>> Hello, everyone, and welcome to the LEAD Center's webinar on Guided Group Discovery, Paving the Way to Employment, a Journey in Self-Exploration for Jobseekers Ready to Take Control of Their Employment Search. Before we get started with the content we want to give you some information so that you'll be able to fully participate in the webinar. If you don't have sound capabilities on your computer or prefer to listen by phone please dial one of the numbers listed on the slide. There is a meeting code provided, but no need to enter an attendee ID. Realtime captioning is provided during this webinar. Captions can be found in the media viewer panel, which appears in the lower right-hand corner of the webinar platform. If you want to make the media viewer panel larger you can minimize the other panels, like chat, q-and-a and, or participants. We encourage you to submit questions during the webinar. To submit questions please use the q-and-a box during the webinar and we will direct the questions accordingly during the q-and-a portion of the webinar. If you're listening by phone and not logged on you may also ask questions by e-mailing questions to Aramide Awosika at aawosika@ndi-inc.org. Please note that this webinar is being recorded and the materials will be placed on the LEAD Center website at the link provided. If you experience any technical difficulties during the webinar please use the chat box to send a message to the host, Aramide Awosika, or you may e-mail her at aawosika@ndi-inc.org. The audio for today's webinar is being broadcast through your computer. Please make sure your speakers are turned on or your headphones are plugged in. You can control the audio broadcast via the audio broadcast panel. If you accidentally close the panel you can reopen it by going to the communicate menu at the top of the screen and choosing the join audio broadcast. For those of you who may be new to the LEAD Center, we are the national center on leadership for the employment and economic advancement of people with disabilities. We're a collaborative of disability workforce and economic empowerment organizations led by National Disability Institute and funded by the US Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy. Our mission is to advance sustainable individual and systems level change that results in improved competitive integrated employment and economic self-sufficiency outcomes for people across the spectrum of disability. Before we get into the content I'd like to introduce Christopher Button, who is the Supervisor of the Workforce Systems Policy Team at the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the US Department of Labor. Chris?

>> Thanks, Rebecca, and thanks to our Lead colleagues. Welcome to everyone who is on the phone today listening in to this important webinar. I believe we have close to a thousand people that are registered, so we are really excited about today's conversation. Thank you for taking the time to be here. LEAD Center has been working for a number of years to pilot customized employment with American Job Centers, focus on jobseekers who have really complex life circumstances and have previously been unable to be successful in finding employment. So today we are releasing an important manual that you're going to be hearing about. You're also going to be hearing about the pilots that LEAD Center has been conducting in the HACs [Assumed Spelling]. So discovery is the first step to customized employment, it is based on the premise that if we learn enough about people we can figure out a really good job match in competitive integrated employment and that all people can work, even people with very complex significant disabilities can be in competitive integrated employment if we use this important tool that we're going to be hearing about today. So thank you to everyone, Rebecca and all of our Lead colleagues thank you in advance for what's going to be a really interesting webinar.

>> Well, thank you so much, Chris. So we have a number of speakers today. Michael Morris, the Executive Director of National Disability Institute and LEAD Center's Public Policy Co-Chair will be facilitating a panel discussion. I'm Rebecca Salon, Project Director of the LEAD Center. And Janet Steveley, Senior Consultant with Griffin and Hammis Associates, will be walking us through the guided group discovery process and talking about the many pilot projects in which she's been involved in and the LEAD Center has been involved over the past few years. So our agenda for today is we will go over the objectives for the webinar to give you a flow of what's going to happen, talk about why we are pursuing guided group discovery as a universal design that is both beneficial for people with and without disabilities, we'll provide an overview of the guided group discovery process and the materials that are being released today. Talk about the role of the facilitators who facilitate the guided group discovery process and the partners with whom they typically work, and then we're very pleased to have people who have actually gone through the process and helped people gain employment from a variety of different systems so that you'll get a lot of that kind of information. So you'll during this session will learn about guided group discovery, strategies, explore capacity building approaches to support customized employment options and those materials that we've been referring to will assist in that capacity building process. Explore options for cross-system collaboration that you'll hear from the pilot project participants and from the partners who've been involved, and then we'll talk you through the materials and where to find them so that you can pursue guided group discovery on your own. So the reason that guided group discovery was pursued is that customized employment has been a very successful approach for people with disabilities in achieving employment outcomes. As many of you who are on the webinar know the discovery process is a cornerstone of the customized employment process and is a very intensive one-on-one process to lead someone to a customized employment position. A lot of the partners with whom we were working work with people in small groups and many of the subject matter experts with whom the LEAD Center was working have developed this group approach to assist in that. For those of you who are new to customized employment discovery is the first step as you pursue that and discovery seeks to find out who a person is right now, what their interest and preferences are, what their skills are, what contributions they currently make or potentially could make, under what conditions they're most likely to be successful in employment. And all of that information is used to match someone who is looking for a job with an employer who needs what they have to offer. A couple of years ago we were excited to see that customized employment was defined in the new Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and we provide you with that definition here. It's defined as competitive integrated employment for an individual with significant disability based on that person's, a determination of that person's strengths, needs and interests, as designed to meet the specific abilities of the individual and the business needs of the employer and is carried out through flexible strategies. And flexible strategies can include adapting job descriptions, flexible scheduling, a number of different things. What customized employment seeks to do is to take people away from traditional job search strategies that compare people to standardized job descriptions and to other job candidates. So traditional job development strategies use standardized vocational evaluation and prepare people by helping them develop a resume and practice interviewing. Jobseekers and the people who support them identify available jobs through traditional means, like looking on Craig's List and for advertisements, making cold calls to employers, and this much more traditional strategy results in an employer or a hiring manager selecting the candidate whose skills best meet a job description. And, unfortunately, for people with significant disabilities or other barriers to employment they may not stand out as part of that process as people are looking for qualified candidates because their skills may not exactly match what someone is looking for. What a customized approach does is circumvents that comparative process by focusing on how a person's skills meet and identified an unmet need of an employer. The assumption is that the employers are always hiring, always looking to meet unmet needs as long as the potential employee brings value to the business. So employers are always looking for quality employees and what customized employment does is assess people through the process of discovery to identify their interests, their strengths and their ideal conditions of employment. It uses informational interviews to collect information on the employer's needs and once that's identified matches the jobseeker's interests and conditions of employment with what employers need so that it meets the needs of both and often results in an employment proposal or a negotiated job. And, as I said initially, the Office of Disability Employment Policies is promoting discovery and strategies like guided group discovery as a universal design so that it's not just for people with disabilities. So in terms of who benefits, it really could be anyone, it's not specific to any individual disability and a wide range of employers and jobseekers can benefit and are using this type of approach. So, with that, I would like to turn it over to Janet Steveley, who is going to provide an overview of guided group discovery, its process and the materials that have been developed. Janet?

