- [Narrator] Start recording.

- [Narrator] Okay, media recorder, I can do it.

- I did it, okay everyone.

- Okay, screen got little.

- [Narrator] Good afternoon everyone, my name is Myriam Alizo and I would like to welcome you to today's webinar. The ALSA Parent program meeting and webinar on Promise centers and family engagement. And like this, okay. Before we get started, I'd like you to go over a few items so you know how to participate in today's event. So you will notice on your screen, a screenshot of an example of the go to webinar interface. You see something that looks like this on your computer desktop in the upper right corner. You are listening and using your computer speaker system by default. And questions, to the right of the go to webinar PowerPoint viewer is a go to webinar control panel. This is where you have the option to select the way you hear the webinar, raise your hand and ask questions by text. You will have the opportunity to submit text questions to today's presenters by typing your questions into the questions for staff pane of the control panel. You may send in your questions at any time during the presentation, we will collect these and address them during the Q and A session at the end of today's presentation. There is also hand out that has the PowerPoint in PDF format for today's webinar. Okay Deborah.

- [Carmen] I think I'm going to start. This is Carmen Sanchez at the Office of Special Education Programs and so before we get to the main part of our webinar today which has to do with the Promise projects, we're gonna be first be hearing from Deborah Jennings who's gonna talk about something that's available now in the super website specifically for all of you as parent centers that you can use in communicating that kind of work that you do so Deborah, take it away.

- [Deborah] Thank you Carmen. And hello and welcome to all of my Parent Center colleagues, I just wanted to make sure that we share with you the exciting news of all of the outreach and the impact that we have had as Parent Centers over the course of the project year 2016 to 2017. The data selection was completed by every parent center except for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico who were excused from the hurricanes that were occurring at the time of the data collection. With that, we had over 900,000 contacts and what we have, are going to share with you in the next slide is the ways that you can access the more detailed information about the National results where we have designed an infographic and we also include a summary and a text format of the national results from across the Parent Center network, not only in terms of our contacts and our reach but also the impact in terms of the ways that parents have been able to benefit from the services of each of our centers. For you use as a parent center and your dissemination to your funders and your partners and families, we also developed an infographic that you can adapt to include your individual achievements and results so that you can disseminate that and that infographic is accompanied by just a quick two page guide that explains what you need to do in order to adapt the infographic and then on the next slide, when you download the handout in the control panel on your right, you'll see that there is handouts, you'll be able to download this entire presentation and in that presentation there is this slide which provides you with direct links to each of the resources that you see outlined here, the infographic, the summary in plain text, your adaptable infographic for your use as well as the two page guide to use in order to create your own infographic. So with that, if you have any questions or you need assistance, please call the Super Project Assistant, Myriam Alizo or actually contact her by email as well. And she's at malizo@spanadvocacy.org. And she will be able to help you and or direct you to exactly the person that can help you with your information. Myriam can also if you are looking for your data that you submitted, she can also download your report for you and send that to you so that you can use it for creating your infographic, thanks for your time and I am going to pass the ball to Corinne Ridinthal, I'm sorry, Corinne Winithal from OSEF who is the project officer or one of the project officers for the Promise Projects.

- [Carmen] So this is Carmen again. Before we can turn it over to Corinne, I just wanted to make a couple comments. One, I think most of the parent centers are quite knowledgeable about having this infographic. I think they did it last year also. So each year it gets better so I really encourage you to download that infographic and see how it could be useful to your center. So let me say a little bit about the purpose of the webinar which is Corinne is gonna discuss in detail more detail what Promise was about. And it was a very large investment of in for the department and those grants are now ending. But through the grants, a lot of the grants also did a lot of work with parent centers and we wanted to share with you the kinds of learning that happened from the project and how that can be used in moving forward as we work with the most wonderful of populations. So in addition, Corinne is gonna give you an overview of the Promise grants, we're also gonna be hearing from Tisha Harry who worked with specifically in Montana as part of the Aspire Project from Cid Van Koersel from WarmLine, the parent center in Northern California who worked with the California Promise Center from, I'm sorry, Carol Ruddell who also worked with the Aspire Project and lastly from Susan Barlow from the Parent Center in New York who worked with the Promise center in New York. I want to thank them all for being on this webinar. I want to thank David Eminheiser, our colleague here in OSEF for organizing the webinar and getting this information to you because we really think there's a lot to be learned from that so what you see in front of you right now is a quick poll. And I encourage you to take it. And then we'll turn it over to Corinne. So please select one of these topics, whether or now, how familiar you are with the Promise initiative so with that, let me turn it over to Corinne.

- [Corinne] Great thanks Carmen. Yes, please take the poll. I'm very interested to know if I need to spend three minutes or five minutes on my portion of today's presentation. Will we be able to see the results before I start?

- [Narrator] Yeah, Corinne, right now, you see right there.

