1 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT DISCLAIMER This text is being provided in a lightly edited draft format and is the work product of the CART captioner. Any reproduction, publication, or other use of this CART file without the express written consent of the captioner is strictly prohibited. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility, and this lightly edited CART file may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings, nor should it be considered in any way as a certified document. Due to the live nature of the event, some names and/or terms may be misspelled. This text may also contain phonetic attempts at sounds and words that were spoken, and environmental sounds that occurred during the event. >> Welcome, I know we're getting some people in our Zoom room. Welcome, welcome to Zoom. Doing a forum by Zoom. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 2 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT This is a new experience for everybody. To do it with Zoom for us. Feel free to come on in the room and stay muted. We're going to keep everybody muted if we can, we'll be using the question and answer session but we'll also have ability to unmute if need be. One thing, Kim -- Kim, could you click on closed captioning? >> Ann: We will also have our captioning. We're having it interpreted today. So our interpreter right now is Susan Boinis and she is up at the top as a cohost if anybody needs the interpreter pinned, just go up to her screen and that's where you'll see her camera and her picture and do the three dots and you can pin that video. We also will be having Dee Ramnirin I think it is, so when Dee comes in we'll make sure she's up at the top for everybody. So hopefully everybody had a nice long weekend and is fresh for Monday. We'll kick us off with a forum today. So we're going to give it just like three minutes for people to get in the room. And at 10:00 we'll be starting off. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 3 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT >> Just to make sure everybody knows, hi, my name is Ann Macheledt, I know I've seen or you've seen my face probably many times for this type of forum. And I am with VRS in the -- and development area. As you're coming in today we're doing this in Zoom so we have tried to mute all of you up front. If you could stay muted, that would be great. That will help us with our audio. So all you have to do to stay muted is make sure as you look down on your tool bar on the left-hand side that you have a cross over your mute, it's a red cross over your mute. So make sure that that is the case for you. Perfect. Seeing people follow through on that, so thank you for doing that. Just trying to make sure would have the best audio experience possible today. Your cameras probably are also off and we certainly encourage those to be off just for the best quality of wifi that we're getting coming through, but we also know that later on too we'll be having questions and answers and using our chat as a first option for people to participate. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 4 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT And if you were to ask a question and unmute yourself you can also put on your camera at that time. So we're going to do just a second -- coming in. A lot of people coming into our room hopefully today. Looks like we have about 160 or so right now. We have one more minute before we kick things off. >> Okay. I know we've been having people come in the room yet. But let's get started with just specifics for today and making sure that everybody knows, you should come into our room muted and if you could stay muted that would be great. And how to make sure that you're doing that is if you go down at the bottom of the screen, or to the right of your name, you'll see a little mute button. And I want to make sure that that is, that has a cross over it and is red. To make sure everybody stays muted. So please do that if you could so we have the best audio experience today. And your video is also something that we are wanting to keep off unless you maybe ask a question later. And that will allow us to keep all of our presenters up and their videos and our interpreter today. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 5 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT I'm going to bring up our PowerPoint and we're going to get us started. All right. Everybody I'm assuming can see the PowerPoint? >> Sara: Looks good, Ann. >> Ann: Perfect. Give me one second and I'm going to kick us off with our record, so. Sorry with that my computer's not responding well to me. Give me one second. Okay. All right. Well, welcome, everybody, to our VRS community partner and VRS staff forum. Thank you for joining us on a Monday after a long weekend. We're really excited to be able to be in front of you today to give you some updates and a couple of things that we wanted to walk through in order to make sure you are aware of this Zoom experience and I suppose many of you have probably gotten used to Zoom but we wanted to make sure that we have the best audio CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 6 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT experience possible so you are muted coming in. So if you could remain muted, that'd be great. We will have question and answer time later which we'll use primarily the chat but there is the possibility to unmute yourself and/or show your camera at the time you're asking a question, that's fine too. But we know that in order to stay muted I think everybody might be familiar with it, but when we show this screen, full screen like this, your toolbar goes to the top. So know that just by using your cursor and going up to the top that your screen will show that toolbar up top and your mute is the one that is the farthest to the left so make sure that's red. Your camera is also there so know that's available too. And if you do have your videos showing, that should show to the right. Panel, that should be coming up. And if it's not certainly just again go to your toolbar and make sure that you are showing those cameras by having your participant panel show up and you can either hide or show video. Also for your chat because we're going to be using that for our question and answer function, if you go up to the top or even escape, those are options too to be CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 7 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT able to bring your chat off to the right side panel, we'll be having that show up, and you can move your panels around at any time when you're in this full screen kind of like floating panels of sort. So we will be using the chat functions for the Q & A and we'll be voicing some of your questions out. But as we said, certainly if