RAW COPY

STOUT VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION INSTITUTE (SVRI)

PROJECT E3 LEADERSHIP ACADEMY:
LESSONS LEARNED

DECEMBER 3RD, 2020
10:45 AM TO 12:17 PM CST

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This text document, or file, is based on live transcription.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings or used in any way that may violate copyright law.

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 >> Good morning, everybody and welcome to today's Project E3 webinar.  My name is Heidi Decker‑Maurer, and I work at the Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute at UW Stout in Menominee, Wisconsin.  
      Today I'm joined by my colleagues Terry Donovan and Beth Gaertner.  We'll be presenting this play‑back for you.  
      Just a few things in housekeeping.  We don't have our speakers for our Q & A today.  They are not able to make it today.  If you do have any questions, you could put them in the chat box.  We'll do our best to help by trying to answer your questions, if we can, otherwise, we have information at the end the presentation that has the speakers, Madan Kundu and Dr. Susan Flowers Benton.  Their information will be ‑‑ Suzuki.  We'll have the them at the.  About the program.  
      Just a few things about housekeeping.  This webinar Project E3 leadership academy 2.0 lessons learned is kind of a Roundup of all the different technical assistant sites that were part of E3, and basically what they did is they got together an academy where they presented all their findings and all the things they were working on Project E3.  All the things that worked for them and all the things that are ‑‑ that they learned, and we are able to implement.  
      The other thing I wanted to mention before we get underway about 30 minutes into the presentation, we have a little bit of problems with the captions because one of the intensive technical assistant sites that contributed a video ‑‑ they ‑‑ they had captions on already, so we're working with our captioner to try and see if we can do something about that, but I just wanted to give you a head's up ahead of time.  
      This is a really great presentation.  We have some of our leadership from the Project E3 project ‑‑ the project manager and the principal investigator as well as the project manager, and they will be narrating in between the clips from each of the technical assistant sites.
     So I'm going to get the program underway.  Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us, and I hope you enjoy the program.  
>> Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute for targeted communities.  This webinar's primary focus is to give an overview of the four phases of intensive technical assistance provided by the project to twelve states and 24 targeted communities.  I am Madan Kundu, and I have the distinct privilege and honor of serving this 5‑year project as the project director.  In this webinar, I along with my colleagues, will provide an overview of the intensive technical assistance and its impact on the project in state vocational rehabilitation agencies and community‑based programs and community‑based organizations since 2015.  
      My colleagues are Susan Flores, principal investigator and Mr. John Walsh, project manager.  This national technical assistance center is a unique and innovative initiative of videos and services administration of the United States Department of Education.  This presentation is made possible with support from the Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute U.S. Department of Education.  
     The ideas and opinions we express in this opinions and the presenters and do not represent recommendations, endorsements or the policies of the U.S. Department of Education.  
      We want to express our sincere appreciation our project officer for his guidance in implementing this project and achievements today.  
      This project has significantly impacted people with disabilities in the country especially for the most vulnerable people with disabilities who are economically disadvantaged and live in rural locations.  We owe our gratitude to one who had the sincerity and vision to respond to the request for proposal for the vocational rehabilitation technical assistance center for targeted communities.  
      As chair of the department, Dr. Alo Dutta approached me about writing this proposal.  I said no as we do not have stuff faculty to handle this national project.  She replied:  We know that.  She already figured out and said we will have partner universities to help implement this project around the country.  We consulted Dr. Fong Chen from the University of Wisconsin and offered five partners to the proposal.  Given the short time and approaching deadline Dr. Dutta worked every day of the month until the wee early of the mornings, so that Dr. Chen, and I can provide feedback the next morning for further improvement of the proposal.  
      With a grant but now we have to develop two targeted community proposals for each state, by each partner for 12 states, a total of 24 proposals, it was a very arduous task rather than receiving the grant.  
      So Dr. Dutta's vision for the project is to improve the quality of services to underserved people by people with disabilities by educating, empowering and employing them in different occupations and thereby improve the quality of life.  
      The project's name was a mouthful, vocational rehabilitation technical assistance center for targeted communities, therefore, Dr. Dutta described the initiatives's three primary focuses and coined the term Project E3, educate, empowering ‑‑ educating, empowering and employing.  It's to educate the personnel and their partners community programs and community‑based organizations.  The second is to employ the underserved and unserved consumers with the knowledge to increase participation, so that they can take advantage of the available vocational rehabilitation services and third, is to employ these consumers in completely integrated employment, supported employment or self‑employment to enhance the quality of life and become taxpayer, and then tax consumers, so this presentation will discuss the ways how to vision and project objectives have been achieved.  
      Let us allow me to say a few words about her dedication in the field of rehabilitation.  She's an excellent teacher and taught research and statistics.  She used to hold extra classes on Fridays for those who need help in statistics and methodology.  She was attitude focused and grants to allow the economically disadvantaged students to study and earn a degree and to move ahead in their life.  
      Dr. Dutta was a team player, and we collaborated in writing grants, research and publications.  She was the principal investigator and project director of 11 training research and capacity‑building and technical assistance certificates.  She was a Co‑PI associate project director of 9 other grants, so we secured funding of $31 million.  She was a guest reviewer of 10 journals.  Published 50 journals and 80 presentations, and she received 14 awards and recognitions.  You can see her dedication in the field, but she was a quiet, smart, creative, intelligent, productive, reliable and dedicated.  She was my student and a colleague, and I am blessed that I had the opportunity to work with her.  
