A monograph by the Rural Institute Training Department
Written and Prepared by: Cary Griffin, Mike Flaherty, Barbara Kriskovich, Nancy Maxson, Roger Shelley,
David Hammis, Marsha Katz, and Invited Contributors.
© The Rural Institute, 1999
Note: Some of the projects and activities described in this document are no longer active so contacts and project opportunities may no longer be accurate.
by Cary Griffin, Director of Adult Community Services and Supports
The Rural Institute
"The crisis through which we are going…is rooted in the fact that we all
hold beliefs contrary to our behavior." - Henry Miller
This country is built on the ideals of fairness and democracy. This is also the country that prompted
Alexis de Tocqueville to write, in his landmark book, Democracy in America (1835), "beware the tyranny of the majority." As customers, bureaucrats, leaders, managers, or front line personnel, we have all, at one time or another questioned a practice, policy, or decision. In America it is our right to question, but that does not mean we will not anger those invested in that practice, policy, or decision. In all systems, there are politics. And, as another keen observer, Albert Einstein, once observed: "Politics is harder than physics."
This monograph is about change. It is about changing our techniques and our beliefs to increase the employment and community participation of individuals with significant disabilities. Making change within a system or organization is difficult, even when the change is right. As a consultant, I have probably had as many top level administrators say to me, "I wish I could change this organization, but the staff resist new ideas," as I have had front line staff complain about their leadership's entrenchment.
Ineffective change-agents often get trapped when they attack individuals instead of ideas, demonize specific classes of folks, are angry instead of constructive. The best tactics invoke collaborative factfinding and conversation. It sounds cliché, but it works. When assumptions are made about the "evil intent" of someone suggesting change, defensiveness and polarization result.
Many of us are destined to make change. Many of us are never satisfied—always seeking something better. It is both our purpose and our curse in life. While there is no avoiding the conflict and personal

controversy that comes with this role, there are some rules of engagement that will help minimize conflict and actually ease change.
One of the best tactics for innovation and change is to know the rules better than anyone else. Many arguments begin because the opponents have insufficient or incomplete data. Do your homework before making a case for change. Plans for Achieving Self Support (PASS) through the Social Security
Administration are a fine example. PASS plans are often resisted by consumers, Social Security, and service providers because of incomplete or false information. Knowing the rules and the truth about
Social Security Work Incentives allowed the Rural Institute to successfully write more PASS plans than any other team in the country.
It may sound foolish and naive, but believing that people have the best of intentions goes a long way to securing their trust and maintaining a reasonable environment for change. The most common form of job accommodation in the United States for workers with disabilities is flextime. Flextime is based on trust. Managers who trust their workers typically achieve better outcomes. Assuming that people engaged in a change program will act honorably opens the doors to substantive conversation and problem solving.
Too often the public sector tries to create a "special" program or intervention to solve complex (and not so complex) problems. Transportation, employment, recreation, and housing are all community issues.
Allow the community to face the circumstance by standing back and offering technical support, not isolation and segregation. Substantively involve the community in the change initiative. Ask for help. Too often we rely on deductive reasoning to solve our problems. We add up all the problems and look for solutions. Instead, great change agents utilize inductive reasoning. They identify a large solution and pull as many problems into it as possible. In the case of disability, the community is the big solution.
Effective change agents make the need for innovation compelling and necessary. This is why selfadvocacy is so important for us all. The voices of those affected are the most powerful, the most clear, and the most urgent. A bureaucrat can go before the legislature and argue for increased funding for employment programs, and that would be good. But the best tactic is for those personally facing unemployment and discrimination to speak for themselves. Those closest to the problem make the issues real.
Most of us get quite comfortable with, or at least tolerant of, the status quo. Many people got into human services in order to change the world. All toos often, however, the system either wore them out or waited them out. A diverse team that clearly identifies the issues and pledges to work together builds confidence in itself, in the leadership, and in the safety of the future. Small, immediately rejuvenating victories build a strong and viable coalition that can handle large, related issues later.

Because of this, embracing ambiguity, intuition, and ad hoc roles is vital. Resist the temptation to write rules and regulations. Instead, study and implement best-practices that lead to measurable results.
These best-practices will evolve through application in unique circumstances, instead of being inhibited by job descriptions and lines of authority. Learn to satisfy the customer and develop policies that support these outcomes. Remember Hock's Law: "Everything has both intended and unintended consequences. The intended consequences may or may not happen; the unintended consequences always do."
Doing things differently takes new skills and changes the Corporate Culture. Learning new ways of operating and communicating requires a personal and professional investment. Organizations that seek change, but that do not invest in educating staff on how to change, simply rearrange their organizational charts, doing little to mix up the original power structure. Old habits and practices are given new names
(e.g., a "Staffing" is now referred to as a "Futures Plan") and on-lookers witness the disingenuousness of the effort.
Knowing who the Good Ol' Boys are is not enough; you need to know how much clout they have. Do the homework and know the stakes; pick the right battles and kill them with kindness. Most of all, work behind the scenes whenever possible, and build your political capital by being smart, trustworthy, and competent. Good Ol' Boys eat, breathe, and sleep politics. Good Ol' Boys don't resist change, they resist being changed. Create relationships with them based on their needs, then use your position with them to enlist their help with new ideas. This is slow, meticulous work.
Change makes for strange bedfellows. Capitalize on as many non-traditional partnerships as manageable. These relationships may be short-lived, but they can bring together public-private coalitions that are powerful and outside the political arena of those who oppose change. Having numerous allies also leads to better ideas because the diversity of thought creates options outside any one person's experience. Diverse groups leverage more political capital. They divert and diffuse attacks by presenting multiple moving targets. Groups are more resistant to fatigue. A group with an idea is more likely to succeed than an individual with an idea.
In organized change efforts, there should be some agreed-upon operational duties. Typically, a partner who fails to achieve her/his outcomes either relinquishes her/his seat at the table, or takes on a less visible role. When internal team members fail to perform, job loss or reassignment may result.
Change takes time. One of the worst outcomes is a poorly designed innovation that fails due to an overabundance of enthusiasm and a paucity of intelligent implementation. The old adage, "slow down to speed up," guides the best design work for both individuals and organizations. Taking the time to think processes through clearly will save substantial re-work time later. When substantive change

occurs, especially in highly charged political surroundings, one misstep can be reason enough for those
"being changed" to sabotage the plan and engineer its demise.
Change is almost never quick, neat, and easy. Change can occur very slowly, very quickly, erratically, and/or planfully. Regardless, prepare to be threatened, challenged, and renewed; you are unleashing chaos and it cannot be contained in any but the most stringently controlled processes. Those who resist the unexpected changes they foster are destined to be the victims of the future. The true mark of a change agent is his/her ability to shed the prejudices of the past that he/she is so quick to point out in others.
Gary Donaldson, President of Strategic Performance Solutions, once noted that people do not fear change—they fear loss. There are often good reasons for people and systems not to change.
Recognizing these reasons and the accomplishments of the past are critical. Most of us played a role in creating the past and when change agents marginalize our accomplishments, they endear themselves to no one.
There are many, many issues facing every individual, organization, and community. One person's critical issue is on another's back burner. Skilled tacticians help others get their ideas recognized in return for quid pro quo assistance. Another efficacious strategy involves "bundling" an issue with other more visible but related issues in a community, team, or organization. For instance, economic development is a critical concern in many communities, whereas employment for people with disabilities is on most citizens' back burner. By joining forces with the economic development proponents, the addendum of employment and disability becomes mixed with the greater community goal. (See # 3: The answers are already present in the community).
Individuals, teams, and organizations that challenge traditional methods and beliefs become lightning rods, attracting oversight and criticism. Practicing what one preaches demonstrates authenticity and commitment. For instance, an employment program for people with disabilities that does not visibly employ workers with disabilities throughout its organization, is not exemplifying the behaviors it seeks from local businesses.
Marc Gold's life-changing hypothesis postulates that one can exhibit what others might consider
"deviance" as long as it is balanced by recognized competence. In other words, people who are very good at their jobs (competence) can make changes (deviance) that people with less respect might not be able to survive. Know the facts, work hard, produce visible and valued outcomes. Once your reputation is established, finding allies as a champion of change will be easier.
Making change requires allies, clear thinking, a positive reputation, determination, capacity for ambiguity, strong intuition, and knowledge. Some theorists believe that making change should start slowly and gather speed, while others suggest a thorough evaluation of the circumstances followed by

launching a full-speed change program. Whatever approach fits the situation best, the above dimensions of change-behavior serve as a guide and checkpoint on the journey.
By Cary Griffin, Director of Training at The Rural Institute
Produced in Collaboration with the National Supported Employment Consortium at Virginia
Commonwealth University
Today, it may be safe to say that "rural" is a state of mind rather than a geographic place. In the past,
"rural" conjured up a clear picture in one's mind: a farm, a small schoolhouse, a few white churches, small towns with tree-lined streets connected via Elm or Main Street to a small and pragmatic town center, with businesses based on agricultural products of the surrounding county. While there remain many places fitting this description, the bucolic ideal has changed substantially. Many rural areas have become bedroom communities to adjacent large cities, bringing antiseptic housing developments, highways, and strip malls to once productive fields. Rural, in many cases, has become the safety valve for urbanites facing inner city decay, high housing prices, and crime. The predominance of the automobile, instead of mass transit, makes high speed access to distant communities possible for middle class Americans, while the poor in rural communities remain isolated. Where the small town once stood as the nexus of human interaction, in many cases today it exists as a resting place and haven from work life. It is no longer the economic foundation nor the natural tonic of the citizenry (Oldenburg, 1997;
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 1996; Taylor & Wacker, 1996; Rifkin, 1995).
With that said, there remains a tremendous amount of the United States that exists unaffected by the development frenzy of the ubiquitous metroplex. These are the areas of concern for this paper. Not because the above issues are not critical, but because the impact is on a much smaller scale in rural communities surrounding Billings, Montana, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota, than in those places within commuting distance from Denver, Colorado, or Austin, Texas. In remote parts of this country, the economic boom of late appears less dramatic, and in many cases has breezed by without a trace.
Farming and ranching communities on the eastern plains of Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado, for instance, continue to see a decline in population and economic health. Montana's strong 1980s economy now struggles with the highest per capita number of children living in poverty and the 46th lowest per capita income in the country (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1997; Billings, 1998; Missoulian,
1998).
Regardless of the current status of local economies, employment development is still possible. People consistently go to work in the morning, hiring continues, and there is much work to be done. While many rural areas do not appear to be the direct beneficiaries of the growth economy, the decrease in interest rates, the availability of low interest loans and venture capital, liberalized lending rules, increases nationwide in entrepreneurship, improved telecommunications infrastructure, government downsizing, et. al., make it easier to create jobs. The subtle, but important, shift in thinking and activity from job hunting to creation is critical.

Job development and placement are traditionally rooted in reactive strategy. That is, people with disabilities and organizations that assist them, prospect for what exists in the marketplace. Historically, job development techniques relied on testing that "predicted" employability in certain trades or occupations. When no surplus of those identified jobs existed, the person with a disability often went unemployed. Today, best practice suggests that approaching a job match using an "environmental validity" strategy makes more sense. In other words, looking at a person's desires and gifts makes more sense than trying to fit a person into a particular occupation. And, if that particular occupation does not exist, working to create that job becomes a logical step in this proactive process.
Along these lines, in rural areas it is often necessary to identify or reveal a need, then present a solution to satisfying that need. Small business grows historically through filling needs that others have not filled and by creating needs that can profit individuals. This is the essence of inventiveness, which is a primary requirement for success in rural employment. After all, no one needed a microwave oven until someone identified the technology and used it to satisfy the socio-economic phenomenon of single and double working parent households. Waiting for harried parents to formulate a desire for a high speed oven would have taken forever, if it ever happened. Expecting employers and communities to recognize the talents of people with disabilities is equally futile. Success in rural employment development comes from creating the need for employers to hire, or for customers to buy from, entrepreneurs with disabilities.
Rural may be a state of mind or be culturally defined, but that does not mean there are not formal descriptors for such areas. The U.S. Census Bureau contends that rural is technically any community with
2,500 or fewer people (U.S. Census Bureau, 1995). Using this definition, there are 61,685,330 rural residents spread out over 75% of the land mass of the nation. This definition oversimplifies rural. Rural thereby includes communities and areas "adjacent" to major metropolitan areas that may be small, but benefit from their proximity to the services and activities of the neighboring city. Some rural practitioners debate the true "ruralness" of adjacent communities and argue for the more strict
"frontier" definition offered by the Census Bureau (RTC: Rural, 1998). Frontier areas are described as those with population densities of fewer than 6 people per square mile. Only 2,447, 630 people live in frontier counties, and 15% of these residents have disabilities (McNeil, 1993). Frontier communities exemplify the remoteness and isolation of truly rural Americans. Regardless of definition, rural communities have the highest rates of poverty in the United States (Rojewski, 1992; Nord, 1997).
Providing quality employment support in remote communities is often hampered (but certainly not impossible) by a lack of transportation options, a limited array of jobs, the availability of venture capital, the paucity of community rehabilitation options, and limited access to current information on best practices.
Regardless of the definitions used, rural supported employment is as challenging in its way as urban supported employment is challenging in its way. Both environments suffer unique barriers. And both environments present tremendous opportunities for community engagement and employment discovery.
Service delivery models are important for providing structure and benchmarks for the initial development and incubation of community employment, regardless of environment. However, strict

adherence to any model—in the face of unique circumstances, such as those presented in remote areas—may limit effectiveness. For supported employment techniques to work, they must be flexible and pragmatic. What should not be compromised are the critical elements of any high performance employment process:

Consumer Choice and Self-Determination: Typically, this involves the use of Person-Centered
Planning, which offers full access to information and provides support for choice making (Griffin
& Hammis, 1996).

Functional Assessment of skills and desires in real workplaces: Experiencing a host of possible work environments to afford the worker a comparative assessment of possible jobs and coworkers (Flaherty, 1998).

Thoughtful and formal (i.e. written) Job Analysis: A detailed study of the whos, whats, whens, and wheres of particular worksites (McLoughlin, et al., 1987).

Thoughtful and formal (i.e. written) Job Match: An examination of goodness of fit, as well as training supports necessary for employment success (Moon, et al., 1990).

Skillful utilization of Systematic Instruction: Strategic use of behavioral and planful teaching techniques on the job (Gold, 1980).

Tactful acknowledgment of Worksite Culture: Understanding the rites and rituals of unique worksites and minimizing the disruption of the environment (Griffin & Sherron, 1999).

Planful identification and facilitation of Natural Supports: Assessing the interactions of coworkers, the availability of cues, and the use of typically utilized methods and tools in a particular work environment (Callahan & Garner, 1997; Griffin, 1992; Nisbet and Hagner, 1988).

Customer friendly and respectful Consultation Services: Supporting both the employer and the employee in making the job a success.
Just as in urban areas, when shortcuts are taken problems occur. A pervasive myth in rural communities is that everyone knows everybody else, thereby making communication and working relationships easier and more casual than in anonymous city environments. This myth is further manifested in the belief that formal processes are restrictive and unacceptable in environments where people feel a cultural obligation to the folklore of informality. The fact is that business people do not do business on a handshake. They are used to complex contracts and agreements. So, using a formal job match process, structured on-the-job experience, and systematic instructional techniques, with close attention to honoring the work place culture and utilizing natural support methodologies, will not alienate or frighten employers; it could reassure them of your professionalism.
Typically, job development is constrained by the reactive methods traditionally employed in the field.
Even today, many job developers are taught to review the labor market and test people with disabilities to see if they fit within the current economic environment. In areas of high commercial activity, this approach may work well enough to reinforce its premise, but in typical markets (and especially in depressed markets) this just labels people with severe disabilities as "unemployable." In rural areas (and urban, too), people get jobs through various networks of association, and by being competitive in the workplace.

The power of networks for the job seeker cannot be overstated. Without "respected others" representation, the job seeker is just another name on an application. In interviews, job seekers may be just another applicant, except that they also have a disability. Job developers and job seekers alike must create networks that include people who influence those who hire. Typically, people use references such as their former bosses or professors, but many people with severe disabilities have no one of community standing representing them. If job developers (and this includes everyone in a community rehabilitation program, every VR employee, etc.) take action to become known as credible and giving members of their communities, the job development process gains the respect of employers.
One promising technique for growing jobs involves nurturing community relationships and networks by establishing Active Employment Councils (AECs) or Business Leadership Networks (BLNs). These councils meet monthly and members are required to bring at least one employment lead or "contact." One or two consumers are asked if they have an interest in exploring employment in the "contact s" business.
This contact is then called and given the name of the council member who suggested calling, and an appointment to discuss employment opportunities is made. Sometimes contacts are suppliers to the council member s business and a natural business relationship already exists that can be leveraged into job development. Often, too, the council members find that they have jobs available in their own companies and can help minimize the red tape and other roadblocks inherent in job hunting. Because business and consumers participate in the council, employment outcomes are the absolute priority for all council activity, mutually beneficial and respectful relationships form that create a force for job development in the community (Griffin & Sherron, 1999; Hammis & Griffin, 1994).
Critical lessons are being learned through such councils that seem to have universal applicability to all communities. These include:

In order to create employment and act as a representative for people with disabilities, the job developer should be well known to the business community, and should help people with disabilities actively and visibly create business and personal relationships;

Businesses are particularly concerned about the future of students leaving public schools and many local Chambers of Commerce, service clubs, and city/county governments have committees studying school improvement that welcome contributing committee members and can assist with job development efforts;

Be careful not to overlook the public sector as an employment option. There are government jobs in large cities and in the smallest of communities. Washington state, which has a large rural population, recently announced a state government initiative to hire people with severe disabilities in public sector jobs utilizing supported employment techniques.
Employers understand their workforce and production needs much better than those of us who do not work in those businesses. Employers can assist in job restructuring and on-site training efficiently and more naturally than outside human service personnel who typically must learn jobs first, then teach the new worker. In numerous cases, co-workers effectively instructed new workers with disabilities in task performance while employment specialists offered instructional support and effective teaching/supervision strategies.