you wanted to unmute at a certain time to ask a question, we'll also be considering that as well. The session is being recorded and we'll be posting it to our VRS website. It is also being interpreted and captioned so if you are looking for the captioning all you have to do is go to your CC bar and then click on that, go up and "show subtitles" is the option that you pick. The interpreters are also in the room and right now it's Susan Boinis who's interpreting and she should be labeled as such as interpreter up in the top in the cohost and you can pin her video, clicking the three dots and pinning her video and you can have that available. And as a last thing we have myself available for technical issues, just e-mail that e-mail or just privately chat with me and let me know if you're having technical issues today so that we make sure to address CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 8 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT all of that for you to have the best experience possible. So for our agenda today, we just went over some of the housekeeping elements, we wanted to start with a welcome with Dee Torgerson, our VRS director, then Kim Babine is going to be giving up on our PT contract, she's director of community partnerships. She has an update on the P/T contract amendments and the transportation reimbursement. So some really important things to be updating you on. Then Evie Wold will be talking about changes to our performance based agreements, she's our VRS Placement Specialist. and we will have question and answer time where I will facilitate and moderate that. We have a couple of other cohosts, Sara Sundeen, who will be helping with that too, and we will have our wrap-up and conclusion with Dee Torgerson, our VRS director. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Dee Torgerson, our VRS director. >> Hello, good morning. Thanks, Ann. Welcome, everyone. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 9 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT We're glad you can join us on this Monday morning, almost December, tomorrow is December 1st. And like Ann said I just want to echo I hope that everybody had a nice holiday break it certainly was likely different from others that you've had. And I find although it's been a difficult and unusual year I still find that there's just so much to be thankful for and I hope that you all are able to do the same. So I wanted to provide just a few updates for VRS. The first one, I mean, as you can see we are all still providing remote services and working from our homes or sometimes wherever we can find a quiet spot for that day. Similar to I think many of our providers are doing the same. We're not yet, we have not yet been approved to provide any one on one in-person services work. We submitted a plan actually several months ago, and were feeling like we were moving forward on this and then obviously covid ticked up and everything has changed. So for now we continue to be 100% remote and we're not able to do any even one on one in-person services. But we hope to be moving forward with that again soon. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 10 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT And at least have, be able to meet with some people by appointment and by exception. That will really be a coordinated effort with, it's coordinated with the state of Minnesota but also coordinated within DEED and probably coordinated with our careerforce locations as well across the state. And many of you may have heard that the state of Minnesota, like our staff are expected to be working from home until June of 2021. So we're going to be in this state for much of the time. So we'll continue to provide updates as things change. Some good news that I do want to share with you, we actually are opening categories beginning today. We have as most of you know have had three out of four categories close since 2014. Now, over this past year we've been gradually working to take people off of the wait list and we had cleared our wait list recently. We worked with RSA and got our state plan updated and we're just, just last week approved to open categories. So we will have three out of our four categories open beginning today. So I think that's good news for everyone, that's good news for our staff, hopefully good news for all of you CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 11 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT and will hopefully increase the referrals that we provide. For those who aren't familiar with our categories I just want to mention we haven't had category 4 open really in many, many years, that typically stays closed because category 4 is people with disabilities who do not have barriers to employment. So typically those people are able to be served through career force ing locations or other services that are available. So again, that is something I am particularly thankful for that we have together been able to reach that milestone for VRS. I have a few hiring updates. We have been in a statewide hiring freeze actually for much of this year and we have about 25 unfilled vacancies across VRS. So we again just recently got approval to be able to fill our positions that are 100% federally funded. So most of our field positions are 100% federally funded so we're starting to fill some of those vacancies and evaluating really where they are mostly needed. Some of you, for those of you who are in the St. Cloud area we did just fill that RAM position there for the CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 12 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT St. Cloud and Alexandria team and that is Andrea Chirhart who is in the little falls area and has been part of that team for some time. Welcome to Andrea and for those of you providing services in that area, feel free to welcome her on board and reach out to her. Some other positions that we're filling are some additional Pre-Employment Transition Services rehabilitation rep positions across the state. So we have several of those that are filling. Some of them are filling vacancies that have been created by people who have actually moved into other roles within VRS. And some of those are new added positions. And what we're finding, we really took a look at and tried to evaluate where our gaps are in services, where we don't have capacity or where our Pre-ETS reps are just covering huge territories and large numbers of schools. So we're in the process actually right now of filling some of those positions and we'll be onboarding and training those persons and we hope that that will help us to expand our required Pre-ETS funding, but also to increase the amount of referrals that we are providing. We need those positions as you know to identify the CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 13 