>> Okay, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It's really exciting that there's so many people interested in this topic, so again thank you for being on. again, I'm Janet Steveley with Griffin and Hammis Associates and have been one of the subject matter experts for the Lead customized employment initiative over the last four-and-a-half years or so. And during that time we've gotten to work with a variety of states and a variety of teams who have helped us pilot these materials, so their feedback is really what has helped us get to where we are with the materials today that we'll be walking through. Let's see, looking for this slide, here we go, okay. So, as Rebecca just said, there's different ways to approach discovery, but each way to approach customized employment involves some common components and those components are, first of all, discovery which is really an information gathering process or an assessment process where we're trying to discern who the person is right now so that we can make good decisions about job matching. Also, it includes a profile or what we're calling in this process an employment blueprint which is a written summary of what was learned in discovery. That piece kind of wrapped up discovery, but once discovery is completed then there's typically some kind of plan or a meeting with people who are involved with that person to develop a plan so that the job search plan is based on what we learned through discovery. Again, after that we use a very informal approach to job development which focuses more on informational interviews with employers and using people's social networks to figure out where there might be opportunities for them to use their skills that have been identified. So customized employment really focuses and relies on leveraging social capital and using one's social network because when you think about how we all got our first jobs, many of us got our first jobs through family, friends, people we knew. Some of us might have gotten jobs by going out and filling out applications and applying, but typically we don't have a lot of experience with our first job so there's not a lot to put on a resume, to really entice an employer to hire us. So it really is about kind of who you know, as well as what you know. And, again, proposing employment or negotiating employment opportunities before there's really an announcement or a posted position. Let me give you an example, I was working with some employment specialists in Canada recently and we were working on behalf of a woman who was very interested in doing office-like work, but she was very timid about computers, she hadn't had very much experience with computers and she just really wanted to do other tasks within the office. So the employment specialist went and talked to a CPA in their small community and she was asking the CPA about needs that she might have, that the employer might have. And the CPA couldn't really identify anything, but as they were talking the employment specialist looked above her head and on the shelf she saw a lot of boxes, and she asked her, what are those boxes for? And the woman said, oh, those are the boxes of receipts that people bring in to me to sort through and organize when I'm doing their taxes. She said, oh, you know what, I could use some help with that, you know, that would be really helpful. And, as you know, it takes a lot, the dates look different, the amounts kind of look different, things are placed in different areas of the paper. So we ended up negotiating a job for Patty where what she did was take the receipts, circle the dates and the amounts, and organize them by date. And actually as we started playing with this we found that Patty was really good about entering that information into the computer and we found that the employer had some additional needs that she had. Like she was spending time doing bank runs and mail runs and things that Patty picked up as part of her job eventually. So we didn't wait for an advertised job, we found out what Patty was good at and what she wanted to do and went and explored with community employers where there might be a position that would meet her needs but also meet their needs. So there are different formats for discovery. You'll see here there's a facilitated discovery approach, self-discovery, and what we're calling group discovery. And sometimes that word group doesn't sit with people right because it's such an individualized process, but we're really meaning more like a guided discovery process that's done in a group setting. But let me start by telling a little bit about facilitated discovery so you'll know the difference. Facilitated discovery is, it's probably more common and people might be a little more familiar with it, but it's a much more intensive approach. It's usually working one-on-one with the jobseeker who may have limited experience or limited ability to identify or articulate their own interests, skills and conditions of employment. So this is a process where the professional working with them might do things like home visits, really getting to know the people who they live with and who are close to them and seeing their home environment, to learn about their interests and skills. It could involve interviewing other people who know them well. It could involve doing a series of what we might call discovery activities to really help verify their skills and how they learn and their conditions of employment. So that's a very intensive process and I don't really think that workforce centers or American Job Centers are staffed in such a way that they could do that very easily or not for everybody. So through these customized employment initiatives we've worked on developing a couple of other approaches to discovery, what we call guided self-discovery and guided group discovery. And guided group discovery is what we want to focus on today. Now this is very much adapted from the work of several consulting firms, including Marc Gold and Associates, Griffin Hammis Associates and TransCen, Incorporated. And it's for people who are able to kind self-reflect and really articulate their own interests, skills and conditions of employment. And the nice thing about group discovery, as with any kind of group, is it offers the opportunity to learn from and receive feedback from other people who are kind of in the same boat. I always thing of guided group discovery as potentially being for anyone, but maybe not for everyone. There may be reasons or people that just aren't comfortable with a group setting. For instance, we had somebody start one group who clearly had pretty severe social anxiety and he muddled through the first session, but he looked really uncomfortable and he never came back. So you can see that in his case that wasn't really a good fit. There might be other people for a variety of reasons who a group setting might not work for, and so I don't want to give the impression that this is for everybody but it certainly potentially could be for anybody. And I think folks accessing services through the AJC often are, you know, it's a pretty typical format, there are group settings and it's in classes where instruction and feedback from others is what is expected. So who do we see as kind of the participant profile for guided group discovery is people that enjoy working with others. Certainly people that have one or more barriers to employment. Although you think about it, we all go through a discovery process ourselves, anytime you're thinking about a new job you probably stop and think, well, gee, what do I like to do, what am I good at, what kind of things do I need to make sure of, to be sure I'll be successful. I mean we do that naturally, but the difference is lots of us have lots of work experience to base that on, some people don't or they haven't learned from the work experiences they have had. So we're also looking for people that have specific conditions of employment that need to be addressed and that might be due to disability, but it might be due to a number of other things, as well. It might be criminal background, it might be childcare or parent care responsibilities. It could be a whole host of things. We're looking for people probably who have been unsuccessful or likely will be unsuccessful with the traditional approach. People who if they were to submit applications probably just don't get picked for the interview. And we all know how that is, the more people do that, they go through that process, they put in the application, maybe they even go to the interview, but they don't get picked for the job, it just really deflates people's confidence to where they're really not able to present themselves