The Jobs Issue: Editors' Round Table

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Janet Stewart

Welcome to Impact the Conversation, a podcast of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration. It brings you strategies and stories advancing the inclusion of people with disabilities. Our guests are the authors of impact, our long running magazine, The Bridges. The research, the Practice Gap with professional and personal reflections on what matters most in disability equity today. I'm your host, Janet Stewart.

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Janet Stewart

What do you get from your job? A paycheck? Sure. But what else? For a lot of people, their job makes up a big part of their identity. It's a place to go where we feel part of a community. It keeps our mind sharp as we learn new tasks and skills. Maybe it even gives a sense of purpose to our lives.

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Janet Stewart

Today on the conversation, we're talking with editors for the latest issue of impact, which focuses on employment for people with intellectual, developmental and other disabilities. Stacy Jones is a senior technical assistance and policy associate at the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Danielle Mahaney is a community living and employment specialist here at the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota.

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Janet Stewart

And Dupree Edwards is a coach trainer here at Minnesota's ICI, who works in advocacy and training for people with intellectual and other disabilities. In addition to bringing his lived experience with disability to help shape the issue, Dupree also wrote a personal story about his employment experiences. Welcome everyone! As of last year, as Stacy and Danielle write in their article for the issue, fewer than 1 in 4 people with disabilities was employed.

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Janet Stewart

And that 22% was a record high. Staci, your article points to data from UMass Boston's Access to Integrated Employment Project that shows people with disabilities have been moving toward non-work day services in recent years. Why is this happening?

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Staci Jones

Well, there there probably are multiple reasons why that this is happening. But if you're thinking about the the historical context, we know that people with disability have not had historically the same level of access to employment as people without disabilities. And so a couple of things are probably at play. Over the last few decades, there's been a lot of emphasis in focusing on employment outcomes for people.

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Staci Jones

And at the same time, trying to move away from some of those legacy models of support, like sheltered work or group employment. And so I think part of what we've seen happen is that as organizations move away from those types of models and start focusing on competitive, integrated employment, people might be shifting to other non-work services while they're either waiting for a competitive and an integrated employment service, or waiting to get a job.

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Staci Jones

And so you're seeing that that large increase in non-work, which I think speaks to the other aspect, which is what is happening in those non-work services that might be not as focused on employment for people. So I think it's critical to not just look at what's happening within the employment services, but what's happening within the non-work day services, that's that's contributing to people maybe being stuck in a non-work and not moving on into competitive, integrated employment.

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Janet Stewart

That's one of the things I loved about the article from the two of you was the idea of, let's use that. Let's use what's working in, in the day services and community based services to kind of leverage that for the employment sector. And I don't know, is it does everyone in this field kind of, get that at this point, or is that still something that we're working on to get that message out?

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Staci Jones

I think it's definitely becoming it's coming more to the forefront as we've had more data, and we see that that number continuing to grow. It's more and more a conversation, and we're seeing more, not just among provider organizations recognizing that they need to take a different look at their their service model. But also federal funding partners are also sending that same joint message that it's extremely important to have collaborative relationships across funding sources to use community integration and community life as a as a tool to help people gain competitive, integrated employment and do that again in a more holistic way because it it's the way that we all live our lives, right?

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Staci Jones

We don't just silo between here's our work life and here's our community life. Instead, things are much more seamless. And so with being aware of that, not only organizations, but state I.D. agencies that fund supports are really now taking a closer look at what's happening in non-work. How do we ensure that as a system, those types of services are actually focused on helping people achieve outcomes like, learning new skills?

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Staci Jones

Developing new relationships, actually engaged in their communities in ways that, make sure that they're actually members of their communities because all of those things are essential to, in fact, getting a job. That's how most people get their jobs is through some community connection, or who through what they know and the skills that they have. So it's becoming more and more, a focus area.

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Staci Jones

And I think it's a there's more to come.