Staff at the Rural Institute at the University of Montana develop and create jobs in rather remote sections of the country. Often, no formal jobs exist. The strategy is to look for products or services that are needed and either create a consumer-run enterprise or help established businesses expand through the use of formal partnership agreements.
Recent business start-ups include a small engine repair business, run as a sole proprietorship but located within another "fix-it shop" in Plains, Montana; a stuffed animal concession at a Nature Center in Red
Lodge, Montana, (where the Nature Center receives 10% on all sales in exchange for housing the business run by an entrepreneur with serious disabilities, and others); the possibilities are limitless
(Hammis & Griffin, 1998). Active Employment Councils help identify local entrepreneurs and companies willing to incubate partnerships and businesses within businesses, and individual members bring priceless expertise and advice concerning local market conditions.
At the heart of these councils is peer marketing—having an employer influence other employers to hire individuals with disabilities. This is much more powerful and effective than human service representatives acting as sole job developers. Employment development benefits from creative professional rehabilitation expertise, but there is a major role to be played by having business folks work face to face with people with disabilities in need of employment, and with their peers in the business world. Hiring people with disabilities is, unfortunately, still viewed as a business risk. Hearing of successful employment from both businesses and workers with disabilities, provides powerful support to employers who have not yet hired. Human service roles seem most appropriate in the context of getting these constituents together and providing technical and strategic support until a quality employment relationship is solid.
The process of breaking down jobs into their key components and reassigning those pieces in more efficient or understandable ways is called job carving. This strategy is a creative extension of job development that results in job restructuring or job creation (i.e., typical work duties are reassigned to one or more workers or a new job is created to address efficiency needs). While full-time employment is certainly a reasonable outcome, job carving is often used with individuals in transition from school-towork or supported employment who, for a variety of reasons (including physical disability, psychiatric illness, medical fragility, available supports, and choice) may not be in the market for full-time employment (Griffin & Sherron, 1999). Care must be taken not to create jobs that devalue people with disabilities by physically separating them from other workers or by having them perform tasks that are considered bothersome, dangerous, or unpleasant.
Job carving entails analyzing work duties of specific jobs and identifying specific tasks that could be assigned to employees with severe disabilities who have a proficiency for these tasks and who want to perform these jobs. Job carving can be a useful tactic for helping individuals gain experience in paid situations, and for helping employers reach a new comfort level with employees with disabilities.
Many variables influence job carving. For instance, the marketing approach in job carving is deliberate and businesslike. Job developers should approach potential employers as diagnosticians, ready to determine needs and offer solutions to productivity challenges. Another variable is consumer employment objectives. No job development effort can take place without a thorough understanding of the type of work that is suitable and acceptable to a particular individual.

In some remote communities, it may be necessary to carve positions in several businesses for a person to be able to earn a livable wage. In such cases, transportation issues may arise that challenge the problem-solving skills of the most inventive employment specialists, consumers, and employers. Always consider transportation a key element in any job match. A person must be able to get to work before he/she accepts the job, otherwise the person is at risk of failure and the employment relationship is jeopardized.
Some examples of rural job carving include:

Clerical Assistant: Duties include photocopying, formatting and copying computer disks, answering phones, assembling documents. Hours: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 20 hours per week.

Mail Delivery: Duties include mail, parcel, and message delivery for rural county government offices. Hours: Monday - Friday, 12.5 hours per week.

Pet Groomer: Duties include washing dogs, general animal care. Hours: Monday - Friday, 20 hours per week.

Bank Teller Assistant: Duties include sorting documents, operating coin counter equipment, paper shredding, etc. Hours: Monday - Friday, 15 hours per week.

Taxidermist Assistant: Duties include salting hides, preparation work. Monday - Friday, 20 hours per week.

Seamstress: Duties include guiding material through computerized sewing machine, quality control, packaging, etc. Monday - Friday, 40 hours per week.

Car Wash Attendant: Duties include cleaning wash bays, refilling soap and liquid wax reservoirs, emptying vacuum cleaner bags, policing the grounds. Hours: Monday - Saturday, 22 hours per week.

Grocer's Assistant: Duties include "facing" cans on shelves, arranging produce, unloading delivery trucks, light cleaning, recycling shipping boxes. Hours: Saturday & Sunday, 16 hours per week.

Gas Station Attendant: Duties include: Pumping gasoline, washing windshields, checking oil and fluid levels, washing and detailing vehicles. Hours: Monday - Friday: 30 hours per week.

Farm Hand: Duties include: moving cattle, clearing irrigation ditches, feeding cattle, bucking bales, assorted tasks performed in partnership with the manager. Hours: 7 days per week, 35 hours per week.
Moving supported employment into the next century requires new options and new tools for employment specialists. Significant barriers seem to be in our beliefs and expectations. The business world has been and is ready to do business. Employers are interested in hiring employees who own substantial employment related resources, forming limited partnerships, and supporting sole proprietorships with people of similar interests and dreams.
Small business is the fastest growing segment of the business sector today (Friedman, 1996). All of the options in the business world are possible for people with disabilities. Acting on this belief makes it possible to achieve employment. For instance, in a small rural town in Montana, a "challenging" person who was identified as having multiple and significant disabilities, shared his work dreams. The place he

identified for his work dream was a local Nature Center. On a tour, he clearly demonstrated the interest and relationships he had already developed there. In attempting to job develop here, multiple objections were offered from the manager, including the lack of funding for new employees. The manager agreed to any volunteer help, but "had no money" for new employees.
Acting on the belief that it is possible to create employment for anyone, a business plan for a sole proprietorship was developed and given to the Nature Center manager. The proposal was to operate a retail sales business at the Nature Center, and in return the Center would receive 10% of the profits. The manager reviewed and assisted in refining the business plan and then submitted it to the Board of
Directors for approval. The business is owned by the person, and we were able to clearly create a business outcome following our process for job creation.
Another example involves a young man in a rural town, where an employer was approached to develop a position as an entry level mechanic assistant. The employer did not have an adequate cash flow to hire him. A limited partnership proposal was written for the young man to become a part owner of a small segment of the business by utilizing funds from a Social Security Plan for Achieving Self Support (PASS).
The wealth of knowledge of the business world came into play again, as the owner advised, amended, and assisted with creating an entirely new proposal for a sole proprietorship for the young man, based on a $28.00 per hour contracted rate for the individual's new small business, with a 25% consignment fee for the use of space at the principle owner's garage and a clear method for sharing of customers and work loads. The Business Plan and PASS were approved, and an absolute "no" from a potential employer was turned into a mutually profitable sole proprietorship and partnership. Once more the business world taught us that it is possible to achieve employment even in this economically depressed community of 1,500 people.
Discussion of entrepreneurial approaches in rural communities must include the concept of Import
Substitution. This practice is being employed around the world in developing nations and in many rural communities. Quite simply, Import Substitution is a process that identifies goods and services that a local economy purchases from an outside source, and then creates the mechanism for providing those goods and services locally (Hong, 1993; Marston, 1997). Job developers can use this practice to create employment, but should be cautious not to fall into the trap of having the market need drive the employment opportunities of people with disabilities. The job seeker needs to remain at the center of job creation.
Using proper person-centered techniques, the person with a disability establishes an employment direction. In one case, for instance, a young woman being served in a local institution for persons with developmental disabilities explained that she wanted to work in an office environment performing clerical duties. Further exploration and job tryout indicated that she enjoyed paper shredding. The job developer visited a small clinic in the community, as well as the 2 banks. He discovered that they indeed needed confidential document destruction, and also found several other businesses (accounting firms, doctors' offices) that required such assistance. All these businesses, however, contracted out their services to a large city service and shipped their work there monthly. None of the businesses generated enough work individually to justify the expense of hiring someone and purchasing the equipment.

The job developer was able to convince the local businesses to shred their paper locally. He enlisted the local Vocational Rehabilitation office to purchase a small but powerful portable paper shredder for the job seeker. She then contracted with each of 4 businesses and visited their offices one day a week for 2 to 4 hours to shred their sensitive documents. The cost to the businesses was reduced, and the service was more secure and confidential because the young woman could not read.
Other examples of Import Substitution include a recent business start-up plan for a Native American-run household appliance store on an Indian Reservation and a custom embroidered clothing retail store
(Hammis, 1998). These were established by beginning with a consumer desire to work in a particular location and perform jobs they liked, then identifying the related products and services the community previously purchased from a distance as part of the business plan and job match. And while these particular examples represent small business developments, there are many jobs that are out-sourced in rural communities that clever employment specialists could "carve back into" existing companies.
In the above examples, the employees utilized a variety of resources to become successful. One used a paper shredding machine, the others used their sales experience and their local connections with people of influence. Most people served in supported employment have little or no competitive employment experience, little or no formal education, and few typical relationships in the community. Knowing that employment is secured by having respected others speak on your behalf and by having recognized skills instead of deficits and needs, there is little wonder that people with disabilities remain the nation's most heavily unemployed and underemployed minority group.
Employment is based on competition. Applicants use their connections, skills, and assets to sell themselves to the employer. The basic arrangement is that the employee agrees to be "exploited" by the employer in return for wages. The employer maintains employment as long as the revenue generated by the employee is greater than the amount expended to retain the employee. In this basic capitalist model, workers with severe disabilities who have no positive reputation, no apparent exploitable skills, or who are seen as poor investments, stand little chance of being hired (Hammis &
Griffin, 1998).
To change this circumstance, it makes sense to augment an applicant's profile by helping him or her procure skills training (this is not "readiness," it is employment-specific education such as learning computer programs or small engine repair), tools or equipment of value to the employer that the employee can use in performing the job (an auto mechanic is required to supply his/her own tools; a truck driver provides his/her own truck), or personal transportation which makes the person more reliable than other applicants.
These items require cash. Creative rural service providers can set aside a certain percentage of their revenues to provide these critical elements. These are common-sense expenditures for organizations whose missions are community employment. Still, some expenses are too great, so supplemental funding could be provided through the local Vocational Rehabilitation or Job Training Partnership Act
(JTPA) counselor. One of the most underutilized but lucrative sources of funds is the Social Security Plan for Achieving Self Support (PASS).
PASS is a part of the original supplemental security (SSI) statute of the Social Security Act and is designed to increase a person's earning potential. A PASS, and other related Social Security Work Incentives, such

as Impairment Related Work Expenses (IRWE), Blind Work Expenses (BWE), Subsidy, Trial Work Period, etc., acknowledge the fact that for people who are classified by Social Security as Blind or Disabled, achieving self support may be a gradual and on-going process. A PASS allows a person with a disability to have multiple jobs along a career path while setting aside funds that increases his/her resource ownership and decision-making responsibilities. A PASS results in a very flexible type of written guide for one's future and personal agreement "voucher" between SSA and the person with the PASS.
Rural Institute staff have written, developed, and managed over 500 approved PASS plans, typically generating $1,000 to $5,000 per year in "voucher" type resources for individuals with disabilities with the average single PASS extending 3 years, with the option of unlimited revisions along a career path. Of the plans written to date, people with disabilities have used PASS funds to purchase: new and used vehicles; computerized sewing machines; computerized embroidery equipment; livestock; personal assistants and care attendants; college tuition; laptop computers; motorized wheelchairs; paid taxi and alternative transportation; personally chosen therapy not covered by Medicare/Medicaid; mechanic's tools; business clothing; dental improvements; augmentative communication devices; paid co-worker support at work; long term one-to-one tutoring; a variety of low and high tech assistive technology for work and education. Each person involved owns the resources purchased through the PASS. PASS provides a very personalized and customized incentive to ownership and community employment.
Successful PASSes simultaneously educate and combat the fears of losing Social Security benefits prior to earning a reasonable wage and securing health coverage in the community.
PASS is a rural resource that is utilized extensively in the Rocky Mountain West. At this time, Montana,
Wyoming, and Colorado are leaders in the use of PASS Plans (Social Security Administration, 1998). In rural communities, resources such as Social Security Work Incentives cannot be ignored; they are essential to consumer choice, power, and control in employment matters. And with training in SSA Work
Incentives available through a number of quality sources, there is no excuse for them not being employed whenever possible to support job development and retention.
The new watch-words of rehabilitation are Choice and Self-Determination (Common Sense, 1998). As with almost any radical shift away from tradition, incrementalism threatens these concepts. Choice and
Self-Determination are rooted in person-centered planning techniques of the 1980s. Enlightened vigilance is required to guard against diluting these approaches to support.
There is mounting evidence that person-centered planning has become tremendously bastardized and ineffective due to shortcuts and misuse. True person-centered planning is an extra-legal process that guarantees the individual power in planning his/her own life, and provides supports that make it possible to advocate for outcomes in systems that do not traditionally respond quickly or uniquely to those served. Across the country, person-centered techniques are being employed within service system environments, with service system personnel, and within the framework of system service arrays. At least one software package is available to speed the development of the person-centered planning process. In other words, the language of rehabilitation may have changed—of constructing "maps" fills conference rooms. But the mapping process is only a small piece of person-centered planning. Its strength lies in the commitment of those attending the meetings in making certain that things change for and with the person. The real strength and promise of person-center planning is gone in many organizations. The power of person-centered planning is that it challenges people to radically change

from a model of control and continuum to a model of support and invention. Once person-centered planning becomes mandated and/or practiced at the convenience of state or local rehabilitation or school programs, its power is forever vanquished.
There are places, however where Choice and Self-Determination are driving change. The Choice Access
Project, funded by the Rehabilitation Services Administration and operated by the United Cerebral Palsy
Association national employment projects office, is working in several rural communities. The project offers individuals with severe and multiple disabilities vouchers for work experience, job coaching, job development, and related supports. In Montana, one young man of transition age has secured a variety of work experiences and summer employment support that would not have been available through the high school in his small community of fewer than 1,000 people (Condon, 1998).
In South Dakota, the state Vocational Rehabilitation agency leads the nation in granting service vouchers to numerous people residing in remote communities. In such areas, service delivery is either not available or the choice of providers is severely limited. By offering vouchers, customer service improved, consumers could remain in their home communities, and typical citizens and family members were enlisted to support the employment and rehabilitation goals of the individual (Grimme, 1998).
In Oregon, a relatively rural state, a recently funded project assists families of transition age children.
The Family Management Grants (FMG) is part of Oregon Transition Project and provides families with up to $3,000 to implement their child's employment plan. Fifty families have received financial assistance in purchasing job development and coaching, resulting in 40 individuals gaining community employment at better than minimum wage (Toews, 1998).
In Montana, four rural communities are coming together through a series of structured town meetings and Active Employment Councils to develop supported employment for individuals with psychiatric disabilities. The project is funded through the national Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA) and is designed to build community consensus on ways to solve the unemployment problem for people with mental illness. Currently, the rate of joblessness for people with psychiatric disabilities is greater than for any other disability group. By recognizing the hopes and aspirations of consumers, then identifying the strengths of the community, the project will create employment. A variety of partners is being enlisted to focus on community building. These partners include: consumers, Vocational Rehabilitation, the local affiliates of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the
Coalition of Montanans Concerned with Disability, Montana Community Partners (the Managed Care
Organization), the state Mental Health Division, the regional Mental Health Centers, local businesses, families, and civic entities (Griffin, 1998).
There are many local, state, and national initiatives to guarantee Choice and Self-Determination. The best recognize that communities are capable of solving their own problems once they know they exist.
Rural communities, where local pride and local control are topics of daily conversation, are fertile ground for experimentation. In many rural communities, little formal infrastructure exists to serve people with serious disabilities, thereby allowing local solutions to flourish rapidly, unhampered by bureaucratic infrastructure.
One of the most critical issues facing rural Community Rehabilitation Programs (CRPs) is the recruitment, training, and retention of quality front line staff. The role of direct line staff in CRPs has

evolved dramatically. Twenty years ago, as a front line staff person, all that was expected of front line staff was to help folks get through the day safely and make certain the contract work in the workshop got done. That was pretty much the extent of many job descriptions. In my own career I saw that evolution; I went from working in a group home, to starting a supported living program, to taking over as director of the adult vocational program. Within six months my duties and responsibilities had changed drastically. My salary also improved.
Today, a front line staff person has fewer opportunities for advancement because the systems are more bureaucratized, professionalized, and complicated. The pay at the front lines is relatively the same as it was twenty years ago—slightly better than minimum wage. Also, with the move to community integration, the demands on front line staff have increased. Now, direct support staff work and make decisions often in full view of the community and business. We expect them to be directed by consumers, and we expect serious outcomes such as home ownership and employment. Certainly they are not solely responsible for these outcomes, but front line staff are major contributors to success.
This level of responsibility and stress, coupled with meager or out-dated training, leads naturally to high turnover on the front line. Turnover rates vary from coast to coast, but 80% annual staff replacement for a CRP providing vocational and residential services is common. In fact, it is this high turnover rate that is often blamed for the unmanageable cycle of resignations and hirings. CRPs are continually forced to reinvest in recruitment and basic training rather than increasing salaries, providing better management support of staff, offering advanced training, and increasing support resources used to achieve community outcomes. The reasons CRPs universally give for not using PASS Plans (a significant source of consumer-directed revenue for achieving career goals), is that management is too busy putting out fires, and front line staff do not have time to learn how to use this Social Security Work Incentive. The same reason is true for effective partnering with Vocational Rehabilitation, the use of assistive technology, and the creation of business collaborations that lead to employer-initiated jobs.
Turnover saps the potential of CRPs, and, therefore, seriously undermines the potential of talented staff and consumers who rely on these agencies to support them in non-segregated environments. Couple this with Non-Value Added activities in the CRP daily routine, and outcomes become very difficult to achieve (Griffin, 1999).
Non-Value Added activities do not directly relate to achieving essential consumer outcomes, such as home ownership and real jobs. The types of Non-Value Added activities are many and varied, and are found in most social service systems. They include such items as staff meetings that perpetuate inactivity, certifications of quality that do not have a direct and obvious influence on consumer community outcomes, standardized or norm-referenced testing and evaluation, readiness or prevocational training, various day activity classes performed in artificial environments, cost-response behavior approaches emphasizing behavior change instead of finding ecological validity. If CRPs focused on providing just what the consumer needed to be supported in community environments, many of these wasteful accouterments of rehabilitation would be eliminated. Small, rural CRPs are plagued by insufficient economies of scale. If efficient means are not employed, resources for experimentation and invention are quickly squandered just doing what has always been done. Functional approaches, such as on-the-job experience and situational assessment save significant resources, can generate funds from partners such as Vocational Rehabilitation, give front line staff and consumers real world experience and

