Doing it Right: A Holistic Approach to Job Placement. Presenters: Madan M. Kundu, Ph.D. and Chrissann Schiro-Geist, Ph.D. Sponsored by: Rehabilitation Institute for Underrepresented Populations LAUREL: Good afternoon, this is Laurel Richards with ILRU in Houston and we want to welcome you to today's Web cast presentation, the title is Doing It Right: A Holistic Approach To Job Placement. And we want to recognize the support of NIDRR, that's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research for its support of this series of Web casts. Today we have a special presentation from Madan Kundu and Chrissann Geist who will present on job placement, but they'll present on the conduct of job placement from the point of view of a holistic approach, and specifically they're going to examine two instruments that they have developed and it would be appropriate now for you to make sure you have in front of you either on the screen or, say, printed out in front of you the self-assessment tool for students or counselors, and we've got it posted on the Web site, and you can either use the Adobe pdf file or there is one that's just strictly text file, but it would be extremely useful to have that in front of you as we go along. Now, also you can see at the -- on your screen in the windows place there is typing that's going along as I'm speaking, and we're having this presentation captioned in real time so that's what's going to be scrolling along. Beneath that you can see a little statement that says, click here if you wish to submit questions or something to that effect. What will happen is your software program that does your E-mail will come up, it's preaddressed to ILRU, and you just type in your question and hit send and it comes in to the office. And we will -- when they come in and Madan asks for questions, they'll be read and we'll process it like that. Madan says he would like to see as many questions as you all care to submit. Madan is a Chair and Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Disability Studies at Southern University in Baton Rouge. That's Louisiana for those of you not in the gulf coast area, and Chrissann Geist is a professor with the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Between the two of them by my calculations, they have about 70 years of working in rehab counseling total, so they know a little bit about it and today's presentation, again, is a holistic approach to job placement and Madan, we'll turn it over to you now. MADAN: Thank you, Laurel, and good afternoon to everybody. First of all I would like to thank Laurel Richards, Mark Richards, Lynne Deese and Davian Morrell for assisting me with this Web cast this afternoon. First of all, I would like to -- I'm sorry -- Dr. Chrissann Geist, my colleague, she will join us in a few minutes later because she's in a meeting. First of all, I'm sure that you have the instrument open in front of you called systems approach to placement, self-assessment for students and counselors. We requested that if you take this instrument to assess your knowledge that will be helpful to understand the presentation I want to make after a few minutes. So we invited some individuals who had completed this course and we will discuss that before we make a presentation, because discussion of this course makes presentation more meaningful. First of all, I would like Lynne Deese to share her experience of taking the instrument. Lynne, are you on line? LYNNE: I'm here. MADAN: Could you tell me your experience about taking the instrument? What do you think about it? LYNNE: You know, I found the self-assessment for students and counselors, you know, pretty valuable. I think one of the things that made it difficult for me is that my organization and the services it offers and my responsibilities in that organization vary depending upon the different cases that we handle. We're actually under the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation and there are some services that are provided to our consumers through VR and some that we provide directly. We only take on a portion of the case responsibility. So sometimes it was kind of difficult for me to separate myself from the services that would have been offered through my consumer through another part of the agency. It was a little easier to make the self-assessment because I really was talking about my own expertise and how comfortable I was with serving the consumer in these various capacities. MADAN: Would you tell your experience how many years you are in the rehabilitation business and what are the different positions you've served? LYNNE: Lord, Lord! LAUREL: (Laughter). LYNNE: I've been in human service I guess 25 years or more. And I started my career as a special education teacher. And I've worked for the public school systems, state institutions, area mental health, Department of Social Services, I've worked for the community college system and this is my last stop here is the North Carolina Assistive Technology Program, which is one of the Tech Act Grant programs. MADAN: Have you done any placement activities? LYNNE: What I've done in the past -- most of my placement activity, I have a graduate certificate in vocational evaluation, and most of my placement activities are part of a team of people who make the placement decisions and right now the placement activities that I have are what they call community-based assessment. You go out into the community and I would spend time working with other professional people in the environment in which the consumer is going to work determining what kind of technology is going to help them with the job. MADAN: So your area of experience is in rehabilitation. LYNNE: Everybody from the womb to the tomb.(laughter) MADAN: Can you share your assessment by each subsystems LYNNE: We're talking about the self-assessment? MADAN: Right LYNNE: Subsystems? For client subsystems, total is 54 and the average was 3.6. MADAN: Just tell the average. LYNNE: Health sub system 2.5, education was a 3, family subsystem was a 2, social subsystem was a 2.9, employer subsystem was a 2.8, placement personnel subsystem was a 2.7, and funding subsystem was a 2.6. MADAN: and overall? LYNNE: Overall was 2.9. MADAN: Very good. So now I'm going to ask one of my students -- his name is Davian Morrell, and his score -- he is a masters student in rehabilitation counseling. He just completed one year from this fall he will be a second year student. He has not taken job placement class yet. Davian, can you tell us what kind of work you did before you came to school? DAVIAN: Hello. Good afternoon. The type of work that I would be involved in -- I did some community-based volunteering with HIV/AIDS organizations in New Orleans, and what I did basically was that -- being that it was community-based, we targeted the African American population, males and females between the ages of 18 to 25, and what we did was we distributed condoms and explained the things about HIV. and the infection rates and different things of that nature. And I also worked with Wells Fargo home mortgage as a loan manager for a brief time before I came into the program. MADAN: Okay, good. Could you tell us your score by each subsystems–I mean your average score. DAVIAN: the client subsystem is 2.06, health subsystem is 1.75, education is 2, family subsystem is 2.2, social subsystem is 2.6, employer subsystem is 1.6, placement personnel subsystem, 2, funding subsystem, 1.58 and my overall average is 1.97. MADAN: Very good. So now we can see the difference -- Davian has some exposure in the field of (rehabilitation so his total average is 1.97 whereas Lynne is 2.9 and Lynne has been in the field for 30 years. Now, what is your experience taking this test? Talk about the instrument. DAVIAN: Well, most of the questions, like some of the testing instruments I had seen in some of my undergrad classes and also my undergrad classes in psychology and also in my first year in this rehabilitation program. My assessment class -- that was one of my first classes for the first semester, we looked at certain testing instruments, personality inventories, so we actually had participated with one instrument and I have a job placement class which we also use different instruments for job analysis. So basically that's what my experience is more academic. I have no real world experience. MADAN: So as you -- I mean as you take job placement class next semester and you do an internship with the clients and do some placement activity this score is going to change so this is really what I we do when you teach a job placement class. At the beginning of the class you give this instrument to the student to assess their knowledge, and then at the end of the semester, give them the same thing again so they can see the difference of what they have learned. Okay, now why you took this instrument first? Because you're talking about a very complex subject called job placement. Often we think job placement is just getting a job for your consumer. That is not it. That's why we often see the clients come back to the counselor again and again, the revolving door syndrome. The job placement situation is a very complex subject that's why we discuss this issue. Now, those of you who have taken this instrument, I'll explain what it means. If you have a score of 3 in any of the subsystems, that means you have enough knowledge in that area, but if you have less than that, it doesn't mean anything about it because (Inaudible) that's why you have a lower score, but at least you must have a 3 to be successful in