- [Corinne] Great, great, so it looks like the majority either are very familiar or somewhat so that's very helpful information so I will do a very brief overview on the background of Promise which was began in the fall of 2013 and is ending in September. However, the projects do have a no cost extension and many of them will be providing services until September of 2019 so we still have a little ways to go, let's see. So I should've said the previous administration. This was proposed, the promise program was proposed in fiscal year 2012 by the previous administration to improve education and career outcomes for youths with disability on receiving supplemental security income and they wanted to foster the inter agency collaboration and six grants were awarded in 2013 and we'll be showing you a map of those shortly. But the total budget was approximately 231 million across the six projects, next please. So it aims to encourage ways of providing support and to provide an evidence base on the effectiveness of interventions related to transitioning to post secondary education and employment so we are trying to build the evidence through random control trials which we hope will show some impact at the end of our study which we still have a ways to go for that but next. We worked in very close partnership with other federal agencies as security, Human, HHS and labor. Social security administered a contract for the national evaluation, next please. I'm not gonna go through this. But this is our conceptual framework that mathematical policy research, our national evaluator developed Leon and I do have a citation there, if you're interested in reading a bit more about the evaluation design, next please. So the projects had about a year and a half to recruit their participants and they all met or exceeded their recruitment targets and enrollment targets. So they're a total of 13,172 participants who began at the age of 14 to 16 and as you can see, there's the total enrollment of 13,444. As I mentioned, it is a random control trial to test intervention and the control group continues to receive the typical services available to them in their state. So no services were withheld at any time, next please. There's the map of the projects. It worked out very well to have them coast to coast. Aspire, who you will hear from is the consortium of six states, next please. The lead agency who was awarded the grant had to be a state agency and had to be signed by the governor in that state so you can see the lead agencies and they have a host of external partners. Next please. So the core services and support, as I mentioned, they developed many partnerships but their core services or case management, benefits counseling and financial capabilities services, career and work based learning experiences and they have to offer at least one paid employment experience in integrated settings at at least minimum wage and the parent training and information has been really key to all of these projects. They are working with multiple OSEF PTIs and also family resource centers and other family organizations in their states so that the families are key piece of this. They're training not only youth but working very closely with families, next please. And this is a little bit about the National Evaluation. As I mentioned, you can read more about it in that citation but they're collecting multiple data from many sources. There soon will be some process analysis reports up on the SSA website where they interviewed families and used 18 months after enrollment so there's some potential impact in there and certainly some lessons learned and accomplishments, it will soon be available, next please. Each project, each of the model demonstration projects have to evaluate their own projects through formative, their performance measures and then they all have a management information system where they are tracking multiple layers of data, next please. AUCD was awarded the Promise TA Center in 2014 and on the next slide which you can go to, you will see the website where you can find information about, go to each of the projects websites and other resources so with that I will turn it over to, I think Tisha's next.

