Episode Transcript
Speaker 3 00:01:00 And this is K FFE 90.3 fm, Minneapolis, and k ffe.org. This is Disability and Progress, and we bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam. I'm the host of the this show. Charlene Doll is on her hi. Don't know her vacation. I'm not sure if I can say well deserved, but she's gonna hear this so I can, I can say whatever I want and then she can shake her finger at me later. And Erin is my podcaster helper. Thank you Erin, for doing this. Tonight we are talking with two ladies with me and they are Natasha Jdi, who is Director of State Services for the Blind, or ssb, as you may hear me, refer to it. Hello Natasha.
Speaker 1 00:01:42 Hi, Sam. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 00:01:45 And you, are you really in MIC three? I think it lied. Okay. Um, and also Lisa Lars. Lisa is the outreach coordinator of State Services for the Blind. Hello, Lisa. Hello, Sam. All right. Um, so I wanna start by, you know, it's been a while since you've been on Natasha. Both of you have been on a couple times, so this is fun. Um, I wanna start out by letting people know, though, that they may not have remembered you. So why don't you give a little bit of history and how you stumbled into State Services for the Blind.
Speaker 1 00:02:20 Well, this is Natasha and I stumbled into State Services for the Blind, um, going on 15 years now. Oh my goodness. Uh, pretty much my entire career was spent at State Services for the Blind. I was a baby intern, uh, learning rehabilitation counseling.
Speaker 3 00:02:36 I remember you. It was,
Speaker 1 00:02:37 It's a long time. I was just a little thing and, uh, grew in my positions. I became a rehabilitation counselor focusing on working with people who were deafblind. Uh, eventually became a supervisor, then the director of Policy and program administration. And then I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to become the director August of 2019, which has been, um, baptism by fire because Covid hit about six months. Ah, yes. Later,
Speaker 3 00:03:05 COVID and Lisa.
Speaker 4 00:03:09 Uh, well I grew up here in Minnesota as, uh, a blind kid. And, um, so, you know, I received a ton of services from State Services for the blind, ah, including all my textbooks and things like that. And after college I went off and I did all kinds of other stuff for many, many years. And then I moved back to Minnesota. And meanwhile my sister is a proofreader at State Services for the blind of all of our textbooks that are math and science related uhhuh. And she's like, Hey, they have a position for a outreach person at ssb and you should apply for that cuz you're a goofball, <laugh>. And um,
Speaker 3 00:03:51 I figured she'd say, cuz now you can pay back all your stuff that
Speaker 4 00:03:55 <laugh>. That's right. No, and really honestly, like it has been such a great opportunity to like pay it forward and, uh, that has been just like the most, um, satisfying, like part of my work is just to have the chance to say, Hey, like the state of Minnesota is here for you. And, um, like, this is what we can do. And like, just to meet people who had never heard of us. People who are like, you know, uh, freaking out because they're losing vision, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Uh, like, that's been awesome.
Speaker 3 00:04:33 So I want to take just a small step back and ask Natasha about who, what State Services for the Blind is and what they do, and also your role in the, I know you're director, but what does that mean?
Speaker 1 00:04:48 Well, state Services for the Blind, um, we really focus on helping people serving those who are blind, visually impaired, deaf-blind, or who have a print impairment. Um, making sure that they have the tools, the training, the technology, the independence to go on and live their lives successfully. In a nutshell, that's not our official mission. The mission on, on the Wall is to, uh, facilitate the personal and vocational independence of Minnesotans who are blind, visually impaired, deaf-blind and print impaired. But really what that means is we focus on employment, we focus on independence, we focus on access to information and print literacy. And we do that with an amazing team of about 130 people and hundreds of volunteers throughout the state. And as the director, frankly, I serve everyone else. I serve our staff, I serve our customers and our partners. I'm here to, um, make sure the name of SSB gets out there that we're not forgotten about, that people know what we do and what we can offer. And if there are barriers that are getting in the way, I'm the one who will come with the sledgehammer and try to knock them down <laugh>. Um, but that's, that's really my, my role.