success, and build adaptive corporate cultures focused on outcomes achieved through systematically defined and implemented operational processes.
Eliminating or significantly reducing front line turnover and increasing consumer outcomes requires that organizations immediately quit doing things that do not work. Telling the truth about our efforts is job one. For over fifty years, the promise of community rehabilitation has gone unfulfilled. Today, approximately 1,000,000 people with developmental disabilities are served in sheltered workshops and other segregated day programs. Despite the promise that a system of adult services would train and place many people in the community, only slightly more than 15% of consumers have successfully achieved community employment.
Another significant action is identifying those Non-Value Added activities. In one organization in the
Mid-west, we performed a systematic audit of staff time expenditures. We discovered that this agency
(with a $3.5 million annual budget) has 30 standing committees or meetings and that in one year, salary and benefits expended in attending these meetings topped $800,000. These were all meetings that had no direct connection to an individual consumer, but were procedural or reporting events that did not produce measurable results. Certainly meeting to share information and plans is critical, but not worth almost 25% of operating income. The agency had no significant outcomes, except that staff turnover remained constant at about 85% per year. The cost of turnover was approximately $100,000 when training time, paperwork, advertising, interviewing, and overtime pay for staff coverage was computed.
This is an extreme example, but even in well-run organizations, finding $200,000 or so in waste typically is not difficult. And, $200,000 will provide significant wage increases and training for staff, and foster substantial community outcomes for consumers.
The intervention plan for this particular agency consisted of increasing the use of communications technology (voice and e-mail) to broadcast vital and report information, eliminating most of the nonoutcomes directed meetings, managing remaining meetings with quality improvement techniques, and creating staff position profiles of front line positions to use in recruitment. This last item requires a shift in thinking about front line staff. Instead of accepting turnover as inevitable, the situation calls for managing the situation and solving the problem for the long term.
Establishing front line staff as an organization's most valuable investment, after consumers, dramatically changes corporate culture. Such a change requires an investment mind set. Exit interview data reveal that many front line staff leave for three primary reasons:

Low pay

Frustration with management's lack of focus and support for outcomes

Restricted autonomy or power in decision making
In the organizational example above, the agency could realistically capture over $500,000 if wasteful processes and meetings were eliminated. Reducing turnover to 30% would result in an additional savings of $70,000. That increases fund liquidity to the agency by $570,000. Most organizations could change overnight if this money existed as cash, but until it is saved over the first year or two of a change program, the money is largely theoretical. It cannot be saved until the turnover and waste problems have been solved. So, without an investment strategy, the process is slow. But, by eliminating wasteful activities, which costs little to do, the nest egg can be developed within a year or two. At this point, it is important to create the recruitment profile for each department's front line staff. This means identifying

places where probable candidates might be found, the competencies they should have and those the agency will invest in developing, and designing a salary scale equivalent to similar positions in the private sector. The money exists in human services to do just this; it has been done. But it has not been done without a leadership commitment to drastically change operations.
One of the first steps in accomplishing such dramatic change is identifying the necessary front line Core
Competencies. A competency is a set of skills and attributes that influences job performance. Because competencies are based on skills, they can be measured and improved through training and practice.
Personalities do not appear to change through training. So, new hires should not only exhibit critical competency potential, but also have personality traits that support an organizational culture focused on outcomes and quality customer service. Achieving this match of skills and personality takes much more work than simply hiring warm bodies; it is a long-term investment-based strategy to achieve consumerdesired outcomes. A supported employment specialist might need to exhibit competency in the following areas:

Negotiation

Image/Marketing/Public Relations

Customer Service

Systematic Instruction

Self-Management

Communication

Problem-Solving
Training in these skills is available through turnover savings and by partnering with local universities and businesses. Further, good recruitment entices people away from other businesses that have already trained these staff in many related and complimentary skills. The key here is that the CRP must compete on salary as well as working conditions, work autonomy, and clarity of outcome expectations. It is true that front line staff leave for income reasons as much as for other reasons. It is not the only reason, but it is essential that staff be able to feed and house themselves. By re-investing the savings from organizational re-engineering, salaries can be significantly improved, and training can be high quality.
Initiating a "Save the Front Line" program requires the following basic steps:
1.
Analyze organizational outcomes data in relation to the baseline that all people with disabilities should live, work, and recreate in typical community settings.
2.
Account for all staff time and effort over approximately a 2 month period. Compare the work that's being done to the work that needs to be done. Recent research studies indicate that many rehabilitation personnel are not actively engaged in outcome related work most of the day
(Marrone, 1994). Calculate unproductive personnel time in terms of salaries, benefits, and if possible, in terms of lost opportunities and billables.
3.
Calculate the cost of personnel turnover throughout the agency in terms of over-time pay for coverage, lost billables, advertising, interviewing, orientation and training time. If possible, calculate the stress to consumers, staff, and managers turnover causes. Consider also the lost opportunities, the impact of a crisis orientation when scrambling to find staff, the inconsistency of customer service to community employers, et al.

4.
Create a competency-driven staff recruitment profile that focuses on finding and retaining the best staff possible.
5.
Develop an equitable salary scale that makes CRPs competitive with business.
6.
Change the organization's rhythm to one of continuous communication, refinement, invention, and quality. Avoid falling victim to the myth that rehabilitation is doomed to forever pay people less than they are worth, and that people with disabilities deserve less than the absolute best.
Think future development and capacity building.
A major challenge for rehabilitation programs in any community is projecting a positive image of individuals with disabilities. Years of paternalism and public misinformation about the "specialness" and inability of people with severe disabilities must be overcome in order for sweeping employment reform to occur. The establishment of segregated programs for people with disabilities (i.e. group homes, special schools, workshops) conveyed the message to the public that people with disabilities were "the system's problem;" that the community at-large was not prepared or properly trained to deal with such folks; that "they'd rather be with their own kind anyway." In many small towns, the citizenry took pride in fund raising efforts that helped establish local programs that were state-of-the-art for their time. The change to a philosophy of integration and inclusion devalues these community efforts. Without a planful approach to community re-entry, the best efforts of employment specialists may be met with both external and internal resistence.
Staff training, as mentioned above, is one critical element in linking the community and the rehabilitation effort. Staff must know the agency's mission, proper conflict management approaches, respectful language, and efficacious worksite training approaches to overcome years of systems-driven stereotyping. The role of the CRP, its leaders, consumers, families, and Board changes to that of network builder and link to the wealth of the public sector and the opportunities available within the private sector. Attention is turned to creating an environment where the community recognizes people with disabilities as citizens who should no longer be denied the rights of housing and economic selfsufficiency.
The steps in achieving this are familiar. They demand a strong effort on behalf of the CRP in becoming contributors to community building, using staff expertise to help solve community challenges, and a fundamental change from reliance upon a specialized system to reframing disability issues as community issues. Unemployment, for instance, is not a disability issue. It is a community issue that begs for community action. The CRP can bring light to the high local unemployment rate of persons with disabilities. When this has been done in places such as Greeley, Colorado, the community has responded by taking action through its Active Employment Council (Griffin & Sherron, 1999). In Missoula, Montana, the need for small business start-up loans for entrepreneurs with severe disabilities led to substantially increased access to existing loan funds and technical assistance especially relevant to borrowers who also received Social Security and needed to protect portions of their benefits package. The loan funds were accessed through local business development sources and with a loan guarantee/risk pool funded by the City Council.
Efforts to bring the public and private sectors together are incubated by civic entrepreneurs, which can include CRPs. The civic entrepreneur leverages or augments existing resources in the community, such as low-interest/high risk loan funds, transportation, medical care, etc., without creating a "separate but

equal" resource for citizens with disabilities. Even in the most remote communities, resources exist to address many human problems that are not unique to people with disabilities (Henton, et al., 1997).
A commonly shared challenge to employment and health care services in rural areas is the lack of accessible transportation. And, even when money is available to purchase transportation, often there is simply none available at any price. Rural Americans make up 27% of the U.S. population, but only 5% of federal transportation funds are allocated to rural communities. Where transportation is available, it is typically unreliable because over half the vehicles are beyond their useable life, and fully 60% of mass transit in rural areas is not wheelchair accessible (Bernier & Seekins, 1996). Add to this the cost of transportation for a population that lives in poverty, as well as the challenges of geography and weather, and isolation remains as the predominant factor in frontier communities.
As mentioned earlier, one approach to transportation is to make certain that the job analysis process includes a studied examination of access resources. A job that one cannot get to is simply not a good job. Transportation is another issue that supports the role of the civic entrepreneur. Transportation in remote areas is everybody's problem and benefits from community-wide solutions.
One example of rural problem solving occurred in southern Colorado in the early 1980s. The CRP played a leading role in forming a transportation cooperative in Colorado's remote and poor San Luis Valley.
Several human service organizations pooled their vehicles and formed a new corporation to provide both fixed route and door-to-door services. This CRP also utilized private citizens for transportation from remote to hub communities. Service consumers were matched with commuters from nearby areas. The commuter transported the individual to and from work and received payment from the CRP to underwrite the driver's costs. These approaches have been replicated with success in rural Michigan,
Kansas, Montana, and South Dakota (Bernier & Seekins, 1996).
Finally, the use of vouchers is a promising practice as self-determination approaches to rehabilitation gain favor (Callahan, 1998; Bernier & Seekins, 1996). The use of Social Security Work Incentives, such as
PASS and the pending Ticket to Independence, to underwrite commuting and private transportation costs is a potential solution (Griffin, et al., 1998). And as portability of money allotted for service delivery becomes a reality, perhaps more options will arise.
The challenges of the rural population are many. Isolation due to a paucity of accessible transportation, waiting lists for services, highly competitive markets for low-paying and repetitive jobs, underpaid and overworked front-line CRP staff, continued stereotyping of people with severe disabilities, etc., all contribute to making rural supported employment one of the toughest challenges communities face at the turn of this century. After ten years of federal systems change projects, training programs, increased funding rates, and a growing civic awareness of the employment rights of people with disabilities, the prospect of attaining a good job in a remote community remains difficult.
A brief review of state developmental disability plans reveals that few states currently provide financial incentives for assisting people with severe disabilities into community employment. Rural programs with limited economies of scale face greater risks because their financial status is typically more tentative than larger urban programs. Therefore, experimentation is sometimes limited for fear of fiscally jeopardizing the program. A review of final reports of rural state Supported Employment Systems

Change projects funded in the 1980s and 1990s showed that little effort was directed at engaging the communities as problem solvers and addressed few of the challenges faced by remote CRPs and consumers.
The agenda for the next decade certainly must include a reformulating of our efforts at community employment. States must take a lead role in offering incentives to CRPs for assisting people in attaining and retaining community employment. States must start granting personal service vouchers, especially in rural areas, to create consumer-control of outcomes and to spark competition where none now exists. States must set some community employment outcomes expectations where none now exist.
Training must change for vocational counselors and staff to include emphasis on rural issues, the work abilities of people with even the most significant disabilities, the role of self-employment and microenterprise. Programs must de-emphasize predictive validity via vocational testing and instead make a commitment to funding supports that augment community success.
Finally, and perhaps most difficult of all, professionals and consumers alike must face the community and engage the populace. Years of separation and isolation have produced a fear of the greater community. Our neighbors share many of the same hopes and concerns that we in the public sector and disability community share. Engaging employers, townspeople, and city governments is a crucial step in addressing community and employment access. A fundamental shift in thinking will change our view of the community from a Pandora's Box to that of a resource rich Treasure Chest.
Arnold, N.L. (Ed). (1996). Self-Employment in Vocational Rehabilitation: Building on Lessons from Rural
America. Missoula, MT: Rural Institute, University of Montana.
Bernier, B. & Seekins, T. (1996). Rural Transportation Voucher Program for people with Disabilities.
Missoula, MT: Rural Institute, University of Montana.
Billings, E.P. (1998). Fastest-Growing jobs pay less than Livable Wage. (Helena, Montana) Independent
Record (December 9).
Bureau of Economic Analysis (1998). Per Capita Income for 1997. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of
Commerce.
Callahan, M. (May 23, 1998). Personal conversation with Mike Callahan, Director of the UCPA Choice
Access Project.
Callahan, M. & Garner, B. (1997). Keys to the Workplace: Skills and Supports for People with Disabilities.
Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.
Common Sense (1998). 1 (2). (Newsletter of the National Office on Self-Determination).
Condon, E. (December 23, 1998). Personal conversation with local Montana Statewide Transition
Systems Change project and UCPA Choice Access staff facilitator.
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (1996). Economic Forces Shaping the Rural Heartland. Kansas City,
MO: Federal Reserve Bank.
Friedman, S.E. (1996). Forming Your Own Limited Liability Company. Chicago: Upstart Publishing.

Gold, M.W. (1980). Try Another Way Training Manual. Champaign, IL: Research Press.
Henton, D., Melville, J. & Walesh, K. (1997). Grassroots Leaders for a New Economy. San Francisco:
Jossey Bass Publishers.
Hong, L. (1993). A Thesis on the Rationale of Import Substitution Industrialization Strategy. Unpublished
MA Thesis. Denver: University of Denver.
Marrone, J. (1994). If Everybody is Doing it, How come it doesn't get Done. Psychosocial Rehabilitation
Journal. 18(2). 73-76.
Marston, E. (1997). A 1,000 Year Plan for Willapa Bay. High Country News. 29 (5).
McLoughlin, C.S., Garner, J.B., Callahan, M.J. (1987). Getting Employed, Staying Employed. Baltimore:
Brookes Publishing.
McNeil, J.M. (1993). Americans with Disabilities:1991-1992. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Missoulian (1998). Number of Jobless Outstripping new jobs and those Getting Jobs. December 26, 1;11.
Moon, S.M., Inge, K.J., Wehman, P., Brooke, V., Barcus, J.M.(1990). Helping Persons with Severe Mental
Retardation Get and Keep Employment. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.
Nisbet, J. & Hagner, D. (1988). Natural Supports in the Workplace: A Re-examination of Supported
Employment. JASH, 13 (4),260-268.
Nord, M. (1997). Rural Conditions and Trends. 7 (3), 37-39.
Oldenburg, R. (1997). The Great Good Place. NY: Marlowe & Company.
Rifkin, J. (1995). The End of Work: The Decline of the Global labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-
Market Era. NY: Putnam's Sons.
Rojewski, J. (1992). Vocational Rehabilitation in Rural America: Challenges & Opportunities. American
Rehabilitation. Vol 18, 39-44.
Griffin, C.C. (1999). Working Better, Working Smarter: Building Responsive Rehabilitation Programs. St.
Augustine: TRN.
Griffin, C.C. (1998). Rural Supported Employment Fact Sheet. Missoula, MT: Rural Institute, University of
Montana.
Griffin, C.C. (1997). Rural Supported Employment Topical Short (video). Columbus, OH: Irene Ward &
Associates.
Griffin, C.C. (1992). Typical, Generic, In Vivo, In Situ, Granola, Voodoo, Normal, Informal, (a.k.a. Natural)
Supports. The Advance (APSE Newsletter). 3(2).
Griffin, C.C., Flaherty M., Hammis, D., Shelley, R., Maxson, N., Spas, D. (1998). Knowing the Ropes:
Reaching New Heights in Rural Community Employment. Missoula, MT: Rural Institute, University of
Montana.
Griffin, C.C. & Hammis, D. (1996). StreetWise Guide to Person-Centered Career Planning. Denver: CTAT.

