You'll look around the room you'll notice that there are not a lot of diversity
officers that there are not a lot of ADA coordinators here today and there's a
reason for that our office along with other state agencies is a member of the
Disability Employment advocacy group which is made up of nonprofit entities state
governments advocates that are out there and one of the the asks of them was for us as a state
to better figure out opportunities for consumers of Mass Rehabilitation
Commission and Mass Commission for the Blind in that vein I had held a
roundtable about a month and a half ago and we had figured out that we honestly
believe the diversity officers ADA coordinators are doing the good job of
bringing qualified applicants with disabilities to the hiring managers but
ultimately were not necessarily seeing results we'd like to see of those
qualified individuals being hired and that is why we are holding this for
hiring managers mostly because we want to demystify the process mostly because
we want to make clear and make sure that you folks ultimately know that we know you can
reach out to us you can reach out to the folks at MRC and MCB for assistance for
internships for hiring for the questions that you have and that's generally what
we're here today to talk about hopefully you'll walk away here today I'm having a
better understanding of the application process of what consumers are
available and generally what are the obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act for qualified individuals
The Massachusetts office on Disability set out in state law to bring about the full
and equal participation of persons with disabilities in all aspects of life one
of the relevant areas as to why we're here today one run that employment
advocacy is that we are the ADA coordinating agency for the executive
branch of state government so in that we provide advice technical assistance
trainings we serve on various boards and commissions one of them being the
employment advocacy group which led to the roundtable which led to us being
here today and providing this resource for you folks as hiring managers
recruiters and HR personnel real quick I just want to touch on the civil rights
definition for disability we often recognize that there are a lot of
definitions for disability out there there's a definition for disability
relative to the receipt of SSDI benefits and that really focuses on one's ability
to perform jobs that are available in the public relative to other specific
limitations and disability there's another definition for example of
disability on how you can receive a handicap placard and that really focuses
on someone's ability to ambulate and move what we're talking about today is
we're talking about the civil rights definition for disability and it's the
widest and broadest legal definition for disability which states is that a
this is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more
major life activities notice we don't say disability we focus on physical or
mental impairment and sometimes I get a lot of questions from hiring managers
HR personnel when we receive medical documentation but doesn't list the
specific disorder disease or disability that's okay that's okay we often also
get questions about substantially limits and that doesn't mean completely
incapacitated it means that you're limited as compared to someone in the
average or the general public okay so for a great example that would be if I
utilize the facilities more frequently than someone else because of
the disability I may receive protection and may be eligible
for reasonable accommodation in the employment realm
I'm going to move on
here there are two other prongs of disability by having a record of such an
impairment or being regarded as having such an impairment I'm going to pass
over those two I'm going to really focus today on those limitations so one of the
things we talked about is major life activities as you can see here this is a
non-exhaustive list of sitting working learning these are all things that are
major life activities around 2010 to ADA definition expanded to also include
major bodily functions so as I mentioned my example if you're limited to the
ability for adjustment of limitations things of that nature those things may
not be obvious to the eye that you may be eligible for civil rights protection
under the disability definition again not exhaustive list the ABA definition
here I said the back two prongs are having a record of such an impairment so
a great example with that would be if I have cancer for example and someone
passes up on me for a promotion because of that belief that I may not be in
a position that I may be here for a few years from now so that would be a good
example of disability discrimination again I said I wouldn't mention it
but also going to regarded as a great example that would be someone who is not
necessarily limited in any major life activity but for example let's say
there's a rumor around the office that individual has ADD but they don't
actually have it right they're not substantially limited to any major
life activity or bodily function but the reality is in that scenario
that employers are treating them that way and therefore they would receive
protection under the ADA
the last piece I'm going to talk about is a slight tweak to
this civil rights definition in the employment context right and that says
that a qualified individual with a disability is an individual with a
disability who's able to perform the essential functions of the job with or
without reasonable accommodation right so that's someone who meets that
definition that I just mentioned but they also have to be qualified and in
that qualification they have to have the skills experience education
certification and training and often times one of the misconceptions is I am
forced to or I have to where I may be in a position where I need to hire
someone who ultimately can't do the job and hopefully through talking through
these things today talking about some of the internship and job placement
programs and opportunities that are available out there we're hoping to team
up with folks that very well are persons with disabilities but they are
qualified for the jobs that they're applying for in the jobs that MRC and
MCB can link you up with so again that's the goal here today and it's to try to
better educate you folks on those opportunities on the to agencies that
can assist you with those opportunities we finish here with a contact page so if
you need to reach out to us feel free to come to me and come to Moss at the end of the
training we'd be happy to help you out on that but right now I'm going to turn
it over to our first speaker Mr. Bill Allen the Director of Statewide Job
Placement Services he is a resource he is a titan in the state and I am going to turn it over
to him to really go into some of the opportunities that he can help you out with
I'm going to read the mission to you it encapsulates every day that I get up every day that an area director
wakes up every day that a counselor supervisor clerical staff commissioner
assistant commissioner every staff person that comes to our office job
specialist employment service specialist we endear ourselves to this
mission Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission promotes equality empowerment
and independence of individuals with disabilities
these goals are achieved through enhancing and encouraging personal choice
in the right to succeed or fail in the pursuit of independence and employment
in the community the MRC provides comprehensive services to people with
disabilities that maximize their quality of life in their economic
self-sufficiency in the community that's a long mission statement and it's a
hefty order to follow through on but I believe the Commission does a reasonably