job placement activities. So in case of Lynne, she has 3.6, in client subsystem so that means that is what she does day in and day out and that's why she is more knowledgeable in that area. Social subsystem, 2.9, pretty close to 3, but some areas she has lower, family subsystem that is acceptable for her because she doesn't deal with the family that much. So that's why. So what does this mean? This instrument allows The potential practitioner to identify his level of understanding of each one of the variables within the subsystem and how they interrelate and have an affect on the placement process system. So the evaluation of how much knowledge you have in relationship to your peers in your class or in your facility or in your rehabilitation agency -- but see, this is not a matter of perfection, how much you know in comparison to your peers, so there is some -- the perception of how much I know may vary from person to person. So that's why this score you have to treat with caution. If you have a between 3 and 4 in any subsystem, you have enough knowledge or you can teach someone on the subsystems. . If lower than 3, then that means you need to read a textbook on placement or attend a class on placement or learn more about that subsystem so that way you'll have competency or knowledge in job placement. MANDAN: Now, Lynne, as far as our presentation, I'm sure you have the Powerpoint slides in front of you. I'm going to have some discussion about work, what does it mean, and some statistics. And then later on we will talk about systems theory and its impact on placement. Okay, so the second slide that you have is work -- work is of course paid employment that you can measure, and also what can be defined as an activity that produces something of value to other people, that have some social and psychological value and have some worth as a citizen and individual and contributing person in society and the family. And in another one, it says search for daily meaning, daily bread, League of Nations), so this is like a humanistic approach. And the other area is called quest for life rather than Monday through Friday. So as we're concerned about consumers with disabilities, let's talk about -- a little more about disability as a natural part of human experience and in no way diminishes the rights of individuals to live independently -- live independently, enjoy self determination, make choices, contribute to society, (Inaudible) and full integration into the economy as a part of social, cultural and integration in society. This quotation is actually from the Rehabilitation Act of 1998, but my question is we all will be disabled at one point in our lifetime so we need to pay attention to this. Now, regarding employment and people with disabilities, here is some statistics and job placement is one of the most central and important duties of a counselor that we know. That is how the state vocational rehabilitation system is meant for has been for to successfully place them in jobs. Now, here is some data -- 82 percent of managers feel that there is no difference between employees with and without disabilities. That's a very good perception; but there are some exceptions, too. 75 percent expressed interest of including efforts to have people with disabilities. That's also good news. And some of the other characteristics is (Inaudible), and 68 percent of people with disabilities and 73 percent of those with severe disabilities within working age range is unemployed. This is a figure that really bothers us in rehabilitation. In fact, while we have all the mandates, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Tech Act, all these provisions why still we have this number. So that's why you need to pay attention. Now, here is some data in the next slide, slide No. 5. It says level of participation of men with disabilities by age. 1957-92. I mean, this is the data for the 23 years that is available. Later data is not available. And you can see that the graph -- up to 18-44 years of age, 45 to 54 year age and 55 to 64 year age. You can see the difference that the level of participation is decreasing for men with disabilities over the years. So there are a lot of reasons for it. One could be that we're dealing with people with severe disabilities. People are living longer as a result of the medical advances; but as people are living longer, so they have to have some occupation so they can feel their personal dignity and worth. Then the next one is slide 6, level of participation of women with disabilities of the same period, you can see the different trend because back in 1970 women's participation in the workforce was very minimal, 35 percent, while the men was 70 percent or 72.5 percent. So that's why women are becoming more educated and doors are opening for them, so they are up in the graph; but if you see that 55 to 64 age range -- men have of course decreased quite a bit but women remain the same. Now we go to some other -- next statistics, next slide, No. 7, level of participation rate for persons, again, 18 to 64 years of age, in the same period, we can see the characteristics here, men, women and total. You can see the men with disability and without disability. So men without disability is a little change of 2 percent, but men with disability, it's significant, more than 11 percent change. And then women is still a little increase, about 11 percent, but women without disabilities is 21 percent. And then of course the total. Now if we keep the statistics in mind, what we can do to enhance the employment potential of people with disabilities. Now, let's talk about the concept of placement, what does that word mean? CHRISSANN: Madan, what slide would you like me to come in on? MADAN: Slide 8. LYNNE: can I say that I'm not seeing the slides on my end. Am I supposed to be seeing the slides through RealPlayer? MADAN: It should be on that Web site. One is text and the other one is the PowerPoint presentation. LYNNE: I see. Okay. MADAN: Slide No. 8 is placement by definition: -- available optimal vocational positioning of a person (Inaudible). It's a broad definition. In fact, what I like often in my presentation I want the participant to interact with me, but I don't think, Laurel is it possible in this situation? LAUREL: You want to try it? MADAN: Let's see what you think, in other words, I'll be lecturing -- or opportunities for questions will be at the end. So here are three major definitions here -- broad definition -- that's the broad definition you have in that top. And it says now when you talk about placement, the critical outcome of placement, now that word optimal vocational positioning, that particular word has a broad definition. What optimal vocational positioning means? It is different from person to person based on their circumstances, given their conditions, given their disability or other factors. So that's a very broad definition. For example, I give two answers here, a homemaker, is that person in an optimum vocational positioning? One can say, no, that's not enough, but given the person's situation and living condition for that woman, that is optimal vocational positioning, but if this person's disability condition changes, they become more independent, have assistive technology or computer or whatever, then next will be his or her optimal vocational positioning. (Inaudible).So it depends on the situation. One sense sit correct, the other sense -- (Inaudible). Now, I'm going to talk about two different placements. The first story says client- centered placement and selective placements, that is what we teach at the university. So (Inaudible). CHRISSANN: Madan, did you want me to do anything in this area? MADAN: We are on slide No. 9 now. So what is client-centered placement. He is on job interviews and acts as if he is his or her own agent, advocate in contact with the employer. It is based on consumer responsibility and counselor direction. It is consumer-directed, that means less involvement of counselor. It's a nondirective approach, it means that consumer is independent and he is autonomous. In fact, in this approach, 56 percent of successful closures are attributed to consumer effort. That is one approach. The next one is selective placement, which is something different. Selective placement is a process used for placing people with disabilities in employment according to their age,experience, qualificationas if I indications, physical and mental capacities. So it involves matching the consumer with the job where the counselor acts as a resource person or agent or advocate in following up job leads, making contacts and even accompanying the client to the interview. So which is different than the client centered placement. They are still unable to secure work on their own. In such cases, the counselor provides more services within the job site, meets with the employer and personal managers solving problems with coworkers, that means the counselor is involved heavily in this placement process. So I think in rehabilitation rehab, consumers like this with severe disability conditions, mental conditions -- so that's where the counselor has quite a bit of involvement. Of course counselors like to have client centered placement because the counselor has to do a lot of paperwork and can not deal with everything, but often that is not the case. CHRISSANN: Sometimes people have said that they make the analogy that this idea is that the selective placement is giving a person a fish and client centered placement is teaching them how to fish. That's a very simplistic