Speaker 3 00:06:06 And she really does actually, I, I will say I've known Natasha for a while and I actually, full disclosure, I, um, you know, because I contract and I'm a community partner, I remembered it <laugh>, um, for them. And so I remember getting people, clients to teach from Natasha. And by the way, all her clients loved her. Oh, I will tell you that now, I, I don't think I got one single one of this at all that Natasha, that's not, I can't say that for every counselor, but <laugh>, I can say that you were well loved. So I'm curious, when at what part of your time did you decide, cuz the director's a big role and I can imagine just as many headaches come with it as successes. What made you decide to step into that role and why?
Speaker 1 00:06:54 So long ago, I said to myself, you know, when I'm nearing retirement, my dream would be to be the director. I love ssb, I love working with people, but it would be cool to see what that experience is like. And then when our previous director announced her promotion and that she was gonna be hiring, I'm like, Ugh, no. You know, I just, that's a, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And I really thought about it and I decided, you know what the, Hey, I, I love this agency. I love what we do. Um, you, you what you miss every, every shot that you don't take. Right? So I figured I would try it, uh, apply. And when I got it, I was, I was so honored and I was actually shocked too, <laugh> because my dream was maybe one day when I was in my fifties or sixties, I would have the opportunity to do this. And it came about 20, 30 years, a little bit sooner. Um, but I am just so proud to be able to work with this team and serve our customers. And yes, there are some headaches. I had a bunch of headaches today, but it's all worth it. When I get a letter forwarded to me from someone who was working with our senior services staff, just praising all of the wonderful things that they're doing. It reminds me that that's why we do what we do. And I'm just proud to be a part of that.
Speaker 3 00:08:24 And yeah. Nowhere near retirement,
Speaker 1 00:08:26 <laugh>? Not yet. Not yet. I I wouldn't, actually wouldn't mind early in retirement, but I don't think that's in my future.
Speaker 3 00:08:33 No. They're gonna string it out and keep you there for as long as they can. They do that to all the good people. Um, so Lisa, as an outreach coordinator, what do you do for state services for the Blind?
Speaker 4 00:08:45 Yeah. You know, uh, we have this little thing that people say we're the best kept secret. And, um, I I just, that makes me crazy. I know, know, I wanna make sure Why would you,
Speaker 3 00:08:56 Why would you want them to say
Speaker 4 00:08:58 That? Yeah. Right. So, um, I wanna make sure that everybody who could use our services knows about our services. Uhhuh, <affirmative>, they don't, they don't need to. You, they don't need to sign up with us, but just to know that, um, we are there and that, um, these things are available. Like pe people should know what their options are. And, you know, lots of times when, uh, you know, you're a senior and all of a sudden you realize you have a macular degeneration and you have no idea what it's like to live with less vision, that is a, that's a scary time in a person's life. And so to know that there are people who will come along and say, Hey, you can do this, and we are here to like, give you, empower you with the things you need to make that happen. You know, or somebody's, uh, has a job and all of a sudden they can't, um, see their computer screen, right.
Speaker 4 00:10:05 And they're like, oh, I have to quit my job and go home and sit on the couch <laugh>. I don't even know how I will watch tv. You know? Um, and, and people don't know that there's an alternative anyway. So what I do like in reality is go to, you know, f festivals and street fairs and community events and, um, things like that go to, I've been working with a wonderful retired, um, optometrist and we've been going to eye clinics, um, just so that they can say to their patients, Hey, there's, there's resources out there. Anyway, so my job is just to try and, um, let people know that we exist <laugh> and, and that there's, there's stuff for people. And the the other thing is like, I, as Natasha said, we serve people who have a print impairment mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so, uh, we'll get to that. Yeah. Right? Yep. And so, um, like that's something people don't necessarily know, right. If they have a diff difficulty reading print, um, you know, for whatever reasons that State Services for the Blind is the place for them. So, and it is,
Speaker 3 00:11:21 And I feel like it's, you know, not, I mean, I realize state services kind of capitalizes on, you know, serving people with who are blind, deaf-blind, um, or low vision. But it's, I I could say the idea of what you're describing is happens across the, the board for people, all people with disabilities. You know, you see people that get a disability, name, the disability, any disability and say, well, I guess I won't be doing fill in the blank anymore. And I feel like, you know, there's so much out there now that can make things better so that they can do whatever the fill in the blank was still that they used to do. And that's kind of what you guys do. Yep. For at least the visual people vision or lack thereof. Um, I want to talk about the, that, um, you launched a multi-year, uh, initiative called the Evolve vr. Did I? You sure did. Um, so what does that mean? And, and talk a little bit about what that is.
