VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: RISE-Up! Elevating Rehabilitation and Employment Services for Underserved Communities with San Diego State University's Interwork Institute

The RISE-UP project is a transformative initiative to revolutionize rehabilitation services for underserved populations, focusing on racial and ethnic minorities. Dr. Mari Guillermo and Dr. Mark Tucker, Project Directors at San Diego State University's Interwork Institute, highlight how this project seeks to drive systemic change through state agency partnerships and tools like QA Advisor Plus. RISE-UP strives to reshape vocational rehabilitation and improve employment outcomes nationwide by fostering equity, inclusion, and access.

 

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Full Transcript:

 

{Music}

Mark: QA Advisor Plus, a tool that agencies can use to check their RSA 911 data for errors and to help facilitate or expedite analysis of their own data.

 

Mari: How do we close this gap? Where are people not being served, what populations specifically are not being served? And the emphasis is on systems change because we can't improve these outcomes without really looking at what needs to change within that system.

 

Mark: So we hope that when you see information about the survey coming out, that you take a few minutes to fill it out and can provide us with information both about what they see as needs related to serving underserved populations. But also, we're asking folks to identify any promising practices that they're aware of with respect to providing effective services to underserved populations.

 

^{Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.}

 

Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute, Dr. Mari Guillermo and Dr. Mark Tucker, are co-project directors with San Diego State University Interwork Institute. And they are joining me in the studio today. So how are things going in San Diego, Mari?

 

Mari: Uh, well, it's warming up. It's going to be in the 90s by tomorrow, but it's also the start of the semester at San Diego State University. We're in our second week, so things are still trying to settle down, but it's been quite a good busy two weeks for sure.

 

Carol: Oh, good for you. Well, I was in San Diego back in June and I'm going, okay, why isn't it warm here now? It was warmer in Minnesota than it was in San Diego. It was so crazy with that kind of, I don't know, marine layer or whatever hangs out. Yeah. How about you, Mark? How are things going for you?

 

Mark: Going well, yeah, That marine layer in June we that's like a typical thing June Gloom we call it. And then we pay the price in September. September is usually warm for us, but we'll get back to our normal San Diego weather in October.

 

Carol: Nice. I do love your fair city though. It is really awesome. Well, I thought, and I'm so glad I could get you two because I've been trying to snag you. I think I've been talking to you since last December, but now is finally the sweet spot. I thought it was super timely that we talk about the project given you're at the end of year one. October is also National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and I really think the project that you guys are embarking on could have a significant impact on the employment arena for underserved populations. As a little side note, we're super happy as part of the George Washington University team to be a partner on this project. So I want to give our listeners just a little bit of background. Over a year ago, RSA competed a discretionary grant, and the grant was specifically related to section 21 of the Rehab Act, as amended by WIOA, which requires RSA to reserve 1% of the funds appropriated each year for programs under titles three, title six, and seven to provide grant, contract or cooperative agreement awards to minority entities and Indian tribes to carry out activities under the Rehab Act. Secondly, minority entities and Indian tribes to conduct research training to or a related activity to improve services provided under the act, especially services provided to individuals from minority backgrounds. Or thirdly, state or public or private non-profit agencies or organizations to provide outreach and technical assistance to minority entities and American Indian tribes to promote their participation in activities under the Rehab Act.

I learned a whole bunch. I know for our listeners, you're getting a whole history lesson, but I thought this was cool. And so under this priority, the department provides funding for a cooperative agreement for a minority entity or an Indian tribe to provide training and TA to a minimum range of 5 to 15 state VR agencies over a five year period of performance, so they are equipped to serve as role models for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the workforce system by implementing policies, Practices and service delivery approaches designed to contribute to increasing competitive, integrated employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities from underserved populations. And the other cool part is that you also need to contribute via our research and really good practices that promote access, and this will be really of great benefit across the whole country. So I'm super excited. Let's dig in.

So, Mari, typically our listeners like to know a little bit about our guests, your backgrounds. So can you tell a little bit about yourself and your background?