approach to it that in the long run if we just do selective placement and we never give any of those skills, that the person always has to come back to the vocational rehabilitation counselor to move on, whereas if you've taught them some skills, they can go back and make their own cycle. I think that's critical, too, but the point that you've made with clients who are capable of that, and so many times selective placement, as you pointed out, is the most efficient way for clients who don't have the skill set and can't learn - and can't learn that because of the nature of their disability. MADAN: Sure. You're perfectly right. Our job is to teach how to fish, you know, but sometimes it is not possible or maybe that you start with selective placement and then slowly, slowly, probably in the long run he will be independent. Now, let's talk about that word matching, what does matching mean? So good placement requests more than matching the individuals' mechanical or physical capacities to the requirements of the job. Because that is not all, some other factors are the degree of responsibility that must be assumed by the consumer, the amount of initiative and adaptability and mental alertness that must be exercised, environmental working conditions, and individual requirements. So those are requirements for our consumers with disabilities. So with this basic concept on placement, now I'm going to talk about the new approach that Dr. Chrissann Geist and we advance. (inaudable) Are you on line? CHRISSANN: Yes, I have the slides -- I'm not on line -- I mean I have a slides but I'm talking to you on a phone. MADAN: Do you have the slides? CHRISSANN: I have the PowerPoint. I'm looking at a green one that says self-assessment for students and counselors. MADAN: How about -- are you on slide No. 13? No, we've already gone over that. We're in the next one. Why don't you start on this systems diagram or SAP. You start from here. All right? CHRISSANN: on 13, self-assessment, yes. Okay, good. CHRISSANN: Did the people on the broadcast have a chance to try the instrument out? MADAN: We already discussed this one student score and one placement specialist score and so we're talking about a schematic diagram. Are you in the right place? CHRISSANN: Yes, slide 13. MADAN: Go ahead. CHRISSANN: So this -- the instrument that was created in the way of not dichotomizing placement as we noticed in the slide before, the two major theoretical models and they were well developed theoretical models, client centered from counseling theory and directive placement as a result of a lot of vocational rehabilitation theories over time, but the approach to looking at the issues of placement from a systems approach at the time that it was brought to the fore, which was the early 1980's was a new way of doing things that we didn't have to take a position or a point in time, but it wasn't an either/or. We didn't have to say the only right way to do this is to give our clients fish for for dinner or the only right way to do this is to teach them how to fish because we know, as we pointed out earlier, there are some clients that no matter how much we teach them will not have the skill set, and other clients would be insulted if we said, hey, you go take this job and that's it. They would want to go through the process themselves. They are capable of learning, you know, how to interview and how to present themselves and how to use the skills that they've acquired. And there are other clients who, you know, would be capable of doing things if we could help them with other circumstances that would help them with getting a job. We came to realize -- are you there? Hello? LYNNE: I'm sorry, my phone just did a little funny noise. CHRISSANN: In the process of getting a job that it's more than just having skills. There are lots of people who have a degree or qualification and they don't somehow get that job. And so maybe there are circumstances in their life or other needs that are not being met, and that's the real reason why they are not employed at a particular time. Not because of not having the skills themselves. So in the 1980's when we developed this new model, we decided that we would -- we would take all the elements that have to deal with placement and put them new a systematic approach, but we realized that all those elements interact with each other. It's not just knowing how to sell yourself, it's not just having the skills, it could be transportation, it's not having a family support system it could be a million things. So we would look at the issues related to people getting jobs, people with disabilities, especially, getting jobs from this holistic perspective. And that's how the instrument evolved that you've had exposure to. And if you've looked at the instrument, then you know that there are a couple of things you can rate in that instrument. One is you can rate your own knowledge of all the things that make up helping a person with a disability move to the next step of employment. So you can rate yourself on your knowledge in those areas, and sometimes counselors aren't as knowledgeable as they should be in some of these areas. Sometimes they forget to ask or just because it isn't on an intake form. They haven't sometimes they haven't really ascertained the family support level or the financial situation as accurately as they should. So one of the things that students in training in vocational rehabilitation and counselors in the field can do is look at the systematic approach and evaluate themselves on how knowledgeable they are on the various subsystems that have to do with getting a person with disabilities employed. So that's one way to use this approach. Another way is to use it with the client themselves. If you are comfortable with all the elements, once you've done what you needed to do to become comfortable, if you're lacking in any of those areas, you can use this as a way of having an assessment done on the person who is looking for the job in terms of systematically reviewing all the things that need to be reviewed, including client centered versus directive placement techniques, but all the other things that are taken into account on the instrument itself. It can be used as a self-developing instrument for the counselor or student, it can be used as a way of analyzing the needs of the clients. So if we look at the schematic diagram of the systems approach to placement, we see that there are, in this model, than is an evolved model from the original one that we started with one that had like ten subsystems in the '80's and Dr. Kundu and I have refined it and reorganized it to eight subsystem model. So in the schematic diagram, all of the subsystems interact with each other and they interact with the whole activity of placement itself. And the subsystems that have been defined here include the funding subsystem, which could be very critical. Maybe someone would like to go back to work but they would lose their social security and they won't have -- I'm not saying this is true, but they believe they won't have medical care, especially for a person with a disability, this is critical. They have become accustomed, even though they don't want to be dependent on funding, they have become accustomed to a particular funding level and that is frightening for them or they need access to funding that only certain systems can help them with, et cetera. There is the social subsystem which is the client's ability to interact with other people, and you can find the details of each of these subsystems when you look at the instrument itself and we've gone through a lot of exposure of this instrument to different populations of counselors who have enhanced it or changed it or given us feedback about it, but one of the elements in the social environment of the client that neither aid nor keep them from a successful job. Some of those things can be -- can be real assets and some of the social issues can take away from their employment, for example, cultural issues can be an asset in one direction, especially if they're looking for employment within a particular cultural location or it can be a negative, we still have prejudice against particular cultures. And I mean that -- not supporting it, I mean you need to be honest about it and understand. The employer is a very important part of this subsystem -- a very important subsystem because the employer is the key to it. In many cases, we need to work with the employer to help facilitate the system itself to set up natural supports, for example, especially if a client has special physical or mental needs. The employer ultimately is the source of work, so the employer's subsystem is important to understand. Job trends, employer needs, working with employers, sensitivity, creating jobs within an employment system, issues around job sharing for people with special time needs, et cetera, and those factors that will really help us have the employer be a facilitated part of change. Education is a critical subsystem and that not only means formal education here, but also informal education. Does the client understand work as it is in our national economy, and have they gained any skills? Have they been to vocational training? Have they had on-the-job training? Have they had formal education? Have they completed community college? I'm going to be using -- in the near future a large dataset that the state federal agency has created to look at just those who have had community college training and that's a huge number compared to people who have had no training at all. So