Adult Mental Health Best Practices Conference

W. Roy Grizzard, Jr.
Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Labor
Office of Disability Employment Policy

State of Hawaii, Department of Health’s Adult Mental Health Division’s
4th Annual Best Practices Conference
Honolulu, Hawaii
April 5, 2007

First let me say that I am honored to be with you today. The cover of your conference program really intrigued me. Depicted on the cover is an individual installing a bulb into a light post. Much as the filament within the bulb causes light to increase visibility, the six key principles of employment supports (zero exclusion, integration of vocational rehabilitation and mental health services, competitive employment, rapid job search, time-unlimited support and attention to consumer preferences) embedded in your policies and practices cause systemic changes that increase employment rates.

The main title for this conference, WORK WORKS! Supported Employment, emphasizes what I have been saying all along. Work is important not just because it provides a paycheck, but because it affirms our dignity, serves to help us realize our humanity and allows us to contribute to the community. For people with severe mental illness, employment is a critical part of their recovery process.

The State of Hawaii Adult Mental Health Division and the Hawaii Consortium for Continuing Medical Education are to be commended for arranging annual forums such as this to focus on the evidence based practices that improve the lives of adults with severe and persistent mental illness. Your leadership in bringing together public sector stakeholders from Hawaii and the Pacific to exchange ideas and to learn from one another is fundamental for systemic change to occur.

In 2002, President George W. Bush announced the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, the first presidential mental health commission in 25 years. The goal of the Commission was to recommend improvements that would allow adults with serious mental illness and children with serious emotional disturbance to live, work, learn and participate fully in their communities. The Commission’s Final Report states that to transform mental health care, collaboration between the private and public sectors and among levels of government is critical.

ODEP is here today because our focus is on disability employment policy at the systems level. Coordinated programs, processes and services are essential to positive employment outcomes. Services often exist in separate silos, requiring individuals to move from one silo to another to obtain needed services and information.

ODEP’s research affirms the importance of collaboration to ensure necessary long-term supports. Collaborative agreements, both formal and informal, recognize common objectives and interdependent roles and responsibilities. Formalizing these relationships can take many forms such as letters or memoranda of understandings, or purchase of service agreements. Providing coordinated programs, processes and services sets the pace for improved economic and employment outcomes for adults with severe and persistent mental illness.

While increasing planning, coordination and capacity, it is vital that service delivery systems be mindful of preparing people with disabilities to meet the demands of a global workforce. Adding this dimension is critical to anticipated employment outcomes.

America faces a constant challenge to gear up to compete in a global environment. It is our responsibility to see that people with disabilities step up to those demands and are not left behind. Each of us here today is part of the process of preparing people with disabilities to meet these changing requirements. Together, I believe we can make this happen. And when it does, I can see the day when all people with disabilities who want to work, will be working.

Many of you may know that ODEP provides leadership in developing policy and practice to eliminate employment barriers to people with disabilities. What you may not know is that ODEP is the only Federal agency that serves this purpose. To accomplish this complex and substantial task, ODEP acts in three ways:

• ODEP identifies, documents and analyzes the barriers to employment faced by people with disabilities,
• ODEP develops policy and strategies that reduce and remove those barriers, and
• ODEP fosters the adoption and implementation of policy and strategies throughout Federal, state and local non-government and government systems and private and public sector employers where the barriers are located.

Because workforce systems are driven by policies and practices, I would like to share three ODEP approaches with you that can be readily adopted to increase employment outcomes for people with disabilities. Adopted collectively, these approaches enable us to prepare a competitive workforce that includes workers with disabilities.

The three ODEP strategies are:

First – Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Initiative,

Second – Universal Design, and

Third – Customized Employment 

Fundamental to meeting anticipated employment outcomes is preparing tomorrow’s workforce--our Nation’s youth including youth with serious emotional disturbances and other disabilities. The Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Initiative is the result of a research study conducted by the National Collaborative on Workforce & Disability for Youth funded by ODEP. Specific knowledge, skills and abilities are identified for those who work with young people, both with and without disabilities.

Improving the competencies of youth service practitioners through ongoing professional development is critical to shaping the workforce we envision. Ensuring that these workers have the skills they need to do their job well, will lead to better practices with youth, which in turn will produce positive youth outcomes such as staying in school, graduating from high school, seeking an advanced degree, or getting a job.

This is particularly important in light of a report released last fall by leaders of a consortium of organizations that have vested interests in ensuring that employers have access to a world-class supply of American workers; The Conference Board, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management. The report, Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century Workforce, found that new entrants to the workforce were severely lacking in applied skills such as teamwork, collaboration and critical thinking.

The second approach is universal design or UD. UD is an integral part of the world community that is evolving. I spoke recently at a forum on accessibility in the corporate environment at the International Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA). Attendees at the ATIA conference were taking a strategic look at a world where products and environments can be used by all people without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Creating products and services with the greatest variety of individuals in mind from the outset eliminates costly after-the-fact modifications.

When we speak of universal design in the context of workforce development, we must strive to ensure that our programs, services, and activities are designed to be useable to the greatest extent possible by all job seekers. Achieving universal design within the workforce development system may involve changes in four key areas:

• Changes in policy, to make sure that the rules guiding implementation of workforce activities are welcoming to all potential job seekers, including people with disabilities;
• Changes in the physical environment, to make sure that no architectural or communication barriers exist that would exclude people from accessing the programs and services being offered;
• Changes in program design, so that programs offered are providing an effective opportunity to participate to all potential job seekers; and
• Changes in practices or how the workforce system actually implements it services and activities.

Making these changes creates an environment for maximum inclusion of all people—particularly those with multiple barriers to employment.

For those experiencing multiple employment barriers, ODEP’s policy research has validated a third area to consider: the competitive edge gained through Customized Employment. Supported and customized employment share so many strategies—individualization, person-centered planning, flexibility, benefits interaction, and paid employment to name a few. 

Customized employment is a set of strategies that result in a job being individually tailored to meet the needs of an employee or job seeker and the identified needs of the employer. It is a win-win situation. Let’s face it, everybody begins to customize their jobs after being hired, reflecting personal preferences, contributions, or strengths.

ODEP’s Customized Employment initiative takes the idea of individualization beyond job environment, hours, days and location to actually include negotiation with the employer around specific job tasks. Our research has demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach not only with people with disabilities, but with others who have complex life circumstances that impact their success in securing or maintaining employment found through the traditional path Customized employment stands on the shoulders of the best of supported employment. At the same time, it puts those proven strategies into the generic work world for an employer to use with any employee who needs something different than the norm. In this way it is actually de-stigmatizing the need for something different in the workplace, because it recognizes that many people can benefit from these customized strategies.

I am pleased to tell you that thousands of workforce investment system professionals now use Customized Employment approaches in training and job development. It is being acknowledged in academic books, curriculum, and national rehabilitation journals. And our results are documented: individuals with disabilities, employed as a result of customized employment demonstration projects, earned on average $9.35 per hour, while 54% remained on their jobs at least 12 months. More than half of the people in our research obtained a job with career advancement potential and many received fringe benefits for the first time.

ODEP is currently identifying ways to expand the understanding and use of this customized approach. Within the Department of Labor, ODEP recently initiated a Customized Apprenticeship Collaboration with the Division of Wage and Hour and the Office of Apprenticeship to create intermediate levels of certification in the Culinary Arts Apprenticeship Program so that persons with significant disabilities can choose to complete intermediate levels of certification according to their abilities. Through this collaboration, persons with significant disabilities will be able to obtain community-based food service jobs starting at minimum wage or above.

ODEP has started collaboration with DOL’s Women’s Bureau to include promotion of customized employment through their “flex-options” grant program. This program is working with employers across the nation to encourage adoption of flexible workplace policies and practices.

ODEP has several new publications on Customized Employment including a “How To” booklet on the elements and principles of CE. Over the course of the next six months we will be releasing multiple documents providing examples of exemplary customized employment and tools to assist with achieving universal design in the workforce system. I encourage you to visit ODEP’s Web site at www.dol.gov/odep to review all of our publications. And while you are on the site, be sure to register to receive regular notifications of what’s new at ODEP.

I am particularly pleased to see that this conference featured a Job Fair that occurred this morning. Prior to the Job Fair, employers were encouraged to post open positions. I urge you to include this vital component to the employment process at all future conferences. Not only must employers be included as an integral partner in the successful employment outcomes process but it is up to us to ensure that employers have access to the supports and services they need for recruitment, retention, and promotion of workers with disabilities.