well. And we're looking for people who can stay focused on a topic for at least 20 minutes or so and maybe with support if needed. We've had several people participate who have had somebody there to support them in different ways, but if somebody can't really stay focused they might be a better candidate for facilitated employment or facilitated discovery, excuse me. So I guess with the American Job Centers and vocational rehabilitation guided group discovery can serve as an initial assessment of people's skills and contributions and conditions of employment. It can also help different agencies figure out what partners are needed. Depending on what people need you might want to bring in a VR, you might want to bring in a community rehabilitation program, you may want to bring in a center for independent living. So for those of you who are using the integrative resource model it helps you figure out who the partners are that need to come to the table to help support this person's goal. It does result in what we call a blueprint for employment or that profile piece that guides plan and job development. So what we want to see, we started out kind of calling this a plan and realized that didn't work because people work with multiple agencies and they have plans. It really is just the profile that people are using to guide the plan and to figure out what kind of job makes the most sense and what elements have to be in place to make sure that person is successful. It also can promote grading an leveraging of resources across systems. So once we can see what people need to be successful, to figure out who does what. And again by working together we can all get successful outcomes, we all get successful closures and can do so hopefully by generating resources together. I wanted to focus for a minute on the pilot sites that we work with in developing the materials. Initially we focused on three states, those states were Kansas, Maryland and Illinois. And in each of those states there was kind of a slightly different focus. Maryland was working with between the AJCs and Voc Rehab systems to facilitate a group there. In Illinois they really focused on people with long-term unemployment, who had disabilities, some who did not. In Kansas there were several groups that were conducted, a few of them were with mental health and people who were receiving services through the supported employment mental health programs, as well as the AJC. And also in Kansas there were some other groups that focused just with the AJC and VR, as well. And in 2016 we added some new sites. One site was in Philadelphia, who was really focusing more on people who experienced homelessness. In Tennessee there were a couple of different sites participating, both in the north and southern part of the state. Those agencies focused more on partnering with community rehab programs, and they'll be talking to you in a little bit so I'll leave that for them. And in southern Oregon in this last year we did a couple of groups, one with adults who was co-facilitated by VR and the workforce center and another session with youth that was conducted with the AJC youth specialists, the vocational rehabilitation counselor and the transition network facilitator, who is in a role that's paid for by VR but their role is to help facilitate transition services with full and adult service agencies across the state. So we've got lots of different feedback from different people. We've used it all, the same materials but a little bit differently. You can see here a number of the partners that we've partnered with in those pilots, but we've also seen a lot of interest or heard a lot of interest for trying using these materials from different groups, with people coming out of corrections, with veterans with disabilities, with Tanus [Assumed Spelling]. It doesn't have to be a specific population, it certainly can be a broader group, but those are some people who might be good candidates for guided group discovery. Move on here. So I want to tell you a little bit about the materials without going through the whole thing because we wouldn't have time, but just so you know the materials that are now available and they are on the LEAD Center website and the link is there at the bottom, but what you can find there is a comprehensive PowerPoint, a participant workbook. And the participant workbook includes activities and assignments and a copy of the blueprint, that is the culminating piece that they end with. There's also a facilitator manual, and in the facilitator manual there's an introduction, it gives a little bit of background on guided group discovery. It's sort of set-up like a notes page of a PowerPoint, so as you go through the facilitator's guide you'll see a picture of the slide but you'll also have discussion tips and facilitator tools with that. So as you go through it you can look through that. The facilitator's manual also includes a copy of the participant workbook, so you have that as part of it, too. And you'll also see the blueprints for employment. Oftentimes people might just need an extra, so that's an extra piece, while it's included both in the facilitator manual and the participant workbook sometimes people will need additional copies. So that's included in the materials. And the way that the materials are structured is it's set-up for like five lessons that are approximately two hours long, might be an hour-and-a-half to two hours depending on the group size, depending on if you take a break, all those kinds of things. But the main topics that you can see here, lesson one is more an introduction to customized employment and guided group discovery and that helps people begin to think about an employment team and those people who might be key supporters for them as they approach job search. Lesson two focuses on interest and contributions. Lesson three focuses on conditions, accommodations and disclosure. Lesson four we've titled the art and science of networking. And the last session is really about pulling it all together and taking action. So, as I said, the way they are arranged right now is for five weekly lessons lasting about an hour-and-a-half to two hours, scheduled two hours. Each lesson starts with an overview of the objectives, not the first, but all subsequent sessions include a review of assignments from previous sessions, so there are some assignments built-in. There's been some content provided around the topic of the Lead and some activities that are built-in. And then at the end of each session there's some summary and review of the assignment, which oftentimes has been one of the activities that they just need to go complete or share with somebody or get info from somebody on their team, so that when they come back to the next session they begin again by reviewing their assignment from the previous session. While they're arranged for kind of five weekly sessions, this can and has been adapted in different ways. Some groups have said we don't want to drag it out for five weeks, we want to do twice-a-week sessions and get it done in a couple weeks. When we tried it with the youth group in Oregon just because of school schedules they were kind of limited to 5-minute blocks, so we ended up splitting each session into approximately two sessions so that we could cover the same info but in a little different schedule. What I wanted to do, we don't have time to do the whole PowerPoint but I wanted to give you some highlights of each of the five session so you know what they involve. Session one was the introduction to customized employment and guided group discovery, so during this session it's really about getting to know each other, getting a little comfortable talking to each other, and discussing different ways to approach job search. Like Rebecca had mentioned this, a more traditional approach where we fill out applications, go to interviews, that sort of thing, which is fine, we're not saying there's anything wrong with that, it's just that that does put people in a very competitive situation. And the question to the employer again is who is the person who can best meet the job description? And oftentimes it's not -- people get passed over. So we talk about that, as well as the more customized approach where we're just really looking for opportunities that haven't been advertised yet. We present the concept of discovery and the blueprint for employment and kind of walk through the components of that. We ask in this session that people also start to identify their personal employment network, and as one of the assignments they're given is to go and to interview people in their personal employment network and ask them some questions, like what