CEHD News Tom Donaghy

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CEHD News Tom Donaghy

Beyond quotas: Making work meaningful in Japan

December 18, 2020
ICI’s Renáta Tichá, principal investigator, and Brian Abery, co-principal investigator (pictured second and third from left), with local and international colleagues in Bhutan in 2019. The Bhutan project, which continues into 2022, promotes meaningful work and social inclusion for Bhutanese youth and young adults with disabilities. The Japan project has a similar mission, serving transition-age youth, young adults, and adults with disabilities.

Japanese companies are required to staff about two percent of their workforces with people with disabilities, but many individuals remain unemployed, underemployed, or stuck in jobs for which they are ill-suited.

In a new collaboration with U.S. and Japanese universities and Sega Sammy Holdings Inc., ICI’s Global Disability Rights and Inclusion group will study these gaps and create customized tools that promote meaningful employment and the social inclusion of people with disabilities in Japan.

The project, funded by the U.S. Embassy, Tokyo, is called Making Employment Meaningful for People with Disabilities: A US-Japan Partnership. 

ICI’s Renáta Tichá, principal investigator, and Brian Abery, co-principal investigator, will work with academic partners University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Hiroshima University, and University of Tokyo, as well as Sega Sammy, a large, integrated entertainment company that is interested in further developing its hiring program for people with disabilities.

“We’re trying to build inclusive education throughout the world, but what happens to students with disabilities after they leave school is also of critical importance,” Tichá said. “By partnering with employers and schools, we are building expertise and materials that will help people with disabilities and their families access better opportunities.”

A key component of the work will be to more fully develop the concept of self-determination, or the ability of people with disabilities to control aspects of their lives that are important to them, in Japan. 

“Self-determination has been introduced in Japan, but the concept is a little different there,” said Satomi Shinde, a professor at University of Wisconsin-River Falls. “We’re excited to see a company like Sega Sammy being interested in true inclusion and in making employment more meaningful to people.”

In addition to making workplaces more inclusive, the efforts also have a business case. Finding ways to unlock unique skills, rather than simply training all workers with disabilities to do repetitive tasks, has broad implications for companies as they seek greater efficiencies through advancing technologies.

“In our previous work in eastern Europe we met a mother of someone with an intellectual disability who approached every company in her city until she found an employer willing to hire her daughter for a skilled position. Six months later the company came back to the mother asking her to introduce them to more workers like her daughter,” said Abery. “Customized employment is about getting people to the point where employers can see through the disability to the person and their gifts and capacities.”

That recognition becomes even more important as Sega Sammy and other large employers weather the economic storm created by the pandemic, Abery said. As more companies grapple with job cuts this year, he said, the ones that have focused on developing a broad spectrum of talent will be the ones with the most productive workforces.

The project officially begins Feb. 1, and will include interviews and focus groups in Japan to determine the areas of greatest need. Two fact-finding visits, one in Japan and one in Minnesota, are also planned as a way to expose Japanese educators and others to customized employment programs in the United States. Eventually, the group expects to publish Japanese-language materials for educators and employers. 

“Building this area of expertise and sharing these materials is important for ICI’s Global Disability Rights and Inclusion area, and will lay the groundwork for future partnerships and projects,” Tichá said.

MN-LEND fellows climb a virtual Hill

December 18, 2020
Kimberly Anderson was one of several MN-LEND fellows to meet online ​in December with members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation. She urged policymakers to understand the role of DSPs on healthcare teams and the critical need to increase their wages.

Better pay for direct support professionals, more post-secondary educational opportunities for young adults with disabilities, and continuing funding for interdisciplinary programs that promote the inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) were among issues on the table as a group of fellows from ICI met this month with members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation.

ICI participates annually in the visits as part of the Association of University Centers on Disability Conference. This year’s Capitol Hill visits with U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber and representatives of U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, among others, were virtual, but no less passionate. Several fellows from ICI’s Minnesota Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities urged policymakers to support the intellectual disability community.

“The demand for quality higher education options for people with IDD is growing, but the supply is limited,” Sally Sexton, a fellow in ICI’s MN-LEND program, told policymakers. “Minnesota has approximately 2,000 students with an intellectual or developmental disability who complete 12th grade each year. The three Minnesota options available currently have the capacity to enroll only 90 students.”

Sexton, who also is the mother of a high-school junior with disabilities, is working on a project through the LEND fellowship to expand post-secondary options in Minnesota. After initially planning to just watch and learn during the virtual event, Sexton said she was inspired to advocate for appropriations support for the Office of Postsecondary Education’s Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities Model Demonstrations and the TPSID National Coordinating Center.

“Inclusion has positively influenced my daughter and the goals she has for herself and her future, which is why we started to look for pathways to inclusive postsecondary education and we found very few,” she said after the event. “Our project is just getting started, but if you look across the country at all the colleges that are making this happen, as well as the outcomes for students who attend, you would understand my reason for being passionate about this work.” 

Another MN-LEND fellow, Kimberly Anderson, urged policymakers to understand the role of DSPs on healthcare teams and the critical need to increase their wages. 

“I was encouraged that many of our legislators not only acknowledged the need for livable wages for DSPs, but have first-hand experience with IDD and neurodevelopmental disabilities in their own families,” said Anderson, an occupational therapist and co-chair of the Health Equity Special Interest Group for the Minnesota Occupational Therapy Association.

Joshua Chapman, a pediatrician and internal medicine physician participating in the LEND program as part of a fellowship in developmental behavioral pediatrics, spoke to policymakers about the value of LEND programs.

“Before joining LEND, I probably would have avoided an opportunity like this,” he said following the visit. “Through LEND, I am more aware of my own privilege and representation within systems, which affords me the option of disengaging with politics. That is a choice some communities may not have. These visits were an opportunity to be an ally, and amplify others’ voices about important programs to our representatives in government.”

All means all: The unfinished business of IDEA

December 18, 2020

By Terri Vandercook and Gail Ghere, TIES Center, University of Minnesota

While there is much to celebrate as we mark the 45th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2020, there remains a persistent hole. To be sure, IDEA has progressively opened the nation’s classrooms to millions of students with disabilities since 1975. While we celebrate that progress, however, we must point out that the exception to the story continues to be those students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. 

