001i just did [Laughter] um so hi i just wanted to interject kathy i'm so sorry but you're muted and we can't hear you well that's really embarrassing but thank you so much for telling me it was really good information though well you couldn't read my sign language basically all right i wish i could start the live button over but i can't so i'll start it now okay so welcome everyone this is our second event in the autism acceptance week the amherst regional public schools celebration of all things autism and um yesterday we had an event where we had people from colleges come and talk about how to access services at the college level today we have people from adult services so many there are many different services out there and they all but they all
002kind of um complement each other and have and you can access access more than one of them and i really want you everyone to hear about what those services are and how they work so we've got a great group okay we've got people from dds and community action and mrc and autism connections pathlight thank you so much crystal cartwright our transition specialist for getting that for getting all these people here i'm really impressed that you all took your time to be here today it's really meaningful um so what will happen is um each one of these people will take a few minutes five six seven minutes to talk about who they are and what their services are and then there'll be a period for question and answer so um any of you watching this please
003feel free to put a question or comment in the chat that's totally fine and we'll get to it um after crystal is monitoring that so that she won't miss anything and will help push forward questions and may come forward herself to ask or to answer anything that has to do with process in terms of how it works at the high school level in terms of our piece we very much work together so um and that also i will at the end put a link to the flyer that has in information about what else is happening this week and what's happening on thursday which is tomorrow is the main event of the autism week which is a panel like this but everybody on the panel is autistic um or has autism and um we'll talk about
004their own experience so it's former students who have already graduated alumni who want to come back and talk about it and then or also some current students in our schools and um that's a really exciting event my favorite this is great right now but you know to actually have the students here is so wonderful and after that they'll be kind of an after party google link where there'll be different breakouts to do different things like one of the students will be live streaming herself doing art it's gonna be great so anyway back to today's event um so on the order i have on my screen which i think everybody does i have arlene and then jennifer and it kind of goes down like that so if you all don't mind arlene if you don't mind
005being first if you would jump in and say a little bit about yourself and your services thank you sure um thank you uh my name is arlene lochenwich and i'm the children and transition coordinator that covers for m amherst and pelham regional school district and my role is really to assist the student um to transition from school services into adult services and that's via the the 688 referral process that that the school initiates for a lot of individuals who are graduating i don't always i'm not always involved for a long period of time so because the adult services are are coordinated by an adult service coordinator jennifer durant wing is here with us today and she's an adult service coordinator that works with individuals who are autism only so i'm going to let jennifer speak
006a little bit more about about those services so really just depending on what the student's vision is um and what their their hopes are um you know we help them transition into an array of services whether it be community-based day services if they need to continue to work on their um pre-vocational and vocational skills to to job employment type services we also offer individualized services so there's an array of supports that are available it really just um you know it's as individual as the individual so it really comes down to what their hopes and dreams are and what their vision is for themselves moving forward after school services and i i try to support that along with you know help from other agencies as well like mass rehab commission we also have katie here representing
007pathlight so you know pathlight is a uh is an agency that we refer a lot to uh when it comes to adult services so i'm sure katie will be able to elaborate a little bit more specifically around the services that they provide so that's that's what i think i have for today thank you very much i appreciate it you're welcome really gives a good picture of uh the structure of things thank you jennifer did you want to add on to that hi everyone my name is jennifer durant wing i am on the autism service coordinator out of the franklin hampshire dds area office and what that means is that the individuals who are on my caseload have a diagnosis of autism but do not have an intellectual disability prior to 2014 and that eligibility did
008not exist the department only served individuals who had an intellectual disability but in there was legislation the omnibus bill um that said that um individuals who had autism without an intellectual disability um needed to receive services and it was decided that the department of developmental services was the best agency to in fact do that so i think the first thing that i want to stress is that um all of the services and all of the documentation and all of the forms and everything that existed um prior to 2014 he was keeping in mind um individuals who have an intellectual disability and so we tried to fit all of that to individuals who were asd only um and that has had extremely mixed results um and i would like to say that um by 2021 that