what level of education does the person have and what can they market? Placement as an activity itself -- and here is where we get into the philosophical approaches, are we going to place the person or teach them how to place themselves or is there something in between. The family I've allude to before are very critical issues. Sometimes it's not to the family's advantage to have that person going to work, in terms of loss of funding. Now the person is receiving social security. If they go to work, they're going to be having their own funding, they may leave the family environment, live independently, Maybe the family's become dependent on that financially. So when we have our client that we think can go out to an interview and if the family sabotages that by not driving them there or not getting them up on time, that may be a real detriment and we may not have looked at that. We may have assumed that the person was going to get there independently and now we find out the family can be a draw back. On the other hand, the family can be a huge asset, a family that understands the value of work, has good work values themselves can be an incredible positive in this system. We need to know that. We need to know what are the positives and what are the negatives. Health itself is critical for people with disabilities, what are their health needs, what are their medical needs? How often are they going to have to leave the workplace during the day to get medical treatment or services that they can't get at any other time, et cetera. Will their health stay the same? Will it change over time in a way that the employer has to interact with or the family has to interact with or the funding system has to interact with? Or the family has to interact with. So the health issues in itself are very critical and that in itself could be a whole, you know, years or several years worth of study for the person who wants to do placement. Just understanding the health aspects can be a critical piece itself and take a lot of time. The client -- the client's needs, why is the client here with us? Because somebody said you had to go work with that counselor or because they want to be there. Personality factors that might interfere with their ability to access the rest of the system itself. Do they have a hidden disability? Do they have disabilities that are secondary to the primary disability which is the reason why they are here working with you which maybe will interfere with the problem or do they have assets that will make them excellent clients for job placement. We need to look at each of those subsystems both by themselves and also how they interact with each other in terms of placement itself. And so, again, knowledge not only of the subsystems themselves, which is important, but how they interact with each other is critical if we're going to make a successful placement and keep the person employed. Lots of times we can get them successfully placed and there they are two weeks later back at our door, or worse yet, not at anybody's door OR worse yet at anybody's door, and they have just given up. That's what we're trying to accomplish. Madan, did you want to do the next one? MADAN: So you talked about the schematic diagram, right? So I'm going to go to slide No. 14. So with this overview of the essence of the systems placement, we need to discuss some concepts related to that and some of the theory behind it. So the systems placement of course either doesn't negate the other two approaches we discussed, client centered approach and selective approach, but the problem with the client centered and selective approach is that two existing models are unable to address the complexity of job placement for persons with disabilities. And you can see from Dr. Geist's discussion that there are so many factors and variables that react and interact very complexly. That determines the ultimate placement outcome. Other issues that this existing model does not take into account the aspect of human organizational or environmental interactions. That is most important because a person leaving the society and environment, or organization or an environment that he or she interacts, so those have to be important, too. The system placement takes into account all the factors. So what we're suggesting is in combination of the two within an objective framework will elicit higher success rate in the placement of persons with disabilities. As I said earlier, the systems approach (Inaudible)but adds a new dimension to it. If a successful evaluation is completed, then at the end of the process the possibility of successful job placement is increased. We're going to talk about that at the end, the other instrument, the intake and outtake assessment. If you take a good assessment of the consumer's need at the beginning and then throughout the process be providing all the services that he needs, then definitely we'll have a better placement outcome. So how you can be sure that you are really addressing the needs of the consumer in an objective fashion when you have a 150 to 200 case load in a State federal agency to deal with is impossible for any human being to remember all the factors of what client X needs or what client Y needs. That's why the SAP is an objective manner of assessing the needs in different subsystems. SAP is built to view the placement process as a system with eight identifiable subsystems that play an important role in the placement process. It views the placement activity organized in a holistic way. Accesses the consumer systematically at entry or at the infant stage. It helps determine whether the consumer is employable and placeable. We'll talk about these two concepts a little later. What is employment placeable. It also facilitates growth to the Consumer. The Consumer is a part of the process. It's also facilitating the placement counselor, because when you work together with the consumer -- that gives a new idea for the counselor to be creative and innovative. Okay, now, these two concepts, employability and placeability. This concept is: What is employability is the capacity of an individual to function in a particular occupation or work situation. That means they have the skills to perform the job. Now, placeability is different. The capacity of an individual, which has particular assets and liabilities to become employed, given the options of the current job market and doing the job. So it's the other skill -- not only the skills for the job, how the persons get along with the coworkers, how the person takes instruction from the supervisors, the quality, quantity, those kind of aspects that impacts the maintaining of a job. So here is the concept of placeability, how he maintains the job given the job market and retain the job. Now we are going to discuss about each of the subsystems and some of the variables and factors we thought are important, but we'd like your comments, too. I mean, this is not an all inclusive factor that we've heard about it, but they are the common and mostly -- I mean mostly we talk about it. The client subsystems, we think about the client's intelligence, interest, aptitudes, abilities, independent living skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, living management, transportation, work adjustment skills, job skills, these are important. And of course you may say, yes, there are some other factors and variables that are important, too That is true, we agree with that, these are the common factors and variables that we will consider always. But given your situation, it might change, so you can change it. So that is the flexibility and adaptability of this instrument. And I would like if you've given some comments about it on each of the subsystems and factors. We are doing other research about how does this systems placement apply to consumers with culturally diverse backgrounds? For example, I think an American, Asian Hispanic American, islander, American Indian, so we are doing some focus groups in different parts of the country about how we can make this instrument more culturally relevant. The next subsystem is the health subsystem. So we are talking about primarily disability, secondary disability, general physical condition, personality, prosthetic aides,(wheelchairs) sensory aide, glasses, low vision aide, hearing aids, assistive technology. Now, if you have the other instrument open that is the intake and out take factors. You can look at that and we'll talk about that instrument at the end. The next one is educational subsystem. Clients' academic background, interest level and their potential for further education. Does your client have a GED or diploma or college or given the client's situation, he or she can do a correspondence school or get technical training or whatever, on-the-job training, that might enhance his employment potential. Chrissann you want to talk about the family subsystem? CHRISSANN: Sure, Yeah. What I was alluding to when I was talking about the schematic is one way to put it here as you noticed is this adjustment to the disability. MADAN: Correct. CHRISSANN: That is some of the things I was alluding to when I was going over the schematic is has the family adjusted to the disability? Not only does the person have to adjust to the disability, but has the family adjusted to that disability? Because often -- and especially I would guess when we start doing this research into the cultural aspects, families will play an even greater role than we ever thought they would. Because often that disability is owned by the family, it becomes