1 LIGHTLY EDITED CART FILE Community Partner and VRS Staff Forum Via Zoom February 1, 2022 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. * * * * * This file is being provided in a lightly edited format and is the work product of the CART captioner. CART is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and 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, and the text may also contain environmental sounds that occurred during the event. * * * * * CART provided by Lisa Richardson, CRR, CBC, CCP Veritext/Paradigm Reporting & Captioning Inc. Captioning-paradigm@veritext.com CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT >> Good morning, this is the VRS Community Partners 2 >> All right, good morning, again, welcome to the VRS community partners and VRS staff forum for February 1. We have a lot of updates for you today. A lottery lated to contracting, there's just a lot moving and so the day is focused on that. So you're going to hear from four of the community partnerships team specialists with various parts of that contracting. You'll hear some contracting updates for the 2022 CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT cycle, that's coming up right here from Janine OIEN. 5 And then we've got some updates on that state COVID vaccination and testing policy for PT contract holders, Jess Outhwaite will do that. Some reminders around the MDHR certifications with Anne Paulson and then we're announcing community partner conversations which we'll talk with Sarah Sundin about that and then we'll have time for question and answer. All right. So I'll pass it off to Janine to go for the contracting updates. We can go to the next slide. Thank you. If we could go to the next slide. I'd like to start by sharing with you a rough timeline of when the community partner program specialist anticipates having everything ready. A reminder, most professional technical contracts will expire June 30th, 2022. We on the CP team are working to re-certify for an additional five-year contracting cycle. All new professional technical contracts have to be executed before June 30th, 2022. So begin on July 1, 2022. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Currently we are working on a new request for 6 proposal, or RFP. That will be published in February. It's going to be published to Swift and also to our community partner website. February and March, we're hoping that -- first of all, to backtrack a little bit, the RFP needs to be published for 21 days, not business days, calendar days this does not mean we will not accept applications after April, it simply means if we're going to keep on top of our timeline in order to get everything executed and ready to go for July 1, that we would like to see applications come due in April. During the months of March, April and May, as we accept your applications to be a contracted provider, we will have what's typically our second consultation where we go over your new contract, your fee for service exhibit or schedule. And really have the discussion at that time about rates and what sorts of services you're going to be providing for us moving forward. We as program specialists, Anne Paulson, Jessica, Sarah and myself will then be busy working away at getting those contracts moved through our system and getting all the contract signatures on them, that will CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT take place during April and May. 7 We would like to see the majority of our contracts executed by the end of May, early June. This means they will be sitting and waiting ready to start July 1, 2022. Again, there are other steps beside just vocational Rehab Services signature, there's the D.E.E.D., Department of Employment and Economic Development, which is our umbrella agency they also process other grants and contracts for D.E.E.D., and we have to get the signature from the office of state procurement through the admin of the State of Minnesota and again they are processing a large amount of contracts at this time of year, so our goal is to have the majority of Vocational Rehabilitation Service contracts ready and waiting by early June. Next slide, please. The request for proposal is going to be published in February. It will be posted to the community partners' web page, also a Swift event and we'll send an Email notice when it's posted. The request for proposal has to be posted for 21 calendar days before we can officially start processing those applications. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT We'll also give you a very specific date when 8 applications are due in order to guarantee that your can be ready and witnessing to begin July 12022. Again, expect that to be in April. If you submit your application after that deadline, that's given, we're not going to guarantee that we can have your contract executed by July 1 and that might cause a break in services. Again, there is other agencies involved in helping to process our contracts and just the workload of 165 community providers needing new contracts for the cycle requires that we send out some deadlines for everyone. Next slide. You can add what kind of services you would like to add or remove from your contract. The consultation will be virtual, either Microsoft teams or Zoom, and we'll discuss those proposed services and fees. I know we've heard quite a bit from partners that there will be requests for rate increases, which is perfect valid. Something that's helpful for partners to prepare is some type of rationale as to why you want a rate increase and, again, we're going to really look at a CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Breakdown of wages versus Admin expenses so try to 9 give us that information upfront and make that a little bit smoother for us to have the discussion. We understand wages and benefits need to increase in order to attract applicant for your open positions and we certainly value the work that every single, you know, provider and staff member provides for our individuals. So, again, if whoever is negotiating the contract with us, if they could please just have that rationale ready to go, that really is helpful. Next slide. Contract will be scouted early June for that July 1 start date. We don't want to be rushing through our vocational rehab fiscal staff, state fiscal or the office of procurement at the end of the state fiscal year on June 30th so we ask that so we talk about staff at partners respond to us as quickly as possible, stay responsive and prepared to get applications turned in on time and be responsive when we are having consultation meetings. >> Next slide. This is a change and so I really want to draw your attention to this. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT All new contracts, including our community 10 rehabilitation partners and our limited vendors will start with a two-year term. This is part of kind of an overall mandate from our Federal funder that's asking us to look at contract oversight a little more closely and so having a five-year contract doesn't allow for that check-in point where we can really do some of that quality assurance for our contracted service providers. So, again, all new contracts, CRPs and LUVs, will be on a two-year term starting July one, 2022, ending June 30th, with 2024. For CRPs, who are accredited, when we reach that point of June 30th, 2024, there will be an option to extend the contract each year up to that additional three years total after the first term. For limited use vendors, it stays the same where we'll create another contract for another two years. But just pay attention to that, pay attention to that your contract is going to be on a two-year term. Next slide. There's going to be some changes to our application, some small tweaks but a very large change that our team has added is some questions and attestation around diversity, equity and inclusion. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT The State of Minnesota, our D.E.E.D. leadership and 11 admin, and our leadership here at Vocational Rehab Services are all really focused on a deeper commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion within our work. Part of that includes having service providers that either match the lived experiences of all the individuals we serve or have put in a lot of time and effort to be culturally informed and ready and affirming to provide those services to the individuals that we all work with. So the new application for a professional technical contract with VRS is going to include the section of questions related to your agency's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. The main question or attestation that needs to be answered is if your partner agency is committed to staff training practices that result in providing services that are culturally informed, affirming and appropriate to the served individual's lived experience. This does not just refer to race, it refers to gender, expression and identity, it refers to sexual orientation, and any other of those protected class-type, you know, pieces of service, disability, CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT et cetera. 12 So, again, that attestation is something we are asking for upfront. And we'll also have language in our RFP and contract that reflect that as being a core value of the type of services you would like to see provided to individuals. We also want to help advertise your agency's diverse backgrounds and skills to help better help our individuals make a really fully informed choice of who they want to work with. So there will be a space for you to add information about second language skills amongst your staff or perhaps trainings or lived experiences that really call support, you know, the unique challenges that job seekers face. There are unique services that transgender employees face in the workplace so if you have someone that has a lot of background or knowledge about the legal protections, the different the accommodation attention that are appropriate, et cetera, feel free to share that with us on the application. It's not going to be hosted on any sort of database that has to be updated, it's more about us as contractual liaisons really wanting to advertise those CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT unique skills and background out to the field staff, 13 out to all Vocational Rehab Services so that that can be passed on to the individuals we serve. Next slide? Any current amendment requests for your current contracts between today, this meeting and June 30th are going to now be considered on a case-by-case basis. So just a reminder, you know, if you really still need an amendment between now and the end of your contract the team will assess the short-term necessity of that amendment. Is it something that is necessary, like, for example, a budget increase between now and the end of your current contract term? Yes, that would be considered necessary. If it's a small teak to services or rates, we might consider that, it's not going to be that necessary but, again, just go ahead and check in with your contractual liaison if you have questions about any current amendment request that your agency might make. Thank you. >> All right, we'll pass it to JESS to go through COVID testing and vaccination. >> Perfect. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Good morning, everyone. 14 As you know, VRS has rolled out communication about state COVID testing and vaccination policy in September. The State issued the State policy number 1446 in September of 2021 to respond to the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. State policy, number 1446 intended to ensure the safety of State staff, community partner staff and the people we serve. Go on to the next slide. Oh, you did it just as I said it. The State policy requires community -- VRS Community partners who actively utilize the VRS P/T contract for in-person services to track and maintain data regarding proof of full vaccination or weekly negative testing results. Next we'll discuss how VRS will monitor community partners' compliance with the Minnesota state policy number 1446. We understand that tests can be hard or difficult to coordinate. There are free mail-in tests are available through the Vault, which is a website that the State of Minnesota has run and then the other piece is always feel free CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT to connect with your community partner liaison, either 15 myself, Anne, JESS or Sarah and I'll ask one of my team members to throw the link to the mail-in testing site into the chat. Next slide, please. First let's clarify what compliance and non-compliance