Announcing the Completion
of A New Web Site!
Business Income of CILs - A Preliminary Report
Taking Stock of Best Practices in CIL Management – Part II
Since November 2000, the RRTC-ILM staff and research collaborators
have been very busy researching, developing, and implementing a variety of
products that we believe assist centers for independent living (CILs) in their
missions. It has been four and one-half years since the Rehabilitation Research
and Training Center on Independent Living Management (RRTC-ILM) grant, funded
by the National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) and the
Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) at the US Department of Education,
was awarded to the Western New York Independent Living Project, Inc.
"So, just what has been done?" you ask.
Let's see. I think I'll start at the beginning and list the products that have been developed for CILs and announce those products that will be released soon.
1.
The COMPENDIUM of Resources for Independent Living
Management for CILs - contains collated survey data from over 300 CILs and
over 750 downloadable documents that include actual CIL job descriptions,
policies, practices, and procedures that are being used in CILs across the
country. (http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/compendium.html)
2.
The COMPENDIUM of Resources for Independent Living
Management for SILCs & IL
Associations - contains collated survey
data from over 25 SILCs and IL Associations, organizational data and
procedures, and links to State Plans for Independent Living (SPILs).
(http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/compendium.html)
3.
The CIL DIRECTORY -
the most up-to-date directory of the
national network of over 600 CILs. (http://www.wnyilp.org/database/directory.php)
*4. Going
Entrepreneurial - a manual on how to build
a for-profit business at your CIL that includes four case studies on how CILs
were able to develop businesses to raise non-governmental funds to support
their missions. The manual contains "how to" directions, tips, and resources,
to guide you through the process.
Available soon.
5. Centers
for Independent Living: Building Support for Transition-Aged Youth - a
website that presents three examples of how your CIL can develop transition
programs for your community. The website includes instructions, resources, and
information on how to either conduct the program of your choice or seek funding
for programs. Our colleagues at the Beach Center, University of Kansas
developed this program. (http://cilyouthtransition.lsi.ku.edu/)
*6. Centers
for Independent Living (CIL) Pathfinder for Services & Programs for Older
Americans – provides information
about the aging network infrastructure and how CILs can link with this network
to market the IL philosophy and provide services for older Americans with
disabilities. Our colleagues at the Department of Occupational Therapy College
of Health Professions, the University of Florida developed this program.
Available soon.
7. Independent
Living Executive Management Simulation - a
weeklong simulation interactive workshop, which provides real life experiences
for new CIL directors handling budgets of over one million dollars. This
workshop is a revision of those developed by Cornell and ILRU.
*8. Start-Up
Executive Management Simulation – a
weeklong simulation workshop, which provides real life experiences for
directors of newly funded CIL.
9. The Organizational SnapShot for CIL Strategic
Planning© - a step-by-step questionnaire that enables you to
take a managerial picture of your center as it exists today. Structured within
nine CIL management categories, the questions guide you to identify various
resources that support day-to-day operations of your organization. (http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/snapshots/CILSnapshot01-05.doc)
10. The
Organizational SnapShot for SILC Strategic Planning© - a strategic planning instrument developed specifically for SILCs
with a step-by-step questionnaire that enables you to take a picture of your
SILC. The questions guide you to identify various resources that support
day-to-day operations of your SILC and assist in directing where it may go. (http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/snapshots/SILCSnapShot01-05.doc)
*11. A CIL Management Model - the result of information gathered from over 600 stakeholders (CIL staff, consumers, board members, and SILC personnel) who helped in the development of a CIL Management Checklist. See what over 130 CIL executive directors believe should be in place for CIL management.
*12. Effective
Independent Living Board/Staff Relationships
– a CD tutorial about CIL Board of Directors' roles and functions.
13. Visit-ability: Making Universal Access to Community Life a Reality - a computer-based tutorial produced by the RRTC-ILM and the RERC on Universal Design. This program explains visit-ability and ways to promote it through text, video, graphics, and a brief test with a certificate of completion.
14. Culture
Brokering Training - face-to-face training
specifically designed for CIL staff, developed by the Center for International
Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange (CIRRIE) and the RRTC-ILM.
15. Successful
Outreach to Foreign-Born Consumers Through Culture Brokering CD -
a computer-based tutorial, which adapts the CIRRIE monograph entitled Culture
Brokering: Providing Culturally Competent Rehabilitation Services to
Foreign-Born Persons by M. Jezewski for CIL use. The CD presents
text, video, a test and a certificate of completion.
16. Independent
Living Philosophy and History DVD -
includes text, video clips, IL disability rights history timeline, a training
manual, IL scenarios, My Country video, links to IL sites around
the world and more.
*17. Community Organizing – a DVD tutorial presenting the nuts and bolts of grassroots organizing including marketing, promoting, and "how to." The DVD includes video clips from thirteen national community organizers including Justin Dart.
18. National Network of Federally Funded Centers for Independent Living 2001 - 2003 Consumer Profile - charts that provide in-depth data about CIL service provision across the country. (http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/dissemination/conprofile/index.html)
19. Pioneers
in Grassroots Organizing Video Links -
monthly online video stream links of national disability rights community
organizers. (http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/index.html)
20. Pioneers
in Grassroots Organizing Videotape Series
- fourteen videotaped interviews of IL leaders (including Judy Heumann, Justin
Dart, Mike Oxford and others) who talk about the independent living movement,
disability rights, how they got involved and why.
*21. An
Assessment Form - that will clearly show
when a consumer is in jeopardy of entering a nursing home.
22. Online
Training Programs - online courses are six
weeks long requiring two to three hours of participation per week. Course
assignments include readings from web sites, responding to instructor
questions, reviewing other participants' responses and interacting with
participants and instructors. Previous online training included: Delivering
Core Services: A Primer for Supervisors, Beginning Supervisory
Skills – Part 1 and Part 2, Employee
Discipline and Termination, and How
to Hire.
*23. Peer Mentoring: Promoting Positive
Transition Outcomes for Youth with Disabilities -
Mentoring programs provide broad and strong
bases for people with disabilities who are transitioning from school. This
manual provides a foundation upon which to build and tailor a mentoring program
that meets the needs of your center, consumers and community.
24.
Going Home: A Guide to Nursing Home Transitioning - Provides a template
for each CIL to create a basic framework to help break the cycle of
institutionalization.
You may have noticed the *
before certain numbers. If you did, the asterisk means that the item will be
released soon. As for the report card ... well ... mmmmm ... that's up to you! Please
contact us, pick your product, and let us know if we passed.
- written by Douglas J.
Usiak
Executive Director,
Western NY Independent Living Project, Inc.
Principal Investigator,
RRTC-ILM
Announcing
the Completion of A New Web Site!
Development of the Centers for Independent Living:
Building Support for Transition-Aged Youth website represents the conclusion of a three year
project conducted with the RRTC-ILM by the Beach Center on Disability at the
University of Kansas. This website provides a synopsis of materials focusing on
the roles that CILs play in transition services for youth with disabilities.
Content of the website is based upon project activities including a review of
research literature and services provided to youth in transition at CILs and a
survey of transition services provided to transition-age youth by CILs. The
intention is to provide an accessible website that will be useful to CILs
trying to provide support to youth in transition all over the country. Rather
than a single "how to" manual, the website offers resources on multiple relevant
topics, accessible to all CILs via the web. The U.S. Department of Education,
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, National Institutes on
Disability Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) funds this project.
Web Site Location: The link is http://cilyouthtransition.lsi.ku.edu/.
Accessibility and Usefulness: Accessibility and usefulness of
materials were key considerations and influenced the development and look of
the materials. Each section is designed to be read easily by a screen reader
and downloadable for later reference.