a disability for the family itself, not just for the person, depending on how the culture views disability and how the culture views the disability and the needs of the person within the family system. So has the family accepted the disability, and more importantly for placement, have they accepted the fact that this person, this family member with a disability is going to be able to work or in what capacity will they be able to facilitate the person's acquiring a successful job? As the adjustments of a reciprocal kind of situation -- what about the changes in the family role? For example, if the family member with the disability is a father of a nuclear family and because of the disability he has been out of work for a year, a year and a half, during his medical recuperation and the mother has had to go to work in the more traditional family model, is he going to give that up because dad is able to go back to work? Maybe mom is enjoying work and she wants to share that responsibility with the family, but the father who is now medically well or as well as he is going to be or come to some stability may not be so excited about the idea of mom still working. He would like her back in the role she had before he became ill or had an accident and she is not so happy to do that. So those kinds of issues of the roles of the family are very critical. Are they talking about it? Are they talking about these changes and what's happened? Sometimes it's amazing how little people talk about the disabling condition and its impact on the family? It just happens. We do something about it, we pick up the pieces and we go on. We never really talked about what that means, especially when the person with the disability is ready to seek employment. Maybe that may lead to the need for couples therapy between the significant others in the family and we're also talking about nontraditional families. So the therapy may be between two persons who are choosing to live together in a nontraditional but stable relationship or the broader aspects of all the people that are living together in that household. What about the financial resources? Often there has often been a drain on the family, not only psychologically, but financially, how has that impacted them? What opportunities have been lost and how are people going to accept those losses and now the person with the disability is considering going back to work, what are the financial aspects that are going to change? What are the costs of going to work? We think about this is wonderful, the person is going to bring in a lot more money, the family is going to be stable. Sometimes that means that they will lose -- they may lose financially because they've lost some income replacement situation. So they may lose that to gain the work. Now, we think that's great, but this particular family may have a period of adjustment during that period of time. How depleted are they because of the disability? Have they had to give up their home and move to a rental situation and what impact is the person going to work going to have on that, et cetera? So those things all need to be taken into account itself. The need for intensive care -- very critical. If the person is going to go back to work and there is going to have to be some attendance care situation happening, who is going to pay for that? How is that going to be taken care of? Will it be supplied through the employer? Will the family have to pay for that? Will mom have to quit her job so she can help dad go back to work and act as an attendant, et cetera? And the aspects of child care. Often when a person with a disability is at home recoup rating, child care snot an issue because the person with the disability is at home. Now both people who are working are going back to work, what is going to happen in terms of child care issues. You want to do social? MADAN: Sure, (Inaudible). So let's talk about these factors. As we live in a multicultural society, each ethnic group has their own values so that impact in their living and working conditions. And of course their language barriers, too. I remember that one survey in New York City, there are 135 different -- (Inaudible) a lot of times spoken at home. So what will happen, what is the impact in terms of education and employment, some cases in some service provision, a lot of Hispanic populations -- for example, Houston, Texas, Dallas, and this area -- so there could be some language barriers between the workers and these Supervisors . Or some moral and religious barriers based on their values, some people do not work on weekends, or some other situation that someone way not want to work in an adult video store, something like that. So there are different interesting aspects of this culture. So that has some consideration that you have to pay. And the next one is employer subsystems. Now, one of the factors here is called organizational factor barrier, attitudinal barriers, coworker attitudes, union barriers, environmental or architectural barriers, (Inaudible). Now, let's talk about employer subsystems. The employer has to make money. So if a worker has to contribute more than what he is going to earn, otherwise the employer will be hurt. That's why we need to understand how the employer system functions and what type of attitude they have. For example, if an employer had a past experience with people with disabilities, they are more favorable to hire people with disabilities. So what are the major issues -- many employers don't have an exposure. They always think about accident insurance rate, but the statistics show the insurance rate is not determined by the type of persons they hire. It is the type of job they perform, the operation, that determines the insurance rate. CHRISSANN: I think it's important in the employer subsystem to point out that rehabilitation counselors and those working with people with disabilities can really be change agents here, that the employers are not necessarily bad people who don't want people with disabilities employed in their business, they just don't have information. And so a lot of these points are where we have to come prepared with the document, the study, the research that will show them that these are really non-issues because they're going to (Inaudible), not because they are bad people, but just because they don't know. MADAN: Yes, so that is our job as a rehabilitation counselor specialist to make them aware, in fact, what their potential gives them and the cost of insurance will go up -- that is not true, and the people with disabilities are always absent or late -- study after study shows that is not true because they are serious about their work, and they produce more quality work. And there are of course some union barriers, so that means the job placement specialist needs to understand the structure there. So that's also another aspect that we as placement counselors need to be aware of, how to handle the situation. CHRISSANN: You know, sometimes they'll say we can't let so and so come in because there is a union problem. The union won't allow it and they say that without ever really contacting the union or talking to the union. So that's what I mean, where we can be agents of truth here, you know. MADAN: and of course there are some environmental architectural barriers, for example. The employer often thinks that it's going to cost so many dollars or thousands of dollars to hire a person with disabilities to make this modification, but actually persons -- coming into employment with disabilities,there is a study that shows most modifications are less than $600. On the other hand, employers have spent thousands and thousands of dollars to make the workplace nicer the work place modifications, without thinking that only minimum is required to make accommodations for people with disabilities. So this is a myth that employers think that it will cost tons of money to make accommodations for people with disabilities and that is not true. So that is our job to dispel those myths and giving them the right information, and also as I said earlier, the employer is concerned about making profit. That is their main business, but then how we as rehab counselors or placement persons assist them in making more profit. For example, one of the things -- a couple of the things that we can show to them, the people they hire from the street, they don't know their background, but here they are hiring people with disabilities from the state federal system or from other agencies that means we have assessed, evaluated their potential, we trained them, we groomed them, so they are getting a finished product. So anything goes wrong, they can contact us. On the other hand, if they hire someone they do not know, they are risking, but at the same time if an employer wants to hire somebody, they have to advertise. That costs money, and then they have to interview, a lot of time factors are involved and then they hire. So as a rehab counselor, we are saving them money in giving a product or an individual with skills to them. So it doesn't cost the employer much or less money. Another area that we can make the employer aware that there are so many incentives to hire people with disabilities, tax credits and so things that we can make them aware. Often they are not aware of this. So we can make an environment for the employer to hire people with disabilities, just sending our knowledge and skills of the regulations so that will be helpful. The next area is placement personal subsystem, so that is one of the factors we will talk about and