      Dr. Dutta will have a special place in the students and colleagues' hearts as she touched many lives.  
      Recognizing her contribution in the rehabilitation the national council on rehabilitation education has established the Dr. Alo Dutta scholarship fund, scholarship recognizes an outstanding doctoral dissertation in the country.  
      Last week, Dr. Dutta was recognized by the national Association of Research technical center post mussily for her contribution to rehabilitation.  We pray that her soul rests in piece with the almighty.  
      The Project E3 is Southern University's the primary grant, and we have 5 university partners.  They are University of Wisconsin Medicine, the University of Wisconsin‑Stout, the George Washington University, University of Illinois‑champagne, University of Kentucky and One Advocacy Organization, Council of State Administrators For Vocational Rehabilitation.  
      Now I request Mr. John Walsh to make his presentation.
>> John:  The purpose of Project E3 was to provide technical assistance to state VR agencies and their partners, to address barriers to VR participation and to increase competitive integrated employment of historically underserved groups of individuals with disabilities.  
      Intensive technical assistance was provided by the partners of the E3 team onsite through long‑term service‑delivery relationships with the local state VR agency personnel and community‑based organizations in economically disadvantaged communities, identified by the VR agencies themselves.  
      In addition, targeted and universal TA was also provided to the broad VR community in order to promote the objectives of the project.  
      For the purpose of this project, a targeted community is defined as any economically disadvantaged community that would qualify as an Empowerment Zone, and in order for that community to qualify under that classification, the median household income would have to be under 200% of the federal poverty level that unemployment rate is or above the national average and based on the results of the comprehensive statewide needs assessment within a particular state, there would have to be an indication that a group of individuals receiving services from VR have been traditionally underserved in those particular settings.  
      In addition, Project E3 also looked at focus populations or high leverage groups with national applicability.  These are groups with disability who have frequently identified by the state VR agency as being either underserved or as achieving substandard performance, so some of the examples of these high leveraged groups include residents of rural and remote communities, adults and youth that were affiliated with the criminal justice system, individuals with disabilities in foster care.  In addition, individuals with disabilities receiving federal financial assistance including SSI or SSDI recipients.  
      In addition, there were also focus on populations addressing persons with multiple disabilities or people living with specific conditions such as HIV‑AIDS, mental illness, cognitive disabilities or sensory disabilities.  
      Project E3 provided technical assistance to 24 targeted communities in 12 states across the country.  In today's presentation, we're going to highlight 8 of those states:  California, Kentucky, Oregon, Louisiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia that in their own words will present information about the projects within their states.
>> Project E3 was originally conceptualized as a series of 4 daze phases with each faced from the lessons learned and insights gained from the previous.  The first phase was community outreach and orientation for target populations.  This phase focused on increasing the number of VR referrals and applications from HLGNA groups in the targeted communities.  
      Engaging the community was the overarching goal of the entire project.  During the second phase, community needs assessment and strategies for change, E3 partners worked with community stakeholders to identify barriers to VR participation and employment in each targeted community with the goal of working together to then develop strategies to address those barriers, which then informed the work of the third phase, training and technical assistance for staffs of VR agencies, community rehabilitation programs and community‑based organizations.  
      In this phase, Project E3 partners began to offer trainings and technical assistance aimed at addressing some of those gaps that were identified by ongoing community needs assessments.  Trainings were offered on specific topics geared towards bridging those knowledge and skill gaps to improve the capacity of rehabilitation professionals to provide those VR services and comprehensive supports while at the same time expand employment opportunities for members of the council their prioritized communities.  
      And as we wrap up the project, we now turned our focus to sustaining the work that was begun in the previous three phases.  In this final phase, sustainability and systems change, Project E3 partners focused on further developing and strengthening those collaborative relationships both with and between community stakeholders and focused populations to address barriers to access and participation in VR services, especially, those that affect a person's ability to obtain and remain employed but might be considered outside of the scope of VR services.  
      This fourth phase sustainability is the foundation of our presentation today.  In this presentation we'll highlight vignettes of our state VR partners discussing the Project E3 opportunities that they plan to continue and the steps that they intend to continue those activities.  As we go more in depth in phases we'll highlight the examples of how these states plan to sustain some of those ITA activities, aligning with each phase.  
      The primary focus of Phase 1 was to increase the number of VR referrals and applications from HLGNA groups in the targeted communities.  This was achieved through outreach of community‑based organizations, otherwise, known as CBOs as well as potential eligibles from the groups that were identified as needing more services.  It's to increase both the services of these services in these communities and increase the COBs to reach potentially eligible individuals.  For example, to increase collaboration between VR and community agency professionals.  Project E3 partners report the initiatives as part of community outreach serve to develop and or improve developing relationships which led to an increase in referrals to VR as well as increasing counselor knowledge of available community resources.  
      Additionally one partner developed a referral screening tool which was for use in Chicago TC and is also available for use as appropriate in other communities.  
      Outreach efforts specifically to individuals included outreach and orientation sessions that addressed the general lack of awareness of VR services and procedures as well as issues specific to that community such as lack of trust.  All activities in each TC were adapted to fit community needs and some of these examples include public service announcements that were specifically tailored to reach prioritized populations and other types of targeted outreach such as community forums, listening sessions, social media posts; right?  Interviews as well as videos, podcasts and literature distributions and all of these were done in accessible formats.  
