Steffany Stevens: Today's webinar is hosted by Norciva Shumpert from Marc Gold and Associates. The webinar will begin now at 1:00 p.m.. I do want to let everyone know you can type any questions you have in our public chat area or any answers you may have in our public chat area. This will be an interactive webinar and our presenter Norciva will be asking questions of the audience. Please make sure you type responses in the public chat and any questions that you might have. Right now I will turn the webinar over to Chip Kenney.
Chip Kenney: Thank you, Steffany and welcome to all of you. I understand we have quite a sizable group. Considering today's topic, I think this is great. I want to welcome each and every one of you and thank you for joining as on today's webinar which is entitled Discovery An Alternative to Assessment. It gives me particular pleasure to welcome, to you those of you who don't know, Norciva Shumpert. Her biography is on our website and I encourage you to take a look at it. It is quite impressive so I won’t to recite that for you and take up valuable time. But I do want to emphasize a couple points. Norciva is a valued consultant to the TACE program which is only a year old. We are extremely lucky to have access to her expertise. She has been working with many of you for quite a bit longer in a variety of fields. Mostly focused on getting people with significant and most significant disabilities into employment. She is working with us on customizing employment initiatives and she is also our lead person in terms of transition for youth with disabilities. And her emphasis is on getting employment for youth with which she brings a very rich background to that. Without further ado, I want to bring up a couple of housekeeping things. Today’s session as Steffany said, you will be able to use the chat area for questions and you also might want to close other applications and system checks at this time. And if you are connected to a network, press the space occasionally to let the system know you are still there and keep this active. Having said that, and not wanting to take up any more valuable time from what I think will be just a wonderful presentation, I want to welcome Norciva to the session. Thank you so much Norciva for doing this and bringing your expertise to all of us in the southeast. Take it away.
Steffany: Just one moment group. Norciva will be on in just a second. I'm sure your are not hearing anything now, but she will be joining in just one second. She had just a little computer glitch. So she will be right with us.
Norciva: Thank you, everyone. I apology for the technology glitches we have had with our microphone this morning. I hope you all here me now. Thank you Chip for the warm welcome. I would like to begin by saying this is a part of four webinars that Mike Callahan and myself are offering. The first one was done in September. Mike gave an overview of customize employment kind of distinguishing between both strategies and employment. I ask you now, if you can begin to kind of let me know if you participated on the webinar with Mike Callahan in September on customize employment. If you would just type in yes or no, that would be helpful so I can get a sense of how many people were here and a part of this. It sounds like we have a nice mix of people that were not on and some of you that were on. One of the things I would really like to do is to bring your awareness - Steffany, I may need little assistance. The screen is not moving with me. Got it. Thank you.
This whole concept of customize employment talks about looking at each customer individually, which is what all of those do pretty much in best practices and by regulation now. As Chip said, one of the focus I have is on employment and so is Mike Callahan and Mark Gold & Associates. One of the things we have figured out throughout the years is that some of our strategies that we have used in the past had not led to successful employment outcomes. That really pushed us years ago to begin to look at what were some other strategies? What premises did we operate from? Some of the basic premises were if we gave people basic education and preparation to practice on different types of stock tasks that these kinds of things would lead to successful employment. What we found is there are still people that with those kinds of set up and expertise from all of you out there giving your best efforts, that there still is a group of people that we have difficulty in facilitating employment to them. That is where you see the Customized Employment approach really deriving from. You're going to find as they go through discovery today, I will have to talk a little bit how this process is linked to a Customized Employment approach. However, for some people they may not need all of the pieces of customized employment. They just may need a better look at who they are so that can guide you to employment. Discovery really is the primary key that sets the foundation for employment here.
The thing you have to think about particularly in an assessment situation is whether or not, what your goal and out come of an assessment is. It is to determine eligibility, you will not use discovery. But if it is to guide you to employment. If it is to help guide someone into a career, than that is the approach you want to use. Understand that if you begin to think about, if you are a counselor, I need this person and I need help thinking about where they are going, they are saying they have direction, but it seems to be contradictory. One of the things you might do is to let me have someone to discovery that can guide me to employment in see if it is going in the same direction that they're talking about. However, if you're looking at just eligibility for any service, you are not going to use discovery to get you there. Discovery is certainly the approach and the foundation. No one can to customized employment without a essentially doing discovery first. So understand that, if you are on the call today and you are someone, you are working with someone and you have targeted that this person has applied for jobs and not been successful. You want to shift their thinking into a different way. I'm not going to just have them fill out applications; they need a Customized Employment process.
The foundation of that Customized Employment process is discovery. For that person, you really want to think about initiating the whole process. For a person that you have got some basic information about and you feel like this person can represent themselves. You feel the two you can do proper planning, then discovery may be more of a guide to them on which direction to go for employment. They just need assistance and direction. Think about those two things as you go through this process with me today. Those two types of people, the person you see no direction for and feel like they will probably not fit into a job opening, and that will be the person you will want to do the customized Employment process.
The person that you need guidance for, which direction to go in, probably they could utilize the discovery process also.
If you look at the slide that I started with, I think this is very important, the first thing that this discovery does is it begins to have clarity, that I am looking at existing information rather than developing new information solely for an evaluation. Your whole discovery piece looks at who this person is today. I think that is one of the more critical pieces of discovery. It is a look at who that person is. It is not where you're going. That will be your outcome. You start with before you could talk about where you're going, you start with who is the person. One of the big differences between discovery and traditional procedures is you will take the person's everyday life, what they do in their everyday life and look at their transportation today and that will be the information that you will use. You won't have to look at an instance of performance. You won't have to look at coming in and taking this one day and saying how they did in this particular process. It is a real shift in to understanding where you are going with this person and looking at their whole life.
It is not an instance of performance. The gentleman you are seeing in this picture is a gentleman I worked with out of the Detroit area. One of the things we did when we first got to know him, that was during the discovery process, we spent some time with him. In spending time with him, we found out he had this marvelous knowledge of music. He could talk about any of the artists that came in. He understood what categories they would fall into. He would understand whether they could be purchased. Had we been doing something more standardized, we might have found a surface area of information about his knowledge, but we would not have had the depth in which really did have clarity about who people other and what artists did? Which one perceived as pop or gospel. As a result of that broad knowledge base that we found from looking at his whole life and collection of music, it led to us creating a job in a business that was basically very similar to many of your music stores in the mall. This gentleman also needed to work very privately by himself and not deal with the general public. They set him up workstation and he goes through all of the returned items, makes the determination for the whole store of what category of music each one of the sets of music are. It comes from letting go of a standardization and really looking at who he is. Not looking at that instance of performance but really looking at his entire life.