means. We'll be talking about these terms a lot today. Compliance means your organization has a policy to track and maintain data regarding proof of full COVID-19 vaccination or proof of weekly negative COVID-19 testing results. And your organization is following the policy. Non-compliance means your organization does not have a policy to track and maintain data regarding proof of full COVID-19 vaccination or proof of weekly negative COVID-19 testing results. And/or, your organization is not following the organization's policy and/or your organization does not respond to the survey form requesting information on your policy, which we'll talk about shortly. Here's how we'll monitor community partners with compliance and non-compliance with policy 1446. Our first step will be communication. We know our partners are working hard on building CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT policies and procedures that comply with the state's 16 vaccination and testing policy. And that VRS ensuring compliance is new so in the month of February, we plan to communicate, communicate, communicate to our partners. The next at the point will be to do an initial trial run of collecting information. We want to test the survey tool which will be open Microsoft Form and we want to be able to provide technical assistance if you have barriers to comply. We'll do that through a survey. And we'll be -- and I already said that. I'm sorry. On March 1, all community partners will receive an Email with the link to the Microsoft Form. The deadline to complete the form will be March 15th. We will use the end of March to follow up with community partners that are not in compliance. And then our final step will be the actual data collection in April the next step will be to collect information in April. On April 1, the same Microsoft data collection form will be sent out to all community partners again. The deadline to complete this form will again be the CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 15th, and after April 15th, VRS will initiate 17 the process to discontinue new authorizations to the community partners and/or cancel current authorizations due to non-compliance with the policy. I apologize. Here's what you can expect on survey when you receive it. It will be a Microsoft form emailed to all community partners. Here are the questions that community partners will be required to answer. Are any of your staff providing in-person services to individuals through a VRS/SSB contracted service? Does your organization have a policy in place to track and maintain data regarding proof of full COVID-19 vaccination or proof of weekly negative COVID-19 testing results for employees serving individuals through a VRS or SSB contracted service. Is your organization following your organization's policy to track and maintain data regarding proof of COVID-19 vaccination or proof of weekly negative COVID-19 testing results for employees serving individuals through a VRS or SSB contracted service. If no, do you have plans to get into compliance? If you have a plan to get into compliance, please CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT share details of what steps you are taking to comply 18 and what your timeline to achieve this is. If an organization is not in compliance as of April 15th, additional actions will follow. VRS will initiate a process to discontinue new authorizations to the community partner and cancel current authorizations if a community partner is not in compliance. VRS will consider canceling a current contract if a community partner is not in compliance but may simply let them expire with no new authorizations prior to June 30th. VRS will not award a new P/T contract starting July 1, 2022, to a community partner if they are not in compliance. Again, non compliance means your organization does not have a policy to track and maintain data regarding proof of vaccination and weekly negative COVID tests. Or your organization is not following that policy or your organization does not respond to the survey requesting information about your organization's policy. Starting April 15th, VRS staff will work to stop new authorizations to community partners not in compliance. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT If a community partner comes into compliance, new 19 authorizations can begin again. VRS staff will receive additional information about the VRS internal process to accomplish this in the coming weeks. Starting April 5th, VRS staff will send a notification to a community partner out of compliance to cancel current authorizations. Authorizations will end 30 days after this notification is sent. VRS community partners will have 90 days from the end of the authorization to invoice for all services rendered. If the community partners comes into compliance, new authorizations can begin again. And VRT staff, you'll receive additional information about our internal process to accomplish this in the next coming weeks. And then from there, I'm going to go ahead and hand it off to Anne Paulson to talk about some MDH [indiscernible] forms. Hello, this is Anne Paulson, program specialist, I'm here to talk to you today about the Minnesota Department of Human Rights certification forms. So pretty exciting subject. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Swift did an update in September which included a 20 check for MDHR to make sure that all contractors had their CERT forms in place. So over the last two years, we have taken a more active roll and responsibility in making sure those forms are updated and I'll walk you through them. There are certain certifications as a contract holder that we have to have completed. One is the workforce Certificate form so a community partner that has 40 or more employees and whose contract will exceed $100,000 will need that on file. And then the equal pay CERT form is required for our partner who will exceed $500,000 during the life of the contract. There are many organizations that would be exempt from one or both of these forms, the CERT forms still need to be completed and acknowledged that the organization is exempt from them. What we will do is we will gather these two forms, are necessary forms when we're working with a partner to develop a new contract. It's part of the application process. We will then send it to Dee Vizquel who will also help us monitor them and send them to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT If we don't have these on file -- next slide, please. 