009there have been significant changes and there have not been certainly we have made some strides um but we do not have an entire separate set of services that i would say um can entirely meet the needs for individuals who are asd only um we have some pockets and we have some agencies that i think have a certain amount of expertise in that area um what can also be a little bit complicated is having clinical supports um that are associated with those agencies or even in the community that have an understanding of autism and the best way to support those individuals so that is my my preemptive speech so when i came to the department in 2017 i had about 65 people on my caseload and 15 of those were individuals who had an intellectual disability
010i now have a hundred people on my caseload and those are all autism only no intellectual disability um so clearly there has been a significant increase in the number of people who are applying for the asd only eligibility and a lot of that i think is coming through the school systems and the 688 process um that is an extremely important process because as of three years ago um there is now funding that's attached to those referrals so there always was or um you might hear it referred to as turning 22 um money or referral um but i think it you know as you know the the individuals who are asd only are graduating at 17 18 19 um the people who had an intellectual disability um there was funding attached to going from their school
011entitlement to their adult services in dds there was not for um people who were asd only and um there was very limited um increases to the autism budget although you heard the numbers that i was talking about as far as the increase in people that we're serving but as of three years ago if there is a 688 referral to the department of developmental services um there is now funding that becomes available to develop adult services um so that that is an important distinction um a lot of times what we're seeing is that school systems are um maybe we'll choose mrc as the adult service agency because someone expresses an interest in employment or because someone expresses an interest in maybe going to college and would like some um assistance with that and um i think
012that that mrc is a very important piece of the puzzle um but an individual can access both so i would certainly encourage um school systems and families and students to push for that dds designation um knowing that you can also access mrc that it's not one or the other but the funding um the the funding will um really only come for the adult services with the dds designation um so what are some of the services that are available um so you know like arlene said um there are there is something called cbds and that stands for community-based day supports so typically there's a um social um and community-based component of that as well as a pre-vocational component to that um that is probably one of the biggest holes that we have right now as far
013as um places for individuals who are asd only to go most of the cbds programs um again were developed and serve individuals with intellectual disabilities and sometimes um the programming may not be um what would best serve the individual who is asd only um we do have something that's called individualized supports and community habilitation and that is a one-on-one support that is very flexible um we look at that as being skill based and would like it to focus on whatever is going to help an individual to be able to be safely and successfully independent in the community so that can focus on social goals um financial goals getting a driver's license um you know dealing with correspondence how are you returning emails are you opening your mail um how do you respond when you um
014when you get mail um filling out applications for things like mass health getting on housing lists um it really is um it really is quite flexible um because you have that one-on-one support so i think you can move through goals with that there's also a service that's called autism coaching um right now aane provides that service um they do approximately four hours a week is the most that they would do um it is extremely goal-based um and i feel like they work to kind of teach an overarching skill set that the individual um then implements on their own to a certain degree we also have employment supports um some individuals participate in group supported employment meaning that they have a coach and may have three or four people on a work crew other people are
015being placed in a community-based employment um with supports with preparing for a job finding a job interviewing um and then on the job training and then check-ins as appropriate um what we do not have is we do not fund residential placements for individuals who are eligible under the asd only eligibility um so that question comes a lot we have a lot of young people who are living at home who have some decent skills but there are some concerns about them living completely independently so oftentimes you know what we would look to do then is to put in some individualized supports so that um the agency then kind of takes the place of the parental figure um or the school figures to help um with things that they may have done previously um that's a long
016answer to i'm not even sure what the question was but um that's what i got i think it was a wide open question and there's a lot to fill in and thank you there's so much there um i loved how you started it in terms of the framework of the funding and then when it and how important it is um to get that 688 going you know to get that funding through that and our school definitely has been doing both has been the 688 to dds and then also referring to mrc and that's been a really a great pairing so thank you for reinforcing that idea um and everything else it's really exciting um are you ready you know annie okay go for it sure this is exciting we're going row by row i thought