      California is one of the public partners that came up with a solution for the communities that they wanted to better serve.  In California was California central valley region with a replication site in Fresno and Kern Counties.  They included young Hispanic adults with chronic illness or disability receiving public assistance and young adults with depression or PTSD receiving public assistance.  
      In this vignette Project E3 partners discussed their goals for sustaining Project E3 outreach initiatives which includes their outreach to the Hmong population.
>> Hi, good afternoon, everybody.  Presenting for you today is California, and we are going to be presenting regarding our continuation and sustainability plan for Project E3.  My name is Pricilla Veriella I'm the regional business specialist for the San Joaquin Valley district, and we also have Devin Fuente who is our rehabilitation counselor and our regional director.
>> Hello, everyone.  My name is Devin Fuente.  I had the opportunity to participate in a project that was in correlation with E3 based on community radio stations.  We were able to get connected with a local community radio station to focus on the Hmong population, which is an underserved and unserved population in our area and because of this we were able to increase our number of referrals for Hmong individuals.  
      We would like this whole idea and concept to be expanded throughout the state of California in order to target more unserved and underserved populations, leveraging community‑based radio stations.  These radio stations would help us to show an approach a ‑‑ a different type of approach in order to educate and encourage community members to seek out resources they wouldn't ordinarily know about.  
>> Hello, everybody, this is Pricilla.  In California, we would also like to see an expansion and continuation of community‑focused marketing materials and staff training.  We believe that an expansion of the community‑focused marketing materials would allow for us to reach our targeted population in other areas and would ensure that we further sustain the E3 project.  Through the marketing materials partnerships were created to establish a more unified way of providing services to unserved and underserved populations.  
      We would also like to see a continuation and expansion of resources and trainings for staff and community partners.  
      Some trainings that were provided in the San Joaquin Valley district in California were motivational interviewing, trauma darker informed training and money management.  The marketing materials allowed for us to make connections which resulted in resources and trainings and some local trainings which were fundamental and provided.  
      While the trainings ensured that our staff and community partners had the tools and resources that they needed.
>> Another concept that we barely were able to touch on so far is the integrative resource team.  We had a very short meeting with some representatives of this idea at the last community of practice training in New Orleans, and we would like to receive further comprehensive training on this idea and would like it to be expanded not only in our local district but throughout the state in order for us to provide better services to our consumers.
>> We would like to see a continuation and expansion of the IRT within our district to better provide customer service to our targeted populations, and we would also like to see a continuation of the IRT to support the teams.  We hope to see this rolled out in our district and hopefully throughout the state of California.  
>> Hi, my name is Arcelie Holland, I am the regional director for the San Joaquin Valley district at the Department of Rehab in California.  
      So to talk a little bit about our California sustainability plan.  And our next steps, we are hoping in an effort to build on our sustainability plan is to provide a presentation to our executive leadership.  We want to be able to provide them with a presentation of economic project and the services we provide and the outcomes in order to get some buy‑in.  We already work ‑‑ we have already been able to acquire a dedicated person for our IRT team, and we hope to be building an IRT team level around that individual.  
      We also have a workgroup that we've established to expand the E3 pilots best practices statewide.  
      As part of that we've also recognized that we need to provide some training.  We would like to expand as well on the IRT training for our current staff, and we are going to be dedicating some training funds to be able to provide that training.  
      We're also developing a demographic data project because we understand from the Project E3 that we really have to be data‑driven in order to develop good practices, we need to know who our community is, we need to know who the people with her serving are and most importantly and the people with her not serving, and we hope that by understanding our local communities we can better build our program to meet their needs.  
      Another practice that really helped us through the E3 project is the local advisory board we're hoping to replicate that.  We're already starting our second local advisory board in the southern part of our district, but we are also going to introduce it as part of the statewide best practices from E3 and hope to be able to use that as a model concept for all the Department of Rehabilitation regions.  
      We are looking at waives securing ‑‑ ways of securing funding for training.  We have some potential of being able to continue providing training in the motivational counseling, the trauma informed and the money management but also in being able to train additional staff on the integrated resource team model.
     So we are looking forward to implementing the things that we have learned from the E3 project.  We are ‑‑ we are developing a very positive, and we're happy to have a path forward in developing our sustainable plan moving forward with our E3 project, so I want to thank you, guys, all for your time and look forward to sharing more information.
>> Community‑based participatory research is a well-known approach that emphasizes the importance of engagement and collaboration between researchers and for the community for whom the research or program is ultimately meant to serve.  Project E3 used elements of CBPR at all phases of the project.  E3 partners worked in collaboration with community stakeholders to identify their needs and identify and implement the most appropriate strategies to address those needs.  Project E3 partners enlisted the help of local community experts to identify the needs of the focused communities.  This was primarily done through hosting focus groups and listening sessions as well as convening advisory councils.  Though each state and community identified different needs there were some specific areas of overlap.  The first one was a general kind of lack of awareness of VR services, and then, two, a lack of relationship between community‑based organizations and VR, and then, 3, there were many external barriers such as transportation, a lack of employment opportunities in the area and other specific issues relevant to that particular community.  
      New Jersey, Kentucky, and Oregon projects are all excellent examples of the way that E3 partners and community stakeholders were able to come together to focus on the identification of barriers to access and provision of services and begin to find solutions.  
      The city of nuclear was the targeted community in New Jersey and the prioritized populations included people receiving SSI or SSDI who have also been diagnosed with mental illness or a substance use disorder.  
      In this vignette Project E3 partners discussed how they were able to build on and expand a committee to increase community partnerships resulting in increased participation in the public workforce development system.