Griffin, C.C. & Sherron, P. (1999, in press). Finding Jobs for Young People with Disabilities. In Paul
Wehman (Ed.) Life Beyond the Classroom. 3rd Edition. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.
Grimme, B. (June 6, 1998). Personal conversation with supervisor for South Dakota Vocational
Rehabilitation's rural employment voucher program.
Hammis, D. (1998). Unpublished business plans for Mr. Monroe's Sole Proprietorship and Amaya's
Monograms Plus 2 Sole Proprietorship. Missoula: Rural Institute, University of Montana.
Hammis, D. & Griffin, C.C. (1998). Employment for Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime: Creating New
Employment Options through Supported Employment and Supported Self-Employment. The Advance, 9
(2).
Rural Institute (1998). An Update on the Demography of Rural Disability. Missoula, MT: University of
Montana.
Social Security Administration (June, 1998). Social Security Quarterly Report on Work Incentives
Utilization by State. www.ssa.gov
Taylor, J. & Wacker, W. (1997). The 500 Year Delta. NY: Harper Business.
Toews, J. (1998). Oregon's System of Brokered Supports. Common Sense 1 (2), 1;2.
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By Nancy Arnold, Research Director for Rural Employment and Economic Development The Rural
Institute's Research and Training Center on Rural Rehabilitation Services
Franchises are becoming quite popular and may offer an option for business owners with disabilities.
Mike Powers, author of How to Open a Franchise Business, says that about one-third of today's franchises are owned or co-owned by women and about one-tenth are minority owned. Franchising offers a good opportunity for potential business owners with disabilities—especially with careful planning, investigation, and an adequate financial base.
In How to Open a Franchise Business, Mike Powers says that franchises have a greater chance of success than either purchased businesses or those started from scratch. Franchises offer a proven type of business, people patronize them because their products are recognized and trusted, and they have a larger customer base because of name recognition.
Many franchisors also provide training in starting, running, and marketing the business; training for updating the skills of franchise owners and employees; supply record keeping systems; and conduct

advertising and marketing campaigns on behalf of all franchisees. Some sell supplies to franchisees at reduced costs, and some can finance or arrange financing for franchisees.
As with everything, franchising has a downside. Franchises tend to require more research than starting a business from scratch because both the market and the franchise itself need to be evaluated. Generally, they are more expensive to open than other new businesses, typically requiring an investment of
$20,000 or more. Many cost quite a bit more—in the $100,000 to $300,000 range.
The franchise owner answers to customers and to the franchisor and must operate his or her business according to the terms specified in the franchise agreement. This may mean that the business's location and exterior/interior design, product mix and prices, work attire, and advertising are under the franchisor's, not the franchisee's, control. The franchisee may be required to regularly file financial reports and be subject to inspection and audits. Also, the franchisee makes regular payments to the franchisor.
In a franchise arrangement, the franchisor and franchisee develop a binding agreement that is renewed periodically. There are many steps to take before this occurs and the business opens. Most are the same steps involved in opening a business from scratch and none should be bypassed. They include:

Research industries and types of franchise arrangements for those industries

Conduct a self-evaluation

Identify and evaluate possible franchisors and their franchise systems

Evaluate franchisor's products

Contact and visit other franchisees

Identify the market and evaluate its income potential

Identify opening and operational expenses and develop income projections
Because franchise agreements are written to protect the franchisor, the prospective franchisee should hire a lawyer with franchise expertise. The lawyer will explain and negotiate the franchise agreement and may recommend changes. He or she also can provide expertise on state and federal regulations, negotiate and develop leases, and deal with any other legal arrangements required for opening a business.
Hiring an accountant is also a good idea because the financial statements and reporting requirements for a franchise usually are more complex and rigorous than those for a from-scratch business. The accountant will prepare financial statements, evaluate business costs, and work with the franchisor's accounting system.
Here are some resources that provide detailed discussions and tips on franchising, the purpose of the franchise offering circular, and rules and regulations governing franchising. They also list questions to ask and answer while researching franchises, provide lists of franchise associations, and discuss the franchisor/franchisee relationship.

How to Open a Franchise Business, Mike Powers, Avon Books.


The Franchise Doctor - www.franchisedoc.com/evaluate.html

State Franchise Information Guidelines - www.smartbiz.com/sbs/arts/frb4.htm

Entrepreneur Magazine - www.entrepreneurmag.com/franchise500/about-f50099.html

FranInfo - www.franinfo.com/default.htm

For more information on RTC: Rural's self-employment research, please visit their web page at http://rtc.ruralinstitute.umt.edu or contact Nancy Arnold, Research Director for Rural
Employment and Economic Development, at 406-243-2469
By Alice Weiss-Doyel Effective of Compensation, Inc.
The article contains excerpts from the forth-coming book on self-employment for people with disabilities, authored by Alice Weiss-Doyel. These excerpts are used with the permission of the publisher, TRN, Inc.
PO Box 439, St. Augustine, FL 32085-0439. The book can be ordered by contacting TRN, Inc. by phone:
904-823-9800 fax: 904-823-3554 e-mail: trninc@aug.com
Self-employment is the preferred career choice for an increasing number of people with disabilities.
Some of the potential entrepreneurs come to vocational rehabilitation departments and other human service organizations for:
 resources to accommodate their disabilities,
 business training,
 technical skills training,
 business and personal support services, and
 financial assistance.
Self-employment should meet the broad employment goals for people with disabilities: a salary commensurate with the work, employee benefits, and a career path for future growth. Coupling these factors with appropriate disability accommodations can produce long-term employment and selfsufficiency. Clearly, self-employment is not for everyone, able-bodied or disabled; however, it is appropriate for far more people than are currently being considered for it by the human service profession.
While there are some specific characteristics and capabilities that are found in many successful entrepreneurs, there is no set formula for predetermining self-employment success.

The number of types and sizes of businesses is so great that a single "profile" would not fit all of these settings and situations.

Different personality types can successfully run the same type of business with different approaches and different strengths.

One person does not need to bring in all of the attributes of running the business. Partners, employees, and outside resources can, and usually should, provide some of the capabilities in designing and running a successful business.


Many of the capabilities can be learned by a motivated person. Many personality characteristics can change if the person wants success with his or her business. In fact, the opportunity for individualism and innovation can provide the motivation for these personality changes.
In the past small business experts thought specific personality characteristics determined if a person would be a successful entrepreneur. Lists of questions were used to ascertain if a person should become a business owner. However, there are serious problems with these lists of questions that make them useless, even detrimental.

These lists of questions are not statistically validated, even for healthy populations. There is no proof that they predict the successful outcome of a business venture or the capabilities of its owner.

These lists are biased against people with disabilities. They have questions that are related to good health, strength, and/or endurance. People with disabilities will not have positive responses. However, we know that many people with disabilities find ways to overcome disability-related problems and create successful businesses. In a United States government report, Re-charting the Course (1998): "In spite of severe obstacles…the 1990 national census shows that people with disabilities have higher rates of self- employment than people without disabilities (12.2 % versus 7.8 %)."
At their worst, these lists become an easy way to turn down people interested in pursuing selfemployment instead of looking for individual potential and determining methods of training to support success.
Today the small business experts believe that many people have the potential for entrepreneurial success, if they are willing to put in the time, effort, learning, and commitment that it takes to design and run a success business. To become successful as an entrepreneur requires dealing realistically with the financial prospects for the proposed business. It means having the willingness to research, listen, and learn about the market and the prospective business, so that projections for success have a firm basis. And it means taking the time that is necessary to do the planning and preparation right, before the business starts up as a full-fledged enterprise.
Although there are many people who would like to start their own business, there must be a system to determine who is actually capable of opening a potentially successful business. The best method is giving prospective entrepreneurs the chance to determine for themselves if they can succeed.
Giving people a chance to succeed does not mean simply putting people into a training program or handing them money. It means teaching them about entrepreneurship in a step-by-step process. Given the proper information, training, and experience, they usually will make their own decision whether they can succeed or not. Since this is a step-by-step procedure, prospective entrepreneurs must put in considerable effort and show significant progress before proceeding through the more advanced steps of the self-employment process or receiving substantial financial benefits.
There is no downside to this procedure. People who learn about self-employment can either take the necessary steps toward entrepreneurship or they can return to conventional employment as a means of self-sufficiency. Either way, they will have learned about both the business world and themselves. If they

decide on conventional employment, they will have acquired entrepreneurial skills that are sought today by many employers. Additionally, people who have been given this opportunity, but return to the goal of conventional employment, often work more positively to find a suitable job.
Succeeding as a business owner requires knowledge and skills, whether they are obtained formally or informally. Some people appear to "innately" have many entrepreneurial capabilities, others gain them through life and business experience, while other people learn them through more formal educational programs. Business training takes people from where they are in the entrepreneurial learning process and continues their education. The entrepreneurial educational goals include learning:
 the hands-on processes for designing, developing, and managing the selected business.
 creativity, innovation, inventiveness, and applying these capabilities to the proposed business.
 methods to prevent or minimize problems that could potentially damage the business.
 problem-solving techniques for resolving difficult business problems.
 strategies to address the ongoing changes and growth of the business.
 what effects the entrepreneur's disabilities will have on the business, and what accommodations are necessary to put the business on a competitive footing with businesses owned by able-bodied persons.
The old model for entrepreneurship training assumed that people who became successful entrepreneurs were born with the necessary talent, or learned it in childhood from their business-owner parents or their own experience in newspaper routes, baby-sitting, lawn mowing, or similar youthful business ventures. Therefore, the training programs and college courses emphasized what you need to do to create and run a business. They included courses on business plan writing and courses on a variety of business functions such as operations, finance, and marketing. However, most of the programs did not include courses teaching creativity, entrepreneurial leadership, communications skills appropriate to small business ownership, or collaborative efforts in business creation…in other words, how to be entrepreneurial.
Fortunately, the viewpoint of entrepreneurial training and education is changing fast as a much broader spectrum of people become entrepreneurs. Business planning and management are still part of a basic program. However, today many creative concepts and classes are appearing in entrepreneurial programs, emphasizing original and open thinking, collaborative efforts, developing an entrepreneurial mind-set, and finding new ways to address problems and opportunities.
Human service providers can participate in self-employment programs that provide prospective entrepreneurs with disabilities with access to the training programs and services needed to start small businesses. The self-employment programs, and complementary programs listed below, are best accomplished in collaboration with state vocational rehabilitation departments, business and economic development organizations (not-for-profit or government), other human services providers, and the local business community.
In addition to self-employment programs, human service agencies may provide:


Supported employment training to either the business owner or other employees with disabilities.

Transportation or other human services, which would assist the business owner in running the business.

Customary human services, assisting the person with disabilities to live independently and productively. An organization can be instrumental in assuring that disability needs do not become overwhelming while the business person is developing and running the business.

Help to ensure that the business person becomes integrated into the community for the benefit of the business, the community, and the individual.

Contact community development groups to assist the business person in finding marketable products or services, finding potential customers, and possibly receiving loans or financial incentive.
Self-employment, by its nature, is a collaborative effort. All entrepreneurs work with natural supports system: vendors, employees, CPAs, business consultants, to name a few. When human service organizations join this support system for the benefit of an entrepreneur with disabilities, they are optimizing the chances of success and self-sufficiency for that person.
Government and nonprofit organizations that work collaboratively with businesses and economic development groups can learn for-profit business practices and apply them, where appropriate, to their own organizations. Working with entrepreneurs with disabilities offers the opportunity to bring these diverse organizations together for greater mutual understanding and growth as well as entrepreneurial knowledge.
Universities and their affiliates are teaching entrepreneurship to people involved with human service organizations. Cary Griffin of the Rural Institute (The University of Montana) developed a training course on Civic Entrepreneurship. Civic Entrepreneurship involves the social sector (rehabilitation and other human service organizations) bringing together the public (governmental) and the private (business) sectors to address community issues. Whereas, these sectors have often worked at arm's length, the growing global economy dictates that partnership and networks of diverse populations solve critical problems and leverage the wealth of the community. World class economies require world class communities that form economic alliances that benefit all sectors. Working in isolation is no longer an option as strategic alliances become the best method for solving complex problems such as unemployment, isolation, or bigotry. Economic and social alliances seek to raise the standard of living for all community members and the social sector represents a key catalyst in this amalgamation of skills, needs, and resources.
Examples of Civic Entrepreneurship include the development of Business Leadership Networks (BLNs) as sponsored by the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. BLNs are formed by the social sector, generally the state Vocational Rehabilitation agency in league with other community rehabilitation agencies, and bring together public and private sector employers. Through the BLNs, the private and public sectors learn methods for hiring and retaining workers with significant disabilities, and the social sector supports this employment through its skill and resource development acumen.

Another example is microloan programs for entrepreneurs with disabilities. Rather than building another "separate but equal" loan fund for people with disabilities, the social sector in this case approaches a community business development center that is typically a mix of public and private funds.
The rehabilitation organization provides information on issues of disability, Social Security,
Medicaid/Medicare, and various social sector resources, and together with the community business development center helps expand their customer base and expertise to include individuals with significant disabilities.
Entrepreneurs with disabilities, and their businesses:
 are taxpayers, providing funds for the community.
 provide services and/or products.
 provide jobs for the community.
 use the products and services of other local businesses.
 interact with the community, sharing themselves and their ideas.
 have more pride and self-esteem…adding quality to the lives of their families and friends.
Entrepreneurship for people with disabilities comes full circle, benefitting the human service organizations and the communities that support business development for people with disabilities.
(November 15, 1998) Re-charting the Course: First Report of the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities; Produced pursuant to Executive Order No. 13078. Copies of this report are available from the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities web-site http://www.dol.gov. The Task Force is located at 200 Constitution Avenue, NW, Room S2312;
Washington, D.C. 20210; 202.219.6081
by Roger Shelley, Organizational Consultant, The Rural Institute
Tom Hayes, Program Manager, Montana Job Training Partnership
Lisa Newman, Program Specialist, Montana Job Training Partnership
Cary Griffin, Director of Training, The Rural Institute
This article was produced through a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, Title III Disability
Demonstration Project.
The Montana/Wyoming Careers Through Partnerships Project is a U.S. Department of Labor initiative to help people with disabilities re-enter the workforce. The Rural Institute Training Department at the
University of Montana worked collaboratively with the Montana Job Training Partnership (MJTP) on
Careers Through Partnerships. For this project, the Department of Labor asked, "What do people with

disabilities need to be successful?" The answer to this question was a new formula for success: choice + flexibility, and the successful outcomes it produced profoundly surprised us. October 22, 1999
What are the results of this new formula for success? How are outcomes affected when consumer choice and funding flexibility define the services delivered to people with disabilities who seek employment?
Costs are nominal. Employment takes off. Half of the participants are self-employed.
The project began the year with $127,000 for Montana participants to use for employment goods and services in "personal accounts." The initial goal was for 21 Montanans with disabilities (as defined by the
Rehabilitation Act) to find work, and the projected cost for workforce reentry was estimated at $3,500 to $5,000 per person. By June of 1999, 62 people had accessed the project funds and found work or were moving toward their career goals. Thirty-one participants (50%) opted for sole proprietorship selfemployment, and thirty-one (50%) chose more conventional employment situations ranging from receptionist to truck driver. Cost per person was around $4,000 and ranged from a low of $616 to a high of $10,352. Estimated average cost to this project to start a business was $4,112. The estimated average cost to this project for goods and services to obtain more conventional employment was $4,281. Of the
62 participants, 28 are also authorized for Vocational Rehabilitation services and received an average of
$2,100 each for services not covered by this Department of Labor project. Two received funds through micro-loans for business expenses, and four Social Security Plans for Achieving Self Support (PASS plans) have been written and submitted to Social Security. One of these was written by the job seeker, not the professional vocational consultant.
The choice half of the equation is consumer career choice. Choice in employment and employment services has been given quite a bit of air time over the years, and has been advocated by groups serving people with disabilities. However, choice may have been limited by those service providers or agencies either directly, owing to perceived lack of funding or staff time, or indirectly, in the assertion that the people making the choices had limited abilities to make choices for themselves. One of the primary tenents of Supported Employment and Supported Self-Employment is that people are free to make any choice that appeals to them and that necessary supports will be added to ensure success in the chosen employment venture (Griffin, 1999). The Montana/Wyoming Careers Through Partnerships Project has defined itself by offering career choice to people with disabilities on an unprecedented level, using best practices from Supported Employment. Working with people to identify their work preferences and choose a career path is the job of the service provider and employment consultant. The service provider, employment consultant, and employment seeker became partners in this process.
Through the Careers Through Partnerships project, the Rural Institute provided extensive training and technical assistance to service providers, vocational providers (including Montana Vocational
Rehabilitation), and professional employment consultants. Providers learned new skills for helping people with disabilities—the people we as employment consultants serve. The skills focused on helping people with disabilities choose careers they want and work toward their career goals, rather than simply maneuvering people with disabilities into whatever work came along. Training topics on consumer choice included:

 person-centered career planning,
 community development,
 employment development,
 job carving,
 situational assessment, and
 entrepreneurship.
The better the employment consultant knows the person he/she is serving and how that individual fits into the community, the greater the likelihood of success. Vocational profiling, person-centered career planning, and functional assessments are accepted, structured methods of learning about a job seeker, but less formal means are sometimes as productive. The employment consultant learns about someone's interests, ambitions, and abilities at a pace and in the place that the job seeker dictates. This may include conversations that take place in the office, but any community setting that the person chooses is quite acceptable—where ever the person feels comfortable expressing his/her choice. Be prepared to learn from the person. Let him/her lead you through his/her life. Use the power of observation and intuition when interacting with the employment seeker. Gather all the information needed and establish a working relationship that has real power for success.
Facilitating choice may not ensure 100% success for the people we serve, but not listening to choices, making judgements concerning personal choices, abilities, and people's motives, and allowing those judgements to affect your support will certainly hinder your partnership with people with disabilities and hamper success in the endeavor.
Facilitating Choice:
What It Takes from the Employment Consultant
1.
Assume Competency of the Employment Seeker
2.
Total Support of Customer's Choice
3.
Being a Partner
4.
Using Your Community Networking Skills
5.
Working for Nothing Less Than
The flexibility part of the equation included resource sharing and funding flexibility. Careers Through
Partnerships actually had money available for people with disabilities to pay for employment and job development services, including vocational services. These funds could be combined with funds from other sources to get the job seeker back into the workforce. As a result, the project established partnerships with other service agencies to enhance available funding and access community resources that develop employment opportunities for all people.
All of the service personnel associated with this project shared control of the employment process with their partners. Everyone understood that partnerships are based upon sharing control and responsibility. Because of this understanding, and because the focus was on consumer choice, everyone's roles remained flexible throughout the process. The employment consultants became resource developers and facilitators for employment, not the primary decision-makers in the process.
Accountability for outcomes was equally apportioned to all of the resource partners, including related

community members. In this process, the service providers relinquished a great deal of the control of the situation. As it turned out, this one aspect had positive consequences on the operation of the project. Employment consultants found that the resources involved in building a prosperous employment venture reside not only in the monetary resources brought into play, but also in the fabric of the community itself. The community sees one person's success as everyone's success. Community resource development and integration becomes the employment consultant's primary responsibility to the person being supported. The consultant's ability to find and implement a variety of supports, both monetary and non-paid, and the readiness to offer technical assistance to the job seeker, are of the utmost importance. Technical assistance to job seekers includes:
1.
Sharing a clear vision of success with the person and being willing and able to do what it takes to facilitate success.
2.
Making recommendations concerning goals and implementation of supports.
3.
Making recommendations concerning business logistics.
4.
Modifying business plans and applications.
5.
Identifying and facilitating business/employment supports.
6.
Supplying information and techniques to maximize success.
Service agencies leveraged available funding and community resources to improve employment opportunities. Inventiveness and networking within the community were encouraged in initial training sessions, which included service providers and job seekers with disabilities who were accessing services from these organizations. These job seekers were paid to participate in the training. Their presence made the training reality-based and functional. Partnerships among service agencies grew and provided an effective use of available funding to facilitate employment for people with disabilities. Service provider costs for the individual agencies decreased as funding streams were joined and expanded.
Given choice and support, both by the service agencies and the community, people with disabilities accessed far less money per person than was originally projected and were highly satisfied with the services provided.
Money was supplied for vocational services, business development, business equipment and supplies, short-term schooling, and a myriad of other expenses that were needed for the success of the person.
The primary funding mechanism for direct services through this project was the United States
Department of Labor and Montana Job Training Partnership. Since 28 of the participants also received services from Vocational Rehabilitation, funding was available from that agency.
Sources of Funding for Self-employment
1.
Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA)
2.
Vocational Rehabilitation
3.
Social Security Work Incentives (PASS)
4.
Micro Loans for Business
5.
Small Business Administration
6.
Lump Sum Payment of Unemployment
Agencies that supported people with developmental disabilities and mental illness used existing funds and resources, which were already allocated to the person. Micro loans were secured for items that could not be procured through Department of Labor or Vocational Rehabilitation. Social Security Work