017we would go clockwise so here i am uh hi folks my name is noemi los salandra um i work with community action pioneer valley which is a pretty uh substantial social services organization anti-poverty agency um that serves franklin hampshire counties and um today i'm here to talk about our wioa program our technically our wioa title 1 youth program because you may hear we always get kicked around in some other conversations um and uh thank you to the other folks that have gone ahead of me um so wioa is a program um federally funded job training program and slightly different from my four colleagues who are presenting plus kathy um today this is not an autism-specific asd specific uh program but um folks with an autism diagnosis uh are able to get support in our program
018um we have some experience doing that um and and seeing people through our programming successfully and it also happens to make a lot of the eligibility stuff easier for you all um which is which is always a nice thing so it's good to keep in mind as i'm talking that my work and and my agency and my program is really detached from a lot of this other um networked stuff around dds and your 688 referrals that you'll be wrapping up with um with amherst high here so um just keep that in mind as i'm talking so uh wioa is a as i said federally funded legislated a job development program um we provide employment readiness services to folks usually who are in that kind of um transition age youth 17 to 24 we often work
019with people kind of the earliest we would work with people would be kind of beginning of their last year of high school and then then we work with folks who are out of school for any number of reasons because they have graduated high school uh and and you know are just kind of trying to get into the employment game maybe they left high school without a credential um that's that's acceptable too in terms of our eligibility or maybe folks went to college gave it a try and decided no or uh are currently in their first year um some kind of collegiate programming so it's pretty broad uh the kind of paths you can come from to get to us but once you are working with wiela our goals are to help people uh with some
020individualized goal setting as jennifer was talking about some overlaps there um learning employment readiness skills so we work on um both kind of hard skill and soft skill development right so there's a lot of job search coaching how do you find job lists how do you fill out applications how do you write a resume cover letter uh we do interviewing skills um and there's also a lot of just frank and peer supported discussion um we do a lot of group employment trainings um where folks can get all together with their peers in the wioa program and talk about stuff like how i make a budget or how um to resolve conflicts at work or you know um all the how to talk to your employer who is a was a big scary person um in
021your life and uh that you know participants in our program get a lot of opportunities to um do kind of that that skill building work both one-on-one and in some kind of a semi-classroom semi-peer cohort style um environments so uh we think that's cool and our goal there is really to get people from a position of for example um i'm done with school i don't want to go back to school i'm not really sure though what else i'm going to do i've never really worked before or i have worked but it was like crummy and i didn't like it or maybe you know i am working and i'm doing retail or burger king or you know service jobs that are really stressful and intimidating to me and not good for my well-being and mental health
022we get we get that a lot from from our participants when they enter and our goal is to take folks kind of from that place and empower them to kind of chart their path to kind of maybe like first second and maybe third kind of career steps so i can say um in terms of what our funding prescribes that we do it we are obligated to provide individualized case management to folks so everybody works with a knowledge with a one-on-one with a caseworker uh we usually meet for about an hour a week it could be less it could be more depending on the circumstances and that case management individualized support that lasts for usually somewhere between one and three years for people in our programs and our goals are to you know research career paths
023explore extra schooling if that feels like an option um explore occupational training programs so you know we've put folks through certifications to get either you know certifications or licensures to do things like bookkeeping or manufacturing or business classes or just like general office skills maybe doing it or security stuff working in healthcare or even kind of doing some trade stuff i know we've done some kind of plumbing and hauling and hoisting and driving stuff before as well if that's you know uh things that are kind of interesting to to you all um so yeah that's our goal we kind of are hoping to get people from a place of little confidence in their career trajectory little work experience kind of through to the other end where they exit our program with a license or a
024credential that enables them to get an entry job kind of that's career oriented and career focused and not just kind of making minimum wage doing whatever you can you you can do which um you know it's great for the folks that are doing it but also it could it could be better for most of us too so uh that's our overall goal um like i said if if uh you or the person that you're supporting has an asd diagnosis um or frankly even just an iep or a 504 without a diagnosis again because we're not um autism specific then eligibility for wioa winds up being pretty straightforward uh you have to live in franklin or hampshire county and um if you're still in school you have to be 17 to 21 and if you're no
