcasts, Rick. We couldn’t be more thrilled with today’s show. We have an all-star panel to explain the phenomenal success of the Career Pathways for Individuals with Disabilities initiative. And to get us started, we are so honored to welcome the Acting Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administrative, Carol Dobak. Commissioner, welcome to the podcast.
Carol Dobak: Thank you. When the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act was enacted in July of 2014, it was designed to do a couple of things. First and foremost, among that, definitely is to increase access to training and services for individuals with barriers to employment, including individuals with disabilities so that they can achieve employment outcomes in high demand and quality, competitive, and graded employment. And one of the ways that the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is designed to accomplish that significant goal is through strengthening collaboration between the core partners of the workforce development system which now includes, of course, the Vocational Rehabilitation program. In considering the ways in which the Rehabilitation Services Administration could implement those important goals, we looked at our discretionary grant opportunities. And in looking at that, we thought a significant way in which we could improve access to services and training for individuals with disabilities and their opportunities for employment, was to identify innovative ways in which individuals with disabilities could access that employment. And we focused on career pathways. Career pathways, as you all know, is not a new concept. It was not born out of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, but what the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act does for vocational rehabilitation and the individuals who are served through the program, is increase opportunities inways in which our program, our Vocational Rehabilitation program, can work with the other partners in the states of the workforce development system in order to enhance opportunities in career pathways in ways in which individuals with disabilities haven’t yet had the opportunity to engage in those important opportunities. That is what this discretionary grant project is all about. And we are so excited today to be hearing from our grantees in Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia, Nebraska, about what they are doing in a variety of ways, they have found to partner with their workforce development systems in their states and the variety of ways in which access to career pathways and apprenticeships can be increased through the coordination with these important programs in order to increase opportunities for individuals with disabilities. And I would just like to turn it back to Anne and Rick and the panel now, so you can hear all about what they are doing. Thank you.
Anne Hudlow: Commissioner, thank you so much. We appreciate your leadership and your innovation through funding these services and creating these opportunities and career pathways.
Rick Sizemore: And later in today’s show we’ll hear from the CEO of CSAVR, Steve Wooderson. We’re looking forward to his comments on CPID and how they relate to Vision 20/20. But up first, Dr. Joe Ashley from the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Ashley: Rick, it’s a pleasure to be here today.
Rick Sizemore: Joe, you’ve had a long, celebrated career in vocational rehabilitation, and you’ve been credited with some truly innovative programs that have withstood the test of time, and have produced some truly amazing results. Now you’re spearheading this incredible initiative with CPID.
Joe Ashley: Well, Rick, I’m finding that the CPID initiative reminds me of some of the early work in transition with some very important changes. Back in some of the earlier days we were looking at career ladders and now we’re talking stackable credentials. But the other difference is the collaboration with the Workforce partners, the community colleges, adult ed. Also, the collaboration with the businesses, is central in this focus on getting to credentials.
Anne Hudlow: Joe, you are no stranger to podcasting and I want you to know that the episode that you recorded with us a couple of years ago continues to be one of my favorites and also one of the most popular episodes in iTunes. And I know, Rick, you’re ready to get CPID conversation. But Joe, I was just curious about your perspectives on the emergence of podcasting in the Workforce and the VR conversation?
Joe Ashley: Well Anne, I think the podcasting—we’ve had some experience in Virginia with the VR Studio and we’re very impressed with the professionalism of the podcast and the ability of the podcast to tell the VR story. To bring in our partners as we’re discussing this, real voices of clients that have worked and benefited from the program. The businesses that are employing these folks can talk about the successes they’ve seen. And it puts the voices in place and allows VR to no longer be the best kept secret, and that’s pretty exciting because of the broad reach of this particular medium.
Anne Hudlow: Well we want to thank you for inviting us to be part of this conference here today, Joe.
