Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good afternoon, everybody. This is Sarah Williford, library director and deputy director. Just welcoming everybody to this afternoon directors forum.
We have. Stacey's going to do a report, and we have other reports from areas throughout the department, and then we'll have time for questions.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: All right.
[00:00:21] Speaker C: Well, welcome, everyone. We have a lot to share this month. We as a staff have been extremely, extremely busy, both externally and internally.
Earlier this month, I mean, Zach met with the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, and we are going to be doing some work with them regarding advising them on their transportation policy.
From our perspective, we want to make sure that they are taking into consideration the full spectrum of needs that Iowans who are blind and low vision might have, particularly Iowans in the Des Moines metropolitan area. Of course, this includes expanding and improving our fixed route bus service, as many of us take.
Obviously, we would love to see more routes. We would love to see, you know, routes expanded in length. We want to make sure that drivers are calling out stops. We want to make sure that drivers are, you know, using any technology that's available on the buses to alert passengers of stops. We want to make sure that buses are accessible to people who use mobility devices.
So improving fixed route services is one of our first priorities. Our second priority is improving paratransit services, ensuring that these services are responsive to the needs of people with disabilities. Today, as many of us know.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Often.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Paratransit services work, create, created in an era where it was expected that a person with a disability might have, you know, a weekly doctor's appointment or a weekly trip to the store, but it's not. Paratransit is often not, not, you know, an efficient tool for someone who is a busy parent or a busy professional. So we just want to make sure that we are updating and modernizing our parent transit services to hopefully be as on demand as possible.
You know, allowing stops when possible for people to, you know, drop off children at child care or elder care, drop off children at school to pick up a prescription from Walgreens. We hear from a lot of seniors that they have, they might need to pick up a prescription from the drugstore, and then they have to wait 90 minutes at the drugstore before they can then go on to their next errand at the post office. So making sure that paratransit allows for people to make sense stops on their way to a final destination is a huge thing for people.
We'd also love to see them do what many public transportation agencies do and offer travel trainers to people with disabilities, refugees, and other people who might have difficulty learning to use the bus.
These travel trainers generally function somewhat similar to orientation mobility instructors. In some cities they actually hire O and M instructors to do this and many others they hire what are called certified travel trainers or they train their own. And these people help people not necessarily learn how to cross a street or how to, you know, for example, in D.C. they learn how to, they teach people how to use the Metro, how to use the subway. So here in Des Moines, it would be how to use our bus stop. So if a blind person moves to Des Moines and is starting a new job, a travel trainer could help them, you know, figure out what their, the most efficient route to work would be for them.
If it's someone who's new to using the bus, they would help them learn how fares work, how you can make sure that you know when your stop is coming.
So they don't necessarily do the like how to cross a street, how to use a cane type things. They more just teach people again, refugees, immigrants, non English speakers, people with disabilities tend to be some of their largest client bases how to use the bus or how to navigate a new route.
We also met with our state education secretary, Mackenzie Snow, and we spoke with her and her team about the instructional material center and made sure that they understand what an amazing resource we are to all blind and low vision, you know, Iowa school children, making sure that they're aware of, you know, the services that we are able to provide so that they're not duplicating the work that we do and so that things can be as efficient and smooth as possible. And that most importantly, you know, blind and low vision students are getting the materials they need on time at the same time as their classmates and that they're high quality materials with, you know, no braille mistakes. And we just want to make sure that they're getting equitable materials and equitable time.
We also spoke with them about our pre ETS programs and, and we look forward to finding ways to partner with ISBVI on some of their sports and recreation programs. We love to invite them to be a part of our pre ETS programs and to help them where we can on their pre ETS programs so that we can kind of pull resources and pull knowledge and pull experience and make sure that students in both programs are being as well served as possible.
Our center, Carly, is going to talk a little bit about this later, but our center staff have been meeting and are meeting later this week with staff from the Sacramento Society for the Blind, the Chris Cole center in Texas and the Virginia Rehabilitation center for the Blind and Vision Impaired. These are all well regarded centers that have large client bases where structured discovery and aspects of structured discovery are embraced and encouraged by, but where clients still have sort of freedom of choice and they still sort of respect that flexibility.