025longer in school so you know if if it's april and you're kind of making that transition out this june um then you can be up to 24 in our program um and uh that's kind of it um some categories of folks do have to be low income for our programs however people with who are designated as having a disability um are considered a legal household of one so only the participant's income is counted um and so as long as the young person themselves are making less than 200 the federal poverty limit on their own which tends to be everybody we see uh then you're all set there um income wise and then the last thing is because these are federal training dollars folks do have to have work authorization either you know through their u.s
026citizenship or through um whatever stage they're at in kind of immigration naturalization type type things um let me take a peek at my notes here and see what else i've got although i can also kind of just wrap up um oh i also like to talk about a little bit about um money because that's always a good thing to hear about um there's kind of three ways that folks get financial support once they're in our program um the first is through what we call supportive services so we try to retain between 200 and 300 per participant per year um in order to purchase goods for that person that helps them overcome employment or education obstacles so these are small things like job uniforms work boots schools school supplies they're more complicated messy things like helping
027people get um employment documents so you know if you don't have a state id if you don't have a license if you don't have your social security card anymore we both help facilitate that process as well as pay the fees um and then also other other stuff you know um if you if if you're parenting and you need help with child care like we help you find child care get you signed up for some vouchers that kind of thing um we then also retain about fifteen hundred dollars a year per participant um to enroll them in those occupational training programs i was speaking to so if you know you're someone who wants to take who you know is like on the college path but six weeks learning about internet security sounds like a cool thing
028um you know we'll help you research your options do you you know especially right now right do you want to do independent self-paced learning online do you want to do um in-person learning do you want to do online learning that's taught by a teacher live like you know we research those options with you and then uh we we pay for your enrollment and registration and all that kind of thing um so that you know that that's one of the biggest sells if you're looking to get a credential that puts you into a kind of a particular bracket for your career goals um we pay for that and uh then the last thing money-wise that's nice to know is that we tend to hire all of our participants on our payroll um and every training that
029you come to to you know you come to a two-hour training to learn about budgeting that's two hours at minimum wage in your bank account you come to a uh you know an informational um session about a particular career sector uh that lasts for three hours you earn three hours in wages and then finally one of our capstones that we like to do with folks is actually get them a career oriented internship um and we pay you wages for any hours that you work usually those internships are about 150 um hours sometimes a little bit more a little less they can be you know if someone's ready and eager they could do it over the summer in a couple of weeks working 30 hours a week or we could do you know three four hours
030a week just to kind of dip your toes in the water and get used to things it's very um customizable that way which is nice and we work with the participant to find like what type of job do you want can you interview with the employer see kind of how like that jives and we support you slightly in that work experience it is important to know um just full disclosure and to be transparent that our program is not set up to provide um some of the supports that jennifer was talking about in terms of cohort based employment or job coaching that stuff is much more mrc uh and and their lane and alley and the work they do um but if you're somebody who is able to work a little bit more independently but still
031wants you know a weekly check-in a light kind of introductory work experience a lot of guidance a trusting adult to talk to who's not your employer um that's more kind of the the feeling in the sense that we're going for um so yeah i mean i think that's the whirlwind tour uh the way to get started with us i'll be uh frank and oblivious here i'm not really sure if kathy or crystal are planning to uh disseminate information um do you happen to know if that's in the poem i was just thinking of that how would i how am i going to do that i was thinking i could put my email in the chat and then send it out crystal might have a thought or if you want to plot something in the chat
032a link or something too yeah well yeah absolutely i'm happy to just say out loud you know our website is www.communityaction.us wioa and we'll try to get you like something in writing so you don't have to remember that but there's a self-referral form you fill it out and ask for a little bit of info name phone number email where do you live what's your likes kind of uh status or station in school right now and um and then we kind of do an intake review your eligibility and get you started with a case worker um so uh you know that's how you can get in touch with us and um and begin that we can begin that process um thank you and i think that's kind of it for me so thank you kathy for
