Director’s Report
Outcomes: We are very excited about our outcomes for the fiscal year that just ended.
As of yesterday we had assisted 1750 people with significant disabilities to obtain or maintain employment. Last fiscal year we had 1622 employment outcomes. Counselors have until the end of October to enter their data into the MIS. I think we might very well reach the 1800 mark. Credit is clearly due to the incredible hard work of our staff. I also believe strongly that adding progressive employment to the tool box and building strong
CWS teams has impacted our level of employment outcomes. The Business Account
Managers are making a difference. This will definitely be an item in the Governor’s
Weekly Report in November.
RSA Audit: An audit team will be coming to Vermont the week of November 3 rd
to conduct a 107 Monitoring Review of the VR program. We have been having a series of pre audit conference calls on a variety of topics. You will be speaking with the team today. The focus of the review is on services to youth in transition, fiscal integrity, and organizational structure. We had an in-depth discussion of CWS with the team this morning. I am proud of the program, staff and our outcomes and hope they can see the good work we do to assist Vermonters with disabilities to go to work.
Budget: We were very successful in securing reallotment funds for this upcoming year.
We exceeded the dollar amount needed to sustain VR and the CWS infrastructure. We also had a meeting with Secretary Racine regarding a SFY 2015 budget request to sustain the business account managers, the GA VR program, and the offender re-entry specialists as reallotment dollars disappear. We are attempting to be fiscally conservative to maximize carryover funds for SFY ’15.
SNAP (Food Stamps) Employment and Training Funds: We are making progress on moving a SNAP state plan amendment to fruition in the next calendar year. The
Department of Corrections seems to be on board. Serving offenders is the first phase of our plan to expand SNAP employment and training funds to GA recipients and youth exiting custody. It is slow going but at least we are inching forward.
What we will do:
• Engage all staff in discovering why we are who we are, sharing our institutional knowledge, and reaffirming our Mission, Vision, and Shared Values
• Better understand our roles and share our best practices

•
Create concrete recommendations on how to move the organization forward within the context of our four Strategic Themes (Prepared Job Seekers, Valued and
Empowered Employees, Collaborative Partnerships/Employer Partnerships,
Organizational Effectiveness)
How you will benefit:
• Feel grounded and oriented to your important part/role within the whole VR/VABIR enterprise, past, present and future.
• Be instrumental in shaping that future by giving concrete input from your unique perspective and experience.
• Help us re-balance and re-focus our commitment to our customers with disabilities while keeping our focus on the employer customer.
• Connect and reconnect to your extended work community.
• Take the opportunity to recharge, reflect, and celebrate yourself, your colleagues, and our collective work.
A team of people are planning the event. We have hired many new staff in the last year and I believe we need bring everyone together around our mission, vision and guiding principles. I would like to invite any SRC member who wishes to attend this event. I will attach a brief agenda for your information. I want to send a message that each and every person is an important part of charting our future. I expect the event to be productive and fun for all.
Employment Staff Training: We have been working to develop a certificate program for all employment staff. I think we may have identified a curriculum through Transcend, a national organization. We will explore further and then look at customization and a delivery mechanism.
Staff Satisfaction Survey: We are in the final stage of conducting a staff satisfaction survey which we do every two years. We ran the data recently with 146 respondents. We are extremely pleased with the results so far. 93.8% of staff are satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs. I will mention additional highlights at the meeting. We are keeping the survey open until mid-October. I have offered a pizza lunch to any office that gets to 100% participation ☺ Another interesting piece of data is the 57% of staff have worked for VR for 5 years or less. I think we are mid way through implementing our succession plan! This is good news. There are more retirements to come but seem manageable in light of where we are now.
New England VR Director’s Meeting: I was elected to be regional chair of the New England
CSAVR Group. We met on September 26 th
at Assumption College in Worcester, MA. It is always productive to meet with my peers. There were three main components of the meeting. Sharing something that is working well in our agency. Asking for peer consultation and support around something this is not working well. We also met with the Employment

Managers from each state agency (Hugh’s colleagues). It was an excellent meeting. We agreed on three topics for our next meeting: consistency of practice, forward momentum, and quality assurance strategies.
Management Team Meeting Structure: We recently changed our monthly management team structure to better meet the needs of regional managers. There are three meetings per quarter: the first meeting includes James, Karen and me plus the regional managers; the second meeting includes the senior management team and the regional mangers; the third meeting is the expanded management team including senior managers, regional managers, program managers, and senior counselors. We have completed a quarter’s meetings and everyone is pleased with the new structure. We are better able to focus on the needs of the regional managers in the first meeting of the month.
My son’s weddings and my trip to Hong Kong were spectacular! Our gorgeous summer is over my boat was hauled onto dry land today. The holiday season will be upon us before we know it. I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. I am so very sad about Don. He will be greatly missed.
Diane