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT students that we're able to put into Pre-ETS services and then our hope is that that will help to increase the referrals that we're sending out to those of you who have Pre-ETS services on your contract or are planning to provide those. So look for those new persons to be starting very soon. Some other good news, last week was a very busy week. We had our RSA monitoring done in August of 2019, so we got our final monitoring report and corrective action completed actually just last week our corrective action plan was completed. We got our final monitoring report in October of this year. We're well on our way to meeting most of those requirements. Much of our corrective action plans were around internal controls and contracting and we've been making adjustments over this past year to some of the contracting and there will be some continued adjustments that we have to make along the way. And we'll provide some of those updates today and continue to provide those as we have those plans and actions secured. And I think that is it, I'll be open to questions later when we have the Q & A available. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 14 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT So feel free if you have any questions on those areas or VRS in general, and then in the meantime I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Kim Babine, our director of community partnerships. Thanks. >> Kim: Thanks, Dee. Good morning, everybody. My name is Kim Babine and I am director of community partnerships here with VRS. And I have a number of updates for you related to P/T contracts and the services that we use and purchase from you through those P/T contracts. So I know the first, right off the bat I know a lot of you submitted applications for amendments to your contracts. Those are in process and are moving through. And I know everyone's really eager to get those. There were a lot of them and it just takes a little time, and so I appreciate everyone's patience as we have VRS staff and communities, partner staff on the call today. So I know community partner staff are eager to have those contracts updated and I know VRS staff are also similarly anticipating those and are eagerly awaiting CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 15 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT those so that they can authorize for those services. rest assured we're working on those as fast as we can. I wanted to share a little bit more and talk through some changes that we made in the last week to share about the transportation reimbursement policy. So we initially had put that out in July of 2020, this summer we published that policy. And after learning a little bit and putting it into practice just a little bit, we found through these last few months that we needed a few changes. And so I'll go through those today. The first one is related to consumer financial participation, and so consumer financial participation is applied to specific services and that is dictated by the state rule that governs some of the VR program. And so when we worked with the CFP, we learned that we needed to break it in two. That the travel costs when a provider is transporting an individual, persons in the car for the purposes of their employment plan, CFP does apply to those costs. Whereas if the travel expenses when a provider is traveling to or from the individual, that's the new part. That's the new part of this transportation policy that we wanted to add as of July. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 16 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT So when that's happening, CFP does not apply in that circumstance. So the other piece to know about this is that it's important what goes on the employment plan and what doesn't need to go on the employment plan. So when the provider is transporting the individual for the purposes of their employment plan, CFP does apply and those transportation services must be on the employment plan. When a provider is traveling to or from the individual and CFP does not apply, those travel expenses do not need to be on the individual's employment plan. I'll say this a lot through each of these pieces that it's really important that if this is something that you think an individual needs, someone you're already working with or if it's a new referral, it's really important that you talk with the counselor or talk with the VR staff who is working with that individual and talk through what is needed and how that will be authorized for and all these details will be worked out through those conversations with VR staff. So in the next slide we talk about the service types and titles for these transportation services. So this isn't necessarily policy that you as community partners will be using all the time. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 17 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT This is really important for the VR staff who will be authorizing for those services, but we thought it's important for you to see the service types and titles, that's how we authorize and you can see that we need to authorize them separately. So it's two different things that a community partner would be, have authorizations for. Excuse me. When VR staff is authorizing for travel expenses, again, when a provider is traveling to or from the individual, that's when the individual is not in the vehicle, VR staff will be using the service type travel expenses to provider and the service title Travel Expenses to Provider-travel to or from the person. So then on the flip side when a provider is transporting the individual for the purposes of their employment plan, VR staff will be using the service type transportation services and the service title transportation to vendor. Again, two things that we're looking with we need to kind of in our head think of them separately so that we can have everything work out correctly. This is something that we touched on in July but wanted to underscore in the policy and in the way that we work together between VR staff and community partner staff CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 18 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT and when we're all in it to serve the individual. And so one thing we wanted to clarify was how the decision to authorize for these services will be made. So just a reminder, and this is, again, excuse me, something that the, that RSA is our federal funder is very particular about that the VR staff needs to be making the decision about what services an individual receives, and also is the one to determine when and how that happens. And that it's an individual decision by the counselor or the rep, the VR staff to be able to make that decision. And so working on an individualized basis and then making that