Incentives, in the form of Plans to Achieve Self-Support (PASS), augmented these other sources of money. Although not utilized during the current year, a lump sum unemployment payment (instead of the 26 weekly payments) could have been utilized for business start-up funding, and will likely be used in year two.
Community Business Development Resources
1.
SCORE Members
2.
Local Small Business Development Centers
3.
Economic Development Personnel
4.
SBA Personnel
5.
Micro Business Centers
6.
Business Leadership Network Members (sponsored through the President's Committee on
Employment of People with Disabilities)
7.
Local Bankers
8.
Local Service/Business Club
During the first year of the Montana/Wyoming Careers Through Partnerships Project, a number of people with disabilities opted for self-employment. Primarily, this is due to two factors: 1.) Real supported choice for people with disabilities; and 2.) Funding flexibility from the Department of Labor and Vocational Rehabilitation, who are promoting partnerships with other public and private funders to increase the range of employment opportunities. Early results indicate that these factors may lead to increased employment for people with disabilities and a corresponding rise in their quality of life and access to their communities.
Several existing community business development resources can be utilized when facilitating selfemployment opportunities for the entrepreneur with disabilities. Economic development personnel are often an excellent first call. They can keep you informed on business trends, new business starts, and businesses in search of assets to enable growth. Local Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) can help write business plans and help facilitate funding to establish a small business. Many are also business incubators, which offer space, management, and logistical services to entrepreneurs during the start up phase. Business mentors may be found among the membership of SCORE, an organization of retired executives (attached to the Small Business Administration). Business management and marketing services may be supplied by business students at a local university who are required to complete projects related to business operation. Local Small Business Administration personnel provide information on business loans and recommendations on the application process. Business Leadership
Network (BLN), a project of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, members may be enlisted for marketing and business profitability information, and as networking agents in the community. Local bankers or members of service clubs may offer guidance in establishing a business. Community members and family may be able to supply limited funding or assistance for starting the business. The list of resources available at no/low cost is as unlimited as the employment consultant's imagination and existing community connections. The identification of connections that already exist for the employment seeker within the community and their mobilization is always necessary for a truly effective employment endeavor, and is a function of getting to know the person within his/her environment.

by Tom Hayes, Program Manager of Montana Job Training Partnership
Ron F. (Kalispell): Ron is an SSI recipient with dual diagnosis (psychiatric and developmental disabilities).
He is also a Vocational Rehabilitation consumer. Ron's employment goal is to own and operate a lawn service and snow removal business. As a result of a collaborative effort between the mental health center, Careers Through Partnerships, and the local microbusiness development center, Ron is on his way to realizing his career goal. The mental health center in Kalispell helped Ron develop his business plan, and they will continue to help him manage his business finances. Careers Through Partnerships purchased Ron's "tools of the trade" including a weed eater, snow blower, leaf blower, lawnmower, work clothing, and other miscellaneous tools. Through the microbusiness development center, Ron obtained a loan to buy a pickup truck. Careers Through Partnerships is also helping Ron with advertising expenses such as flyers, business cards, and an answering machine.
Ron's story is just one of the early successes of the Careers Through Partnership Project. This project is helping meet the employment needs of people with disabilities in Wyoming and Montana. The first component of the project was to build the capacity of service providers in the Job Training Partnership
Act (JTPA) system or any other provider interested in giving people with disabilities an opportunity to become employed in the job they chose. In order to fulfill people's aspirations, techniques such as supported employment and job carving were a primary component of the capacity building. Underlying these principles, however, is the fundamental belief that everyone is job-ready. The trick is finding that job.
Montana Job Training Partnership, Inc., (MJTP) serves as the administrative agency for Job Training
Partnership Act programs across Montana. Formed in 1990, it is a private, non-profit in Helena,
Montana. The Rural Institute Training Department is providing the training in supported employment and job carving techniques for the Careers Through Partnerships Project. Funded with $450,000 of JTPA funds, the project will be extended for another year, with a third year possible after that. Most of the funds are reserved for direct services for consumers.
The Wyoming portion of grant activities has begun and all initial training will be completed by mid-May
1999, with more enrollments expected soon after. As of this time, four capacity building workshops have been held in Montana, with two completed in Wyoming. Each workshop was an intensive three-day seminar conducted for service providers and consumers that included field work on job analysis in local businesses. In addition to these first steps, all follow-up and PASS (Plan to Achieve Self Support) training sessions have been completed in Montana. Thirty-eight people have been enrolled under the project, and more applications for enrollments arrive at the MJTP office daily. Services are being provided by a variety of agencies, from those who have traditionally been JTPA providers to mental health centers with no JTPA experience.
Self-employment has become a pre-eminent interest among customers of the project. While seemingly a risky venture, there have been successes in self-employment. In their initial start-up phases, it is really too early to judge the long range outcomes of these businesses. What has been most encouraging has been the resourcefulness of local agencies to bring together a number of different program funds in

order to make the most of the money available. It is not unusual, for example, for one of these entrepreneurs to access JTPA funds from this project, Vocational Rehabilitation funds, and even secure a microbusiness loan.
Five participants with psychiatric and emotional disabilities in Miles City are forming a business partnership to own and operate a transportable food cart. The partnership will provide their food service to the local high school during the school year, at the city park in the summer, and at special events and occasions throughout the year. The food cart, valued at approximately $10,000, was donated to the participants by Vocational Rehabilitation. Careers Through Partnerships is assisting participants with liability insurance, uniforms, and transportation.
by Wendy Parent, Outreach Director
The Rural Institute
This article was originally published in the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, Vol. 6 (1996) and is reprinted here with the permission of the author and that publication.
The development of this paper was supported by Grant # H133B30071 from the National Institute of
Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), U.S. Department of Education. The opinions expressed are those of the author and no endorsement by NIDRR is implied.
Supported employment has proven to be a successful service option in terms of outcomes and participant satisfaction. Most studies to date have focused upon the attitudes of employers, rehabilitation counselors, parents, and advocates with little information available as to the opinions of the consumers who are the primary customers. This article summarizes the views of 110 consumers of supported employment who share information about their experiences and their feelings about their jobs and the services they receive. Practical strategies and a Consumer Satisfaction Survey tool are presented to assist practitioners, consumers, and advocates with enhancing consumer choice and satisfaction in supported employment.
Few persons would disagree that supported employment has been and continues to be an overwhelming success. Today, more than 100,000 individuals with severe disabilities are working in community businesses alongside their coworkers (Revell, Wehman, Rayfield, & Kregel, 1994; Wehman,
Revell, & Kregel, 1995). Persons, previously unemployed, underemployed, and with sporadic work histories are now earning regular wages (Thompson, et. al., 1992) and receiving other benefits associated with employment (West, Kregel, & Banks, 1990; West, Revell, & Wehman, 1992). These wages reflect dramatic improvements over participants' presupported employment placements in segregated adult day programs (Drake, Becker, Biesanz, Torrey, McHugo, & Wyzik, 1994; Kregel, Banks,
& Wehman, 1989). Employers also are receiving a valuable contribution to their workforce and view supported employment as a positive source of assistance (Kregel & Unger, 1993, Shafer, Hill, Seyfarth, &
Wehman, 1987). Rehabilitation professionals are experiencing the rewards of an effective support

service which expands the opportunities available to the large numbers of persons on their caseloads who desire competitive employment (Cook & Pickett, 1994; Molinaro & Walls 1987). Parents and advocates are expressing favorable opinions about a much needed support option that allows friends and family members with a disability to achieve their career goals (Ferguson, Ferguson, & Jones, 1988;
Hanley-Maxwell, Whitney-Thomas, & Pogoloff, 1995; Stineman, Morningstar, Bishop, & Turnbull, 1993;
Irvin, Thorin, & Singer, 1993).
Despite the positive feedback from participants of supported employment, little information is known about the attitudes of the primary customer of those services, namely the individuals with disabilities who use supported employment services. For example, are people obtaining the jobs of their choice? Is supported employment assisting consumers in the manner they would like? Do individuals have recommendations for changing or improving service delivery practices? Anecdotal evidence suggests that consumers like their jobs and the services they receive. However, to truly assess the success and impact of supported employment, it is imperative that the viewpoints of this very important group be determined (Kregel, 1992). Presenting and gathering information in a way that is meaningful to supported employment consumers is the critical first step in accomplishing this goal. Listening and responding to what they say is the essential element that will insure the quality and integrity of this approach.
The purpose of this article is threefold. First, a tool to assist practitioners, consumers, and advocates with assessing supported employment jobs and services and advantages of its use will be described.
Second, the opinions of individuals with disabilities who use supported employment services and what they feel about their experiences will be presented. Finally, specific strategies for use by program managers, employment specialists, and consumers to enhance participant satisfaction with supported employment will be discussed.
The Consumer Satisfaction Survey (CSS) was developed with assistance from persons with disabilities who shared ideas about the content, decided the format of the questions, and determined the best procedures for its administration. The resulting instrument contains 60 items that are divided into several categories including: consumer/job demographics, pay and benefits, supervision, relationships/teamwork, job conditions, job satisfaction, job coach satisfaction, and service satisfaction.
The CSS is designed to be completed during a personal interview that takes approximately 30 minutes to conduct.
The instrument was pilot-tested and field-tested with individuals with a variety of disability labels who functioned as consumers and interviewers. The CSS was found to be a valid, reliable, and useable tool by all participants regardless of the severity of their disability and level of communication (Parent, 1994).
This tool is useful in supported employment programs for the purposes of promoting high quality services, monitoring an individual's employment situation, and providing a vehicle for the consumer's voice. Specific advantages of including the CSS are highlighted in Table 1.
Table 1
Advantages of Using the Consumer Satisfaction Survey

Promotes High Quality Service


Addresses issues typically overlooked

Measures both choice and availability

Gives most current information

Provides direction for future service

A Tool for Monitoring the Employment Situation

Identifies personal and worksite changes, needs, and satisfaction

Provides information to allow proactive intervention

Enhances the existing evaluation process (e.g., supervisor's evaluation, employer evaluation, outcome measures)

Provides a Vehicle for the Consumer's Voice

Allows direct, personal input

Encourages expression of preferences

Identifies current likes and dislikes

Provides information to set goals (e.g., career advancement, more hours)
(This table was co-developed by Karen Gibson, an Employment Specialist at the Virginia Commonwealth
University-Rehabilitation Research and Training Center)
The opinions of 110 individuals with a disability who were working in supported employment were obtained during a study conducted in Virginia by the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on
Supported Employment at Virginia Commonwealth University (Parent, 1994). A summary of the key findings describing what consumers of supported employment services are telling us is located in Table
2.
Table 2
Key Findings: What Consumers of Supported Employment Services are Telling Us

The majority of us like our jobs

Most of us feel that our present job is better than what we were doing before

Some of us like everything about our jobs, some of us would like to change our job to make it better, some of us would like a different job

Most of us feel that our current job is satisfactory at the present time but not the job we would like permanently

The majority of us are happy with supported employment services and would use them again

Many of us are receiving all of the services we need

Most of us would like to keep our same job coach and not change the amount of intervention time he or she spends visiting the job

The majority of us play a major role in choosing our jobs but many of us are not included in the decisions made about our jobs as much as we would like

Many of us feel our life is better since starting to work at this job

Those of us who make choices related to our job tend to be more satisfied with our jobs

Sixty percent of the participants were male and 40% were female with the average age being 32 years old. Individuals reported a disability label of cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities (34%), mental retardation (33%), traumatic brain injury (22%), and mental illness (21%). Participants were primarily employed in commercial (e.g., retail, store, or shop), food (e.g., restaurant, fast food), or service provider (e.g., church, park, agency) types of businesses in clerk/office worker (27%), dishwasher/food prep (19%), and stockclerk/warehouse (17%) positions. Average hours and wages were reported to be
28 and $159.38 per week respectively. Participants were employed between one month and six years with the average length of employment being 2.3 years.
The majority of consumers (90%) like their jobs. Not unlike the general workforce, participants indicated that they like some aspects of their job and dislike others. Things they like about their jobs include: the people (coworkers, public), the job duties (washing dishes, physical labor, stocking), the work conditions
(atmosphere, breaks, hours, no pressure), having a job (just working), and the pay. Similarly, what people don't like about their jobs are: the people (talk down, petty fighting, customers complain, coworkers take too many breaks, they talk too much), the work conditions (indoors, interruptions, dirty, slow periods, stressful), their work schedule (weekends, not enough hours, evenings, overtime), the pay and benefits (not enough, no benefits), and the job is boring (routine, monotonous).
More than half (56%) of the consumers say they earn enough money from their jobs with the remainder saying they earn more than enough or not enough. Approximately half (54%) of the individuals have received a raise and another third expect one in the near future. Two thirds (67%) of the consumers do not receive company medical benefits while others need Medicaid or Medicare subsidies and a few have benefits that meet all of their health care needs. More than one third (41%) have opportunities for career mobility within the company and more than half feel that there are no opportunities for advancement for either themselves or themselves and other coworkers.
Most (82%) feel that their boss is always available when needed and that they can ask him or her for help if they have a question or problem. Characteristics that individuals like about their bosses are their management style and how they treat their employees. Similarly, most (82%) feel that their coworkers treat them the same as everyone else and that they get along great or O.K. Close to two thirds (62%) say that they like their job duties a lot and most of the others feel they are O.K. Approximately one half
(49%) think that their job is sometimes boring and sometimes fun while close to half feel that their job is a lot of fun.
The majority of participants say that their job coach has been very helpful (85%) or sometimes helpful
(16%). The areas where consumers most often receive help from their job coaches include: learning how to do the job, getting a job, dealing with work-related issues, providing support, and handling problems at the job site. Most consumers would like their job coach to visit them at the job site about the same as they are (74%), while some would like visits more (18%) or less (8%) often. Consumers generally like

their job coach and say that if given the choice, they would like to keep their same job coach (87%), have one of the job coaches they used to work with (11%), or get a different job coach (2%).
The majority (96%) of consumers are satisfied with supported employment and many feel that they would not be working without its help. Many (80%) think supported employment assisted them as much as could be expected. Overwhelmingly, participants say they would use supported employment again if they lost their job or decided to change jobs (93%) and would recommend supported employment to a friend (92%).
Consumers feel that their lives have gotten better (73%), stayed about the same (24%), or become worse (3%) since starting to work at their job. The ways consumers feel their lives are better now that they are working include: more money, more productive (busy, doing something, less bored), personal benefits (more confidence, self-esteem, coping better), major life changes (savings account, major purchases, dating relationships, cruise), more independent (more responsibilities, more decisive, mom allows to do things) and like the people (friends).
Close to one half (45%) of the consumers are earning less money than they would like and others are getting paid as much as they would like. Approximately three fourths (73%) work together with their coworkers as much as they would like and many are satisfied with the amount of time they spend together at break and lunch. More than half (56%) feel this job is O.K. for now but not the job they would like to do the rest of their life. Similarly, more than half (55%) would like to be able to learn more new things at work while others are learning as many new things as they would like. More than one third (44%) of the consumers would like to work more, less, or different hours and most feel that the time of day that they work is fine. More than half (56%) would like to keep their job just the way it is while some (26%) would like to change their job to make it better and others (19%) would like to have a different job.
Numerous suggestions for increasing consumer choice and satisfaction emerge from the comments and ideas offered by participants. Often, bureaucratic red tape, agency restrictions, funding limitations, and staff shortages are identified as factors prohibiting attempts to establish a consumer-directed approach to the delivery of supported employment. However, many of the recommendations presented only take the initiative of one person with one consumer to lay the foundation for large-scale change.
Table 3 lists specific strategies for program managers interested in making changes in the way supported employment services are provided through their agency or program. The critical first step is to set the standard that consumer choice is a priority and everything else will fall into place. For example, establish policies that facilitate consumer choice, model practices that are guided by consumer input, and ask consumers what they want and respect what they have to say. Simply identifying individual preferences is not enough; following-through with the services and supports that will make choices is vital to

success. While the provision of assistance that the consumer wants may at times appear costly, it is likely to save money in the long run due to increased satisfaction and ultimately job retention.
Table 3
Strategies to Assist Program Managers with Increasing Consumer Involvement and Enhancing the
Quality of Supported Employment Services

Make consumer choice a priority within your program and the driving force behind all service delivery practices

Provide the services and supports that will allow consumers to realize the outcomes of their choice

Include consumers in all activities associated with supported employment implementation

Proactively assess individual satisfaction and respond to personal preferences frequently over time

Provide job coach support in the provision of quality, consumer-directed services
Consumer involvement needs to be a major part of all program operations in order to insure that policies, procedures, and practices are compatible with what people really want. For example, have consumers participate on the program Advisory Committee, in planning meetings, staffing sessions, staff and community trainings, and program development activities. Be proactive and include assessment of consumer satisfaction as a critical piece of service delivery that is conducted regularly over time. In addition, plan staffing and other resources to be available to respond to changes in preferences that arise as consumers change their mind.
The best policies are meaningless if not implemented through the day-to-day operations of service delivery. One method for promoting consumer involvement is to support the job coaches who are trying to make this happen. For example, get involved in what they are doing, trust their judgement, and visit job sites to find out what is going on. It is imperative that those individuals who are making consumer choice a reality be given the encouragement and backing to provide quality services that are driven by the people they serve.
Employment specialists are in the unique position of being on the front line where consumer choice can be translated into outcomes even if program support is minimal. A few guiding principles can lead the way to insure that consumer preference is the motivating factor behind the way decisions are made and services are delivered. First, it is imperative to spend time initially, truly getting to know the individual
(Parent, Unger, Gibson, & Clements, 1994). For example, spend time together, get involved with the individual's world, and find out what he or she would really like. Second, provide detailed information about available services, share all of the information that is known, and be open to explore new possibilities that may not have been tried before. A major criticism expressed by consumers is that professionals often make important decisions for them through the screening of information as to what they feel is appropriate, a lack of knowledge on their part, or close-mindedness to another way of doing things (Brooke, Barcus, & Inge, 1992).