Here is another young lady. She really has a wonderful way of helping people learn. We need to look at ecological validity versus predicted validity. When I worked with this young lady in Corpus Christi, Texas, one of the things that was real clear to us is that you needed to look at her life and to begin to think about not predicting what she could or could not do, but look at her at this day and say what she does do. The feature that ecological validity does, it really does so many wonderful things. It begins with eco means environment and validity means it works. In my simplistic way of thinking, I always think about in this environment, it works. I can remember during the day when I was doing a checklist of vocational skills with people, we would go can, can't and with assistance column, I was relieved, who ever completed the checklist, the check list changed based on who was completing it. In this environment, the family may say the person does or does not do certain things. In this environment, meaning a school environment or in other isolated environment brought into the center to have someone look at a person's skills, it may be really different. We really put a lot of validity into the environments that a person works and what works best for them. You're going to see the discovery process really talking about ecological validity. That really allows us to recognize the uniqueness of each one of the people that we serve. Many of us, when we are dealing with strangers or strangers in a large group say 15 or more, we are probably very different than what if we were in a small group of people that we know. That is the kind of thing that Discovery does. The discovery process really looks at where this person works best, what does that look like? What does that ecology look like? What does that environment look like? One of the things we don't ask folks to do in discovery is predict. We want to say this is who someone is. The young lady in the picture, we really began to know her, some of the things that people said she could or could not do is to actually pay attention to money. She had a tremendous focus on money. Yet people in class with talk about her math skills and that they were not as strong. When we talked with their family and those that knew her with money, they understood clearly that if we gave her a job that dealt with money, not only was it motivating, but it was also very much a scale that she had to keep up with, pay attention to it and know where it is. It never got out of her sight. She could actually put the numbers and times together to make things happen. We ended up working her out, one of her first jobs was in a mortgage company when she worked during the lunch hour. When the other staff persons were off she paired up with someone and became basically their assistant and they helped people during that time period. She felt very valuable in that environment and also found the motivation to go there. That was really hard key for us, finding out the environment she worked with. She worked beautifully by herself or with this other person there, but not in a large group. Her parents were fearful of her dealing with strangers. She was in a very secure department as they were handling money. There was a security guard there and one person there all the time. It wasn't large groups or so small that she would be vulnerable in any type of an environment.
Then there is this other piece that we feel like Discovery does. You really look at the real complexities of who the person is. Their faces were blocked out in this picture at their request. One of them is in a wheelchair typically and he had actually been working with voc rehab and had been told that he to kind of change his direction. One of the things that he had been working in was in construction for years. When we sat down and really spent some time getting to know him, we found out he had a lot of skills from construction and use those in a different environment. We also had to look at the fact that even though he had a brain injury, that some of the ways it impacted his life, I think that is the real key, it doesn't matter whether or not you have a brain injury, whether or not you have a cognitive disability, what matters is how it impacts your life. By flushing out, what does that mean in a day-to-day workplace? Some people, when you get to know them, what their disability impacts on a day-to-day basis, may come out in how they communicate. It can be as simple as they have no filter. They say exactly what is on their minds. They may sometimes may be labeled inappropriate in our language if we are using an evaluative language. They may say what is on their mind and so as a result of that, we may have to look at how we accommodate those complexities. Number one, this person would not be working with customers. If he is saying what comes out without any filters, then we are not going to be able to negotiate with an employer in such a way to where it minimizes his impact. One of the first conditions of employment that we would see by recognizing the real complexities is that we would see this person does not need to work with the general public. Recognizing real complexities, understanding what’s the impact of this complexity. How does it impact this person? The concept of resolving those complexities does not mean that we fix them, it means we think about them and what environments do they have less impact. What kinds of supports help them to have less impact? You really begin to pay attention. It is my belief those people that you have that are not employed have real complexities in their life and as a result of that, they are not seen when you just look at them from one lens, you have to look at them with a variety of lenses in order to get the perspective you can.
In this next slide, you will notice that in discovery, we don't do any type of testing. There is no readiness. The presumption is that all people are ready for employment. You might want to say that there are some people who are not ready for employment. But let me say this, one of the strong things we have found to be successful is that you just say this person is who he is. Once we figure out who that person is in discovery, it allows us to begin to see it what environments. I have had people such as the gentleman we spoke about earlier who did not have any filters and might use curse words, he might say some sexually explicit type language. He had no filters in what he said. People were working with him. He had been through eight years of some type of training to try to change that behavior and that behavior was not changed. Rather than waiting people to quote get fixed or changed, and they have had a proper education, then we would just have to go ahead and say, who is this person and let's go with you that are today. I think that is one of the more critical pieces. You also need to be very cognizant about not putting employment on hold because of technology. One of the worst things I ever did about twenty years ago, I waited for a gentleman to get the perfect kind of wheelchair, the perfect communication device. No sooner that we purchased all of that, we went to do job development and the type of job that he got; he needed a different type of communication. He needed a different type of wheelchair. Had we had the job first, the accommodations would have fallen right in place. You and I know that sometimes we get into these circles and we wait for people. We would want to think about making sure that we are clear. Who this person is really drives everything and that is with the discovery process does. You have to actually put this readiness piece and put it aside. You want to think about no checklist. You're not doing a checklist on who is or who isn't, what the skill is and with the skill isn't there for that person. In many ways you want to know how this person uses those types of skills.
