Allegan County Community Mental Health/Career Concepts

Organizational Barrier to Competitive Employment

Many communities have embraced supported employment as an add-on service with preconceived notions about the degree of implementation. This is because of fear of staff job changes and outdated ideas on who people actually think can achieve competitive employment. In our organization, supported employment staff were a separate entity from the group that ran our workshops. When we put everyone to work who had approached us both internally and students transitioning, we had about 100 people working in the community. But we still had 100 others attending our workshops. None of these people were being referred for supported employment services. It became pretty clear that we actually had a group of staff who were holding on a little to tightly to the past.

Strategy to Address Barrier

We developed a formal organizational change strategy that now has all vocational services under one umbrella.

- We reorganized all services for people with developmental disabilities and discontinued employment staff being involved with activities that are not consistent with achieving competitive employment outcomes.

- When we developed our workshop conversion plan, we increased the number of staff working on employment to accelerate the pace with which we were able to develop competitive employment outcomes for anyone who wanted to make more money working in the community.

- When we went public about or conversion idea, we were met with spirited resistance from the community, lead by our ARC.

- We continued to learn that to make community employment a reality for all who wanted to work in integrated job settings, we needed to learn a lot more about business and attain better credibility in the business community.

Case Example of Organization Change Strategy

- We went through a strenuous quality improvement planning process to identify our values, strengths, weaknesses, and developed a plan of action for the future.

- We changed staff roles and job descriptions and only lost one staff person based on differing values.

- We trained all staff on the value and skills necessary to support people working in competitive jobs in the community.

- We worked closely with our ARC every step along the way and were held to high standards for planning and better employment outcomes.

- We learned more about Social Security and work incentives than ever before and have developed an internal benefits department to help folks make more money and maintain benefits.

- We have put a lot of effort into learning a great deal about supported self-employment and all of the details that are now helping us develop the expanded number of improved wage and self-employment outcomes that have revitalized our customers and staff.

Allegan County Community Mental Health
The Arc of Stanly County, Inc.
Career Support Systems, Inc.
The Cobb/Douglas Community Services Boards (CSBs)
KFI
Rise, Inc.
Tri County Tec