 

Mari: Yeah, I'm originally from Hawaii, born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. I moved to San Diego in the late 80s to as a graduate student in the rehabilitation program at San Diego State University. So since moving to San Diego, I haven't moved very far from San Diego State University and our rehab counseling program. I'm currently faculty in our graduate program, but I've been with the Interwork Institute since its beginning, when it was started by doctors Fred McFarlane and Doctor Ian Champion, and just worked with some incredible number of leaders in our rehabilitation field. And upon graduating from the master's program, I started working with Doctor Bobby Atkins. And for those of you who few of you who are not familiar with Doctor Atkins, she is a leader. When we look at all diversity initiatives and in fact, when we look at section 21, that was started with her groundbreaking research looking at the involvement and participation of African Americans in vocational rehabilitation. But I worked with Doctor Atkins upon graduating from the program in the capacity building projects funded by this same pool of money. And Doctor Atkins was the national director for the Rehabilitation Cultural Diversity Initiative, which then morphed over into the Rehabilitation Capacity Building Project. So I worked with her from the 90s. All the way up to like 2015 I think is when the project ended. So a lot of the work that we are doing in Rise Up really builds on the foundational work that we did with Doctor Atkins back in the 1990s. So it's an incredible honor.

 

Carol: I think that is very cool. You've come full circle. Oh my gosh, I love that. I had no idea. And for our listeners too, I just want to say a word about Doctor Fred McFarlane. Fred had passed away this summer. Fred has been a good friend to many, and many of our listeners have benefited from Fred's work with the NRLI and the Leadership Institute. Fred was the founding person developing that and really did such an amazing job touching so many VR professionals over his career. And his legacy definitely lives on. So I just I needed to say that because Fred is definitely missed. So, Marc, how about you? Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background.

 

Mark: Sure, I've got a Master of Science in rehabilitation counseling, and I'm a certified rehabilitation counselor. And in fact, you know, when I was applying to the graduate program in rehabilitation counseling, Fred interviewed me. Uh, that was a few years back. But that...

 

Carol: Yeah, 1 or 2.

 

Mark: Yeah, but he was there right at the start for me. And then kind of in the profession, I got my start in community based non-profit agencies and then from there joined the Rehabilitation Continuing Education program for region nine at Interwork and SDSU in the early 2000. And when I was there, was involved in all kinds of different technical assistance, training and research projects, while also kind of teaching in an adjunct capacity in the Rehabilitation counseling graduate program at SDSU. And then eventually the Rehabilitation Continuing Education programs transitioned into the Technical Assistance and Continuing Education centers. So I continued doing that same type of work with what were called the TACE centers, and then in 2014, joined the Rehabilitation Counseling Program faculty at SDSU full time. So that's sort of where I spend a lot of my time. But I still continue working with, you know, Interwork. The two are just so intricately joined. It's really difficult to be part of one without being part of the other. So I continue doing work at Interwork. One of the recent projects that Mari and I were both involved in a few years back was the California version of the Promise Projects. It was a 5 or 6 years of work with transition age youth who were recipients of Supplemental Security Income. Presently, I'm the coordinator of the Rehabilitation Counseling program at SDSU, and do that while maintaining connections to a variety of projects at Interwork.

 

Carol: Yeah, you're always wearing about 40 hats. I always think of you, Mark, as being the data guy though, too, because you love the data. I mean, everybody likes data, sort of but you love the data. I mean, you've done some really amazing things with our national data.

 

Mark: Thank you. I enjoy that. I appreciate being able to bring that to a lot of the projects that I'm involved in. Yeah, you're right. I think I find it fun maybe at times where other people are like, oh, we'll leave that to somebody else.

 

Carol: Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh. So why don't you guys tell us a little bit about your project? I know it's called Rise Up. Maybe you can tell our group like what's that stand for? Everybody's got their fun acronyms and what you're trying to accomplish.