decision. Of course in conversation with you as the provider, but we wanted to make clear that the service is always at the discretion of VRS staff. And it's important for you to know that we have policy, program policy for VRS staff to follow that they will be looking at when they are making decisions about travel reimbursement involving transport of the individual. So when the person's in the car. There's a policy that they need to look at and information about how to make that decision and how to CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 19 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT come to that evaluation in our policy and you can, that's posted online and I have a link there -- or link went out in a communication that I sent week before last, I think. So, again, the decision's made in conversation with the individual and their provider. And there may be times when the staff determines that no transportation time is needed and not to authorize for it. That is something that, again, it's really important to our federal funder to RSA, that that decision is being made and the VR staff can have that discretion. And that will be evaluating each individual's situation before adding it to the authorization. The last piece I wanted to bring up is a change regarding the starting location. So when we're calculating travel time and the starting location we changed it a little bit so it's easier for everyone involved. So generally the starting location is the service provider, the community partner staff, your primary work location. Now, if the community partner staff is not the provider site, like the HQ or the office, then the provider staff may provide an alternate work location such as if CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 20 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT they're working, if someone's working from home. This is, you can only use this when it's the most direct, efficient, shortest route. What we're really trying to get at with this is outside of covid even, not necessarily fer people just getting around town. Like so many people are working from home right now that if you're working from home but you're only a couple miles from the office or just across town, that's not really what we wanted to get at. We want to get at especially in rural Minnesota we know that some providers have their office and then may employ someone who lives an hour and a half away to serve a radius much further out. And so and obviously doesn't make sense to go an hour and a half back to the office and then back to somewhere in that area where the, that staff might be. And so that's when you'd want to use the home address. We're hoping that that will work. If there's an issue, if someone has an issue with providing their home address, you at least have to provide the zip code. We think that will get close enough. But we'll be watching this and see how this works out and if there's issues then we can adjust as we go. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 21 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Again, we're looking for the most direct, efficient and shortest rout for these pieces. That's -- I know people are getting this on their contracts now, and we'll start to use it more and more once those contract amendments are fully executed. And again, you know, you can see here from July to November and we had been working on this months before July, that we want to be looking at how it's working and make sure that we can adjust as necessary. So it's not necessarily written in stone for all of eternity. We will, we want feedback and we want to hear from you, both partner staff and VRS staff to be able to make sure that this policy is working the way it needs to. So I'll stop there. There may be some questions, be sure to put those in the chat and we can get to those during the question and answer part. For now I'm going to turn it over to Evie Wold. She is a VRS Placement Specialist, and she's going to go over some changes to the PBA. >> Evie: Thanks, Kim. Good morning, everyone. As Kim said, I'm Evie Wold, I work in placement CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 22 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT services for Voc Rehab Services. I'm coming to you from my dining room office in Northfield, Minnesota this morning. So it's good to be with everybody. As Dee said we had a RSA audit a little over a year ago, and we found out that we need to start collecting some more information upon job start and upon closure. So we made some changes to our internal computer case management system Workforce One and we mandated the tools in there a few months ago. So as the counselors and our techs were trying to put in the information upon a job start, they were finding they didn't have everything and they were kind of kicking back those invoices and you might have seen that happening. Back in August we had another forum and we talked about those changes, but it's always good to kind of come back and review because we're continuing to get some questions trickling in. So I just wanted to bring up -- hopefully this will work okay -- the placement and retention services web -- part of our DEED website that covers everything about PBAs. Ohm hopefully this is review but we went in and made some changes to this website. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 23 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT I will put the link to the website in the chat when I'm done presenting. But if you get a chance, take a look at this if you're providing performance based agreements. In here you can see that we have all the information on any changes that have recently happened. You should be getting through those our Gov delivery system as well, but if you're not you can go into this website as well on the left you'll see this tab here on the left that says "staying up to date." if you put your e-mail address in there, you'll be getting those announcements so, that's really handy to have that. You'll also get the, you also see in here milestone rates, all the definitions of the services, and under the training website there's a webinar if you want to listen to me for half an hour going over the full placement and retention services process, which is really handy. So today I just want to focus a little bit on that update I was talking about in regards to the employment detail information. So the forms are here, I'm just going to pull up our communication update form. Hopefully. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 24 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Are you able to see that? If someone could let me know. >> Yes, we can. >> Evie: Okay. So you should be familiar with this communication update form. We look for this communication update form once the person starts in the placement process so, after the placement plan is written and we look for this form from you twice a month by the first and the 15th throughout that whole placement process. If you go to the second page, I'll scroll down, you'll see some changes here on the second page regarding the job offer. So RSA requested that we collect more information about the employer, more details, so we added in that information here. Some of you are using a job hire report and sending that in with your invoice. Please take a look at that and make sure that the elements on your job hire report contain this information. I've worked with a couple of our partners that have CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 25 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT sent their job hire reports to me saying is this sufficient, and so I can take a look at that too if you want me to look at your job hire report. But if you compare it to this and the elements are the same, it should be fine. And the same goes upon closure. So just take a look and be sure that you're having those elements in your closure report or your job hire report. We're working on clarifying some of this language. Once we put this out we heard from you within VRS and our partner staff that this language a little bit confusing, so we're working on clarifying that within Workforce One and also on this communication update so. As soon as our Workforce One team can get those changes in, we'll be rolling all that out together so that the language matches up between what our partners, what you our partners are telling us, and what we're needing to enter into our system. So we'll looking for that probably around March. But for now these are the elements that we have and we're just going to clarify them a little bit. One piece that a lot of people are missing is this level of benefits. If you could let us know the general benefits that go CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 26 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT along with a typical employment such as dental health, life, those kinds of typical benefits. And if they're not receiving any, that's good that we need to know that too. So just indicate that. Other than that I think those are all the new updates that we have or the new review that we wanted to do. And like I said if you have questions please put them in the chat. You can also reach out to me and I'm happy to go through any reporting information that you're having questions about and answer any questions about that. So I'm going to turn it over to Ann who's going to be moderating some of our question and answers here. >> Ann: Thank you, Evie. So now is a good time as we see some of those updates to put some of the questions that you have in the chat. All you need to do -- our preference, it's just nice for everybody to see what those questions are. So if you could do to and click everyone and make sure everyone in the meeting can see your question, that's great. If for some reason you prefer to be more directly sent you can send it to me at Ann Macheledt and select that CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 27 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT name as well. But I think we have some questions that have already come in. We will be voicing out. And if there's any clarification that we do need on a question we can always ask that person to bring up their video and voice as well. We'll just try it first starting through the chat. I think Mary has the first question and it might go to Kim. So it's can you give an example of when to and from person, but not transporting -- example of kind of transporting the to and from a person but not transporting. Would that be for customized employment or other? >> Great. This is Kim Babine, I can jump in on that one. Thanks, Ann and thanks, Mary. I think most of the time they will actually be used together. I think most of the time -- well, maybe not most of the time, but they will often be used together and they just need to be separate authorizations. So there would be an authorization for a provider to CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 28 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT get to an individual and then a separate authorization for transporting. And so what it would end up looking like is traveling to and from transporting, traveling from. So that's one option. And then sometimes I would guess that sometimes you are meeting the individual at the, at a site, at a, you know, location where you are, maybe they're having an informational interview or something like that. So I think those would be somewhere where you might meet them at a place and then you wouldn't have the transporting necessarily. And anyone from VRS is welcome to jump in if any of these things need more clarification or if you have a different way that you want to share it. As long as I have the floor, I had a private message about how the transportation and transportation services are to be billed or invoiced back to VRS. Is there a sample invoice, and that is something that is on the to-do list is to put together a sample invoice and a simple report so that's easier for you. Generally on the invoice you'll have the information about the date, dates and the number of hours that you're invoicing for, billed by, down to the 15-minute increment, so .25. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 29 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT On the report you'll need to say on this day it was from 2 to 2/15 traveling to from and from, 2:15 to 2:30, transporting individual, you know, you'll have to put the date and time and when those things happened, and that's when we'll need the starting address as well. And so we have the addresses. That needs to be on the report. We will, that's something that needs to be in the report again for RSA they need that level of detail so we ensure we can track and show them exactly what we're paying for. So sample invoice reports to come. >> Ann: Thank you, Kim. For talking out that. There is a comment in the chat from Alyssa Klein, I'll read it and I'll just open it up to Kim and Alyssa, you can even unmute if you'd like to comment as well. So it says for everyone just to keep in mind, the policy that Kim is reviewing does not apply to Pre-Employment Transition Services. Transportation time can just be built into the Pre-ETS service time. It isn't a separate line item on invoice or employment CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 30 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT plan. So something for people to keep in mind but I don't know if Kim or Alyssa would like to make any other comments about that. >> Hi, everybody. Alyssa Klein, VRS transition and preemployment transition specialist. I know there was a question like can you clarify that a bit. So let's say you, your