033letting me speak and go on about thank you no it's there's so many um i love all the specifics all the detailed kind of concrete ways it can play out your support that just makes it so real i appreciate that um you know different things you were talking about you know plumbing there's so many different things just help make it real like jennifer when you were talking about how do i what do i do with my mail like all that stuff is is really helpful to explain what we mean um so i appreciate that thank you oh i'm just like yes let's sign everybody up okay um katie would you like to pick up from there sure thank you um and before i get started i just wanted to say i'm really um happy to
034to you see that you're doing this um this week of resources because i used to go to your autism resource night and really enjoyed it so it's great to hear that you have your panel going on tomorrow with with students and alums because that was one of my favorite parts but thank you yeah i would just say it was such a shame to cancel it last year because it happened right you know when things blew up and the share you know we know how to use the internet now so could make it right we've all adapted to the internet whether we want to or not um so our my program um is pathlight which both arlene and jennifer did a lot of the heavy lifting for me on some of the services i'm going to
035talk about but i'll get into a little bit more detail i'm pathwight is a human services organization that serves western massachusetts and we also have a program called autism connections that's a part of that that is our autism resource center so um all the other services i'm going to talk about today require direct referrals from dds the autism resource center of western massachusetts anybody can call if they have a general question regarding information or resources or referral um they can call or email us or go to our facebook page and send a message and we have an information and referral specialist who gets a lot of contacts um but who is really good at reaching out and getting back to people and if and also maybe connecting members of our team who might have a
036little bit more information about what the person is looking for and that's open to anyone of any age and anyone in the community so that's a little different than post high school services but i wanted to mention that because a lot of times if people have a question and they're not sure where to start that is a resource the other thing that it does is offer um trainings and um support groups and networking groups and all of that information you can find at our website and i'll put that in the chat a little bit later but you can sign up for our mailing list and you'll get a monthly newsletter that basically lists all the the resources we're offering but also the resources that we're aware of in the broader community a lot of them
037are um since we since last april or march um we pivoted to making that newsletter um it was weekly for a while we've gone back to monthly but we make it a little bit more specific just to resources related to needs regarding covid and the pandemic there is a broad range of resources in that newsletter but sometimes there's general if you need to know about where to get a vaccine or what your eligibility is types of resources there as well so i just recommend that to the broader community that if you're not sure where to start and you need to figure out what you need to ask for sometimes or you need to know that dds exists because maybe you're not sure yet or that mrc or wioa exists like it's a good place to
038kind of just start and get that general information um flowing so the um other services we provide uh do support both people with um an intellectual disability and perhaps autism as well or with an autism-only disability so i'm sorry no autism only diagnosis so it's a little bit um so we provide services to a wide range of people uh and we do have services that support people under the the age of 18 and 22 but our adults programs obviously focus on that those post-high school years um regardless of um whether or not the person has um autism and intellectual disability or just autism or just an intellectual disability so it the services do look different like jennifer was saying based on um how your referral comes through and we provide those direct services in addition
039to other area agencies um by referral uh from dds from arlene or from jennifer um or and and their uh area office so um as jennifer was saying a lot of times when people leave school at 22 there's a bit if they have an autism-only diagnosis and they're graduating or choosing not to stay until they're 22 um there's a bit of a gap because there's been a really natural structure that's been in place um from you know from start of school till then and then it's a now what kind of moment um so we find that you know like jennifer was saying there's not like a day service structure that exists um in a lot of cases that you know is very naturally structured for for people with autism to just fall into easily there
040are community-based day programs um for people with intellectual disabilities but it's hard to find one that might provide um that natural structure for someone with autism however it's not something that necessarily the person might need and what our goal is is to help support that person to start to build their own structure and to make that transition from a school setting where your day is kind of planned out for you and maybe you have some after school jobs or programs as well and to building your own plan for the future and exploring what you want to do and that's often overwhelming for anyone when they leave school but when you have a you know when you're dealing with managing some you know executive functioning decision making and things like that it can become a little