As Harold Kleinert, director emeritus of the Human Development Institute at University of Kentucky, wrote in Impact magazine last year, U.S. Education Department data from 2015 show 63 percent of all students with disabilities were placed predominantly in general education classrooms, while just 3 percent of students with significant cognitive disabilities participating in alternative educational assessments were served in general education classrooms at least 80 percent of the time. 

There are many reasons why. One is a maddening catch-22. People who haven’t had the experience of being in a relationship with people with significant cognitive disabilities often can’t envision how people with such challenges could meaningfully benefit and contribute to their school and wider community. And lacking those opportunities, people with significant cognitive disabilities can’t gain the skills and relationships that would make them successful in that community.

Another reason is on us. When advocacy related to including students with more extensive support needs first began, we wanted to get students in the door so badly that we just said to schools, “Don’t worry so much about the academics, let’s focus on social and communication skills and the expansion of relationships.” But that message had unintended negative consequences—the lowering of academic expectations and opportunities. We know now that all students need to be part of their school community for both academic and social-emotional reasons, so they can learn and struggle and gain skills and knowledge that will help them succeed in their adult lives. The research is clear that students with disabilities do better in inclusive classrooms, and studies have shown that students without disabilities also benefit from inclusivity. 

Another thing we did as a field was to focus on one student at a time, hoping that by repeating success stories, it would be easy to scale up within a district or nationwide. There were many success stories of individual students and even teams of educators who made real progress, but it wasn’t enough to change the structures that would truly support the learning of all students in inclusive settings. And as pressures to perform on standards-based assessments grew, the commitment to keep students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms lessened, as did understanding why that is important.

At its core, the TIES Center promotes creative ways to think systemically about changing not just mindsets about disability, but the actual structures that can be put in place to support the learning of every child who walks or wheels in the front door. We keep the academic bar high by intervening at the school, district, and state levels to make sure that when students with significant cognitive disabilities make progress one year with an excellent general education teacher and supportive special educators that they enter the next grade level with a teaching team of general and special educators who are also highly capable of creating effective, inclusive classrooms for all.

In Washington and Maryland, we’re implementing intensive technical assistance programs that involve high-level policy and planning by state, district, and school-level personnel committed to inclusive classrooms. We’re also making room for nimble, just-in-time problem solving. In one state, a principal recently asked for an inclusion help desk, where any teacher could come for quick help with a challenge, whether it’s reducing barriers for a certain academic concept or a question about resources that could be used in better ways. We’ve now created that help desk and staff it with people from TIES, our partner organizations, and from the school district, and it has led to some great conversations. A general education teacher recently told us she took the ideas back to her classroom the next day and they are working in support of more effective learning for all students in her class.

Another area of promise is coming from outside the field of disabilities. Many schools are implementing universal design for learning concepts and tiered systems of support. Those are ideas that make sense for every single student. Ask your school officials how they are implementing universal design and tiered systems of support to include students with significant cognitive disabilities. 

We’re working with a wide variety of other partners on tools that make grade-level content standards accessible to all students, as the law requires. These students may also need support in learning other essential skills in areas such as communication, social interaction, organization, self-advocacy, and technology, but those areas alone are insufficient and don’t open up post-secondary opportunities that many could achieve with rigorous academic education. 

IDEA’s promise to our country’s students with disabilities was that all of them will benefit from an education where we set the bar high and strive to reach it. On the 45th anniversary of IDEA, let’s commit to ensuring that all really means all, including those students who have significant cognitive disabilities. While we’ve come a long way since 1975, there is still a large research-to-practice gap to fulfill this promise for all students. 

Terri Vandercook, Ph.D., is assistant director and Gail Ghere, Ph.D., is a research associate for the TIES Center. The TIES Center is the national technical assistance center on inclusive practices and policies for students with significant cognitive disabilities. It focuses on increasing the time, instructional effectiveness, engagement, and state support for inclusive practices.

Dennis Olson, alumnus: At the helm of Higher Ed in Minnesota

November 19, 2020
Dennis Olson, Minnesota's Commissioner of Higher Education.

Not quite two years into leading Minnesota’s higher education office, Dennis Olson has navigated the abrupt closure of Argosy University, grappled with huge projected budget shortfalls, and dug into persistent disparities in post-secondary educational achievement.

“There have been a lot of difficult conversations,” said Olson, who began his career at the Institute on Community Integration while a student at University of Minnesota. He went on to work as a project coordinator at ICI, contributing to research and projects to facilitate successful transitions from high school to post-secondary life for American Indian students. 

In January 2019, Gov. Tim Walz named him Commissioner of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, after stints as executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and as director of the Office of Indian Education for the Minnesota Education Department. He is a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

The conversation he’s working on now is a joint effort with other state officials to present the financial case for schools as they face huge pandemic-related and other budget pressures.

“We want to make sure education investments are top-of-mind and make the case to the legislature that the best way to make a speedy recovery is to invest in education, from K-12 through higher ed,” Olson said.

Minnesota’s education record is among the strongest in the nation, and on its way to attaining the state’s lofty goal of 70 percent of adults age 25 to 44 having attained a post-secondary certificate or degree, he said, but significant racial and other disparities form a large asterisk on that achievement.

“When you peel the onion, we have one of the largest attainment gaps in the nation,” said Olson. “It’s important to reach that goal overall, but will we reach it equitably? Probably not, so we are going to make investments in programming to address those gaps.”

He’s also proud to have worked on MN Reconnect, a state program that offers $1,000 to help returning post-secondary students, and on his agency’s efforts during the Argosy bankruptcy, including hosting a transfer fair for displaced students, where about 40 colleges were invited to set up tables and talk with students about opportunities.

“I’ve spent my entire career in public service working on behalf of students who have historically been underserved, and I try to keep that central at all times,” he said. “State agencies exist to serve Minnesotans and to bring awareness to issues that historically have been swept under the rug.”

Check & Connect: 30 years of building futures

November 19, 2020
Eileen Klemm (second from left), director of Check & Connect, meeting educators in Micronesia in December 2018.
Eileen Klemm (second from left), director of Check & Connect, meeting educators in Micronesia in December 2018.

It started 30 years ago with the simple idea that caring mentors, equipped with the right data, could inspire more students to stay in school. 