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Janet Stewart

And I'd love to bring in a little, practical information here about how this is working on the ground here in Minnesota. We have an initiative called the Minnesota Transformation Initiative. Danielle, can you talk a little bit about what that is and what you're seeing from different providers involved in that?

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Dannielle Mahoehney

ort, started in the spring of: 2022

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Dannielle Mahoehney

The first round of providers that we worked with over the past couple of years, were focused on shifting away from the use of some minimum wage toward competitive, integrated employment. That round of technical assistance ended this past spring, and we've since expanded our focus to encompass any kind of capacity building, around competitive, integrated employment or community life engagement in Minnesota.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

So we do a lot of work with provider agencies. Each provider that we work with in our cohort technical assistance has a team of technical assistance staff from MTI who support them to come up with a plan for transforming their services or expanding their capacity to support people to achieve competitive, integrated employment. And then we help them implement that over time.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

Another key piece of what we do with providers is help connect them with each other. So those that are all focused on transformation, on shifting those service models, like Stacey had said, away from those legacy models of center based employment, group based employment, some minimum wage employment toward competitive, integrated employment, getting them talking with each other, learning from each other, sharing those lessons learned, sharing that expertise.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

We're adding a few new activities, in the coming year as well. So we're going to be doing a lot more work with what we call lead agencies in Minnesota, which are primarily counties and also tribal nations. To support them, providing technical assistance to expand employment outcomes within their counties. So that's pretty new and exciting work we haven't done much work with with that group before.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

So we'll see where that goes. Another part of the project is partnering with, the Arc Minnesota, for our peer mentorship program. They have trained several peer mentors from across the state, including Dupree, who is with us today, to work and talk with other potential job seekers with disabilities who would love to hear the experience of someone else, you know, have someone to walk them through what it's like to seek employment, what it's like to make that jump from maybe a center based job as a minimum wage job to competitive, integrated employment, and have that support and coaching from a peer as they move through that process.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

We also offer, access to Life Course Connect, which are some online tools for planning and considering employment through our partners at Quello. And that's a great resource for families and for potential job seekers as well.

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Janet Stewart

And how difficult has this been? Has this work been you've been at it for a while now. Minnesota is actually one of the states with the highest number of people working for subminimum wages, meaning their hourly wage is below the federal minimum standard. Well, there must have been, you know, there's a lot of different sides to this.

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Janet Stewart

Can you talk a little bit about, you know, and what sort of, have you been met with resistance? What? Why would people resist this? And can you talk a little bit about some of those dynamics?

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Dannielle Mahoehney

What a good question. This is a very, very heated topic in Minnesota and across the country. It's a very emotional topic for many people, especially for families and for people with disabilities who have fears about losing services and programs that they relied upon, that they enjoy going to, that have been a source of friendship and stability for them for sometimes many decades.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

And that can be really, really scary. Change is scary for anyone. So yes, there is definitely some resistance toward changing service models toward ending the use of some minimum wage. And there's many barriers beyond that. Resistance from families and job seekers. There is changing infrastructure for these providers who have these large facilities and these large busses that they use to, new people places and to get people to and from places and, shifting that to, community based models, just very different.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

The funding is different, the infrastructure is different. The delivery model is different. The, the philosophy is different. The training needed for staff is different. And so there's just so many pieces to try to figure out and move at one time. It's a really, really big lift for those provider agencies. And we see a lot of this resistance and a lot of this fear and concern.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

When this topic comes up for example, at the legislature, there has been, pushes the last couple of years at the Minnesota Legislature to phase out some minimum wage. And it's been met with a lot of resistance from a variety of stakeholders. I think one of the things that we're trying to do with MTI is to show that this can be done.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

And that's the that first round of technical assistance we did, we worked with seven provider agencies that all ended their use of some minimum wage. All seven of those providers chose to make that decision. We we still have some minimum wage in Minnesota. Like you said, Janet, we have a heavy reliance upon it in this state.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

But those seven agencies, they're not they weren't forced to end some minimum wage. They stepped forward and said they wanted to. And there is a huge, huge variety of reasons that they did that. Some of the providers we work with chose to end some minimum wage because they see the value in moving toward community based services and supports.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