When you think about supported employment, and I see on one of the notes in terms of dealing with supported employment and in terms of dealing behavior, the reality is that discovery is going to be used whether you use a traditional method of Employment for someone or if you use a supported employment model. There are certainly very clear distinctions between all of those. We may eventually want to do a webinar maybe sorting some of those things out. The discovery piece, almost every person flushes out who they are and defines them as a person. In that process, it really helps us think about if we can empower people with the knowledge that I learn then we set them up to represent themselves well. If I am doing discovery with someone and I notice that when I went to visit them they were all prepared and organized for that day to do what ever activities we had planned. They demonstrated a skilled, had a knowledge base and say for instance that I found out that they worked with cattle, that they had an understanding and the basic numbers of keeping up the cattle. They recognize the health of the cattle, whether or not the cow was up are not up. If this one was moving sluggish, what did that mean what type of options might you have there? Those are skills not captured generally on any type of the test. The minute you see this, you want to empower the person to see that you had clarity what happened next. That is a critical piece for you to think about that during discovery. For some of the people, it will be real clear that you have to do representation to an employer that somebody need to represent them. For some people, if you're having a discovery process done and you're helping them get in touch with who they are, what their strengths really are, people don't normally have insight about their strengths. In fact, when I do training, many times in the setting you hear me ask that the folks and people will say, wait a minute. Here is my job, this is what my tasks are. I am saying hold on. Let me talk about what skills you have got and let me tell you how I know you have those skills because I saw you do these kinds of things. In essence, when I think about doing discovery with someone, where we are using discovery with a wide range of people, we certainly have used it with folks that were traditionally see or utilize and support employment. Persons with mental health issues, persons with cognitive disabilities, persons with just multiple complexities, be it health or they just can't get a job. We have also used it with just the general population. Looking at veterans who have come back. Right now I am working with a group with primarily the families that are in temporary assistance and can't get jobs. Part of the discovery process with that group is helping them get in touch with where their strengths are. Many people look for that. I think most people agree to take tests to see if they can get inside on who they are. For me, for discovery, one of the tradition of departures from procedures or assessment is that during the process, if you are out with somebody doing discovery at that point, you see somebody presenting themselves, you either ask for clarification or say, look at the skill I am seeing you use. Do you use it often? How do use it anywhere else? So it really is an empowering tool. When I think about people going on interviews for a labor driven approach, and many of you did not hear Mike Callahan speak earlier, one of the things you might have need to know is that our two basic strategies to get a job. One is to either go through a competitive demand driven model where you look at job openings. The other is where you customize it where you actually start with the individual and go through a linked process which I will be talking about here. And in doing that, that either way in the Discovery Process if you use it for a demand driven approach, empowering the person with what they offer. Helping them know what they are best at will guide them to what type of job does this look like to you.
In customization, it is absolutely critical that you use this, and you would end up with a way two think about the areas of interest for motivation, and you end up with what is a person's ideal environment, and where do you work best. And that is where you begin to match, thinking about, I've worked best with the general public, I work best with one person or three people. I work best when I have one boss instead of four. Whatever it is, you don’t use discovery to exclude a person from employment. So you would never have that occur. Discovery is always used as that guide to employment.
And as we move to the next piece, and this is young lady on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi that gave me the opportunity to get to know her. I don't have very much about her but I wanted to introduce you just a little bit about how those differences really lead to a job for at Jenni. When I first met Jenni, she was primarily doing mostly coloring. Certainly coloring is not an appropriate behavior for a 21 year old. Rather than judging that and making some comment about that, it was like let go and basically looked at, why did she do this? Is this something she often did? Did she have the tools to enjoy? And quite frankly, if you notice her arm here. You will notice that her hand is bent a little backwards here. So when you spend time with Jenni, your first assumption might be that because of her Cerebral Palsy and limited use of her hands that she could not use paper and get it around very well. But in reality, Jenni really compensates and has built in a lot of accommodations. She manages to move paper around very easily, particularly if you let her do it herself. If you set it up like I tried to do with the jig, you will find that she is very self-directed. That she moves things to accommodate for her own need. In that discovery process, we found out so many things about who she was.
We found out that she was clearly a person that moved her own pace. It didn't matter what pace you wanted to go at. That is a very critical piece of information to know. To me pace is one of the primary issues that we seem to leave out and it seems to be one of the things that people miss on. It is one of those subtle things in ours jobs that are very hard to match or accommodate unless you have clarity about who you are. Some of us probably know what our pace is. Many of us work at our own pace and you can't move us any faster. Some of us respond more to we have to have this done by this hour, and so therefore we move according to that. Some of us are very clearly upon that by saying, I move at my own pace, but I need a day and not a half day to do these kinds of things. Still looking at pace during work performance and discovery is very critical.
One of the things that we learned really that Jenni was that, coming straight from a school, her basic interaction was to hug everybody that she came into contact with. So one of the critical pieces for us was, what kind of environment would it be okay to hug in? And this was actually Jenni’s first day at the job that we negotiated. I literally toured this business and went back a couple of times during the process to find out what people's interaction pattern was. And one part of this business, if you actually got close to someone's desk, people felt like you were in their personal space. I immediately knew that no matter if they have skills that Jenni could offer her, it would not work. That I needed a place that she could walk in and greet people. This place I toured. I watched Wade this guy get up and go hug this lady when she came in. Other workers stopped. Her daughter was going through treatment. This part of this business people were very welcome to touch. They were very bright. They were very sociable. There was just a whole tone that said this would really fit Jenni.
I really got a sense of her work pace. Jenni got that job working and where she was actually pulling out cardboard and pulling hats. She would take a set of hats out of a cardboard box, which you see her in right now. She would pull them out of the plastic sleeve and she would also take out a piece of cardboard that was in the top of that hat. So when she lost this job after a year and a half or two years when they laid off about a hundred people at the firm, her family was very empowered with understanding that this is going to be a task that we talk about. We took data during this job so we could go to the next job with this data. So within two weeks time, Jenni learned how to do this task and could do 144 cases, which had two dozen hats in it, in two hours. So that talks about, you say she moves out her own pace, but what is her pace? And what is her pace for this type of a task? So when she got ready to go to the next job, we had clarity about what her tasks were. And by the way, we didn’t have to have her at a job to do that. We actually got this job that she is in right now by looking at what her pace was to do some work that she did in her home. She did all the recycling in her home. So I looked it she did approximately 15 bottles cleaned them out and about and about three cases of cans in less than thirty minutes, and that gave me a sense of her pace. It not fast or slow, but it was really one that kind of told me how a person might be initiating in a job.
This is Jenni at the second job we negotiated for her that she is currently in now for a couple of years probably six years. She gets a bonus, and I never get a bonus at my job. What you’re seeing is the gentleman in the green shirt is her job coach for the day, or actually for the week. We pretty much negotiated for him to work there for a week to help Jenni learn these skills. She basically has the job task of putting together all of the envelopes that go out to all of the southeastern region, all of you states that are out there right now, on how to use propane. This is for a local propane company that covers the southeastern region. She has to mail out all the rules and regulations for their state. She learned how to coordinate that very well and is paid very nicely for her job. She works five days a week, and we negotiated this job to be somewhere around three and a half or four hours a day and it varies based upon medical needs.
The key of all of this is, discovery doesn't look at it can and cant’s. It really is a word that we have thought about very hard and we don't use the word discovery lightly. I understand that most of us think about discovery as going to the moon or looking under the sea, or seeing something you haven't seen before. But a sense of noticing or realizing something. And I think that is what we perceive discovery as. It is really getting to know who this person is and thinking about what it is they can offer from that perspective.