Rather than focusing solely on the truancy system, they would spend time talking about a student’s future, self-regulatory abilities, and perceptions about the relevance of education. Time would still be spent on behavioral issues and class attendance, but also on whether the student had strong relationships in and outside of school, and a sense of belonging.

Introduced in 1990 to combat the unemployment, incarceration, and dependence on social programs that often follow someone who leaves school without graduating, the Institute on Community Integration’s Check & Connect program has now been implemented in 48 states and several foreign countries. Numerous third-party evaluations have demonstrated the program’s effectiveness, and it is being adapted in a variety of new formats, including in a web-based app that frees mentors from paper-based forms.

“Check & Connect has been a lifeline for thousands of students who might otherwise have dropped out of school,” said Eileen Klemm, program director for Check & Connect. “We know the model we started in many schools continues to be used today, long after our training has ended.” 

Before joining ICI, Klemm was a special education compliance specialist with the Minnesota Department of Education and was a speech-language pathologist in urban and suburban public schools. She now oversees implementation of two statewide Check & Connect programs, in Minnesota and Florida, as well as expanded applications of the model, including the web-based app and customized training for specific populations of students in the United States and abroad. 

At its core, Check & Connect builds a trusting relationship between a student and a trained, consistent mentor. Systematically monitoring attendance, behavior, and grades, the mentor goes beyond the numbers, spending time engaging with the student. The resulting relationship creates a more dedicated student who is less likely to drop out, and a responsible adult who will both inspire and advocate for the student.

As part of a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education to boost graduation rates among Black and Native American students, for example, Duluth Public Schools has implemented the program for the last several years and has seen strong results, said Sarah Laulunen, the district’s Check & Connect coordinator.

Last year, 11 of the 13 seniors in the program, 85 percent, graduated. That compares to overall graduation rates of about 43 percent among all students in special education programs in 2017. Overall, about 45 students are currently involved in the program, but the district is in the process of expanding that number.

“We got started in this program because graduation rates and school suspension rates were not where we wanted them to be,” said Jason Crane, the district’s special education director. “It’s been a powerful process to be a part of and it led us to use this implementation model in other initiatives of the district.”

Starting slowly in the early years helped lay a foundation for success, Laulunen said. 

“The district was intentional about implementation,” she said. “It wasn’t a case of picking up and running with something and adjusting on the fly. They put the right people in the right positions to make sure it was done correctly.”

In South Africa, meanwhile, one of several countries adapting the program to fit their schools’ needs, the Masibumbane Development Organisation has been holding virtual mentoring sessions with middle school students in the port city of East London. Since the beginning of the pandemic, they’ve been working with distance-learning tools as part of South Africa’s Zero Dropout Campaign, an effort to halve the country’s dropout rate by 2030.

The Check & Connect program’s roots date back to 1989, when ICI’s Sandra Christenson and Martha Thurlow, along with former University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks, applied for a U.S. Department of Education grant to develop, evaluate, and refine a dropout prevention program for 200 middle school students with learning and behavioral disabilities. Subsequent grants, partnerships, and product sales have enabled budget-impaired schools to take advantage of C&C over the years.

The original five-year grant, begun in 1990, allowed ICI investigators the time to interview students and educators about what worked and what didn’t work in dropout prevention efforts, developing a model that combined mentors’ attention to academic and behavioral goals, as well as to students’ self-regulatory and educational relevance perceptions and their relationships inside and outside of school. 

“We wanted kids to feel like they belong and that there is always a niche for them at school,” said Christenson, now a University of Minnesota professor emeritus. “We collaborated across practice and theory to create a relationship-based, systemic approach to keeping marginalized students engaged that involves students themselves, parents, the school, and the broader community. That powerful combination remains at the core of the program today.”

What has changed, in response to both technology advances and needs, is accessibility and ease of implementation.

“The risk factors for students in 1995 were not the same as they are today, and there has been an erosion of some resources in schools,” said Christenson. “Check & Connect remains relevant because it is dynamic, adapting to students and to their needs today.”

A self-paced online training option for school officials implementing the program was rolled out this year, and a virtual option for mentor training is expected to be launched shortly.

The program’s new training formats, as well as its move in recent years to make training services and materials available to schools for direct purchase instead of having to go through time-consuming grant processes, have all helped with accessibility, Klemm said.

And in this year of distance-learning and the disruption of COVID-19, she said, the program is using Slack and other channels to link Check & Connect communities for sharing mentoring ideas and best practices.

“It’s been an extraordinary experience to guide this program, hearing from principals and educators who say their school cultures have changed because of how they have taken the perspective of students and families through Check & Connect,” Klemm said. “We very much look forward to the next 30 years.”

To learn more, visit Check & Connect.

Outreach critical during pandemic

November 19, 2020

In typical times, new parents talk to their pediatricians at well-child visits about developmental milestones. Or they might come across literature about spotting signs of autism, for example, at a community event.

But with some families putting off medical visits for their young children due to the novel coronavirus, and with most in-person events cancelled, families could be missing important signs that their children could benefit from early intervention.

A partnership between Help Me Grow MN and the Minnesota Act Early Project to promote awareness in diverse cultural communities about the need for early evaluation and intervention helped connect more than 2,400 Minnesota families to resources in 2020, according to the Help Me Grow grant report, published in September. Jennifer Hall-Lande at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration is the Minnesota Ambassador for the Act Early project.

After distributing interactive story books and other developmental materials at several in-person events in the Hmong, Somali, and Latinx communities around the Twin Cities in 2019 and early 2020, project leaders pivoted to new outreach methods, social media, and online webinars, said Hall-Lande.

“This year taught us that we have to do something different to reach families,” she said. Several of ICI’s MN LEND fellows, for example, were trained on the awareness initiatives and brought them back to the childcare centers, clinics, and other places where they live and work.

The Help Me Grow/Act Early programs also partnered with Ramsey County’s Early Childhood Initiative and Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) to create an educational webinar series for parents and professionals from several diverse communities. It covered tips on getting children outside for play every day, dealing with challenging behaviors during times of stress, the importance of well-child visits, and other parenting topics.

As the partnership moves forward through 2021, Hall-Lande said, maintaining these relationships will be critical in getting young children and their families the supports needed to thrive.