- Thanks Corinne. Hello everybody, my name is Tisha Harry. I am the site coordinator for Aspire in the state of Montana. I will be talking about reaching families separated by geography and the barriers to Access that go with that, next slide. So when we're talking about reaching families separated by geography, I'm going to give a little bit of context first. So Aspire Montana is just one of six rural states in the Aspire Project, Montana itself is the fourth largest state in the US with a very small population of just over a million people. We have four case managers to cover the entire state but because our geography, we have very high rates of what we call windshield time. In fact, in some cases, our case managers have to travel three and a half hours in one direction just to meet with a single family, next slide. So in this presentation, I'm gonna be talking about two different kinds of separation. I'll talk about families separated from services because of geography and I will talk about families separated from each other because of geography or living apart and I'll be talking about the barriers and what we've been doing because of it so next slide. Alright, so when we're talking about the barriers that are created by families separated from services due to geography, some examples of that are just services in general. When you're talking about a rural location, there's significantly fewer options for services available to these families simply because it's a rural location, in addition to that, transportation is very limited, there's no taxis, no Uber, no transit systems of any kind so if the family doesn't have their own vehicle, they're essentially without access to the few services that do exist in that area, employment opportunities are smaller, limited education opportunities. There's typically only one school in a rural location. Oftentimes, at 10,000 or less people. That one school is often K through 12. There's no college, no adult education centers and very limited extra curricular activities that they do. Next slide. So to alleviate some of the barriers to services because of geography, our solution has been to bring the services to the family so our case managers meet the families at locations the families can easily get to. This may be a home or a local diner. Mornings and evenings and sometimes even weekends are the times that we need to meet with these families. We pay other agencies to bring training to our families in rural areas and this includes some parent training centers. These agencies are already providing services in urban areas so essentially we're seating them with the funds in order to build their capacity to serve in rural areas. We also use technology, we bring computers and smart phones so the families can participate in webinars, online training or approved videos that we have viewed ahead of time and sometimes, I might mention, that our families don't have their own technology so our case managers bring their computers and let the families use it while the case manager is there. And finally, we participate in education services by attending IUP meetings, coordinating tours of colleges, job core, adult education opportunities and more. Next slide. Alright, so even with these accommodations, we still have ongoing barriers. The agencies that we pay to provide the trainings, often have difficulty finding places to facilitate those trainings, bars and gas stations in small towns are not very practical locations to hold training. While we have provided financial backing for agencies to travel to rural locations, this doesn't alleviate all the travel issues, for instance, we must account for the time it takes to get to the locations both for the trainers and the case managers and construction and weather are a real issue. Every one of our case managers and a lot of our trainers up here have experienced inclement weather and had to turn back from a training. And then learning the resources in several small areas. This means working with multiple rural areas. That means you have to know all the different services in multiple areas and this is very time consuming. And then finally, limited cell service. So even when our case managers and trainers bring their own technology to share with the families, there are times we can't even use it, next slide. Alright, so this next part and final portion is gonna be about families separated from each other because of geography, next slide. Alright, so just a couple examples of what I'm talking about, it's not something we anticipated in the beginning but we deal a lot with family members who live apart from one another and this could be a youth living in a group home while the family remains in their home town, a youth that lives in a completely different state with their grandparent while their parent or legal guardian lives in another state or maybe the youth has turned 18 and moved out or the youth has decided to join job core and doesn't live with their family. There's a lot more but you get the idea, next slide. This family separation causes barriers. For instance, parents become less engaged when they're separated from the youth. Because of the separation, an outside entity is more knowledgeable, sorry, knowledgeable about the youth than the parent themselves and parents who often retain guardianship of their youth even though they're separated. This causes a really big barrier because when the youth is trying to obtain a driver's license or sign up for a service like vocational rehabilitation or maybe they're registering for school or getting a signed release of information of some type, having that separation from their parents creates a significant barrier in being able to access the in services, next slide. Alright, so a couple other barriers. There can be a lot of legal confusion when parent and youth are separated by geography. If a parent is one state and attempts to obtain guardianship over their adult child maybe in another state, there's the question of which court system do we use, lots of legal questions come into play and finally, we've encountered the inconsistency of services in differing locations, even if the services are being provided by the same organization, they can look entirely different when they're implemented in more than one location, this can cause issues for families trying to access the same service in two geographic locations so that's a big barrier, next slide. Alright, so to accommodate these families separated from each other, we've found that connected with both the youth and the parent regardless of location is vital. In our case, each case manager visits both parents and the youth separately if necessary, on a monthly basis. If both of the parents and the child are separated by state and both states happen to be Aspire states, we assign the case manager from each state to each family member and the Aspire states also have the benefit of sharing a database so case managers can share information and documents by using that database. And we have had to educate ourselves and families on procedures and policies of the alternative residents or living location, whether that be a hospital, a group home or other location. We also make sure the parents understand that they are still the parent and in many of those situations, they still have a say in what happens to their child. You'd be surprised at how many parents don't think they do. Next slide. Alright, so in addition to that, case managers encourage and facilitate communication between parents and additional entities in the youth's life. When a parent and youth live in different states, we often coordinate and attend various appointments with the youth, then report back to the parent how it went and what steps need to be taken. Finally, we investigate services that are available in all geographical areas and educate the families on both. This is especially important when the services vary in each location so overall, we have certainly recognized that there must be a team approach. This is requiring a partnership of multiple agencies in order to truly reach these families in rural locations. Next slide. Alright, so this is my contact information. If you have any questions, I will be happy to talk to you about anything and give more specific examples if need be so that's it for what I have to say, thanks.

