By Richard Strong, Director, Minnesota State Services for the Blind

(Editor’s Note: This presentation was given at the Annual Convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota on October 24, 2009. At the time, he was acting director and was appointed to the permanent position on December 23, 2009.)

Good morning. . . I’m Dick Strong, and Madame President I want to thank you for inviting me today to address this meeting of the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota.

I appreciate and very much value the important work of the Federation and its membership.

You are indeed changing what it means to be blind in Minnesota and throughout the nation.

I especially appreciate, value and respect the work members do on the State Rehabilitation Council for the Blind (SRC-B).

Listen, for just a moment . . . o.k. . . . a long moment . . . to what your leaders do with and for the council.

Judy Sanders, Jan Bailey and Tom Scanlan are members appointed by the governor. Judy is the Council Chair.

Jennifer Dunnam, your president, chairs the Council’s Consumer Satisfaction and Goals and Priorities Committee. Steve Jacobson, your vice president, Tom Scanlan, your treasurer, and Bob Raisbeck also serve on that committee that works with State Services for the Blind (SSB) to set overall goals and priorities for the Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program.

Steve Jacobson chairs the Communication Center Committee and is joined by Andy Virden, your Saint Cloud Chapter President.

Tom Scanlan chairs the Vendor Outcomes & Measures Committee.

Joyce Scanlan, your past president, chairs the Senior Services Committee, along with Harry Krueger, [Amy Baron], and RoseAnn Faber.

Sharon Monthei serves on the Minority Outreach Committee.

Pat Barrett, your Metro Chapter President, and Jan Bailey, your Rochester Chapter President, are on the Transition Committee with Jan also serving on the Needs Assessment task force.

The NFB is truly actively involved in working with SSB to improve services for Minnesotans and we very much appreciate your work.

Staff Transitions at SSB

I’m very pleased to be here today with the Federation but, as I said to the SSB staff at its meeting earlier this week, I don’t want to be here. At least not in the role I’m now playing.

That’s the role as acting director of SSB.

I’d hoped the personal wish Chuk Hamilton shared at your meeting last spring, that he wanted to be “doing something different” by July, would come true.

Like many of you, I had high hopes a permanent director would be in place by now and he or she would be sharing with you a vision for the future of SSB and what blind Minnesotans could expect from their state agency.

Not always do all our hopes come true. Not always are all our wishes realized. But some do come to pass.

Chuk’s hope came true. An opportunity arose and he is doing something different: working hard in a new role with SSB, handling American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) efforts and other special projects to make a difference in the lives of blind Minnesotans. I’ll touch on the ARRA efforts in a moment.

And Chuk is still riding his Harley. That’s a good thing.

The posting for the director’s position closed a week ago Friday and I hope for a fine and full pool of candidates for that difficult, very difficult but doable job.

While we wait for a new director to come to SSB, nearly a dozen long-term staff have left SSB in the last year. They include two long-time supervisors in the Communication Center I had the honor to work with: Ellie Sevdy, in our Audio section who retired after over 40 years and Mary Archer in Braille whose untimely death last month shocked us all.

 It’s especially fitting that Celebrating Braille is the theme of this convention – Mary would definitely approve.

We mark the 200th anniversary of Louis Braille’s birth this year and I have to note the staff leaving SSB in the past year account for more than 220 years of service to the people of Minnesota.

And the departures continue with Jan Bailey retiring in December and Cathy Carlson next month. Their retirements will add another 71 years of service to the total.

So we recognize and remember the seasoned veterans who served so long and so well. Our hope for them is satisfaction in a job well done and peace.

And we welcome the new: the younger staff who join us with their energy and enthusiasm, unfettered by time and frustration, and the older (but new to SSB) staff, who bring with them the wisdom and perspective gleaned from years of experience.

The future will be crafted by the young and the old, the new and the veteran who will seize the opportunities to improve our services to blind Minnesotans. And there are great opportunities.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Let me touch for a bit on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and what it means to SSB, to you, and the opportunity it presents to blind Minnesotans.

On February 17, 2009, the President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA or “stimulus”) into law. This is a $787 billion recovery plan for America.

The purposes of ARRA are several. They include:

• To preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery;
• To assist those most impacted by the recession;
• To invest in infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits; and
• To stabilize states and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services.

Guiding principles in the distribution and use of ARRA funds include:

• Spend funds quickly to save and create jobs;
• Ensure transparency, reporting, and accountability; and
• Invest one-time ARRA funds thoughtfully to minimize the “funding cliff” as all funds must be obligated by 9/30/2011.

SSB’s ARRA funding is over $2,000,000 of one time money with nearly $1,400,000 for vocational rehabilitation (VR), almost $44,000 for basic Independent Living (IL) and a bit more than $586,000 for the Older Individuals who are Blind (OIB) program. Those funds present a splendid one-time opportunity to improve services and outcomes for blind Minnesotans.

Here is a summary of SSB’s current plans for these funds:

SSB-VR “stimulus” project plans:

• Hire and train two counselors in temporary positions to meet immediate needs and increase the pool of candidates for permanent positions if and when vacancies arise;
• Bring on placement staff to work with employers;
• Hire technology staff to assess the technology skills of customers approaching job readiness;
• Hire a program support person to facilitate the ARRA effort and carry out additional critical infrastructure functions at SSB;
• Purchase assistive technology inventory for the resource center lending library and for the SSB Resource Room;
• Improve the Workforce 1 program software system; and
• Improve statewide E-government accessibility.

SSB-IL “stimulus” project plan:

Funds from the basic Independent Living program will strengthen on current outreach activities for unserved and underserved persons.

