1 LIGHTLY EDITED FILE VRS Community Partners & VRS Staff Forum Vocational Rehabilitation Services Remote CART June 4, 2024 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. * * * * * 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. 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 Provided by Jayne Carriker, RPR, CRR, CRC Paradigm Reporting & Captioning, a Veritext Company 612.339.0545 captioning-paradigm@veritext.com CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 2 >> Lori: Welcome, welcome. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. We're admitting people so good to have you join us. We'll get started in just a minute here. Glad you can be here. >> Recording in progress. >> Janeen: Meghan, could you please advance to the housekeeping slide. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started. This is Janeen Oien. I'm a program specialist with the community partnerships teams, and I am just going to go through the housekeeping slide, and then I will be passing it over to Lori Thorpe, our director of contracts and partnerships. Welcome, everyone. Today we have two ASL interpreters. You if you need the ability to multipin can e-mail me. However, both Nina and Kathie, our interpreters, will be spotlighting themselves as we go through this meeting today. Closed captioning is available. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 3 I've been putting the live stream link in the chat and will continue to do so as more people join. You have the ability to change your Zoom name to display your first and last name and the agency where you work. If you are willing to do that, that's fantastic so we know who is with us today. We ask that you keep yourselves on mute, and any questions or comments can go to the Microsoft form link that is posted in the slides. And I will also be including our presentation slides in the chat as well as the link to the MS form. If you have any technical issues, please e-mail me at the e-mail address shown. And this is recorded, and we will be posting our recording along with the official closed captioning transcript, and our presentation is already posted to our external website. So with that I think in about one minute here at 10:35 Lori Thorpe can kick us off. Thank you. >> Lori: Wonderful. Thank you, Janeen, so much. My name is Lori Thorpe, and I'm the VRS director of contracts and partnerships, and I'm just so glad to have all of you here today. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 4 It's great to get together and see one another and meet virtually. So thank you. So today our topics are going to be an update on our extended employment program, and that will be with Meghan Hanson, who is our EE specialist. After that we're going to hear from Bruce Bock regarding a wonderful free training opportunity for placement specialists for around the state, and so we'll hear from Bruce. Then back to me, we're going to talk a little bit about the July 1 contracting process and the timeline on all that. Then we'll hear from Sara Sundeen, who is one of our community partnerships program specialists. She's going to share some valuable information about our Pre-ETS communities of practice that take place around the entire state and some training opportunities within those communities of practice. Then Jess Outhwaite, who is also a CP specialist, she's going to share about Workforce One partner access, which some of you might be pretty familiar with and it's rolling out around the state as well. Then Janeen will share about the contract services review work group and how that's rolling out and the CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 5 plans for the rest of this year. Then back to me, we'll just talk briefly about MS16 purchasing violations, and as always, we'll wrap up with some question and answer time. So as Janeen said, please put any of your questions in the Microsoft form, and we'll get to those at the end. If we don't get to them all, we will certainly follow up via written communication. So thank you. Next up then I want to introduce Meghan Hanson. And as I said, she is our EE program specialist. Take it away, Meghan. >> Meghan: Good morning. Sorry, just making sure the slides are moving over here. So just wanted to take a few minutes just to provide some quick updates. As most of the EE providers know, the program year 25 applications have gone out, and everyone has returned those. The due date was last Friday. We've had them all returned back in, which is allowing us to put the contracts together. Those will be going out as soon as possible. So please watch for those. Get those signatures and returned. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 6 Our goal is to have them in and processed in time for the July 1 start date. So if you have any questions about that, please reach out to me as soon as possible. I also wanted to talk about the communication that went out recently. There had been some questions about individuals who are receiving extended employment supports and on a waiver. Some communication had gone out in 2023, so we wanted to just follow that up and make sure that people understood that the exception that was put in place due to the pandemic and had at that time been communicated through 2023 is being extended through June 30 of 2025 at which time we will move forward with following the rule as it's written, and then the only exceptions from there being July 1 -- starting July 1, 2025, and going forward will be those that were the exception for the waiver starting -- that were on EE and the waiver June 20 of 2020 that were grandfathered in as stated. So if you have questions about that, please reach out to me. As you know, there's also the frequently asked questions on the Disability Hub that answers a lot of the questions that have come through. So please be sure you're reaching out to me related to CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 7 any of that. And also as some of you know, I've been going out and presenting at some of the VRS teams at the BEN's meetings and some different groups, so if you have a group that would be interested in me presenting either in person or virtually, I'm happy to