21 What will happen is swift will not allow us to make any authorizations or make any payments. Swift will also not allow us to enter into new contracts or update any contract amendments. This simply will interrupt services for the individuals that we're all serving. So we're really looking at ways we can make it as seamless as possible and one is asking our partners to take some responsibility in making sure you're tracking that expiration date on the forms when it needs to be renewed. It would be wonderful if we're all in communication on that and we recognize we've been doing it for a couple of years and we're communicating with MDHR, as well, to see if we can make sure we're ahead of that as much as possible. And next slide, please. >> These your last slide, Anne. >> Oh, that's it. That was relatively easy for a big project. Just once again, watch the expiration dates. If you need the forms, all specialists have access to them and we'll get them to you as soon as possible. You may get some communication from us that is a high CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT alert, that they need to be completed and submitted to 22 us as soon as possible and once again, it's just a reflection of the system in place with Swift and we wouldn't be able to enter into any contracts or authorize or pay for service attention until they're completed and updated. And thank you. >> I get to wrap up our update. I think I got the lucky straw because mine I think is really fun and less about compliance but more about what we want to do to support you, our community partners. Again, my name is Sarah Sundeen, I'm one of the program specialists on community partnership team. And we know that the last 21 months have been really challenging with lots of changes and both in the community, the rehab community and within Voc Rehab Services, and as we've expanded our team, our community partnerships team, we want to expand our support to you, our community partners. So we are going to launch what we are calling the community partners conversations. So what is community partners conversations? We envision this to be a monthly office hour available to you, our community partners. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT So each month, we plan to have a mini training topic 23 and then ample time for questions and answers and discussion time. Our goal is to provide a regular time for our partners who have questions about services or processes and we hope that by holding regular office hours, we will continue to build a stronger community partner relationships where you can share resources, best practices and support each other. We feel this will be a real benefit to both our long-term established partners and our brand-new partners coming together and having an opportunity to wherever you're going to lead our session. Our first session, we'll launch these on March 2nd. We'll hold office hours from 8:30 to 9:30 and they'll occur monthly on the first Wednesday of the month. So who should attend these? Really any community partner staff is welcome to attend. That could be managers, supervisors, job placement specialists, job coaches, trainers, billing or support staff, database managers. What we plan to do when we have different mini training topics each month is let you know, and maybe that will influence who from your organization might CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT want to attend that month. 24 We will be inviting VRS staff as subject matter experts when it is appropriate. However, typically it will be the VRS community partnerships team and you, our partners, at these meetings. What will we be discussing? We are planning, again, to have approximately 20 minutes of each hour focused on a topic of training. Some of our training topics we're thinking of is how to market your organization to the local offices. Updates on the 2022 P/T contracting cycle and conversations, navigating the community partnership's website and resources available to you. Invoicing tips, again, we think once we -- going on these new contracts, we'll have a Q and A session devoted to that. Report writing tips and Workforce 1 access so those are just a few of the things that our team has brainstormed so far but as we get going, with we definitely want the feedback from our partners on what topics are important. We also track trend that we see and that we attend with you so that will also drive the agendas. But, again, really excited that we're going to try to CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT launch something new to provide more support to you. 25 You don't have to attend every month, just an open office hour and I will be sending out more information soon. So with that, I'm going to pass it to you, Kim. >> Kim: Thanks, Sarah. I just need to spotlight myself. That is the content we have for you. I know sometimes we have so much presentation that we don't have time for questions and answers, so we've got lots of time today, all the way until noon. So a few things to think about. In the form we want to hear what your questions and concerns and also, like, how is that going to work or how is that going to work about the contracting process for 2022, what looks like there could be barriers there, what are you concerned about, if any. Then thinking about the COVID vaccination and testing policy and that roll-out, how that comes together. And then we'll also mention, you know, we'll start the formal communication in -- that data collection in March but you have all of February to reach out to your contractual liaison to be able to ask questions and discuss and make sure that you're getting into compliance if you're not already. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT And then also in the form we have some questions just 26 as we prepare services and rates and being able to negotiate contracts and look at how we are putting those contracts together. We have a few questions in the form to consider, and you don't have to finish it today, if it's something that you want to work on this form will stay open for a little while so some of the things we're interested in hearing from a broad group and we've talked with our community partners committee about this, but we want to nope what services do you have trouble staffing for? Obviously, we know that staffing shortages and staff turnover have been an issue with your organizations for a long time and we know that has only been exacerbated, a lot, with COVID-19 and the pandemic, so we understand that there is a lot going on. We're wondering if there are some services that are harder to staff for that others, we're wondering what those are. And then also what contracted services are unclear or confusing? So we are doing a lot of work to make sure that we have good definitions and requirements all laid out for all of our services, and we've made some progress CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT on that over the last couple of years and we are doing 27 that again, so we want to make sure that we -- as we put those together, if there are some that are particularly tough to -- for your organization to wrap their heads around or if you have back-and-forth with VRS staff or VRS staff, you have back and forth with community partner staff about what a service actually is, then put that in there and make sure we are addressing it. There are some we're keeping a deeper dive into some services so we'll be rolling those out. We'll also be sharing, you know, some definitions we'll put out and they are not too complicated, they're more what everyone, most people understand our serves to be, they're more straightforward is what I'm trying to say. So the form link has been shared in the chat a couple times. I will also note, actually, Sarah before you stop screen sharing, let's do the next couple slides so I explain it so people see it as they go through. So we also have been remiss in asking for your feedback on these forums. We've been doing them for a little over a year now and we want to know how they're going, are they helpful, CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT what would be more helpful, what kind of information 28 would be good to hear and who would be good to hear from? We also want to know what's helpful, what else we can be doing and then of course things are always changing, especially with virtual platforms and Zoom, if there's anything around accessibility that would make it easier for you to access the information or, you know, connect with the information or the presentation, please let us know because we don't know what we don't snow and we want to always be improving that. So I think we can stop sharing the screen right now and we'll dive into some questions, and as always, we may not have all the answers today but we will follow up on those that we don't and make sure that you have the information you need. Let's start with the COVID vaccination and testing policy questions. What is considered fully vaccinated? Does this include the requirement of a booster, what is a vaccinated person? And the State of Minnesota policy was written last fall and that was before boosters had been rolled out widely and the State of Minnesota has not updated CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT their policy, so right now, it considers the two-dose 29 regimen of Moderna and Pfizer and the one-dose regimen of Johnson and Johnson. We've heard nothing about the State of Minnesota updating that policy, they could at some point. We would give you, then, time to adjust your policies and get that implemented going down the pike. What we're asking each community partner to do is create your own policy. So if you want to go above and beyond what the state of Minnesota policy does, you're more than welcome to do that. If you want to define for your staff that it requires a booster, that's up to you and that would be completely fine. So the State of Minnesota policy with the two shots of ModernA or Pfizer and the one of Johnson and Johnson is the minimum and you can go beyond that, if you would like. Another question kind of similar to that, that bare minimum piece, is do the weekly tests have to be PCR or antigen tests, do -- can they be at home, do they have to be at a testing site? And, again, the State of Minnesota policy does not specify so any of those are okay as far as the State CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT of Minnesota goes, but, again, that's the bare 30 minimum. If your organization wants to go above and beyond based on whatever information and you're reading in the news or hearing about, you can require that it's a different type of test. That's up to you, as an organization. SO the question that I don't have an exact answer for but I'll say it now and make sure -- and anyone on the team has the answer, they can jump in, but we'll get clarification and get back to you, is the -- oh, it went away. Oh, yeah. We have a staff that had COVID and asked about getting weekly tests after recovery and what -- Janine, do you want to jump in? >> Yes, Kim, sorry. I've had this question come up before from some of our providers and so did do a little bit of a dive into the answer so I can answer that question. >> Perfect, thank up. >> The question is, if someone has had COVID and is done quarantining, non-symptomatic, ready to be back to work, I'm assuming those things are all true, but that's not what the exact question was, they would CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT still be testing positive on weekly COVID tests and 31 so, you know, may have a note from a doctor saying, hey, this is going to happen for some time. How our policy in the State of Minnesota reads and what the technical assistance that we have provided to our providers signal a person is cleared to come back to work when they've been medically cleared or they have followed the CDC guidelines. So if this individual has a note from a medical professional indicating what's happening, then they are cleared to come back to work. We understand that people can test positive for COVID for some time afterwards, but after that initial positive test, if they followed the appropriate medical care guidelines and CDC guidelines, then they are allowed to be back at work and in person with the individuals we serve. The weekly testing requirement, however, is built into the policy so even though they're positive tests, the individuals should continue to do weekly