>> Welcome.  My name is John Walsh, and I'm project manager for Project E3.  I'm here with Rebecca Shulman and Eban Katz from my New Jersey project.  We wanted talk a little bit about the project in New Jersey and what are some of the next steps so Rebecca and Elaine I'm going to turn it both over to you.
>> Thank you, John.
>> Great, thank you.
>> Hello, everybody.  Basically the pumpkin our presentation is to discuss a little bit about what we've doing in New Jersey.  As chair ‑‑ cochair of our disability issues subcommittee of the workforce development board, one of the most positive outcomes that we saw was expanding the efforts of our committee to include additional members who had ‑‑ who had not before participated and also to expand community partnerships and outreach.  That was our first priority.  
      In terms of what we have done and what we want to see continued, we're going to be working on cross‑training opportunities between partners in the workforce development system, and one of the really positive results is that we brought together members of the council public and private partners in order to help extend our reach.  
      What we also saw was increased employment participation rates for individuals with disabilities in the public workforce system and in community‑based organizations.  We had individuals particularly in the public workforce system who had very limited if any connection with working with individuals who have disabilities and by participating and going through the training that was provided, they really learned a great deal about the types of services that individuals with disabilities can use and how much ‑‑ much of these services are available in the public workforce system.  
      We also did a lot of cross‑training that was helpful to increase awareness around serving the individuals with disabilities that hopefully will be positively impacted by this program.  
      So in terms of sustainability, we do plan to put together a community academy once we're able to go in‑person again right now many of the agencies are providing virtual services, so we are looking forward to being able to host a community academy, and we're also looking for other opportunities to engage with training and technical assistance.  The disability issues committee will be continuing, and it is hoped that we will be able to look at additional opportunities as a result of our regular committee meetings.
>> And I would just like to add that we really want to thank the Project E3 team for coming to New Jersey.  I think there was a lot of resource information and as Becky mentioned, a continuing education.  It was really helpful for both public workforce and the community of practice on the ground as well, and I think we all learned a lot.  I think it was difficult the past six months because of COVID where we couldn't finish off the project and have the ‑‑ you know, the engagement we really wanted.  But again, we're really happy that we're part of the project, and we look forward to perhaps being part of another project in the near future.  
>> Fantastic.
>> Yes.
>> Thank you so much Elaine and Rebecca for that great presentation on New Jersey.
>> Kentucky and Oregon were parallel projects.  Both focused on transition‑aged youth and young adults in rural or remote communities.  In Kentucky, the prioritized populations included transition‑aged youth with developmental disabilities or young adults with mental health diagnosis in rural and remote communities.  
      In Oregon, the focused populations included transition‑aged youths and adults with sensory disabilities residing in Bend or Medford, Oregon.  In both areas of transportation was a significant barrier to employment for people with disabilities.  
      In this vignette, E3 partners in Oregon and Kentucky discuss solutions identified assessing community needs and brainstorming solutions for transportation.  
>> Hi, I'm Jane haggle, and I'm a voc. rehab counselor in southern Oregon.  I've been working with the E3 project for five years, and now we're proceeding on to sustainability.
>> Hi, I'm Roxanne Robinson.  I'm a regional manager for the Kentucky vocational rehabilitation, and I've been working with the Project E3 for about a year.
>> So Kentucky and Oregon have been paralleled projects, both working with VR in rural and remote areas through the University conduct's human development institute.  As a result, we've shared priorities and will be reporting those and our sustainability together.  Although the COVID‑19 pandemic has created a definite barrier of PPDs and social distancing, the telephone has recently developed into more of a social contact tool for developing relationships since face‑to‑face relationships are more problematic.  Starting with the intake interview, schedule a half hour more on your time allotted.  During it, ask for the client's input on their needs while potential IRT members, if you have the time with the client there, right after the intake, let them hear the client on speakerphone, so they're motivated to participate in a meeting.  When you do meet, express your common goals and sum up the plan to meet those goals and share, share, share the successes.  
      Brian Ingram of Win Tech Technical Assistance team is still providing biweekly input and instruction to one of our two regions, TC1, which is Jackson, Josephine, Douglas and climate counties our Region 2 includes the central Oregon counties of Crook, Jefferson and Deschutes counties has been impacted by COVID‑related workload shift, so the counselor has had to address that by withdrawing.
>> And Nicki is still providing input and instruction for both of our Kentucky regions because some of our states' specific considerations Kentucky is more near the given geared toward the IRT implementation we're working with Nicki and working with provisions for people.  The COVID has definitely set us back some, and we're all learning how to communicate with people remotely, but we're hoping to get this off the ground and really have some success with it.
>> Yes, folks, COVID has created layers of protection that might present objections or barriers to meeting in‑person, however, there is some freedom in times certainly in not driving to meet face‑to‑face, so if the client is the focus of the IRT's purpose, let that purpose inspire the virtual meetings and collaboration.  This can still happen.  Who thought a VRC might be recommending attending meetings?  A year ago it would not have been I.
     However, selecting a few meetings to attend regularly, to be well‑informed for your client's benefit has become an invaluable source and resource to me.  
      For example, because I attended the local leadership team headed by Work Source Oregon.  I was able to assist clients during the pandemic with unemployment insurance application and problem‑solving as well as with pandemic unemployment assistance, which is retroactive.  