Site Layout:
Each web page is broken into three columns. The left column contains a
list of links to the main sections of the website. The middle column is used
for the narrative or descriptive content of each section. The right column
provides a list of links to the agencies involved in the development of the
website (e.g., NIDRR, The Beach Center on Disability, and RRTC-ILM). The
opening page is shown below.
CILs' Transition Best Practices: This section provides materials that
can be used to implement practices designed to promote transition outcomes for
youth. Materials are straightforward and easily downloaded for future
reference. Emphasis is on practices that have been experimentally evaluated or
that are currently being implemented by CILs across the country, as identified
by our survey or literature review. Three of the best practices included on the
web page were evaluated through project activities: Empowerment Groups, The
Self-Determined Career Development Model, and Youth Leadership Forum
activities. Two additional best practices are provided: Peer Mentoring and
Supported and Customized Employment. All best practices can be downloaded for later
reference.
|
Menu Overview of Transition Services Transition and Self-Determination CIL Roles and Services for Transition-Aged Youth Self-Determined Career Development Model CIL's Transition Best Practices Site
Info
|
Welcome to the Centers for Independent Living: Building Support for Transition-Aged Youth website. The goal of this website is to provide CIL staff and partners with information, resources, and strategies for supporting transition-aged youth to become fully integrated into their communities and to prepare them for independent living. This website is part of a three-year research project funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) awarded to the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Independent Living Management. |
Additional Links Rehabilitation Research
|
References and Links: Each section of the website contains references and links to
additional information on the topic.
Come check out our site!
- written by Jennifer
Lattimore and Michael Wehmeyer
University
of Kansas, Beach Center on Disability
Business Income of CILs - A Preliminary Report
This is a preliminary analysis of descriptive data from the Independent
Living Organizational Survey. 308 executive
directors responded to our survey between 2001 and 2004. About 25% (76)
indicated that they provided a business-related service or product. Of these,
fewer than half (34) reported the amount of business income generated. Sixteen
of these thirty-four CILs reported less than $10,000 in business income. The
remaining eighteen reported income ranging from $10,000 to over $500,000. Since
the majority of CILs, which generated business income, failed to report the
amount of income, it is not possible to draw conclusions about typical business
income from this survey.
The 76 responses indicated that most (68) obtained income by
providing a disability-related service (e.g., wheelchair modification or
repair). Five CILs produced a product and three provided both a service and a
product.
The RRTC-ILM will be conducting further research studies to
understand what types of business ventures are successful; so that the lessons
learned can be replicated by other CILs.
James King, Executive Director of the New York State Small
Business Development Center and Principal Investigator of RRTC-ILM's Project 2
stated, "These projects reflect new ways to do business. Changes in CIL
operations will make the CIL stronger in the future. These diverse projects are
projected to trigger additional innovations by CILs." (RRTC-ILM
Newsletter 4(1), April, 2004, p. 3 http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/dissemination/newsletters.html).
For those interested in starting a for-profit venture, the
RRTC-ILM's Going Entrepreneurial: A Workbook to Plan A CIL For-Profit
Venture is in press.
All CIL directors will be notified when it is available.
-
written by Ronald B. House and Mark E. Montgomery
Taking Stock of Best Practices in CIL Management – Part II
This report summarizes the second step (Part II) of a
research study we just completed. This two-part study focused on taking stock
of management practices currently en vogue across the national network of CILs.
The objective of the study was to identify management practices viewed by CILs
stakeholders as potentially effective. As described in our past newsletter
article,1 we previously obtained the profile of an effective CIL2
as seen by its stakeholders (board members, executive directors, funders,
volunteers, staff and consumers), suggesting nine management areas in which CIL
practices could be grouped. These areas guided our work both in Part I and II
of this study. The entire research is part of a major RRTC-ILM effort to
identify and replicate suitable management models from CILs and from other
organizations.3
Part I of the study involved obtaining the collective view
of CIL executive directors on the importance of a set of proposed management
practices in relation to CIL management. These were 181 practices that we
previously generated under the 9 management areas. They were then critiqued and
validated by 10 experts - directors of CILs identified as top performing based
on aggregated data from the most currently available 704 Report. A survey was
prepared in a Kano format4 containing 181 pairs of questions,
structured for telephone administration. Each set called for the degree of
agreement (on a rating scale of 1 to 5) about the importance of a specific
practice, one referring to the practice being present in the CIL and the other
referring to the practice not present in
the CIL. A national sample of 131 executive directors representing 50 states in
the 10 regions responded to the telephone interviews, most of them in two
sittings, with each session taking approximately 75 minutes to complete.