“The common thread is the strength of families and communities,” she said. “During the pandemic, it’s more important than ever to have parents carrying the early intervention message in their own communities.”

Parent ‘selfies’ help others: “You are enough”

November 19, 2020

A new video series featuring and supporting parents of students with significant cognitive disabilities is bringing structure—and a dose of reality—to the often-chaotic world of distance learning during the pandemic.

Real-life families across the United States volunteered to film their daily routines and learning activities on their own mobile phones for the series, which offers tips for supporting children’s learning while at home. The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) and the TIES Center, both at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration, developed the short instructional videos at the request of the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education. 

The first four videos focus on routines, communication, and understanding students’ grade-level academic goals. Another seven, delving into more specific academic instruction techniques and ways to check on progress, will be launched shortly.

“They bring a reaffirming message that is practical and positive,” said Kristin Liu, assistant director at NCEO and co-principal investigator for the TIES Center, which supports inclusive learning environments for students with significant cognitive disabilities. “They show actual families of students with significant cognitive disabilities, so that parents can see other parents like themselves who are navigating home learning successfully.”

Because COVID-19 made it difficult to send a videographer to homes, Liu said, families turned on their mobile phones and recorded themselves doing school work and every day activities, from household chores to playing outside. A narrator offers tips on how to create a strong learning environment and work with a child’s school to understand learning goals.

“We’re not asking parents to take over the teacher’s role, but providing some helpful information on how best to support at-home learning,” said NCEO and TIES Center Director Sheryl Lazarus. “I’m extremely pleased the team was able to create such a useful video series during such a difficult time. Parents are their children’s best advocates, but their children with significant disabilities have unique challenges in instruction and these videos will be a welcome resource.” 

The series stresses the importance of predictable routines, staying in close communication with teachers, and regularly checking progress. Practical ideas for working academic lessons into home life, such as having children calculate the number of knives, spoons, and forks needed at the dinner table, are also included. 

“There is a huge amount of self-doubt that parents have now about whether they are doing the right things for their kids, whether they have disabilities or not,” said Liu. “This series says, ‘We see you, keep it up, you are enough.’ Small things make a difference in this context and are valuable for students’ long-term learning.”

Art for All: New exhibit starts Nov. 1

October 27, 2020
Wisconsin Union, a drawing by Devin Wildes of empty café chairs, vacated by the pandemic.

Sheryl and David Evelo, along with ICI’s Nicholas Fernholz, will introduce a virtual art show on Nov. 1 hosted by the Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. It runs through December.

Art for All: The Stephanie Evelo Fund for Art Inclusion will feature works by five individual artists with disabilities and a cooperative of Bhutanese Artists from the Draktsho Vocational Training Centre for Special Children and Youth from the country of Bhutan. During the Nov. 1 forum, Fernholz will talk about the Evelo Fund, the artists, and their contributed work. The Evelos will tell their story of creating Art for All, in partnership with ICI, to honor the memory of their daughter Stephanie (1969–2012), a gifted artist who worked at the Institute.

Among the featured artists is Devin Wildes, a 22-year-old Stillwater man with autism who has won several art awards and spoken to groups about his art. View a PBS story about his work.

Wildes has been with Interact Center, a St. Paul organization for performing and visual artists with disabilities, for the last four years. When Interact closed its physical space due to the pandemic, moving to online programming, Devin needed inspiration to work from home.

“He loved going to that art center,” said Devin’s mother, A.J. Paron-Wildes. “It was his passion, and my fear was, ‘What is he going to do to keep busy?’” 

Devin had previously created artwork from photos of the Burning Man festival he received from a friend, so A.J. put the word out to Devin’s family, friends, and followers on social media that he wanted photographs to turn into works of art.

The community delivered, and Devin has since created dozens of works using high-quality markers and paper. Among them: Wisconsin Union, from a photo of empty café chairs (pictured), a nod to the pandemic’s effect on everyday life; Lois’ Heavenly Sunrise, from a photo taken the morning a dear friend passed away; and several landscapes. In addition to his pieces selected for the show, viewers will be able to link directly to all of Devin’s works during the pandemic. Originals and digital copies are available for purchase, with proceeds benefitting Interact.

“It’s just amazing, his sense of color and design and the abstract quality. He does a wonderful job of executing his work,” Sheryl said. 

Other featured artists include Jimmy Reagan, Kathryn Fitzgerald, Lena ​Osman, and Geoffrey Mikol.

“Their art is so honest, with a great sense of design and color,” said David Evelo. “Sometimes people think that if the artist has a disability it won’t be well-executed, but that’s not at all the case. It points out that people simply have different abilities.”

The Evelos recalled their own daughter’s love of art, but also the power that art gave her.

“She was so thrilled to see us understand how meaningful it was to her,” Sheryl said. “When she had her own exhibit at Pattee Hall on the University of Minnesota’s campus, it became an important part of her life to think about herself as an artist.”

DSP Survey: More hours and risk, not more pay

October 27, 2020

Direct-support professionals (DSPs) are working more hours due to COVID-19, but few are getting higher hourly rates to compensate for the added health risks of the pandemic, a survey from the Institute on Community Integration and the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals shows.

The survey of nearly 9,000 DSPs—conducted April 23 through May 27 and believed to be the largest-ever sample of the DSP workforce—found that just 24 percent are receiving extra pay due to infection risk.

More than half of those surveyed said they are working more hours, including 25 percent who reported working more than 16 extra hours per week compared with their normal shifts. Nearly three-quarters are the primary wage earners in their household, with an average wage of $13.63 per hour before the start of the pandemic. This wage is higher than the national average of $12 per hour due to the tenure of those who completed the survey.

Many said they know someone personally who has left the profession this year. Of the 42 percent who knew someone who has left, nearly 60 percent said the reason was fear of becoming infected or a lack of childcare.

“These findings underscore the dire need for higher wages, credentialing programs, and funded protection measures for ongoing and future waves of the pandemic,” said Amy Hewitt, ICI director. “DSPs must be universally recognized as essential workers and have access to protective equipment to do their jobs.”

More comprehensive safety training on public health crises for both DSPs and people with disabilities are needed, she said, citing survey findings showing that 27 percent of newly-hired DSPs were not getting typical orientation and preservice training.