do you see as my strongest skills, what do you see as my best contributions to an employment setting? So it gets people using their team and starting to focus on positive. We find that just in the beginning in the icebreakers just getting people to say something positive about themselves is really what we're getting at here. And session two focuses on interests and contributions and we really are trying to get people -- people oftentimes have trouble talking about what they're good at, what they like. What I find lots of times is people will say what they think the job is that they should get, like they'll say, well, I'm interested in janitorial. And then you peel the layers back a little you find out this person really isn't interested in cleaning, they just think that that's all they can do. So we try to get at people's interests by asking a lot of questions about their hobbies, things they like to do, how they spend their time, even things that they might keep in their home or their bedroom, in particular. When they think about it, especially youth, might keep a lot of things in their bedrooms that say something about who they are, things like trophies or pictures or hobbies or things like that that would help you get at some of their interests. And one of the key things we want to do here is to help get at those interests and help people see how those might match an employment setting, like where do people with similar interests work. We also want to get at key skills and tasks, what people can do, what they like to do, what they have natural motivation to learn. We also focus on positive personality traits and we do this with actually a checklist of different traits that people can go through and check which ones kind of describe them. And then we have people like circle the three that really resonate with them. And it was interesting as we went through this because especially with the youth group, because one of the comments the teacher made afterwards is she said, you know, well, first I should say that one of the students was asking us to define some of the terms, like what does meticulous mean, what is resourceful, what does that mean? And the teacher said, you know, this is terminology that kids have to learn, they need to know what that is and they need to know how to describe that. The VR Counselor, Terry Kingsolver [Assumed Spelling], who is part of that group, she did a fun little trick where she flipped it around and had people describe each other, which in a school group where they knew each other well that was easy to do. So, you know, it's hard for us to kind of talk about our own positive traits sometimes because it seems like boasting, so figuring out how to get other people to say it by interviewing their friends or by talking with people on your employment team or those kinds of things, it makes it a little bit easier if somebody else is saying it. We also in this session try to get people to identify vocational themes, and what that is is not job descriptions but just kind of broad areas of interest. So, for instance, if somebody likes bikes and fiddling with bikes maybe they have a mechanical theme, if somebody really likes dogs maybe it's a larger animal theme. Because if people have some interest there and some skills around dogs probably those same skills might relate to other animals. So thinking about themes. The assignment for this particular lesson, lesson number two, is to review their contributions chart, which is one of the activities, and to start identifying local businesses that can match those themes or benefit from those contributions. So really helping people think about how that meets a potential employer need. Session three focuses mostly on conditions, accommodations and disclosure. And by conditions of employment we just mean those things that people need to be successful, and it's a little different than preferences, I mean preferences are things that people would like to have in place. Conditions are those things that people need to have in place, you know, it's like for instance if my only transportation is the public bus I need to find a job that I can get to, that is one of my conditions of employment. If I can't figure out any other way to cover childcare after three o'clock one of my conditions is I need to be home by three o'clock. So it's those kinds of things. Certainly there's people who might have problems with allergies, being allergic to dust or sensitivity to chemicals or fluorescent lights trigger seizures, there might be lots of things that are just absolute, you know, these need to be in place to make it work for this person. We also talk here a lot about job accommodations and how we might talk about accommodations needed and this, again, I mean there are people without disabilities who need accommodations so it's really about how we approach that, when do you approach that. It's a very personal decision, but helping people think through what accommodations they might need and how you talk to an employer about it and when and to who. Some people, we go through as one of the activities some kind of true or false questions that help sparks conversation about this. Like, for instance, one question might be if you don't disclose your disability upfront you can't later. Well, obviously, that's false. I mean there might not be a need to disclose it upfront, but at some point that you recognize that you need an accommodation that might be the time when you do want to disclose a disability. So we have people critique some good and bad examples of how people might have those conversations with an employer or whoever they might be having that conversation with to kind of script some of their own issues. We ask people to be straightforward, to discuss their disability positively and lightly, but really to focus on what they can do, their qualifications for the job and how they might demonstrate that they can do the task. So is there any accommodation there they can kind of work that in, this is what helps to be successful. Employers want their employees to be successful, so that's a really helping thing. So this assignment is really making some personal decisions about disclosure and figuring out how to frame any personal information that that person has. As an example, on one of the groups that I got to attend several sessions with because it was close to where I live I happened to kind of support this man who attended who had a severe learning disability and he had trouble with reading and writing. So I was helping him with some of the assignments, and he figured out a really good way to talk to employers about the skills that he had, letting them know that while reading and writing was a problem for him he had a really good memory and once he knew the task that he would be fine with it. So that's the kind of thing we're trying to get people to identify. Highlights from lesson four, the art and science of networking. This part talks about the importance of social contacts in job search and having people actually map out who is in their social network, who are their friends, who are their family members. By helpers we meant just people like teachers or counselors or AJC staff or, you know, anybody who is in a kind of a more professional role with them, other community members. So once people have kind of mapped out who those people are in their life then we ask them a series of questions about, well, what do those people do, what do they do for work, who do they know, how can you use those people to help you in your job search? And some interesting things come out, like for example the fellow is talking about who has the severe learning disability, a couple of the things he really liked to do that were coming out as themes is he liked bikes and he sort of had this mechanical theme going on, but he also really liked like yardwork and cutting and stacking firewood and that sort of outside physical kind of work. And when I talked to him about who the people in his life where he had kind of limited family, but he had a sister that lived there and he had some friends that he identified and he was working with both workforce and VR at that point. And when we started asking what those people do, well, it turned out his friend, Larry, was a cabdriver, and I'm thinking, wow, if you want to do work like outside, like helping people with lawn work or that sort of thing, cabdrivers get to talk to everybody in town. And then as we talked a little bit more I asked him what his sister did? Turns out she works for a property management company. Well, wow, there could be opportunities there to do yardwork or clean-up around the property. So, again, we're just trying to use these