They think that they could get better outcomes and better quality of life for the people they support by doing so. So they were very philosophically on board with that shift. There were also some providers we worked with who weren't philosophically on board with that shift, but just saw the drumbeat of change coming in policy and thought they would rather get some support and some grants to make that change.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

Now rather than be forced to do it later, possibly without that extra money. And support that came with participating in the grant program over the past couple of years and all seven of those providers and then some unknown wage are still open. They didn't have to stop services to anyone. So anyone who still wants to receive services from these providers are still receiving services from these providers.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

And through MTI, we've been trying to show that we can do this. It's going to be okay, and we can get really good employment and community life engagement outcomes for people by making these changes.

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Janet Stewart

And I love that you've just said, you know, you've seen so many people getting into jobs that they actually love. You know, in putting this issue together, we talked with people who, you know, who used to be just in a center based environment. Now there's one woman who's working at the sports arena in Duluth, and she's a huge sports fan, and she talks about when she went home to her family and told them she got a job at this arena.

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Janet Stewart

It just just incredible stories. And, you know, Dupree, you've never worked in a sheltered work shop, but you've had a lot of interesting jobs in competitive employment. You've worked at the grocery store chain. I loved in your in your essay, you talked about, you know, what you got just from that job. You know, a lot of CEOs, you hear, you know, talking about that first job and all the customer service skills that they that they learned through that.

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Janet Stewart

And then, you know, you went on to do some wrapping to do some different kinds of media even before you came to Ikea. Can you talk a little bit about the fun that you've had on some of these jobs? What what what's that feeling like when you're when you're actually earning that paycheck? What what's what goes through your mind.

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Dupree Edwards

Well, for a day, yeah, we work for the peer to peer better site. And most of what we worked over the past year was with rice. Rice is a very big example of, you know, it's it's a bit of a wage, transitioning. They're building sites all over the Twin Cities at the Metro. And so yeah, I just wanted to, shout out to them.

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Janet Stewart

But, and they're in our issue as well.

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Dupree Edwards

They're there as well.

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Janet Stewart

Exactly.

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Dupree Edwards

And I think, like I told you, the, our essay, I don't think that I want it to, you know, you know, like, I did these shelter workshops at that time was bad. And plus, I wanted to earn money. I wanted to earn things. I never know what it felt like to earn a paycheck or, you know, when I first got the paycheck, it was fun to get paid.

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Dupree Edwards

It was fun to get money and actually get a something that you don't normally get when you're not working. And I learned the different skills and the customer service skills and things like that. Like I said in that essay or the article, that it was very difficult for me to adjust, to the back end groceries. And because I was, I was at a store that had drive to a drive up.

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Dupree Edwards

And now sometimes it was hard on my back and I wasn't as fast as I was before. So I switched to a store that didn't have to drive up what I got. And then I was still kind of slow with the groceries. But, you know, I got to know the customers. I got to know everything. I know I was going through a lot of other stuff in my life during that time, but I made it work, you know, and I, you know, think about me for customer service.

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Dupree Edwards

s also in the article, too. A: 2018

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Dupree Edwards

Before I even got into Icai, I was really, you know, big on the disability community. When I went to Pittsburgh, you know, and I wasn't part of Icai, but Danielle invited me to Pittsburgh, and I met Stacy, and I met, all that we talked about. You know, what the, the peer to peer mentor program that they were starting out was there.

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Dupree Edwards

It opened a lot of doors for me. So, yeah. So I'm part of ISI now and and I like it. And and this is also my dream job because I'm in my dream jobs now. And like for people that want to get into their dream job right away, it's not always realistic. You know, sometimes what I've done is that I try to, you know, give what the day program or the day programs gives me and, and make it work, you know, and try to develop skills and things like that.

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Janet Stewart

So Aisha at UMass Boston has really done a huge body of work in this area as as you hear Dupri talking about some of the work that he's done and you think about the individuals that you've worked with over the years, what do you think collectively this work, what what kind of difference hasn't made?