Speaker 1 00:12:26 So it's, it started with Evolve VR and VR stands for vocational rehabilitation. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But really our whole evolve concept just expands across our entire agency at ssb. But what it is, is in vocational rehabilitation, we are at a national crisis, and I will use the word crisis. Uh, vocational rehabilitation agencies across the country gave back 338 million to the feds. This is 338 million not spent on people with disabilities.
Speaker 3 00:12:57 Why did they do that?
Speaker 1 00:12:59 A whole number of reasons Were not serving as many people as we used to. Uh, covid happened and how we provided services changed. A lot of services were low cost or no cost. Uh, some states they don't have the required state dollars to supplement their federal grant, and so they had to give money back. Um, so Congress is looking at it. Congress is saying, well, if you have all this money you're turning back, then maybe VR isn't doing what we need it to do. So I've been listening to many, many other states and the challenges that are happening, and I put together with support from my team, from my deputy, from our staff, a plan to, to change VR for the better. And we use the term evolve because evolve means that we did great things and we're still doing great things, but we can do 'em better. Mm-hmm. And we can do 'em in a way that meets today in the future because our world looks radically different than it did. Right. You know, 10 years ago, even
Speaker 3 00:14:02 Five.
Speaker 1 00:14:03 Even five <laugh>, it's completely different. So we love acronyms. Right, right. So our acronym, our, our model, we use the acronym M A P P P or map, and the m stands for mindset, evolving Our Mindset. And that means we need to change how we think about serving our customers. The whole premise of Evolve is we want you to come to State Services for the Blind. And it feels easy and fun and not complicated. We want it to not feel like state government because, you know, when you interact with state government, sometimes it can be a little bureaucratic, um, a little bit of hoops jumping mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And we don't want people to feel like that. Right. So the m the mindset is changing our own staff's way of approaching that. Um, a stands for awareness much what Lisa's talking about. We need people to know we exist and that we are here to help when they're ready.
Speaker 1 00:15:02 Uh, the first p is around our personnel. We need great staff who can help support people in their journey. And part of that is making sure we're keeping our great staff. Mm-hmm. Yes. There's a big turnover issue in vr. A lot of staff are leaving and the people who most suffer are the customers. You know, we've heard stories of customers saying, well, I've had three counselors in a year, I don't know who to even contact. Right. I don't think that's helpful in them finding a job when you don't even know who your counselor is to help you with that. Right. Uh, the next p is policy and really, uh, trying to get rid of a lot of it to make it easier for people. Um, some things we have been able to do is we have this financial participation requirement where some people might have to pay for some of their services. We, we put a, a temporary hold on doing that and we're planning on completely getting rid of it. Really?
Speaker 3 00:16:00 Yes. And why would that be?
Speaker 1 00:16:03 Um, why would we wanna do
Speaker 3 00:16:04 It? Why would you get rid of it?
Speaker 1 00:16:07 We know that the people who need us the most, they shouldn't have to pay for their services. When we have as much money as we do and we're giving money back to the feds, let's have them put their time and energy in completing their college program and going on to getting a job versus trying to come up with money to pay for their portion.
Speaker 3 00:16:32 Um, so then a question just to be on the other side, um, as I will say as a parent <laugh>, whenever I've given something to my kid, they sometimes, you know, some, they, they, they always appreciate it and they love it, but how they take care of it may be different than if they had to pay in or I always call it having some skin in the game. <laugh>. Yeah. Do you think that that's not the same with just humans in general?