Plans for a six-month follow-up survey are underway, with results expected early in 2021. Read the current survey results. 

Frontline Initiative: Making a career in direct support

October 27, 2020

They are paid like fast-food workers, perform duties comparable to highly-trained health professionals, and are asked to coach and inspire people to take on active roles in their communities.

Frontline Initiative: Making a Career in Direct Support, published in September, explores what keeps direct support professionals (DSPs) working in the field and illuminates the shift from thinking about the work as a job to considering it a career.

FI editors Julie Kramme and Chet Tschetter see the issue as a call to action to DSPs to lift their voices about the low pay, low visibility, and low respect they endure. It features personal reflections from DSPs themselves, calls for professional credentials, and practical tips.

“This edition has about twice as many articles as usual, and that is because of the enthusiasm regarding the topic,” Tschetter said. “Authors include DSPs, self-advocates, family members of people who accept support, and professionals in the field.”

The issue provides DSPs with clear guidance on how to tell their story, Kramme said, and is a call to action to have their voices heard.

“We really hope that this issue is a helpful tool for DSPs that shares the career experiences, continued education, and training that DSPs are using to build a solid career foundation,” she said.

Among other authors in the issue, Skylar Smith shares why she got into the profession in South Dakota, and how she tries to educate as many people as she can about the rewards.

“I want others to see that my job is important. I want them to understand the rights of the people we support. I aim to gently broaden people’s perspectives,” she writes. “They don’t know what I know about people with disabilities: that when they receive high-quality support, so many things are possible.”

Another article, by Joseph M. Macbeth, president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals, explains the ongoing effort to establish a professional standard occupational code. The NADSP has an online petition via change.org calling for such a classification.

Macbeth also calls for more support for DSPs working through the pandemic.

“DSPs are tired, frustrated, and traumatized. Now, more than ever before, they need attention, support, and relief,” he writes. “If anything, COVID-19 has lifted the veil on a decades-long systemic failure to support the most important resource in the disability services sector—the director support workforce—that has been neglected for far too long.”

New Impact: Self-advocacy is alive and well

October 27, 2020

The year 2020 has been a lightning rod for people with disabilities who advocate for themselves and others to design and live their own lives. 

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, many protested healthcare rationing decisions that threatened to put them at the back of the line. Others spoke out when they lost critical services from direct support professionals or feared for their lives in congregate care settings. When George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis sparked global calls for fundamentally reexamining systemic racism, people who live with disabilities renewed the conversation about the intersectionality of racism and ableism.

Against that backdrop, the latest issue of Impact examines the Self-Advocacy Movement, its history, and the role it plays today. Articles explore the current issues self-advocates are fighting for, the debate over the term ‘self-advocacy’ itself, ways to get started as a self-advocate, and the personal stories and programs shaping the Movement today.

“We are at a critical time for the country and for the Movement,” said Teresa Moore, a guest editor for this issue of Impact. She is director of the Self-Advocacy Resource and Technical Assistance Center, a project of Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE). “People want to know SABE’s position on using the term self-advocate or advocate in the work they are doing, among other topics. This issue of Impact is going to set the pace for quite a long time and will help self-advocates and their groups work on what is important to them.”

Moore and three other self-advocates served as guest editors for the publication, which is produced by the Institute on Community Integration and the Research and Training Center on Community Living and Employment under grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.  

“This issue is important because our Movement, for and by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, is alive and well, but it needs more attention. We are not getting the recognition that we deserve in the broader disability world,” said Max Barrows, an Impact guest editor and outreach director for Green Mountain Self-Advocates in Montpelier, Vermont. Barrows hosted several online discussions with dozens of self-advocates for an article highlighting today’s most pressing issues. “If you are new to our Movement, this issue is a great way to begin your relationship with self-advocacy.”

Mike Rogers, regional organizer for the Self-Advocacy Association of New York State, served as an editor and contributed to several articles, including an interview with Samuel R. Mattle, founder of the Center for Self Advocacy in Buffalo, New York.

“Creating this publication on self-advocacy is very important to me,” Rogers said. “We need to expose people without disabilities to the power of the Self-Advocacy Movement and our ability to impact the world.”

Pinpointing autism’s reach

September 16, 2020

To better quantify the prevalence of autism across Minnesota, ICI investigators will tap into large statewide education and social services databases under a new grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Using secure data sets from the MinnLInK project at the University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW), investigators will explore statewide indicators of autism spectrum disorder and the use of ASD-related services in schools, public health, juvenile justice, and other settings. Their ultimate aim: To estimate accurate, statewide ASD prevalence rates, allowing intervention services to be directed where they are needed most. Improving service delivery to key populations will lower the average age of diagnosis, a critical factor in better life outcomes for people with ASD, investigators say.

The project, expected to be completed within the next year, builds on ICI’s longstanding prevalence work in the Twin Cities metro area through the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. Also funded through the CDC, the ADDM Network monitors prevalence rates in select areas across the United States. ICI’s ongoing prevalence work, concentrated in parts of Hennepin, Ramsey, and Anoka counties, covers about one-third of the state’s population.  

ICI’s work has also focused on disparities in prevalence among children with diverse cultural and racial backgrounds, but has been limited by small sample sizes collected through reviews of health and education records. 

Having access to larger, statewide data through MinnLInK will help validate and expand that work. MinnLInK data collects information from state education, human services, and corrections departments, and includes information on children from birth to age 18.

“Communities want to understand their specific prevalence rates and to know what services children who are diagnosed with autism are accessing,” said ICI’s Jennifer Hall-Lande, co-principal investigator for the project. “This opens up a world of possibilities to better understand not only autism prevalence, but also the experiences of children, what services they are using, and where the disparities in diagnosis and treatment exist.”

Amy Esler, associate professor of pediatrics at the University, joins Hall-Lande as co-principal investigator. ICI Director Amy Hewitt, Adele Dimian, and Libby Hallas are also working on the project, among others.

In proposing the study, the team cited research estimating the total annual societal cost of autism is $268 billion in the United States, and that life-long support costs may be cut by up to two-thirds through early diagnosis and intervention.

“It would take years to get separate data agreements in place if we tried to approach school districts and other entities individually for this information,” Esler said. “With this project, we can access data in a confidential, efficient way that will help us identify geographic areas and diverse populations that need more services.”

Back to school, or not: Helping students, and schools, cope

September 16, 2020

As patchwork re-opening plans unfold in schools across the country, one thing is clear when it comes to students with learning challenges: They are at great risk of falling further behind.

Consider a student whose family immigrated to the United States and is struggling to master English. Or another with significant cognitive disabilities. Or another with autism, whose only social interactions had been at school.  

“There are many, many issues of equity out there today,” said Sheryl Lazarus, director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) and TIES Center at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration. “For huge numbers of students, including students with disabilities and English learners, the last several months have been very difficult. Gaps in learning may be increasing, and as a nation we need to know if gaps are disproportionately affecting some groups of students.” 

On several fronts, NCEO and key partners are stepping into that gap, providing distance-learning support for schools that are still operating remotely, as well as those beginning to reopen or using a hybrid model, and providing guidance to ensure student testing is appropriate and fair. 

The TIES Center, for example, has issued nearly two dozen online articles on distance-learning modules in recent months. TIES is a national technical assistance partnership, led by NCEO, for engaging K-8 students with the most significant cognitive disabilities in their grade-level curriculum in inclusive classrooms.

“When students are not in classrooms, building relationships takes even more intentional planning,” one TIES Center article begins. It goes on to offer tips for helping students with and without disabilities to get to know each other, such as designing identity maps. 

TIES and NCEO are developing a video series featuring real-life families sharing how they are working with their child with disabilities and with teachers during the pandemic. The National Center on Deaf-Blindness is assisting with developing these videos, which will be launched soon. 

Much of the online and video content will be useful even when schools fully reopen, said Terri Vandercook, assistant director of the TIES Center. 

“It will enhance collaboration between general and special educators in support of effective instruction, as well as enhance collaboration between home and school,” she said.  “You can use a lot of these strategies in school or in a virtual environment, because student priorities and needs don’t change based on where the student is receiving the education.” 

Likewise, a project affiliated with NCEO, the Improving Instruction for English Learners Through Improved Accessibility Decisions project, has launched audio guides in English, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, and Vietnamese that explain accessibility features and accommodations, and how parents can effectively advocate for their students to receive the right ones.

NCEO is also working to help states, districts, and schools to think through issues related to assessment, despite the challenges of the pandemic. In a Sept. 3 letter, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos alerted state school officials that statewide testing for accountability, waived last year, would not be waived this school year. 

“In this time when it is unclear whether all students have the opportunity to learn, it is important to have data on student performance to be able to look at equity issues across different groups of students,” Lazarus said. NCEO published a brief on formative assessments  in May that offers strategies for distance-learning environments.

Lazarus and colleagues Kristin Liu and Kathy Strunk last month organized and hosted a webinar series for the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education on the inclusion of all students in statewide assessments, while lowering the number of students who take alternative assessments.

“Having a child in alternative assessments starts them down a path that can follow them their whole life,” Lazarus said. “When kids are inappropriately placed, that’s a huge decision that’s been made about their future, so it is critical that good decisions are made. NCEO provides technical assistance to states to help them develop appropriate participation guidelines, resources, and training.”

Closing gaps: Autism’s health disparities

August 18, 2020
Jennifer Hall-Lande.

Responding to research documenting health disparities in the autism community, investigators at the College’s Institute on Community Integration have joined a national research network formed to improve the physical health and well-being of children and adults with autism.

The multidisciplinary team, called the Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health, is led by University of California, Los Angeles, under a grant from the Health Resources & Services Administration. It will create interventional studies and other research on autism as it intersects with overall healthcare access and quality, primary care utilization, physical activity, stress, sleep, substance abuse, sexual health, neurological issues, and genetics, among others. The project will also explore disparities in healthcare among women and people from underserved or vulnerable populations. 

ICI is among 15 collaborating organizations and seven research nodes participating in the network. The Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD) will serve as the data repository and will help manage the network. AUCD’s broad membership network will also serve as collaborators, and UCLA’s Alice Kuo, a professor of internal medicine and pediatrics, is the project director.

“We’re very excited to collaborate on this project with some of the key leaders in the field of autism research,” said Jennifer Hall-Lande, principal investigator on the project for ICI. The ICI team also includes Lynda Lahti Anderson and Jessica Simacek. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to look across the lifespan at outcomes, and to work at the intersection of public health, well-being, community living, and autism.”

In proposing the research network, UCLA investigators cited several studies showing autistic individuals report significantly lower physical and mental health-related quality of life than the general population. They experience chronic underlying health conditions, including gastrointestinal disturbances, sleep and eating disorders, and obesity. Investigators also pointed to a lack of research exploring gender and sex differences, despite a large body of evidence that autistic adults are less likely than the general population to be heterosexual or gender-conforming.

“We are still working out the details of ICI’s role and research contributions, but essentially it furthers our work in racial disparities in autism prevalence, and it opens up a broad new look at health outcomes across the lifespan,” said Hall-Lande.

Note: The Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health prefers the use of “autistic person” as opposed to “person with autism” in order to respect the preferences of self-advocates not to separate their experience of autism from who they are.

Alumni update: Casey Burrows, assistant professor of pediatrics

July 16, 2020
Casey Burrows (MNLEND Fellow, 2018-19).

Helping a colleague prepare for a presentation recently on the state of autism in 2020, Casey Burrows reached out to teen clients and their families in the autism clinic at University of Minnesota’s department of pediatrics to ask about their reactions to the killing of George Floyd.

“The world isn’t expecting [people living with autism] to show a strong emotional response, but they are feeling this so strongly,” said Burrows (MNLEND, 2018–19), assistant professor of pediatrics. “We had some amazing responses.”

Some created visual art, others wrote passionately, debunking the common misconception that people with autism lack emotion.

“It’s very sad and heartbreaking to see so many Black men and women die from police brutality,” one teen wrote. “Events like this make me feel sick to my stomach.”

A parent talked about a family visit to the intersection of Chicago Avenue and 38th Street in Minneapolis to see the George Floyd mural.

“[My son] was overwhelmed with emotion and we had to leave after just three or four minutes,” the parent wrote. “He might show his emotions differently from others, but he feels them all the same.”