- [Cid Good morning, my name is Cid Van Koersel. I'm the project director at the WarmLine Family Resource Center in Sacramento. We serve 26 counties in far northern California. I apologize for the voice, hopefully I'm gonna be able to get through this pretty quick. WarmLine is a parent training and information center and an early start to part c family resource center in California, in California, the FRCs were the partners in the California Promise grant. Next please. So our question was how does WarmLine raise parent expectations of possible outcomes for youth, sorry for the typo, with disabilities? I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here. 'Cause I think it's certainly the PTIs who are on the line grapple with this every day, from experience, we know that the parents of disabled youth are frequently at a loss at what outcomes to expect for their children. They don't know what types of services and supports the youth is going to need, they don't know what they want. More importantly, they don't know what's available. And the outcome of that is low expectations for the youth. Next please, Myriam. So traditionally parents of children with disabilities are not led to have high expectations for the children. Many parents have no idea that their adult child can have a life independent of them, paid employment and social ties and as they contact WarmLine, they express frustration, confusion, fear of the unknown and mostly that equates to frustration with schools and agencies, confusion over programs and just outright fear of the future and because we are all parents here, we provide that listening ear because we have had similar experience, several of our staff have youth who have gone through transition. And one of the things we do regularly is encourage parents of all disabled students from a really, very young age to just start asking what the kids wanna be when they grow up. We all know that that happens for non disabled children but parents of disabled children frequently don't think to do that and we know that the answer is less important than the question because that gives children a place to begin on their journey of self determination, next please. So we have a few tools that we use to help provide, help parents have those high expectations for children. First, we model it with our own children and because several of us have been through the process, to hear our frustrations, hear the strategies we've used and hear our children's triumphs. We encourage parents from an early age to give their children choices and to support them as self advocates and dream big, we know that all of us, big dreams drive us to try new things. We have trainings, for example, supported decision making, person centered planning and student led IEPs, next. Another tool that we use is a booklet that we created called Moving On To Adult Services. It guides parents through the process of the adult services, features worksheets for student led IEPs, person centered planning, questions to ask adult service providers, we hand this out at trainings. It's on the WarmLine website, on our Special education page, we mail it to families on request and we also provide it to partners so that they can provide it to families too, next. We have an annual transition fair with Spanish speaking vendors, we provide Spanish translators. We did one in May that included Russian translators. And we did at least annually, with local adult service providers such as supported living, supported employment, social and recreation opportunities and we always have some sort of a break out information sessions such as a panel discussion with self advocates and we encourage parents to attend with their youth. One thing that's been very popular is what we call teen talk and parent cafe and they're concurrent activities where the two groups gather separately to discuss related topics so for example, both groups might talk about self advocacy, disclosure of disability or person centered planning, next please. We provide information about local activities for youth, such as Special Olympics, we know that those activities enhance the social skills for children in youth but the part that parents sometimes don't realize until they go is that parents really receive organic support from other parents or participating youth. And sometimes that's the most important component of getting youth out in activities, next. So here's my contact information. And my email, our website and you're certainly welcome to visit our website, go on the special education page and take a look at moving onto adult services. Thank you, I think I'm handing this off to Carol.

- [Carol] Yes, thanks Cid.

- Hello.