Speaker 1 00:17:03 You know, you raise a really good point and that actually was one of the things we talked about when we were doing the financial participation policies. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> is people tend to be more vested. Right. But I think that's still true, but we are also finding a lot of people who have had to leave college because they couldn't afford their portion. We have people with very complex financial aid situations and families that they're on paper expected to cover it, but their families aren't helping them. But with this financial participation policy, they're gonna have to come up with money and that's gets in the way of them getting their college education.
Speaker 3 00:17:39 Gotcha.
Speaker 1 00:17:40 So there's, there's pros and cons right. To that decision. But we feel like that is a more customer-centric approach, is to not have people have to pay towards their, their VR costs.
Speaker 3 00:17:52 And will you, will you keep track of the numbers to see like how people do with that? Like do more people complete their rehab? Do more people, um, less people drop out? Do more people make their stuff time more timely? Will you kind of keep an eye on how that goes as opposed to when they did have to pay into it?
Speaker 1 00:18:16 Absolutely. Granted, we, we won't be able to really dive in if, um, for some of this, just because we don't collect some of the data. But we're able to see, um, rates of people completing their, their college degree. We can tell who was supposed to have theoretically done financial participation. And another thing is our staff spend so much time trying to collect, uh, W two or tax returns Yeah. And pay stubs to calculate this, it takes about two to three hours per person to calculate financial participation. Ah. And we'd rather they spend their time working with customers directly than doing the paperwork. Gotcha. So I do wanna add that, but we are gonna be tracking, we are, we save about 50,000 a year doing financial participation, which in the scheme of things isn't actually a ton of cost savings by doing that.
Speaker 3 00:19:10 I want to play a little game. We're gonna play a little game. Uhoh. Yeah. This will be great. <laugh>. Okay. You two are sitting across the desk. I don't care who plays with me, one or the other has to, but, um, I'm coming in and I'm just a person who has just found out from their doctor that they are gonna be quickly losing their vision and I'm pretty devastated. Um, and I'm gonna say, hi, my name is John Doe and I just found out that my vision is diminishing very quickly and I have a job and I, my, my boss is gonna fire me cuz he says I, I can't keep it cuz I can't do the things that I'm supposed to be able to do and I don't know how to, to type without looking at things and I, I don't know what to do, what do I do? And who are you?
Speaker 1 00:20:01 Oh my goodness. You put us on the spot. I
Speaker 3 00:20:04 Did <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:20:05 I'm gonna have to get my counselor hat on now, Sam. Exactly. It's been a while. <laugh>. So, um, well I would start and I, John, um, first you are at the right place. Let me talk to you a little bit about what we can do. And then at that point I would, I would talk a little bit about our services, but I would say it sounds like the most immediate scariest thing right now is you've just got this diagnosis and you're worried about your job. Mm. Yes. Let's start there. Let's bring in our employment specialist. We can talk to your boss. Let's give that a little time. Let your boss know if you're okay with it. We can help you get you trained up and see what we can do to get you back in that job or find something different. But now let's talk about all of the things and all of the support available to you cuz you are not alone in this. And getting you connected to other people who, who have went through similar situations to know that this is not the end, this is the beginning of a new journey, and we are gonna be with you along this entire, this entire way.
Speaker 3 00:21:16 I really like that wording. The beginning of a new journey. I like that. I always often used adventure, but <laugh>, not everyone likes the go on <laugh>. Um, so I know when you have training, if you wanna use that word, it's done by your, your partners, um, that your community partners that will work with you. So talk to me about what a community partner is, what they do, and how do you know they're a good community partner?
Speaker 1 00:21:52 Oh, great question. So we can only do so much ourselves. And so our community partners, otherwise known as a contractor or a vendor, they really help us do the work. Um, we have community partners that have two categories. We have community partners who do more of the adjustment to blindness training, whether it be a full comprehensive program or, um, itinerant doing orientation and mobility or assistive technology training, for example. And we also have another group of community partners that focus on the employment side, job search and job placement. And some of our community partners do both. And we rely on them to actually work directly with many of our customers doing the training, helping them find the job, helping them get those skills. We have some staff in house that can help, but we know most of the people we work with, they need, uh, more longer term, more intensive training than what we do internally. And how do we know, know their good community partners. What we survey our customers, we ask, we also develop our own relationships with those partners. And by having those relationships, a counselor, like, let's take you for instance, Sam, having a counselor who knows you and knows your style, you guys are gonna have some great communication and you'll be able to better serve that customer because you guys have a relationship. Um, and we know when a community partner isn't that great because people will tell us, <laugh> <laugh>, we, we know if there's some struggles.