Third, help consumers explore options by arranging practical concrete experiences related to jobs and supports of interest. For example, if someone desires to bag groceries, take him or her to visit a grocery store, arrange a situational assessment to try it out (Moon, Inge, Wehman, Brooke, & Barcus, 1990), or coordinate a time for him or her to talk with someone who is employed as a bagger. Fourth, make sure communication is frequent and use a variety of means to give the individual ample opportunities to share ideas as they occur to him or her. It is unlikely that most people will remember a passing thought months down the road if conversations are few and far between. Finally, assess satisfaction on a consistent basis and intervene to make those areas that are not liked a little more desirable. For example, an individual may say he or she doesn't like the job and wants another, however, looking at the specific aspects of the job may reveal that he or she really does like the job but wants different hours. Responding to a specific request is far less time consuming or costly than finding another job should the individual quit out of frustration or be terminated and then re-enter the system. Specific recommendations to aid employment specialists who really want to make a difference are located in
Table 4.
Table 4
Strategies to Assist Employment Specialists with Enhancing Choice and Satisfaction for Supported
Employment Consumers.

Get to know the individual and find out what he or she likes

Share information about supported employment, different job opportunities, and potential services and support options

Assist with identifying career goals and job opportunities of interest

Maintain frequent and on-going communication

Assess individual satisfaction on a regular basis

Determine satisfaction with specific aspects of the job and services
What can consumers do to insure that their choices and preferences are heard and responded to? The bottom line in obtaining the job and supports one desires is to know what is available and let others know what can and should be. Contact agencies and organizations in the community, find out what they have to offer, determine the eligibility process, and initiate the referral procedures to insure that services are readily available when needed. Similarly, explore types of employment opportunities, find out the different requirements expected of particular businesses, generate job leads through friends and informal networks, and share information with professionals to facilitate the job development process. In addition, look at the supports that are currently available, think about who typically provides help, investigate other types of assistance that persons may be willing to provide, and be prepared to make suggestions to professionals to expand limited and dwindling resources.
It is important to communicate frequently with the providers of supported employment services, even if that means initiating the telephone calls and requesting meetings to share pertinent information. Ask questions and persevere until the information presented is understandable and an acceptable resolution to the issue has been determined. Critical to making sure that one's choices become a reality is to proactively arrange a blanket of support to utilize when assistance is needed during the present as well as in the future for both existing and anticipated needs, such as career advancement, independent living, or job changes. Experience suggests that no issue should be overlooked. Instead, brainstorm

potential issues and supports, document procedures for accessing assistance that is readily available
(e.g., names, telephone numbers, key information), and make the provisions now to get what may be desired later. Table 5 offers specific tips for consumers to help them achieve their chosen career goals.
Table 5
Strategies to Assist Consumers with Insuring that Their Choices and Preferences are Heard and
Responded To

Get to know the available services in your area

Explore a variety of potential support resources in your life and community

Communicate and meet with your rehabilitation counselor and job coach frequently

Ask questions about the services you are receiving and don't be intimidated by professional jargon

Determine your present and future options
There is no doubt that we have done a good job with supported employment but we can do better. Yes, people are out working and most probably would not be without assistance from supported employment. However, many are not employed in their careers and desire to change jobs at some point in the future. We simply must acknowledge and support opportunities for job mobility and career advancement for every person working in supported employment so the question no longer is "should I work at this job or no job at all" but rather "what job do I want to pursue next?"
Do consumers like their jobs? Yes, but as with the general labor force, certain aspects of the job are typically more desirable than others. Asking global questions is just not enough. We must break these questions down and ask about everything, if we are going to determine what specific aspects of the job and/or services could be improved. Eventually employees will leave their jobs if these areas are not addressed or if other things occur so that the benefits of the job no longer outweigh the disadvantages.
Adequate provisions for assessing and responding to individual preferences and concerns must be implemented if a truly consumer-driven service delivery approach is to be achieved.
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Drake, R.E., Becker, D.R., Biesanz, J.C., Torrey, W.C., McHugo, G.J., & Wyzik, P.F. (1994). Rehabilitative day treatment vs. supported employment: I. Vocational outcomes. Community Mental Health Journal,
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Moon, M.S., Inge, K.J., Wehman, P., Brooke, V. & Barcus, J.M. (1990). Helping Persons with Severe
Mental Retardation Get and Keep Employment. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
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Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Supported Employment.
Parent, W., Unger, D., Gibson, K. & Clements, C. (1994). The role of the job coach: Orchestrating community and workplace supports. American Rehabilitation, 20(3), 2-11.
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Retardation, 92 (3), 304-311.
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3-15.
Irvin, L.K., Thorin, E., & Singer, G.H.S. (1993). Family-related roles and considerations: Transition to adulthood by youth with developmental disabilities. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 3 (2), 38-46.
Kregel, J. (1992). The subtle and salient points of program evaluation: An illustration from supported employment. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 2(2), 53-61.
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An illustration from supported employment. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 3(4), 17-25.
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Analysis, 22, 407-415.
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Rehabilitation Administration, 11, 44-48.
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Thompson, L., Powers, G., & Houchard, B. (1992). The wage effects of supported employment. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 17(2) 87-94.
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Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 34 (2), 126-138.
by Deborah M. Shelley , Supported Living Coordinator
Herb Noyes, Area Manager
Beartooth Industries
Bernie Klundt, Business Owner
At an early age, Bernie showed signs of "disturbing" behavior. At times he displayed an uncontrollable temper, bit other children, tried to flee from his home. He received limited attention and guidance during his developmental period while enduring serious emotional trauma due to sustained abuse. He was placed in foster care at the age of 10 and lived in several homes until he was 13 years old. From
1969 until 1975 he resided at Boulder River School and Hospital (Montana's developmental disabilities institution) and Warm Springs State Psychiatric Hospital. During his stay in these institutions, he was prescribed Haldol and Mellaril, which served only to increase his violent outbursts and episodes of depression. Bernie came to Red Lodge, Montana, in June of 1976. The Red Lodge Group Home and day services workshop staff supplied Bernie with support for community living. His often violent and aggressive behaviors increased. He was admitted to a local hospital psychiatric unit and immediately placed on a series of medications from Valium to Ritalin to Lithium to Ardane. After six weeks, the doctors felt that Bernie's condition was degenerating and asked for an electro-convulsive therapy permit. Bernie left the hospital, against physician's advice, with the director of developmental disability services in Red Lodge.
Following his stay in the hospital, the staff began to see Bernie as a person subject to a metabolic/organic disorder and no further medications were utilized. Although his explosive behaviors continued, staff members instituted any number of positive reinforcement programs. Some of these included picture boards, communications aids, relaxation time and space, and reinforcement for what was defined as "appropriate" behaviors. These programs only worked for short periods of time, and had to be redesigned frequently. Agitation, frustration, and confusion controlled his daily life. This cycle was to continue for 20 years!
Often during these years, a much gentler and more coherent side of Bernie would appear. He loved children and animals, and formed strong attachments with his peers, staff members, and many members of the Red Lodge community. He had a sharp and incisive sense of humor, and he saw beauty in things that others did not. His keen insight and understanding of the people around him, and his compassion for those close to him, led the staff to continue to search for an answer that might facilitate a healthier, happier Bernie. We needed to open doors that had been shut for many years and address his mental health issues.
Several components fell together from April, 1997 through June of 1998.

In April of 1997, Bernie began seeing a new psychiatrist at the Billings Mental Health Center. Although we were apprehensive about introducing Bernie to medication because of past experiences, through process of elimination, she found a medication called Zyprexa that began to reduce his emotional and violent episodes. Although the staff continued to report difficulties in Bernie's work and home settings, his violent episodes were significantly reduced.
Bernie's quality of life at the group home was very trying for him. Living with seven other people and trying to comply with a hectic, noisy, and demanding atmosphere caused him to retreat into his bedroom and seclude himself from the activities going on around him. If he did involve himself in projects or activities, he could only maintain his composure for short periods of time before having an episode or escaping into his bedroom.
On February 5, 1998, Bernie became part of a new developmental disabilities service expansion project through the Montana Department of Health and Human Services for Supported Living. The expansion money allowed him to consider other living alternatives and have the opportunity to choose the agency that would support him. He was approached by a community merchant whose place of business Bernie had patronized for several years. When she heard that Bernie was looking for a place of his own, she offered to rent him an apartment that was attached to her home. Bernie moved into his new home on
May 1, 1998.
Bernie purchased new furnishings for his home. He placed and organized every article and piece of furniture to his liking. He chose his own color schemes, chose his own food, and planned his own meals.
Given a sense of ownership and the ability to control his own life, Bernie created a quiet, calm, and happier environment for himself. His behavioral and emotional needs began to decline as he became more comfortable in his apartment. Previously, the staff was documenting 20 episodes per week in both the home and at the workshop. After Bernie had moved into his own place, episodes diminished to 1-2 per week over the following six months! The amount of time spent by the staff in supporting him decreased by at least 75%.
One month after his transition into his own home, Bernie started a new business. He and his supporting staff members initiated the business with the assistance of David Hammis, Organizational Consultant from the Rural Institute at the University of Montana. The team used their resources and history with
Bernie to visualize and implement a plan for a business that fit Bernie's interests, and with a $250 contribution from Dave, the business, called Klundt's Kritters was up and running.
Bernie sells stuffed animals at the Beartooth Nature Center. The Center is a nonprofit facility that cares for wild animals that are injured or too tame to return to the wild. Bernie's products depict the actual animals cared for at the Center, and his business is doing quite well. In fact, he makes many times more money through his business than he earns through his real job—cleaning a local restaurant after hours two days per week. Bernie pays 10% of his profits to the Center in exchange for the Center exhibiting his display. For this fee, the Center's volunteer workers oversee sales for him, and Bernie takes the responsibility for making sure that the inventory is counted, the stuffed animals are labeled and priced, and his display stand is stocked and ready for business each week.

Bernie has been featured in the local newspaper, The Carbon County News, and during the 4th of July, his animal stand was available at a benefit for the Center hosted by Jack Hannah, a well-known TV personality and director of the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. Bernie met Jack and conversed pleasantly with him (as two contributors to the community would). He mingled with the large crowd and spoke to friends. A year ago, we would all have known that this event would have been too much for him to handle, and would have prepared for a possible explosive and violent episode. Now he is a local business owner with a place of his own. Bernie is part of the gang.
Bernie had two things working for him when all these new opportunities were presented to him. First, he had staff members working for him who had known him for 10-20 years, and when presented with a series of obstacles, they were able to pull from their personal experience and knowledge to facilitate solutions that benefitted Bernie. Secondly, Bernie had his own inherent strength. Although Bernie had experienced some personal difficulties, he is charming, polite, compassionate, endowed with a magnetic personality, and has developed friends throughout the community and in the organizations that serve him. These community members and staff dedicated a lot of time and support to assure that his life transition went smoothly. It was not a matter of being compensated with money or recognition. It was the dedication of many of his friends who wanted him to succeed and become that happy and healthy man we now know and enjoy.
By Mike Flaherty and Marlene Disburg, Organizational Consultants at The Rural Institute
Readiness has become the prevailing measurement decision makers use when determining if and when a person with a disability should work in the community. Evaluating readiness takes a variety of formats, using both subjective and objective measurements. Regardless of the method that is ultimately used, the decision maker's assumptions about people with disabilities remain the same—extensive in-house
(sheltered) preparation is necessary before a person with a disability can succeed in the community.
Training people with disabilities to be ready implies that the natural ways of learning and growing in the community have little consequence for them. A great deal of time, energy, and money is spent teaching skills to people with disabilities in unnatural work environments in the belief that once these skills are mastered in the unnatural/sheltered settings, the individual will be ready to work in the community.
These readiness training models ignore the power of real world experiences. These training models also underestimate the importance of learning through "trial and error." Readiness training is often preceded by standardized functional employment assessments, which severely limit customer choice. Ultimately, the getting ready method deprives the customer of personal choice.
There is no shortage of "canned" readiness programs, but what about alternatives? What is available?
How is it done? Where is it done? Who does it? When does it happen? The answers to all these questions are either directly or indirectly dependent on the individual with the disability seeking employment in the community. Simply put, the customer is it, the right and the best choice to be the

ultimate decision maker in terms of what is possible. The phrase "the customer is always right" is most appropriate in supporting the decisions and work choices an individual with the disability makes.
One critical issue when making good employment decisions is getting all the information available about the jobs that the customer wants in the community. You can use a naturally occurring model to gather and evaluate this information—a model that the vast majority of non-disabled persons have used consistently and successfully to identify their choice of work. In its simplest application, gathering information is nothing more sophisticated than "trial and error." Beneath the application of the "try it and see what happens" method, is the core of experience-based learning, a naturally occurring selfassessment in the community. The customer gets immediate, real responses to his/her work trial in the actual work situations he/she is considering.
In community based self-assessments, the customers are in control; they are the best available experts on their wishes. The customer is the ultimate consultant as to the best practice of matching the job to the job seeker.
Customer self-assessments start everywhere and anywhere. Typically advocates, family, or job developers will initiate the process, with the direct input of the customer. The critical first step is listening to the dreams, goals, and expectations of the customer. A formalized listening process may include person-centered planning or futures planning, where the customer talks about his/her life dreams, goals, etc. The customer lists the employment choices he/she wants to explore in the community.
This information lays the groundwork for the second step, identifying all the potential job sites and sources that reflect the customer's wishes. The job choices the customer offers can potentially range from general to quite specific, depending on the individual's level of prior experience with the community. An open ended approach is invaluable, potentially providing customers with a variety of venues to explore during their job exploration. The identification process can range from an informal visit to a business for basic employment information to specific long-term on-site work simulations and on-the-job work trials. Emphasis is on the natural teaching that occurs on real job sites, not in static or sterile getting-ready models.
The final step is choosing the job site that provides the best environment for customer self-assessment.
Of all the potential jobs explored, which most closely matches the customer's wishes? Key to the development and ongoing maintenance of community jobs are the efforts of parents, friends, and advocates. Clear communication among all concerned (with the values of customer self-assessment and satisfaction always in the foreground) is critical to establishing successful short and long-term relationships.
This is Jeremy's story, an example of the value of utilizing the supports that naturally exist in family and community. Jeremy's story does not follow the narrow constraints of the readiness model. His story illustrates the power of listening, identifying, and making choices for ourselves.
Jeremy is a sandy-blonde, slender teenager. His large dancing blue eyes—obscured but not paled by thick corrective lenses—inviting warm smile, and enormous personality greeted us a few months ago

when we went to listen and talk about Jeremy's future planning. We learned that Jeremy loves Nintendo and hunting. He passed the Hunter Safety Course two years ago and looks forward to hunting elk with his father again this fall. Jeremy, like all 15 year olds, has many career interests (veterinarian, artist, policeman, sales, garbage collection) but most of all, Jeremy wants to build things, and has identified carpenter assistant as his career choice. Jeremy attends high school in Stevensville, Montana, and would exchange time in English or Math for class periods in Shop/Industrial Arts.
Jeremy describes himself as a "good person, honest, (most of the time)" he qualifies. Jeremy has to be reminded to mind his manners but says he is getting better. He likes a clean bedroom and takes responsibility for that family chore. Jeremy enjoys playing practical jokes on his family and friends, and accepts payback for his playfulness—Jeremy has a great sense of humor. He says he has "a soft spot" for people and babies and also expresses a particular fondness for the family dog Rustler and his horse
Tachonee. Jeremy, riding his red and white Suzuki four-wheeler, mimics a bright comet streaking across the night sky. Hang on to your seats—Jeremy is full of spontaneous energy. It's easy to like Jeremy.
Jeremy was born with spina bifida, Arnold Chiari Syndrome, and hydroecphalus. He uses a wheelchair most of the day but works hard to use a walker for short periods of time. Jeremy has a loving supportive family and strong community support system. He has established himself as a contributing member of his community and his parents are identified in the community as "Jeremy's mom" and "Jeremy's dad."
Jeremy has dreams of living on his own in the nearby town of Hamilton and plans to support himself through his choice to work in the field of carpentry, like his good friend and mentor Wayne. Although
Wayne and his wife Karen taught Jeremy in school, they have become more than his teachers; they are valuable supports to Jeremy and his family.
This summer Jeremy will be training to use basic woodworking tools. With funds from a Social Security
Plan for Achieving Self Support (PASS plan) Jeremy will purchase a scroll saw and work toward getting a position as a carpenter's assistant soon after his graduation. Wayne will instruct and assist Jeremy in the safe operation of power tools and carpentry techniques. Because Jeremy has three more years of school left before he graduates, he and Wayne will work intensely over the next three summers. Jeremy will practice and expand his acquired skills through high school shop classes and continued instruction from
Wayne during the school years. Jeremy and his family are active participants in developing his Individual
Education Plan (IEP). His IEP will be customer-driven, with course work supporting Jeremy's desire for carpentry work. His IEP is individual—not developed from a canned template. Jeremy's vocational preparation experiences are structured to support his choices and Jeremy will continue to identify his strengths and needs over the course of his school life.
As Jeremy's circle of relationships expands in his community, he will meet other employers, friends, and mentors. Over time, he will change his mind on many occasions and based on his experiences may make a choice to do something different. Naturally, life is full of change, challenges, and new information for all of us—for Jeremy, too!
How long does it take to get ready? Jeremy doesn't ask. He says, "JUST DO IT!"