do either. My goal is to get out around the state and connect with all of the providers and all of the VRS teams. So just let me know if you have a meeting scheduled and there's time on your agenda for me to join you. So with that I will move on to -- sorry, there is a delay in my button here when I push it. All right. So I will turn it over to Bruce Bock and let him take it from here. >> Bruce: Good morning, everybody. My name is Bruce Bock. I'm a placement specialist in northeastern Minnesota. Over the last couple years VRS has been involved with iGreet training, and some of you may have been familiar with Marci Jasper and I have been doing some hosted recaps. First of all it is the innovative guided rehabilitation employer engagement training series. So just going to go over a few things about the CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 8 training. The nicest thing is it is free. It is self-paced on line. It is great for counselors. It is also really a good program for anyone for placement, if you've got new staff, if you're a community partner and you've got new staff, this is a really, really good introduction into -- they call it employer engagement or basic business engagement. It takes a couple hours per module. There are four modules. It's created by the Institute for Community Inclusion, University of Mass Boston, and the folks that have gone through it have really had a great response to it. It's very helpful. There might be pieces in there that are new to you, but there's also a lot of really, really good content as far as just refreshers, how to deal with businesses, how to navigate elevator pitches, how to work with a business that might not be as cooperative as you would like them to be. So we really encourage folks to participate in it. The next session will start July 1, and I will put the link to the registration. It is currently not open, but I would think in the next CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 9 couple weeks you'll be able to register. Again, self-paced individual training. Marci Jasper and I are looking at an in-person series that we're probably going to put on to do a one-day recap sometime later this fall, maybe end of September, early October, and that would be a separate link that we would send where you would have your staff go through the training, and then we would get together to kind of recap all four of the modules, and it's really helpful particularly to the folks new to the placement field, just a great program. So I would encourage anybody out there to take it. Even if you could take a couple modules and go through them, take advantage of the opportunity. It is free at least through 2025, so it's a great opportunity, and I just want to encourage folks to take it, and I'll put the link to the registration information in the chat. So thank you. >> Thank you so much, Bruce. And yeah, a huge plug for iGreet training. As Bruce said, it's free. We've had a lot of good feedback from those providers who have had placement staff go through if, and a lot of great discussions have come from that. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 10 So I really encourage all of you if you have new placement staff or existing placement staff, please take advantage of that free option. So thank you, Bruce. And also a huge shout-out to Meghan. I meant to say this in my introduction. But yes, she's gone to the Cambridge team, she's gone to the Burnsville VRS team, several BENs meetings in order to get the word out about extended employment because it's kind of a nicely kept secret, and we want to get the word out. We don't want it to be a secret. And with that she does a lot of introductory information. There's a lot of myths and misinformation out there about what is extended employment versus, you know, some support employment options, and the funding for EE actually comes -- it's from a separate pot of money than typical VRS funding, so yeah, we just really want to get people using the extended employment program more often. So with that I'll do a little bit of updating about the upcoming July 1, the new contracting period. Next slide, please, Meghan. Thank you. So as you probably know, all community partner CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 11 amendments and any limited use vendor applications that have been submitted, they're all expiring June 30 of this year. Every single contract we have with our partners is expiring June 30, so any that we have received were given over to DEED fiscal by mid May, so we don't have any lingering unless there's any latecomers. Any latecomers I'm afraid we can't guarantee that we will have a contract in place by July 1, and so fiscal is working hard on getting these up and ready, so we will keep you posted as that day comes. And as -- oh, I'm sorry, back, Meghan, sorry about that. As we get a little bit closer so... Yep, thank you. You're right. Next slide. Sorry about that. Okay. So following, once they go to DEED fiscal, what happens is DEED fiscal very carefully reviews every single contract, and then they all come back to us. Dee Torgerson signs them. Then they go to the office of -- oh, I'm sorry, our partner signs them first, so any of you that have gotten your contracts back, we are so grateful. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 12 I know it's a lot of pressure, but the sooner we can get that back to you, then we have our director sign them, and that's Dee Torgerson, and from there they go to the office of state procurement. So typically any contract or an amendment or new contract, it's taking about eight weeks minimum to get those processed, and that's why most of you know we started this process back in February really getting these contracts going, and each of the four specialists have been meeting with their partners and, you know, reviving that contract, renewing the contract, getting an amendment in place. And it just takes a lot of time. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, so just grateful for everyone that's pulled together to make this happen. Then what we're going to do as we get closer to the July 1 kickoff is we're working with Kelly Schneider and Dolly Xiong from our administrative team and Laura Cheney and the FOSs to get everything updated in Workforce One and on our SharePoint site with the new rates for our providers, the start dates and everything. So as we get into mid June, there's going to be a lot of communications coming out from the CP team and, again, your FOSs, Laura Cheney on where things are at because CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 13 we want to ensure those contracts are up and ready so that our VR techs and our VR staff can get in there and authorize for new -- new authorizations starting July 1. So as you can imagine, it's a very big process, and we'll just be as transparent as possible about all of it as we get closer to July 1, so lots more to come on that. So thank you. Next slide. Excellent. Now I'd like to introduce Sara Sundeen. >> Sara: Thank you, Lori. I'm going to give some updates on our Pre-ETS community of practices. I am the facilitator of our community of practices. We have three community of practices across the state. One is in northern Minnesota, one is in the metro, and one is southern Minnesota, and the metro community of practice started in 2021, and then we expanded statewide in 2023. Our Pre-ETS community of practice meetings take place monthly, and they are planned by VR staff, which includes myself, our youth team and the placement team, and then we also have community partner liaison to assist with that, and that's Christy Johnson from CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 14 Productive Alternatives, Chelsea Garvin from Lifeworks, and Nina Heimer from MRCI. The mission of the Pre-ETS community of practice is to create a seamless system of Pre-ETS services and supports between community partners and vocational rehab services, and our goal and purposes is to gain a better understanding of Pre-ETS services, share ideas, best practices, strategies and resource, build and strengthen relationships and communication, improve processes and resources and strategically plan and measure success. Next slide there. So at our meetings regardless of region, we have the same training topic across the state, and here are a couple examples of the Pre-ETS training topics we have done at our community of practices. We talk about the Pre-ETS reports writing, billing and invoicing. We take time to spotlight on specific Pre-ETS service titles, so throughout the year we will hit on all of our service areas. We have training on business engagement tips, DB101, and we've done training on follow-up versus coaching. So a wide variety of opportunities. At our monthly community of practice meetings, we take time to spotlight our VR teams and our community CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 15 partners. Since one of our goals is building relationships across the Pre-ETS community, we have found that having VR team updates the partner updates gives us opportunity to introduce staff and who is doing the work and has really helped in building relationships, trust and collaboration across our system. Also just a shout-out that in September all of our meetings will be focusing on partner spotlights, so I strongly encourage VR staff to attend so they can hear updates from all of our partners who are working across the state. Our Pre-ETS community of practice uses a Google group platform, and this platform is used so that everyone who attends can access our meeting agendas, our meeting handouts, notes from small group breakout discussions, and we have partner folders, so each partner is given a folder where they can upload marketing materials and their staff lists, and each Pre-ETS community of practice has its own link, so in the PowerPoint you should be able to open these hyperlinks. If you have any access issues, you can feel free to contact me. So finally here is our schedule for meeting. So each Pre-ETS community of practice has ten meetings a CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 16 year. Typically the northern community of practice meets on the first Thursday of the month from 8:30 to 10, so our next meeting is Thursday June 6. The southern Pre-ETS community of practice is on the third Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30, so maybe we will see you on Tuesday June 18, and then the metro Pre-ETS community of practice meetings are the third Thursday of the month from 9 to 10:30, and so the next meeting will be Thursday June 20. So hopefully that's a helpful overview, and then I'm going to turn it over to Jess. >> Jess: Good morning, everyone. I'm here to talk about Workforce One partner access. I know, as Lori said, many are already well versed in Workforce One partner access. But we are rolling things out. We kind of want to talk through some things. So the first part is the why. If you're not currently a partner in Workforce One or you're not currently a VRS office that has partners within Workforce One, you may be wondering the why, right, why are we doing this. And the biggest piece is to protect participant data. So we serve individuals across the state of Minnesota, CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 17 and at this time our current practice includes e-mailing information back and forth between our partners and our VRS offices. As we all know, the State of Minnesota is often the victim of attacks on e-mails, and so we just want to make sure that we have a way that we can privately share data and that that information of those participants is safe. Meghan, if you want to -- perfect. She is on it. So the history, so we began our pilot in the Rochester office. After a lot of feedback and information from both Rochester and the local partners that gained access to Workforce One, we then moved that pilot to Monticello as well and did the same thing in Monticello. We got the Monticello VRS office trained, and then we got about five partners that we started with from there. More recently we started to roll out statewide. The statewide rollout started with Cambridge, and then we also gained all of the other remaining partners of Monticello and Rochester. For the most part, those three locations are completely up and running. We do have a few partners across the