- So I've been asked to share a little bit about when families experience difficulties, crises and trauma. You can move along, Myriam. One of the things that I think happens in all of our lives is that we're just plain busy. Children are in school, parents work, there's medical appointments to go to. There's just a line for everything. Maybe it's to pay bills, maybe it's to report your earnings, as Tisha mentioned, a lot of our families are not connected electronically. If there's a line it's usually for the computer at the library or at a work force center. So even with connectivity, they're having challenges around that, a lot of our families do use cell phones for everything but gosh, they're small. It'd be hard to watch webinars and other trainings and contact well through that format. Certainly there's a lot of daily things happening in families and we can't forget the cultural or social expectations, at Aspire, we have quite a large population or American Indians and there are definitely cultural expectations that are different from say, your family or my family often and so being aware of those expectations is really important, next slide. So one of the things that we said when we started Aspire was that we really need to build and maintain a foundation of rapport and trust and it takes time, it doesn't happen because we show up today. It happens because we show up all the time. We become a constant, oftentimes, these families have revolving doors of service providers in their lives and we've made a commitment that we're gonna be there every month, you'll see us every time we say we're coming. So we've become a constant. We frequently stay in touch, multiple times a month. Maybe that's texting, maybe it's sending a letter, sending fliers for parent center activities. But whatever we do, we do it multiple times a month and then we certainly meet face to face once a month regardless of the distance that it takes to get there. Because in the end, we're really hoping to empower these families so that they can overcome even some of their learned helplessness. They can develop knowledge and skills, can become more independent and self sufficient, next slide. As was noted earlier, all of the promise projects are working with our PTIs, there's no question about that and in Aspire, we're working with six different PTIs. And they are one of six key interventions that we're providing so in the midst of all of this business of daily lives, we still expect families to be active and participate so we've established a core content to be delivered to families and parents and we're hoping, we're intending that they would attend six hours a year of workshops, now as you know offering something and attending are two different things so it doesn't always happen, next slide. So these families not only deal with the day to day life thing, they are dealing with a lot of other crises and traumas, perhaps it's financial. Maybe they don't have enough money to make rent this month. Maybe their food sources are limited. There's 31 days in the month and that Snap just doesn't last quite as long. There's medical emergencies, unforeseen co pays. Even if its only a few dollars for Medicaid, it's still cash out of their pocket. Sometimes there's relationships. Families split up or somebody joins the family for the week or for the month or for the year. So relationships change. These families also have mobility challenges, getting around in their communities. Even if they need to seek medical care and the nearest hospitals an hour away, how are they getting there and personal care. Sometimes there's just a matter of being able to care for your own needs so the challenges and crises that they face are real, now all of Promise is set up around all of these. Obviously we're looking at increased education, improved employment and greater self sufficiency. Theoretically, we should be addressing all this. Next slide please. So one of the, we've learned quite a few things actually about helping families through crisis. Obviously don't get on the crisis coaster with them. Stay the course, maintain your expectation and maintain your roles, taking ownership of the problem surely won't help families become empowered and be self determined about their lives. But it is important to listen and affirm their experiences. They're real, it's not our place to judge or patronize. Their experiences are their experiences. It might not be my experience. It might not be your experience but it's real. And then of course, we really do have to recognize those cultural influences in the situation, how someone from in for example, in some of our states, we have a high Polynesian population. How do they handle crises as a community, not just as a family, next slide. It's certainly important to be empathetic. I always tell people we can listen and use the information we have but we're not there to commiserate. That's not gonna help a situation but we can accompany a family through these challenges. And it's not about my limitations, it's not about my calendar and the example of driving three or four hours to visit with one family and they cancel when you're 30 minutes outside of town, yeah, that's frustrating but we still need to make the time to meet with that family and figure out how to get back their quickly and adjust to their schedule, not our schedule. We can't be influenced by those constraints. And when the time is right, we need to be ready with the information and resources. There might not always be a perfect plan B but if we know our resources and the services are available to our families in their communities, then we can come up with alternatives to help them with those crises, next slide. And then in the middle of all that, we have to think well gosh, I still have a goal. I still have something I was supposed to be doing with this family and it's important to listen. I think all of us have said that. If we listen to what a family is experiencing, then we can connect it to what our purposes is with them regardless of what that purpose is. There's nothing that doesn't fit, it's just a matter of being able to make those connections. So look for those opportunities, connect with other Parent education, the PTIs are fabulous. I've been a fan for many many years. And the resources that you all can provide is something that we need to be sure families are aware of as well. But even in a crisis, there are always steps to a long term solution, it's just a matter of making a plan, figuring out who can help, who's responsible and then holding people accountable because no man is an island, it takes a community. And the adage of it takes a village to raise a child is true, no one of us has a corner on the market. Being able to keep everyone focused on those outcomes and keep moving forward is really critical, next slide. So when I think about how we've looked at parent education and training in Aspire, we've had to evaluate a lot of different things, what day of the week are we offering classes, what time of day are we offering classes? Some families do better when their kids are in school so they can meet, other times it's like nope, we're just gonna bring everybody and hope they have food when we get there in the evening. So looking at time, day of week, location is important. As Tisha pointed out, some of our smaller towns, the bar and the gas station is not the place to hold a workshop so how are you gonna do that? We've made a lot of adjustments. We've offered retreat style events where it included overnight stays with travel reimbursement. We've done joint trainings and I think Susan, you mentioned that, where you have one thing or Cid, sorry, you have one happening at the same time as another time, something going on for the youth, something going on for the parents, we've done recognition events, recognizing the successes that families do have and included some short trainings in that, of course. We also do some of what we're calling family connections which are like mini orientations to all the services that are out there and when we've had to, we've done one on one opportunities with parents and we've actually increased the number of one on one opportunities for parents throughout the course of this project, next slide. So I guess if I could give some advice, watch out and recognize things is watch out those control influences, in our six states, we have every culture you can imagine represented. And each of those cultures are unique and bring characteristics to that family that we should respect and understand, don't get into the superman syndrome. It's not my job to sweep in and save the day. It's our job to empower families and for some, maybe that means a bit of hand holding at first but doing it for them will never result in that self determination so accompanying them through a crisis and the trauma, that's the thing to do. And of course, the next one will come. There's no question about that. But it's really easy to develop that oh, not again attitude so it's really important to remember that everyone has a crisis, each one of us. But having a good attitude and moving forward will help us be able to achieve what they can, what our successes are, what their goals are, what our goals are, next slide. I am gonna pass on the examples, I'm out of time. And the next slide is just my contact information. You're welcome to contact me any time as far a big project and we have lots going on. But it certainly is very relevant in terms of how we work with our parent training information centers. So thank you and I think Susan, you're up next.