So we are having them meet with our center staff to talk about the various ways that they implement those policies. And they do it in different ways. Some offer different tracks, some, you know, the Society for the Blind. Basically, just as Sleep Shades are.
[00:06:28] Speaker D: You.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Know, highly recommended, the Chris Cole center has two different tracks.
The Virginia center also has two different tracks that are slightly different.
One is for, you know, the comprehensive program and one is, they call it a career track. And it's for people to just get whatever training they need to pursue their particular career goals.
So our staff is, you know, we're kind of learning what works, what has worked and what has not worked for these centers. And, you know, in order to make the best decision for our own center, we met with the ARC of Iowa and we gave their president a tour of our building. We talked about possibly utilizing ARC in the future to consult on some of our clients who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
So if we have a client who's going through the center who has an intellectual or development disability or as neurodiverse, you know, and we're, let's say, if we're running into an issue where we simply aren't sure how to proceed, or we're not sure how to accommodate the student, or we're not sure how to help the student to accomplish a task where their blindness and perhaps their intellectual disability intersect, we can consult with them and they can also call us and consult with us when they have folks in their programs who are blind and low vision.
We. I also had the opportunity to lead a seminar on blind parenting at our training center during our Super CBT. As you guys are aware, Super CBTs are community based trainings where folks come to our training center and they for, you know, usually I think it's Tuesday through Saturday and they take center classes and you know, they attended our, what we have been calling, we used to call business class that we're currently kind of calling seminar.
So I talked a lot about the myths that exist about blind and low vision parents and the actual challenges that blind and low vision parents as a community do often face.
We had a meeting with the director of Iowa Workforce Development that was an extremely productive meeting.
We talked about what they can offer us, for example, tailoring job fairs for our consumers, perhaps Having dedicated job fairs for our consumers, possibly having a mock job fair for our consumers, where our consumers come in first and they have a little seminar, they have like an hour long seminar where they learn how to navigate a job fair.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: How.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: What is the best way to prepare for a job fair? What questions can you anticipate being asked? How can you make sure that the job fair you're going to has employers that you want to, you know, consider? I mean, for example, I would not be someone who should go to a STEM job fair. Science, technology, engineering, and math. I mean, those aren't careers that I would, you know, be suited for. So making sure that, you know, people are going to the job fairs that are best for them, that they know how to navigate them, that they know how to put their best foot forward. So we also talk about bringing center students over to their centers for either. We're still working it out whether we would like to just bring students from our training center over, like one day a week and, you know, have a staff there, a staff member there, provide dedicated programming to our center students, or whether we would prefer, you know, sort of some other model. But we want to make sure that our center students are utilizing the resources that are available at the workforce development centers in whatever kind of way makes the most sense.
We also are happy to help them. We're happy to train their staff and how to work best with people who are blind and low vision. One concern we have is that at many workforce development centers, blind and low vision people come in and the staff there will say, oh, yeah, you go to rehab. And yes, of course, we do want them to come to us, but we also want them to be able to use other resources in the community. We want them to have access to all the job finding and job retention resources that the community has to offer, not just us.
So we want to make sure that when blind and low vision people come to their centers that they are getting equitable services.
I also met with Tyler Meador from our department of administrative Services, talked about getting more interns here at the department.
Kind of two types of interns. We'd love to get more interns who are NOMC, CLMs, CLVT, people who, you know, blindness rehabilitation professionals.
Often these people have to do internships in order to. To get their certification, to get their degree. For example, when I got my master's degree in rehabilitation counseling, I had to do a semester of practicum. I had to do a semester of internship. You usually have to do so many hours.
So we, besides rehabilitation Counselors. We would love to have interns who are trying to get their NOMC or their COMs or their. Or their CLVT or their VRT or whatever it is.
And we would love to host these folks and learn from them, and hopefully they can learn from us. I also met with Mary McGraw from DAS, the Department of Administrative Services, about working with us as a staff to make sure that we are working as efficiently and well as a team as we possibly can, because happy staff, happy clients.