state that maybe CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 18 provide services statewide and maybe only have one or two referrals in a -- in an office at a time, and so we're letting those partners choose when they will start with Workforce One access. Adaptive experts is a driving one that's the most common one that we come upon where each office has one referral, maybe two, so adaptive experts is one that's going to wait until we're statewide. But for the most part Cambridge, Monticello, and Rochester have all their partners trained and ready to go. More now more recently we have moved up to Bemidji and Duluth, and we are just finishing up training all the partners. Both Bemidji and Duluth VRS offices are trained, and we're just finishing up with their partners. And now we are moving to the northwest side of the state, so invitations have gone out to those VRS offices -- sorry, the -- Jeff's team up in Crookston has an invitation at this point. The Fergus Falls team, which has been Eric, and Eric is now leaving to a different VRS team, and then we have St. Cloud as well. So we've got St. Cloud and Crookston on the calendar at this time, and so partners that work with those two VRS CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 19 offices, you can expect a partner invite hopefully within I would guess maybe July even you could be potentially seeing an invitation. Then after we get the northwest corner done, our plan is to do the remaining southern offices which would include Mimi up in the Marshall office, Carla out of the Faribault office and Christine, the supervisor for the Mankato office. As we said, Rochester is already trained, but if there's any remaining partners that they share, we get those ones updated as well. And then our final stop will be for the metro. So we know the metro obviously has multiple offices and therefore multiple partners that serve all of those offices, and so that's why we kind of left that big one for the end. So that kind of talks a little bit about timeline. Going to talk about a little bit about the process as well. So when we add a new area or a new VRS office to Workforce One partner access, the first step we do is we do get that local office trained. There's a video that they watch. Me and Laura meet with them to kind of talk through. And I should have introduced Laura Cheney. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 20 Laura Cheney is my partner in crime. She's a data specialist, and she primarily works with the Workforce One case management system. So we meet, both me and myself meet, Laura and I meet with the local VRS office. We get some training put in place. Laura does a really nice tutorial the behind of scenes of Workforce One and gives some tips and tricks of what local offices can do as reports are being uploaded to Workforce One. Then after that meeting we do task that local office with determining what might be a handful of partners to start Workforce One access with. We're also getting to the point that having Rochester, Monticello, Cambridge, Bemidji and Duluth all trained at this point that there are lots of partners that already serve the northwest side of the state. So that's going to be a new endeavor for me and Laura that we've got partners ready to go for those three offices that we're going to train. So we'll kind of talk through partners and figure out who will get kind of the first load of invites, and then we'll go from there. Once we identify who those first partners are, we then send them an invitation e-mail that has information with CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 21 training. It has resources on there. And then we also do a question-and-answer training session with each partner as well. We are very flexible with our partners. We know that this is a new process. Truthfully your internal process doesn't have to change significantly, but just the way that you send reports and invoices is what changes. And we know that's an ask, so we can be very flexible with partners across the state of Minnesota as we are moving to the different areas. So we kind of talk -- back to that question-and- answer session, we talk through what those next steps are and what the timeline is for each individual partner. That's what I've got for right now. We're pretty excited to move into the northwest part of the state and continue to get partners access to Workforce One. And we're moving on to Janeen next, who already introduced herself. >> Janeen: Good morning, everyone. Janeen Oien, and -- sorry, I apologize. I was attempting to spotlight myself, and I'm struggling with that, so I will work on that. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 22 I would love to give you an update this morning on the contracted services review work group. Again, this is the group that contains various vocational rehab staff members as well as occasional guest specialists and staff members across vocational rehab services. And we are tasked with reviewing the definitions and the resources for each contracted service, which has a significant impact on our community partners as well. Where those definitions live is out on our community partner website, which I will post in the chat after I get done with my slides. And that's the place where we would love to have both community partner staff and our vocational rehab staff go to for questions on is this within the scope of this service, is this billing or invoicing correct for this service, etc., as kind of your first place, your first best resource that's often where we as program specialists will be pointing you anyway. So wanting to make sure those definitions are always updated to current services. Also wanting to make sure that we enhance and increase the resources available for everyone. Just a quick update. We have been working on performance-based agreements, CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 23 and we have talked about taking quarters 2 and 3 of this year to talk about that, and in getting started with feedback, we realized you have to also talk about job seeking skills training and short-term job coaching when you're talking about the performance-based agreement. They