- [Susan] So you know what they say, last but not least. I'm actually asked to speak about changing how systems work together and our system expectations. So let me just give you a little background real quick about how New York State did it. We have three locations where we focused our energies primarily in urban areas, New York City, Albany and in Buffalo, each one of those was attached to a parent center so we actually had Promise contracts to work directly with the project. Each area had a team consisting of a case manager, family engagement specialist, providers of vocational services in the school districts. Can you go to the next one, thank you. And you can go to the next one after that. Okay so recently in April at one of our learning communities state wide, Cornell conducted a survey, kind of a focus group, asking groups these questions and the next slide will cover some of the stuff we talked about. So identified were some major challenges with the family centers primarily, connecting with families and then maintaining engagement, communicating, developing partnerships along with the service providers as well as the schools and obviously capacity and consistency, I just wanna point out under the service providers, one of the areas that I don't think we anticipated of a real challenge was the work force around the providers. In our area and I'm sure this is going on in different areas, we're seeing a real difficulty with service providers being able to keep, retain staff, recruit and retain staff. Next slide. Thank you. So let's just talk a little bit about the service, this lovely slide that one of our Cornell people helped to develop, for us as an organization as a parent center, entering into this Promise grant, there were a number of areas that we had not had a whole lot of experience or were providing to some extent so for us, we were expanding our services, we were expanding our populations in some ways. We needed to really deepen our understanding of cultural sensitivity and we also had to expand our community. When we talk about our community, we're talking about we needed to learn more about family court, juvenile justice, housing, food stamps, social security. And we needed to know at a deeper level what the providers were doing. I think from a parent center, this was a move into the deeper world of services outside of just our typical special education. And most importantly, we had to train our staff as it related to all these, next slide please. Where I think we were most excited and where we are right now is before Promise, our parent center and I think most of the parent centers across New York state were at a tier one, in general, you call us, we give you information, we provide workshops, we do a little bit of follow up but we did not and were not in a position to intensely provide the support that the families that we work with in Promise truly needed, at this point, I'd say five years later, we're working, we're doing a lot of hand holding. We're doing a lot of empowering and I'd like to just quickly just tell you a story that would illustrate the success here and also feels like a little bit of a tease is this is where we wanna stay because of the work that we're doing so let me just tell you about Kim. Kim is one of our family engagement specialists. And Kim told me a story the other day that she actually asked me to share with you. And she was all excited because Kim had been working with this family for the past five years supporting them. So when she first met this family, the mom would get letters from social security and not open them. And she'd go to her house and she'd actually go through her mail with her and say here it is. This is the letter I'm looking for. So they opened the mail, they would look at the mail and then she would explain what the letter says. And then they would go to meet with social security. And the first time they met with social security, Kim found herself having to do most of the talking and the mom, the student basically sat and listened. So then after a while, Kim was at that point modeling and by now we're five years later, Kim came in the office and said so I went to this social security meeting with the mom and this time, I got to sit and watch. And this mom spoke to the social security with advocacy, with intelligence and with potential partnership. And I just think it's an important story to tell because ultimately this is the kind of support we're seeing that the families need so you can go to the next slide before I just keep going on and on. Another important aspect is partnerships and some of my colleagues spoke about this before. But as a result of Promise and I can't say this enough, some of the partners that we have been able to deepen those relationships with now are calling us and asking us to write grants together. We're now doing shared staff meetings and I think this is a really important system cost systems outcome because it may not have happened if we weren't working so closely with them and as my colleagues have said, you have to build trust across the board and building trust through working with the students and the families has resulted in relationship building so I just wanna point out if I could do Promise all over again, I would because all these relationships are blossoming and the next slide. And these are some of the relationships that we've deepened, I think as parent centers, a number of us work with a lot of these organizations, as I said, some of the organizations in juvenile justice and family court, in criminal court, in probation are areas that we're finding ourselves having a much deeper relationship with now that we may not have had before. So and we can actually go to the next slide and these are the area, this is an important piece and I spoke about it earlier. We had to do a lot of training with our Promise staff to understand a, the data collection piece, the fidelity piece, as well as knowing deeply the services that folks may need. Like we've said before, families aren't really gonna be that into wanting to work with you unless you can also help them as a family. I have to just do a quick plug and then I will let you go. If you wanna see some very cool videos, you can go to the New York State Promise website and they're called podcasts but there's some great videos that will demonstrate what Promise is all about. So on that note, because of timing, I'm gonna let y'all go and go to questions and answers. Go to the next slide.

- [Narrator] Thank you Sue and all our other presenters, Tisha, Carol, Cid for these presentations, we do have some questions that have been coming to be privately. One of them has to do with how much money, even percentage or the actual amount was dedicated to Promise in your common branch?

- [Carol] This is Carol, would you like me to field that one?

- Sure, yeah.

- [Carol] So when we were making our applications for Promise, we were allowed to request only $6,500 per youth that you, up to 2,000 essentially or in California's case, they had more so they received more. But if we said we were going to recruit and enroll 2,000 youth, then that case basically comes out to $52.5 million so of course half of the youth are assigned to the control group, our usual services so essentially you're talking about $13,000 per youth. It's a pretty cheap project for what outcomes we're getting.

- [Narrator] $13,000 per youth for both the services and the outreach.

- No. 6,500 each, so yeah.

- [Narrator] For the outreach, maybe I'm not tracking you. But 6,500 per youth for all the services together.

- [Carol] Everything right, all recruitment, outreach enrollment and services after enrollment, everything.

- [Narrator] Okay and you also said that that was quite inexpensive for the results you've been seeing. So can you talk a little bit more about your evaluation. I understand that it's not completely in yet because you're finishing up the project and most projects are going into a one year no cost extension but what are some of the preliminary data especially compared to the control group?

- [Carol] So in our formative evaluation in Aspire, we do phone surveys for our youth for an example. So we are doing phone surveys only of our control group verses our treatment group and in essence, what we're finding that our youth who do attend things which are not being attended by the control group, they're more likely to be employed, they're more likely to pursue post secondary education. They're more likely to remain in school. So we are seeing some statistically significant difference between our treatment and control group.

- [Narrator] Anybody else want to address the question of what you're seeing in the evaluation?

- [Narrator] Nora has a comment, she can hear me.