041bit more overwhelming so our job is to kind of take that and break it down into smaller pieces and help focus on kind of those skill based next step resources so we have people who might say i really want to get my driver's license but i only feel comfortable driving on a closed track until um for now which is you know we might have to start with okay well a closed track is a little bit hard um but here's what some steps that we can take to um help you feel more comfortable before you get behind the wheel or what some other resources we might be able to find that might help you to get more more comfortable um or maybe somebody is exploring taking college classes um we work a lot with other agencies
042who um are a little bit more specialized in maybe supporting someone um to attend a college class but we might help them with that you know looking with that kind of organizing their thoughts and their day and pla and making sure that they understand all the little bits and pieces of of their day that maybe when the um disability office at the college or the person who's assigned to help them complete their assignments maybe they're working on something very specific and we can kind of help them with the bigger picture let's put it all together and create a structure piece um sometimes we have people who really want to work on cooking or other life skills opening their mail which does become a really big deal when you don't open your mail you learn some
043things really hard way um so we do some of those day-to-day skill-based things that can be more community-based um or home based and there's a couple different types of models that are structured by dds and part of the referral process is figuring out what the right type of model might be um and sometimes it's a little bit of a learning curve as jennifer was saying um the the supports for the for people with autism only are rel relatively new um they're what seven years old now so you know we have a seven-year-old in terms of supports and what we've learned and seven years of experience and getting things um pushed through to you know as we learn oh goodness there's a real gap here in terms of what we need to be able to provide
044both as an agency or as a service that's funded through the state and so we often end up working together collaboratively to try to figure out those gaps and there's other programs like mrc or agencies like mrc that come in as well like we're all really accustomed to working as a team and figuring out what the needs are um i know i just talked a lot about the autism only crowd we do also provides those same types of supports to people with an intellectual disability or co-incurring intellectual disability and autism we often find that our area of focus and the issues we're facing are different and the preferences of the people we serve are very different um so we you know adjust accordingly um this past year obviously like everybody else we've made a lot
045of adjustments to how we provide services temporarily well until it's safe to do some of what we used to do in person more we had some groups going for a while that were in person that really helped with this socialization aspect because leaving school can also be isolating especially when you um lose your your you know core group of socialization um one of the nice things we've been able to do is bring some of that um online and we found that especially for the autism only crowd that's actually shown us some strengths and some progress that i don't think for the people that we serve that i don't think we would have seen as naturally if we hadn't tried this so we have some groups for people that we provide direct service to where you
046know we've gotten to know you know we've gotten to know um susan and we've gotten to know barry and we know that oh like susan and barry are never going to meet but um now we know both of them and we know that we have they have a common interest but if we had tried to introduce them in person they might have said yes they might have said no they might have said yes but then the idea of getting out of the house and going to meet them was too overwhelming but connecting online and doing something way less way more low risk for a first meeting has been really some positive benefits and of course many of the people we serve are comfortable online and well ready to show off their skills and so we
047found that there are some things that i think we learned that we can continue into the future that might benefit services overall for helping people to feel more comfortable whether it's reaching out to you know new social opportunities or whether it's you know connecting in with a new type of service that might have been really hard to schedule the initial meeting for um so we're all kind of learning as we go along um i trying to think if there's anything i didn't cover um but definitely those services do come through referral from from dds um and that that note jennifer made about you know checking the box for both dds and mrc and your 688 um applications are really is really important and it's great that amherst does that because it does make it harder
048if that doesn't happen um and definitely if you have further questions going to the website about more of our wraparound services that are open to anyone from the center is is great and we also have a conference um we have our 30th annual autism conference that we've brought online that i'm i'm obligated to mention but it is um address a lot of the topics and do a deeper dive that we're talking about right now we have a panel also from dds um that's focused on employment and some of the employment agencies that are out there um and some people who are currently receiving employment services as well as our autism regional directors are having a a panel from dds um and there's a wide variety of topics that address both post high school and um