discuss. It is policy -- agency resources, counselor placement specialist academic preparation, knowledge, competence, experience, successfulness, some of the ethical and legal issues. Now, one of the points is that -- of course we know that the sources of referrals has an indication often of whether a client will be successful in the rehabilitation process or not. So those are indicators that we need to use and use correctly to motivated so that the participate in the placement process. The other one is a placement policy, if the state agency has a policy about placement and reinforces the placement personnel, those agencies make more placements than the agency that don't have any policy. Agencies -- another aspect of it, too, because you can't have a good place am policy but if you do not provide the resources required for the rehab counselor or placement specialist to place the consumers, what would happen? You have a policy, but no resources. The next area is the placement specialist -- as some of you use that instrument for processing your knowledge, that has an impact. Placement specialist counselor, academic preparation, knowledge, competence, experience, all are important in order to have quality placement. And there is a study that says a counselor for placement should have a masters degree, and they do more quality placement than without. There is some variation, of course, there, but this is the finding of the study. Then some of the ethical and legal issues that one has to deal with, if you say workers' compensation or insurance companies paying so there are some ethical and legal dilemmas. The counselor will (Inaudible) the insurance company or the client? What is the best interest of the client about the funding source? So this becomes some ethical and legal issues. Chrissann you want to say something about this? CHRISSANN: Well, I think that my overall comment would be that we need to take care of ourselves. Sometimes when we get into this business, we get so busy about the needs of the client, working with the employers, the technicalities of modifications and analysis that we don't attend to the fact that we are an important part of the system. If we're the placement counselor or if we're the counselor working with a placement specialist, or we're the facilitator for the client getting a job, then we are really critical part of it. A lot of it is our ability to engender trust in the client, to go out and take that chance. A lot of it is our ability to go out and talk to the employer and make that person willing to hear the truth and take a risk or something like that, and so it's interesting that we often see placement going on around us and we don't realize how much of a change agent we are as a counselor ourselves; but to do that, we have to have information. We have to know the truth. We have to have the data and the statistics and the information to be able to make this all happen. So it's a joy and it's also a responsibility and somehow before anybody looks at this systematically, people were just supposed to know this. They got their own jobs, so therefore they know how to get other people placed. Well, it doesn't work that way. We really need to look at this as a science and if anything what this instrument does is say there is a scientific approach to what we're doing. It's not just a random, look in the newspaper and go out and get a job kind of thing. Most of us didn't get our jobs that way. We did a lot more than look in the newspaper and go apply for a job. And so this issue of dealing with the placement counselor as a subsystem is very critical and we need to pay a lot of attention to that. MADAN: the next one is funding subsystems, so we have listed some of the resources. It could be state Federal aids referral Pel grants and aid, student loans, SSI, Medicaid, SSDI, Medicare, job service, workers' compensation, state rehabilitation agency or services, private insurance, private facility resources, or community foundations. So this is not an exhaustive list. So when a client in the system, we need to find some way to support his treatment or adjustment, education, training until we place the person in a job as an earning member. Go ahead. CHRISSANN: No, no, I was going to say that not only are these all things we need to know about, but we need to know how they interact with each other. And actually this is one that is very interesting to me from a two students now at the University of Illinois that I've been dealing with where we have our masters training grant is paying a stipend who have not been able to take the stipend money because they are receiving social security support and this stipend will put them over the amount that they can have without losing their social security maintenance payments, which will also -- could mean losing their Medicare. Now, I've encouraged them again to seek the truth and to make sure that, you know, they would lose their money. They are both going to speak to somebody knowledgeable. I've tried to give them a whole bunch of money from part of the subsystem to help them ultimately become rehabilitation counselors themselves. They are both people with disabilities, and they are saying, oh, no, no, no, I can't take that money because another part of the funding subsystem will fall out of place and that piece is much more important to me because it's often connected to my medical care. So I think the -- not only knowing each of these pieces, but knowing how they interact with each other and how receiving funding from one source could be a contradiction in receiving funding from another source. MADAN: So there is another point, too, that we need to be resourceful of all the different sources that we can utilize, effective ways to assist our consumers, but on the other hand, sometimes what happens is the consumer may receive funding from other sources that has some disincentives built into it and that makes a problem, that hinders their placement activity. So, for example, if the consumer is receiving workers' compensation and thinking about a big settlement and after all the litigation for two and three years didn't get very much, the person is already demoralized, so they were thinking of getting a big settlement and didn't get it. So as counselors, we have to be careful to give them the reality of it, what is going to happen, what are the possibilities. Also the social security has some disincentives built into it, even when the people on disability want to go back to work. You can only earn this much money and the social security will be cut off and won't receive Medicare or Medicaid and so these are disincentives, too. CHRISSANN: in terms of updating our list, the Ticket to Work is something that needs to be added to this list as a funding subsystem, which again, plays into many of the -- in terms of positive and negative, into many of the other interactions. MADAN: Now, I'll briefly talk about the systems theory. Then we'll have some discussion. After all the discussion, now you can see that system regarding placement takes into account these factors. It focuses on the functional aspect of the organization and model and also the systems cannot be totally independent from our schematic diagram earlier. They are not independent. Each one is interdependent on each other and the factors and variables within the subsystems react and interact and then between the subsystems react and interact. That means each subsystem is dependent on characteristics and variables as well as interaction with other subsystems. Now we talk about open versus closed systems, these two concepts. It says an open system is a self-maintaining system that exhibits the ability of the duration, growth and production. An open system consists of these areas: Input, personality, output, product and system is a cycle of events. Okay, for example, why is the cycle of events -- because for example your consumer in the system comes in (Inaudible). The person is getting more skills or education and training, and then you place them, and the new consumer comes in and the cycle goes on. The same thing in the educational situation, every year you get new students, they go through the system they learn and get grades and graduate and goes on. Now, let's pay attention to this word, open system is a self-maintaining system that exhibits rejuvenation, growth and (Inaudible). For example, a rehabilitation agency is an open system because you are having input and output. The same thing with the university, too. Now, another one is called closed system, is being self-contained and does not receive any external stimuli from the environment or other aspects that would have an impact on the systems structure or organization. If some placement Counselor or rehab counselor thinks, well, he or she will sit in his office and do job placement. He or she doesn't need to participate in this kind of discussion that we're having today. They know everything. I don't need to study the journals or go to conferences about what's going on in the field. That would be considered a closed system. CHRISSANN: Actually, I had an example that just came up this week. I'm on the board of an agency that provides placement services to persons with disabilities who have dually diagnosed, both mentally ill and developmentally disabled that's the criteria. This is up in the Chicago area, and I have been on their board now for a year, and we are recruiting some new board members and trying to explain to them because often the new board members are from the -- one was a banker and one was