Rick Sizemore: And I feel like we should be sending some type of check to our previous panel for their testimonial on podcasting. Two billion downloads last year in this country of podcasts! So it’s becoming a great way to share the message of vocational rehabilitation disability employment. By the way, if you’d like to hear Joe’s story, “Blind Man with a Vision,” it’s in our library out at VRworkforcestudio.com. I guarantee you, you’ll enjoy it. He has some amazing reflections on his life as a person with blindness and his career in vocational rehabilitation. OK, I think we’re about ready to meet our all-star panelists in just a minute. Before we do that, Anne, you caught up with Filipe Louis earlier this week and he had this to say.
Filipe Louis: Thank you Anne. I’m excited about bringing individuals with disabilities to the forefront of WIOA’s promise of career opportunity and economic growth in our states. Through CPID’s funding, the state VR agencies of Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Virginia are building innovative models and strategies of credential repayment, measurable skills gained, business engagement, and corroboration with a broad range of workforce development system partners. These agencies are helping individuals with disabilities overcome barriers to success through career exploration and workplace accommodations, promoting flexible work and training arrangements, assistive technology, post-secondary education and training opportunities, and comprehensive support services that VR eligible individuals with disabilities need to succeed. During the remainder of this session, your colleagues from these states will describe their distinctive approaches for enabling individuals with disabilities to pursue high-quality careers in leading industries and to help businesses within their states to recoup the highly qualified employees they need to grow in the economy of today and tomorrow. So I thank you all for participating in this workshop and I look forward to the questions and the insights that you can share with your colleagues and with us. Thank you.
Rick Sizemore: Philippe Louis is the project officer for the CPID demonstration program and comes to us from his office at the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
Anne Hudlow: And Rick, before we go any further, I wanted to ask Joe a quick question if you don’t mind coming back to us Joe. There is—everybody that knows you, knows you for a phrase that you say often which is “Giving our consumers an edge.” Can you speak to that for us Joe?
Joe Ashley: Yes. Thank you, Anne. We, in VR, have talked a long time about trying to level the playing field and through assistive technology and ADA, you know, and some of the other advocacy opportunities we’ve had, we’ve been able to do some of that. But I think that’s not far enough. I think we need to be finding ways that our clients are the first in line when they go into the businesses to seek employment. And I believe the career pathways for individuals with disabilities projects offer us that opportunity to involve assistive technology, discuss with businesses exactly what they’re looking for and, if we take the time to listen to the credentials they are looking for as well as the soft skills and environmental skills they look for and then find the access to the programs that will train that across our workforce partners, we’re in a better position to be sure that when we go in, our clients go in and we’ve trained them up, we’ve skilled them up, we’ve made sure they have the right attitudes and skill sets for those particular jobs, then we will be the first in line for the interviews. And I think when we get to that level of programming, then we’re going to have the opportunity to make sure that our folks—they’re just not going to worry about the disability as much. The other piece that we’ve got to learn to do is between ourselves and our partners—be sure, if we say we’re going to do something, that we do it. And I think when we start putting all that together with our business folks and our other partners in the workforce system, we’re going to have that opportunity to make sure our clients have an edge when they go in for those interviews.
Rick Sizemore: Awesome. Absolutely awesome. Let’s meet the rest of our panelists. Janet Drudek from Lincoln, Nebraska where she’s a program director with the Nebraska VR agency. Welcome, Janet.
Janet Drudek: Welcome. Thank you so much Anne and Rick.
Anne Hudlow: Helga Gilbert is an administrator in the Kentucky office for the blind and works with state partners on career pathway systems focusing on information technology manufacturing and healthcare. Welcome, Helga.
Helga Gilbert: Thank you.
Rick Sizemore: And Shelly Kraft joins us from the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency where she works as the Assistant Director of Transition and has worked for a variety in a variety of VR positions over the past decade. Glad to have you with us, Shelly.
Shelley Kraft: Thank you.
Anne Hudlow: We’ve included links about our guests and all their contact information in the show notes at VRworkforcestudio.com in case you’d like to contact them.
Rick Sizemore: OK, well let’s get started with Janet from Nebraska. Your CPID grant is based on the “upskill-backfill” model. How does it work?
Janet Durdek: Well let me tell you about it. We are the—we have what we call The Career Pathway to Advancement Project, or CPAPgrant, we call it. And it’s all about economic self-sufficiency for our clients. What we find is many clients, or many individuals with disabilities, have two jobs, maybe possibly no benefits, or maybe they just can’t make a living on it. So we want them to be the part of the grant is economic self-sufficiency. It’s really a dual customer approach that we have. We’re working with the past VR clients as well as with businesses. So what we’re doing is we’re contacting 2500 clients from the years ‘13, ‘14, ‘15, and ‘16. Besides those years, we have other clients come in who want to advance within the designated career pathways. We can then also advance them as well. The career pathways are the high demand, high wage jobs of information technology, manufacturing, and then transportation distribution and logistics. So those we started with in the grant. We knew in year two or three, we expand to healthcare—so we have done that as of this past year. And we also found a need for construction. So we’re—we have expanded in those five career pathways. The advancement includes stackable credentials. So what our goal is to help people in their current employment or pathway advance within that pathway. So we’re looking at stackable credentials—being industrial certifications, apprenticeships, associate degrees, bachelor’s—whatever it takes to help them advance. That may be one credential or that may be multiple credentials to help them advance. And then the other component is the back-filling component. Whereas we advance and we’re developing that relationship with the employer and the client, and so as we’re developing that relationship and the client’s advancing, the first thing we know is that there’s going to be an opening. So then we’re backfilling with clients from our regular 110 program who either wants to get into like entry-level positions within that career pathway or middle-level positions within that career pathway. So that’s why we call it the upscale-backfill model.
Rick Sizemore: So it’s like a two for one special?
Janet Drudek: It is. It is. [laughter] And sometimes we hope it’s more than two for one. [laughing]
Rick Sizemore: I mean I hadn’t heard of this until we got in to planning for this podcast, but what a cool strategy!
Anne Hudlow: Very cool! Janet we recently talked with David Kelly. And as you know, David is the plant manager of Todd’s BBI and oversees packaging operations for food and pet products. Let’s take a listen to how upscale-backfill has made a real impact in his life.
David Kelly: How’s it going today? My name is David Kelly. I’m a former VR client. Seven years ago when I was released from prison, I went through voc-rehab. They helped me find a job, attain the necessary skills and equipment so I could fill this job. Since then, I have moved up four or five positions in the food manufacturing industry. When ZackArter contacted me back in January about enrolling in the grant program, I was a quality control technician. Since then, Zack has helped me go through preventive controls certification which allowed me to become a PQCI. I was able to be promoted to quality control manager. And even since then,furthermore, Zack has helped me enroll in food management course which allowed me to move into the plant manager position. He has also helped it so that newer employees here were able to go through the grant program and the new quality control technician is just finishing up her grant program and she will become the quality control manager as soon as she is finished. It has been a pleasure working with Zack. The grant program has done wonders here. I’m looking forward to working with him in the future with more employees so we can have employees advance in their positions.
Rick Sizemore: What a great example of upskill and backfill. What a great strategy. It’s got to make you feel really good about this approach.
Janet Drudek: It really does. We’re doing that across the state of Nebraska. Zack Arter is one of four career pathway recruiters who are reaching out to employers and also working with businesses. And as Joe says, this is about giving the person an edge. And just as you’ve heard with David, he got the edge—he’s now a plant manager. And one of the great things is that plant is also their main plant is in Iowa and we’re expanding this grant onto the border of Iowa so we’re hoping to coordinate also services in Iowa, besides just Nebraska. So that’s one of the great things. But with this grant, and working, like, with David’s plant, we’re able, then, to upskill David, backfill with someone 10 clients. But one of the things we noticed was—that wasn’t originally wrote in the grant—that there’s a need for incumbent workers. So as you heard David mention, we are also, even though they haven’t been a past VR client, we are doing marketing materials with many of the businesses now. If they have a person within one of those designated career pathways that can upskill within that business to help them move up, that is awesome and that’s been great for us.