049pre-high school so or pre-graduation so um that might be worth checking out if anyone is interested as well in learning a little bit more about any one of these particular topics that we're um that we're learning about today and there are limited scholarships available for people with financial hardship thank you so much yes your conferences are amazing i'm so glad you're able to do it this year and um and i've got some links here crystal's put and there's a private chat that i can copy and paste into the public chat pathlight.org again communityaction.us i've got those ready to go so i'll pop those in um i loved your analogy of the seven year old you know in terms of that that makes a lot of sense we're growing the services are growing yeah and well
050the way they grow too is so much with feedback from other from people and you know they get shaped by the people accessing them so i hope yeah wow all right amelda would you like to wrap us up yeah i mean there's some advantages of some anxiety uh waiting to go last but i'm glad to have met all of you and what i'm seeing here as a team um so let me introduce myself to those who are listening i'm imelda henderson i'm a voc rehab counselor with mrc nmrc stands for the massachusetts rehabilitation commission and uh voc rehab helps people with physical cognitive intellectual or mental health conditions managed in the modern workplace and that's the little blurb on our website so what the important thing is that i'm hearing today is how uh the
051referrals are actually made and um thank you naomi and um katie um and i already know the uh process for dds with jennifer and arlene and um we do all work as a team and the benefit of this panel today is that i've learned so much more about community action and and about pathlight and i think i envision us all um working as a team um pretty much we do already you know dds and mrc were state agencies the difference might be with mrc is that we're partial we're actually predominantly federally funded and a small amount uh state but we're a state agency and our referrals come from the school and from the community and the one difference that i can say is that we don't have a maximum age uh we serve persons with
052disabilities you know up until any age i've worked with consumers who are over 70 and up um we start uh in high school at 14 for the potentially eligible um and once the student the services that we offer offer at the high school for potentially eligible students through vendors like buyability and stavros once the student gets to junior year they can apply for vr services i sort of lean towards the end of junior year 17 18 years old because then we i can kind of get a head start with the student on college planning um so we go in two different directions mass rehab vocationally the path that i explain to consumers is they can go down the employment path or the training path a decision has to be made like if they're going to
053leave high school and go into college we can help with a state college with tuition and waiver and we go down the education path towards a career or it's straight up employment and i think um katie as far as like the um employment supports i mean there's a lot of crossover in what like dds might do and what community action might do and a lot of the different agencies but we somehow figure it out um but mrc is devoted to to vocational rehabilitation and to that end however we get there whether it's training vocational training job corps or however we all have like a specialties that we can add to this this this picture um and as as jennifer mentioned a a and e we also um depending on the family's income unfortunately we don't
054consider the income like community action does with the the uh the individual's income we have to look at the family family's income um unless the person's on social security and if they receive social security benefits then that's you know the exception there um but the aaa is something i know that sometimes uh different agencies have funding for it and and don't right now we have funding for for the aaa services for the students um and like i said the adult services you know like um we can come in at 18 we don't have to wait till 22 when when the student graduates the high school like we're there uh as soon as the iep ends um mass rehab's ipe kicks in and if the student is going to college we that can be sent over
055to the college for a 504 uh plan to be written and um basically we are partner with that client until the client is successful with job placement or finishing their education or just decides that they would rather go in a different direction so um i i see mass rehab as a compliment you know and the strength you know within this you know just this small uh agencies represented today we've got quite a few agencies in the pioneer valley that um work with us so uh in a nutshell that's who mrc is thank you i appreciate what you said about a team and and they're being crossover but that being a good thing because i've definitely known students former students who have tried one and then switched to the other and you know it's all about
056sometimes just a personal match often so it's really good to have options where the office is located all those pieces can make or break it so that's really good it's like katie said though with virtual everything being virtual right now you know we're all we're all in the same same place well and i appreciate what somebody was saying about um i think was katie saying that that we you we've learned a lot of of actually excellent things at this time that we can bring forward i'm actually of course excited for the pandemic to end for the pandemic to end but then also bringing forth some of the tools and boundaries that we've broken down through because we had to yeah so i'm going to add crystal to the stream here and crystal if you have