SSB-OIB “stimulus” project plans:

• Hire staff in Moorhead and Marshall to deepen the pool of skilled personnel in areas where we anticipate retirements in the near future;
• Hire technology staff to improve skills of field personnel serving older blind Minnesotans;
• Replace old and outdated office and customer equipment;
• Strengthen staff skills of blindness training program; and
• Develop and distribute training materials on blindness and how to work with blind seniors to nursing home and assisted living staff.

We trust these one-time expenditures will jump start our employment program and provide blind Minnesotans improved services and opportunities.

SSB will keep in touch with you through its SRC-B as these activities unfold.

2009 Accomplishment and Continuing Opportunities

I want to touch briefly on some additional milestones — some positive and some where we need to do better — reached in the last year by SSB’s four major service units.

Technology

Accomplishments:

1. Added a number of devices to the K-12 technology loan program we have with the Resource Center in Faribault.
2. Closely involved with the enactment of HF 1744, the bill related to accessibility of the state’s equipment, websites and software systems. The Commissioner of DEED (Department of Employment and Economic Development) appointed David Andrews to the committee called for by this law that began meeting in September and has a life cycle of two years.
3. Increased the number and expanded the range of devices and software we can demonstrate in the Computer Resource Center.
4. Trained AT (Assistive Technology) staff on the Macintosh computer when used as a Mac and as a Windows substitute.

Areas for Improvement:

1. We need to respond more quickly to rehabilitation counselor requests for evaluations and equipment recommendations.
2. Make improvements to the trainer certification process.
3. Provide training to improve AT staff skills in JAWS scripting, Windows 7, and other areas.

Workforce Development

Accomplishments:

1. Added a functional dimension (Expanded Evaluation Program) to the current evaluation process at SSB. This dimension minimizes the time lag for feedback to counselors and clients.
2. Held SSB 101, a student and parent event to provide transition students and their parents information about the VR program. Agenda included multimedia presentation by Nicole Schultz of her path toward accepting her blindness and looked at Myth vs. Reality about SSB.
3. Increased job development staff from one to four with focus on professional positions and large companies likely to hire more than just one SSB customer.

Areas for Improvement:

1. Placement: Poor economy or not, we didn't meet our placement goal for the year. Right now we are looking at 79 successful outcomes rather than last year’s 93. We must do better and the ARRA resources and the planned effort in assessment and in placement will assist in that effort.
2. Internships: We are developing internships, job try-outs and on-the-job training opportunities to increase employment outcomes. We need to do more to ensure customers have real world work and career experiences.
3. Staffing: Difficulty getting qualified counselors, including one to take Jan’s place in Rochester. We need to be more creative in developing options for attracting qualified candidates to SSB. And SSB needs more qualified blind people on its staff in all its sections.

Senior Services Unit (SSU)

Accomplishments:

1. Served over 3,300 customers in FFY (Federal Fiscal Year) 2009, up from 3,200 in FFY 2008, without developing waiting lists or having long delays in services.
2. Equipped each SSU location with updated electronic devices/tools that are used by seniors to increase independence.
3. Collaborated with NFB and BLIND, Inc., to hold the 2nd annual "Possibilities Fair for Seniors."

 

Areas for Improvement:

1. Need to increase capacity to train customers to use computers with access technology.
2. SSU needs to update its policy manual to ensure consistent service delivery across the state.
3. SSU needs to take a very close look at how it provides services, who’s going to get services, what services it will provide and how optimal services can be delivered when resources are shrinking and demand is exploding.

Communication Center

Accomplishments:

1. New digital radios arrived last week, a year behind our forecast of 18 months ago, but they are here, have passed our initial inspection and we will begin distribution later this fall.
2. Permission granted to hire for Braille supervisor and have already hired Annette Toews for Ellie Sevdy’s position.
3. Engineering will be fully staffed come this Wednesday.

Areas for Improvement:

1. Radio Talking Book survey of customers is in its final stages with nearly 400 persons interviewed about our services and improvements needed.
2. Continue to work with contract vendor to ensure stable platforms for Radio and Audio.
3. Braille embossers are solid and running smoothly but we may need one more machine to ensure our capacity to meet need.
4. Our agreement with the Minnesota Department of Education continues to meet some but not all of the cost for providing braille to the K-12 population.

Those are the major events, the positive and the areas for improvement, for this past year.

The Future

SSB, through its staff and its valued partners including the National Federation of the Blind, will continue to provide quality and critical services that blind Minnesotans will use to secure their own future, a future not just full of hope and intentions but rather a future of full integration and inclusion in the very fabric of American society and a normal and productive life.

So when someone comes to SSB and is unsure of themselves we can point them to an article called “Minding my own Business,” written by a woman who went into the Business Enterprise Program and came out with more than hope. She came out with a renewed belief in herself and she seized the opportunity for increased independence.

So when a young child stops by our booth at the State Fair (staffed, in part, by members of your organization) and that boy says he’s going to learn braille because that’s how his blind baby sister is going to read, he’s seizing the opportunity of life-long positive expectations for his sister.

And when some blind person, young or old — perhaps even someone in a strange land called Louisiana down at the other end of the Mississippi River, reads about some blind guy from Arkansas engaging in a seemingly outrageous activity behind a dog sled in northern Minnesota, I hope they see it as an opportunity to increased independence and a pathway to a normal and productive life.

I appreciate your willingness to work with SSB to get more qualified blind people employed.

And I appreciate your willingness to serve as mentors to new SSB staff in our “Introduction to Blindness and Visual Impairment – Phase II” training program.

There will soon be a new director for SSB. I hope that person seeks your support, your guidance and your wisdom. I ask you to offer that opportunity in the future.

And if your counsel isn’t sought, I’m certain you won’t hesitate to step forward and provide your input.

Thank you for working with SSB and, Madame President, thank you for the opportunity to be a part of your convention today.