 

Mari: The name really captures the overall vision for this project, and we have to give a shout out to Doctor Chaz Compton because after several failed acronyms, as we were writing the proposal, it was Chaz who came up with the name. And RISEUP stands for Rehabilitation Improvements in Services and Employment for Underserved Populations. And so that really captures what we're aiming to do, improving the services and in the process of improving services, improving the outcomes for underserved populations, in competitive integrated employment, in careers, in academic achievements and accomplishments now underserved populations. There's many ways we can look at that, but RSA has defined it for us and it concentrates on race and ethnicity. So it encompasses individuals who are black, Latino, indigenous, Native American persons, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color. And so that is the specific focus for this grant and the population that we hope to impact ultimately with the work that we do with the state agencies. An important component of the project is the partnerships that we aim to build with ten state agencies. And that partnership is really important because while we think about this work is okay, we'll do training and technical assistance and all these different topics and how it intersects with these different populations based on evidence based practices and promising practices. But we can only do so much with training and technical assistance. We really have to look at, okay, how does this then translate into the work that goes on in the agency and not just in the agency? How does that look at the different levels within the agency? How a director would translate the training will look different than how a counselor or a technician would translate.

We hope that it complements each other, but everyone has a different role in this process. And that's the other part of the project, is that we want to really look at the whole agency and all the different levels, and being able to provide that support to them where they need it. And really looking at how do we close this gap? Where are people not being served, what populations specifically are not being served within a state or a section of the state? And the emphasis is on systems change, because we can't improve these outcomes without really looking at what needs to change within that system. And there's different components that we're going to be incorporating into the project in our partnerships with the state agencies to look at what are the strengths and weaknesses within your agencies and what are the opportunities and gaps. And while there are big challenges that we all are aware of, there's also some great things going on and we want to highlight that, and we believe we'll be able to find that also within each of the state agencies.

 

Carol: I like a couple of things about what you just said. Well, I like it all, but a couple things stick out to me because holistically, we've seen it as we do TA and as people put in new initiatives in place. If you really get the whole agency going in the same direction, it is the rise or fall of that project for sure, because maybe the director is all in, but the mid-level managers and the counselors are like, I don't even understand what's going on. You're asking us to do this other thing? I don't get it. It seems weird. It's extra. I don't want to. I'm not going to. And then it doesn't happen. And so you really have to get everybody in sync. So I think you're smart to look at the whole organization and how everybody interprets the information and the training and how it actually gets implemented, because it isn't the director implementing it. It's the boots on the ground folks, it's your counselor. You need your line folks engaged and involved and giving you feedback and understanding what's happening. So that I think that is brilliant. Secondly, the data I think it's been interesting and I think Mark, it's some of the work that you've done over the last couple of years that I've known you as well, that as people start to get better about looking at their data, I think folks were looking really high level, not getting into the real intricacies and seeing the maybe the disparities that are happening in employment as you start looking at different races and ethnicities and who's getting what kind of work and what those outcomes are. And then we've seen states be completely shocked, like we didn't know we have a huge problem in this area. So I think getting at the data is super important. So I know, Mark, you and I had spoken to and you talked about this special wrinkle, and we're not using wrinkle in a bad way. It was in a good way. But you have a contractor called Encorpe and they're bringing something special to the project. Tell us a little bit about that.

 

Mark: Sure, and this relates a bit more to the data aspects of the project that we were just talking about. So Encorpe is a partner on the project. It's an organization that's headed by a couple of individuals with considerable experience with the public VR program, and they offer a tool that's known as QA Advisor Plus. So this is a tool that agencies can use to check their RSA 911 data for errors and to kind of help facilitate or expedite analysis of their own data. So users of the tool can run custom queries on their data. They can do things like track changes from quarter to quarter in things like population served on a variety of measures that might include things like applications or eligibility plan services, competitive integrated employment outcomes. Those are the kinds of things that are of interest, particularly to us as part of the Rise Up project and built into this project is that Rise Up will pay for one year of QA advisor Plus for participating agencies if they elect to use it. So agencies aren't required to use QA Advisor Plus if they don't want to. We have other strategies for helping and assisting with data analysis if they elect not to use it, but that's there as an offer. Rise Up will cover one year of the cost of that service.