agency is going to be providing job exploration counseling, and so will be travel to go meet with the student or maybe you're even going to be picking up the student for whatever purpose. Either way, for Pre-ETS we just, for transportation it's just built into the service time. So it would mean adding extra time for the transportation within job exploration counseling. So if you know the appointment's going to be an hour, it's going to take an hour to get toto and from the student, then it would be two hours for job exploration counseling, whether or not you're picking up the student or the November all of it's just kind of embedded within that service rate. So it's not a separate line item on an authorization, CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 31 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT it's not a separate line item on your invoice, and VRS staff do not need to add that to the employment plan for Pre-ETS. The only caveat is when you're writing your report as a provider writing a report to VRS, you'll just want to denote in that report how much of the time was transportation and as Kim said, the starting location and the location you go to. So that still needs to be in the report but it's not separate line items on the authorization or the invoice. Hopefully that helps. >> This is Kim Babine, I wanted to jump in as well. And thanks to my -- the people listening for when I am not precise with my language. Thank you to Sherry and Sandy -- or both Sherries that said it's not a separate authorization, it's different lines on the same authorization. So I just misspoke there, so just separate lines, not separate authorizations. >> Ann: Thanks, Kim. And I know there was another comment related to as you talked through the specifics of how it should look on a CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 32 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT billing, is there a sample report that's out there, or that would show people kind of now looks a little bit more specifically? >> Yep, thanks, Ann. This is Kim Babine again. There is general sample reports for -- or a general sample report on our website. It doesn't specifically look at the transportation piece, and so that's something that we will put together and get out to everyone. >> Ann: Great. And then I do have a question -- well, more of something that some of our partners have experienced that have access to Workforce One, just given their (indiscernible) partners. But they haven't been able to view the authorization tabs. Is that something that would be changing in the future? If that's a Kim or -- >> Yeah, this is Kim Babine and thanks for that question. I don't know exactly what's happening there, and so why don't we connect offline and we can just see what's CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 33 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT going on and why you had access and why you don't right now, unless if Alyssa or Sherry know, then feel free to jump in. If not we can follow up after. >> Hi, this is Sherry Henrikson. Yeah, we have been able to give -- the access is now ready in Workforce One for all agencies, but all agencies are not currently cleared. So that's something that I need to work with Kim and her team on to move forward with getting all agencies access to Workforce One. So I should probably meet with Kim and some of her team about moving forward with getting that access cleared for everyone. So, yeah, we can work on that, definitely. >> This is Kim Babine again. Sherry, just, you heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen, we haven't talked about this as a group and there will be more information to come. But one thing that we've been working on and sherry has worked on the Workforce One, making the capability there, one thing that we have been working on is wanting to have provider staff have access to workforce, some information in Workforce One. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 34 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Again, if you're not familiar, Workforce One is VR's case management system. And so we want there to be specific things that, information that can be shared or things that you can see so that things don't necessarily always have to go through e-mail or you're able to check there would be, there's going to be, you know, notifications, so some of that information can be shared through Workforce One as opposed to going through e-mail. It will help so everyone can be on the same page, everyone's seeing the same thing. But we haven't rolled that out to everyone yet. We are, there's some things that we need to do before we like Sherry said, start to get access for people. There will be a lot more information to come. >> Ann: Great. Thanks for doing that question as well. -- has a question about can you share examples of situations where transportation will not be authorized? >> This is Kim. Thank you, Taylor. I don't have a situation or an example to share right now. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 35 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT I would call on our regional directors if they have something that might come up or come to mind. If not, that can be something that we work through and get some examples of so we can provide better information to you. Just, and it's not necessarily that there's a ton of situations, you know, listed out where it wouldn't apply or not be authorized. Just we need to say for RSA's sake especially that that decision can be made to authorize or not authorize, so. I saw Becky came on video. >> Yeah, Kim. This is Becky Sunder. And Taylor, thanks for the question. I would just say that this is where we would encourage that conversation between the VRS counselor staff person and the provider about the necessity of that service. It's going -- as many of our services are, they're individualized and so I think what Kim is saying and what we're encouraging is to have that conversation with the VR staff in regard to that individual. >> Ann: Thanks, Becky. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 36 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT The next question that is somebody from Productive Alternatives says -- thank you, first of all, for sharing the P/T contracts are being processed. When they are approved, and I believe this will go to Kim, will we be able to bill back to the date of the rate change? And they said I believe that was July 2020. >> Thank you for that question. This is Kim Babine again. No, unfortunately we cannot have that be back dated. That's within state purchasing law that it would be from the time your amendment is executed moving forward. >> Ann: Okay. And then I have -- feel free to keep putting your questions in the chat and also if you had any questions related to Evie's presentation. I just have I think one more item in the chat that was about a clarification. I will just read it out and see if Alyssa or Kim want to give reactions. Just to clarify, so transportation services in support of Pre-ETS, so thinking about Pre-ETS and CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 37 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT transportation, so transportation services in support of Pre-ETS applies only for eligible students, or does it include potentially eligible students too? That was more of a question I guess. There was some conflicting information. Does it apply only for eligible students, or does it include potentially eligible students too? >> Hi, everyone. Alyssa Klein again. I know that's confusing. When it comes to our professional and technical contract of providers, again, building in transportation time into the Pre-ETS service time is for both eligibility and potentially eligible students. When it comes to any other transportation needs, say you're, like a student needs a bus pass or you're going to reimburse a student for travel to and from a Pre-ETS experience, that can only be for students who are eligible. We can't authorize any specific line item as transportation for potentially eligible students. So that's the beauty of being able to when a provider is providing a service to a student, whether they're eligible or potentially eligible, having the CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 38 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT transportation time just built into the service time. But anything else outside of our P/T contracted providers that are providing transportation for Pre-ETS students, then only eligible students can receive any other types of transportation assistance. Hopefully that helps. >> Ann: Thank you, Alyssa. Couple more coming in. One is from Dee Torgerson. Just replied to everybody regarding transportation services and all of our services, VRS staff must assure the services meet the big 4 federal requirements. Services must be necessary, reasonable, allocable and allowable. Staff need to consider comparable benefits and costs as part of that decision. So as our staff are make some of those decisions, partners, those are the four, the big four that they need to be considering. So thanks, Dee, for putting in that. And then Sheenah has a question with priority 2 and 3 opening. Does that mean current potentially eligible students who are in 2 and 3 will now be moved to eligible CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 39 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT students? And Alyssa? >> Alyssa: I can start on that one, and others can jump in as well. In terms of students that are currently receiving services as a potentially eligible student we always have to look at their need for more services, do they need regular general VR services, and in those cases would we help them apply. That's what you need to consider. So if a student is a junior in high school and all they need right now is, you know, one of the five Pre-ETS services and they don't have a need beyond that, then there's no need necessarily unless they ask to apply for general VR services for them to apply. Certainly as students get towards the end of their school career, they're graduating from high school, they're in their senior year and they're getting closer to graduation and there is a need for a student to have more services beyond high school, that's a decision, a discussion, actually, between our Pre-ETS representatives and our counselors that should happen. I know that Dee sent out a message to our staff last week about that, and we plan to hold, figure out maybe CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 40 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT a time where we'll have a webinar like this internally so that we can answer more questions. Because I know there are questions about now that we're opening categories, priority categories, making that sort in terms of who should apply for general VR. As Dee said in her message, we would prefer students to start as potentially eligible if they can get their needs met there. >> Ann: Thanks, Alyssa, again. Yeah, it's a pretty exciting time to be opening priority categories and so I know that comes with questions and just making sure people know they feel like they know where to take things from there. Thanks for asking the question, Sheenah, and we'll continue to be available as providers have questions and staff have questions. So any other questions specific to the updates around transportation any contracts? PBAs or the categories opening up oh, somebody's asking when was the last update to your website for the PBAs? Evie, would you be able to answer that? >> Evie: We continually add in the updates on the main screen. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 41 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT So as Kim sends out communications through that gov delivery, that loads in as it goes. I'm trying to think of -- I would say probably, you can help me, Kim with, this, I would say around April was probably the last time when we finalized that site and all the content was added. There was a change to the communication update form and that was probably in May or June. So they continue to happen and look, like I said, for revised communication general dates to be coming probably right after the new year, probably in February. >> Yep. This is Kim Babine. I just put the link in the chat to those PBAs. So, again, we've communicated the changes as they've come, but are -- it was redone. Evie worked really hard on reorganizing the information, making it really user friendly hopefully. Feel free to give us feedback if there's things you're having trouble finding on the PBA front. >> Ann: Any last questions? Okay. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 42 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT And I think we're going to pass it to Dee and Kim. >> Kim: Yep, I'm actually going to jump in real quick here. Sorry, Ann, for messing you up. Again, Kim Babine. And we'll pass it to Dee, but I wanted to first offer my gratitude and thanks for everyone joining. We had more time than we needed today so you get a little time back on your calendar, but I wanted to make sure there was enough time for discussion of questions. One thing, if you didn't receive the e-mail for this directly, this is for community partners staff. If you didn't receive the e-mail directly, you can sign up for those emails. I just put the link in the chat for those e-mails updates. So it's a tab that you click on and you can enter your e-mail address or e-mail addresses of your staff and then there's also a tab there that that's where the forums, the past forums are posted as well as the past e-mail messages that have come out. There's a question, one last question about the different priority levels. And we can share more information on this in the CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 43 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT future, but I can jump in and share a little bit and Dee can feel free to say differently. But the federal government says that we need to when we have VR services there are not enough resources to serve all people with disabilities, then you have what's called a priority for service system. And so this was established a long time ago and we have had that priority for service structure. So it's one, two, three, four. Again, like Dee said, four is for people who have no functional limitations to employment. And so they walk in our door, they have a disability, but they don't have a functional limitation to employment. Those functional limitations are, again, laid out in state rule. And then categories one, two, and three, there are different thresholds for how many functional limitations a person has. So one, priority one is if they have three or more functional limitations. Two and three, Dee, you can correct me, I haven't looked in a little while, if it's one for priority two and two for priority three. And that just means that when we had those closed, CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 44 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT those service categories close, that we were serving only people with three functional limitations to employment, and now that we have two and three, we will be able to serve people with fewer functional limitations to employment. Dee, I don't know if you had any other things and that's all I had to share, so we can turn it over to you for wrapping up. There's a link, it says the page doesn't exist, which is strange because I just copied from that page. So I will see what's going on and we'll figure it out. But, with the links, but you should be able to access from those links later. So Dee, over to you. Thank you. >> Dee: All right. Thanks, Kim. No, you explained the different categories very well. And, you know, the federal government requires that we first serve those with the most functional limitations, so that was three or more. My hope really is that especially when we're looking at persons who are in our, you know, categories two and three, so they have less functional limitations to CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 45 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT employment, especially during this time of remote services that those are the people that are going to be more likely more willing and kind of ready to be working at this time, and probably also and maybe an assumption on my part, we'll see. But my assumption is that those people may also be more receptive or more able to benefit from our remote services as well. Because what we've seen is particularly people who need a lot of supports, which is primarily the people we've been working with in the last six or seven years, for some of those folks, like some people needing customized employment, even though we're still doing some of those services, many people either need to have more intensive in-person services or prefer that. So we're seeing some of those on hold. And overall, and this is a national trend, not just a Minnesota, but certainly in Minnesota since the pandemic we certainly have seen a overall decrease in the number of people that we're serving, the number of new referrals. So we're hoping by opening categories, we can help to take that up and have more people that can help meet employer needs, provide additional referrals your way and that we can have more people that we're moving CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 46 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT forward. So that's our hope. And we'll keep you appraised of that. So thank you, everybody. Hopefully we've given you back the gift of time. If there are additional questions, feel free to reach out to Kim and her Anne Paulson and Sara Sundeen as well. And certainly -- she's been doing heavy, heavy hard work. As Alyssa said, I just want to reinforce that really we do want most students are going to be able to benefit from the preemployment transition services and for the most part we want students being referred into those services first. We still have a ways to go before we're meeting our spending requirement around Pre-ETS as well so we want to get those referrals moving and frankly we think it will help people to be in those services. And then that will still allow our staff who are providing our more traditional intensive services to focus on students in their last years of transition services. Again, so, thanks, we are just super grateful you were able to join us. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 47 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT We lope that these forums are helpful to you. We really appreciate the dedication that all of you have in providing high quality and effective services to assist the people that we all serve with disabilities to achieve their individual goals. And particularly during this times. I mean, just know that the support that all of you provide to individuals, especially during these unusual and difficult times, even if it's just, you know, reaching out and encouraging people, it does have an impact on their lives. So I just want to thank you and we'll look forward to joining you at the next forum that we have. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye. >> Ann: Thanks, everyone. If you do have a chance, we just put a link in the chat too that gives us some feedback on this forum. You can either copy that into a browser or click on it. Hopefully that should take you there. We'll also try to send it out to everybody but it's just nice to get, right when you're in the event so that we can have some fresh feedback. Is he thanks, everybody, for attending, and enjoy your CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 48 CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT week. DISCLAIMER This text is being provided in a lightly edited draft format and is the work product of the CART captioner. Any reproduction, publication, or other use of this CART file without the express written consent of the captioner is strictly prohibited. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility, and this lightly edited CART file may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings, nor should it be considered in any way as a certified document. Due to the live nature of the event, some names and/or terms may be misspelled. This text may also contain phonetic attempts at sounds and words that were spoken, and environmental sounds that occurred during the event. CART CAPTIONING FILE - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT