>> KRIS PALMER: Welcome, everyone, to the Direct Support Professional Careers for People with Disabilities webinar. We're so happy to have you join us. You're in for a treat today. We have a marvelous panel and very current and exciting topic. 
Next slide. Just a few housekeeping points. If you wish to personalize the captioning, you can click the Live Transcript button on the Zoom panel to find the Hide Captions option or you can adjust the caption size under the subtitle headings. Sorry, subtitle settings option. Or you may open a captioning web page in a new browser and then you can click on this link. Maybe, I think the link is in your chat. And you can adjust the background color, text color, and font and use the drop down menus at the top of the browser. You can position the window to sit on top of the embedded captioning. And we're going to show some videos today, too, that will also be captioned. 
Okay. And next slide. If you have any content questions, there's a Q&A button on my computer, anyway, you can look down below. There's, like, a panel. You can roll down with your mouse. A little panel should come up. There's a Q&A. You can put questions in there any time during our entire webinar. And we just encourage you to ask questions and be    we'll have plenty of time to answer questions at the end and have an exchange    hope to have an exchange with you. So please ask your questions. The format doesn't allow you to speak live, but we'll really    we would love to have your questions in the chat. 
And then if you have any tech support, if you're struggling with anything to do with the captioning or anything to do with the sound or anything else, you can type your question in the chat box. And someone will respond to you on our team. 
Next slide. I would like to now turn it over to Assistant Secretary Williams. 
>> TARYN WILLIAMS: Great, thank you and hi, everyone. I'm Taryn Williams, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment policy, and head of the Office of Disability Employment Policy, or ODEP for short, at the U.S. Department of Labor. I want to welcome all of you to our webinar today about direct support professionals or DSPs. 
For those of you who are not familiar with ODEP, Congress established the Office of Disability Employment Policy within the U.S. Department of Labor 21 years ago to create a federal agency dedicated to working across policies, programs, and agencies to promote disability employment. DSPs play a critical role in employment for people with disabilities. This may include a range of tasks from helping them determine which job they want to helping them find a job, to supporting them on the job. To phasing that support. And finally, to providing support before and after work at home, and in community settings. And we know the importance of DSPs is only growing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, employers will need to fill 7.4 million job openings in direct care from 2019 to 2029. Including 1.3 million new jobs to meet rising demand and another 6.1 million job openings to replace workers who leave the labor force or transfer to new occupations. And BLS also projects direct care job growth of 33% between 2020 and 2030. 
To be able to fill the millions of direct care jobs in the years ahead, stronger recruitment pipelines, improved job quality and a range of workforce interventions are critically needed. As LEAD's Kris Palmer will discuss, ODEP recently released a report on the Direct Support Professional Workforce. This report summarized findings and recommendations from a think tank that ODEP hosted in February to discuss the DSP crisis. And to brainstorm potential federal actions that could be taken to address the issue. Unless we take action to increase the pipeline of DSPs and increase the number and quality of this workforce, the potential and talent of people with disabilities who rely upon DSPs in the workplace will go unfulfilled. 
Before I turn it over to Kris, I do want to take a moment to thank the LEAD Center for their support and work and leadership on this critical issue and I look forward to our continued collaboration. And with that, I hope everyone has a festive and safe Labor Day. Kris, I'll turn it back to you. Thank you. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thank you, Assistant Secretary Williams, for your leadership and for joining us today. As you say, it's an important holiday this weekend. And nothing more apt to be talking about this topic today. 
Next slide, please. So I'm going to go over it now, some of our objectives for today. You're going to hear, as Assistant Secretary referenced, the findings from the LEAD Center report. And listening session on the Direct Support Professional and care workforce that gives a set of recommendations of how people with disabilities can be part of the solution for these labor market shortages and crisis that Assistant Secretary just referenced with some accommodation and training. So we'll have a lot of solutions to be offered today. 
And we'll hear from this model effort that our CM is doing that trains people with disabilities and helps bridge the accommodation divide with employers. By presenting these two things, the RCM model and the memo, we hope to impart the importance of customization and accommodation and training and employment for DSPs and beyond. The need for a labor market culture shift to allow for more flexible and inclusive approaches to accommodate workers and clients' needs. A diverse and rich care economy path, we're going to be talking about a diverse and rich care economy pathways for people with disabilities. Benefits of the DSP profession for people with disabilities. The need to value, more than our culture and our labor market currently does, the contributions that direct care workers make. And the need to more highly value them. 
And I just saw, breezed through in the chat, that looking for the report. Leah, I think you can go ahead and post that and we'll post it again soon when we talk more directly about the memo. 
Okay. Next slide, please. So we're going to give you a sneak peek now. We're going to talk about the memo. Before we get there, we want to give you a sneak peek about the RCM project. This was a memo    sorry, a memo    a short video that tells part of the story that we're going to talk about later. And focuses squarely on valuing care workers and valuing the people they care for. So with that, we will show you this short video. 
>> Dear world. 
>> Dear world. 
>> Dear world
>> I'm an 18 year old hard of hearing person.  
>> I used to not be able to speak very clearly. 
>> Life with autism, I was taught that I would never amount to anything. 
>> Ready, set, go. 
>> Follow these steps to open the airway. 
(Music) 
>> I started learning how to read when I was, like, 5th grade. I used to not be able to communicate. I got out of high school, I wish I knew about this program. I started working at a theatre. They mistreated me. They would say, okay, this is your job. That's all you can be. Kind of made me feel like I was useless when I knew that I had potential. 
>> You want to do under the person's arm and go up here. 
(Music) 
>> Nine, ten. 
>> So Direct Professional is basically being one on one with a person. And understanding what they're going through. 
>> You want to try it in a different color? 
>> I was offered a position as a Community Navigator where I would be working with four individuals. Because I had a disability, myself, I think that I can utilize what I've learned from my previous history. This person right here is Robin. She's able to use her talents and kind of understand the seasons that's happening right now. 
>> I am a boundlessly optimistic human being. 
>> I can fight for someone and advocate for them and get their words out. 
>> I want to be able to help people feel like they are worth something. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thank you. Next slide. Now I'm going to introduce to you the people behind the program that you just saw. Amy Brooks, the CEO of RCM of Washington Incorporated. And Susan Brooks, the Chief Innovation Officer at RCM of Washington incorporated. You're also going to hear even more voices of people who have gone through this program and are currently through it and working as DSPs. Tinesha Gray and Carlos Hilton Zacarias. We'll hear them also in video form because they wanted    that's the way they wanted to share their voice with you. 
And then from our LEAD Center staff, we have Leah Cadena Igdalsky and myself, Kris Palmer and Rebecca Salon from the LEAD Center National Disability Institute was one of the masterminds working on this webinar, won't be speaking today but was very integral to the work. 
Next slide. Now we want to know more about who has joined us today. Some of you have introduced yourself in the chat, which is fantastic. But we're going to do a poll now. Click all that apply when you see the poll come up. Just about who we have here. What kind of organization do you work with? Are you a person with disabilities or a family member of someone with disabilities? You can check multiple. I know we all have multiple identities in our life. This is just a few that we've named here. I see others have introduced themselves in the chat. If you want to do that to know who else is here, go right ahead. 
So, gosh, we're up to 220, 230. How many participants do we have here today? We have 319 people on the line. Wow. Okay. So that's quite a few of you that have already replied. So we've got a large number of people who are coming from community agencies. Organizations and service providers. At least these might be multiple    anyway, 42% of those of you who have replied are from community organizations. We have some educators. We have quite a few workforce development professionals. State government agencies. That's fantastic. We have you here. Of course, we have our federal partners. 18% are people with disabilities. 11% of families of persons with disabilities. Thank you so much for    thank you so much for weighing in. And that helps us, Amy, and Susan and I and Leah just to know who we're talking to and more about    kind of, we can think a little bit more through what your interests might be. I think that's in line with what we expected today, too. A lot of our remarks are. 
So let's go to our next slide. Okay. Let me give you a little bit of context. Really, Assistant Secretary Williams did such a great job of giving us some context here on just the incredible job growth. 33% as she mentioned in this area of direct care- Direct Care Workforce. Outlining a bit more about what the shortages that we're facing. We have    we know that a large number of the workforce, 87%, are women, and 53% are women of color. That is part- that tells part of the story of why this position, and the wages, are low and undervalued. We know that the skills used in this job, if you look at some other jobs in the labor market, are paid more. But because of this history of racism, sexism, that affects jobs that are dominated by women and people of color, they're often undervalued. That's something we're facing and we want to work on. We know that there are chronically high turnover rates. And barriers to collective bargaining in some states. And surges in demand due to COVID. Then just surges in demand for many other reasons, too. 
Okay. Next slide. Okay. Did you hear about the memo? It's in the chat. You can take a look. We did this    all that context that I just shared    led to ODEP and the LEAD Center knowing that we had to do something. So we convened a large number of national experts, state experts, community based experts, to    and DSPs themselves, who came into the think tank, to share the challenges that were being faced to make recommendations for federal action to mitigate the challenges. And then that was one day. Then the very next day we had some of the people, the experts, determine who would take the lead in reporting that to federal agencies. 14 fellow agencies and many more people from those agencies came to the listening session following the think tank. And there's been some steps since. We won't share all of those. There's action happening. 
Next slide. Oh, sorry, before I go, Alethea is pictured here with Russell, the client that she serves. Alethea, She was one of the DSPs who spoke at the event. 
Okay. Next slide. Okay. So the memo, as you'll see, okay, I just saw someone say she was great. And she was. She was fantastic. There's also a newsletter. We'll give you some links later to the ODEP site. You can see a newsletter that she's actually featured and she talks more about her story. You can see that. The memo focused on four different areas. We, today, are focusing on recommendation 4 that has to do with supporting people with disabilities to enter the DSP profession. 
Next slide. And so here's just some of the recommendations. Just in a nutshell here, among the findings, were to eliminate barriers for people with disabilities becoming DSPs. This could be in the form of rules and service definitions and requirements. Just for one example, that you've probably seen before in job descriptions that there's a requirement to lift a certain amount of weight. We know that some clients need that. Others don't. We also know that there's a lot of medical assistance, you know, there's mechanical assistance available now for a lot of different things that keeps all workers safer from injury. So the point is that matches can be made to fit people's abilities in a much more nuanced way. So these blanket requirements that can be a barrier to entry, that's unnecessary. And accommodations can be made with some match making. You're going to hear more about this with Susan and Amy with the wonderful work that they do. And I don't want to keep you any longer from hearing from them. 
So I'm going to turn it over now to Susan Brooks to get us into more specifics about RCM and that work. Next slide. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Before we pop into the kind of meat and potatoes of the Direct Support Professional Academy, I wanted to touch on some kind of the inspiration behind the program. And on this slide here, it talks about expanding career pathways. And there is an illustration of some colorful arrows pointing in multiple directions when the middle arrow is saying find your path. 
So one thing that we know is that employment outcomes and rates for people with disabilities is far lower than their non disabled peers. So how do we improve meaningful competitive employment for people with disabilities? And one of those ways is to create more opportunities for people with disabilities outside of the conventional pathways we have seen historically. 
So janitorial work, food services, grocery bagger, et cetera. These are all jobs that we have seen. A lot of people with disabilities hold. Now, there's nothing wrong with these positions. If these, the duties of these jobs align with the person's skill and passion, then that's wonderful. But what if it doesn't? What if you were pushed into a job that you weren't good at or maybe you didn't enjoy, just because you happen to be a person with a disability? My guess is the likelihood of you being successful is slim. 
Another thing that we want to acknowledge is that people with disabilities are an untapped recruitment resource. And they are one of many solutions to the workforce shortages that we see today. Thinking of the health care field and specifically as we’ll talk about today, the direct support professional field. 
And lastly, creating customized vocational training programs that use universal design and incorporate elements of customized employment will lead to increased opportunities and more meaningful outcomes and competitive employment for people with disabilities. And we will introduce you to a program created in Washington called the Direct Support Professional Academy otherwise known as the DSP Academy for short. 
Next slide, please. But before we jump in, let's remember that a truly inclusive workforce must include people with disabilities. And oftentimes, that may take intentionality and even an organizational culture shift. At RCM, it is important    it was important for our workforce to reflect our mission and values. We wanted to be a model employer for employment first practices. You can see here in this photo on this slide there is a group of people hanging around and this happens to be a graduation of a DSP Academy. And people are all smiling and they're holding up little props that say “DSP” and “everyday inclusion.” And having a lot of fun. 
Additionally, we wanted to make sure that intentional job matching and customized employment were a part of our organization's practices. We also looked at what intentional barrier    unintentional barriers    are we creating. So, I think we all need to look at that as government systems, as employers, as government systems. Do we have regulations in place that might be creating barriers for employment for people to join our workforce? An example being in the District of Columbia, you used to have to have a high school diploma or GED to qualify to be a direct support professional. We were able to amend that requirement and amend the waiver to include people that have certificates of completion which really open the doors to a much wider pool of potential employees. 
As employers, we need to think about, you know, do our HR teams and management teams have a meaningful understanding of accommodations, of what customized employment is? Of the use of natural support among coworkers? And then lastly, you know, as employers, are our job descriptions and our job postings blanketed and hindering and creating barriers for other people? Meaning are we requiring that every dsupport professional have a driver's license? Even if they're in a position where driving isn't required. Are we requiring everyone to have a medication administration certification even if the person that they're supporting is self administering medication? So these are some of the things that we thought about. 
And simply raising the bar high. Setting expectations high. What we've learned is that if we set expectations high, people usually meet you there. And the truth is that many people with intellectual, developmental disabilities can hold positions of high responsibility. Especially with the right training and right supports. 
And now Amy will tell us a little bit more about the Direct Support Professional Academy in detail. 
Next slide, please. 
>> AMY BROOKS: Hello, all. I want to first describe the slide that you're looking at. What you're seeing in this slide is a group of DSP Academy participants sitting in a classroom setting in front of computers,and actively participating in some of the curriculum. But I want to talk about for those of you who aren't familiar, the direct support professional, or DSP role, is to help a person to live their best life. This could include assistance with personal care, teaching independent living skills, and helping a person be an active member of their community. 
The DSP Academy is RCM of Washington's customized vocational training program to certify an inclusive workforce of Direct Care Professionals in the District of Columbia. It creates opportunities at the crossroads of two critical issues facing the field. Which is the reason why we developed the academy in the first place. And that is the workforce shortage of DSPs and the high unemployment rates for people with disabilities. The program we offer consists of around 70 training hours over the course of six to eight weeks depending on the makeup and the needs of the cohort who is learning. Both transition age youth and adults are eligible to participate in the DSP Academy. And the curriculum has been adapted using universal design, which Susan will talk about more later, and is actively training participants both with and without disabilities. And we have built job development into the curriculum so as some of you may know, job development equals job search and hopefully placement. 
Next slide, please. So let's shift now and talk about some of the benefits of the DSP Academy. And what you can see on this slide is a gentleman who is an Academy member and he is learning to do CPR. He is practicing his CPR skills. So some of the benefits are fairly obvious. Would result in an increased number of qualified and skilled DSPs. Increased employment for people with disabilities. Inclusion. We want our workforce to reflect our missions as employers. But also decreased people in need of supports or amount of supports. And what we're talking about here is that people who work often need less supports. People working often develop their own natural supports and network of friends as you or I may do through our employment. Employment can also disrupt the pipeline from school to day programs for transitional youth. Overall, meaningful and competitive employment is key to independence. 
People with disabilities gain knowledge of person centered planning, self advocacy, and the Disability Movement. And also gain the self confidence to lead some of these activities in their own lives. Therefore, becoming their own best advocates. 
And finally, there's true value in peer supports. People benefit from having success modeled in a helping relationship between people who share some form of lived experience is priceless. I'm going to turn it back over to Susan. 
Next slide, please. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yeah. Now that Amy has told us a little bit more about the DSP Academy, let's jump into some specifics. One of the most important pieces of the Direct Support Professional Academy curriculum is that it was developed with a universal design approach. And universal design approach means minimizing barriers to maximize learning. And on the screen here, it says universal design is a concept in which products and environments are designed to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design. 
So what that means is universal design is for everybody. And how we incorporated that in our curriculum and program is making sure first and foremost that our curriculum was accessible. Accessible with captioning. Accessible with screen readers. Alt text. So on and so forth. 
We also made sure that our information is presented in a variety of methods. To complement diverse learning styles. So we have visual aspects. We have auditory aspects. We have hands on aspects. And, of course, reading aspects. 
We also placed project based comprehension assessments wherever possible. Removing the need of testing based measurements of knowledge growth wherever we can. For example, we do a module on community mapping and activity planning. Instead of doing testing, we actually give someone a profile of a person and have them map that person's community. We have them, you know, plan activities in a person centered way based on the profile that they received. They're actually able to make those connections of what person centered thinking is and community mapping is. And without, you know, during that project without the need of actual testing. They're really able to show their skills and that method. We focus on content and not medium delivery. We allow people to complete assignments, allow people to complete projects. In whatever medium feels comfortable to them. We're not necessarily looking for something that's written down. People can submit things through videos. They can submit assignments through voice memos. Or they can use the assistance of their facilitator, someone at home. Even the co participants within their cohorts. 
One thing that's really wonderful that we found about the program is really just the bond and support and encouragement that people receive from the other people that they're going through this process program with. 
Structure. Structure was really    it's really important to this academy and the success of this academy. The scheduling of dense topics. Making sure that those are spread out and sprinkled within topics that might not be so overwhelming. Allowing lots of times for breaks. Allowing time for reflection. And lots of time for review. In no way is there any rushing during this academy. We make sure that we build in plenty of time to make sure that people are hearing information more than once. That they're grasping concepts. That they have time to ask questions. That they have time to talk ideas out. And have time to participate. So truly engagement is key. So engagement, engagement, engagement. 
Next slide, please. So people might be wondering how did we make this all happen? We've been very fortunate to have incredible partnerships throughout the journey. We've had many, many more partnerships than what are listed on the slide today. For the purposes of this presentation, we're going to focus on these two. And on this slide, you'll see two different logos. One for the D.C. Department on Disability Services with the slogan, "Life. Your way." And one logo for the District of Columbia Public Schools. 
So first starting with Department on Disability Services otherwise known as DDS, wewere really happy to have our government partners support this program from the ground up. The vocational wing, which is called the Rehabilitation Services Administration in D.C. of the Department on Disability Services is an essential partner to this program. They provide funding through vocational rehabilitation dollars. They assist with marketing the program. And they help us find participants whose career goals align with the program itself. In fact, the pilot of this program was funded using the PIE Grant dollars which is Partnerships in Employment Grant. 
We've been able to have a great relationship with our local D.C. Public School System. We work with graduating seniors. And through our pre employment transition services group, in the D.C. Public Schools Career Bridge Program, we've been able to really make a great relationship and partnership. The Career Bridge Program is for students both with and without disabilities who are seniors and are interested in obtaining a vocational or trade certification before graduation. And also through that partnership with Career Bridge, we were able to join under the Summer Youth Employment Program here in the district as well run, which is run through that American Job Center. So we've been having    we're just very thankful for our partners and all of the support that we receive. 
Next slide, please. Now let's talk about outcomes. Here on this slide, we see a woman filling out a job application, wearing a bright yellow business jacket,and smiling. And so contextually, it's important to point out that most of the placements before we get started on outcomes, that most of the placements are customized in nature. Meaning that the jobs obtained aren't necessarily pulled from the blanketed DSP posting online. Instead, creativity, job carving, and skill matching, has been considered to create or alter a job to meet the needs of both the direct support professional and the person receiving supports. 
Customized employment might be a different and sometimes longer process to obtain outcomes, but once success is achieved, after finding that perfect match or fit, it's beneficial to all. It's beneficial to the employee. It's beneficial to the employer. And most importantly, the people receiving supports. And it's key to having an inclusive workforce. 
As you can see on the slide here, we have had 43 people be accepted into the DSP. 53 people be accepted into the DSP Academy. 47 of them have graduated. So we have an 89% graduation rate. For employment outcomes, you can see that pre pandemic, we were hovering around 56%. At the height of the pandemic, those outcomes went down. Likely due to the high risk nature of this position, to 43%. Since we have seen the numbers steadily climbing back up. Currently, we are at 53% of employment outcomes. That includes transitional youth and the adult. You'll see here that we separated the adults. And I'll get to that in a little bit. But our adult outcome rate is 66%. One of the reasons why we separated out this adult is because there are many more outcomes to the Direct Support Professional Academy than just employment outcomes. And one of those is professional experience. So for some people, especially transitional youth, the academy might be their first professional experience that they've ever had. And like most young adults who have just finished high school, they may not know what they want to do with their future. 
However, after completing this program, they have a legitimate work experience and certifications under their belt to reference on their resume and to talk about when they're networking or when they're in an interview. This academy provides much needed exposure to the health and human service field, especially the disability field in which capacity building for our future is very important. 
So we have seen transitional youth move on to college with an interest in social work or community health nursing, for example. And helping to build the future generation of professionals in our field is really important outcome to highlight as well. 
Next slide, please. So now we're going to pull up a video and we're going to hear from a graduate, Miss Tinesha Gray. She will talk about her experience in the academy and also what it means to her to be a DSP. 
>> TINESHA GRAY: Tinesha, a DSP. I'm a graduate from DSP or RCM, for three years now. 
>> Wonderful. So you graduated three years ago from the DSP Academy and you've been working as a DSP ever since, right? 
>> TINESHA GRAY: Yep. 
>> What was your experience like in the academy? 
>> TINESHA GRAY: You learn a whole lot in the program. Ittakes six weeks. If you need more information, you can call the office. They will give you information to learn about being a DSP. When I didn't like taking tests, they was right there with me one on one helping me read the questions. And stuff like that. Our classmates    I'll say classmates    they helped out a lot, too, in the program. 
>> What is your favorite part of the job? 
>> TINESHA GRAY: Coming to work every day. Working with the ladies. They put a smile on your face. If you're sad, make your day go more faster. You'll love this job. 
>> What makes you a good DSP? 
>> TINESHA GRAY: I come to work every day on time. If I'm late, I call my boss and tell them and she'll say, okay. I still come to work, do what I got to do. I don't care if I'm tired or not. I'm still coming to work. 
>> How does it feel being a person with a disability working with others with disabilities? 
>> TINESHA GRAY: They think people who have disabilities can't do this type of job, and you could if you have a disability. Don't let nobody talk you down. Just push forward. You will get to it. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Wonderful. Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Carlos and he'll talk about the impact that the academy had on him. 
>> CARLOS HILTON ZACARIAS: One of the programs that helped me out a lot was the Direct Support Professional Program Academy. It was basically like an academy where you would learn how to help people with disabilities. They taught us how to communicate with people with disabilities without getting hands on and so on. That was something that really touched me because I had seen how some people were treated in the past and I wasn't okay with that. Then seeing that the people are advancing with the ways to communicate with people and helping people with disabilities, like, it really touched me. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Wonderful. So great to hear from a few of our graduates who are so proud of their accomplishments. 
Now let's look at replications. So RCM is actively working with other states to expand the DSP Academy. On the map here, you'll see a portion of the United States highlighted, and Tennessee and New York filled in. That is because RCM has worked with the state of Tennessee for curriculum development for their pilot of their Direct Support Professional Academy which is being run through a provider in Memphis. Additionally, RCM is very excited to have partnered on a grant application with the state of New York. So that we can hopefully assist in helping them with their version of a Direct Support Professional Academy. 
Next thing when it comes to replication, obviously, this program had started long before the pandemic. But during the height of the pandemic, as the rest of the world, we had to figure out how to do programming virtually. So the DSP Academy was forced to go virtual. And what we learned through that process is that with tweaks, with kind of setting some things up differently, that we were still able to be successful in, you know, in running a virtual DSP Academy. 
And so what that's proven to us is that, you know, in the District, we are an urban environment. We have loads of public transportation. And it's really easy to get to a classroom or a work site every day for the Academy. However, in some more rural areas or remote areas, that might be a hindrance. So what we learn from the virtual courses that we did over the pandemic is that this is applicable in rural settings. That a virtual or hybrid model, a virtual and in person, could work for other areas of the country who are more remote. 
Lastly, we really believe that this model is applicable to other pathways. We think that this model could be applied to a plethora of different career paths. Especially career paths within the career    the care economy. So I'm going to hand it over to Amy now to talk a little bit about the care economy. 
>> AMY BROOKS: Next slide, please. So let's talk a little bit about what is the care economy. You can see on this slide it's brightly colored and fun. We've got someone holding a baby. We have people assisting people with mobility disabilities. We have people, looks like in a health care setting. So let's take a look at what is the care economy. The definition that I like best comes from American University. The care economy is work and relationships that are necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of all people, young and old, able bodied, disabled, and frail. Care work sustains life. It involves childcare, elder care, education, health care, and, yes, personal services and supports to people with disabilities. 
Care work is one of the fastest expanding economic sectors and a major driver of employment growth, which I think we heard earlier from Taryn, and economic development around the entire world. Ultimately, at some point in our lives we're all part of the care economy, either paid or unpaid. 
As we all know, DSPs do not do one thing. A DSP may be supporting someone throughout their life span, touching on many aspects of care, medical, nutritional, social, as well as activities of daily living. As Susan has touched on, there are many skills a DSP must possess. This uniquely positions someone with these skills to work in a variety of settings and really provides a launching pad for many career trajectories that one could pursue. The cause of a person who has a disability's distinctive perspective of person centeredness, a natural flexibility is created in one's ability to adapt and have a flexible look on opportunities that help with job carving and customization. Basically, people know what they are good at and they know what they can do. 
Through our DSP Academy, we explore many different employment options for people and the curriculum does also include training in day and employment supports so people have a full understanding of these options. 
There are many branching career paths that graduates can and have taken in the past. Some of these include nursing, susan told us about people that went on to school, social work, hospital workers, classroom aides, early childhood aides, working with the elderly, job coaches, employment specialists, peer mentoring positions, advisory board positions with state DD counsels or other boards. 
And as you can see, there are many opportunities that do exist. Next slide. I'll turn it over to Kris. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thank you, Susan and Amy. Yeah, I just first wanted    I'm going to talk about the DSP memo. But I do first want to really thank both of you. From what you shared, I think we can definitely see how important customization and accommodation are for training employment. And your approach makes work more inclusive and it helps people who need direct care get the support they need. And as we heard from Assistant Secretary, it's such a vital need now in our economy. So it's just such good work. And I know everyone on the call, on the webinar today will join me in applause if we only had sound for everyone, a round of applause for you, your presentation, your work, and if any of you on the call know what it's    how many work it takes to tell your story and put things in this format, you'll know that Amy and Susan have gone above and beyond. We have a lot of organizations here that probably run programs. And how much it takes to do something outside your daily work. So thank you, both, so much. 
So now I am going to turn this back over to the memo, which you have in your chat, Back a little ways. Maybe we can post it one more time so people can see the DSP memo. And we talked a little bit before about set of recommendations. So we’re going to continue on those. And I’m going to turn it over to Leah to take it from here. 
>> LEAH CADENA IGDALSKY: Thanks so much, Kris. We’re going to share some of the recommendations that came out of the DSP memo that we referenced following the think tank. One of those recommendations is a national campaign about employment for people with disabilities in the DSP profession to recruit, train, and expand the DSP workforce raising awareness about the need for and the value of DSPs. 
And another recommendation is to clarify how existing    excuse me    existing funding sources can be used to support DSPs with disabilities. For example, it could look like developing guidance, identifying best practices, to increase the efficacy of funding, and quality of programs using blending and braiding of resources across programs such as Medicaid and workforce development. It could also look like encouraging braiding and blending by state and local level entities including pilot projects that can inform future policies and efforts. And if you're not familiar with blending and braiding, there's a new interagency memo that just recently came out about blending, braiding and sequencing of funds for competitive integrated employment that is a great resource to get started in learning more about that. 
Next slide, please. On this slide, you’ll see-- here's a photo of myself and Amy who, believe it or not, had the chance to meet in person. On the right side of your screen, you can see a photo of myself and Amy smiling at the camera and we’re standing in front of a table that the LEAD Center had at a recent conference. And in addition to getting the chance to meet, which was a lot of fun, this photo also represents one of the recommendations from the memo, which was about disseminating resources and information about models, successes, and the issues at hand that we've covered today. 
So here Amy and I are at a recent HCBS conference disseminating the memo that we’ve referenced a few times and sharing information about successes. And the last recommendation that we'll highlight today relates to supporting research and pilot projects in which people with disabilities successfully enter and advance in DSP careers. 
Go to the next slide, please. Thanks so much. So before we open the floor for questions, and we've had quite a few really exciting ones come in, we want to have one last final poll that will open momentarily. And please respond to the poll to let us know what you would need for yourself, for your organization, to get more involved with getting people with disabilities into the care professions. So that poll question, you'll see on your screen. So I'll give a few moments for folks to respond. And i'll just not that this is a multiple-choice poll meaning you can answer more than one thing. Okay. We'll give just another moment for folks to respond. I think we can go ahead. Let's close the poll and see what people said. So as you may be able to see, there are a number of things that folks would need in order to get more involved with this work. The most common response was funding to support training and on the job supports followed by a universally designed accessible DSP curriculum, staff dedicated to DSP training, and we'll get to this more in the Q&A, the removal of regulatory barriers such as needing a high school diploma to be a DSP. And some folks answered something else, which we can look at and share after we get a peek in the chat. 
Thanks so much. We can go to the next slide. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Okay. Thank you very much, Leah, for that poll and to get a better sense of just what you would need to get more involved, and I think we can pursue that a bit in the questions, too. People have any questions related to that, for our speakers, or, yeah, for any of our speakers, and anything around if you're able to access the memo, to look at that. 
I also saw there was a request to put the blending and braiding work    we're going to work on getting you a link for that also. It's also on the website. Actually, could you go    before we start questions, just go    let me just go ahead a couple here. Krystal, just go to the resource slide. One more. Sorry. One more. The LEAD Center. One back one. Here's the leadcenter.org. that’s also where you can go if you want to look at that blending and braiding work and other things. You can go there. 
Okay. Sorry Krystal, go back to where we were. To Q&A. So here we are at questions. We have so many questions. Where to begin? And we have plenty of time. So I just want to encourage you as you're listening, if other things come up, to go ahead and put them in the chat. We'll start with    there's a very good first question here about what do you say to people who would be hesitant to place a person with a disability in a role like the DSP role and care worker role that has such high responsibility? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Thank you, Kris. I'll take this one. This is especially early on a question that we got a lot. We saw some hesitancy. And what I would say is that having choice and decision making skills is not exclusive to people without disabilities. In fact, I know plenty of people without disabilities who do not have strong choice and decision making skills. But I think the good way to sum it up is, you know when we were coming up with this program and having listening sessions and feedback sessions and one of the groups that we went to was our local self advocacy agency group which is called Project Action. And one of Project Action's leaders, you know, when we talked about this said, you know, we've been taking care of each oath and looking out for each other for as long as I can remember. So why couldn't we be paid to do this? And that really resonated with me. I think lots of people with disabilities have    already have care experience. They might have care experiences with their friends. They might have it with family members. With their own children. They might have it with aging parents. And so a lot of people with disabilities already have this experience needed to be a successful sirect support professional. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thanks, Susan. We have several questions about funding. Let's start with that general question and we'll go into some of the more specific. But just talk generally about how do you manage to fund all of this great work? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: So I'm happy to take that again. As I mentioned, our voc. rehab wing    our Rehabilitation Services Administration, does a large amount of funding for us. Both for transitional youth and for adults. And also we're able to work within that Career Bridge Program which is funded through D.C. Public Schools. We've been able to do some braiding of funding through those two outlets. 
One thing I didn't mention, and we didn't mention in the presentation, and I would like to bring up when it comes to funding, is that it is through these things, it is free to participants. And that this program is, in fact, a paid experience, a paid program. People are earning hourly wages as they're going through this program. Which I saw, I think I saw something flash by in the chat regarding technology and access to technology. So there are a multitude of reasons why people are paid, one, because they    we believe that they should be. It also professionalizes the experience. And thirdly, it helps overcome any financial barriers that might be in place. Transportation to and from classes. Or having access to technology. Having    being able to have a computer or Internet at home. And so this funding allows    or childcare that might need to be in place. It helps with any barriers that potential participants might have in those areas. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thank you. Then there’s a specific, There's specifically a question about how does voc rehab fund, how does it fund the program? Is it the youth pre employment transition funding, or adult services funding, or both? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: It is both. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thank you. 
 Okay. I'm going to come back to some of the really specific questions. I'm going to do a couple more general ones. Okay. So Sarah has a couple questions. One, will participants be able to use a job coach supported employment specialist as an accommodation both in the academy and on the job? Let's just take that first question first. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Sure. Absolutely. And you know, we have not yet had someone that has  needed a job coach or supported person within the Academy because we have multiple facilitators that their role is to support people in person during the academy. But yes, absolutely. Both of those things are possible. Those accommodations can be made. 
>> AMY BROOKS: I'll jump in here. I think one thing that we really do intentionally is for on the job, I mean, absolutely someone could have a job coach if they needed it. But we're very intentional in our job matching. And what we have found is being very intentional, meaning what are the skills and passions of the person? We have found that natural supports often just fall around that person. And Susan may be able to even expand upon that. I think if you are very intentional in your job matching, the person would    has a better chance of being successful without having a job coach. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Right. Okay. Thank you, Amy. Let's talk a little bit now about partners. So if you could just talk a little bit more about the partners you have and maybe who you wish you had. We have a couple specific questions here. So do you interface with nTIDE? Any other specific partners? There's another one from Jonathan maybe. Yeah. So talk more about your partnerships. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Sure. As I mentioned, we've been very lucky to have our two main partners which is the D.C. Public School and Department on Disability Services. We've also have had support from our local DD council, which is Developmental Disabilities Council. As well as, you know, different partnerships throughout our community. Such as Project Action as we talked about,  ur self advocacy group. And so, you know, we’ve been very lucky to have a lot of support from a lot of different people. 
You know, in reference to that question where it talks about other providers and systems, pursuing similar partnerships with youth and adults with disabilities, especially for the youth, I would say it’s something it was very helpful. A person from our employment transition services team at the Department on Disability Services introduced us to the transition manager at OSSE, so the Office of State Superintendent of Education in D.C. And through that connection, we were really able to funnel ourselves into meeting different people from different programs. And making that great relationship with our local public school system. And so I think that just    a lot of it has to do with introducing yourselvf to people, talking to other organizations, putting yourself out there. A lot of those connections were made simply by just asking for meetings. Who can I talk to that would be interested in a program like this? We know we want to work with transitional youth. Who can I talk to that will help us work through how that will be possible and through what avenue? And so a lot of it had to do with really putting ourselves out there. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Great. Let me just go back a minute to the funding. There's a couple other questions related to funding. Are there any federal grants being developed to assist employment of DSPs? Someone asked what are some of the examples of graded funding of HCBS services? Has there been a success with funding the job coach to support people with a disability working as a DSP? See if there's any other    someone wondered if you could expand a little bit more on the voc rehab funds. Also is there additional funding with American Job Centers, if you're aware? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yeah. Of course, we're continuing to look for expanded funding. But as we talked about through voc rehab, we are currently working this program through Job Readiness program, is what  it falls underneath, for both adults and for transitional youth. So it falls underneath that job readiness category here. 
And as far as    I'm sorry. One more    give me one more question. With you threw out a couple. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Are there any federal grants being developed to assist in the employment of DSPs? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yeah. That area, I know that in New York, one of the grant that we partnered to apply on them, for them, is a federal grant about subminimum wage. Pushing people out of subminimum wage jobs. So there is definitely a lot out there. To your question regarding the American Job Center, that summer youth employment program that we've talked about that we’ve been connected with through the D.C. Public School System, that program is funded through the American Job Center and would actually like to make better contacts with them as well to have a better, a stronger partnership with them. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Great. Okay. So now I want to    let me see. So now I want to talk a little bit about the career ladders. Something Amy referenced. There's a couple questions related to that. About what will    what do you imagine this leads to with DSPs? And if you’ve had an experience— if you've seen people move from that or even within it. And then there's a question from Sarah, again, about her second part of the question was, would there be opportunities to expand this kind of work to home care aides for the aging community who desperately need more home care aides? I would think the people with disabilities who are working could also use home care aides. There's often a lot of questions about is a DSP a care worker? You know, that DSP is specific, but, yet, there are many related types of jobs. And could you just address that? 
>> AMY BROOKS: I certainly think that it's replicable for home care aides. As a matter of fact, as I said, I think that was one of the branching areas that certainly someone with these skills    because, remember, they're leaving with certifications. So they're leaving with certifications in crisis management. They're leaving with a certification in CPR. Those are some of the foundational things, you know, that a home care agency would be interested in. 
Also I think, and that question is, you know, Susan can probably expand on this also. But the career trajectory, I believe we've had a graduate who really found her passion was in employment services. She didn't necessarily want to work one on one with someone or work in a home with someone. So her passion was employment services. So she went to our employment area. I believe she started as a job coach. She now has – and she has now graduated to being an employment specialist, herself. She has passed the certification that is required here in D.C. And, you know, just in the last year and a half, you know, she’s already climbed that ladder. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yeah. And I think another important aspect, too, is people who maybe this is their first work experience, they might want to start off working more part time, and then moving into full time work is also an accomplishment for people. There's definitely a career trajectory within our field. And I think that that's important to note. Whether it be employment specialists. Or moving on to more of a management position. Or people that might want to go back to school. Or go to school to further their education as well. There definitely is a career trajectory in this field. And we have, as Amy mentioned, seen success with people from the program. You know, taking advantage of that career trajectory. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thanks. Here's a related question. Do any of your participants that have graduated and been hired now work as a DSP who performs personal care with individuals with developmental disabilities? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yes, many. In fact, Tinesha who was featured in that video works with some ladies that require significant levels of personal care, and transition needs and things of that nature. So she works in a position of great responsibility. 
>> KRIS PALMER: I think when she said “I love working with the ladies,” I think she was referring to    that's who she was referring to. It's really nice that she really enjoys it. 
Okay. So there's another question here that's really important. This is a very important question. So some people are concerned they will lose their residential Social Security, SSDI, their benefits if they graduate and become employed in Washington, D.C. I guess I will also expand to say there's people all over the country that worry about that. Will they lose their services, A, and maybe I'll just add what are the steps that people listening, if you have any advice for people listening, what are the steps they would have to take to kind of ensure that    to just understand their benefits situation and how it relates to work?
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yeah, we have graduates who receive services themselves and are providing services. That's a concern, as you mentioned, all over the country. And a hesitation for employment that we see frequently. And what I would recommend to people is to learn more about ABLE accounts, to see a benefits counselor. To talk with if people are connected to a vocational counselor. So share those concerns with them. We know that employment outweighs    is such a benefit to people. And we suggest they talk to    and we do talk about this with people about the access that they have and the ability to access through our voc wing. The ability to access benefits counseling. 
>> AMY BROOKS: I think even just to add to that, we know the status of our workforce challenges right now. And the reality is, you know, someone could work very part time and someone could work, you know, overtime. So there is a lot of flexibility. You know, we work with people. So that's good. You know, that there's flexibility kind of built into our field. People are able to, really kind of  match themselves to what is needed. I think the flexibility of the field and the fact that, you know, we need workers is just a real benefit for everyone. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Okay. Let's talk a little bit now about placement. I know that's always an area of great– you know that transition into employment. And could you talk a little bit more about how you – this is from Hillary Nichols. How are you placing individuals after training? Are you connecting with all the businesses in the area that hire DSPs? She apologizes if that was asked before or already covered it. She said “I don't think I would be able to support multiple programs but likely all the local businesses who hire DSPs could benefit.” 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yeah, I'm real appreciative of that question. That's one of the partners that I left out. Yes, the root of this program is not just for these people graduates to just be coming into RCM  as a provider. We really want people and other providers to benefit from this program as well. One way we've been able to do that is partnering with our local D.C. Coalition of Disability Service Providers. RCM is very active. The membership, in that there's 58 other providers that are part of that. We've been able to set up hiring fairs. We've been able to set up interviews. And really make connections through our colleagues at other organizations and other providers. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Great. So there's a really general question here about, has there been any engagement on your behalf, in advocacy to raise the wages of DSPs, and home aides, I would assume with DSPs? Or just even more generally, do you have any thoughts about knowing that that's an issue, but at the same time, you know, we know clients can only afford so much? I think we know in Build Back Better, there's been discussion of raising that reimbursement rate. We know most DSPs-- well, I won't say most, I think it's 25%-- depend on those reimbursement. The federal reimbursement rates. In order to    for people to get these services. So just anything more about this thorny question of how we're valuing    the labor market, not even just you? How we're valuing workers and the wages and what kind of advocacy are you or others doing that you would want to talk about? 
>> AMY BROOKS: All right. I'll take a stab at that one. Yes, we have advocated very heavily not only on our local level but I also have been very active through ANCHOR national provider organization in working on Capitol Hill, you know, to raise the wages. We have had quite a success in D.C. We have been able to keep wages above the living wage in D.C. We're very thankful for that. But we also-- I'm also very aware that that does not reflect the rest of the country. And I know there's much more work to be done. I do feel that that any time anyone can bring attention and awareness to the issues of direct support professionals is a benefit. I mean, this can be done, you know, in your local community. In your churches. Whatever. I think the Assistant Secretary really clearly this morning talked about how many direct support professionals are going to be needed. And when we think about the care economy, and we think about everywhere that we drive today there's a help wanted sign or please apply here. When we think about that, you know, we need to ensure that we are, you know, bringing focus to the field. But also bringing focus to, particularly a direct support professional who is supporting someone with disabilities. You know, we talked about the whole range of skills that they are having. And, you know, it is a little bit different than elder care or some of the other care economy things. So I think it's really important that we continue to highlight that any time we get a chance. But, yes, at RCM, we've been very active, locally and nationally. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thank you. Now there's a couple questions related to this training as kind of    part of the education journey. So there's a question about to what extent do you see people going, deciding, oh, I want to get more skills. I want to do    well, you get skills on the job, too. I want to get more credentials. Or I want to go forward on my education pathway. Then another related question is, have you approached, from Mary Ellen from San Diego, have you approached a community college to offer this training as a regular offering or any kind of connection made to this, and the education system out there, training and education systems? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yeah, we would definitely be interested. We have not approached any community college. The only education system we're currently working with is, like I mentioned, D.C. Public Schools with graduating seniors. So we would definitely be interested in taking that route. 