Dor.
I met with California Department of Rehabilitation Director Kim Rutledge, who also recently went through a confirmation process and spoke with her about what that was like for her. I learned a lot from her, just about what DOR is doing. As many of you know, I used to work for California Department of Rehabilitation. They're actually the largest VR agency in the country. They've got about 2,000 staff, about 500 at central office. So they're always doing innovative and interesting things. So I'm always interested in learning about what sort of what new programs and what new staff and just sort of what new initiatives they're undertaking.
So that was a very nice meeting.
Some of you may know that the Paul McCartney staff reached out to us and apparently at all his concerts, Paul McCartney invites 20 folks who are blind, low vision, deaf or hard of hearing. And we were the organization that they reached out to with 20 tickets. So 15 for our clients, five for our staff.
We decided to offer these tickets. We're going to be offering these tickets to our Older Individuals who are Blind program because we figured they are the most likely of our client pools to be very interested in seeing Paul McCartney.
And they.
I went over to Casey's center to kind of check out what, you know, the seating that they had in mind for us and just make sure that, you know, everything's go. And so we're very excited. In October, we will have 15 OIB clients and four, five staff members going to the Casey center for the Paul McCartney concert.
We also had the opportunity to host listening sessions on our new Learning Shade policy with both ICUB and NFB of Iowa.
Both of these, we had our entire leadership team come in the evening and we worked. We, you know, kind of put ourselves at the disposal of the ICub and the NFB of Iowa presidents as far as how they wanted to conduct the listening session for ICUB. We presented a PowerPoint and our leadership team spoke, and then they asked us questions for nfb. They focused on asking just, you know, sort of a Q and A session this weekend. Many of our staff went to the ICUB convention, the ICUB conference here in Urbandale. And our staff participated in the convention in a variety of ways. We hosted a listening session. We. I spoke at the luncheon. We had a library booth. I know there were staff on the agenda throughout the conference.
Um, so of course, we always get really, you know, I got many good ideas from them. I really enjoyed some. Some ideas that I got from our ICUB listening sessions this weekend were the need for perhaps resume writing and mock interviewing workshops. So that's something for us to think about in the future, Whether we do it through the library or we do it through the VR program, But hosting like this, this type of workshops, or whether we partner with the workforce development centers, you know, also the need for.
Another thing that was discussed was the need for community O and M instructors who can help people who aren't necessarily students at the center, but who, you know, maybe move to a new town or who.
One thing that was considered as people who might be interested in getting a guide dog, often they need an evaluation from an O and M instructor. So a need for O and M instructors who are also available to kind of serve VR and IL clients in the community who may not be attending the center.
Our state workforce development board. I attended that for the first time yesterday, and I'm, you know, learning a lot. Obviously, we help them develop the VR portion of the Unified state Plan.
And so the state workforce board deals with all types of employment programs that are listed under the Workforce Innovation Opportunity act, such as programs for dislocated workers, programs for youth in general, programs for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.
So we are happy to, of course, continue playing our role in that.
Today I had a meeting with the team that's dedicated to us at the US Rehabilitation Services Administration. We learned a lot from them. Learned about how we'll be working together with them, you know, obviously always open to technical assistance and guidance from them on all our programs. So I look forward to that.
We are planning our all staff training. We have a two and a half day all staff training coming up. From September 10th through September 12th, the first day of the training, we're going to do some strategic planning, really talk about our mission, our vision, our. Our values, our culture.
Second day, we're going to do a lot of kind of nitty gritty case notes, you know, working with older clients, change management, working with, you know, clients who have or, you know, hearing again from those centers, having them, you know, address our whole staff and what it means to have high expectations you know, kind of have high expectations and also that inform consumer choice.
We the third day we're going to focus on serving consumers with additional disabilities and we're going to focus on learning from the Connect center at the American Printing House for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
So we look forward to that.