a lawyer. They are good hearted people they are going to help raise funds and they care about the agency, but they really don't understand, you know, the mechanics of a rehabilitation agency. And this particular one -- what we were doing was picking up other agencies that were more highly visible in the Chicago area, and the two that came up were lance farm which was a place for primarily downs syndrome persons, where it is entirely closed. Often these young people go there as children and stay until they die. It's in a beautiful facility near the Wisconsin border. So it's a farm area, et cetera. They raise products on the farm. They sell them. The people work the residents work in the various bakery and raising the animals and stuff like that, but it's an entirely closed rehabilitation system and then there was another one that had a lot of visibility in the Chicago area called -- (Inaudible) run by a Catholic religious group, again, where people enter -- people with disabilities may enter at five, six or seven years of age and stay for the rest of their lives and they are employed, but not in the open sense that we've been talking about. The employment is entirely within the system. What was interesting was that these closed systems was actually what the new board members could understand better than the agency they were going to be on the board of, which has evaluation, training and placement and competitive employment and a whole bunch of other things, but the ones that have gained visibility were the closed systems. They understood that. The perspective board members understood closed because it was real clear to them that these were places where you kind of institutionalized your person with disabilities and they stayed there. It was harder for them to understand the open system where the clients of Victor C. Newman were living in the community under supervision, were going to work on a daily basis or coming to the facility for training, et cetera. So it kind of struck me that we have made assumptions in the field that everybody understands, and actually the public may be more familiar with very closed, specific disabilities than they are with an open system. MADAN: Well, we can have some examples such as what happened in many years ago in Africa, the Jim Jones situation, and Waco, Texas, these are examples of a closed system. Next slide is internal (Inaudible) systems. The internal system consists of consumer preparation -- preparation of the counselor, we can do something about it, but this system includes the market, location of the jobs, types of industry, which we have no control at all, some jobs are changing, jobs are moving from one place to another, maybe you trained the client in gas welding in your area, but you didn't know that that was replaced by arc welding just a simple example. Or some of the jobs have been computerized quite a bit, so we have to be up to date with the external system the labor market, how the labor market is changing. The next one is the balance in the system. This is nice, everything goes okay, and we are happy. Such as if a placement counselor quits, so the role of the energy consumption as well as energy input on that subsystem must be assumed by another or several other subsystems. Earlier Chrissann talked about the family system where the bread earner becomes disabled for whatever reason, so the other person in this family has to take a different role. This changes the responsibility and role of the whole family. So another subsystem or combination of subsystems tends to compensate for the loss. Similarly, in a state agency if some counselor quits for whatever reason, budget cuts, there could be budget cuts, so the other counselor has to share the responsibility or the consumer has to be more responsible, take some responsibility -- the consumer is to be consulted in admitting his or her financial placement or needs. Now, the main question is what is the formula for success? That is the next slide. It talks about improved competency. Let's not talk about these two because we are running out of time. One can read these, some of the skills that will be required in the future to be successful in placement activities. Now, I want to talk about the last two slides and then we'll have some room for discussion. We already talked about self- assessment for students and counselors. Now, if you look into that intake assessment and outcome evaluation, that instrument, and what it does, it assesses the client's needs at the beginning when they come in and then we look into it whether we are providing the services, and then you can measure the outcome. Now, how does it help -- that instrument? It determines consumer service needs at intake, at the beginning. It assists in preparing a functional individualized plan for employment. If an objective evaluation of the quality services is done by the consumer and also the objective quality services is provided by the placement counselor, so both ways. It's a matter of placement accountability for the counselor and the agency. It serves as an outcome evaluation, which may assist the agency in resource allocation or you may use the data to convince the funding sources as how successful you are in your placement activities. Now, I want to ask Lynne, you completed this intake assessment and outcome evaluation. Could you tell me how you did that? Did you take a case? LYNNE: I tried to think in terms of the larger organization that I'm part of. Since I'm only a part of that placement process where I evaluate people's suitability for this particular form of access, I see people come in with a certain level of needs upon intake, but I may not be involved in the final outcome. MADAN: Sure. LYNNE: Except for as a consultant or participant. I tried to look at it from a vocational rehabilitation kind of perspective as opposed to just me as an individual and what kind of service I provide. MADAN: Sure. LYNNE: if I didn't do that, some of the areas just simply won't apply. MADAN: Right. For example, it may apply to all of the subsystems for your consumer or it may not, but what it does, when you complete the intake assessment at the beginning, you can have whole picture of the client's needs in different subsystems. And then you can plan which subsystems you should take care of first, you know, that might help the other subsystems automatically fall in place. So that gives an object to the evaluation in terms of client's needs. For example, how you can apply this in a practical situation, you can have your closed cases and less objectively what are the client's at the beginning and how the cases are closed. So many of you will see the differences and also it will show where maybe some more attention should have been given, (Inaudible). It is tough what I said earlier of the counselor with a 150 or 200 number caseload. It is difficult to remember all the client's needs. LYNNE: So you think could be applied per case or for large group situations? MADAN: Yes. This is per case. Now, thank you to all the participants who are listening to our presentation. Now we are open for questions. LAUREL: Dawn, did we receive some questions? DAWN: We've got two right now. LAUREL: Go ahead. DAWN: the first question is, would you explain how religious - and they put in parenthesis Hinduism and regional, facilitator hinder job placement? MADAN: Well, for example, as I mentioned, that as a Hindu -- you said Hinduism, is that correct? DAWN: Yes. MADAN: I have a correlation in getting bids, so I would not work with anything with meat or the beast industry. And Alaska or American Indian, they may have certain areas they don't want to work with because of their religious or morale belief. Chrissann you want to add anything? that's a good question? CHRISSANN: It's a very good question, and it was very specific, but I think the more important issue is knowing that those barriers exist and not being afraid to talk to the client about them, you know, to specifically say we're looking at a broad range of work for you. Are there things that are important to you to either look for in a job or avoid in terms of your own background and belief system. So, you know, in this case, there wouldn't be a lot of limitations. You know, we wouldn't put you in McDonald's, but there could be other ones like the one you mentioned before about certain religions not working on a Friday or a Saturday that would affect scheduling, which is very, very critical. Once we know the specifics, we can work with that. No beef, no Saturday, only this area, no video stores, et cetera. Once we know what it is, we can work with it. A critical issue is just being frank enough and honest enough and having a good relationship with the client that they share those things with you, so they're not just rejecting something and you are don't know why you're rejecting it or you don't waste your time looking at stuff that won't work in the first place. So building is the relationship so that you understand their cultural needs and getting them to the point where they are being very straightforward and honest with you. MADAN: for example, in the American Indian situation, if they have a pow wow or some celebration, they will miss work. That is important to them. That is part of their culture, so that's why it needs to be discussed. This is the time of the celebration. No matter what, they have to participate, and that is their belief and part of their culture and they need to maintain that. CHRISSANN: So maybe that is going to be the first week that they're on the job and they're