- Yup.

- Okay. Nora writes in pilots are great and the results seem amazing, what are the chances this program will be funded to continue and to grow to cover the entire country?

- [Carol] Again this is Carol. My quick is answer to that is the word sustainability was never in the announcement, it is a research study. So it has to end and then it has to be studied so that we can determine if there are truly these outcomes that are expected of increased education, improved employment and greater self sufficiency and less dependence on public benefits. We won't know if that has actually happened until Mathmatica policy research completes their 60 month survey and then analyzes their data so it could be a few years but at that point, I'm hopeful that there are some significant results that would result in some changes to the practices or the policies within our four federal agencies who are our partners but that's yet to be determined.

- [Narrator] Great, Kathy asked is the $6,500 per youth per year or over the entire length of the project?

- [Carol] I just had to unmute myself there. That's basically the entire project.

- [Narrator] Okay so $6,500 per youth over the course of the project.

- Yes.

- Wow. Any other questions, post them in the question box.

- [Narrator] You can also feel free to raise your hand and then we can unmute you if your hand is raised and then you can ask a question directly. So while we're waiting for possible questions, let me ask another question of for Tisha and Carol, since you're in state agencies, how has been involved in the Promise project changed your work in other areas or in other things that you do or if you haven't had a chance, if you're doing other things right now because you're so involved in the Promise project, how will a change moving forward in your other work and then the same for the Cid and Sue, how have being involved in the Promise projects changed the way in which you might be doing the work at parent centers, all of you have touched on that. But I just wanted you to just expand on that a little bit more.

- [Sue] This is Sue Barlow and one of the things that I think it has done is as an organization, as an executive director to a parent center, it's put, it's refocused some of my energy in where to look for funding for the future in terms of having a much closer relationship with our department of social services, with our department of health and look at the possibility of expanding into becoming more of a navigator/coach in a way to support families in a more intensive way.

- Great. Cid or Tisha or Carol? And if you're talking, I think Cid, you're muted. Let's try you, Tisha.

- [Carol] This is Carol. We have.

- Oh, I'm unmuted now.

- Then go ahead, Cid.

- Oh, I just echo the last statement that it has really improved our partnerships with agencies that work with that age group and has given us the opportunity to just expand everything that we were already doing so it's been a terrific opportunity.

- [Carol] And this is Carol, what I would add is that we were required as projects to partner in our projects with, I think it's seven and I'm gonna never be able to remember them all but the mental health agency, the DD agency, the VR agency, the Tan F agency, the labor agency, the WIOA agency so we were required right up front to build relationships and I think all of us as Promise projects, some of that existed. There's all kinds of WIOA for example or W-I-O-A for example requires counsels that contain all these people. And this is one example so it's, I think to some extent there is already in existence a lot of those relationships but I think the beauty of Promise is it makes you sit down at the table and it's not about well them or what they do or what we do, it has become a total collaboration, a true, what I would call partnering, laws and regulations can make us sit down at the table and go collaborate but to truly partner means we actually have common goals and a shared vision for how we're gonna get there and I think that's what Promise had done in each of our states and in our case, in Aspire, I see that happening even across our state lines and people working better together when they have shared purpose.

- [Narrator] Tanya has two questions. Well actually wait a minute, one. There was mention of the importance of cultural understanding and competency with respect to family and youth demographics, can you share some examples of this and it's impact on outcomes?

- [Woman] Lisa, can you repeat that please.

- [Narrator] Yes, I was just gonna ask if you wanted me to reread it. There was a mention of the importance of cultural understanding and competency with respect to family and youth demographics, can you share some examples of this and it's impact on outcomes, so the importance of cultural understanding and competency with the families you're working.

- [Cid] Okay this is Cid, we already had Spanish speaking staff in house but we've used them more extensively for some of our outreach like the transition fairs. We've used them for translation and just being the hosts to the Spanish speaking families and as I said, we also had a Russian speaker come to our last transition fair to support our Russian speaking families and I don't know about the overall state outcomes. I think Corinne probably knows more about that.

- [Narrator] There's another question. Corinne can pipe in if she wants to answer it. What kind of work was done with the providers to help them increase their expectations for youth with disabilities so often as parent center staff, we hear from families that from an early age, it's the professionals that discourage them from having high expectations for their children with disabilities, that's from Diana.

- [Sue] Can I just jump in on that one because we actually had an aha moment throughout this project. Most of the providers that were contracted to do the Promise work in New York State were providers for adult services, vocational rehab providers and at one point, I think the leadership in the Promise grant at our state level realized we have to teach the youth piece to this, the working closer with the schools but also just expectations of a teenager and that was just a little bit of a aha moment I think at our state level.

- [Narrator] I also think, Tisha, you wanted to weigh in on some of these questions.