The Kano analyses of the stakeholder priorities assigned to the CIL practices presented under the 9 management areas found them to fall into four distinct Kano categories: (1) expected practices, or those that were considered essential; (2) revealed practices, or those that were seen as important enough to examine and improve; (3) exciting practices, or the "nice to have" practices which CILs may not have thought about or may have considered infeasible; and (4) make-no-difference practices that CILs did not care about. The management areas which housed these four types of practices include: Organizational Culture, Physical Plant, Human Resources, Fiscal Management, Administrative Operations, Community Relations, Programs and Services, and Consumer Involvement and Governance.
The organization of the final listing for a model is now
under way. In the mean time, the findings further inform the RRTC-ILM if the
priorities are different for centers based on size, age and type of communities
served (urban/rural). This will allow CILs to identify mutual strengths that
might be tapped and transferred between centers and will help centers identify
areas in which to seek fortification through training. In addition, the
findings will enable the RRTC-ILM to offer useful planning tools to CILs in the
form of meaningfully structured organizational snapshots. To this end, we
proposed further organization of the findings into meaningful management
functions. We got them validated by 20 experts - CIL directors from the 10
regions. In addition to the 10 directors of the top-performing CILs earlier
identified in the study, the sample of experts consisted of 9 directors that
took part in the earlier Kano survey. Three of the experts are also members of
the RRTC-ILM Steering Council. The sample represented urban (12) and rural (8)
CILs. They came from small (11), mid-sized (8) and large (1) centers. In terms
of age, 6 were old centers, 11 were mid-aged and 3 were young centers. (For a
definition of urban versus rural centers in this study, as well as their
distribution in terms of age and size, please see the previous newsletter
article entitled Taking Stock Of Best Practices in CIL Management - Part I http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/dissemination/nl8.pdf.
In an effort to validate the groupings of practices under
functions, the experts responded to a telephone survey, where they approved or
disagreed as to the relevance of a given management function to each of the
practices presented. In all, 257 practices were judged including 76 that
represent mandatory CIL practices in addition to the 181 practices referred to
above. There was fairly good consensus among the interviewed experts regarding
the correspondence we proposed with at least 80% (16 or more) agreeing to all
of the cases. Nineteen of them agreed on most of the cases. The disagreements
also provided alternative suggestions, which are being examined for due
incorporation.
Stay tuned! Our next step is to appropriately substantiate
the emerging model with the relevant body of knowledge and house it in a format
that will be useful as a resource and management guide.
- written by Mark E.
Montgomery, RRTC-ILM and Vathsala I. Stone, University at Buffalo
References
1Stone, V.I. and Montgomery, M.E. (2004). Taking
stock of best practices in CIL management – part I. RRTC-ILM
Newsletter 4(2) p. 4-5.
2Usiak, D.J., Stone, V.I., House, R.B. &
Montgomery, M.E. (2004). Stakeholder perceptions of an effective CIL. Journal
of Vocational Rehabilitation, 20(1) 35-43.
(Also available at: http://www.wnyilp.org/RRTCILM/dissemination/publications.html).
3Western
New York Independent Living Project, Inc. (2000). Rehabilitation Research and
Training Center
for Independent Living Management. [A grant proposal submitted to NIDRR].
Unpublished.
4Kano, N. (1984). Attractive quality and must be
quality. Hinshitsu, The Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control, 14(2)147-156.