truly all go together. So we have added those two topics to our scope of work, and we have added a quarter, the remainder of 2024, these will be the three definitions that we are looking at and that we are seeking, you know, to really increase resources and training opportunities. The community partners are going to have three more Zoom meetings where you can give feedback. Those went out in the GovDelivery that was sent out yesterday, but they will also be on our next slide, so if you want to pull the presentation slides out of the chat, you're welcome to do that. VR staff, you're going to be contacted by your peers for ongoing feedback opportunities. And the feedback window will close by July 31. That's the end of quarter 3. We're actually part way through quarter 3, but we want to really allow sufficient time because it's going to take quite a bit of internal work across different areas of our program to refine these definitions and these CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 24 resources and get that submitted to executive leadership before the end of this year. So next slide. Here are the three Zoom links for our community partners only. If you are VR staff, we will ask you to not come, please. These are sessions where our community partners can share, and it's going to be specific to job seeking skills training and job coaching as we've already had three sessions on performance-based agreement and got a lot of great feedback that was very common themes throughout. Here are the links on the slide, so you can pull them from there. Again a GovDelivery went out reminding everyone of the forum, and within that GovDelivery e-mail you will see these three dates. June 12, June 27 and July 19. I scattered them throughout the day hoping that this provides the most opportunity for folks to access one of these feedback sessions. Come prepared to share your thoughts on the definition and available resources for job seeking skills training and job coaching. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 25 Thank you. >> Great. Thank you, Janeen. All right now, before I get into MS16a's -- sorry, Meghan. I want to talk just briefly. I know we had at our April 2 forum, which was our last forum with partners and VRS staff, we talked a lot about ensuring, ensuring that partners are invoicing VRS within 90 days of the end date of that authorization. And we -- Chris McVey and Jackie Christopherson and I have been taking very close looks at that and the way VRS and the partners have come together to really invoice as quickly and for VRS to get those paid quickly. So speaking on behalf of Chris and Jackie and myself, we are very grateful for that. And with that being said, so at the April 2 forum we talked about needing to, you know, kind of clean up any invoices that were over 90 days by April 15, and again partners and VRS worked diligently at that. And with that being said, we only have a handful of over 90-day invoices out there right now. So the process for that just so that VRS knows and our partners is Jackie, Chris and I look at those CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 26 outstanding invoices or the over 90-day invoices, and we look in Workforce One, and then what we do is we're having meetings with our internal staff that are connected to those files, to those participant situations, and just kind of researching, you know, kind of what went down, what didn't maybe happen, those kinds of things. And then after that then we set up a meeting with the partner and whoever you want at that meeting. It can be the employment specialist, the job placement person, your invoicing staff person whoever you want at that meeting, we'll set that up with you, and then we'll just talk through it and, you know, and once we gathered all that information, we'll be able to make a decision as to whether or not any specific invoice over 90 days is paid or not. So that's just -- that's kind of the big picture of the process. And, again, only a handful are happening right now, so that's wonderful. We're just so grateful, you know, the diligence that's being paid to those processes, so thank you. And with that, and this is related, are MS16s, so you may have heard that term, and if you work for VRS you definitely have heard that term. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 27 MS16A-C, they are -- actually it's a purchasing violation that refers to any breach of financial and accounting rules outlined in the Minnesota state statute. So this is written into statute, and we at VRS, we take it very, very seriously. In fact, we have committees that look at this and really look at ways we can cut down and eliminate MS16s to the biggest extent possible. So what an MS16 is, it's a purchasing violation that occurs when any services are performed without there being an authorization in place where we can encumber that money ahead of time, so that's what it is. It's when a service takes place, there's no authorization set up in Workforce One, and that's called an MS16, and that's why they get -- you know, there's a lot of discussion that goes on at the team level with the local partners when this happens because it's something that the state takes very seriously. So next slide, Meghan. So how can we minimize those. And I know -- Jennifer Germain? Do you have your hand raised? No, okay. Anyway, so an MS16A-C purchasing violation, how we can CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 28 take steps to eliminate those as much as possible is that constant communication between our partners and our VRS staff at the local level and just ensuring that there is an authorization in place prior to an intake or job coaching or work experience, whatever that service might be. And so those partners that have Workforce One access already, the nice thing for you is you can go into Workforce One and before you go out and provide that service, just verify with your own eyes that, yes, there is an authorization in place, you can see the dates, you can see the number of hours, and that's available to you any time. Those partners that don't yet have Workforce One access, then you would need to be in contact, and this goes for both