by Todd Gorman, Vocational Specialist
Job Connection, Inc.
Graduating from high school is scary enough for most of us. Not knowing what we want to do with our lives vocationally can be an intimidating experience for anyone. But when you have limited vocational support in your community and no work experience, the task ahead of finding a job and being part of your community can be overwhelming.
Amanda graduated from Laurel High School in 1998, and had no idea what and where she was going to work after graduation. Her mother, Linda, recounts that Amanda always loved school, all the support she received there, and the friends and teachers that played such an important part in her development.
School gave Amanda a sense of security and belonging. After graduating, Linda didn't know what the future had in store for her daughter. Having little information on where to find career guidance and the on-the-job support that Amanda would need, Linda was worried that Amanda would be sitting around doing nothing for some time. Linda knew about supported employment and what it had to offer her daughter, but the closest social service agencies were based in Billings, about 18 miles from Laurel, and there was no public transportation between the communities. The supported employment agencies in
Billings also have limitations of their own—they lacked the staff and funding to reach out to the rural communities in the area. Linda knew all this and did not know where to turn to help her daughter move on with her life and enter the world of work.
In October of 1998, Amanda's fall after graduation, The University of Montana's Rural Institute made grant funds available through their Montana Rural Employment Initiative to help adults with disabilities in rural areas find employment. Job Connection, Inc., located in Billings, obtained a grant to job develop and train specifically outside the Billings community. Laurel was targeted for this project because it was in desperate need of supported employment services. Job Connection's first customer and first job placement was Amanda.
Amanda started her first job at Ben Franklin Arts and Crafts in Laurel as a courtesy clerk. Her duties include vacuuming and light cleaning and most of her day is filled with stocking shelves and helping customers. Her job coach, Kim, stated the first week Amanda was shy and nervous because the whole work experience for her was so new and intimidating. Amanda is an extremely likable and sweet young lady, but in her new surroundings she acted introverted. She was so shy she did not talk to anyone but her job coach. By week two though, Amanda was so happy with her job and her co-workers that her true personality came to the forefront. And the rest, as they say, is history!
Amanda's supervisor, Rod, is thrilled to have Amanda as an employee and to have her be part of the Ben
Franklin family. He is pleased with the amount of time and energy she puts into her work and the cheerful attitude she brings to the job. "She is such a joy and lighthearted, once she got comfortable with us," said Rod. Kim stated that when they first started the job, Amanda had reservations about the kind of work she would be doing and whether she would like it. "She loves her job and all the different things she does around the store," she said. "She now helps the customers find items and is so comfortable with her co-workers that the good natured teasing that goes around is sometimes initiated by Amanda."

Linda says that working in the community has given Amanda a sense of security and belonging, just like she had when she was in school. "She has always loved school," Linda stated, "and now she loves her job…nothing has changed." Kim says the biggest change she sees in Amanda after four months is that she has become so outgoing and comfortable. "Amanda is really growing as a person and her personality is so contagious that she creates, unknowingly, a better place to work for her co-workers and customers."
by Gary Gill, Vocational Specialist at Lamplighter House
Lamplighter House in Kalispell, Montana, provides services—day treatment, vocational outreach, and case management—to Montanans with mental illness through the Western Montana Mental Health
Center. This year Lamplighter House received a grant through the Rural Institute's Montana Rural
Employment Initiative (MREI) to expand our vocational service capacity. As a result of this grant, we built our vocational capacity by developing an employment advisory council and monthly educational forums. MREI funds paid for an additional staff person to work with me on employment and provides extensive staff/consumer training and technical consultation.
We were also able to take advantage of money from a second Rural Institute employment program, the
Job Training Partnership Act: Montana/Wyoming Careers Through Partnership Project (JTPA). This project provided funds directly to consumers to start their own businesses or pay for vocational training and services. Throughout the year, each time someone successfully found a job, it inspired the other consumers we serve to look for community employment. Success blossomed into more success, and it all started with seed money through the Rural Institute's supported employment projects.
Below are four consumers' work histories. Each consumer successfully found employment as a direct result of Lamplighter House's partnering with the Rural Institute.
Ron is 55 years old and was referred to Lamplighter House in late 1997. He has been seeing our psychiatrist and using case management service for the past year and half. Because he hadn't worked since 1992, he was referred to our vocational services to participate in our Job Club and for assistance with searching for work. Our Job Club meets once a week and the members set the agenda. At the Job
Club, members can get leads on jobs, get help filling out job applications, and share their job-hunting and work experiences with their peers.
Ron was referred to my office in December, 1998. He felt he was ready to go back to work and would like my help with his job search. After interviewing Ron, completing a Vocational/Personal Profile Form and an Interest Form, we concluded that Ron would like working outdoors in a laborer position, preferably one without a great amount of supervision. Because his work background was in the timber industry, this is where we began our job search. Ron and I worked on his resume and filled out applications together, but Ron went to his job interviews alone. He found a job splitting and stacking firewood with Montana Timberline in Columbia Falls. He started with them on December 20 and worked there until January 15. While he was working for Timberline, Ron continued to apply for better jobs and he found a better paying job with Great Northern Bark Company. He went to work for them on January

30, 1999. This summer Ron found an even better job, working as a groundskeeper at Glacier National
Park for $9.00 an hour.
Zach is 42 years. When Zach was first referred to Lamplighter House, he was nervous around people. He
"feared people" because they might believe he was not "good enough." He was isolated at home in his bedroom. In public, his thoughts were racing, he breathed rapidly, and he easily became angry with others.
Because of treatment and medications, Zach no longer suffers from the majority of his symptoms and now wants to be a productive citizen. While interviewing Zach, it came to my attention that he enjoyed working with wood. He said that he had completed and sold several wood carvings. He brought several of his carvings into the office and I was amazed at how good they were. I asked Zach if he thought he could make a living doing this and without hesitation he stated he was sure he could. I asked what he would need to set up a shop with all the tools to start a business. Zach did all the footwork and gathered prices of all the tools and equipment he would like, and I helped him apply for JTPA funds for his own business. Zach received $2,973 in JTPA money. He now has all the tools and materials for his wood products business.
Zach has been selling his sculpture and jewelry boxes at the Farmer's Market in Kalispell and at various arts and crafts fairs in Western Montana. Recently he sold a sculpture for $1700.
Garold is 32 years old. He has visual hallucinations, is hypersensitive to noises (birds, cars passing by), and sometimes feels a "hardening of his chest" with pressure coming from the inside. Television commercials have special meaning to him and seem to tell him "don't buy here, you don't have the money, I do."
Garold came to my office in December, 1998 and explained he had lost his job and needed to find work.
He enrolled and began attending Job Club every week. The second week he attended, he noticed a job opening that I had found on the Montana Job Service Web Page. He said he thought he would like to be a janitor and this opening fit the bill. I asked if he wanted my assistance applying for the job and he said he really wanted to do it by himself, so with my moral support he applied for the job. He received an interview and asked me for some tips on how to interview. We did two mock interviews before he went to interview for the job. Garold was chosen for the job on the January 15 and has been working at Lee's
Janitorial since. I did not have to job coach him.
Miss "T" is 38 years old and has a history of chronic depression. Miss "T" came into my office in
February, said she needed a job, and asked if I would assist with a job search. While interviewing her, it became apparent to me that this woman had a wonderful work history, including such postions as personnel supervisor for a large national marketing and managing group, team coordinator and fine arts project coordinator for a school district, physical therapy technician, and assistant and posting clerk for a federal credit union. She also has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and
Economics, graduating with a 3.93 GPA.

Job searching in northwest Montana during the winter is not exactly full of promise and most of the jobs available are fairly low paying compared to other parts of the country. I felt that Miss "T" had credentials that warranted a higher paying job than those being offered in Montana at that time. One day when she was in my office, I discussed this with her and asked if she would be willing to accept a position outside
Montana. She thought for a moment and said yes, so we broadened our job search to cover areas outside the state. Within a week we found an opening on the Internet for a position in Washington, DC.
She applied for the job, was granted an interview, and was accepted for the position of administrative assistant at a Congressional office. Miss "T" began her new job February 27, 1999, and is still employed there.
Mario is 38 years old and has a bipolar disorder. Mario's symptoms have interfered with his ability to work. He had not worked in a year and currently lives with his parents.
I interviewed Mario on February 1, 1999. At that time he didn't know what kind of work he wanted to do. He had an impressive work history in graphic design, but stated he just didn't want to do that again, just yet. He said he didn't know if he could take the stress. After Mario had left the office, I was looking over the list of interests he had filled out and noticed he was an avid skier. A new ski resort called
Blacktail Mountain had just opened in the Flathead Valley and had been advertising for ski instructors. I obtained an application, then called Mario. Mario was interested; he applied for and got the job. He started working on the February 5 and worked until the resort closed for the season on April 4.
As I look back at each of these cases, I see one common denominator. I did not get jobs for any of these individuals—they all worked hard and obtained jobs on their own. All I did was facilitate. I assisted with their job search and gave them support, but they did the leg work and it was a job they chose, rather than a job I chose for them. By the time they started working, each of them had a vested interest in their respective jobs and to that I attribute their success.
By Jamie Widhalm, Employment Specialist
Career Development Associates - Easter Seals
Eric grew up and attended school in Choteau, Montana. However, once he finished school there was nothing for him to do. Eric wanted and needed a job not only for financial reasons, but also for a feeling of self-worth. Many people had told him that he was not employable or that they would not employ him. Although people in the community did not treat him with much respect, Eric always remained positive and did not let what anyone said bother him.
During school and after, Eric never qualified for developmental disabilities services so in many cases he fell through the cracks, not always getting the services that he truly needed, such as case management,
Social Security benefits, Medicaid, or a service provider to name a few. He did qualify for vocational rehabilitation services and that is how I got involved.

When I started working with Eric, we tried a couple different type jobs. In both, Eric got the short end of the deal. Either there was an employee who did not like him (even if he was doing a good job) or someone did not like his talking. An interesting point about life in rural Montana—everyone knows all about everyone else. I ran into this with Eric several times. As I was job developing and inquiring with an employer they automatically asked me if I was talking about Eric. Sad to say that when I responded,
"Yes," I did not always get favorable responses.
Finally, we did find an employer who gave Eric a chance and who works with him positively when he does talk too much or interrupts when they are talking with a customer. They are helping to teach him responsibility and that there are consequences for his actions. My hat goes off to this employer for taking such an interest in Eric and helping him be the best he can be.
We found Eric's current employer after Eric had just been fired from a job. Upon finding out that Eric was going to be let go, I went to Choteau. I had just missed Eric at the employer, but I found him at the
Choteau Seafood and Steak House. While visiting with him, the owner came up to me and mentioned that they would be needing some help later. (They knew what had happened and Eric's situation) Eric did end up working for them on a very limited basis until their permanent help got fired. Eric then filled the permanent position.
He has worked at the Choteau Seafood and Steak House for approximately nine months. He has an assortment of responsibilities he does with pride. Eric assists with some food prep, cleans the grills, washes the dishes, busses and sets tables, does most of the cleaning, and runs various errands for the owners.
Because the owners have helped Eric out in so many ways, he now believes that he could leave Choteau and get a job some place else. We are proud of his accomplishments that nobody else thought to be possible!
by Melena K. Tripp, Employment Specialist
Summit Independent Living Center
Individuals challenged with disabilities in America today often find the idea of self-employment an exciting possibility. Especially in rural America, self-employment may be one of the most realistic vocational goals for those with disabilities who want their piece of the American dream.
Summit Independent Living Center's dream has been to provide individuals with disabilities with the option of self-employment. This has been accomplished, in part, as a result of The Rural Institute's
Training Department capacity building Montana Rural Employment Initiative (MREI). With a cash grant to us and extensive training and technical assistance, we have established a program to provide information and referral, evaluation of business feasibility, advocacy, and other supports to entrepreneurs.
The centerpiece of our self-employment program is the Business Assessment Scale (BAS). The BAS is a tool available to help define self-employment goals for those with disabilities. The BAS provides an early

assessment of an individual's support needs related to establishing and successfully operating a business. Once the Assessment is used, the real work of putting together a business and financial plan and supports begins.
Summit consults with consumers referred by Montana Vocational Rehabilitation services (MVR), to help determine the best approaches to self-employment by persons with disabilities.
The intent of the BAS is not to disallow self-employment for an individual, but instead to provide MVR necessary background information regarding the consumer. Additionally, the BAS provides the consumer with insight into his/her individual abilities and weaknesses. From these data, a potential business goal is developed and brought to fruition.
The BAS uses a numerical scale, from which individual business aptitudes are assessed. The assessment is accomplished by examining five main areas of business acumen, including:
 management expertise/skills,
 commitment/desire/persistence,
 technical skill/work experience,
 market demand, and
 personal credit/financial solvency.
The information gathered provides a cumulative score that calculates the feasibility of self-employment at a particular time. This information is helpful to the individual and his/her vocational rehabilitation counselor, as an assessment of the consumer's background and aptitude for a given business goal.
This information helps determine necessary training, resources, and other pertinent assistance required for the individual to realize a self-employment goal. Moreover, the data may suggest a delay of the selfemployment goal, until the individual is better supported in pursuing his or her interest.
The individual being assessed assists in the interview process. Remember to:

Define your business goal.

Be prepared to answer many questions.

Engage rigorous research to learn product or service demand in a particular market, or geographical area.

Know your capabilities. "To thine own-self, be true."

Be prepared to learn how to effectively write a business plan that will be presented to your vocational rehabilitation counselor, banker, or potential venture capitalist.

When writing your plan, remember to cover Who, What, Where, Why, and How.

Do not be afraid to ask questions—there is no such thing as a stupid question.

Be prepared to immerse yourself into your business venture.

Be prepared for any eventuality, by having the possibility of multiple approaches to solving problems.

Do not take your examiner's questions personally. They are designed only to examine your capabilities and aptitudes and shape your business goal.