good job at doing this with the support of everyone in this room with the
support of community members and with our combined talent that we have at the
MRC and MCB my colleagues in here he is out dressing me today and I can't wait to see Joe up here but
together as a team in the state of Massachusetts it is a winning
combination and I look forward to working with agencies within
Massachusetts to hire and promote more individuals with disabilities so we have three divisions at MRC vocational
rehabilitation which we will talk about in length community living and
disability determination services community living is really an incredible program to allow
individuals to live independently and to assist individuals with most significant
disabilities to gain access to the community and to live independently
while looking for employment they are basically given an opportunity
to live their lives unlike before our previous Commissioner talks about
community living extensively because he grew up in the situation where he was in a
nursing home and had institutionalized living quarters this division really breaks down that
barrier I don't know the details of community living like others do but it
is is a really substantial part of the Commission and it is really a meeting
entity in the Commonwealth that individuals who get freedom from work but to stabilize
their living situation is what this division does disability determination
services is a social security that having popped up a little bit in terms
of receiving disability benefits in terms of payment making sure that
individuals that have a disability have opportunity to receive benefits from the
federal government and it is really administered through the Social Security
Administration but every state has an agency like disability determination
services in Massachusetts it's given to the MRC so what is the vocational
rehabilitation from my perspective it's an opportunity to educate employers to
the skill set that is needed to get the job done
vocational rehabilitation we actually assist individuals so that they can
figure out what skill set that they have what interest do they have that relate
to employment so our goal at VR vocational rehabilitation
is all about the job employment career path opportunity to grow and flourish
within either public or private sectors today our focus is talking about the
public sector we match individuals my team in particular matches skills set to
the appropriate job or fundamental training to update skills necessary for
employment we do not do this the job placement team does not do this without
the direction of the area directors supervisors and counselors that are
trained and seeped in disability knowledge and understanding of what that
individual brings to bear within the workplace so we're guided way before we
get into a job placement scenario by the counselors that really know that
individual so when you come to us as employers you're getting probably the
best deal in the Commonwealth because these individuals know what they've done to achieve to
move forward with employment we've done assessments we've done interest
inventories and more importantly the consumer or individual seeking
employment is really the powerhouse of driving that that force they have the
driving force by which they go to work from that point we work closely
with employers to understand employment needs and expectations that's my
definition of vocational rehabilitation it is a generic definition because we
want to be integrated into the world of work wherever we can have that
opportunity to do so so we take information from the marketplace we take
information from our counselors and we break them together so that this is the
individual that comes through our doors has an opportunity to really understand
where their efforts can be put to work and where they can be individual
contributors so what do we have our employer services (Evan you are going to
watch my time right) What do we do with employers I'm
going to be talking broadly about private sector employers
as well as our agenda here today to identify how the Commonwealth can move forward
so my team the job placement team made up of job placement specialists and
employment service specialists provide diverse candidates to employers we
pre-screen applicants after they've gone through the rehabilitation process for
lack of a better term they come to us we pre-screen them and we allow them to experience an internship that we've broken down
with employers and with the Commonwealth
you are going to hear from MCB later
about their incredible and rich internship
program
one that MRC wishes
to replicate
we have a resume job matching database
so what we do is take the skill set of
of the individual
and we take marketplace information and we match them up so that's a good fit for the individual
based on their interests skills and abilities
and they are able to
transition from the rehabilitation process into the competitive employment world
one of our events is the hiring event that you will hear more about that as we move forward through the year
there's an opportunity I'm very happy to announce that the Commonwealth takes a really big leadership in coming to that event
I see colleagues Tom and Juanita here today from different agencies that come together to really hire skilled individuals
and that hiring event is not a job fair but an event that really looks at interviewing individuals that day or moving them forward
we need to improve upon that within the Commonwealth and I think that we have made great strife with the individuals that I have seen here today
the customized job-driven training program that I always share with our groups about when President Obama came out with WIOA, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act
he had a vision of really having employers understand who we are by us
individuals working with disabilities understanding what the employment market
is really like so they really came up with job driven training well a year
before that assistant commissioner Phillips said we ought to have job-driven
training programs we ought to go to the employers and say what curriculum do you
need us to train for that are out in the markets that's the different various
market sectors so our program was born before President Obama came out with WIOA
and I always plug Phillips for that because we have a job driven training program
where individuals are trained to the specifications of every market sector
that you can imagine that we have opportunities to serve they include
healthcare manufacturing biotechnology healthcare in customer service
in general so we take curriculum from employers and I'll mention that towards
the end of my presentation and we really train to the specifications of that
employer and the individuals are given an opportunity to leverage a skill set but
also outpace someone that's competitively being interviewed from
someone who is walking down the street so our candidates are given an opportunity to
to really be given an opportunity to to really feel the presence of I can do
this job have the presence of mind to say I'm competing on the same level as
someone without a disability to do this job training
we have OJEs or no-cost services which I'll talk about in a minute tax incentives
so OJEs without putting someone on the spot but I will do that anyways
do you all know Juanita Allen Juanita please stand up for a round of applause
*clapping* I told you I would call you out and didn't know you were going to be here today
I put this in red because
we would not have
this is our internship program I liken it to an internship program it's an internship on
the job evaluation so we have from Jaunita's presentation
an initiative created via a collaboration between the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity and Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission
we got together about a decade ago and I know we are dating ourselves
created in 2008 with a total of 30 successful OJEs to date
the program varies from two to six months it's an opportunity it really is an
opportunity for consumers and I for lack of a better word I'll use that word because that's what I'm
supposed to use but candidates at this point they're really readying themselves
and preparing themselves for the real world of work they have that first-hand
experience and Juanita can attest to this and it's third-party verification not
coming from my mouth but from hers that the team behind the scenes that's these
candidates to ensure that they meet the minimum expectations of the job and I
think Juanita can attest that they go above beyond that consumers gain
additional improved skills employers benefit financially
from skilled individuals that don't need training and can hit the ground running I
can't put any plainer and simpler than that it's an opportunity to get the
real deal some of the assignments are preparation in representation admin or
or job fairs that Jaunita does or create PowerPoint presentations with exposure to
various components of diversity inclusion diversity reports
affirmative action reports veterans persons with disabilities initiative
critiquing resumes and cover letters attending webinars training seminars and
industry-specific conferences managing computer databases and other
administrative duties and writing the self-evaluation at the end that is
powerful that is powerful Juanita and her team and Tom too there is a
whole cache of people here that I didn't know you were going be here they
can do this presentation you're changing lives and you're adding
value to the Commonwealth structure of work they're giving back opportunities
for someone otherwise would be passed by and I can't underscore the value of what
Massachusetts agencies can do for skilled individuals so what happens why
is it successful you just mentioned its real-time experience the projects are
tailored to the candidate strengths opportunity to network for state
jobs and that is hugely powerful successful traffic record of employment
it's a two-way street of communication instructor feedback and dialogue in
collaboration between MRC employer and consumer it really allows us to build an
environment where people can learn and I would suffice to say that we've learned
from individuals that have gone through the OJE
so here's some of the results that occurred under the the oje and direct
placements I might add so we had review examiners the Department of unemployment
assistance that disability advocate hired the Mass Office on Disability
customer service security of the Convention Center Authority business
analyst Massachusetts rehabilitation Commission DCAMM Human Resources
now parole board nurse department of Elder Affairs I am so happy to announce to
you today and upon my research 49 successful employment outcomes over a
five year period we're done with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts surpassing
the wage of our average wage of $14.87 the average wage for someone going to
work for the Commonwealth through the efforts of the oje program and our direct hire
program is $18.42 that is an incredible feat so you're surpassing I think the
national average I have to get back to the to you on that now but I think the national
average is like $17 and change Massachusetts round of applause for Massachusetts
*clapping*
so I'm going to lean on Tom now so there it is I'll put it up on the
screen that's incredible not just entry-level
positions these are positions that are beyond economic self-sufficiency it's a
career decision so Tom thank you so much so what do we mean by customized job-driven
training programs well we meet with employers to identify employment needs
we get curriculum we get job description we break them together we develop the
curriculum on behalf of the employer in this case it would be a Massachusetts
state agency we develop a job driven training plan utilizing with that information and
look at positions and we train to those positions so the job description the
cultural fit and the curriculum is based on that information and then we
then we move forward into a training program we either to train ourselves or we
hire dedicated trainers or we train with the employer we identify qualified and
motivated and MRC consumers that are seeking a career within specific market
sectors I mentioned the resume database this is a database that is competitive and is a
marketplace database small employers use RESUMate because of this database is
really similar to burning glass is that right burning glasses a database that
Salesforce uses you know these huge databases to do high-end job matching
for positions within the business world this does the same thing but at a lower scale
we take skill set and resumes of individuals we match them the 20,000
jobs that we get directly from employers so say that again employers in the Commonwealth are
sending us the direct job leads in asking us to fill them with competitively other
job matching components so our team of JPS and ESS work and consumers and
candidates for employment through vetting process with mock
interviews and free training modules so why would you benefit us in Commonwealth agencies
this would be an open-ended question but I'll answer it you are going to
work with pre-screened candidates this it isn't someone who just walks in off of the street and applies for a job
you're going to know who you're interviewing you're going to be able to observe assess and evaluate a potential
employee before hiring them and you'll get a ton of information that you would not normally get. You will be able to
assign projects to free up your time to identify what projects am I dealing with
and not that you have a lot of projects in state agencies this
offers a solution for you to use some of the skill set to help you to advance your
mission in respective agencies it's consumer-driven so that individual is slated to identify with
that skill set of gonna add value to your agency or your organization and it
assists consumers to improve current connections or employment and we create
ambassadors to promote the organization and MRC can help
conflict resolution within different state agencies that maybe don't understand how to work with people with disabilities
Juanita I have to say that Juanita Allen should have done this presentation, she has been a champion on so many levels as Tom has done as well
as far as really formal internship she's been facilitating this internship program with us and has been breaking down barriers
am I doing alright Juantia *laughing* are you going to double get me now
so this so let's look at the altruistic reason why you do it this is imperitive
and already in place we know slam dunk this is all the jobs that you guys have
been hiring for but look what are you doing for our for our candidates think about
someone not in the world of work and they come to your doors they come
through MRC they have this incredible opportunity to work in government
to bridge a gap in their work history to get a professional reference from someone
like an agency that is duly recognized by the Commonwealth you get to network with
people and make meaningful contacts you have the opportunity to showcase a broader
set of skill set where no other opportunity would be allowed in the
competitive marketplace without having to go a long time to demonstrate your skill
set you expanded your interpersonal skills how you encourage learning from various
projects the employer provides meaningful projects and I'll let Juanita speak to that
consumers are encouraged to do their own job search and apply to positions
during the OJE yet it basically provides a very