      One client received a lump sum check for over $5,000, which has greatly aided him in having a financial buffer during this time.  Unfortunately, the chamber of commerce meetings have been COVID casualties for my area in southern Oregon, so I hope to renew that attendance in 2021.  
      Lastly peer mentoring is on an upswing in the form of virtual workshops, flash online job events and feedback following those events by peer groups.  The ESDs, education service districts, are starting to refer transition‑aged youth again, and we've connected them with all of the VR resources available as well as have done virtual intakes.  
      Adobe docu sign has helped us get paperwork sign and returned, and it's legal, a totally legal thing, legal documents.  Utilize youth and adult clients who have had successful VR outcomes to mentor new clients youth to youth to adults to adults toward their own success.  
      Whenever possible establish groups to provide support.  OCB, that's Oregon Commission for the Blind has a Thursday 11:00 to noon virtual social group, Zoom or phone‑in only option, and that's statewide now, so this allows clients to hear and discuss VR options and requirements in real time with their peers.
>> Chamber meetings have also been a COVID casualty in Kentucky.  One group that is consistently still meeting via Zoom are the health coalitions for each county, so we have and will continue that participation as much as possible.  We want to continue to develop and nurture these relationships have to increase the knowledge of vocational rehab and the services we provide and to increase our counselor's familiarity with the businesses and agencies around them.
>> The University of Kentucky put together a bodacious transportation resource listing for Oregon.  Here's the list, so you can see an example of who's on there and what they do.  Find out what these organizations do in depth, and then proceed with discussion about what more is possible.  You can't sell it or vouch through it through reliability if you haven't used this itself.  This will build credibility.  Transportation issues in rural communities have been an issue for a long time.  Keep working in untying this bundle, and you'll get there eventually.
>> Some clients that are outside of the boundaries of municipal approximately transit Dial‑A‑Ride and some live so far out that a four-mile ride on Uber or Lyft will cost them $15 each way, which is not sustainable.  Even if they were working full‑time the trips to and from home, plus tips, would cost them 3 of the 8 hours they are working.  I've associated with cab companies for reduced fares on regular customers.  One client gets picked up at 4:40 AM to be at work by 5:00 AM and as an A&D counselor, and she is able to ride the bus to go home, so it's a $13 cab ride to work and a dollar bus ride home, which is sustainable for her at $22 an hour.  
      For minimum wage workers, that's where Waze carpool for multiple clients riding with one general VR client as a driver to work.
>> Our targeted community 1 Jackson, Josephine, Douglas and Klamath counties has been a pilot project for our agency along with TC2 Oregon's high desert region we're working on development and integration for these items and our leadership continues to support these activities and is, hopefully, to build all these programs into statewide client supports, and then we're going to go global.
>> We have integrated these priorities into the workflow of our counselors.  Leadership will continue to encourage these activities of our counselors and build the programs into our regular client services.
>> Thanks, folks!  
>> Through this collaborative work with VR and community stakeholders, E3 partners then develop specific training and technical assistance activities to address the needs identified in the previous phases.  These trainings and technical assistance were then offered to staffs of VR agencies, CBOs and CRPs and in some cases directly to the consumers themselves.  Training and technical assistance activities covered four broad categories.  One, trainings were offered on issues of specific concern to HLGNA populations in that targeted community.  For example, HIV‑AIDS and metal and substance abuse activities.  
      The second category focused on training to HLGNA‑specific issues that potentially impact service delivery.  For example, understanding the intersection of disability and poverty and trauma‑informed care were very well received trainings.  
      The third category focused on training and activities that encouraged collaboration between community stakeholders and increased coordination of service strategies and potential system‑wide change initiatives such introducing and implementing the integrative team model and learning to brave new resources.  
      Fourth training activities to encourage the expansion of employment activities for HLGNA population.  Activities in this category focused on employer engagement, business development, grant‑writing and self‑employment and home‑based based employment activities.  
      Here's a nonexhausted list of some of the project 3 training and technical assistance activities.  As you can see some of the activities focus training and activities directly to members directly of the HLGNA such as mindfulness, stress reduction, financial literacy training, empowerment trainings and job clubs.  
      Other trainings were offered to the staff of VR and CBOs in order to increase rapport‑building to improve employment outcomes such as motivational interviewing and trauma‑informed care.  Many of these trainings and more have been recorded as webinars and posted to the E3 website.  
>> In North Carolina, the focus group were transition‑aged youth and adults of economically disadvantaged, rural and remote communities were mental impairment and blindness or visual impairments.  Also, those who receive SSI supplemental social security income and other benefits.  There were two targeted communities in North Carolina, one is Rocky Mountain mount VR and Greenville services for the blind and the other one is Boone VR and Asheville and Winston‑Salem disability for the blind.  They focus on training on motivational interviewing, and they indicated they improved the counselor/client relationship and communication, so they want to continue this motivational interview in their activity.  
      The other is innovative strategies of job placement, still looking for how to place them in jobs in different areas of the state.  
      Another area they focused on trauma informed care in the organization they would implement this whole organizational structure.  That is the focus of North Carolina.  This here is their venues.  
>> There are two targeted communities located in Louisiana.  One in New Orleans, the largest consecutive Louisiana and in Baton Rouge, the capital city and the focus groups here are African‑Americans with HIV‑AIDS and an African‑American with mental health condition, so the Louisiana rehabilitation services they include planning for two major focus:  How to expand employment opportunities in the state government, and they want to hire qualified personnel to ‑‑ in his job placement outcome for people with disabilities.  
      Now let's hear their plan.