We also, you know, the program administrators are going to talk individually about what's going on with them. We're very excited. I think we touched on this last month. We are standing up a retreat team that is going to be taking the place of the CBT's. Essentially they are going to be traveling around the state of Iowa and offering week long, monthly week long retreats for adult clients in our VR, IL OIB programs. And then of course we will also be offering our monthly youth retreats, our weekend youth retreats. So the retreat team will handle our week long adult retreats and our weekend, monthly weekend youth retreats where our hope is to travel around the state of Iowa and to serve people as close to their communities as possible. Because we know that for some people coming to Des Moines just isn't in the cards.
And for some people this is really an intro into intensive training. They might have been working with an in home instructor, one of our rehabilitation teachers, and they want to see what more intensive training is like. So they go for a week. And for many people that leads to them deciding that they do want to come to the center for a period of time.
So we're really looking forward to that. With that being said, I'm going to turn things over to our team. So I guess we can start with. Why don't we start with Sarah in the library.
[00:19:05] Speaker E: Okay.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Well, thank you.
So I apologize in advance. I've got a lot to share today, so I will get through it. Just know whatever, if you have questions, just reach out because I'm going to go through some stuff pretty quick. So first of all, September is National Literacy Month and Library Card Signup Month. And this year's Library Card Signup Month theme is One Card Endless Possibilities. So it ties perfectly with our library's mission that all may read.
So in September we are working with IDB's communication team and it is going to be all things literacy and library.
We are going to be doing just some informational pieces about the services and programs that our library provides. We will also be launching some new programs and doing some programs specifically in September.
So just really raising awareness but also starting some new initiatives. So the first thing I'm going to kind of run through what's happening in September. We are doing a reading challenge for all ages in September and there is a registration or if you want to register, you can just give us a call. And really it's just read what you love, track your minutes, stay motivated, really celebrate your progress and try to get reading to be something that you're doing daily. So if you need book lists, things like that, if you want to kind of branch out from what your your usual reading is, let us know and watch our social media and our blog for for more book highlights. We're also going to be trying Ask a Librarian office hours. These will be held Tuesday mornings from 9 to 10 and then Thursdays from 3 to 4.
This is just time to they'll be held on Zoom so you can pop in and have a library in there to answer all your questions. You can also always give us a call, but we thought this would be kind of a fun way to engage and maybe help answer some of those really specific questions you have, whether it's with your technology or, you know, using the library catalog. All of those good things.
And then we are going to be launching a new program that will be held throughout the year along with our other fall, winter and spring programs. So we are going I'm going to start with the youth programs that will be starting because it's fall, but also one that we are starting because of National Literacy Month and that one is Braille Babies. So we are going to combine we already had a Braille babies activity box that we would send out to parents and Alphabet Corner videos that take you through the Braille Alphabet.
But we are also going to start a program Thursday mornings at 10am starting September 18th.
This program will be virtual as well as in person and again for that birth to 4 year old, just really focusing on those beginning Braille skills, importance of exploring touch, textures, the tactiles. There'll be monthly activities as well as parent resources as well. So we're very excited to get Braille babies into kind of our program rotation.
We will also be starting in September, our usual after school program that's held on Tuesdays. This is held via Zoom.
The activities that are held during those weekly programs are mailed out each month prior to the program so participants have what they need.
We will also bring back our Makerspace Mondays. They're held the second Monday of the month at 6pm here at the department and those can be in person as well as virtual. And again we mail out to those doing what they need to participate. And then another program we're adding into the mix is beyond the book Teen Book Club. This will be held on the fourth Tuesday, Thursday, fourth Thursday at 5pm via Zoom. And this is for our teens and they'll be discussing books, doing some creative writing pieces.
Monthly book book lists will be shared. So great things there for schools and educators.
Our book bundles and pen pal program has begun. Again, schools can receive monthly book bundles. So these will be in braille and or large print depending on what the student needs. And these box of books is they are for the classroom or they could be in the library just making sure that the student has access to kind of those outside free reading time materials that they need in the format that they need.
Along with that is the pen pal program. So if students want to sign up for that, our youth services librarian will send them messages in braille and they can send messages back. So again just really practicing that braille, writing braille and reading. So we're excited to bring that back. And then for adults, our book discussion groups continue throughout the year but we are adding another a new one. It's called the no Book Book Club.