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Dannielle Mahoehney

Yeah. We, the University of Minnesota ICI, I have been so, so grateful for our partnership and collaboration over the years, over the decades with, UMass Boston ICI they are in many ways national leaders in employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And that's been a really great partnership. And I think one of the cool things about that partnership between our two centers is they bring a very strong background in employment for people with A.D.D., and we bring a really strong background in workforce, and there's been some cool collaboration there.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

And how can we better support the peop, the direct support workers on the ground to our supporting people with disabilities to find and keep their jobs? This is a podcast. So if you are a podcast listener interested in employment for people with disabilities, MTI will be launching a podcast very soon this month, that is intended for employment consultants, employment specialists, people who support people with disabilities to find jobs.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

And it'll be telling those stories, Janet, those stories of helping one person find one job at a time, because that's really how it's done. And I think that's really what we've seen through our work over the years, is that you can do these systems approaches. You have to do systems approaches, you have to do organizational approaches. But in the end, it really comes down to really getting to know the person, the person with a disability who's interested in finding a job, understanding what they're good at and understanding what their skills are, understanding what their interests are, and then finding the employer, the job at the business that fits that.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

And that's how we get success in what we're doing.

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Janet Stewart

And Stacie, from, from the perspective of UMass Boston, ICI, what kind of changes have you seen over the last several years? Do you do you think we're headed in the right direction here?

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Staci Jones

I definitely think we're headed in the right direction. I think what, you know, going back to some things that Danielle said earlier, there definitely are fears from people, families, provider organizations about making the kinds of changes that we're talking about here in business models and service delivery methods. And so I think the the exciting thing is that through the work that we're doing at both Ices and through through projects like MTI, is we're able to bring tools, research, the resources that organizations need to be able to move past some of those fears, because honestly, it can very often be that organizations have had their same business models in place for sometimes many decades, and

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Staci Jones

they may just need access to better understand how to make those changes. Sometimes this can take multiple years and different levels of support. So what you know, the things that ICI UMass has by way of toolkits that that are based on research and talking to experts that have already done the work, I think makes this kind of, these kind of changes in the kind of outcomes that both Danielle and Dupree talked about makes them a little bit more accessible and less scary.

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Staci Jones

And then we have the ability to capture stories from some of that, that transformation. So stories are the best way to show others what's possible. You know, whether it's a personal story, like a personal story like Dupree sharing about his life, his journey, his employment, but also making sure that we show all kinds of stories of people that, whose lives look different, who maybe have different support needs, different journeys and different ways that they've gotten to where they are.

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Staci Jones

So those are other tools that we feel really strongly about of highlighting personal stories and provider organization practices. And, something that I touched on earlier. Some of ICE's work also involves, working directly with state intellectual and developmental disabilities. Agencies around systems change. So we are, one half of the State Employment Leadership Network, or sklearn, which is a joint initiative between ICM as Boston and the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities, or these and that's a membership organization made up of states across the country.

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Staci Jones

We're actually headed into our 19th year. And our goal there is really to support member states to engage in systems change that leads to increases in employment outcomes. So, like Daniel said, that individual level support is so critical. But at the same time, we are still continuing to do systems level work and hoping that all of those points kind of connect in some way.

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Janet Stewart

That's great. And I'm glad you mentioned those personal stories, because one of the things that we've talked about and that we heard from several people who who wrote their personal stories for this issue, was this tension with, you know, as I get into the competitive work environment, I start to earn a little bit of money. A lot of them are fearful that that they that that employment won't be sustained and they'll be back to applying for public benefits or they'll lose their public benefits, if they, you know, make over a certain amount.

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Janet Stewart

And this is a fear that does hold some families back from really wanting to pursue competitive employment. I anyone, want to tackle that one? What? What where do we come down on that?

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Staci Jones

Well, I will just start by saying that there definitely are real complexities that we would all acknowledge, understanding how benefits can be impacted by work and a person's wages. And, you know, we talked to touched on the fact that often fear is coming out of a place of just not having the proper resources or having somebody to walk you through that.