sides, so the VRS office and the partner would need to communicate and make sure that that authorization has actually been created, it's up and ready to go, it's current and solid. And so please with that being said, you know, again, it's communication on both sides, and I'm so grateful for that. And also, partners, if you can whenever possible, I know occasionally a job starts like tomorrow, but as much as possible we really need to know about the need for an CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 29 authorization a few days ahead of time so that the VR tech for that office can get in there and create that valid authorization, and yes, thank you, Chris, I see your hand. >> Chris: Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much, Lori. I just wanted to -- so it's Chris McVey, deputy director for disability employment services for VRS. I want to reiterate what Lori is saying that because of the seriousness of what we -- you know, as described as the MS16, it is a purchasing violation, and that all eyes are on DEED VRS. We encumber more funds and more authorizations I think than any other agency in the entire state, and so we get a lot of scrutiny. And as I mentioned in the last VRS CP forum is that we are telling our staff that they must ensure that a PT contract -- sorry, that a PR is done or an authorization is done as well as the community partner before you start work. So it's just absolutely imperative that we're not guiding our staff that in the event that a community partner started services and then they're asking that VR tech, for example, to just go ahead and do that authorization after services have begun, we're CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 30 instructing our staff that they cannot do that. We need to significantly reduce the number of MS16s. We know that we're likely never going to be at a place where we never have any, but the circumstances that Lori is describing are those that we would not consider that to be a reasonable use for MS16. So just know that especially for our community partners it's absolutely essential that you see an authorization that you're looking at whether electronically or otherwise that verifies that services have been encumbered, that the start date is what it is and that you cannot begin services before that time, so thank you so much. >> Lori: Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you, thank you. Well, that brings us to the end of our slide show, and so now we'd love to again use that MS form for any questions, and then we will -- Janeen is actually going to read out the questions, and then we will get through as many as we can, so thank you all. >> Janeen: Thank you, Lori. I'm going to leave you on spotlight, which I know is your favorite, but please do either go into the slide deck and click on the MS form or I have it in the chat multiple times. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 31 Our first question, so far we only have a couple, contracts. We have not seen our contract yet, although we met in February. At what point should we be concerned or contact our contract specialist? >> Lori: Sure. So as we -- I didn't fully mention this, but right now as I mentioned actually our four CP specialists, they did start meeting with our partners in February to ensure they're up and ready by July 1, and so as with many agencies, I know our fiscal department has had a shortage of staff and some turnover, so we're working closely. We meet with them pretty much every week, and we talk daily. So I would not be concerned yet at all, so -- and feel free to reach out to me or your specialist too if you have individual things. But we're not going to worry yet. We have one month, and fiscal is working as quickly as they can, so yes. >> Janeen: Thank you, Lori. >> Lori: Yep, thank you, Janeen. >> Janeen: Next question is -- well, goodness, there CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 32 was a respondent. Let me go back, and now I feel like they took it away. All right. I apologize for the delay. Workforce One partner access, can partners be taught how to delete their ticklers? >> Lori: Oh, Jess. >> This is Jess Outhwaite. Yes, we can definitely teach people how to delete ticklers. I'll connect with Laura Cheney or whoever asked the question if you just want to e-mail me and Laura Cheney directly, and we can help you with that. >> Lori: Great. Thank you. Other questions? And we'll just pause. Yes, thank you. >> Janeen: There actually -- okay, now maybe we have another question. We just had a comment that wasn't necessarily for public. So I -- I'm not seeing any other questions so far. Oh, for the contracted services -- and this is one I can answer, Lori. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 33 For the contracted services review work group, can you clarify if the first topic is about the payment structure of a performance-based agreement or the service definition? What I can clarify is that the overall rate in how you are paid is not within the scope of our work group. Deciding to increase the overall payment or structure of those payments, those milestone payments is a decision that rests with our executive leadership at any given time. What we are looking at are the details of what's required within each milestone because that's part of the definition of each milestone payment. So anything related to the scope of work or the definition of the work is what our work group is focused on. If you give us feedback about the overall payment amount, we just pass that on. And I hope that answers the question. Thank you. Lori, I'm going to look in the form again. >> Lori: Great. >> Janeen: Can you clarify quarterly authorization end dates. Are we still going to be using -- hang on. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 34 Okay. My Microsoft form is very difficult right now. One moment. Are we still going to be using those, and what happens when we have hours authorized but we did not use those? Are they going to be rolled over? >> Lori: Great. >> Janeen: So continuing I think that extension process, yeah. >> Lori: Yes, and that is related to as any of you that were -- I believe it was also our April 2 forum where we talked about VRS, we're butting up kind of our maximum amount of money that we can encumber, and it doesn't mean we don't have money. We do have money. We're just kind of capping out at our credit limit so to speak. And so at that time that's where we changed PBAs, we're creating a $1 placeholder for some of the milestones. And with that too we did ask for in the quarterly authorizations, those are pertaining to Pre-ETS authorizations where we do them 90 days at a time. We are extending, we are going to continue to extend any of those unused hours rather than creating completely new authorizations at the end of each quarter. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 35 So that again goes back to really clear communication between VRS staff and our partners about, hey, I see you have four hours left of, you know, work experience services. Do you need more? And yes, that's a great question. Yeah, we will be maintaining that practice of extending the quarterly authorizations. So good question. >> Janeen: Lori, there's a question in the chat from Kim Bear Claw, and I just wanted to say publicly, Kim, that those internal processes will be addressed in upcoming communications to VRS staff, so at your support staff meeting you will have information about that as well as coming from your RAM, so look for more to come on that. Thank you. >> Lori: Yeah, great. >> Janeen: And then I'm going to go back to the form and see what else we have here. Folks are asking if we did not use the budget, is there a way we can get it extended? I'm not sure if that's related to EE or if that's related to contracts. What I can say about your contract is if you are a CARF CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 36 accredited agency, we have already increased your budget and extended your end date. If you're a limited use vendor, budgets do not roll over across contracts, so you will start fresh on July 1 with a $200,000 max for authorizations. >> Lori: Thank you. And with that -- thank you, Janeen. I'm going to add that for any provider that is CARF accredited, your contract will now be good through 6/30 of 2027, so three years, which is a wonderful situation, and for any of our limited-use providers, your contract is good for two years. That's how long we can go on limited-use vendors, so yours will expire 6/30 of 2026. Great questions. >> Janeen: Okay, a few more, Lori. Sorry. Still on the hot spot, and I apologize for the background noise. I'm working from a public space. But Pre-ETS authorizations can't be extended past June 30, correct? And that is correct due to the state fiscal year. Everything will be renewed on July 1 so... >> Lori: And all new contracts. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 37 Lots of things coming July 1. Good question. >> Janeen: Okay, so there were two questions about that, and that covers both. Are VR staff allowed to observe partner staff training in Workforce One? Jess, I'll let you answer that, although I think I know the answer as well. >> Jess: I really apologize, Janeen. My computer is really glitchy this morning. You cut out right in the middle of the question. I know it's my internet. I apologize. >> Janeen: No, no problem. The question is, are VR staff allowed to observe community partner training for Workforce One access? And I believe there's a video that everyone could see, correct? >> Correct. So the training video that we utilize and then we actually show VRS staff is the same training video that our partner staff are required to view. So you actually as a VRS staff will receive the exact same training. Obviously, there are some things different that partners CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 38 need to do, but that's why we think it's really important for VRS staff to see that video as well, and then there's obviously a few changes that our internal staff need to do, so that's what we talk about during our training session. >> Lori: All right. Good, good. >> Janeen: Okay, Lori, more questions coming. Hang on a second. >> Lori: Thank you. Take your time. >> Janeen: If I started as a limited-use vendor, can I update my contract to CARF before the end of my limited-use contract, or will I need to wait for my limited-use contract to expire? And there you go, Lori. >> Lori: Yep, you can absolutely do it. Any time we encourage it, and that does open up the no limit then on how many services you can provide, so great question. >> Janeen: Okay, and I want to go back one page because I feel like I missed something, so my apologies again. It's -- >> Lori: You're doing great. >> Janeen: I'm working from my one laptop screen, so CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 39 that's part of my issue. What happens when you submit an authorization request and the authorization just doesn't come through for weeks? Is there an escalation path? >> Lori: Sure. So I'm assuming then you reached out to either the counselor or the tech for an autho. So certainly if you're not hearing back, you could absolutely reach out to that RAM from the office, the regional area manager, and they can assign or find out, kind of dig in, see what's happening and help out that way. So great question. >> Janeen: Okay. Another kind of question/comment. Many providers only have their managers or supervisors attend these forums. Their field staff isn't always getting the information quickly. How do we as VRS staff help that? I will say that there's a recording of this forum that is always sent out to VR all staff as well as via GovDelivery, and again it's posted to our external website which should be step one resource for everyone CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 40 involved. So feel free always to share the recording, the transcript, the presentation slides. All are posted on our community partner website which I'm going to throw in the chat now under VRS news. You can always find past information as well as the most updated. >> Lori: Yeah. >> Janeen: And registrations for future forums so you can register for a year in advance. >> Lori: And our next one is coming up I want to say August 6. So yeah, get registered for that one. And I will say