Generally, most of us in the initial discovery use our words basically, and in past times we have talked about just asking questions, what you like to do, but quite frankly, most folks tell us that this is the top of the iceberg. We get the very tip top of this iceberg, and we need to know a lot more. Most of the time, people don't have that kind of insight into who they are, so we have a tendency to think about, that just because we are here and in my office, what we see is what we’ve got. I've of like for you to think about each person that you are working with and particularly during discovery, that it’s a puzzle. That you are trying to get different perspectives of who they are.
And that the piece of the puzzle that you are seeing today is how this person got to your office. Whether or not it was late or not, it was not any evaluative term. They got here late, they weren't at work on time and that is an evaluation. Discovery talks about who got you here today, was that out of their usual pattern? It is not predictive, it is ecological. When they came here and they have to figure out how to get her here during the time in which they are working, they had a difficult time getting her here three times. So it is that kind of information that you are looking for. I think the important pieces understanding that people represent kind of a puzzle.
Many times we see disability as a fog. I can really almost say that when I go to an agency and start working with them, they will describe the, that is the person that -- and they might use language that would describe the behavior that they have done. Yes, he hasn't back three times, or this person gets mad and quits. Sometimes we will even hear about people being labeled quitters. That to me is fog around a person. It is a piece of who they are but we need to not let that obscure the whole purpose of getting to know them. When you get to know them, pay attention to how the disability itself impacts their life complexities. Thee are going to be, and I have to tell you, those folks with mental health issues finding out how those mental health issues impact their life can be very difficult, because you may be meeting the person when they are on their medication, life is good, they seem to be getting things in order, and a piece of Discovery says we have to go back and look at what life is like when it is not good so we might negotiate with an employer if Jane doesn't show up for work for three days without calling in, instead of firing her, could you negotiate to contact somebody? And that is what discovery does, it lets us know these things we may have to negotiate.
We end up with a picture of the person and a very useful description of the person. You want to think about it as discovery gets you to think about what the complexities are, the useful description, and then, who are they? What are they? What motivates them? And I really only do fears and things like that kind only if it emerges. I focus more on what you think about in terms of possibilities. Where do you think things might go. I don't talk about it yet, but as I get to know the person, my questions might lead into that.
Discovery is a process that has some basic steps to it that I will be taking your through. But you have to have this mind set, this way of thinking. Let go of the whole concept of the disability as a fog, or the complexity as a fog. Think about, how would I describe this person? Because that description is what we need to have that will guide us really to who the person is. The discovery really is in non-traditional common-sense form. It is so common sense that it folks typically say -- I have even had people say that that is just a touchy-feely get to know process. Excuse me; it is a very skilled process. I have seen people go through the activities that identify, but yet they can't come out by simply answering the question, who is this person? And that is what discovery does.
If you enjoy people, it is a very enjoyable process to allow yourself to get to know them. Helping them get to know themselves, and this is critical piece, it cannot go to plan until you actually know who this person is, and it has to be bigger than you knowing it.
We really feel like you have to spend time with a person. Spending time with them comes in a variety of ways and I will outline those ways. We also want you to begin to focus on if you are seeing the worst of a person today, then where would I see the best? And so when I hear someone describing, you haven't been around this person, this person hits people. The first thing I want to know, where do they not hit? Where do they never hit? That’s the person I want to go in with. Not only for my own personal safety but that’s also the person who does best with this person that gives me a model of what environments might work best with this person. So you began to think about who this person is at their best with. It is so common sense but yet a very skilled process. You want to look at the unique contributions.
The thing that you want to think about is paying attention to where people are at their best and if you see any unique contributions. That is where you will focus. Look at where and who are the best with? Think about settings. Understand the setting. Understand that discovery is not your plan. The minute you go out and spend time with someone, and you begin to have clarity with someone, it is not for you to decide, let me go here on your behalf. It really goes to, hey, I need to inform you of who you are and then in empower that person within their own planning.
In fact, the next webinar that you will have is on planning. I will be doing, how do you take discovery information into that next step? And if you look at the last bullet point, it is self -determination and customer choice. We actually feel like one of the things that you really offer a person is, here is who you are, and of course, they are going to approve all of that. It is not you coming over and saying here is who you are. It is a process done with a person, not for or to someone.
There are a couple of approaches to discovery; we have really had most of our experience over the past fifteen years with a facilitated process. This is best done if you have one person as an employment professional that does this. Basically that one person is assigned either from an assessment roll as an evaluator to do discovery as opposed to a formal evaluation, to come in and do the discovery with that person.
Or, you might use a group process. I have my most of the experience is in the facilitated process, but probably over the last five years I have been engaged in group processes where people came the same day and run a discovery work group in a job center. I ran a group where we brought in folks with mental health issues and they brought their teams. We went through a series of group experiences of discovery.
Probably this next piece is the next piece I’ve had the least experience with and that is sending people information and letting them kind of coach themselves on doing self discovery. Actually there are a lot of employment type skills out there that people are already looking for, for self discovery. In fact, it was interesting because you’ll see some writers actually talking about just the word discovery itself and there will be a discussion around that.
If you are listening to this, you may find that you have access to someone that can do a facilitated discovery either through your evaluators that are offering this as an option to providing services, you might find that you have to coach someone through doing discovery where you actually ask them to bring information in to you and you work with them on an individual basis to where you gather this. However, both of those two processes coached and self and you really don't get to do all of the activities.
These are the basic strategies for facilitated discovery. It is not any one of these that is more powerful than the other, there is certainly conversation with someone, however, we find that if people can use words to communicate, it clouds something, but he will see something demonstrated in how they carry out the actions that they don't necessarily want something that you think they do because they say what you want them to. So I put a lot of validity into observation. My observation time with people. My time together with the person. My interview is basically setting up a kind of categories, and then from those categories it moves over into conversation. So you will find that I use all four of these together.
Almost critically are going out in the community with the person to do a familiar activity and a novel activity. Going to a familiar place gives you a sense of, if this person has been here 15 times, how did they get there? Because this should be counted at their best. If you know they are going to a Wal-Mart and they have been there before and they shop their weekly, you should get a sense of how organized they are and what is your knowledge base, and of what is the layout of the store. So you get a sense. Ask questions. How long have you been coming here? How often? So you get a sense of by coming here this often this is how this person works in that environment.
When you take a person to a new environment, you are really looking at, are they paying attention to natural queues? Natural queues are the things that guide anybody to do an activity. One of the more common things is like going to the post office. Almost always there is a line, and every line is managed differently. And some people behind the counter will expect you to walk up. Some people behind the counter will expect you to wait until you are called upon. Those are subtleties that in our environment help us learn and if a person pays attention to what did the person before them do. Then they follow that model, than they are paying attention two natural queues. So that is kind one of the things that I learn when I take a person to someplace new. Someplace they have never been before. It really helps this person to have that picture of who they are. And its not good or bad because what you're doing is describing here who this person is and that is what you are looking for is who is this person; in this environment they do that.
One things that Mike and I have really learned over the last three years is that people are able to go out and do discovery activities, but then they have a hard time when they get to this translation piece. The translation piece is taking everyday activities and then translating them into the person’s ideal conditions for success. Their interest toward employment and their contributions. There is a real skill here that you have at the beginning of discovery you are gathering information. Once you have gone through a series of activities that are outlined, and you do the initial gathering of information, then the you go into translation mode, where you are really saying, he did this and he did this, but I noticed in these environments that this work best consistently. And if I gave him a description of where he was going first. It seems to have set things up very successfully.
So your translation piece is the last piece of your discovery. You actually will go through three processes. But one of the things I will pull up here is that I we don't put a lot of validity into just asking people. We’ve been involved in multiple projects where somebody has come in and said where do you want to work and gone back 18 months later to see if that person was in that job. And what we found is that people that went through a process, had clarity, got offered things that they had never considered and were much happier there, however it wasn't part of the initial asking.
So you really have to think. Sometimes when you are asking a person a question, different people will ask and you will get different answers. People often tell us what we think we want them to say, and so, it going to be very different. When you are in discovery, you will use some asking, but you are going to ask about five different ways and back it up with some observations out in the community, and where you have a question, that is when you will go back to. I hear you say that you would really like to be able to start work at eight in the morning and yet, every time there was a discovery activity, with could not start before 10. Help me understand, is that about transportation and working that through and building that relationship with the person to where they are very clear that this is something that they can customize around who they are, not a job opening that is there. For instance for some people this works really well with eight in the morning. So it is all going to depend on who is that person.
When you say the “Who” of discovery, we are really looking at the person of concern. You have to spend a lot of time with that job seeker. You have to talk with their family and loved ones. We all understand that self-determination really talks clearly about the job seeker and the person on your client load that is the individual. We all know that none of us live independently, we all live interdependently, and many of us contribute to a household. We have to talk to our family and loved ones around us, and if someone is living with their family, it is almost like the family has more influence and so we really have to pay attention to the people who they are living with that are significant to them. Because number one, those may be the people that will support your activities, and those may be the people that do not support your activities. And part of doing discovery is knowing those kinds of things. Understanding the connections in the community. I really look at who does the family know, and make lists of who they know and who calls, and if they get a phone call during discovery, I’m making a list. I ask, “do you mind if I ask who called?” Is this somebody who is close? Do they know people in the community? Because the time will come when you will go to plan and they will say they know no one. Your discovery really captures who are people that might be helpful to open doors for us. You use the who here. The person, the family, close and trusted friends, neighbors professionals that care, all that with the permission of the job seeker. So understand that you are doing this to process and these are the people and you have a set of things you want to learn from them.
Where? We feel like there is a couple of places that have to go. One is you absolutely have to make a home visit and sometimes this is where you find who is doing discovery. If it is an alternative to an assessment, that person may have to get out of their building and they will have to do it in a variety of environments to get a chance to see who this person is.
One of the other things is to find places where the person is. Find out where they are most who they are. If you find they are very comfortable in a certain place try to visit with them a couple of times there. If you can look at and think about going to the community and I explained to you earlier about why you would go to a familiar place and a novel place.
The next place is where that person spends their day. If this is a youth and you are supporting transition Services, you may find that have to go to school. If this is a person that is at home, and spending most of their time at home, or it may be where they spend most of their time an aunt or an uncle during the day, you have to go to that environment and see where that person is, and learn about them in that environment.
This is young man, and one thing that was so clear to him when I met him, is that he was going to use all the pieces of customize employment. Discovery was the foundation of that for him. So we went through the process with him. And by the way, discovery is not a questionnaire. It’s not an outline form. We will give you a profile to put it in and that is kind of the report format. It is really a process that you have to go through. It’s optimistic and every time you look for and find the deficit, then you need to say where does this not work? For instance when somebody says to me, he won't talk to people or he won't do this, then I say, where does he do that? So I am always trying to find the optimistic picture of who that person is.
When I met this young gentleman, he didn't speak with me. Basically when I talked, he would either listen or sometimes he would repeat back exactly what I said. However, when I got to see him around people that really knew him, he was a person that really clearly recognized the folks that were familiar with him, and could use one or two words with them and they typically had some pictures to use with him. So the thing I learned right there was that in a work setting, I needed to have him with a couple of things; number one, it would be where he could be a round of the same people every day so they could get to communicate with him. The second thing was the people that had a pace in their work environment where they could stop to communicate instead of passing in the hall and giving communication. This gentleman needed a few minutes two process the information and communicate back.
Comprehensiveness. I had to look at everything from transportation, which is a key problem in employment. You have to be real clear when you do discovery. One of the things I am flushing out, where are we getting this job from? Home or aunt’s house or from a program or using public transportation. You want to be non-competitive. Not using language like, he is slow. Or he doesn't do this like others. Non-competitive requires us to get descriptive. That talks about you seen him use a copy machine or shredder on the side. It talks about that he goes through a routine and the way you would describe that is he goes through so many cases in so many in the hours and typically, if he has a problem, he will go in the other room and sit down and wait until the manager comes back in to fix the machine or correct anything, and that not only gives you pace but also information around how is supports needs are, “someone to go in there and fix it”, that is a rich description.
Robust: you would talk about him always been there for almost missing no time at work or schools. You could talk about him, quickly going to translate, we can't guarantee he is going to come to work but here is his history in the past. We can talk about when he does things, he not one to wander around or talk to people. This man stays on task and completes it. Doesn’t stop until he does complete it. And somebody in autism might think that because he does it the same way over and over again and we need to break that. When I told his mother that was a valuable work experience and that employers liked people who had routine and ritual in their methodology in completing a task because they have built in performance standards if we taught it in a certain way.
So you end up with this optimistic, comprehensive, noncompetitive, very descriptive and robust and last but not least, respectful narrative descriptive picture of the job seeker. And the job seeker is going to read this and the job seeker and his family are going to say, “yep that’s me”.
And some of your observation skills are going to be looking at what is the task, describing the motivation to do the task. By that I mean, we had asked him two or three times to come do it. Or he volunteered. Or he waited. Or he ask me could he do something? That is how you describe the motivation. You don't say he is or is not motivated.
What is the performance of the task? That is where you get into the pace. Where you get into correctness. When he finished shredding, all of the boxes were complete. He completed so many in a certain amount of time. The equipment was cleaned up and put away and all paper was put away in its proper place. That talks about correctness.
Who did they do the task with? This gives us a sense of whether or not there was support there at that time. May also be a connection? If someone was doing a task with someone, this may be a community task at a local church, than that person might actually be a support person for you. So those are the kind of ways that you think about discovery. That is the skill need of this. You can go do a home visit and go do all these other things, but unless you are able to describe richly. And then this piece of focusing on performance, being able to pay attention to the best of who this person is, competency versus deficits. Where is this person at their best? Just grabbing an actual behavior if you see anything challenging. Then describe the solutions.
One of the best things I can say when you say to anyone – “when you ask him to do this and he doesn’t do it and he typically does this, then tell me what it takes to get him to typically do it. Does it take two or three more requests or does he do it the next day or he does it at his own pace?
That is where those solutions are absolutely critical. You are saying to me out there, “where are we going to find him a job where he moves at his own pace and his performance looks different?” What you have to understand is, this tells you the kind of employer you are going to target. Are you want to target an employer that needs the task done at 12:00 like doing hamburgers for McDonalds at noon? Or are you want to have an employer that needs tasks done by the end of the week? I negotiated for a young boy to fold pizza boxes and have them all ready by the weekend. He was medically fragile. We could not even guarantee what day of the week he could come into work. But we could say that three days out of five, he typically comes in. On the fifth day if he is not there by Friday morning we will have backup support in there. So we built all those things in with the employer to negotiate that. But if we had not flushed out performance and actual support needs and pace at all of those things, we would not have been able to do the negotiation.
So this is real focus on performance and how a person does things in order to move forward. The key thing that I think that most people have trouble with in doing discovery is they have trouble describing. You will be surprised how you evaluation lens crops up. Even for me it crops up now. I will go out on a discovery activity with someone and I will go, oooh this feels slow. Slow is evaluative. I force myself into, how far did this person go and distance to do this? At what time did they start and end? And many times I find that my initial evaluative judgment is so different when I put it down it takes ten minutes to go through these nine doors and we are going about 150 feet. Then you go, “Hey, that’s pretty decent!” But when you are looking at somebody and they are doing it, it may feel different. So even if it took them an hour to do that, it does not matter. It is not fast or slow that guides us to a job. What does guide us to a job is that description of how that person does a particular task. In addition to that, their knowledge base as they are doing it, the manner in which they are doing it. It is almost as if you're taking something and you're trying to see the best of the person at every point, and once you do, you zoom in on that so that you are able to say, how long did it take them to do that? What supports were in place? Those kind of things that make it work. They all now, if he were to put us in front of a computer and each of us had to use each other's computer, it would take time to make the adjustment as we go through this.
The what of discovery is community connections and the description of the applicant and it really starts in that format. The profile really starts with who is this person is in their community. Where do they go? What kinds of places? How did they get there? What social groups are they in? This is where you are looking at connections, transportation, and places they are familiar with and then that rich description of the applicant.
This third piece, summary, is when you get into the translation activities. You are really translating who is this person is into those three characteristics of work. That is where you're talking about the final piece, characteristics of the customize work situation which is getting into understanding what in environment does this person work best in. And by the way, some of our research and data basically says that most folks lose their jobs because of social skills. And most social skills connect back to the environment for me. So if we can have clarity about what kind of environment this person works best in then we have a matching a situation much better to get going here.
Discovery allows us to look at all of these issues. I won’t go through all of these, but I really want to point out just a few things here. You are wanting to look at the responsibilities that the person may have. Anything that is complex and some of the complexities a person has. Some of the complexities I’ve had, people want to work, and you spend time with them and all that motivates a person might be food. Then you find out they are overweight and on a diet. So then you trying to say, there are some things that motivate that we do not use to drive our job. There are some things that we clearly used to drive our job as an area of interest. So you really have to understand the complexities of the people that we begin to work with.
This next piece is basically a description. This is an example of what you might have. With youth I am recommended more of a profile that is like a combination PowerPoint so that youth can learn to take that assessment and introduce themselves to others and be empowered with their knowledge. And this would be like with school personnel or other interagency people that they are working with, but it would still be used as a guide to a job.
So the next thing here is, as you read this, and if you just look at this, it gives you kind of a description of how Jenni communicates. And by the way, most employers are more anxious around how to communicate with this person that you represent than anything.
The young man from Texas, when we interviewed his boss later, she said the most powerful tool that we had was the portfolio that we introduced him with. Because the portfolio described how he communicated, and we let her no right away that he would not be talking or answering her questions and in a new meeting with strangers, people around him usually answered his questions. That was a very powerful piece of information.
Again, don’t start in with questions. In fact we don't have on any part of the profile or any part of the discovery that says, where do you want to go to work? We really focus on who are you. Who are you? What are the pieces here? And those pieces I described earlier are critical pieces in employment.
It typically takes about 20 hours to do discovery, a range of 16 to 24. The average time, it needs to be done in 3 to 6 weeks and averages four. We recommend that if you don't use the facilitated model, that for a learning model, it would take two or three members two get on a team together and learn how to do this together as a team. We will be offering some of this kind of training through TACE is also offering each state what we termed a “community of excellence”. But it is really about learning how to use customized employment in your state. So there will be some technical assistance available at a later time depending upon what state you're in and what your state directors choose to do in order to build that capacity or to build on the customize employment capacity within your community.
In most places that have already done this, they have taken a facilitated model. One person basically does the process itself after a person knows how to do this. You can see that this really is a putting together. You’re going to find that it takes you out of your office and it takes you into a person’s home. It really requires you to build a relationship. You have to have that assumption that you have to build that relationship of trust. Therefore you have a clarity that the picture you are seeing is the true picture and not the picture that someone is putting up for us today. That is why you are doing multiple trips with the person so you don't get a picture of one day and you think that represents the whole person's life.
We feel like to have to do it just to sum up some things here. Number one, I have talked a good bit about how the disability impacts your life. The second thing is critical. Intimate topics. Let me tell you what I think intimate topics are. Sex is an intimate topic. He will find that there will be some people who have issues about sex in their lives. You are going to find that there are some people who have issues about sex in their lives. You are going to find that there will be some families that have concerns about vulnerability of their person that they love that we are serving. That is a very intimate topic, and that is one of those that you typically have to wait to build a relationship with. The next topic that is very intimate to me is money. You don’t walk into a family and talk about how much money you make. But at the same time, all of us are required to gather that information at some point. So if you are talking with a job seeker, and they are receiving Social Security benefits, we really have to think about bringing in our benefits planner. Typically, you have to broach the topic as a facilitator of discovery and talk about, but you know, I think you guys may be getting some social security benefits here and I’d really like you to know that you can work and receive benefits. That they are very compatible and there is a lot of support. You may have to do during discovery the upstart discussion around Social Security and get through to where people are willing to have somebody come in that might offer, and I understand that its called Work Incentive Planning rather than Benefits Planning, and so either you want to bring somebody in during discovery, because they will help flesh out the number of hours a day that this person's comfortable working. You are going too flush out the actual physical stamina, the time away from home during your discovery that the person could work. The benefits person will come in and help flush up financially what they are comfortable working at and come into some negotiation and agreement about that. It is absolutely critical before you go into planning.
The third piece is that whole piece around trust. They are going to talk to you about some issues. And issues typically come back two sexual concerns, they may come back about, we pay the house notes with this person's Social Security check, their SSI check. So how can we jeopardize our house note? Those things have to have a trust from you. In fact, I actually have kind of a spiel that I talk about that discloses how I feel about benefits early on to a family so that I open the door right away to say to the family that this is very comfortable with me.
The discovery piece really tells us my negotiations. What I think I might need to negotiate. It might be different with this person once I see them in the context of their whole family unit. Its back to that, what I think their physical stamina to work is, is what the family and the person is willing to go to work to do.
The discovery puts those pieces together. It allows you to empower them with knowledge and what you're doing. So it really has a whole series of things that it can offer you.
Without discovery, you cannot customize. That is just as clear as I can say it. When I walk in and people go “we customized this job for this person”. And yes they might have gone in and tweaked some things according to the tasks. But where is your discovery that says the whole person is here? Where is that guide that talks about the characteristics of their work? Those three areas? I personally think that you and I have to think about those three areas before we can go on to another job.
Your next step is going into planning for customized outcomes, their relationship to the IPE, and that’s going to be our next webinar.
So let me stop here and let's go through any questions you guys might have and start with that. Let’s open the floor up for the chat to taking questions that you might have about the discovery process. The floor is open for questions now and if you have questions, please type them in a public chat.
Question: Hello Norciva, we do have a couple of questions that came up in a public chat. I'll go ahead and read one and if you can address it, it is from Aretha Perkins. Do you know if any community rehab providers, like good will, etc., are using this method?
Answer: This is our thing here. Each community looks entirely different, and across the country, there are pockets of community rehab providers that are doing this already. In some states I have had the providers go to the funders and say “we would like to have this”. In some states, interestingly enough, in the last two years, I have had other rehab or funders saying that we need our providers to know how to do this. One of the first things you might want to do is go to your providers and asked them, “Have you had discovery? Do you know how to do discovery?” And if they say no, then that is a critical piece of information you need to pass up the ladder to your state level people, because we need to look at how we get your providers information on discovery. One of the things we will be doing in January is planning next year's training 2010 and further training. We might want to think, do we want to provide some CRP provider training in our community here? That is the best I can do for that answer. Steffany, do you want to the to the next question?
Question: Yes. Why do you typically include as members of the discovery team. Excuse me, who do you typically include as a member of the discovery team?
Answer: Well, it varies based upon two things. One is, say you are a rehab counselor and you are asking a CRP to go out and provide discovery. That is a facilitated provided service at that point. I probably don't have anybody but one person, that person doing the actual discovery. They may interview you, because you have knowledge of the prison where the person. The they go interview you because you have knowledge of the person. They may interview the person, they may do all those things I talked about, but they may do it as a solo and not as a team. Now let's take when you are learning this process. We really advocate that when people are learning discovery that as many people get involved as possible. And so in some places we may say so the rehab counselor might need to be on it. And so the reason for that is not so you would do discovery in your everyday job, because many of you have caseloads where you could not it is not appropriate for you to. However, we want you to experience one so that you have a sense of what discovery is, who should get it, and also so you have some understanding what discovery could provide you so that you know what a quality product looks like when it comes to you. That is kind of one of the critical pieces. So that is kind of a handle of thinking about that. Am I doing discovery to learn it or am I doing this to offer this as a service? And so you have to kind of walk through which one of those two are you going to have.
Question: Okay. To move to the next question, Mary Jane says, I think discovery would be a wonderful tool for the IEP team for addressing transition and planning for post secondary activities. Are you familiar with any schools using discovery?
Answer: Mary Jane, I'm glad you asked the transition question that goes here. Actually, I just got through using six years of doing discovery in a couple of school districts here in Mississippi with a pilot project with the Department of Rehabilitation Services under a Social Security grant. Florida has got schools during discovery and different pockets there and Kentucky, I was just there recently and will be there next week. We are beginning to see discovery used a lot. And it is interesting that you should ask because discovery really needs to have two different looks. From the school perspective, were advocating that they use the discovery process starting as early as age 10 just to begin some of the pictures of what type of work experience as the student should have, so we are building individualize work experiences to what Mike and I call matched work experiences to a student's area of interest as opposed to a general work experience. In the final transition years, I think that you might want to think about getting an external out of the school system discovery process done. Done by people that have not seen the student grow up. And I really think that is probably one of the better strategy is, particularly during those last years that you have an external, and when I say external, outside of the school system, discovery process. So two different ways I think that should probably be handled to answer your question there.
Question: Thank you. And we have another question from CNJ and S. It says, can you elaborate on Person Centered Planning and the discovery process?
Answer: I would love two. About 12 years ago I wrote a paper about the differences between the two. Both processes are good. Both processes do different things. Discovery is the foundation also of any good Person Centered Planning. Some of the people and leaders in the field that we have time to extensively about this understand clearly that we cannot go to a Person Center Planning meeting without knowing who the person is.
However, there are two things. When you are looking at Person Center Planning, you are looking at a person’s whole life. But you are also looking at that person’s whole lives richness and voids. By that, they're life outcome may be to have relationships. It may be a job. But you're looking at such a broad picture of who that person is, that you may not have to focus. And we kind of began to distinguish that, that you would have a vocational lens on when you do discovery for employment. For instance, when I am doing Person Centered Planning, and I have done both of these processes. When I’m doing Person Centered Planning I first look at, how rich is this person's life? What kinds of things are in it? What kinds of things are not in it? What is really important to that person? And sometimes, work may not be the most important thing that goes through there. The other thing is, when you have distinction between discovery is that is very vocationally focused. We have narrowed it down to a set of discovery questions that allows you to translate it into how the picture of that person makes sense of that work.