powerful reference for the individual so what do you get before you get our
consumers or candidates for employment you get our evidence-based practices and you get
candidate preparation with soft skills workshop so one of the major challenges for industry
is critical thinking skills and you hear it all the time soft skills customer service
skills how do you interact with individuals so that they become ready
for work and be meaningful in the workplace there's all those critical components that's what this particular
skills workshop does we do that behind the scenes job preparation activities
include resume cover letters behavioral and motivational and mock interviews and we prepare people
to disclose or not to disclose and how to disclose their disability as it relates to work
we also provide consultation for the ADA we provide the diversity and sensitivity awareness training
Employee Assistance worksite modifications work with the MRC you can
work with MCB you get long term you get us beyond the 90 days of closure you
get us beyond the year you get us to go 10 years you go 20 if Juanita is still working if Tom
is working we are embedded into the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and it's a
phone call away I can't tell you how many times that we would get a phone
call from a state agency and then our job placement specialist right there on the spot
helps intervene to ensure that the individual is meeting the expectations
of that job and it add adds value to the organization as well so I'm going to
step away from public entity so how are we judged really
you know I can stand here all day and tell you how great MRC is how you can
sit here and say how great your state agency but when you get
third-party verification unsolicited then you know you're on the right track
so I wanted to just do a comparative comment by name this is unsolicited from
CVS so CVS came to us if Rick was in the room I'd say Rick Laferriere from CVS
who just got promoted by the way and is the National director for workforce development for CVS
Massachusetts because of this I think he came to us we went to him and they gave us a
curriculum for a pharmacy technician how many people know what a pharmacy
technician is right CVS Walgreens it's a tough job that job was paying $11
an hour that's disgraceful these individuals are in the health care
system I'm happy to tell you that they've been promoted now of their wages
have increased to $14 an hour minimum and up from there
CVS gave us their proprietary curriculum because it's a highly competitive field as you can guess and we
trained well over 150 pharmacy technicians today across the
Commonwealth in some have gone on to hospice to make 20 30 40 dollars an hour
there's a pharmacy technician hospital that's what you can make you know I
often tell Rick that you can start your career here and they can go on
and maybe a really sizable amount of money as a pharmacy technician so what
happened was CVS decided to really give us an opportunity to really invent
ourselves with this irregular so we're in search of great talent
is critical to our business that would reflect communities and patients we
serve and we believe our team provides CVS a competitive advantage conceding
that talent we help break the cycle of poverty for people who may otherwise
continue down the road of dependency which often spans generations this was
presented at a national conference in the usbln and other conferences these are the
words of Rick Laferriere and why is he saying that because look what happened to CVS
MRC consumers who are hired to be customized pharmacy techs doubled their
retention rate the average cost of turnovers $2,900 for pharmacy technician so if you
hire 65 techs from this program from the time that this was done the total
cost savings to the company was $60,000 they've got a tax credit of over $75,000
and the cost to see CVS cycles four cycles of training back in when he did
the studying is about less than a thousand dollars so the business
imperative speaks loud and clear even better than
that is that if you look at that white space in the middle I'm sorry the
National first bar graph that you see there it's a 52% retention
rate total national CVS so CVS has a 52% rate of retention
you go to the last bar that's Mass Rehab clients 81% what so no wonder why Rick got promoted our
consumers are staying in jobs longer making more money Commonwealth is proving that
by $18.42 the average for us $15.65 so we have a grand opportunity here to
really elevate the skill set and capture them within this opportunity
so I want to share internal challenges because we have and I was pretty honest in past meetings about this so we worked with MGH
now for probably years and the first two years how many placements do you think we've
got the first year with MGH (crowd: "0")
how did you know on replacements you think we've got
the second year work with them (crowd: "0")
so you saw the title of my name director or job
placement services with two years of zero placements when having a dedicated job placement
specialists sitting at MGH with zero outcome when I can go to one unit and
get places like *snaps* that what do you think they are thinking of me they're going to me "Bill maybe it's time for you to move on"
So with the wisdom of Phillips what do you need to do to make this program work
we need to understand your business we need to understand the hiring manager we need to
understand the department manager we need to understand the everyday tasks of
those jobs and where we fell it's not understanding where MGH
expectation was and that was a real challenge so we went back and we thought
we'd hit the ground running with food service janitorial positions
administrative position what we learned was 20 successful employment outcomes
later within the year and a half was that they were hiring at the highest levels
most of our placements business analyst lab research analyst we were we were
hitting the high end of placements because we listened to what they were
asking for let me tell you you don't get hired at MGH because it's the
altruistic thing to do you either can do the job that you can't do it and 20
placements later in but I think there's eight more in the pipeline we also hit
the entry level positions for some individual every job but I'm happy to
tell you that the highest paid individual at MGH right now is making
$85,000 a year so let me profile profile this individual
14 years of MRC 14 years developing a placement strategy for this individual
that was not going to work I worked with this individual and I
stepped aside anyway making $85,000 business analyst was Mass Rehab for 14 years
we did several placements with this individual but when you listen to the employer we
set an interview this individual with no JE2 - sorry we did this on our own level
it was incredibly successful and that broke the code and what I'm what I'm saying is the feedback
that we got from MGH is that we need to understand the business imperative
so when you don't understand that business imperative, you cannot move forward to crack the code for an organization like MGH the Commonwealth of Mass or CVS or any other organization
so our commitment is to listen to state agencies on what they want and how do we prepare those individuals
So here's my contact information
Here's my thank you slide
And we have 5 minutes for questions Juanita do you have a question or Tom
Tom: I was just going to say that Bill's staff does a great job at vetting candidates appropriately so you know the candidate you're getting and they help with resumes as well
Tom: So you're getting a really good resume in front of you and make a determination about placement so that's very helpful for staff and has always been helpful for me
Yes, our staff are very good they work very good
Evan in audience: I have a question let's say I'm