I'm sorry, can you repeat the first question? 
>> KRIS PALMER: Could you say a little more about    I don't remember the exact question. It's about where are people going next in their education journey from this training? What kind of avenues? We still have so many questions. It was something    sorry. I lost it now. Where are people going next in their education journey from here? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Especially with transitional youth, people who haven't quite figured out their path yet, we've definitely seen people find focus and as I mentioned go on to community college or university. We’ve also said as Amy mentioned, we've had people through certifications such as the Certified Employment Specialist certification that we had a graduate receive in order to become an employment specialist. We've definitely seen people who are looking to further their education. We've also seen people who are really happy working as a direct support professional and that's their passion. So we've seen both ends of the coin. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Thanks. Related to that, somewhat, from Hillary Nichols here, how do you balance the need for professionalizing this role and adding more training or maybe adding more requirements, but at the same time removing requirements like high school diplomas or other things that get in the way of people being able to move quickly into employment. And accommodating their, you know, maybe the skills they have that aren't formally recognized? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: I was hoping Amy was going to take a stab at that one. It's a heavy one. 
(Laughter) 
No, that's definitely a legitimate question. I think that the thought process is that life experience can sometimes weigh just as heavily as formalized education. And I think that's an important part to remember. And that lived experiences, and oftentimes, would make someone even more qualified for a position. And so I think that we need to remember that you can still be a professional without a high school diploma. Or a certificate of completion. So I think that that's an important thing. That that lived experience, in fact, does give them the professional experience that they need to be qualified for a position. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Okay. Now I have primarily    the questions now are    people very specific about program elements. And they're clearly people that are thinking    maybe thinking about doing this or thinking about, like, did they    do you have the same components they have? So I'm going to just kind of run through some of these really specific questions. So one is how many hours a day is the Training Academy? They wanted to confirm it's six weeks. 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: For the adult cohorts, six weeks because they're able to spend more time per day. For the youth, since it's after school program, it lasts eight weeks. So that's the difference in the weeks there. So we usually do three days a week for the adult cohort. We do about six hours a day. So it ends up being around the 70 hour mark. For both. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Okay. I don't know, all of the letters, what these mean, but I'm going to read you the question. Are you doing any work to place your DSP graduates with individuals self directing their LTSS/HCBS? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: So people that are in self direction. Self direction is just now starting in D.C. And so that will definitely be something that we will have coming on the horizon. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Okay. And are there DSP levels or tiers that help identify the type of DSP work that a participant is prepared to do? Possibly requiring participants to pass prerequisite classes to move to desired levels or tiers? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: In the district, we don't have multiple tiers for DSPs, but we do have some kind of categories, I guess I would say. We have DSPs that work residentially. We have people that might work in what position that might be called, like a community navigator, so they might work in community based day programs. Then we also have people that might work in employment services. So they might be a job coach. One thing that we have incorporated into our training is in D.C., a person is required to go through the eight week training to be a job coach. So we have incorporated some of those modules with the point of exposing people to, you know, these are the different types of roles. And what fits you best. What fits your interests. What fits your skills. You know, would you do better thinking from a customized employment approach, would this person do better helping someone one on one? Would this person do better in a role that's less autonomous, and there are other DSPs around to provide supports, natural supports in that way? And so definitely our goal is to expose people to the lots of different worlds that fall within the direct support professional arena. 
>> KRIS PALMER: And you mentioned the ACRE- there's another question from Kelly, how does being ACRE certified work hand in hand with a DSP? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: In the District, that certification is required to be an employment specialist or job coach. We don't fully certify someone in our program because that would add probably another 80 hours to our program. But we do do introductions to some of the modules. We have a certified trainer in house at RCM. Really, I mean, the ACRE training and certification is really important. It teaches a lot about customized employment, how to network with businesses on behalf of someone else. It really has a lot of value. 
>> KRIS PALMER: Great. So one, I'm sorry to everyone. There's so many more questions that I just encourage you to reach out to Susan and Amy to    we have their emails linked in this presentation that you can get on the website We'll give you the link to that website. And you can ask things directly, but I'll just    do we have time for maybe one really quick one? So there's a lot of paperwork with DSPs. Do you have any    for people that struggle with writing. How do you just quickly, one last moment, what do you do? 
>> SUSAN BROOKS: Yes, we have seen that multiple times. So one thing I would encourage is that providers that are still using paper documentation are creating an unintentional barrier. One of those things that we talked about. And so we've been able to do a lot of different situations where someone might have a dictation microphone that they can use. Someone might be able to send a voice memo to their manager who then imports what they need to import into the correct area. And we've also seen someone have kind of the buddy system, where, you know, they work a regular schedule and they have someone that, you know, also works that regular schedule. And if they’re willing to disclose their needs to that person, then they work in a buddy system. And there’s, you know, those natural supports there to help someone. 
>> KRIS PALMER: What a perfect example of the kind of accommodation that happens with this process. 
Okay. So the next slide, please. So here are resources when you can go into – I’ll give you the website in a moment where you can get everything. But including this presentation so you can click on these links. But the memo is there. The DSP Academy website is there. So you can get more information on their website. The beautiful BBC News video is there. How does everyone get a BBC video made about their program? I’m sure that was a question people wanted to ask. “Washington Post” article is there. And more about the organization. 
Next, I see our ODEP partner is gushing with thanks and gratitude to you, Amy and Susan. Of course, all of us at the LEAD Center have so enjoyed working with you. Amy was also very involved in this memo. She was one of the experts and one of the people who not testified but shared with the federal agencies about some recommendations. 
Okay. Next and last slide, I think. Or one of them. Here’s the leadcenter.org. Leadcenter.org. That’s where you can get so many of these resources. The blending and braiding. This presentation. The memo and many other things. 
Next slide. And you can also follow LEAD Center. You can follow us on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on YouTube. And keep up to date with all the things that are happening related to work and people with disabilities, people working with disabilities. Et cetera. 
Thanks so much, again, to our speakers. To ODEP and to all of the 300 and plus people that attended. And the 290 that hung on to the very end. So that's saying a lot. 
Okay. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.