Said another parent: “Children with autism feel these things in a deep and visceral way that I have not seen often in the world until I met these amazing children of mine.”

The exercise is a prime example of Burrows’ philosophy on working with children and teens with autism.

“I came into LEND being very trained in a medical model. I did my training at medical schools and departments of psychology, so learning about everything else in the life of autistic individuals and their families was one of the best things about LEND for me,” Burrows said. “Seeing different providers and community members and what’s important to them is very different from what clinicians often focus on, and I’ve brought that into my clinical practice.”

Burrows sees her practice as a way to help people understand themselves and to help them capture their own strengths and areas of need.

“Where a more medical model would see impairments coming in when a child has very strong interests, I try to flip the perspective to see possibilities. I’m thinking of a client I see who has a strong interest in butterflies and is able to connect and share that with people. It brings them joy. I’ve learned so much from him. I see more butterflies in my daily life now.”

Burrows spends 60 percent of her professional time engaged in clinical training and research at the Elison Lab for Developmental Brain and Behavior Research within the University of Minnesota’s College of Education + Human Development. The remainder of her time is spent seeing clients directly and performing autism evaluations through the University’s Autism and Neurodevelopment Clinic.

She recently started working with a new therapy group for young people dealing with anxiety around the continuing pandemic.

For those struggling with stress or anxiety during this time, her advice includes taking advantage of all the ways to connect with school professionals, peers and others, from playing video games to going on a walk outside.

“Build in things to look forward to, and build up your own coping thoughts. Realize we’re going to get through this. Meanwhile, what can I do to keep myself and my family safe? We’re seeing these conversations having an impact.”

Looking ahead, Burrows and other Autism and Neurodevelopment Clinic providers are working on developing more wrap-around care and have recently hired a social worker to connect clients with more services.

“We’re thinking broadly about services people want, whether it’s honing parenting practices or getting them looped into community services,” she said. “We’re trying to think about the unmet needs of our clients and how to help.”

MNLEND project responds to opioid crisis

July 16, 2020
Bridget Winchester (MNLEND, 2019-20) works on a team of MNLEND Fellows and ICI staff providing resources to Minnesota families who have babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome, casualties of the opioid epidemic.

What can you do if your baby, or a loved one’s baby, has neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS)? How can a toddler’s development be affected by NAS? Where can Minnesotans find support?

As part of their 2019-20 MNLEND fellowship experience, Bridget Winchester (pictured) and Catie Mapa are answering those questions, and more, through online content expected to be launched next month from the MNLEND website. The fellows created the content with support from ICI’s Jennifer Hall-Lande and Rebecca Dosch Brown, LEND fellow Whitney Terrill, and the Institute’s communications team.

Educational information about what is currently known about NAS as it relates to child development is discussed, along with tips for family members and others caring for children exposed to drugs in utero as well as in the home environment. Examples include maintaining skin-to-skin contact for infants and, for preschool children, early enrichment services that are culturally and linguistically appropriate.

The site also links to videos and other online resources for both families and professionals working with families affected by NAS. Users can take a pre- and post-quiz before and after viewing the information, and a certificate of completion is offered at the end of the mini-training.

Winchester and Mapa had personal experiences with loved ones who had drug use disorders, which made them particularly interested in choosing to create an information hub that would serve families without stigmatizing addiction disorders. The site’s opening page includes a personalized welcome message that reads:

We wanted to create a website for those seeking clear information about opioid use and its potential effects on child development… Life can be really hard sometimes. We hope this site will act as a stepping stone toward feeling it is a little bit more manageable. We are glad you are here.

“Our goal in this MNLEND project is to equip community members with knowledge about supporting children impacted by opioid use and to create connections for families and individuals during vulnerable times,” they wrote in a project description.

Another goal of the project was to highlight data showing the alarming increases in opioid deaths among certain communities in Minnesota, underscoring the need to connect those communities with resources related to NAS. Drug overdose mortality rates more than doubled in the African American and American Indian communities [U.S. census categories] in Minnesota between 2010 and 2016, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

“We’ve tried to be culturally responsive, addressing the racial and ethnic disparities in Minnesota,” said Dosch Brown, MNLEND program director. Resources are included from a wide variety of both urban and rural areas in Minnesota.

“We started with just opioid resources, but the more conversations we had and stories we heard, we knew had to include food shelves, domestic violence, mental health, and other resources for people and families,” Winchester said. “It’s powerful to see how interconnected all these things are. We have to be aware of all the other things that could be happening in families.”

MNLEND’s 12th cohort graduates virtually

June 17, 2020
MNLEND Fellows Muna Khalif (left) and Mariam Adam (center) speak to staff member Beth Fondell (right) in a still from a video about the program.

The 12th cohort of ICI’s Minnesota Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (MNLEND) program graduated May 14 in an online ceremony that featured a congratulatory message from U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, among others, and video testimonials from graduates themselves about what the interdisciplinary fellowship program has meant for them.

“No matter what path brought you to this moment, today is a day to celebrate,” Senator Smith said. “The skills you’ve learned will help you build more inclusive communities, where people across all their differences are valued and have control over their lives. As we live through this extraordinary time, the challenges seem harder and the stakes seem higher. These challenges will be bigger for folks already challenged by disability, discrimination and systemic barriers to living the lives they choose. We need your knowledge and experience. We need your voices.”

MNLEND brings graduate students from 16 different academic disciplines across the University of Minnesota together with people who have lived experience with neurodevelopmental disabilities, their family members and community practitioners. In addition to learning about the field, fellows each participate in a final project that advances understanding of some aspect of disability.

“LEND is a highly competitive program and being accepted is an honor in itself,” ICI Director Amy Hewitt said in addressing the graduates. “Your accomplishments this year clearly reaffirm why you were chosen.” Hewitt reiterated Senator Smith’s remarks about the discrimination and additional challenges that people with disabilities now face because of the pandemic, and called on graduates to use their LEND experience to create a more equitable world.

The ceremony also featured an ICI-produced video (pictured) with interviews of fellows sharing their plans for the future and how they will bring a person-centered lens to their work.

In follow-up interviews, graduates reflected on what the program has meant to them.