as tools to pull out information on people's social networks so we can help them connect with them because again lots of us find our jobs through family, friends, social network. They say that as much as like 80% of jobs are never formally advertised, so if we only do the traditional route we're missing out on a lot of opportunity. There's other research that says about 60% of people find their jobs through family and friends and acquaintances. So we really have to help people work that angle. The next part of that lesson is actually a big part is developing a networking pitch, which you might also call an elevator spiel or a one-minute pitch, it's actually only about 30 seconds. But we help people develop one, and I'll show you here, I think I've got one on the next slide, here. Where we'll help people, we give them a little template to use to develop their own pitch. Now, again, we want people to be able to use this flexibly. They could use it to approach someone about an informational interview, they could use it at the neighborhood barbecue, they connect with somebody who they think might be helpful, they could use it in a formal interview, they could use it at a job fair, they could use it in lots of different ways. But some of the basic steps are smile and introduce yourself. Name drop if somebody recommended you because that's as we know always helpful if we can say so and so said I should talk to you it's a little harder for the person to say no. State the type of work you're interested in doing. Describe your abilities, positive personality traits related to the type of work you're seeking. Give some examples of tasks you can offer. If you have some successes, to highlight that. And also to make a specific request, you know, let the person know what you're wanting from them. Are you looking for advice, are you looking for a referral, are you wanting an informational interview, are you proposing a job, what are you doing? And, again, thank the person. So here's just a quick example. This is a young man who has got a culinary theme going, he's interested in a career in baking, and he's approaching a local bakery owner. So he might say something like this, hi, my name is John Doe and I'm interested in a career in baking. Sharon Hill, your neighbor, recommended that I talk to you. I'm going to culinary school in the fall, but in the meantime I need to get some work experience. I'm good at working with dough, making pastry and decoration. My friends and family all ask me to make cakes on their birthdays. Would you or someone you know be able to use someone like me for the summer? So if we piece that apart and really look at it, you know, he did the things that we recommended. He introduced himself. He dropped the name, Sharon Hill, his neighbor, recommended I talk to you. He talked about the type of work he's interested in, he's interested in culinary, and he even highlights some of the skills he has in terms of working with dough, making pastry and decoration. The success that he highlights is my friends and family all ask me to make cakes on their birthdays, a little personal testimonial. And he makes a specific request, would this baker hire him for a summer job or would he be able to refer him to somebody who might. And then, of course, he would thank him at the end. So we have people develop these pitches and practice them both in session three or in session four and when they come back in session five. So session five is the last one. It's really not a lot of content, but more about more taking information, summarizing it and putting it into an action plan. So people do practice their networking pitches. There's a review of the previous lessons to kind of pull it all together. We have people update and finalize their blueprint at that point, so some of the information they've collected might be in different places at this point so it pulls it all together. And then design action steps. Some groups have done an optional session and this is what we call the employer engagement session and it's optional, and I'm going to let Tennessee tell you what they did when they come on. But some groups have like invited employers to lunch where they could do, have the jobseekers do their networking pitches and have some time to interact with the employers. Some groups have built-in some other optional sessions. So, but for instance, we had with the youth group as one of the final sessions, the sessions were conducted at school but we had them go to the AJC for one of the final sessions so that they could see the facilities, they can meet the staff there, they even had them get on the computers and do a little interest assessment, so just to show them what was there. And, again, this is a good time to congratulate everybody, that they've invested in their own job search, that they've showed up, they've taken action and that while their blueprint gives them some good first initial steps that they need to keep updating that. Once they've taken their initial steps they need to develop new steps and help support them through that. Just quickly, the role of the facilitators, the facilitators are really supporting people through all aspects of this, they're helping to plan and set-up the guided group discovery, recruit participants, and people have done that in different ways. They've put flyers out at the AJC and maybe at partner agencies. One group really kind of helped recruit people through a job fair that they were conducting. Some groups have focused on a more kind of captive audience, like they've, for instance the group that works with the mental health supported employment program there was a group of people with disabilities that were all kind of starting at the same time, so different ways to recruit participants. The facilitators, we really co-facilitation, so it's the AJC facilitator co-facilitating with the VR counselor or with some other disability professional because you get different perspectives that way, people get to learn more about the resources, and it just helps. For one reason if the facilitator is facilitating, a key role of the facilitator is to help translate information that people say into employment possibilities, and it just helps to kind of have more heads there doing that at one time. Facilitators also provide support and assistance with assignments, they make sure the blueprints are completed, but the big part, too, is what happens after guided group discovery. We've kind of focused on the discovery piece today, but really think about once people have their blueprints completed then what happens, who are the partners that are going to be involved, you know, how will the agencies partner, who takes lead? I always find with lots of inter-agency initiatives it kind of falls down because people aren't sure of their role, so it really needs some thinking through, how are services coordinated, how might funding and resources be created and blended? So one of the things we learned upfront is because we know that at the end of guided group discovery when people have completed their blueprints there probably needs to be a meeting with key staff. We've learned that we should schedule those upfront rather than waiting till people are done with guided group discovery because of people's schedules, you know, it might be two or three months before you can get that group together. So let's schedule meetings for people upfront so that as soon as people are done with their blueprints there can be a meeting with key team members so that they can get going on their employment plan. I'm going to introduce to you, I think I'm doing this part, I'm going to introduce to you some panelists from Tennessee and other potential pilot sites. I have the good fortune -- somebody else is coming on here -- we've got several panelists today. We've got Sharyn Hancock, who is the Disability Resource Coordinator from Workforce Essentials in Tennessee, in Clarksville, Tennessee. Mary Newlon is the Community Employment Specialist with Progressive Directions. And Sharyn and Mary both were very instrumental in piloting the materials in Clarksville, Tennessee. We also have William Forrest with us, who is the Disabled Veterans Outreach Program with Workforce Essentials who has been through the guided group discovery training and works with veterans with disabilities. He's met myself, he's met Chris Button. We also have Jarvis Baten with us who was a guided group discovery participant in Tennessee, and he's going to tell you a little bit about how that helped him get his job. And we also have Terry Covington, a Career Coach with Workforce Essentials who is working in the corrections area. So let's see here, I think -- Rebecca?

>> And we're now going to go over to Michael Morris [Assumed Spelling] to facilitate a discussion with the panelists.

>> Great. I'm still absorbing all that information you shared, but we'll move to questions. And I think I'm going to ask a question of Sharyn, first, is can you talk a little bit about what role did the workforce system play in the guided group discovery process with you in Tennessee?

>> Well, first of all, it is something that I had been wanting to get training in for a really long time to be able to provide in the American Job Center system here in Tennessee. And I really, I just always thought that there was so much more to utilize in this particular program with guided group discovery with not only people with disabilities but other jobseekers that we serve in the American Job Center. So a lot of the folks on the call today that you're seeing are from Workforce Essentials, which we're able to take advantage of and do a lot of different things. It's great for the adults. Sometimes when you're working with individuals with disabilities the disability may not necessarily happen at birth, it may happen later on in life, so it's sort of like, well, I have this disability so now what do I do, how can I get a job, what's going to work for me? And then, also, for youth if they've never worked before looking at different types of things that they are interested in and kind of creating that blueprint at the end, which kind of gives them something to work towards.

>> Great. And can you talk a little bit, as you move ahead, how do you plan to continue to try to use guided group discovery as a strategy to support job development and work with the AJC?

>> Okay, well, for right now we do plan on doing more of the guided group discovery sessions in the AJC, but we're also -- we've also partnered with our Vocational Rehabilitation to do the pre-employment transition services program for in-school youth, which we'll be using that piece, as well, in terms of helping the youth, working with them and trying to help them with learning about the different careers and things that are out there and what their interests are and then helping them to be able to come up with that blueprint, so moving forward they will know if they want to go to college or if they want to go to a vocational school or if they want to maybe just go straight to work after they graduate.

>> Great. And I guess it's not on the question on the slide, but I think I'd want to ask you is so can you point out to our listeners -- we've got a huge audience from across the country -- so what are the facets of guided group discovery that's different than your traditional kind of interview-assessment process, so just to help people differentiate it a little bit more?

>> I just think, you know, in terms of when Janet was going over those five different pieces it's something that really gets more into or more in-depth than just providing regular job search mechanics, for example. It's more about getting people to think long term what do they want to do, how do they get there, who is supporting them, as opposed to just like I said a general job search mechanics which just provides them really with how to get a job, get a resume, things like that. This is a lot more to it than just the other services that we provide.

>> And, Sharyn, last point to just follow that question is because of, as you said, it has more depth, more intensity, I suspect some of the listeners from across the country are wondering, well, this is great, but this is going to take more time. But it seems to me it may be taking more time, but you're also producing results and outcomes that may not otherwise have been achieved. Do you have some thoughts about that?

>> No, I mean you're absolutely correct, but one of the other things that it's actually doing is allowing the individuals that are in the guided group discovery to be able to network with each other. And so these folks are actually helping each other through the process, which I think is something really important.

>> Right, makes sense. So let's turn from Sharyn and a question or two for Jarvis, who is with you. And my understanding is Jarvis, you are employed or you achieved employment as a result of being a part of this guided group discovery pilot. Can you talk a little bit about how did guided group discovery help you to identify and find a job?

>> It helped me find my skills, helped me keep my job, helped me to be employed.

>> Okay, and can you tell us a little bit about your job now?

>> Oh, I [inaudible] at the hospital.

>> Okay, and do you think did you learn more about yourself because of going through with the others guided group discovery?

>> Yes, sir.

>> Okay, great, great. Let me turn to Mary Newlon, and can you tell us a little bit, what was your piece here, how did your role play out to support this jobseeker using guided group discovery?

>> Well, first of all, I want to tell you thank you so much from our group, allowing us to be on the webinar. We think that the guided group discovery, it's a wonderful program and we think that it's going to help and has helped a lot of people. Working with Jarvis it helped him know more about what his skills are, what he likes, what he doesn't like. It gave him more confidence and made him feel better about himself, knowing that he has a job now and he is more responsible and brings home a paycheck, which is very important to him. These skills that he learned through guided group discovery, like we said, helps him to be more independent and everybody wants to be independent and make it on their own. So we do support him, we take him back and forth to his job, and if there's meetings we support him and go with him to the meetings. We just think it's a great, great program because he feels better about himself, he just feels more confident.

>> Okay, and can you talk a little bit, is beyond Jarvis, and how do you plan to continue using guided group discovery as a strategy to support job development and placement?

>> Well, we do have different groups that come through our Supported Employment Department as individuals or as a group and definitely can cater the blueprint and the activities to different groups. That's the great thing about the program, if we need to tailor it to fit a certain group's needs or abilities we can definitely do that or we can up it up a little bit if we need to do that. It's just a really good program. So, and also we can use some of these things that we've learned in guided group discovery through our job clubs, as well, and a lot of people have benefitted from that, as well.

>> That's great. And my understanding is that Jarvis has actually gotten increased responsibility and pay increases. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

>> Yes, Jarvis has been at his job over a year now, isn't that right, Jarvis?

>> Yes.

>> Yes, and he has gotten an increase in pay, isn't that correct, Jarvis?

>> Yes, ma'am.

>> And also he has more responsibilities. When they see that he does a great job and then there's a lot of customers that come in and stop and talk with Jarvis, as well. So just having the confidence that he gained from guided group discovery and sticking with the job, because he had a couple jobs before guided group discovery and didn't really stick with them. But learning to be responsible through guided group discovery has helped him to keep his job over a year and he enjoys going to his job.

>> Okay, thank you. I want to turn to William Forrest, and my understanding is you went through the guided group discovery training. How do you think it has helped you, and you work as a Dev Op, you work with veterans, so how do you see guided group discovery potentially helping veterans to obtain jobs that will be a good fit for them?

>> Well, personally, being a veteran, the case management and the case work, I mean the class, the book itself gives you a great blueprint for success. And as far as working one-on-one job placements, and it keeps you on track which is critical for us in getting out of the military. And we come out of the military, we go through a lot of transition for almost 12 months, and a lot of us get out, we're scared and we're lost, we're unorganized. And with this guided group+ I believe that it can get you back on track, give you confidence, and basically it's very simple to go to, to work one-on-one. And I believe as we use it more and more the outcome would become obviously greater.

>> That's fantastic. Any thoughts in terms of how you're going to use guided group discovery in the future?

>> Well, we haven't started the actual one-on-one classes, we've just got the materials, we're trying to get it out there among our Dev Ops. And we want to structure it to basically it's very -- we talked about the five weeks, I talked to several reps and we suggested about half a day, force-feed it in a way where the terminology and then we can work from there with follow-up appointments, continuing with the training as needed because a lot of people can't grasp this in a half a day, and then we just do the one-on-one, coach, teach, mentor.

>> Yes, that sounds great. All right, I'm going to turn next to Terry Covington, who is a Career Coach at Workforce Essentials. You also went through the training, how do you think the guided group discovery is going to help people involved in the justice system to obtain jobs that would be a good fit?

>> Well, the first thing you have to consider when inmates come out of incarceration, they have extreme low self-esteem, low self-confidence. They don't believe that anyone is going to hire them or that they have any marketable skills that are going to overcome their reputation. Their family and friends are sometimes a more negative influence and a negative support system rather than positive. So the guided group discovery is the perfect venue in which we can practice with them, talking about their strengths and how they can contribute to an employer and basically get them out of the habit of thinking of their past and bringing up the negative things that are pulling them down. Practicing interview skills in a group setting is more effective than doing it just one-on-one and this process of interacting with each other and listening to each other will literally give them a different perspective where they're not looking back to the past at the mistakes they've made, but they're all looking forward at what kind of skills they might have or what kind of interests they might have or how they can go forward building their life instead of looking back and being afraid of what the past is.

>> That's great. I'm going to come back to Sharyn and, you know, we've just listened to the way guided group discovery helps lots of different people with different, varying needs, and veterans, people reentering society after prison, people with other types of disabilities. Have you given more thought in terms of the larger framework of the AJC, what is your thinking, Sharyn, in terms of who do you think, is there a certain group of people who would most benefit from guided group discovery? Or I'm getting the sense that this has broad applicability and could be a part of the process that would greatly improve results and outcomes for jobseekers coming in. What are your thoughts, Sharyn?

>> Okay, well, my thoughts are, yes, it could have applicability to other jobseekers, as well, but in terms of where I thought it would come into play. When I first learned about it, because I was doing the disability employment initiative and at that time, or the DEI grant if some people want to go by that terminology -- when I started working with that that's when I learned about guided group discovery. And in the American Job Center we're open to the universal population, so we serve all people regardless of their disability. Well, why not use it, not only for those that have more significant disabilities, intellectual disabilities, but there's youth, some have disabilities, there's adults coming in the system that have disabilities, there's people who are already employed that become unemployed who have disabilities that may need this service. Veterans are coming out of the war with disabilities or just even in their general duties even if they've never been in a war they're still coming out of the service with different types of disabilities or even not knowing what kind of career may help them moving forward if they're not able to do something that they did in the civilian world as they did in the military. And so I think that there's across-the-board a lot of applicability for the customers that we serve in the American Job Centers.

>> Great, excellent answer. Janet, I'm going to come back to you and ask you a few questions, is I know with the webinar today we're unveiling the materials on guided group discovery, which are going to be available on the LEAD Center website, but beyond the materials I know we're seeing different commenters in the chat box. These are several different questions, but they're sort of common ground. Some folks want to know can you become certified as a guided group discovery trainer? And I would say a related question also came in about where can I get more training on guided group discovery? And so maybe you can try those, with the questions together?

>> Okay, thank you. Let's see, okay, the first question was about being certified as a trainer? There is no process in place for that at this point. I know, and just to be clear, some states are requiring service providers to have training in discovery, that typically is directed to the more facilitated discovery approach. At this point there isn't any kind of certification for the guided group discovery process, but we did want to make the materials available to people so that people can start using them and we can learn more as we go. The second part of your question is about the strategies that can be used to accelerate understanding and adoption of guided group discovery? I think one thing we can do is just make people aware of it as a process that people can use. I think Sharyn in Tennessee has done a great job of getting it out kind of statewide. We just did a couple of trainings last May and so she was giving information out to all of the AJCs across the state, so making people aware of it. I think training facilitators is needed, but also kind of wider groups. When we've done trainings we want to include other partners, supervisors, people who might be in a position to refer people to guided group discovery so that is helpful. We also I think need to make sure that more than one person in the agency is trained because we all know that there's turnover in our fields and we need to plan for that so that it keeps going. And one thing I've said to people as they've started this process, too, is that to plan for multiple groups. When you go through the first group you're just kind of figuring it out, right, not that they're the guinea pigs or anything, but you're kind of learning from that group what works, what didn't work. And I think if AJCs took this on as like a regular scheduled event, like let's say we're going to run a group every quarter or, I don't know every month might be too often, but we're going to do this regularly with regular partners that it would become like a flow where people really would get good at it and really be able to do it well.

>> Okay, and, Janet, do you have recommendations about who should be engaged as facilitators of the guided group discovery process? I guess I'm implying in the question -- we're getting a lot of feedback, whoops, that's better. Not so much, but I'll try to talk over it. But the bottom line in the question is are there suggestions or recommendations of who should be engaged as facilitators of the guided group discovery process?

>> Okay, thanks. I think the people that should be engaged are the people that are most directly involved in helping people find jobs, whether that's the adult and youth talent development specialists at the AJCs, the VR counselors, transition specialists or high school teachers, community rehab staff, because this is like an assessment process. And I've always found that if you're an employment specialist in whatever agency you work in that the assessment process is helping to get to know somebody, so you don't want somebody else doing the assessment and then it's your job to take the information and go with it. You want to be part of that whole process. And what I've found is that when I see co-facilitators from different agencies they not only are helping the people that are part of that group, but at the same time they're really learning a lot about each other's agencies. And we've had some really interesting examples of that, you know, where maybe the AJC person said, well, as I understand this is a VR world, that we do this, and the VR person might say, well, no, that's not quite right, let me help explain that to you or vice-versa. The VR counselor might have said, oh, we thought everybody who comes to the AJC has to go through this orientation, and they say, well, that's not really true, we can do that in a little more individualized way. So people are learning about the other agencies and who can do that. So we really do -- I would just say we stress the people who are in positions that are helping people get jobs and that there's co-facilitation, and that once you start it that there's a consistent team. So I mean maybe in one group we actually had three co-facilitators because it was the youth group and because the schedule had to work around the school schedule and their snow days and so we had a third person to make sure that between the three of us, the three of them they could cover all the sessions. So, but having consistent people there is important throughout the process.

>> Thanks, Janet. And this is Rebecca Salon. I just wanted to underline some of the key points that Janet just made. The partnerships can be pretty broad, whoever might be involved in assisting either youth or adults in getting jobs can be trained or co-trained as facilitators. That you can involve people in the training even if they're not going to facilitate just so that they know the process and they know what the blueprint is going to look like, that they can then use. And we really tried to design the materials so that they're pretty stealth paced and prescriptive. You really can walk through the materials and there are notes to guide you every step of the way for what a facilitator can do and how to prompt conversations so that even though everyone cannot go through a facilitator training per se that Janet runs or someone else who is a subject matter expert that the materials are really very user friendly and provide you with a lot of information and the partners can be anyone that you think might be part of an integrative resource team or might be really key in someone's life.