Indeed, self-employment is a rewarding lifestyle. However, it behooves the individual to make informed decisions, be dedicated, demonstrate skills, and be prepared for long-term hard work. Additionally, be prepared for potential economic changes. The bottom line is simple: Opportunity is aplenty!
By Ellen Condon, Project Coordinator
The Rural Institute
Can students with severe disabilities work in the community? Sure they can if we take the time to find out how best to support them and tap into their contributions!
In December of 1997 I met Lance and his family. Lance was 16 at the time and received special education services in a self-contained classroom with several other students with labels of "severe" disabilities. He had performed some informal work tasks at school like emptying trash from his classroom and bringing his classes's attendance slip to the school office but there wasn't a goal for him to perform these tasks independently. He had never had any formal work experience and his Individual
Education Plan (IEP) team hadn't yet discussed work as a long term goal for him or what he would do after graduation.
Lance doesn't read, count, recognize numbers or letters, and the few words that he does use to communicate are difficult to understand. He needs support dressing, performing all personal hygiene routines including using the restroom, and he has always had 24 hour adult supervision at home and at school. The team lacked a vision of what he could do for employment. Although Lance's mom agreed immediately that Lance had something to offer and could become employed, not everyone was convinced that Lance was employable or that he had something to offer the business community.
In January of 1998, Lance and his family applied and were accepted to be participants in United Cerebral
Palsy Association's (UCPA) Choice Access Project. The project offered money to people with physical disabilities to enable them to become employed. The unique feature of the project was that the person
(or their family in Lance's case) had control over the money and could choose with whom to contract with, and what support they wanted or needed. Now that Lance and his family had access to money and could choose what support services they wanted and needed to get Lance a job, the questions became:
What can he do? What would he like to do? What is he capable of? Would anyone hire him? Can he really work?
To find out what Lance could do, Wendy Holmes of the Bitterroot Special Education Cooperative, and
Fred Petak, Lance's special education teacher completed an information gathering process called the
Vocational Profile. The Profile is an alternative to the traditional vocational assessments and is a useful tool for people with more significant support needs. The Profile process starts with the assumption that everyone, regardless of the severity of their disability, can work in an individual paid job in the community.
The Cooperative staff and special education teacher spent about 50 hours gathering information from people who knew Lance well. They hung out with him at home, at school and in the community. They wanted to know what he liked, what he didn't like, what he did at home for jobs and for fun, what his

family felt was important in a job for him, what supports he needed in various situations, what accommodations he might need in the work place, and who did he and his family know who might help us later find that "ideal job" for Lance. After all this information was compiled, the team reconvened to compose a list of: characteristics of the ideal job; conditions for employment, (factors which Lance and the family felt had to be present for a job to be acceptable); contribution that Lance had to offer; and a list of businesses which might have or could create a job that would match Lance's needs.
We all left that meeting with a list of tasks and ideas for potential jobs. We knew that Lance loved interacting with people, running errands, keeping active, going places in the car or school bus, and he was fascinated by big trucks. We also knew that his stamina for work would be low at first, that he would need to work in a location where he wouldn't be around traffic or other potential dangers, that his work tasks would need to be a combination of sitting and moving around, that he would need support to learn the job and ongoing support probably for the life of the job (which may or may not need to be provided by a paid support person). Although we had a lot more information about Lance, we still lacked that compelling vision of exactly what his job would be and what he could offer each employer that we would eventually be calling.
When we had completed the application for the UCPA Choice Project, I had noticed that Lance was not receiving the total available monthly amount of Supplemental Security Income through Social Security
(an indication that he could be eligible for a PASS Plan, a work incentive program that Social Security offers to assist people to become employed). It turned out that this indeed was the case! We wrote a
PASS plan for Lance and once approved, he was one of the first 3 students under the age of 18 in the
U.S. to have an approved PASS. The PASS offered him an additional $250/month to use towards his vocational goals. The PASS was able to fund two paid community-based job trials, and augment job coaching provided by the school to enable Lance and his support staff to gain more information about his work skills and clarify a vision of that future job.
The first job Lance tried was at a local café in Darby, Montana. He passed out menus, greeted customers, put away dishes, and filled condiments. We learned that Lance wasn't shy around strangers.
He liked putting things away and had a good memory for where things went. He had difficulty lifting the large ketchup container to refill the bottles, so he quickly lost interest in that task, and was distracted by windows that look out on traffic.
We weren't sure if Lance would understand the meaning of a paycheck at the end of a week so we arranged for him to get paid at the end of each day in cash. Lance had never really had an opportunity to learn what money was and what you could purchase with it, so we used this as a teaching opportunity.
Beyond the daily trip to the pop machine at school where he used change, he hadn't made independent purchases. The job coach would hand him dollar bills at the end of his shift and explain that he had earned money for working. On the way home she would stop at the store to enable him to purchase something he liked with his wages.
Lance's next job trial was at Marcus Daly Hospital in Hamilton. He started out in the purchasing department placing stickers on inventory. He began working two days a week for up to one hour and eventually increased this to three to four days/week, up to two hours daily. Lance's production and quality increased throughout the job trial. We discovered that he was capable of quality control (placing the sticker accurately on the correct section of the item), but he wasn't all that interested in paying attention to the detail required to do this. He handled distractions much better than we had expected,

and he worked much better if he knew exactly how much had to be completed before lunch. After about a month he seemed to become bored with the repetitive nature of the tasks. His favorite parts of the job were placing the finished product into the "done" basket and showing his supervisor all the work he had completed.
We were able to carve out another task for a job trial at the hospital, which involved pushing a cart from office to office and picking up paper that needed to be recycled. Lance enjoyed the increased movement and mobility involved in this task and was happy to interact with folks along the way. He learned the route very quickly and started doing portions of the task independently within days. He used an augmentative communication device to interact with people and needed more training or an adaptation to be able to accurately dump the individual boxes of paper into the main container. Unfortunately, this job trial ended after one week. What the recycling trial told us was that Lance's contribution was making deliveries where his outgoing personality would be valued and lots of quality control wasn't necessary.
We now had our vision of the job where he would be successful—we just needed to find an employer who had that need. We reconvened our profile team, revisited what worked and what didn't work for
Lance, agreed upon ideal characteristics of a job for Lance, and generated a new list of employers to contact.
Karen Hedges, the Job Developer began chasing leads for businesses that we thought were large enough to require inter-departmental deliveries; the court house, a medical lab, a local pharmacy and the US
Forest Service. None of them panned out. We then changed how we were thinking about the delivery task. Were there several items or services that a Darby resident would be required to drive to Hamilton to get? Could Lance run a delivery service?
We thought of film processing, dry cleaning, and prescriptions. Unfortunately the photo store said that having an intermediary drop off film in the past hadn't been successful and we found that Darby did actually have a place where you could drop off dry cleaning. People suggested a service that would transport other people from Darby to the hospital for medical treatment on a weekly basis but we couldn't see that Lance would have much responsibility in such a service.
After many more brainstorming sessions we came up with the idea to look for a business that would need a delivery service. We called upon Vicki and Korly Stiller, owners of A Place to Ponder Bakery and
Café in Hamilton. We talked to them about what Lance had to offer and asked if he could contribute something valuable to their business. They welcomed the idea. This September Lance will be starting a delivery service called "A Place to Ponder Comes to You!"
Marlene Disburg and Dave Hammis of the Rural Institute helped Lance get his second PASS plan approved; this plan will allow him to purchase and own a van, which he will use to make his deliveries.
Funds through the UCPA grant were used to purchase equipment Lance needed such as a beverage cart to keep his sandwiches and pop cold as he makes deliveries, and a helium tank so he can sell balloons to people ordering birthday cakes from the bakery. There are also funds available through this project to pay for the first month of job coaching for Lance but now we need money for ongoing support until he is as independent as possible. Darby schools has offered him some job coach support and Lance has recently applied to Vocational Rehabilitation for additional funds for a job coach and to put a wheelchair lift in his van, which will enable him (on days when he needs his wheelchair and his cart) to get in and out of the van.

I doubt Lance will ever drive his own van and he will probably need some ongoing support on the job.
However, he will be employed and he will be a contributing community member and tax payer. Our goal is that within one year of starting his business, Lance will be able to hire a driver who will be a business partner and will provide Lance with some support so that he no longer needs a paid job coach.
Lance and his team were really fortunate to be able to access all these funds, but I don't think that getting him employed was contingent on that amount of money. I believe that lack of financial constraints allowed all of us to get creative and think outside the box—which is really how we helped
Lance become employed.
By Barbara Kriskovich, Organizational Consultant
The Rural Institute
"Who are you?" said the caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied rather shyly, "I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then."
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Montana is always interesting in the spring, but for those of us who are involved in services for people with mental illness, this spring brought about big changes in Big Sky Country so that we, like Alice in
Wonderland, hardly know who we are. The big changes were the result of events that finally brought to an abrupt end the State's experiment with privatizing the public mental health managed care system.
By April, the 1999 Montana Legislature passed Senate Bill 534 as the vehicle to define a new mental health managed care system. Senate Bill 534, introduced by Senator Bob Keenan of Big Fork, generally revised the laws regarding public mental health delivery, requiring the Department of Public Health and
Human Services (DPHHS) to incrementally implement a mental health managed care system.
Incremental implementation allowed for time—time to find the system that would work for consumers, their families, the state, and service providers.
On June 30, 1999, the DPHHS and Magellan Health Services terminated their existing contract to provide public mental health managed care. This left Montana with no payment system for public mental health services and forced DPHHS to piece together an interim system.
Local mental health service providers, feeling a money crunch, laid off staff.
This was a system in change, with real people's health care on the line. It was against this backdrop that the Rural Institute's Montana Rural Mental Health Employment Initiative (funded by the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration—SAMHSA) took place. The Rural Institute staff took advantage of the changes being made to work with state officials, the Legislature, local community mental health service providers, and individuals with mental illness to help shape a new managed care

system that emphasized employment of people with disabilities. Our philosophy is simple: a job is the
best social program.
The Montana Rural Mental Health Employment Initiative's (MRMHEI) goal was to expand the supported employment capacity of public mental health services in four small rural Montana communities. Each community's mental health provider received an annual subcontract of $10,000 to build local employment capacity in replicable ways. The project focused on consumer self-determination, policy refinement, and staff training. Rural Institute staff worked in partnership with the four regional mental health centers and provided intensive and recurrent on-site training and technical consultation focused upon employment, alternative funding, and supports for individuals with psychiatric disabilities because a job is the best social program.
The Montana Psychiatric Association hosted a retreat that was facilitated by Dr. Robert Cole, whose specific skills in strategic planning and policy formation helped to guide the group. The retreat included psychiatrists, providers, consumers, legislators, DPHHS personnel, family members, and advocates. This retreat helped to slow down the process of replacing Magellan Health Services's managed care system and to take a closer look at the process. At these meetings, the Rural Institute was represented and emphasized the importance of employment. The mission statement of the group was "the Coalition for
Montana Communities of Care propose and support a system involving bottom-up organization, which is open to efforts to incorporate the wisdom of successful programs from other areas, which changes incrementally, starts pilot projects, and contains a sophisticated purchasing agency."
Following this retreat, the Department of Public Health and Human Services held a series of town meetings. More than 400 people participated in twelve meetings. Attendance was diverse. A variety of topics were discussed, including the need for local managed care representation, and a simple, responsive grievance and appeals process for health care claims. The Rural Institute attended these meetings to discuss employment. Other items mentioned were the payment of claims, number of people being served, consumer information, and availability of services.
DPHHS also held a public hearing to discuss the proposed rules for the interim mental health program, which took effect July 1, 1999. The rules include proposed reimbursement rates for providers. At this hearing, the Rural Institute once again stated the need for employment services and supports to be a part of the mental health care system. Another key concern that consistently surfaced was the need for crisis intervention services. Case management and caseloads were discussed.
DPHHS sought input from people who were interested in serving on the new Mental Health Oversight
Advisory Council. Some ninety people applied to serve on the new council. The new council met for the first time in August 1999. The council consists of nineteen members, including State Senator Bob Keenan who served as chair. Consumer representation on the council is fifty percent. The council will:
 assist in the development of Request for Proposals for mental health services,
 assist in evaluating the proposals,
 recommend planning priorities and review and comment on the state plans for mental health services,
 review and comment on administrative rules
 identify and recommend performance and outcome measures

 report to the Legislative Finance Committee
 identify desirable statutory changes
 monitor, review, and evaluate the adequacy and allocation of services
 act as a conduit for direct community input to the Department.
Also on the state level, Governor Marc Racicot appointed Bonnie Addee as the Mental Health Care
System Ombudsman, a position that was created by Senate Bill 534. The Ombudsman will represent the interests of consumers and families involved in the public mental health system.
During the months of February and March, the Rural Institute Training Department hosted Open Space
Meetings in Livingston, Hamilton, Miles City, and Conrad, the four community sites in the Montana Rural
Mental Health Employment Initiative. The meetings reflected both the feel of Montana and the individuality of each community. The purpose of the meetings was to increase the capacity for employment of people with mental illness. The meetings were well attended with an interesting mix of consumers, service providers, and business people. The meetings were held in the late afternoon from
5:00PM to 7:00PM with desserts and beverages offered after the meeting.
It seems only natural that in Montana's Big Sky Country Open Space Technology would be used for town meetings. Open Space Technology works where conflict and confusion are present. It is effective when a diverse group of people must deal with complex and potentially conflicting information in innovative and productive ways. It is particularly powerful when nobody knows the answer and the ongoing participation of a number of people is required to deal with the questions. The Open Space environment encourages people to be creative, synergistic, and self-motivated. Any size group can use Open Space
Technology. The local mental health centers and the organizational consultant from the Rural Institute compiled a mailing list of people in the community to invite. This list included consumers, family members, business people, agency staff, community leaders, and interested people. The invitation did not include a prepared agenda, but an invitation to be a part of a creative meeting. People were told that every issue and concern would be addressed and that they should "be prepared to be surprised."
These interactive meetings initiated a substantial community consensus building process.
When participants arrived for the meeting, they were greeted with colorful posters. The posters explained:
1.
The Theme - Employment of People with Mental Illness
2.
The Four Principles: a.
Whoever comes are the right people. b.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. c.
Whenever it starts is the right time. d.
When it's over, it's over.
3.
The One Law -The Law of Mobility, which says that if, during the course of the gathering, any person is in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must move to another small group to discuss a different piece of the puzzle.
4.
Be Prepared to be Surprised.
Chairs were placed in a circle, as a circle encourages communication and openness. When everyone was seated in the circle, the purpose/theme of the meeting was stated. Participants were asked to write

their concern/issue on a piece of paper and post it on a wall. Every issue of concern to anyone was raised and each person took responsibility for that issue. All issues were discussed in detail in small groups. A full report of issues and discussions was made available to all participants. Action plans and priorities were written. Passion and responsibility drive successful Open Space Meetings.
The meetings provided a forum for open communication without agendas. Because of the openness, many wonderful ideas were expressed. One participant expressed the need for more assistance finding employment and getting needed supports after becoming employed. Several participants talked of concerns about returning to work and its impact on their Social Security benefits. One consumer expressed the importance of finding an employer who will understand your disability and treat you well.
The issue of transportation was a universal theme in all the meetings. It was noted that the community could be educated about mental illness when consumers involve themselves in the community through service clubs and organizations. The fear of disclosure was an issue for many consumers. Some people feel comfortable disclosing and other people prefer not to disclose their illness. Small business and self employment ideas were brain stormed. One participant stated that everyone has skills that are useful in business. Someone noted that being employed is important for self worth and money, but it is also important that people continue to explore talents and abilities. There was consensus in all the communities that people will continue to work together on the ideas generated by the meetings.
The Open Space Meetings were important in bringing together a variety of people in the communities to focus on the idea of employment for people with mental illness. The meetings also empowered consumers to openly talk about issues that were of concern to them. Business people were eager to assist with ideas and suggestions. These meetings made everyone realize that we are all members of the community and want to be active and involved members of the community.
Business Advisory Councils are also being formed in the communities as a result of these Open Space
Meetings. The councils have consumers, business people, and service providers as members. The
Business Advisory Councils will expand as the implementation phase of this project gradually replaces the consensus building phase. The councils meet monthly to work on employment opportunities in the area for people with mental illness. The business people who have stepped forward are truly a gifted and energetic group.
In each of the four MEMHEI communities, Rural Institute organizational consultants helped individuals with psychiatric disabilities to find work and helped their mental health care services to provide employment supports.
In Conrad, employment has become a reality instead of a dream for Coby. In July of 1999, Coby began working at the Conrad IGA grocery store three days a week from 10:00AM to 2:00PM. He starts his day by sweeping the entryway to the store, then bags groceries and stocks shelves. Coby's co-workers are supports. They taught him how to bag items separately and to know when a grocery bag is full enough.
Coby learned to stock shelves and how to stack carts to get the most benefit from each trip.
After the first week of work, Coby was more relaxed and comfortable with customers. His personal appearance is clean and neat, and he purchased new clothes for work.

In August of 1999, Coby was given a chance to increase his hours and days and now he works four days a week from 10:00AM to 4:00PM. He did this just as the store was remodeling with new checkout counters and a lot of mess. His supervisor said that Coby handled it all with ease. Coby has done well and can be proud of the work he is doing and his success. Judy Buechler of the Golden Triangle Mental
Health Center has been supporting Coby's learning his new job.
In Livingston, Elizabeth (who has had lots of work experience) is now working part-time as a rehabilitation aid. Elizabeth has worked on a volunteer basis for the Angel Line in Livingston. A Plan for
Achieving Self-Support (Social Security PASS plan) was written for Elizabeth for transportation.
Lee has also started working as a clerk at a local deli. Other people are working on employment goals, including dog grooming, medical transcription, school for graphic arts degree. Claire Hendrickson, a case manager in Livingston, has taken the lead on work and job development. She has encouraged people to take a chance on work.
In Hamilton, Lawrence is working at Mountain Rose Pottery. A talented artist in a variety of media, including the use of computer graphics, Lawrence wanted a job in the town of Victor, which is close to home. His job at Mountain Rose Pottery is the result of Jean McDonald's (of Western Montana Mental
Health Center) good job development practices. Lawrence, his family, and his employer are all thrilled with his employment.
In Miles City, a group of five consumers have joined together, with the help of Vocational Rehabilitation, the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), and Jeanne Vetch, the day treatment director, to start a small business. The Miles City High School does not have a school lunch program, so students go out for lunch—a ready market for the Lunch Express. Vocational Rehabilitation provided a catering trailer to use for their business and JTPA provided startup funding. Lots and lots of elbow grease was needed to clean the cook trailer completely and Jeanne added hand-tailored curtains. One of the consumers skillfully designed the eye-catching logo.
On October 1st, the Lunch Express began serving food from 11:30 AM to 1:00PM near the high school.
As these new business owner/operators become more proficient with cooking and selling, they plan to branch out into other areas of retail trade.
Even though this year's project focused on building community consensus, employment has already become an option of choice. But convincing state government, local mental health service providers, and individuals with mental illness to embrace the idea that employment is key takes hard work on the state, local, and individual levels. MRMHEI expanded the supported employment capacity of the public mental health services in four small rural Montana communities during the project's first year. The project's success is largely due to the big changes Montana's mental health managed care system has undergone this last year. The atmosphere of change provided an opportunity to reshape and refocus an entire system on the idea that a job is the best social program. It's that simple.