“Participating in the LEND fellowship has been one of the most meaningful educational experiences I’ve had,” said Alyssa Mason. “After only a couple months in LEND I was given the opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. with some faculty members and fellows for a conference and to meet with legislators. This opportunity helped me jump straight out of my comfort zone.”

Another graduate, Katie Beard, said: “LEND opened my eyes to the need for system changes (within policy, clinics, medical care, etc.) to create interdisciplinary and collaborative care across providers for individuals with NDDs. One of the most valuable experiences I had in LEND was getting to go to the capitol and speak with senators and representatives to share our personal stories to advocate for change within disability policy. That experience has given me the courage to continue to speak with policy makers to fight for many different types of system changes in our society.”

Whitney Terrill said the ceremony was a great opportunity to round out a strong year of learning, collaboration, and community. “After each week of shared learning with our cohort and MNLEND staff and lecturers, it was absolutely wonderful to celebrate our collective and individual accomplishments. I will miss the multi-disciplinary conversations each Thursday and will hope that we have a reunion in the future. Each member of my MNLEND cohort and the ICI staff greatly impacted my life and growth over the past year.”

A Grand Challenge for Ukraine: Building an inclusive community

June 17, 2020
ICI’s Brian Abery and Renáta Tichá at left pictured in 2018 with Marta and Sergiy Sydoriv in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

A fully independent nation for less than 30 years, Ukraine in some ways is ahead of the United States when it comes to creating classrooms that are inclusive for students with disabilities. Europe’s second-largest country has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), for example, a step the United States has thus far not taken.

Hard-fought advances in inclusive U.S. practices, however—often driven from the ground up by educators and parents working to improve school life for their students—could be useful to the European nation as it grapples with implementing the mandates of the CRPD.

For more than six years, under several programs funded by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, the Institute on Community Integration has worked to leverage the best of both nations’ strengths in creating more inclusive schools. As part of the latest work, the Institute’s Global Disability Rights and Inclusion program area—led by co-directors Brian Abery and Renáta Tichá—is providing educators in both countries with key learning modules on developing inclusive policies, designing educational programs, transitioning students with disabilities from school to community life and jobs, and developing leaders who can ensure schools are truly inclusive for all students. Originally slated for completion this month, the work was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic but is expected to be widely available this fall, including on ICI’s website.

The modules, to be offered in English and Ukrainian, build on earlier work for the Embassy that included publishing a handbook on inclusive education, train-the-trainer courses, lectures and mentoring. It also featured a grand challenge to a group of fellows to build a community of learning that would create a more inclusive educational system in Ukraine. The fellowship group originated in 2015 as part of a project marking the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Today, eight universities in Ukraine are jointly developing coursework on inclusive education for pre-service teachers of students with and without disabilities.

“It is not easy to have a unified curriculum, but we have established links within the universities, and many students participated in workshops and are equipped with the resources developed by the consortium,” said Sergiy Sydoriv, a professor at Ukraine’s National Precarpathian University. “We are still at the beginning of the process, but every year sees more of the students who previously participated in the project come to schools as teachers ready for making schools inclusive.”

Valentina Malanchii, a school principal in Khmelnytiskyi, Ukraine, who worked closely with ICI on the projects, said the number of students with special needs is growing rapidly and few secondary school teachers have had any previous coursework on teaching students with disabilities. “Our work is very important for the development of education in Ukraine,” she said. “Teachers need more than manuals, they need professional communication. Our Ministry of Education produces a great amount of documents in this field, but very often our teachers and school administrators do not know how to implement them in their daily work.”

Through social media communities, conferences, and trainings, ICI and its in-country partners have now built a network of resources for future teachers, she said.

“Our Facebook community became a strong tool for professional communication for pedagogical university students, as well as parents of children with disabilities and educators already in the field,” she said.

Both Abery and Tichá said they were struck by the enthusiasm and tenacity of the young professionals they worked with through the experiences.

“By the time this project ends, we will be learning from them because they will have created a more inclusive system for training educators than we have in the U.S.,” said Abery. “They are studying inclusion together and building relationships so they can understand children from the same perspective.”

Due to the pandemic, an August educators conference on inclusive education has been cancelled that was to have featured Malanchii and Sydoriv taking leadership on much of the presentations. Tichá said she is confident, nonetheless, that ICI’s partners in Ukraine are ready to continue and expand the work.

“We have reached a point where they have enough motivation and knowledge to move forward,” she said. “The younger generation we have been working with is ready for this challenge.”

Tapping job skills

June 17, 2020
Danielle Mahoehney.

Jobless rates among people with disabilities soared in May to nearly 18 percent, almost triple the level from a year ago, as COVID-19 shut down much of the global economy. The gap in the unemployment rate between workers with and without disabilities also widened.

Almost overnight, as many employers had to close their doors, so did programs that employ workers with disabilities in group workshop settings. For some of these programs, however, the experience is accelerating a shift to emphasize more individualized, competitive employment opportunities aimed at closing the unemployment rate gap.

“We were well into individualized employment long before COVID,” said Dominique Berg of STEP Inc. in Fairmont, Minnesota, an organization founded in the 1960s that provides in-center employment, day habilitation, and skills training for competitive employment in the community, among other services. As the pandemic spread, the organization temporarily closed its facilities to in-center services, but continued counseling workers it had helped place in jobs. Many of those were frontline jobs in nursing homes and other workplaces that were deemed essential.

“It was a real test to see how everyone fared, and we did well,” said Berg. “All of the people we supported in individual employment either maintained their positions or stepped back due to underlying health conditions but are now coming back to their jobs. We walked them through this process and they stayed the course.”

Led by Sue Eisenmenger, STEP’s executive director, the organization also shared insights on moving forward the agency’s transformation goals in the midst of the pandemic. As part of the Minnesota Training and Technical Assistance Project—an initiative of the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts-Boston in partnership with the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota—about a dozen Minnesota service providers meet virtually to discuss ways to increase competitive, integrated employment.

“STEP is one of our partners that has really embraced the opportunity to make the transition to competitive employment even faster than they might have without the pandemic going on,” said Danielle Mahoehney, a program specialist at ICI. “They see the value in having more individualized options for people, and are focused not only on surviving, but progressing during this time.”