This is for individuals who want to talk books and about what they are reading. So not a specific assigned book for the month. It's more just talking about what you're reading and sharing what you've liked and haven't liked. So those will be on the third Wednesday at 2pm and that's held every other month.
So again there's other things happening but just reach out if you need more information and give us a call. And I did want to just share some final, final information about the Instruction Material center.
So our IMC provides accessible educational materials to students pre K through 12th grade as well as college throughout the throughout Iowa. And so we're starting a new school year. So I just wanted to share some quick summer stats on what we did last school year. So the 2024, 2025 school year we had a total of 891 total projects came through the Instructional Material Center. This will be braille, large print, electronic tech, electronic braille print, braille electronic text.
This equals 37,320 print pages that were, were transcribed.
But what I want to point out is of the 891 total projects, 596 of those came from our library collection. So they were available ready to go for the student or they were added to our collection so another student can use those.
And if the school districts of those that received those projects had gone out on their own and paid for them to be transcribed it would have cost them over $300,000. So just wanted to point out our IMC growing, handling more different formats and working with school districts to make sure our students have what they need in the format that they need. So thank you.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: Okay, I'm unmuted.
So now. Carly, can you give us an update on the training center?
[00:26:45] Speaker D: I can.
[00:26:45] Speaker F: Thank you so much.
All right, so have quite a bit this time.
Right now we have five students in the center. We have a student that started last Monday, August 18th. We have two graduations. We have one on September 5th, and we have one on September 26th.
So we are. That's always bittersweet because we, we love to see the students grow and, and, you know, kind of follow their dreams. And so both of them have.
Have plans of what they're going to do after graduation. So that's exciting.
We also have students starting in September. We have one starting on September 2nd, 17th, 18th, 22nd and 29th.
So those are our start dates so far. We're, we're looking to have a couple students hopefully start in October. There's just some logistics that they are needing to work out before we are able to secure start dates in October. But we're happy about that.
The students went to the World Music and Food Festival on Friday for an activity. They had some fun in the afternoon.
They also also some activities that are coming up are the art center, an art center tour. We will go to the apple orchard and tree cutting. We're always looking for more fun activities and, and some volunteer activities to continue to be out in the community.
And also another thing I wanted to touch on is we are looking at some feedback with our Sleep Shade policy. So in response from our counselors and clients, we're just. We're looking at possible revisions to the center's, like I said, policy.
We are speaking with administrators. One today from the Kris Cole center at 1:15 and also one on September 3rd from the Virginia. Like Stacy said earlier, from the Virginia center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. We spoke to program administrators from the CRIS. Sorry. From the Society for the Blind. On Wednesday, August 13.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: We.
[00:29:03] Speaker F: Sorry, I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything.
So these centers highly recommend sleep shades to their students and, and they report high buy in from their students.
We also want to emphasize that students can, you know, come to the center for any amount of time, like Stacy had mentioned a little earlier. So if someone has to come for, you know, 12 weeks, maybe for FMLA from their job because they don't want to Lose their job. But they need those, they need those skills. We're working with some students on that.
We actually have a student right now who is here for two months at this point working on some emphasized skills that, that he needs to do that needs to work on.
You know, if they need to come for 30 days, you know, that's, that's okay.
They will get the skills that they didn't get if they did, if they haven't come.
So we were working through that and talking with students about what their goals are, working on a plan kind of between when the students have a tour and when they start looking at those goals so that they can continue those throughout their training and after their training.
So while we continue to offer the comprehensive program, which is the six, six to nine month program, I mean that's, we've served Iowans for decades, since the 1958, you know, we'll also are going to offer specific skills track. So like I said, maybe somebody wants to come in for.
They need some more braille, they need some technology kind of looking at that. And that's kind of what we're working on as far as the plans that start at the beginning after they meet with us for the, with the tour.
[00:30:48] Speaker C: So we're working on those goals.
[00:30:55] Speaker F: Sorry, notes, make sure I don't miss.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: Anything that I wrote now.
[00:31:04] Speaker F: So let's see here.