>> Hi, and I am the regional manager for Louisiana rehabilitation services the Baton Rouge office.  Today we're going to be talking about going through my presentation for the Project E3 leadership academy 2.0 for Louisiana.  The first priority for the E3TC was to increase community engagement ‑‑ was to increase community engagement with stakeholders.  The Project E3 provided training for different agencies regarding HIV and mental health and the challenges related to mental health and HIV and strengthen the VR services delivery those are our priority No. 1.  
      Our priority No. 2 includes LRS internal capacity to effectively serve persons with mental health and HIV challenges through rehabilitation employment development specialists or REDS, LRS is currently hiring these positions statewide to provide focused efforts to secure successful employment opportunities for individuals with unique challenges.  
      Our third priority is to assist departments and agencies within Louisiana state government to become model employers for individuals with disabilities, inclusive of individuals with challenges related to mental health and HIV.  LRS is an active participate on the state as a model employer, the SAME task force in accordance with the executive or JBE 18‑08.  The purpose is to increase the representation of individuals with disabilities employed in Louisiana state government.  Those were our three priorities as a ‑‑ as a way to state the sustainability, the steps that we were taking to ensure the sustainability of our efforts was to actively participate in forums to provide for effective exchanges for information for stakeholders like referrals, CRPs, coalitions, et cetera, 
      Identify and provide training opportunities to the REDS related to employment strategies specific to persons with mental health challenges and HIV.  
      And to contribute to the development of identification of strategies resources and partnerships to assist state agencies with the recruitment, hiring and retention of individuals with disabilities in employment.
     So those are some of the areas that we are ‑‑ taking efforts to sustain, actually the things we are doing to sustain our efforts with ‑‑ within the Project E3 and what we're doing, so that's ‑‑ that's it.
>> As we look at Phase 4 of sustainability and systems change, Project E3 partners worked with lead staff at state VR agencies and their community partners to develop sustainability plans for each of the state projects.  The intent was to develop specific strategies to ensure that that change efforts were maintained confronted life of the 5 ‑‑ beyond the life of a 5‑year grant project.  One of the strategies utilized by Project E3 was through the creation of the leadership academy providing both in‑person learning opportunities as well as remote opportunities.  The leadership academy also included monthly community of practice meetings that invited key staff from each of the 12 projects throughout the country to participate in a community that would encourage additional learning.  
      Each state agency that was associated with a project ultimately developed a sustainability plan.  
      In addition, the Project E3 would also like to sustain some of the learning opportunities that were developed throughout the life of the project, so we want to make folks aware that Project E3 website will maintain until March 31st of 2021, and then beyond that archived on the NCRTM website, Project E3 provided a number of universal technical assistance webinars, over 40 webinars that have been archived and a plethora of resources.  
      In the New Mexico project, the targeted communities were Albuquerque and Denning.  The HLGNA groups were persons with a primary disability of an anxiety disorder, depressive disorder or personality disorder and/or other persons with a primary disability of alcohol abuse or drug dependence.  
      In the New Mexico project, the key E3 influencers are looking to maintain the gains they have achieved through implementing the integrated resource team model.  This model was implemented as a way to build partnerships and to leverage additional services in their communities for the benefit of their consumers.  
      In addition the New Mexico team is looking to implement the trails model which stands for team resources for aligning of integration and leveraging of services as a model to create working committees between VR and core partners of the workforce development system to facilitate greater systems integration between those various state partners, and we're now going to play the vignette from New Mexico.  
      Welcome my name is John Walsh I'm project manager for E3, and I have the great pleasure working with the folks from New Mexico on their TA portfolio.  I have today two representatives two of the leads in our project in New Mexico.  Erik and Reyes, I'm going to turn it over to you gentlemen.
>> Hello, this is Reyes Gonzales field operations operator for the division of vocational rehabilitation.  I have 24 years' experience working with the agency.  I'm also a workforce about them.  I represent the VR program with the central workforce board, and I have two years working on the E3 project, and I've been there since the beginning, thank you.
>> Hello, everyone.  My name is Erik Padilla, and I'm the program manager for southwest New Mexico I'm also on the southwestern workforce board and disabilities committee chair.
>> Priority No. 1 greater collaboration between partners in the workforce development system.  We want to create and unusual a shared vision with our workforce partners; deepen and expand relationships with these partners and explore new partnerships with community‑based organizations.
>> In Albuquerque we work very closely with the central board workforce operator and the casa de Phoenix program, which is a homeless program working one of those that are mentally ill and substance abuse and employment is part have this and through this E3 program we've developed relationships with both these partners.
>> And in Dening we're really trying to connect the workforce partners that's the main division to be able to have a smaller transition with participants and working together with the workforce system.
>> Priority No. 2, implementation of the integrated resource team model.  New Mexico DBR is working on this project both in Albuquerque and the Denning area.  In Albuquerque we're currently conducting the IRT with Casa de Phoenix we're going to work with Title 1 and Title 3 partners, however, due to COVID we kind of put that on hold since we're really busy with the unemployment situation in New Mexico, but we do plan to get these partners involved with casa de Phoenix in the future.  
>> And in the Denning area, prior to that, the IRT was mainly for community resources.  Right now we're wanting to get workforce partners involved in the IRT training and VR staff will be providing a lot of that training as well.
>> Priority Number 3, implementation of new projects and programs.  In Albuquerque, and this is real recent, there's a county grant that's for peer support with the New Mexico Workforce Connection, and it's going to be targeting mental health and substance abuse, which is in alignment with our casa de Phoenix partner and their goals.  Also, we developed a job club at casa de Phoenix, and we are working with workforce to provide them assessments regarding work interests with our workforce system.