testing. Thanks. >> JANEEN, don't go too far. If you don't have the answer to this question, this is another one where we might need to get back to folks but does the policy allow for religious and medical CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT exemptions, documenting why staff is not fully 32 vaccinated? Do we know the answer to that one? >> I do. Again, we've had this question come up and so have done a little research. The policy already allows for exceptions in that the individual can choose to test instead of being fully vaccinated. So those are the two options and they are black and white and there is no deviation from that. If an individual for medical or religious reasons is not fully vaccinated, that's perfectly fine but if they want to provide in-person services to the individuals that they are serving for Vocational Rehab Services, then they should be doing the weekly testing. And at this time, I'm not aware of any medical or religious reasons that a person would be unable to test, so that's where our guidance has landed. >> I'm doing to keep you spotlighted in case you can answer this. I believe right now the answer is no, but in that's something that people are really struggling with, we can work on reaching out to partners who have CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT established a policy and maybe be able to provide some 33 best practices or sample language. All right, sounds good. All right, so let's switch gears a little bit. Feel free to keep putting questions in if you ever more questions on that. Moving to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights forms, those MDHR forms, how often do providers need to update those forms? Generally, we understand that those are on a four-year basis, or the length of the contract. So it might be, if you're a limited use vendor and have a two-year contract, it may have only gone the life of the contract in that you'll need a new one when you do a new contract. And sometimes it's that four years and so that's why we've been running into some issues with people -- community partners -- forms expiring, Swift shuts down everything and then all of a sudden, we can't get authorizations through. So that's been an issue so especially given here in the last five months, take a look at those expirations, we are working on getting a lot more information on these forms and what we need to do. We just had a meeting from someone from the Department CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT of Human Rights on Friday so that we can get a lot 34 more clarity but generally we would refer you to the Department of Human Rights, to their website, give them a call. They're the experts in that, so I think four years but don't take my word for it. So if a certificate has expired before the contract renewal, do we send them to the signed contract or somewhere else? We're getting clarification on that from MDHR royalty now. It's not exactly clear. What I think will need to happen is that you will -- well, I'm not even doing to speculate. So more information to come unless Anne or anyone else wants to jump in with more detail. That's the million-dollar question, who gets the forms when and where you send them to and we don't want you to jump through a million hoops so we're trying to streamline that. Okay, so, questions about the P/T contracting updates. Let's see. Will the PBA rates be increased in the next contracting cycle? I don't want to speak to that at this point. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT I think we'll have more information for you on that on 35 the April forum, if not before. Our team is really focused on getting that RFP published and the applications so you can start to work on that, and then we'll spend more time in March to really dig down to see where we see those rates falling and what with the PBA might happen, so to be determined. Back in April. Let's see. Will our community partnerships liaison be reaching out to us or do we reach out to our contact directly with questions? Please reach out to your contact directly with questions. So there is a slide in the form, maybe the team can put your contact information in the chat so people have it handy. Also, on the PowerPoint slide, there's the link to the community partners list. [Dog barking] >> Oh, the dog is excited. Sorry about that, joys of working from home. She's not going to stop so we're just going to keep going. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT [Dog barking] 36 >> Actually so the list of community partners, you'll be able to find which liaison is yours if you're not familiar with who's yours yet. And you can also -- always default to emailing all four of them, they all work very closely together and they will make sure the right person gets back to you. Anything else you want to say on that, team? Okay. All right. We plan to renew our LUC contract but will be asking for carved expectation because we expect to go over the limit in the two years. What is the process for getting our CAR expert identification before the contract is expired? That is a great question, we just had a meeting on it yesterday how best to provide information to LUVs who might be interested in CARF accreditation, how to go about it and that procession. So the best thing I can tell you right now is to contact your liaison and they can walk you through that, but that's something that we want to more general information, you know, more information for the general community, as well. You want to reach out to your liaison and we can go CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT into more detail one on one with you. 37 Please keep sending in questions, there's not too many so we've got time for more so please throw them in. Is the policy for staff only or for consumers, too? The policy is only for your staff, who are working with VRS individuals. That's the only thing your policy needs to cover. We are aware that some of you are also him employers, some of you are the parole agent. There are some complexities around that when you're working with our individuals. If an individual -- if you have a wider policy, generally, than outside just people who are working with individuals, then those individuals would need to fall under your general wider policy but for the purposes of this requirement, this state policy, it is just your staff who are working with individuals. Clarification, if staff are fully vaccinated, do they need to be weekly tested? No. It's one or the other. So if they're vaccinated, don't have to worry about the weekly testing. If they do not want to become vaccinated or are not yet vaccinated, then the weekly testing kicks in. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT All right. 38 There is another question about the MDHR certificates. This is a new area to me, how can we follow up and who is the best contact to reach out to about these certificates? So, again, that's -- we know it's new and the -- it's actually -- they've been required for a while now but the new thing came in 2019 when Swift would shut things down if there was not a current form so that's when things got real, so we -- if you have questions, we understand you probably do, why don't you reach out to your contractual liaison so Anne, Jess, Sarah and JANEEN, we might point you to Department of Human Rights, it might be questions that only they can answer or -- because we don't want to get out of our depth, we don't want to give you correct information, MDH really owns that process. So we can answer some questions about our process and how it works with us but we might send you to Department of Human Rights, as well, so reach out to Anne, Jess, Sarah and JANEEN. Okay, I'm kind of bopping around because now the questions are coming in all over instead of being in a group, so going to go back to the COVID testing piece. So remind me, does the policy refer just to in-person CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT services? 39 If a staff person is conducting services fully virtually, no in-person, then do they need to comply with the policy? So it only applies to in-person services. If an individual, one of your employees is having in-person services with with a VRS individual, so if they're conducting only virtual, they don't need to comply with the policy. Question about with this policy, will VRS begin meeting in person soon? The two are not connected. The question about when VRS will be in person is related to State of Minnesota employee regulations, about what we can and can't do as employees. There is a lot of D.E.E.D. work that's being done at the D.E.E.D. level about when that might take place, so as we move to that, when we move to that, we'll do lots of communication with you so you know what staff are doing but the two are not connected. All righty. Let's see. People please send in other questions. I think we might be wrapping up, so we'll talk here for a little while and please keep sending them in CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT here since we have a few minute left -- we've got 40 plenty of time so we'll just hang out for a little while and let you submit more questions. I will just kind of read back to you what we're hearing to prompt you to help with other topics that would be hopeful to address, the new community partners conversations, workforce 1 access, Pre-ETS, lots of things around Pre-ETS. One person said they liked the proposed topic so if there are other things that you would like a little bit of extra information on, let us know. When we ask what services are hard for your agency to staff, it is not a surprise for us but it is good to hear directly from you that we have many answers that it's job coaching so there is lots to do around the trouble finding job coaches for that work. What contracted services are unclear and confusing? There are some questions around an on-the-job work in training option and that's one of the things we have a work group working on, digging into, those on-the-job work and training openings so it's really clear what those are on the new contract and what the requirements are, when staff might use them in one situation versus another so more to come on that. Let's see. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Okay. 41 There was another comment on the work and training openings, that there's more work to do on there so thank you for that comment. All right. Well, I always want to give lots of opportunity for people to ask questions and so I know we might be ending quite early today but want to -- even if there is not a ton of questions on a given day, we might have this in future forums where we end early because there aren't as many questions but want to have some forums where we give that extra time for that. So I'm just looking at our list one more time, make sure I'm not missing any. All right. Well, the form will stay open for a little bit, please consider doing the evaluation portion, that will be really helpful and also asking some questions about what services are hard to staff for -- what services are hard to staff for and what services are confusing, a little more information on that, and then ways to improve the communication and information during these forums. Next up you'll see a communication that will invite you to that first community partner conversation. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT Again, I'm thinking about them like office hours with 42 a little bit of training built in so it's just, you're always welcome to reach out to Anne, Sarah, Jess, Janine, any time, one on one, but it's a good opportunity to hear what other community partners are asking and things like that. So we're really excited about that and hope that that's of use to you. So also keep an eye on your emails with the RFP being posted and application. We'll again do some more communication around that so that's really clear and you ever an exact dates and timeline for that. So with that I think we'll end. So I thank you so much for being here. Thank you for the engagement on the questions, and we know it was a lot to process and things like that so thanks for sticking with us and we will be in touch soon. So have a great day, everyone. >> Recording stopped. >> Team, did someone stop the recording or -- Sarah was like, I can't find the button. Okay. Thank you for doing that. CART Captioning file - NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT And to those still signing off, I'm going to close the 43 meeting for everybody now. So have a good day. Bye-bye. 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 CART 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