And I think one of the things that we're trying to get at is that through the project is to kind of help facilitate kind of long term attention and ongoing attention to things like population served and differences in services and outcomes, and to use that for more data informed planning, in our case, particularly around underserved populations. But agencies can certainly pretty easily extend that out to other groups of interest or other aspects of the rehabilitation process. That may not be maybe the central focus of what Rise Up is doing. And one of the things I sort of want to underscore here is that the project is intentionally designed to make considerable use of data that the state agencies are already gathering and reporting to RSA anyway. So if agencies are interested maybe in participating in Rise Up, but they're like, oh, I don't want there to be like an additional heavy burden on my data folks or my direct service folks. Our intention is that things will be fairly light with respect to those kinds of demands, because we'll take advantage of existing data that's already being gathered, and then we'll either use QA Advisor Plus or some of our own staff to assist with the analyses.

 

Carol: That's the beauty of this project really, I love that because it isn't like you're going, okay, state, we're knocking on your door to like, come and do this thing. And then you need to add like ten positions to pay attention to this. And I think it's great because I got a chance to look at that QA Advisor Plus. I saw the Encorpe guys at, CSAVR and they were like, hey, do you want to see a little demo of this? I was like, oh my gosh, I know as being a small blind agency director, we had one data person who's doing a million things, and so we were very surfacey. We got a little bit of stuff, but it was really hard. You have one person there doing a million things, and so that tool, I liked how it kind of rose up little things. It had that cool feature and it would just flag something for you to go like, hey, what's going on in this particular area? That would have been so lovely because I know a lot of our programs are small, so you might just have a half a position or one position that's working in this area. They don't have a whole team that's got all this really developed deep skill set in there. I just think having that added resource is amazing and could really take that level of sort of your data analytics to a whole different place than what you've been able to do so far and not, you know, not disparaging anybody's current skill level at it. It's just that people don't have time because there's so many demands. So when you can add like a feature to help with analyzing that data, it really is a great gift. So who are your agencies that are currently participating in the project?

 

Mari: So we've had initial conversations with a number of agencies, and certainly there were a number of agencies who had written letters of commitment when we wrote the grant, and that was really important. I don't want to mention the states yet until we have agreements in place out of respect for the agencies, our goal is to have by the end of year two, our goal is to have six agreements in place and by the end of year three, another four. So that will be a total of ten. But we've already started to have that conversation and people are at different starting points, right? And trying to map out how will this make sense and be of value to your agency and mapping that out in an individualized agreement with each of the states? So maybe we'll be invited for a second visit a year down the road, and I can at least give you a few more names more specific than what I'm giving you now, Carol.

 

Carol: No,  that's totally fine. Absolutely. I wasn't sure if, you know, like, are you needing some people? Because sometimes our listeners are like, hey, I want to be part of that project. I want to be in.

 

Mari: No, absolutely. And we're more than happy to talk to agencies throughout this whole process, because really the intent is we targeted ten agencies because we want to make sure that with the resources that we have available to us, that we use that in a way to really make that impact, to really try to get to that systems change because again, change doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen on a zero budget, right? But the hope is the lessons that are learned from the ten agencies in this work will be relevant to the rest of the country.

 

Carol: That's what I've loved about all of these different discretionary grants that RSA has put out, because I've been talking to people for the last year, and there is such cool things being done and demonstrated that now they're sharing out, you know, with other people and just that wonderful plethora of ideas. It makes it super fun. And everybody gets really excited planting the seeds of a different way of looking at things and doing things. So you are at the end of year one, and I love it when I talk to all our grantees that have gotten these grants, like, what have been your challenges this year?

 

Mark: I would say some of the challenges that we've encountered are things that it's not like they're not doable. It's just that they're the time and process demands are, you know, things have sort of taken longer, I guess I've started to come to kind of expect it. But still, when you're anxious to kind of get going and get rolling, these things sort of surface as challenges or frustrations. And so some of them are, I think, very predictable things like fleshing out the project staff, developing and executing subcontracts. I think Mari, she's nodding her head often. It's a little bit more complicated or involved than you think it might be. We've been working on things like establishing the technical infrastructure for the project, information management, information sharing systems, and we have a website that's in development that will ultimately use to share information coming out of this project, with many more than just the ten state agencies that we work intensively with. So there will be kind of dissemination of project learning far beyond those ten. We've been comprehensively surveying the literature related to underserved populations in VR, and it's not really just a challenge. It's just kind of a time consuming thing that we're kind of working our way through. We are going to be implementing a national survey of state VR staff around both challenges and opportunities related to serving underserved populations and the instrument development process is always a little time consuming, and you get a lot of feedback and you make revisions and there's several feedback and revision stages.

