T-TAP: Training

Interviewer: I would like to thank Nancy for joining us today to talk about competitive employment and moving individuals from sheltered jobs into community jobs. Nancy, thanks for joining me today.

Nancy Brooks-Lane: You are most welcome.

Interviewer: Could you tell us something about yourself and why COBB and Douglas County's Community Services Board decided to move from facility based supports to community based supports?

Nancy Brooks-Lane: For many years, we had wanted to shift the focus. It was just the right thing to do from a values perspective. I actually grew up in Mississippi during the Civil Rights era and really saw the disability movement as a piece of the Civil Rights movement. There was an injustice to keeping folks segregated with sub-minimum wage as the type of payment that they received for what could be several hours of work and just pennies for payment.

So from a values based perspective, there was that continual nagging that this was wrong. We had various leaders in the organization that had a different focus in terms of a more clinical focus, or maybe more of an interest in certain areas of a traditional model of supporting people with disabilities. The attempts we made for change did not go anywhere, which really highlighted for me that you have to have the CEO buy-in to make any sort of systems change. Around 1999, a new CEO was hired who was very interested in innovation and embraced the ideas we had for systems change. That was the catalyst that enabled us to move forward.

Interviewer: Thank you Nancy. Really, was it somewhat of a top-down approach within your organization for systems change would you say?

Nancy Brooks-Lane: Initially it was. We knew we had to have the support of the CEO to give it credence and to support our efforts in moving forward with the change. There were a lot of interesting things that happened during intense systems change, dynamic wise, with staff, community, parents and advocates. Things that you may not even think of; that you have got to have support at the leadership level. That “We are going to push through this difficult time; we are going to stick to the values that we have and move forward.”

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