not telling the employer I'm going to be gone three days. Well, if we knew that ahead of time, we might have negotiated a different starting date. That kind of honesty. Why cause the problem in the first year of employment. Now, the second year comes up and the person is an excellent worker and they have a good attendance record and they say I need these three days for my pow wow, it's perceived entirely differently. LAUREL: Dawn, did you have another question? DAWN: the second one is from Nebraska. I'm an orientation counselor with the Nebraska commission for the blind. I would like to know of some strategies for overcoming the lack of work ethic which seems to be more and more of a common element in today's society and hence a bigger problem for rehab agencies? MADAN: Well, lack of work ethic comes from -- I mean one of the area is the what are the incentives and disincentives built into our society. I mean, for example, I did work in two different situations. I worked in India placing individuals who are blind and visually impaired in jobs in industrial occupations. So what it is in an Indian context, when you have a job for a person with disabilities, they stick to it. That is the only thing they do, and they do an excellent job; but when I did the job placement here in the United States in Michigan, I found that all the factors, social security, disability benefits, workers' compensation has a lot of disincentives built into it. So how is the work ethic built? That's an interesting point, you know. Of course we have good work ethics, no doubt about it, but individual basis -- each individual is different. Chrissann? CHRISSANN: Yeah, I also think that historically, you know, we need to address the issues of diversity in the United States because the ethic upon which this country was built originally was this kind of European focus on employment kind of stuff, and then of course we became very diverse after that where different work values came into place. So if we don't look at the way the different societies view work, we're going to all be behind the 8 ball. You know, this is no longer a major cultural focus on the European work values and work ethic. So we need to look at the work values in the United States and see how those integrate with each other. I also think there is an age issue here and this loyalty that you talk about in terms of loyalty to the job, in the United States, historically, was a value also. Would people who are now, say, in their 40's and 50's even -- you went to a place. You worked and maybe that was the major employer for 30 or 40 years. Other generations here in the states of cross cultures are not as loyal to any employer. They may be very -- they may care a lot about work, and they may have strong work values, but they may not necessarily be loyal to a single employer, and I think that's pretty well documented in the generation X. stuff where somebody keeps moving on as the benefits improve and change, and that change is an age difference, a societal change that comes from age difference So I think we need to be on top of what those cultural and age differences are so that we don't judge people incorrectly and say that they don't have good work values when actually they may be very in synch with their generation or culture. LAUREL: to say nothing of the companies and businesses which have changed their culture, too. It's a whole new world where our parents may have had 40 years and fabulous benefits, retirement benefits. I'm glad I'm not generation X, although I'm not farther above that nor are any of us, are we? I think there are probably a number of other questions that have come in. We've run out of time, Madan and Chrissann. Here is what we'd like to do if you all are agreeable. We can set up a discussion forum, you know, news group, that can -- we can keep it there for about four weeks, about a month or so, and so that individuals who have questions or observations or wish to make observations about the instruments, Madan, that you requested, that they could post them on that Web site. Now, folks, if you come back to this page, this web page, there will be a new link on there that will be the discussion forum. And you click on that and it will take you to where you can put down your question or your comment. Also, Madan and Chrissann, we need -- we're going to close and I wanted to see if I could give you both a little bit of time to wrap up if there is anything. CHRISSANN: I'd like to say we may have been making it seem as though it's a real chore, but it isn't. What I think we want to do here is to just identify the people that this is a science. And that it isn't something you just do by the seat of your pants. And if you do that you may make some placements, but I may also miss a whole lot of good quality placements in the process. So it's not just getting a person a job, it's getting a job that makes sense to them and fits with who they are as a person with a disability. MADAN: I would like to comment that I would like to thank everybody who participated in this Web cast, and would very much like to have their comments and suggestions on how to improve it. The instrument has a lot of liability. Chrissann, the last time we did calculations you were .88. But we want to make better and more practical so the attempt we are taking now is to make this instrument culturally relevant. So I would like the participants on different cultural backgrounds to make some comments how to improve the instrument. We already started the process. We had one focus group with American Indian in Idaho, and then two weeks later we'll be in New York City, so we'll very much like participants to give us feedback and we appreciate their comments and their patience so that we can have a better instrument for everybody and we will all be happy. It will be a very important task in rehabilitation because the only outcome of all the rehabilitation activity that we do is this. Many years ago it was mentioned without placement there is no rehabilitation. CHRISSANN: Can I ask, will this web page then will exist for a month? LAUREL: the discussion forum will. This presentation will be archived, Chrissann, forever. Your grandchildren are going to be able to see it. CHRISSANN: To go back and get this. LAUREL: We'll keep this here and it will -- you can go to the ILRU where it says Web casts and then the second item is archived Web casts. You click there and come down to this date or to this topic and you'll see it. And you click on that. Now, folks, when you do that, you'll click on the archive presentation and up will come your RealPlayer plus the video portion where the captioning is going to be displayed. In addition, we'll have a transcript of this exchange also posted up there along with these handouts. So this Web site will look exactly like it does now except it will have a couple more links, one to the discussion forum for comments and questions and the other to the actual presentation, the audio. In addition, as we close, Madan and Chrissann, I want to tell you how we always value presentations that are sort of high energy, and this give and take, it's clear that you all have worked together for quite awhile and the give and take was high energy and keen and very -- not entertaining is not perhaps the word, but enjoyable thank you both very much. CHRISSANN: You know, placement can be fun, too, so it's okay to be entertaining. LAUREL: I tell you, after today's presentation, if anybody asks me where they should go to school to get rehab counseling training, I'll tell them either Southern or University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. You guys are very impressive. And so we'll wrap today, and truly invite contributions to the discussion forum. Let me just say in closing that this presentation in particular was supported by -- now, Madan, I wonder if you could give me the name of the project, the NIDRR project that underwrites this. MADAN: Sure. We received a grant from the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. It's called NIDRR. And NIDRR has a special funding called DRRP. That is Disability Rehabilitation Research Project. We named our institute a Rehabilitation Research Institute for Underrepresented Populations. The first part was done by Dr. Wong, I think in August, early August. LAUREL: Yes. MADAN: So we will be doing research involving people with culture diverse backgrounds, how does it affect the placement outcome and that serves everybody. (Inaudible). So this instrument was actually done for a state rehabilitation agency mostly under population, but we wanted to make it culturally. We can have a unified version of the instruments that everybody can use it of the that is the task ahead of us. LAUREL: Well, I hope all of you will join us in this -- in the next 12 months we'll have more Web casts from Madan and Chrissann and Daniel Wong and other collaborators on this important project. But we'll close right now and in closing I just want to acknowledge the support we get from Rob Dickehuth, who is the technician who takes all these telephone lines and the captioning and somehow gets them both to stream in the video area and the audio area you're listening to. Also our captioner is Marie Bryant who does just a first rate job and my colleagues at ILRU who made this possible are Dawn Heinsohn, Mark Richards and Marj Gordon. So thanks to all of you. And meanwhile, here at ILRU we want to say good afternoon and please join us for our next Web cast . Madan and Chrissann, thank you very, very much. Good afternoon, folks.