057any questions from the audience you can ask or maybe you could ask something or speak on something related to this and while you do that i will put some of the links in the chat that people have been great thank you i just want to thank all of you for coming today and everything you said was you i couldn't have asked you to do a better job so thank you all so much um folks who are listening in feel free to add any questions in the comments in the chat and i'd be happy to field those questions and ask our guests today um like kathy said she's gonna put some of the links to their websites there she can also add my email for those of you who don't know who i am i'm sorry
058i'm crystal cartwright i'm the transition specialist for amherst regional public schools um you can kind of think of me as the liaison with all of these agencies and working with these folks on the screen i'm happy to help families do referrals or work with the teachers in the schools in the etls um so i'm kind of like your middle person if you want to call it that um but i'm always here to help answer questions to help guide you to the right place to the right person all of these folks are also part of our interagency transition team that we have at the high school which has kind of been on hold this year but we'll be coming back next year um so we all work very closely together so i know the word team
059has been mentioned a few times but that is the truth we are all a team and we all just want to help the families and students get the best supports that they can i'm not seeing any questions in the comments at this time um so chris crystal i just wanted to um just add a little bit more in regards to what katie was talking about in regards to the the support centers she had mentioned the autism support center which does a fabulous job working with families who have children and young adults on the autism spectrum but we also have our family support centers that also support individuals uh or families who have kids and young adults who have id or may have an autism diagnosis as well so we do offer family support services that
060again can look as individualized as the individual some as the individual individual family so some families may be looking for respite some families may be looking for recreational opportunities maybe looking for educational support so there's an array of services that can be provided through our family support guidelines and um i just wanted to mention that so within family support there are also a few different programs such as our ifs program which is an intensive family support program our extended ifs our dese all those are uh closed referrals um so um they would have to you know come from from dds um uh close we we work really closely with our provider agencies to identify those families that may need those services as well so i just wanted to put a plug in for family support
061because they do we have providers that do an awesome job go above and beyond especially in this last year and um just wanted to make sure that people were aware of that so um so you don't have to be and those are are open to families um that are dds eligible that are three and older if you have individuals that are younger than three we do consult services with early intervention as well thank you so much for mentioning that and i know um family empowerment is one of the family support agencies and we work really closely with them as well and for anyone who's like not sure where to start you just heard from all of these agencies and all these amazing services but you're like i don't even know where to start with this
062or what might be the best um normally i would direct folks to call family empowerment and just say hey here's who i am here's my needs and then they're great at saying all right this would be the best way for you to go so that's yeah and you don't have to be dds eligible in order to get to receive services from family empowerment you can just walk in the door and say listen you know this is our family and um you know what kind of supports and services would would you recommend and if um if they did think that they would benefit from dds specific services they could help the individual or the family fill out the application for dds services thanks and i just want to add that they're both programs of pathlight so
063also all the family support centers of the area and autism and autism resource center always work well together but being in family empowerment and autism connections being in the same agency um if you start with either place and it seems like you'd be better off supported with the other support center we will send you there um and make sure you get to where you need to go so thanks katie appreciate that you guys are all so amazing oh so inspiring and hopeful and everything thank you um so in the chat i have popped in a bunch of different websites that have been mentioned um email addresses for crystal and i and the last one is the google site that we've made at the high school here in middle school and elementary school amherst that is
064to um celebrate autism acceptance month and on there you'll see the link to the panel that's happening tomorrow night and you'll see tons of artwork from our students music that our students have created um writing books that have been published i mean just really amazing stuff um and really proud of it so check it out and thanks for being here and have a lovely day is this is this gonna be posted anywhere it sure is it's recorded and um so i mean it's like accessible on youtube um i don't know if you like you know if you just can google it to find it but um we were thinking of um making an email to everybody with the links to this one yesterday's um and and some of these other resources that we would send
065out to everybody who couldn't be here because it's 12 30 and a work day so great at 1 30 with one of my individuals in um is pretty important thank you so much for including me thank you yes very much thank you bye-bye bye-bye everyone