that the website that Janeen has just put in chat, that has so many good resources both for VRS staff and also our partner staff. And we encourage people to always check out that website. >> Janeen: Lori, another question. Can you start a limited-use vendor contract after July 1 if it's a brand-new provider? >> Lori: Yes, absolutely. We are open to taking limited-use providers at any time, and so whenever you start and it won't be before July 1 right now, we're too close, but if you apply, then we CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 41 would hook you up with one of our four CP specialists that are on this call today, and then the end date would be two years from the date that you -- that it goes through. And that is a change. The last few years we've been ending them all on June 30, but we're going to go back to the way it used to be, and that's for limited-use vendors that it will be good for the full two years for $200,000, so it will be much cleaner that way. >> Janeen: And Lori, just a reminder, our current request for proposal ends on July 31, and there will most likely be a gap of time like several months before a new request for proposal is posted. So if you're interested in applying any time soon, just keep in mind that the end of July is your targeted end date. >> Lori: Perfect. Thank you, Janeen. >> Janeen: All right. Checking again on some new questions here real quick. Can you clarify the 90 days. We need to invoice within 90 days of the last date of service or 90 days after the authorization expires? >> Lori: Sure. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 42 It's technically the last day of the authorization. However, we are really hopeful that, you know, three months from the end date of the service will be long enough that you could bill us because sometimes we do do, you know, longer end dates, and we're going to tighten those up as well and try to get them as close as we can on VRS's end to the actual end date of the service, but technically it is the end date on the authorization. Good question. >> Janeen: Okay. And we just got in another question or comment. So just a second. I apologize for the delay, Lori. I just cleared out my entire -- my entire browser tabs disappeared on me, which was real helpful at this exact juncture in my life. >> Lori: Yeah, when you're live that's when that usually happens. You're fine. >> Janeen: Okay. Can folks interested in starting a limited-use vendor check out the website? And I can answer that one, Lori. Yes. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 43 This is a public website that I just posted. There's VRS news with updates. You can view past trainings and that sort of thing. Instead of the VRS news tab if you go under contracted services, that's where you're going to learn a lot about the definitions of our contracted services. Also if you click -- there's a tab that says new contracts, and if you click there and click on the request for proposal tab, it will take you to the Department of Employment and Economic Development website where our request for proposal is posted, and there you can see a sample contract and what it will all take for you to apply. So that's usually our first course of action when someone expresses interest is that we as a program specialist team send you to the website to start checking all of that out. Please do access it. Please do check it out. >> Lori: Yes, and as Janeen said, if you also just wanted to talk to one of our four CP specialists, that's an option too. If you're just thinking, you know, might a limited-use vendor be an option for me, we would be happy to talk you through that as well. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 44 So yeah, thank you, Janeen. >> Janeen: Okay. And then we have another response here about end dates on authorizations. Can you explain a little more about extending authorizations if we can extend past June 30? Are we just renewing the remaining hours? For example, if they only used three in the last quarter, are they just going to be authorized for two on July 1, or will some additional hours be added? I imagine, Lori, that's part of the communication with the local referring VR staff, right? >> Lori: Yeah, I would agree, and yeah, I don't know if anyone has more to add on that. >> This is Chris McVey, and my -- just based on the fact that all PT contracts are renewing that we're looking at new authorizations that need to be encumbered on July 1, and that there wouldn't be an extension beyond June 30. >> Lori: Sounds right to me. Thank you, Chris. >> Janeen: Lori, we have had a significant gap in time since the last question was submitted, so I think it's up to you if you want to call it, and then if we get any further questions or comments submitted, we can always follow up within our GovDelivery posting. CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 45 >> Lori: Absolutely. And I know, Janeen, we've referenced today the GovDelivery option. So please if any of you are thinking what is GovDelivery, what are they talking about, please reach out to me, and I can help you get connected. That is -- it's a large number of people have signed up for it, about, I had to say, but 1700 people actually receive the GovDeliveries that we send out, which is fabulous. We want to share this information broadly and across many venues, and so if you don't know what that is, please reach out to me, I'll get you connected. But it's just a nice way we're able to communicate from VRS out to our providers and anyone that's interested in learning more about VRS or where things are at. So yeah, thank you, Carla. It's a list serve for those of you who are tech savvy. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful, and as I mentioned, our next forum like this will be on August 6, and in the meantime, like Janeen said, send us your questions or comments to any of us, and we will definitely be able to get back to you. So thank you all for being here, and may your day be CART captioning file NOT A CERTIFIED TRANSCRIPT 46 wonderful. Take care. >> Recording stopped. [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. 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