I have a particular job that I'm looking for right now I know I can reach out and
ask you about that and that may be helpful for you
but what we're I think what I'm taking away from you is you want to build some
sort of relationship like you have with MGH c.d.s with some of these long larger
smaller agencies to get an understanding let's say I don't have jobs available
right now but I have jobs available in the future
am i reaching out to your team right now and giving them a heads up what can I be
doing now to give you a better understanding of what I'm looking for
even if I don't have jobs right now
Bill: that's a really good approach so you put
it in the mind's eye of like look we're not hiring right now and I
know with Juanita and Tom deal with this every day when it comes to the
hiring event we're not making offers that day we get that but we make it as
real as possible so that's great labor marketing information
you know Bill when we hire our JDS and ESS team say here's what we are looking for
looking for so having a roundtable discussion above the job about the
expectations about the bureaucracy that they may have to get around and we try
doing OJEs with many other state agencies we
got clobbered on that and that was that was my fault we went in and did a
nosedive we can do it here we can do it anywhere we can do it anywhere
well we can do is really understand the expectations early on in getting that
information upfront as labor market information when we do hire guess what
we look for it's gold that would be really great so I think to your
point let's talk let's meet let's have roundtable discussions
Juanita (audience): So as an employer what are things that from your side of the house is that you want to as an employer have one source of contact especially for the employment specialist on your side
Juanita: Tom and I were able to say that all of your specialists were able to be identified within your organization
so everyone had to go through those specific contacts within three people within your organization
At some point you are going to be exposed to WIOA in our work through knowing us it's the workforce innovation opportunity act
it's a requirement for severalstate agencies to co-collaborate including workforce including
obviously our sister agency MCB including
if they failed we failed so it's all for one one for all
so if we have an opportunity to work to co-collaborate together this is incredible
15% of our budget has to be dedicated to you and we're going to get together to
identify where those entry-level jobs are for students with disabilities that
are not going on to secondary education or knowledge that we have huge
opportunities here to facilitate a pathway for some of the jobs
that Juanita would tell us about at our statewide meetings
so I'm mindful of that workshop that you did talking about don't have to have an
agreement come to work one-on-one and so this is a huge opportunity in the pipeline for
youth in opportunity so I'll leave you with that
Evan: Joe Buizon and Carol Cullins they are from the Mass Commission for the Blind
and they are going to do a very similar approach to what Bill did to sort of
generally talk about the programs that they have the points of contact that
they'll be able to give you and some of the successes that they have had so without further ado I'm
going to hand it over to start with Joe so here you are Joe
Hello folks so I woke up this morning it was pretty cold you guys are probably cold right now
right now my son goes up to me he's six years old
daddy you look like you're going to the prom *laughter* and I'm like do you know what a prom is no I'm
like no I have a presentation of Luca he's like oh okay prom seems more fun than
a presentation but dad you'll do great so
good afternoon everyone so as Evan had mentioned my name is Joe Buizon and I'm here
with my colleague Carol Cullen's from the Mass Commission for the Blind
throughout this presentation I'm going to say lovingly this algorithm of MCB,
so if you hear me say of MCB I'm referring to the Mass Commission for the Blind
the vision of the Commissioner for the blind our mission statement before I
even do that that we thank I would be remiss I want to acknowledge Evan and
MOD our good friend Bill Allen from MRC and of course all of you for being here
today we're really excited to have this opportunity to gain some momentum which
cross collaboration with individuals like yourself so our vision our mission
statement essentially is the Mass Commission for the Blind really provides
the highest level of rehabilitation and social services to individuals or
legally blind visually impaired leading to independence in full contribution to
one's community and I'm an example of that but there are many other examples
so I've benefited to my current employer the kind of rich history of the
Commission for the blind which you'll see is we were started way back when
in 1906 it's pretty impressive to tell you the truth in the sense that it started
with one of the commissioners you will see on the PowerPoint Helen Keller herself
with four individuals they started it had a vision and they were able to
establish what the agency is today kind of evolved and evident closed in 1966 we
end up being what we are today one of the 15 state agencies and second office
of Health and Human Services the Mass Commission for the Blind is unbelievable
honestly I'm very proud to say we are the oldest and the have
the richest history we are the first Commission for the blind that has been established
in the country in the country pretty impressive
we work very closely with MRC with the hiring event and many things like
that but it's really nice to see this wonderful state of the Commonwealth kind
of specialized services that we offer from MRC MCB DYS and all of the services
that you show know all about a little kind of overview about MCB as a whole
a framework if you will so we serve individuals from earth to eventual
passing kind of the circle of life lion king one of my favorite Disney movies
and we have children's services where individuals got kind of that sweet spot the
budding professionals we have social workers that attend IEP meetings work
with education and I heard someone talking about WIOA and how education is a
stakeholder in that process so those are the children's workers the other
spectrum we've where I first started my career at the Commission for the blind
we have SR-social rehabilitation-working with the geriatric population equally as
important trying to maintain their independence at home whether they go
into an assisted living or nursing home we have we deploy social workers our
suite of services to go out there whether it be orientation mobility which we will
talk about in a moment assistive technology kind of tactile techniques to
utilize their microwave for meals on wheels or if their cooking still
independently on their own so sr is quite important as an addition
to children's services and then our specialized unti it is called the
deafblind and it supports you heard me reference
Helen Keller from the beginning and this kind of that population that diverse
population that may be very vulnerable and we serve these individuals that
have dual or tri diversities and disabilities DCAN
Sam Lorne our director in that unit does many many great things and also
provide interpreting services things of that nature and the deafblind extended
supports and then kind of the unit that I'm in vocational rehabilitation kind of
Bill's expertise as well as ours and MOD'S heavily involved we really work
with individuals that are looking to get employment whether it be internship
mentoring voluntary you name it Carol will be talking about that
momentarily as vocational we have services so those are the specific
departments that we have and as you'll s we will have the departments from
rehabilitation teaching that was my first job at MCB now celebrating 12
years of the Commission which I've held different positions we have teachers
really serve all the units there on the ground and come out there and do touch
typing they'll go up there and maybe an individual lost their sight later in
life when they were an adolescent perhaps like myself when I was 17 and go
out and go okay how they gonna match their suit in addition to other things someone said I look like Bruno Mars over there *laughter*
using their stove their daily blending the washing machine things that you may
or may not take for granted and just opening your mind of creativity
that we have teachers do have a degree and they serve all of those departments
that I named orientation mobility is kind of the king is a
big department in our unit were also based throughout the Commonwealth
ONM as well as all the departments from we have a footprint in New Bedford
Worcester Springfield and then our main office is down the street at 600 Washington
across from the Opera House then we have the kind of
ever-evolving assistive technology department that we deploy all types of
technology well I'll show you all momentarily closed-circuit televisions zoom text
which is a magnifying software and JAWs which is a speech-to-text software not
the movie right but jaws stands for job access with speech
so job access with speech I use that specifically for myself as well as I
don't have that usable vision to access print standard so going to the last
and final slide for myself which I'm going to go more in depth on is orientation
and mobility how do people that are visually impaired
and blind actually go to work I'm sure you had a lot of questions because when
I was not blind when I was 16 15 motorways in Somerville
Massachusetts before it was Slummerville and Scummerville come on bye guys see
there's a lot of restaurants as I would see someone who is blind and wonder if I should help them or not help them and what are the
promising practices how do I help that person because I want to be a good
citizen but I don't want to hinder their independence or be rude
so orientation mobility the cane became the universal symbol of independence of disability
an old terminal handicap so if universe I have a blue cane my kid's favorite this is a
symbol of vision impairment and disability is red and white I'm going to
move in a moment with my back there so your typical cane which is red white just red
and white this is the cane that you typically see and the reason why
it's red and white because like that identifies as someone who is visually impaired a question that we typically get
is why that color because when you're driving and things
of that sort your your headlights will flash and reflect therefore it helps
identify that person for safety please keep in mind too if someone is using
their cane and they're bumping and they don't look as graceful they're learning
that's what it is they it may not look great you want to rescue them but no matter
tapping it is what we are training them to do at the Commission
for the blind for the most part other types of canes that should may see not
as often kind of this cane it's pretty sleek slim slender like it's not red and white
but it's an identification cane we don't recommend this giving you a
little snapshot about orientation mobility this goes right into my pocket one would
use that more for less orientation and mobility if they are familiar with the building
sighted guide is the most important some individuals when they saw me today
necessarily have to do that Hey Joe it's Naomi from MOD
because maybe I don't recognize them or haven't see them for a while
just kind of those nice kind of thinking things if you remember that would help
the person who is visually impaired so hey how are you and if I don't say your name I may not recognize you and I
you guys do the same exact thing
hey buddy how are you good to see you miss how are you my friend
graceful things seeing-eye dogs I don't use one myself perhaps later in life I
will you have to have the greatest or not the greatest but you need to have a
baseline of orientation and mobility so if you see someone with a dog they have
gone through screening in case of that sort to get to that point you know not
pet their working dog things of that sort they usually don't get a name because you
know animals are very loving if you call the pet they will go to you and it could interrupt the
individuals training technology the ever evolving technology that's where we come
in in terms of mobility we provide those expertise if you're able to provide and
interview or hire somebody please note the piece with accommodations if
accommodations are needed as Bill had mentioned we are a phone call and email
away this is a long term working relationship we built that rapport that
relationship from the beginning so know you know especially from a state to
state level that is really light lifting whether you do an internship which Carol
go into an OJT or mentoring day or things of that sort technology I myself use a smart phone and you may have seen this
I have a speaker bot and it says 3:09 the reason why it is so quick
over the years celebrating my blindness this coming May I've lost in 1999 I've learned to increase the
speed of me listening so I I slow this down *phone audibly says 15%*
going into and immediate messages
*phone reads 5 unread messages* I have 5 unread messages and my screen is off because technically I don't need it
*phone reading messages: good luck*
oh good luck so essentially that's my texts and I can speed it up
it said good luck again and now it is off so knowing that we can deploy
that technology and we can provide that that's why we have federal and state
funding and our expertise and Carol will go into into services that we do on a
regular basis that's the little bit of technology other things I did want to
show you is some of you may have a pen and paper in front of you I use this
voicenote and essentially it is a note-taker I don't need the screen is
because I just use my ears and keystroke commands allowing me to access exactly
what you would do taking notes if you want to write down my contact
information which Carol will put up at the end of our presentation
I am not a Braille reader however there are different technologies as some
of you have at home there's your low level technology where on your
iPhone you just take a picture of the business art and one who is visually
impaired will just look at close and with their vision so what we wanted to do in
the fun part of this presentation is to give you the background of the
Commission for the one a little of the technology mobility the different
departments the history and then Carol in a moment will tell you about all of
the ways you can engage with that you can engage with MCB and how we can do that
in a meaningful way that will be light lifting
and then moving forward we can partner even on a higher level but that ultimately
these higher success stories things of that sort so after Carol comes up
I'll come back up and hopefully we get some inquires thoughts comments regarding the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind
The definition of legal blindness really the best way to think of it is 20/200 vision 20 over 200 so if you
think about 2020 vision being an ideal level of vision an individual with 20/20
vision think about this now standing 200 feet away from an object for someone who is oops let me just shut of Joe's speaker back here
for someone who has someone who is visually impaired on the borderline
you'd have to be 20 feet away see the same thing that someone sees with 20/20
vision at 200 feet away that make sense so and it's also 10% peripheral
basically very generally speaking without going into a lot of detail its
1/10 of normal so a lot of people with vision impairment do have usable vision a lot
of usable vision Joe's vision is pretty low but he does
have usable vision so I think it's less than 7 percent of individuals who
are legally blind that are totally blind
alright so this next slide we're talking about our collaboration with employers
as Bill mentioned earlier we do have OJEs on the job experiences he did explain that we do
that a little bit as well I'm not going to go back into detail because
it would be redundant we don't do it as often our population is much much
smaller but we're specialized as you could tell by a lot of the gadgets that
Joe had demonstrated and that's just a touch of what we do basically we have an
internship program and I'm going to talk in great detail about that which really
is our abatement major focus of ours where we place close to 100 interns and
over the year throughout the Commonwealth and the for-profit and nonprofit
organizations and I'm going to go into detail about that shortly
obviously we collaborate with employers on channel job seeking you want employers
to hire and want you to hire our more qualified candidates we have a pipeline
of qualified candidates just like Bill said with MRC our VR counselors
completely vet our job seekers I'm going to go through this slide someone quickly
because there are certain areas that I want to focus on a little bit more but
we have we ask employers sometimes to do mock interviews with our job seekers
because after a while we're like their moms and dads I'm sure you see that Bill
heads well we can do mock interviews with them but after a while the job
seekers tune us out the here from us they don't want to hear from us
anymore when they get a job interview even a mock interview a practice
interview for the employer they say oh okay you know that really that is really
what happens during an interview oh they were right when they told me that I didn't have
really strong body language or that I was fudging I guess maybe that's
something I actually have to work on and then they also would love to have
face time with employers as much as possible even if it's not mock interviews and are
informational interviews we would love for any of you to you know be able to
provide informational interviews to our job seekers so that they can get a sense
of what to expect to go into the field that each of you is working in
we also do have speaking of opportunities for employers that can be
at our internship program that can be at you know any of our soft skills
training which we do where we may have we may ask employers and hiring managers
to come in and talk to our offices again to hear from someone other than us we
also like to help employers fill the diversity requirement so we know that's
a challenge and we can do that in a number of ways both from you know hiring
obviously but also doing in-services we can provide an in-service we would be
happy to do that for any of you and in some cases make me do it in conjunction
with MRC where we can go in and talk to the hiring managers talk to a team
of hiring managers from a variety of departments kind of like what we're doing
today but a little bit more in detail about the populations that we serve and
about the assistive technology that we provide Joe only touched on it there's
so much more detail and we often spend an hour on our presentation
and we would be very happy to come in and talk with any of you
about this we do this all over the state we actually just did an in-service for the
FBI we did an in-service for Blue Cross Blue Shield we do it statewide we also in
October had our eighth annual job fair for individuals with vision impairment
this fair is very good we also collaborate with MRC on their job fair
and at their hiring event that they do every year we actually took a piece of that
we modeled after for our job fair for individuals with vision impairment in
that we now it is a job fair and in our case because the individuals took our
table to table not everyone there is getting an interview is but we will take
some of the strongest most job ready candidates because we open it for
everyone even if they're not job ready to sort of explore but those who are
really job ready we encourage them and work with them to
apply for actual positions and we will set up interviews at this job fair and
every year and we always get hires so we actually are getting a lot of follow-up
and feedback right now from the job fair that we had just a few weeks ago so it's
a very good event we and it's very specialized because it's only for
individuals with vision impairment so we do a training session in the beginning
for the employers who are there I should just kind of give them a sense of how to
interact with the jobseekers when they come in it's kind of mysterious in some
ways it's a little bit scary and intimidating as always because employers
don't want to do or say the wrong thing but we try to take the mystery out of
that and the job seekers as well we're talking with them as well and
encouraging them to have patience you know not automatically assuming that if
someone that says the wrong thing that they're you know being degrading or
discriminatory in any way shape or form so we work with them as well
and it's usually a very successful event we also have a great mentoring
program where we match up our job seekers our younger job seekers and some of them are job ready and some of them are not quite yet
with individuals who are legally blind who are successfully
working so that's a great program as well so that they can get a sense of
what individuals do day to day how you know what was the process
that they went through maybe they had some of the same types of hurdles that some of
you know these other individuals have dealt with every year and then we also
have our employment now program which is actually a collaboration right now with
Mass Eye and Ear and we may have another one coming up with Cambridge Health Alliance and
that's a six-month internship program if you will the individuals who
participate actually get a stipend for participating and they go to work in
different departments throughout the hospital
you know hospitals like a mini-city if you think about it you know they have food
services janitorial they've got you know radiology and surgical departments so
these individuals get to experience a little bit of everything and they also
get some one-on-one job coaching and you know job searching and at the same time
a success rate is 95 percent at this point so it's a very very good program
so now about our internship program I mentioned earlier that we place about a hundred
approximately interns throughout the state in both for-profit nonprofit
organizations they all are required to work 120 hours minimum
that's not much I mean if you think about it that's three weeks at forty
hours a week it could be six weeks at twenty hours a week or depending on the
need of whatever department or organization that brings them on they
could work five hours one week they could work forty hours the next twenty
in the next so long as they work 120 hours over the duration the beauty of it
is we provide them with a statement so employers aren't being asked to pay for
this internship however if it there is already a formal internship program in
place with that organization and this intern falls right within that that
internship program they would still pay them like they would anyone else of
course we still provide the stipend of one thousand
dollars and we do that because employers I mean our interns many of
them haven't had that opportunity to have that first job that first work
experience it's very challenging you know a lot of times people view them as
incapable sometimes family members they are hard to learn the right place but
they are sheltering them they're protecting them saying you can't work
you can't do this you can't do that so we're trying to say oh yes absolutely
you can you can let me work independently just like everybody else you're just
going to do things a little bit differently such as the technology such
as orientation mobility they may have those kinds of needs which
we will provide as an agency to anyone any organization that brings on an intern
or an employee of course we must come in we will have our technicians come in
install the software if they need jaws the screen reading software or if they
need zoom text which is the magnification software and a lot of job
seekers use that and it just really is as the word applies it just magnifies everything I
think in order to teach the mobility everyone's different sometimes an
individual could walk around here and you wouldn't even know that they're blind until
maybe they are reading a piece of paper and you may see them holding it really close and their
head is going side to side because maybe they only have central vision so you
know that's that's how they see so an individual like that may not need
orientation mobility they may not need screen reading software they may not
need magnification they may simply need to magnify on their own like we can do with
our smartphones and many of our desktops as it is and our laptops
so this applies for both job seekers and interns all of our interns attend the soft
skills training that's a requirement even if they've done it before and
that's where we like to bring in sometimes employers to talk with them
not just us because they get tired of hearing from us after a while so not
only are we presenting qualified interns to you but remember they're an intern so
they're still learning just like any other intern but we're also providing interns
who have gone through soft skills training all interns attend an opening
ceremony which is usually held right here in this building and then a closing
ceremony which is held at the State House and usually or always the supervisors
are invited to that event this past year actually the Boston Ward of city
councilors hosted an intern for the first time she was so excited about it
she had photos about it on her Facebook page
so we are always looking for new host sites and then there's paperwork and
you know if anyone decides to host an intern we can certainly talk about that
so the job seekers that we present to you become completely vetted so if we're
presenting someone to you you know that they've got the skills unless we're all human unless
there's something that we miss they should have all those minimum qualifications that you'll be
looking for we also will present any assistance and support that you need
we're not going to just say oh here you go and we're done I'm going to give you
an example we have one employer that I mean we've had many but this one in
particular actually hired someone for food service doing food prep completely
blind 100% blind and he was hired to cut chicken make sandwiches and the employer
trusted us but he didn't trickle down to information to his staff so they were
pulling the knife away from him saying you can't cut
you can't use the knife so he came in after the fact and we had come in to do
other trainings on orientation mobility we have teaching and things like that
and we came back in again and this time we talked to the staff so
that they were all put at ease and they loved him and he did great
so basically what we tell employers is please focus on the skills let us handle
the specialized vision situations and then the off the job training real
briefly it's kind of like an audition that's something else if an individual
seems to have all the skills there's a job at the end take them on and we'll pay take
them on and if things don't work out for some reason
there's no contract signed but there should be a job the idea is a job there
is a job at the end once we put in all the technology which the sort of vision
related training that might be necessary then you didn't have a great employee if
it doesn't work well that job seeker got a really good experience maybe
not the most pleasant who knows but it's still experience on the resume which tells us
maybe you need to work on something else with them or the individual needs to do
something else more often than not it's a win-win all the way around I actually
haven't seen any job myself any OJT not work out to this point so this is just
a sample of some of the partners that we've worked with VERC Enterprises for
example they hired an intern as a greeter she was someone who has minimal
skills came to this country on a medical visa multiple surgeries after falling
face-first into a fire and lost her vision lost some of her fingers her face is
deformed beautiful beautiful person and once you talk with her you don't even see
all that but minimal skills and she was so nervous they took her on as a greener
for an internship we brought in a job coach to help her kind of just navigate
the workplace in general after her internship ended the customers
kept asking about her so they called me up and said
can we please hire her I said yeah absolutely
and VERC calls on us often to hire people to work in their different
VERC Enterprises is a convenient store establisher so we have a lot of people
stocking the shelves and such but I have to say our internship populations
some have less than high school diploma through PhDs so it's it's across
the board we place people at Tufts health plan and
Metro West Regional Transit Authority some people in really high-level
positions and people at entry-level positions thank you
*audience clapping*
Evan: okay so questions I know we have all of the content thank you so much Carol and Joe
we have the contact information for both of these individuals as well and I'm going to
have them just answer maybe one or two questions that I know that everyone is
going to stay afterwards to answer more questions if you have them
Bill Allen (audience): I just want to give Joe a shout out as I was talking to his office yesterday you do some incredible work
and you're a testament to your work in the private sector
Audience Member: So Joey do you have one location or various locations
great question so our main office is in Boston right there in 600 Washington Street we share offices with MRC
as well as the Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and then we have some satellite
offices that Dennis was referring to in Springfield New Bedford and Worcester
we're probably the size of our agency as a whole is 120 staff in total
are there any other questions
I had the pleasure of meeting Rebecca and Felicia back there and are there any questions
from them or anyone out there I would love to take one or two more and if not as Evan had
mentioned we will be sticking around afterwards to answer any questions moving forward
Audience Member: What is the population
another great question we have a central registry so we pride ourselves in that so we're
right now is that continues to fluctuate is about 40,000 individuals who are visually impaired and legally blind
it is MA state law that when an individual is diagnosed as legally blind
that they're diagnosing eye care provider registers known with us then we
have a social worker reach out to them and kind of talk about the services we have
Audience Member: So are all 40,000
automatically consumers of MCB
Joe: a follow-up question that comes right to my head is how many
actual individuals are looking for employment in this case so a lot of them
are in the SR side social rehab looking for quality of life quality of living and then we have job seekers that are introduced
by right now that number a good amount of them are more a mature population
Evan (audience): Okay folks a big round of applause *clapping*
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