And we, we also, we want to help, you know, when we, we're working on this, we want to help students to meet their needs and to, you know, still provide that training that we provide with them and, and help them move along and be successful and independent.
That's all I have for now.
Thank you very much.
[00:31:32] Speaker C: Carly.
Let us move from the training center to Carrie on our vocational rehabilitation program.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Thanks, Stacy.
[00:31:47] Speaker D: Just to kind of add to what Carly was saying, I can just share that our counselors are really excited about the changes that are happening with our training center and just the flexibilities and options that are coming. I know our counselors have been asking a lot of questions. They've been out sharing, sharing the changes with clients. And you know, as Carly mentioned, we're getting more clients interested and in coming to our training program, we're getting a lot of requests for how could they attend. So we're really excited to see that increase.
We're also excited about the, as Stacy mentioned earlier, the, the light, the skills retreats and then the weekend retreats that I'm sure Kim and Ambrose will be sharing about later.
But in addition to those programs, we're also going to be continuing our partnership with Sky's the Limit and Blind Savvy for our pre Employment Transition services programs.
And with them we are doing virtual pre ETS programs on Thursdays in the evenings during the month, the months of September, October and November this fall. So in September our focus is on accessible technology for success in school.
And then in October we're focused on good jobs for all in honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. And then in November we'll be focused on advocating with others including including a focus on accessible technology and voting.
Accessible voting. So we're excited about those programs and to be able to expand what we're offering to our youth with our business Enterprises program.
We have three new trainees that are nearing the end of their training program and we're looking forward to them being able to take over new locations soon.
We're also, you know, just with some of the changes that are happening, we are seeing more individuals also interested in our business Enterprises program and just looking at different options for receiving training.
We're also just to share our statewide meeting for our vendors is in October on October 17th and that is an all day meeting and training that our vendors are in attend. And more information will be available next week as we finalize some of those plans.
If anybody is interested in learning more about our business Enterprises program, I encourage everybody to reach out to Matt Nemmers, who was our executive officer for that program.
Just let a couple more things is as I mentioned last time, we are currently in the works with our comprehensive statewide needs assessment. This is an assessment that we do every three years that really focuses in on the needs of blind Iowans, including the needs of persons who are unserved or underserved, the needs of youth, individuals with the most significant needs, individuals with barriers to employment and other barriers with accessing transportation, you know, technology, really anything that's preventing a person from accessing employment. So that is happening right now. And we are also working on our modifications to our state plan.
Those modifications we will be working on throughout the fall, into the winter, beginning of the winter anyway. And we'll be able to share those changes early or at the end of this year during some public forums we will be hosting or having in partnership with the state workforce board and some of our other partners.
I believe that yes, that is it all that I have for now. So I'll turn it back over to you, Stacy.
[00:35:56] Speaker C: Thank you, Carrie. All right. Kim, can you give us the report on independent living?
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Yes. Thank you, Stacy.
So August 12th through 16th we did have our Super CBT here in Des Moines.
We had a little more than 10 people enroll and eight ended up coming and sharing their time with us, both vocational rehabilitation clients and independent living clients.
During the super cbt we had various classes that we offered home management, technology training and REL for the clients so that they could gain disability related skills to help them meet their employment and independent living goals. Participants of course were offered a student choice that they could select a class at the end of each day, one of interest to them.
BRO Class or Business class was yet another anchor class that we offered students and they gathered daily to hold a discussion about the misperceptions of blindness and societal's misunderstanding about blindness while at the same time learning from one another on how best to advocate for their rights and interests. Another piece of the training that was included was an opportunity to participate and meet with the blindness with Iowa Blindness Empowerment and Independent Center Director in person.
The intent here was to provide the participant with more information about the center and they could give thought to whether or not they wanted to potentially enroll in the center. Training as we finalized our training program on Saturday, participants were able to invite their family members.
They actually prepared a brunch and it was absolutely delicious.
Family members were impressed with what they made during the home management class on Friday.
And of course we did invite former students from the center to participate where they shared their experiences and encouraged our students to consider going to the center and implementing what they had learned.
So they were also given a certificate at the end of participation.