>> And in the Denning area we've been introduced to the trails model which we hope to implement at the workforce system level and identify various staff members within the workforce system to be able to determine solutions to be able to make services more efficient to participants.  
      Now, in the Denning area we have a community academy coming up that's going to be virtual, and this is going to be on November 20th.  We're hoping to pool all resources within southwest New Mexico to be able to get more familiar with their programs, and we're also expanding on our partnership again with the workforce system in the IRT model.
>> In Albuquerque we did conduct a community academy about a year ago, and through the IRT process, we realized the need to develop an online referral system between DBR and workforce, and this is something we piloted, and now this project is going to go into implementation with all other partners in workforce.
>> And then again the IRT model will be lead staff within VR will be mentors in training the workforce staff on the IRT model.  A lot of this has already been introduced, however, we would like to put more focus on the details of the IRT and that way we can implement it in the future.
>> Very good, well, gentlemen, thank you for giving an overview of the New Mexico project.  
>> Thank you, John.  
>> In Virginia, the targeted communities were Martinsville and the Henry County region as well as the Hampton roads region.  The HLGNA groups included consumers with drug abuse or dependency who reside in economically disadvantaged rural or remote communities and persons with mental illness who also reside in those communities.  
      You will see in the Virginia vignette that the presenters will talk about the supportive their executive leadership ‑‑ support of their leadership at Virginia DARS.  In addition this support led to a support to a statewide implementation of core concepts of the system change initiative in that state, so the actual change efforts extended beyond the two targeted communities to encompass the agency looking at their entire culture and to incorporate key components of the Project E3 technical assistance as part of their state project.
>> Good afternoon, my name is David Leon.  I'm the deputy director for workforce programs with the Virginia department for aging and rehabilitative services, and we're going to spend a few minutes to share what we are working for the priorities in our targeted communities project.  
      And our first priority from moving forward is a statewide introduction of what we have done in Martinville and the Hampton roads we have begun what we called the E3 influencer group that consisted two staff per office from each district from across the state and within those groups were district directors, VR office managers, counselors, placement staff and assistant staff.  These individuals had 6 two‑hour sessions that included follow‑up work, preparatory work a little bit of homework and during this process we talked about the intersection of disability and poverty, partnership development and collaboration through community academies and the integrated resource team model and financial empowerment.  We really wanted to focus on what worked in both the original communities and developed a framework from moving forward in other parts of the state.  Those staff that participated represented more than half of our additional offices, and we have a follow‑up session scheduled just make sure there are no more questions and for next steps where we begin to invite our partner agencies.  
      Our second priority was the integration of financial empowerment into the VR service delivery system, and we did that in a bunch of ways, and we'll continue to do so while the project was going on, the two areas participated in bridges Out of Poverty.  Trainings on the intersections of disability and poverty, significant emphasis on social security work incentives and the Medicaid expansion, and we did a lot of work around financial empowerment and behavioral economics.  
      When it came to the influencers we made sure the two sessions they had was the intersection of disability and poverty and that community financial empowerment.  That's a program where we're working with people in poverty as a cultural competency and shifting to think about how we can utilize the skills of counselors in terms of counseling and guidance to help our clients understand behaviors that may affect jobs and create ways to be more fiscally responsive.  
      We also have put a program into place that we're using from the cities from financial empowerment.  We have had two cohorts and are about to have our third and final cohort of staff go through their training for financial coaching.  It is approximately 40 hours of financial counselor training, and this is what's used across the country in the cities for financial empowerment program.  
      Our third priority has been to continue with community capacity‑building, and we have focused on growing the Centers for Independent Living around the state.  We work closely with the state‑level leadership for the CILS and expanding the capacity of CILs for VR consumers with the potential for increased fee for service opportunities.  
      Another reason why we wanted to focus on the CILs, this is a great to increase potential referrals both to CILs from VR but also I'm hoping that VR will receive more referrals from the silly.  Through this program we hope to see CILs choose to be Vita sites when tax season comes.  
      The two CILs in the targeted communities receive customized training on financial empowerment strategies that were designed to support those staff and engaging them serving underserved and economically disadvantaged persons with disabilities.  Each area had a 6 2‑hour sessions that included both preparations and follow‑up sessions and for each areas of trainings and sessions there were time spent creating a rain showers map of where those CILs could fill gaps related to financial empowerment for people with disabilities.  We're very excited about that.  
      And in terms of sustainability, I think we're doing a lot already and had that as part of our model from the very beginning.  It has been very helpful that our commissioner and our division director are 100 percent on board and in support of this project.  We have a build that will be in partnership with VRI in Wisconsin to introduce the project for new counselors in the future.  We plan to use it with trainings, and it will include lessons learned and best practices from each of the two targeted areas.  There will be another section of the video that includes our leadership talking about their vision for where we go from here.  
      We are continuing to integrate financial empowerment in the VR service delivery system.  We're doing that through a couple of fee for service tools we've created including a financial health assessment specific to our clients.  I am pleased to say that we're beginning to get referrals for that service.  
      We're also focused on community capacity‑building with not only those two CILs but in doing the work one of those CILs.  
      We are working to help those CILs share this information in other areas of the state as well.  
      And another area I'm really excited about is that we have developed an MOU with the City of Roanoke for their city for financial empowerment project just in the last two months.  That project provides free financial coaching around things like debt reduction, credit‑building, asset development, budgeting ‑‑ we have already referred over 25 of our clients from that local office to the project and a similar project, which is a year behind us starting up in the Richmond area, so we are looking to these partners to growth work with her doing.  And, again, provide resources that our agency can't provide but keeping them in the front of our minds when we're working with clients, making sure that we don't skip anything or miss an opportunity to provide a more holistic experience for each of our clients.
     And those are some of the things that we're doing here in Virginia.  Thank you very much.  
>> In addition to intensive technical assistance, Project E3 also provided targeted technical assistance to requesting agencies.  One example comes from Wisconsin DVR.  Their statewide needs assessment uncovered additional barriers to service as provision for consumers of color living in segregated and disadvantaged communities in Milwaukee.  These barriers were preventing these consumers from full participation in training and employment.  Wisconsin DVR requested technical assistance from Project E3 partners to further invest ‑‑
(Inaudible.)
>> Investigate in order to ‑‑ Project E3 partners assisted Wisconsin DVR in designing community discussion groups and training facilitators to lead these groups.  They also assisted with collecting and analyzing the data obtained from the focus groups discussions and summarizing the data developing the final report and identifying it is next steps.  
      The final report was recently completed and is currently available on the Project E3 website.  Wisconsin DVR has now begun the process of implementing some of their findings, and we hope to be able to share more with you in Project E3 final report.  
      Speaking of websites, the Project E3 website has been the repository of all the Project E3's universal technical assistance activities and products.  This includes all of the Project E3 webinars produced by the team at SVRI.  There are also several communities of projects hosted on this site and a variety of other products and tools that the doctor will touch on in a few minutes.  The Project E3 website will be available until March 2021 until that it will be archived to NCRTM, so that the information tools and lessons learned will be available long after the project has ended.  
>> Now let me tell you about some of the resources policies that you can take advantage of it.  The first one is targeted community profiles.  It describes the targeted communities and their priority population in each state including area of unemployment and priority indicators, population characteristics and strategies to address barriers with contact information for each communities and their partners.  
      Webcasts, it includes about 40 archived webinars on evidenced‑based practices, promising practices and emerging practices that are effective when working with our underserved or unserved targeted populations free of charge.  Strategies education for each webinar, new webinars are being produced and added to the site.  Please register to one of our webinars today.  
      Next area is resource library.  It allows you to search on the project website by keyword, population served and the strategy to help link new contacts are being added regularly.  Research summaries, plain language to link busy professionals in the field of academic research into evidenced‑based practice.  A clear understanding of research in the area by topic information that can be applied to daily practice, resource Roundup, it provides up‑to‑date information on various topics including links to our counselor toolkit, COVID‑19 resources and related topics.  
      Strategies to address barriers, it includes information on evidence‑based practices such as job club, financial literacy, training, motivational interview, customized employment and more.  Organized by strategies.  It can be used to apply a technique to daily practices.  
      The last one is community.  To sign up for our online community of practice for professionals need to share ideas, discuss strategies and evidence‑based practice application including communities on rural and urban services, disability and poverty, career development and employment search and secrets to employment please join today and share your expertise and learn from others.  
      So in what the we achieve in this project.  We had a cadre of knowledge developed by E3 that will be helpful to everyone around the country, communicative communities, community‑based organization, to access and implement in providing quality services and to advance employment outcomes for economically disadvantaged people with disabilities.  We provided the E3 website projectE3.com and archived webinars and sustainability plan developed by the state VRs indicating their commitments and collaborations.  Collaboration among state VR agencies and their partners have increased tremendously and leading to increased referrals, increased applications, increased eligibility of VR services and increased job placement.  
      So video vignettes affirm that Project E3 has made an enormous impact in the rehabilitation community successfully achieved its objectives and vision of Dr. Alo dutta.  
      To access additional information on results on Project E3, please view our results and reflections webinar at https://ncrtm.ed.gov and also visit our Project E3.com for in July 2021 for the final report of the project, so you'll have all of this outcome.  
      While if you need more information, please contact myself, Dr. Madan Kundu project director, my phone number and email address similarly Susan flowers Benton, her telephone number and email address, and please communicate with us if we can be assistance to you in any way possible.  
      Thank you for joining with us today.  
>> Beth Gaertner:  Hello, everyone my name is Beth Gaertner I work at the Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute.  Just a reminder that if you are interested in CRC credit for today's webinar, you will be receiving an email tomorrow that has an evaluation form.  Once you create that ‑‑ complete that eval. you'll to be able to get your CRC credit.  
      If you have further questions about CRC credits, you're interested in some of our previous webinars, feel free to check out our website it's Project E3.com, so that's where you can find this website archived and also a lot of previous webcasts.  
      Finally, I'd like to say everyone from the Project E3 webinar team would like take a moment to thank all of our attendees you've been an absolutely wonderful group.  We appreciate your continued support whether it's tuning in every week, asking an insightful question or even continuing the conversation in the chat.  This has been our final Project E3 webinar with new content.  For the next two weeks we'll be providing rebroadcasts of previous webinars.  
      On December 10th we will be airing Employment Supports For People With Serious Mental Illness; and on December 17th we will be airing Serving Veterans With Mental Health Issues.  Those will both be airing at 11:00 AM Central time.  
     Thanks again for all of your support.  We hope you have a safe and happy holiday season, and it's been wonderful seeing you all virtually here on our webinars.  Thanks.  12:17