>> Related to that, Rebecca, a question did come in in the chat box and that is do the materials include a description of homework assignments that would be brought back to the group for understanding more about yourself?

>> Yes, yes, and again it gives you clear instructions on how to give the assignment, opportunities to review the assignment, ways to help people figure out who might assist them in completing the assignments as they're building their network and doing that assignment. It gives you suggestions for assisting someone in doing that or identifying the contributions that they make, and those are all in the participant workbook, so the participant workbook is a self-standing document. It's also part of the facilitator's manual so that you can see how it works together and it's highlighted in the slide deck, so the materials are very comprehensive in that way.

>> And here's another question from the chat box is, and maybe for Janet, can you differentiate guided discovery from, quote, facilitated discovery?

>> That's a good question. You know, those processes kind of go for the same kind of information, they're looking for information on people's interests and people's skills and their conditions of employment, and it's really about defining who that person is right now and what kind of job would be a good fit for them. The difference in the facilitated approach we're really talking about people who may not be able to identify or articulate that information either because of limited experience, maybe because of severity of their disability, and for them they need a more one-on-one approach where somebody can really walk them through a series of steps and activities to kind of pull that information out. And guided group discovery I mean who we see as kind of prime candidates are people who are more able to articulate that, that they're able to kind of self-reflect and identify their interests, their skills, their conditions of employment, and the group part of it is just that they're doing that in a group setting. Because I think it's often helpful for people to hear examples from other people, so if somebody through the process is maybe talking about their positive personality traits, that could help somebody else see like, oh, you know, those might be some of the same traits I have, or at least help them see how theirs are different. So it's, again, guided group discovery is not for everybody, some people will need that more facilitated approach. There might even be people who go through guided group discovery maybe with support who may need some additional help with discovery, maybe some more work with a professional to really get at that information. And I'll tell you I've done a lot of training on discovery and customized employment and it's taken me a long time to kind of even pick out those things for myself, and as I said I've learned some things about myself and it's kind of helped me see why I'm in the career I'm in. I think all of us here would say that one of our kind of themes, as we call it, is most of us enjoy working with people, that's why we're in the field we're in. But there's a lot of other things that get teased out, like for instance with youth. A lot of youth will say I like computer games or I like video games, and maybe they like it because they like the competition, maybe they like the war-like things, I don't know, people like the -- I play computer games, too, but I think in my case it's more around problem solving and I particularly like word games and number games. And I think one of the things I've found about myself is that I enjoy working with numbers and I kind of tease this out through this process. But for most of us we've had a lot of work experience to kind of tease that out through. Some people haven't had that kind of work experience or they haven't been able to take the work experience they've had and think about how it relates to a job. I don't know how many folks I've worked with that will come to me and they'll say I've been unsuccessful at my last seven jobs in customer service. Well, what do you want to do now? Customer service. They just haven't been able to see how that doesn't fit for them and what might fit better.

>> And, Janet, a related question would be is there an ideal group size to running a guided group discovery?

>> Yes, and I still on yet, can you hear me?

>> Yes, we can hear you.

>> Yes, okay. We've been saying like six to 10. I think over 10 it starts getting a little big and that it's hard to have really good discussions and to really give everybody an opportunity to share and practice what they're learning. On the other side, we've also found that if you recruit a group of people to go through discovery you're likely going to lose a few. So you should probably shoot for 10 or 12 thinking that you might end up with eight or 10, somewhere in there, that might be good. And some people drop out for good reasons, they've got jobs and they can't come or people move, people, you know, other things come up. So start with a few more than you're really targeting and you'll probably come up with a better, a closer number to the six to 10.

>> Okay, and I'm going to try to get in two last quick questions. We did get a question in is can there be more detail on -- it sounds like Sharyn detailing your role and working with Mary as a provider, you know, who did what or how did the partnership work, if either or both of you might talk a little bit more about that?

>> Okay, so -- this is Sharyn -- so I actually did the facilitation part and Mary did the miming part. [laughter] So I'll let Mary explain that part to you.

>> Once again, Sharyn did with the facilitating, allowed us to come in and be part of the program and Sharyn did facilitate most of the program, but we as co-facilitators were able to get the consumers, the clients engaged by just beginning at their level and making it fun and making sure everybody was relaxed and had a good time. But we did correspond back and forth to make sure of the timing of our program, when we could come, and how many people were going to be here.

>> Transportation.

>> Transportation, all of that. So we worked pretty good hand-in-hand making sure that we could work the program the best that we could. And it was a very big success.

>> Great, thank you. Let me try to get this last one in before we thank everyone, and maybe I'll take this one back to Chris Button. We just got in the chat box, will guided group discovery be coming to all local workforce agencies in all states? I know that's impossible to answer, but I'll send it your way.

>> Well, that's impossible to answer, Michael, but I am really excited about today's webinar. And I think that in particular our panelists and what they have shared with us in terms of how useful they feel that it is for the different populations, when Sharyn Hancock mentioned a little while ago that while she was initially introduced to it, all the different ways that disability connects to an American Job Center it seems so very relevant and then with Mr. Forrest and Jarvis and Terry, just very, very helpful. And we are very excited about being able to release this manual to the LEAD Center and we'll certainly be promoting it to the job centers, Michael.

>> Thank you. And, with that, let me thank our audience for staying with us, hundreds of people across the country. Let me thank our panelists, Sharyn, Mary, William, Janet, Chris, Jarvis and Terry, and thank you, Rebecca, as well. I think that everyone has a better context for understanding guided group discovery and I know people are going to come to the LEAD Center website to look at these wonderful new materials. I hope all of you will connect with the LEAD Center website, www.leadcenter.org. You can sign-up for the LEAD Center News. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. And, again, if you'd like to ask further questions please don't hesitate to reach out to Rebecca, her e-mail is listed on the last slide, rsalon@ndi-inc.org, and we hope you'll be with us for future webinars. But thank you, all. I think we have really provided a new level of interest and engagement around guided group discovery as a pathway to advance employment for people across the full range and spectrum of disabilities. Thanks, everyone. We'll talk with you soon.