There were some testimonials that I'd like to share here with you all today.
The testimonials that I collected just briefly I want to say was I feel quote I feel like the whole experience was super positive and I and a good and good overall I expect I expected to come and I was overwhelmed. I and to be overwhelmed frustrating and challenging and it wasn't I want to come back. The next testimonial was I feel like I'm accomplish accomplishing something each time and how comfortable I am becoming each time I am participating in a CBT and the final one was I am so glad I came. I am doing this to prepare for my future and I want to come back.
So that in and of itself is a testament to what these trainings are helping folks to accomplish now in moving forward our our teachers will be collaborating with Ambrose and I don't want to rain on his parade on what he wants to share. We will be collaborating with our colleague Ambrose and referring our clients Vocational rehabilitation clients and IO clients to these retreats. We're very excited. My team's excited about collaborating and having these retreats across the state to offer clients an opportunity to participate in these retreats across the state. And so we'll let Ambrose pick up and talk more about that when he speaks with us.
Next, I want to share about the IL forum that we're going to have. Independent Living Forum on Tuesday, November, September 9th. We hold that form from noon.
Let me see.
I believe it is noon to 1.
We are going to ask that you join us virtually. There will be a link that would be available if you need you. If you need that link, I will have Julie Skinner provide that for you. And it's just the time we all get together and we talk about what's going on in il. The teachers will also have an opportunity to share what they've been doing in the field and folks can ask questions and we will hopefully have answers for you. If not, we'll look the answers up and get back to you again. That's September 9th.
I did pull a few statistics that I wanted to share with you. Just briefly, October.
This is all about open programs that we have for October 1st of this past year.
We're serving a total of 344 clients, a combination of OIB, Ilyb and VR clients.
And then lastly, and I have a breakdown, if anybody's interested, just give me a call and then I think of importance.
We have exited clients out of the program to date of a total of 68 clients. And of those exited, we have rehabilitated success fully 98.5%. I'm not sure where the 5% comes from, but 98%. So Stacy, that's all I have right now.
[00:41:49] Speaker F: Thank you.
[00:41:49] Speaker C: Well, I love, I love those comments and that feedback from consumers of your super cbt that makes me very happy. And I think Carly needs to start getting some, some more dorm rooms ready at the center because it sounds like you guys are doing a great job of getting folks interested in pursuing more comprehensive training. So amazing job.
Ambrose, what do we got going on with education and training?
[00:42:17] Speaker G: Hey there. Thank you.
First, I want to start out by echoing Carly or kind of re emphasizing there on the learning Shades. So the education and training team already kind of had put into the practice of making learning Shades highly recommended for youth programming at idb. And by presenting the learning Shades as an option, we're kind of creating an environment that allows more chances for students to exercise their voice, to self advocate and ultimately take more steps towards Empowerment and independence. By presenting Learning Shades as a highly recommended option, it also mitigates any fixation on the Shades themselves and allows more opportunities to focus on targeted programming and learning goals. Since communicating this change, we have seen an increase in participation in summer and weekend programming for youth.
And also by creating an environment that fosters kind of this two way communication, there's more opportunities for rapport building moments for both students and staff, which can lead to more impactful and stronger learning moments.
A couple weeks ago, we just wrapped up our summer program LEAP. We had 17 participants overall.
Students had some opportunities to participate in some great partnerships both internally and externally.
Internally every Thursday they worked with our youth librarian, Denise Bean, with our STEM Thursdays and they got to participate in a lot of workshops with STEM speakers as well as activities.
They also did a short participatory workshop with our BEP program where they had an opportunity to work with vendors, interview for a job and actually earn a paycheck on a vendor site. So that was pretty exciting.
And we also implemented a few things new like Thrive Thursdays, where individuals who maybe they don't want to come for the whole two week block, they want to come just for the day they're allowed to do that. So we're getting more participation from that, which is really exciting.
And then, yeah, kind of circling around to the retreats that have been mentioned a couple times. So we're going to be continuing our great tradition of our youth retreats here.