Speaker 3 00:23:29 Excellent. So, um, do the, do the community partners have training or do, how do they, how do they learn their stuff?
Speaker 1 00:23:39 So our our community partners come with a whole variety of expertise and when we contract with them, depending on what they're providing, they may have some certification requirements. But around Covid time, we realized we were not offering as much as we could by way of communication and training to our partners. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we started something called community partner forums. So quarterly we invite all of the people we contract with to join us virtually for a whole host of things. Sometimes we'll offer some training, sometimes we will ask them, what would you like from us? Um, because professional development is really important part of vocational rehabilitation. Things are always changing and new technologies are coming out. Right. Um, so we try to offer as much as we can. And then our partners do have their own professional development requirements as well, especially if they have a certification. And we do keep track and monitor that.
Speaker 3 00:24:38 Does every state have a state services for the blind?
Speaker 1 00:24:43 No. In fact, I think there are only 26 states left. Whoa. That have a separate agency.
Speaker 3 00:24:49 Okay. Hold on. You said left. Left. So they're dwindling. Why?
Speaker 1 00:24:53 They are dwindling. Um, some states don't understand the value.
Speaker 3 00:24:59 I was gonna say, vision impairments aren't going away anytime
Speaker 1 00:25:02 Soon. They are not, uh, some states, um, do it because they don't understand the value. Some states think it's a cost savings, um, to, oh God. To be blunt, some, I think some blind agencies were maybe not managing their program as well as they could have. And so the easiest thing was, okay, if you can't manage it, then we're gonna combine. Wow. Um, so some of it is external and some of it might be our own doing, but I think many of us agree having a separate agency serving people with vision loss is critical. You have better outcomes, you have more money devoted to adjustment to blindness training. Um, you, if someone in a combined agency may have 1% of their customers who are blind get jobs, and in SSB for instance, I think we're at 45%.
Speaker 3 00:25:58 Excellent.
Speaker 4 00:25:59 So those in those other 24 states, um, people who are blind or visually impaired or deafblind go to the vocational rehab, rehabilitation agency for that state for their, that's, and that's who provides the services in those,
Speaker 3 00:26:14 But there's a much smaller pot of money for them. Is that what I'm understanding?
Speaker 1 00:26:19 So the state gets a chunk of money and then the, uh, agency for the blind and then the general agency come up with how they wanna split that money. And typically a blind agency gets considerably less Yes.
Speaker 4 00:26:33 Within that, combined within
Speaker 1 00:26:35 That. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:26:36 So it's not, it's not split equally across disabilities.
Speaker 1 00:26:41 Correct. Yep. Wow. If you're a combined agency, you have just your giant pot of money and um, that's for everyone. And a lot of those combined agencies have policies that limit how long you can be in services or how much money you can spend without going through a lot of approval. And we know adjustment to blindness training is neither short nor inexpensive. No, it's not short. But the value is astronomical. The return on investment is indescribable.
Speaker 3 00:27:12 So correct me if I'm wrong, but, um, vision problems, issues, whatever you wanna call them, seem to be, to me, one of the fastest growing disabilities. Am I right on that one?
Speaker 1 00:27:25 Well, it's
Speaker 3 00:27:26 Gotta be
Speaker 1 00:27:26 Close in the senior population, I would say. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. In the senior population. Right.
Speaker 3 00:27:33 So I don't understand why things wouldn't be equally distributed. You're saying some states seniors don't get served?
Speaker 1 00:27:41 There is, um, some states where there's a, a program called the Older Blind Federal Grant program that gets distributed to states and some states that money goes to centers for independent living or they don't have a program to really offer it. Wow. Uh, we're fortunate in Minnesota where we get both federal and state money to support our seniors with vision loss. And we are number two in the country for.