So that's something that will be surfacing in the near future. That's just it's taken time, but we'll get there. Or going through things like the human subjects institutional review process, just to make sure that everybody's, you know, treated well and treated ethically. So those are all, you know, just things that have moved along or are moving along and we're squaring them away. But for those of us who are like, would like to just get going, all of that process stuff at the beginning is a little bit of a challenge. One thing that I think the team is wrestling with a little bit, and this is something that I think were a challenge that we will contend with going forward, and I've got confidence that we'll be able to address it, but it's just going to require some thought is that, you know, as Mari indicated earlier, the underserved populations of interest are defined by race and ethnicity. And we know already from looking at our data over a long period of time that our clients, like everybody else, often are multiracial, and they check a whole bunch of boxes So we're not going to necessarily be able to look at clients who are folks don't fall neatly into very convenient categories, right. So I think we're going to have to be very sensitive to that dynamic in the process and probably develop multiple ways of looking at race and ethnicity, so that we don't kind of miss any really important lessons that are coming out of this project.

 

Carol: Absolutely. And regarding that national survey, is there something our listeners can do to be of help in that or something they should be looking out for?

 

Mark: We're still in the process of piloting it like we want to get it right before it goes out, but we will be working with one of our project partners, which is CSAVR, to disseminate this national survey. It'll be an electronic survey, and it's really designed to go to VR staff at all levels. Like we talked about earlier, involvement of folks, feedback from folks at all levels in VR system really important. So VR staff at all levels, folks like SRC members will be disseminating it through CSAVR. And we would encourage everybody to, you know, I know we survey ourselves all the time in society here in the US. But this one is important. And to me and I think to the overall intent of the project. And so we hope that when you see information about the survey coming out, that you take a few minutes to fill it out and complete it. It will be anonymous. It won't be linked back to you. So we hope people will respond candidly and provide us with information both about what they see as needs related to serving underserved populations. But also, we're asking folks to identify any promising practices that they're aware of with respect to providing effective services to underserved populations. I think both of those types of information can be really helpful to us in terms of planning out the future of this project, designing effective training, effective technical assistance efforts. So we see it as one way of kind of triangulating that information. We will look to triangulate it with other forms of information, but really critical to kind of building some of the key infrastructure to the project.

 

Carol: Good.

 

Mark: Yeah.

 

Carol: And we definitely can be a help to in passing out the word when the survey comes out. I know Chaz, he'll be like, Carol, can you get that out in our email groups too? We have lots of different ways. We communicate out. We have different COPs. We've got lots of mailing lists and such, so we can help kind of promote the word to get at the different groups of folks. So you get kind of a wide range of participation. So I know, Mark, you've alluded to a few things that really you've learned so far this year. One, because always year one's a learning year because people don't fall neatly in boxes. Are there any other kind of learnings you've had from year one so far, or Mari, too. either of you?

 

Mark: Yeah, I'm going to defer to Mari on this one.

 

Mari: We've learned a lot. And when you say, what have you learned so far? It's almost what has been confirmed. The whole reason why this funding opportunity is available because there's a gap there, right? And so what the conversations that we've had with agencies is just confirmed that there's a lot of work that we need to do and that we need to do better. But every agency is at a different starting point. Who they consider underserved will vary from state to state, or even from city to city within the same state. Right And where those gaps and inequities occur will also vary. For some states, it's just getting the outreach to communities to that door exists in their area, to certain populations dropping out before they even reach the point of developing an EIP, and other agencies are seeing where the EIP is developed. Things start to roll out and then for different reasons that we want to dig into, we lose people, you know, in certain populations compared to the overall populations being served. And so one of the things we are learning is that we really need to direct the training and technical assistance to where each agency wants to start, but also helping them and working together using that data that Marc talked about to confirm or not confirm whether these actual inequities at different points in the process are occurring.