Key to partnering with employers is knowing how to gain their attention in order for them to learn about the talents of people with disabilities. I would like to share three findings from ODEP’s employer research that supports a strong Business Case for Hiring People with Disabilities. Please feel free to use this information.

Employers’ top concern is finding qualified employees. Faced with a continuing labor shortage, employers are seeking yet untapped resources. When employers found out that more and more young people with disabilities are graduating from high school and college, and that people who experience a disability have creative problem solving skills, employers recognized that many candidates with disabilities do have the talents, skills, and experiences that they are recruiting for.

Employers are concerned with performance and retention. When employers learn that workers with disabilities have comparable performance and retention ratings as employees without disabilities, they see that hiring, retaining and promoting people with disabilities positively impacts their bottom line.

And third, employers say accommodations are costly. When employers hear that almost half of the accommodations that are needed actually cost nothing, and that the typical cost for an accommodation is $600, then they see that accommodations can be made cost effectively.

This business case demonstrates that investing in workers with disabilities is a sound investment—and believe me, that will get you the employer’s attention! This is particularly important now since such a large percentage of the workforce is nearing retirement, and there are too few skilled workers available in the next generation to replace them. Employers are eager to learn about untapped skilled labor pools they can use.

Because partnership-building is inherent in any systemic change process, I would like to announce ODEP’s newest education and outreach effort. This spring, ODEP launched its new Alliance Initiative. ODEP’s Alliance Initiative enables organizations committed to improving disability employment to work with ODEP to develop and implement model policies and initiatives that increase recruiting, hiring, advancing, and retaining workers with disabilities. ODEP and Alliance participants will work together to reach out to, educate, and lead the nation’s employers, employees and organizations in advancing disability employment. Groups that can form an Alliance with ODEP will include employers, labor unions, trade or professional groups, government agencies and educational institutions.

You may have heard of the first Alliance we completed on October 26, 2006 when Susan Meisinger, President and CEO of the Society for Human Resources Management (or SHRM as it is more commonly known) and I signed the documents in my office. As many of your know, SHRM is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management with a growing membership of more than 217,000 HR professionals including members in more than 100 countries. Together, SHRM and ODEP are actively focusing on training and education, outreach and communication, technical assistance, and fostering a national dialogue. Our respective staffs are hard at work to complete the goals we have set for this Alliance.

In parallel with our Alliances, ODEP actively exchanges information with the business recipients of the New Freedom Initiative Award. This group is known as the NFI Circle of Champions. A key theme of our exchanges is recognizing the importance of public-private partnerships and then acting. To date, best practices identified through these exchanges include: 

• Securing commitment from top levels of leadership within a company. 
• Making the commitment to employees with disabilities intrinsic to a company's culture. 
• Developing ways to measure success and holding managers accountable. 
• Offering flexible and adaptable work practices. 
• Building active relationships with disability employment groups.

And finally, ODEP needs your help to recruit outstanding applicants for the Secretary of Labor’s 2007 New Freedom Initiative Awards. In 2001, Secretary Chao created the New Freedom Initiative Award. Annually, non-profit organizations, small businesses, corporations and individuals are nationally recognized for increasing access to assistive technologies; utilizing innovative training, hiring and retention strategies; and instituting comprehensive strategies to enhance the ability of Americans with disabilities to enter and participate fully in the 21st century workforce. To date, 39 businesses, individuals, and non-profit organizations have received the award.

The period for nominating 2007 awardees is now open! I hope each of you will encourage individuals, non profit organizations and employers you work with to apply to receive this prestigious recognition. After seeing the success stories in the conference program and hearing about other success stories during the conference, I am certain there are organizations here today that meet the criteria of the Secretary’s Award. I would encourage you to apply. The deadline for submitting your nomination is May 31. For more information including information on past awardees, please visit ODEP’s Web site at www.dol.gov/odep.

In closing, let me say that as you strive for significantly higher employment rates for individuals with severe and persistent mental illness, please be sure to visit two government Web sites to avail yourselves of the many resources that support your efforts: www.dol.gov/odep and DisabilityInfo.gov.

Thank you. It has been a pleasure being part of this important conference.