So in a IPE or in a Person Center Planning meeting, it may have one meeting after another and that is how people basically conduct meetings. And in a customized employment approach, you could start with a discovery that could beat facilitated by one person. You would go to a plan and there would only be one planning meeting. That planning meeting we will talk about next time, is very focused on employment outcomes and very strategic to the employment with critical questions that go with employment as opposed to a general action plan. The are just some of your simplistic basics around that.
The other, probably major piece that is here, is who comes to your Person Center Plan are basically people that know the person or many times you do discovery in that meeting. When you do a vocational plan, you may have people that know the community and more of the business focus in there because you have already done your discovery and know who the person is. Those are a couple really big critical differences that might be helpful.
Question: Our next question is from Barbara, it says, you mentioned the “Discovery Profile”, where can we find that?
Answer: Thank-you very much. And I see you are from Lea school somewhere. I guess I need to put that up on the web so you guys can get that. That is one of the things I need to do in the next day or two, getting the profile up there. It is a form. We typically don't like to just give the form, because people feel like they fill the form and we’ve done the discovery. But the form is just a way two gather information. So since we are only doing four webinars this year, or this time period in this series, we may chose at another time to come back and spend very focused time on discovery and the profile of the finished product if you guys would like that. But I will put it up soon.
That sounds like a good idea.
Question: Our next question is from Mark. And he says, what is the end product? Is there a written report to summarize findings? It seems like a report would be very long because so many of the areas of behavior are looked at.
Answer: The written report is really the profile itself. And that is a product. In fact, in some states like Alaska and Michigan, I know it was used many times in other states. The profile itself is the written documentation of the discovery, and it has been captured in various formats. And there is also an activity log where you can kind of identify, I did go on a familiar activity. I do go out in the community with this person. And it gives us a sense of, for instance, like if a rehab counselor gets the profile, and she knows that the first part of it is a connection to the community, the second part is a description, and the third part is where you are using your skills to say, out of all these experiences, these are the patterns that I see that are what guide us toward a job. And then its in that piece that there are three different pieces of the discovery process. They are actually called part one, part two and part three. That is the report, and I will make sure I attach the log with it.
And when a counselor gets that report, they are actually able to see it. It is not predictive. It is basically, here’s who the person is. And here are the types of environments that I think they work best in. Here are the things that seemed to best motivate them in their area of interest. And next month, by the way, next month on planning I’ll take these three areas of ideal characteristics and really spend most of the session on flushing out and identifying interest. Flushing out contributions and how you define that because there are five different ways two think about it. So yes, it is the report.
Question: The next question is from Christine Hadley, and she says, which state agencies have been able to fund the discovery program?
Answer: It is very interesting. State agencies vary in every state. Golly as much as, in the early 2000's, we worked in Texas for around five years. And their Medicaid services and their state vocational and some of their rehab counselors there we're paying for discovery. In Alaska, I know that the Department of Labor and Vocational Rehabilitation Services, and now the Department of Health and Human Services that also provides services to their behavioral Health which is their Medicaid funded services that are there. And in Kentucky, I know a rehab counselor can ask for it there but I don't know if it is built into the system. I know that in Florida, the folks I have talked with there, they talk about that you can get it. Whether or not it is funded at a different rate or not, I don't know. Many states are allowing discovery to be done as an other, other assessment. Some states are including it like referring this person to supported employment and having the number of hours that are delegated to the CRP to include discovery as part of that. So each state, and I think it is really becoming an impetus now to where people are having to clearly identify it and put it in a state plan as making an offer there. I hope that was helpful to you.
Question: That was our last question that I see in a public chat. I will ask one more time, are there any more questions?
Norciva: And while we are possibly waiting for that, I noticed that someone has got, they are saying that so far in Florida, we don't fund it. We try to get code for funding as our agencies are willing to provide the service. If you work for the rehab organization and you are trying to get it, I know that we will be working there too. But I do know that we do have folks in your school systems that are using it also, but I could have not misunderstood that as I listened to them.
I would encourage you guys two tune into the next webinar to tune in to the rest of this. This is one part of four. Mike did an overview in September, on an Overview of Customized Employment. I’m doing the one on Discovery. Next month it will be planning and walking out of that plan with a blueprint of where do you go for a job. And the fourth piece, Mike will be doing a December webinar on working with employers. I have forgotten the exact title but it does have to do with it engaging employers and approaching them differently. And primarily, if you understand customized employment, you don't go for a job opening, you actually go in and identify unmet needs and make a proposal to the employer. And that will be one of the things he is going to be training on in December.
Steffany, I think that it's everything from me. Thank you for your attention and your questions. If you have individual ones you have my e-mail address. If you have a question, please put from the webinar so I can have clarity to which webinar you are referencing since I am doing about three this week. I need to make sure I'm clear.
Thank you guys, I look forward to talking with you next month.
Steffany: Thank you so much for your expertise, and as you all see, her information is located in front of us, and if you need to contact her. Also, you can send in questions to the TACE at our web site. We appreciate the time you have taken to present your expertise to our audience Norciva. And I would like to remind participants that a transcript of the session along with all handouts will be posted nad available on our TACE web site within two weeks of this session. You can find that also on the web site. Tacesoutheast.org
Please remember to complete your evaluation of today's session. Your feedback is very important to our continued planning of our sessions that we provide for you. Also, this session has been approved for CEU and CRCC credits. Please feel free to contact us through that TACE project email, and you can send it to TACEsoutheast@law.syr.edu. And you can send all your questions to that email and I will be happy to forward them or any comments you may have to Norciva.
With that, I will bring the session to a close.
Okay. I wanted to go ahead and see if you have any questions, and I wanted to remind everyone today to please complete the evaluation from today's session, and we do thank you for your participation and your feedback is valued. Also, you can get CEU and CRCC credits for this webinar they are posted. Once you complete and passed the test. You can also send an e-mail to TACEsoutheast@law.syr.edu and contact us with any questions or anything that you may think of after the presentation, and I will be happy to forward those on to Norciva our presenter.
I wanted to thank you Norciva for your presentation today and providing us with your expertise and we look forward to hearing from you on the November 18th webinar.
Thank you all, and have a great day.
[Event Concluded, October 21, 2009]