And then of course, the environment and the climate that agencies operate under impacts what they're tackling, something that we've heard repeatedly. And I'm sure, Carol, you've heard often, is the staffing challenges that our state agencies are experiencing upwards to 40% of unfilled positions, and that will certainly impact the work and the progress and the impact when we start to work with the agencies. Some agencies are further along in the process where they've really looked at the data from their comprehensive statewide needs assessment and saw a hole there and actually started to develop a goal to address that. And so they've already have that beginning understanding and now are at the stage of, okay, what do we do with this information? What kind of training and technical assistance can we provide our staff, and how can you help with this. And getting us to move the needle, at least move the needle forward, right? And I know we're going to get a lot of new information or confirming knowledge from the national survey, but also using that national survey to start the conversation with each of the individual agencies. You know, how does this national data look for you? Is it true or how different it is? And so I think we've learned a lot, and there's a lot more that we're going to unravel in this process.

 

Carol: I love it. The CSNAs, you know, I think states for a long time did it as a check the box. We have to do the thing. We're going to contract to somebody to do the thing. Here's the thing. It's 300 pages. All right. We put it on the shelf. It's in the electronic folder. But I have noticed this over the years we've been doing the QM work. People are really taking the CSNA and actually paying attention to it and starting to put all the dots together, linking that as the basis for then what flows into the state plan flows into goals and priorities and really connecting and spending more time. The thing I've been very hopeful of is spending time with direct staff so that they understand the whole process, because staff will hear about this stuff, but they don't really understand it or what is that about? And now people are linking like, here's why we're doing all of this. We're actually finding out what's the situation in our state, and we're taking this and we're putting together goals and priorities within our state plan based on this data, this information. So it all links together, because I think people feel like everybody's just doing these random activities, but they actually all come together.

 

Mari: Yeah.

 

Carol: So that I have seen as a change, definitely in the five plus years I've been doing

TA work now, I've seen a big swing and I've loved it, because now people are digging down in the organization and including not just your executive leadership and middle managers. They're including the line staff and having them have an understanding of what's going on so that they can understand their contributions to this overall big picture. So I love that.

 

Mari: Yeah, and we learned that from the Cal Promise Project We had this whole large, comprehensive database and our team were able to put together, I guess, reports of here's what the data is looking like, here's how your region is being impacted, and the transition specialists, the people who are meeting with the families and with the students, like we've never seen this before. We're always feeding data to our supervisor. Our boss is always asking for data, and so we give it to them. But we never know what happens to it. And now it makes sense. This is how my work is impacting people.

 

Carol: Absolutely. It's mind blowing to the staff because when you go out, you're talking and you're like, okay. They're like, well, why is Congress doing all this crazy stuff with our money or whatever is going on? I always tell them, I go, the only way your story can be told because they don't know all your anecdotal, really neat. You got Joe, a job like this is awesome and it's a great career and you know, all this great things are happening. They don't know any of that. They only know by the data you put in the system. And when you put data in the system, that isn't very good. That's the picture, the story that your agency is telling. This is the only way for other people to make decisions. You just see this. Aha. Like people are like, oh well this stuff actually does matter. And it is being used for something and then they can figure it out. And I love it when you get down in regional levels because then they go like and they'll know what's going on. Sometimes up here the management's like, oh they're trying to figure out what's happening in that region. Talk to the staff. They see boots on the ground, what's going on.

So the data confirms what's been happening in that area. And then the whole agency having that conversation, it's really exciting and super empowering and energizing. I feel like for their customers and what's going to happen for their people, I love that. The other thing I was going to say, Mari too, is we've been seeing a slight improvement in staffing levels. Now it seems like things for some reason, because we work with a load of states and we talk a lot about this particular issue, the staffing levels, it's been leveling off with that whole people leaving, leaving, leaving, leaving, leaving. And now I've had a couple agencies in the last year where they were sitting at 25, 30% now. They're at 5% and 8% turnover. Like there have been significant changes because of all of the things they put into play to not only get staff, but to keep them, to retain them. So we've been trying to do some efforts on our end and we can't say it's all us, you know, but people have been putting a lot of strategy into this, and it's really fun to see on this other side, this more encouraging landscape for the staff out there.