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Staci Jones

So because that's complex. It's it is a barrier for many people. But the bottom line is that we know that in general, people who work earn more money than those who don't, even if their benefits end up changing. And so we certainly believe that anyone that's exploring employment should access the needed services that are going to help inform those changes well ahead of when those impacts might happen.

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Staci Jones

And so finding a community work incentives coordinator, this is a personal, this person is a certified benefits counselor that can assist navigating, how these things might be impacted, but very often families don't know where to go to get those kind of resources. So I think that's just goes back to what we've already said about making sure that people that are, whether it's an organization, a person with a disability, their families know where to go to get the answers to the questions that they have to kind of demystify or and get get into the hands of the people that can actually do the math and help figure out what's realistic.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

Most, if not all, disability benefit programs have some form of work incentive built into them. So there there are definitely ways to make work and benefits work. I deeply, deeply understand the the fear that families and people disabilities have around it. In a in a previous job, I supported people to apply for disability benefits, and I know that it's very complicated.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

I know that it can take years. I know that it often involves multiple steps and a lot of paperwork and appeals and sometimes lawyers and the even the the possibility of losing that and and having to start over is very intimidating and overwhelming and scary. And so I think that there's very good reasons that people aren't as nervous as they are about losing their benefits.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

I think that, this is a topic that continues to come up as a reason, a primary reason why family members don't want their loved one to pursue employment, why people with disabilities are concerned about pursuing employment. And so I think it's something that we as the professionals in disability services and, that, the policymakers have to do better.

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Dannielle Mahoehney

I think my hope is that it it doesn't get in people's way. Because almost like, say that almost anyone is going to be better off financially from working than by not. If you are solely relying on benefits, you're you're stuck to a life of poverty.

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Dupree Edwards

I am working with the benefit out of this right now. What I've tried to do is I've tried to go full time and and one, one thing. So when you go full time, you make a lot of money. You know, you lose those benefits sometimes. Do I have enough money to pay by, you know, it sure.

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Dupree Edwards

It's or rent or any of those, even though by waiver pays for it or, you know, other Social Security pays though. So the benefit analysts that I've got have tried to go through it. I decide the documents and everything. Everything's good. They're working on it. It takes about five months. My dad else said there is ways to go around it.

00;27;47;09 - 00;28;07;01

Dupree Edwards

There's ways to keep your benefits. Don't you want to be able to have your kid or child or of thought, to be able to get the things that they want in life and what they need? But I just wanted to say that, that, I work with, Eisai Massachusetts a lot, so. And I just want to.

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Staci Jones

Say I would just say me that. That's all. Because of you and your skills, I've had the benefit of listening to you do some public speaking a few times now, and you're really good at it. And so I think everything that you've accomplished has been because of your your skills and your advocacy and your incredible passion for employment.

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Staci Jones

So thank you for your work.

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Janet Stewart

And I just wanted to close by saying thank you to Dupree and to Danielle and to Stacy, not only for coming to the podcast today, but also for guiding this issue over the last several months. I think it really came together well, and there are a lot of great articles that I think that people in this field and beyond are going to be able to get a lot from in the future.

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Janet Stewart

So thank you so much.

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Dupree Edwards

And happy October Disability Employment Month.

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Dupree Edwards

To all National out there.

00;29;04;04 - 00;29;14;14

Janet Stewart

Thanks for joining the conversation. If you'd like to reproduce all or part of this podcast, please email icipub@umn.edu

00;29;14;17 - 00;29;18;13

Pete McCauley

Our show is co-produced at the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration by Impact managing editor Janet.

00;29;21;11 - 00;29;30;25

Pete McCauley

Stewart, and ICI media producer Pete McCauley. Skyler Mihajlov is our editor. Graphic designers are Connie Burkhart and Sarah Curtner.

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Pete McCauley

For more information on.

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Pete McCauley

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Pete McCauley

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