Those are coming up. We saw an increase of about 40% participation last two semesters, fall and spring semester last year. So we're looking to keep that number going up. Our first one coming up is going to be in Dubuque on September 19th.
It's going to be at the Grand Harbor Resort Hotel.
Dubuque is actually the oldest city in Iowa, which I was unaware of, so a lot of historical significance there. We're going to be getting students out to a couple museums, also checking out a very large elevator use for transportation, but also just kind of doing those large confidence building activities found in new cities for students. We're also very excited for our youth retreats to be partnering with iesbvi.
Their athletic director, Crystal Bailey, will be offering a seminar for every youth retreat this coming school year.
The first one is just going to be just a purely virtual seminar talking about athletics for our students and talking about participation in that, mainly highlighting Goball right now. But all of the retreats going forward after that, we're going to be setting aside about two hours every single Sunday of the youth retreats for an ISBVI coach to come in, work with our students participating on that, and work on those fundamental athletics, which are phenomenal sources of confidence building, social relationship building, and just general peer engagement for students.
Our youth retreat after that will be on Halloween here in Des Moines. We'll be focusing more on the culinary and home management side for that.
The theme for that one is pumpkin. Spice things up a bit.
And the theme for the fall one is Fall is amazing.
And our youth retreat for December is going to be on the 12th here in Des Moines as well. And again, all of those that Sunday, we will be partnering with IESBVI to get that athletic portion in there, which we're very excited about.
And then we have our statewide skills retreats for adults. These are going to be open to VR and IL clients. They're going to be held statewide along with our youth retreats. As you all are probably familiar with, Iowa is a very rural state, and if you're not located off pretty much either 80 or 35, what can you know? Should only take 3 to 4 hours to get across the state can take you about five or six. So in an effort to mitigate some of the difficulties that come with being in somewhat of a rural state, we're going to be bringing programming to other parts of the state. We're very excited about this. We're modeling a lot after the success that Kim's team has found with the cbts as well as the great programming that can be found in our center. Our first one is going to be taking place on October 12th. Starting that Saturday, it'll be in Council Bluffs at the Town Place Suites, which is a great facility. We're very excited about that. We're already starting to get some people sign up for it. It'll run from that Sunday.
It'll run, you know, intensive programming Monday through Friday with classes about five periods a day, along with three afternoon and evening activities for students participating, such as going out to eat, hitting a movie, or just going around town.
And then students will kind of debrief and check out on that Saturday.
Our next one after that will be on November 16th, 16th in Cedar Rapids. Same format. Checking in on a Sunday, checking out on a Saturday, and that will be at the Residence Inn in Cedar Rapids. And then after that, our next one will be on December 1st here in Des Moines.
We're very excited about this. We're getting things up and running, and we think it's going to be a lot more opportunities to offer equitable programming and quality programming to Iowans across the state. Thank you.
[00:47:58] Speaker C: Well, thank you, Ambrose.
So now we'd like to open it up for any questions or comments.
All right, anybody have any questions about the new retreat teams or.
[00:48:17] Speaker D: The super cbt?
[00:48:20] Speaker C: All right, well, with that being the.
[00:48:22] Speaker E: Case, this is Sarah.
[00:48:24] Speaker F: Oh, hi, Sarah.
[00:48:26] Speaker E: Hey, Sarah Coleman here. I just would like to make a quick comment. I'm so excited about all the different programs, and I want to come to the retreat, so there you go. But no, I appreciate so much. And, Sarah, I appreciated the sometimes helping us with the numbers of what school districts are saving by using our.
Our resources. It's something that I think we need to continue to get that word out. And I appreciate having numbers like that.
And I appreciate that it took almost 50 minutes to hear about all the good things that are going on at the department. And I just wanted to give my personal congratulations for all of the work that you have been doing. So thank you.
[00:49:13] Speaker C: Well, thank you. I think we're having a good time doing it, and we're excited about kind of what's coming in the next year or two.
So thank you for the work that you and Commissioner Honig have been doing to support us. We appreciate that as well.
All right, any other questions about anything we've covered today?
Okay. Well, that being the case, I guess we are adjourned.
Have a good day. See you next month.