 

Mari: Wow, that's great to hear.

 

Carol: Yeah. So I'm hopeful for you guys as you're carrying this out. So now what are your plans for year two as you go into year two? What are you guys hoping to accomplish this year?

 

Mark: I think it'll be a busy year for us. I think one of the major efforts, you know, we've already kind of alluded to a little bit, which is get the national survey out there to get that information back, have our team kind of start analyzing the results. We'll use that data. As I said before, we'll triangulate that with other information sources that we have our team working on. You mentioned comprehensive statewide needs assessments and state plans. Our team is doing an analysis of that specifically through the lens of underserved populations to see what can be gleaned from those statewide reports. And they're triangulating that also with kind of other forms of published literature around underserved populations. So there's a lot of kind of building that kind of database of information will be focused on executing agreements with the first of the agencies that are going to be involved with kind of the intensive phases of Rise Up, while at the same time kind of establishing the groundwork for agencies that we will add to the Rise Up group, you know, to as we work towards our goal of getting to up to ten state agencies. And then I think as we work with each of the agencies, kind of to begin to identify the populations that they want to focus on for, you know, kind of sustained efforts to enhance getting folks in the door, getting them into plan, getting them services.

The outcomes will also begin to kind of roll out. You know, one aspect of Rise Up will be training. Some of it will be technical assistance. That will be kind of systems change focused efforts. We'll begin to roll out initial training. Some of those will focus on topics like cultural humility And then we'll be using the literature search, the national survey, consultation with the agencies that we're working with to lend direction to the development of additional trainings that will be kind of targeted towards all levels of the organization. And then within the agencies that we begin to work with, we'll also begin kind of identifying the targeted and specific areas of need for technical assistance that will be unique to each of the agencies. So I see those as kind of the major tasks that will be kind of getting into in the beginning of year two and then kind of sustaining through the next year.

 

Carol: That is super exciting. I'm really excited about this. I would love to talk to you guys too, again at the end of like next year to see where things are at. Now, I understand you to, I believe, or somebody coming to CSAVR and people may want to chat with you. Is there a way folks could reach out to you if they are interested in talking to you about the project?

 

Mark: Sure.

 

Mari: Yeah

 

Mark: Yeah, so we will be at CSVAR, our project coordinator, Letty Vavasour will be there. Mari will be there. I will be there. So we're certainly kind of approachable there. As we mentioned before, CSAVR is a project partner of ours, and we mentioned encore. I think they're going to be there as well at CSAVR. And one other partner we haven't mentioned, but we should give them some credit, is a major partner with us is the George Washington Center for Rehabilitation Counseling, Research and Education. They're also a project partner with us and will be instrumental in kind of our efforts. So CSAVR is one place where folks can connect with us. Our team is working on a website, so we should have that up kind of in the near future. That's another way to get a hold of us. Email is always a good way to get a hold of us. I'm easy to get a hold of by email at MTucker at SDSU.edu and Mari is [email protected]. So those are kind of really easy ways to get Ahold of us. And then of course Interwork Institute and the VRTAC-QM, we're sort of housed right there and involved in a number of those projects going on there so folks can track us down through Interwork or the QM.

 

Carol: Excellent. And, Mari, would you mind, Mari, would you spell out your email address? Just in case, because like me, it's like, how is that spelled?

 

Mari: And for those of you who know Spanish, my last name is Guillermo, which is William in Spanish, but it's m g as in George. U I L L E R M as in Mari o at SDSU.edu.

 

Carol: Excellent. Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time. I'm super excited. And I wish our listeners could see like, the excitement on both of your faces about this project because it makes me like, super happy. I mean, the project couldn't be in better hands. You guys always do really good work out of Interwork, and I'm really excited to see what comes. So let's definitely chat again down the road.

 

Mark: That would be great.

 

Carol: Thanks for joining me.

 

Mari: Absolutely. Thank you Carol.

 

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