- [Tisha] Yeah sorry, I was muted. But I would agree with that. For a lot of our providers up here, there was that moment where, sorry, these providers that were working with adults, not as many kids maybe and then they shift from adults to focusing on kids, there was that moment where the providers went now this, this is where we could potentially be effective. We'll start earlier and see if that will help and have a better outcome when they become adults. So that was a good aha moment up here as well in Montana.

- [Narrator] Any other questions, comments?

- [Narrator] Tisha, would you like to give an example of some of the cultural competencies we've learned around working with our American Indian tribes?

- [Tisha] Sure, I feel like I hear a plane landing.

- [Carol] That's me, sorry, let me mute myself.

- [Tisha] Carol, will you ask that question again?

- [Carol] Oh I just said would you share some of the things we've learned around working with American Indian tribes and members verses non members even and what some of the strategies around that cultural competency piece?

- [Tisha] Sure, that has been an eye opening piece for us in the Aspire project, Aspire made a very intentional effort to get a very accurate representative population when we recruited people and that included individuals off Native American reservations. So in order to do that, we have to interact with each tribe's government in order to get permission to recruit off of specific reservations. Just in the midst of that, every single, we have learned that every single tribal government is an entity of its own and it stands on its own. And we had to learn each government and how that government functioned and how we needed to get permission from those sovereign nations. In addition to that, we had to learn about these youth and what really trigger them. Carol and I were looking at some of the data in our database and recognized that there was a lot of parents that identified as American Indian and also associated with a tribe, they were enrolled. However, there were not as many youth that identified as Native American or did identify as Native American but were not enrolled in a tribe. And so when we went to tackle why that might be we uncovered that there's a whole blood quantum conundrum amongst the tribes and essentially in order to be an enrolled member of a tribe, some tribes, most tribes require an individual to meet a blood quantum requirement and while the parents might maintain that blood quantum, their youth don't always meet that blood quantum and so some of these kids who are identify as Native American or essentially what they refer to as walking in two worlds, they identify as Native American and white and feel this identity struggle between the two worlds and which one do I choose so that's certainly a component that we've had to address and interestingly enough, there's this tear between these two worlds. They have this false psycademy essentially some of them, not all, where they feel like they have to choose between one or the other and we've experienced some very difficult identity crises among some of these youth. And we're trying to address that and we don't always know what to do or how to go about it but we're trying to be sensitive to those situations.

- [Carol] That's an excellent answer. Diana had raised her hand and so Diana, I unmuted you. Should you care to speak?

- [Diana] Well it was a topic ago and I think this topic is really important, not just the overall cultural issues that you're talking about but also real life barriers to working with families and youth from different populations. But the question that I had been asking what not working with the adult providers although I think the adult providers also need to have their expectations raised. But really by the time parents have youth that are ready for the Promise initiative, we have often heard for 14 or 18 years from other professionals, doctors, schools, therapists, etc, that we shouldn't have high expectations for our children. That we should basically, even, we hear from families that even today, doctors will tell them if they have a child with down syndrome, that they should institutionalize their child when that's so far from the real potential for children with down syndrome today. So that really was, I guess I was still thinking about did anything happen working with the professionals that work with youth before they transition to get them to themselves have higher expectations and encourage parents to have higher expectations for their children, that was my question.

- [Carol] Thank you, for that, I'm gonna mute you again, Diana, is that okay?

- I muted myself.

- Okay. Anybody like to field that question?

- [Tisha] This is Tisha. So I think definitely when some of our results started coming in and we were able to correlate self determination trainings with increased education and independent living and some of these numbers started coming in and we started seeing that there was definitely a significant effect occurring because of these interventions being provided. Once people started seeing that, once those professionals started seeing those numbers, eyes lit up and some I guess, we were able to combat that idea that no matter what we do, it's not gonna work, that concept of that so that's certainly something that I've noticed up here.

- [Carmen] So this is Carmen. From what you all have been saying, I think it will be really interesting once Mathetmatica's evaluation is finished and in the record books, so to speak, that we maybe have another webinar because I think what may come out of this is a validation of the kind of work that the Promise grants did and also a validation of the kind of work that parent centers do routinely in terms of encourage parents to have high expectations for their children, to meet parents where they are, not to be judgemental, to acknowledge those kind of cultural differences, the kinds of things we've been talking about so it seems to me that this would be really ripe for another webinar once findings are finalized and published. So given that it's 4:10 and it doesn't look like we have other questions, I think I want to thank all our presenters please rest assured we're going to save this and archive this webinar so that others can listen to it and you can also download the handouts also for your reference and I will talk with Deborah, I mean with Corinne and David as things move forward so that we can bring back to you some of the results of the evaluation at another point. Somebody else want to say something, I gave somebody time to jump in, maybe not. So with that, I want to thank our presenters. I want to thank Carol, Cid and Tisha and Sue for all their work on this topic with us. I want to remind you that the Sipper has wonderful resources online now so that you can share your data about the parent centers. And thanks everyone again and to have a good afternoon, thank you.

- Thank you everyone.

- [Woman] Thank you.

- Bye.

- Bye.