By Carol Pankow, Director, Minnesota State Services for the Blind

(Editor’s Note:  Carol made this presentation at our Annual Convention on October 10, 2015.)

Good Morning Federationists!  Thank you so much for inviting me once again to come and talk with you about what’s happening at State Services for the Blind.  I want to begin by saying that I’m here to answer questions, to get your feedback, and to let you know that I’m grateful for the partnership that we have with the NFB of Minnesota.  You keep us on our toes.  You ask the tough questions.  You aren’t afraid to speak up if you disagree with something we are doing.  Now and then you let us know if we’re doing something right, and most of all, you go out and model every day what it means to be blind and living the life you want.

Just 10 days ago, we turned over a page on the calendar, or, for most of us, the pixels on our screens rearranged themselves to say October rather than September.  As you may know, the start of our federal fiscal year begins on October 1, and I have to tell you that as this October 1 rolled around, it was a bittersweet day for SSB and me.

That day, after many discussions we did something I’d been hoping we would never have to do again.  We made the announcement that due to budget constraints, we were going on Order of Selection.  Order of Selection is just a fancy way to say we have to wait list some customers until we have adequate funding.

Order of Selection was the bitter part of October 1 for us at SSB.  I’m going to say more about Order of Selection, our budget situation and what we’re doing to fix it in a few minutes.  I will also answer any and all questions you might have.  But I also want to talk about the sweet part of that bittersweet day.

October 1^st is our New Year’s Day.  It’s the day when all the numbers from the previous year come in, and for us Federal Fiscal year 2015 was a record-breaking year.  We didn’t just break records; we more or less smashed them.

In previous years, we’ve been serving just over 3,000 people in our Senior Services unit.  A few years back, we had some stimulus monies and were able to pay for some advertising.  That year, we served 3,600 Minnesota seniors who were losing their vision.  That was a record.  This year, with no stimulus money and no paid advertising, we saw just over 4,000 people.

In addition, this year we began rolling out a new project, called the Aging Eyes Initiative, which Margaret Klein is leading.  This project is geared to helping SSB serve the 25,000 seniors projected to need our services by 2020.  We’ve been working with other community professionals who serve seniors — like nurses and social workers in the block nurse program — and equipping them with simple strategies and basic tools to help out seniors who are at the early stages of vision loss.  This will free up our staff to provide more comprehensive services to seniors with more advanced vision loss.  Through the Aging Eyes Initiative, our staff can get away from the business of handing out magnifiers and large print playing cards, and into the business of showing seniors how they can use nonvisual techniques to accomplish tasks they used to rely on their eyes to do.

When I spoke to you in May, you met one of four women who were enrolled in a comprehensive class designed especially for seniors at BLIND, Inc.  Since then, we’ve sent more people over there for those same classes.  We are super excited about this ongoing partnership.  More and more we’re witnessing that shift in seniors who are losing vision from saying “What can I do,” to saying, “What can’t I do!”

At that meeting, you heard from Roz who had participated in the class.  As Roz realized how much she could do as a person with a visual impairment, she decided she wanted to go back to work and is on the Workforce side of our place.

On the workforce side, we also had a record-breaking year.  By October 1, we had posted 143 successful closures — that’s 143 Minnesotans who have a job and who’ve been in that job for at least 90 days.  To put it another way, that’s 143 blind, visually impaired, or DeafBlind Minnesotans who are living the life they want.  Sure, some of our success on the employment side is related to overall improvements in Minnesota’s economy, but that doesn’t account for all of it.  In 2012, we had 80 successful closures.  That means that in 2015 we had a 78% increase in successful closures over three years.

One of those closures this year was David Bates.  He’s a guy who has been running his family’s business in downtown Minneapolis until he lost his vision.  He also came to BLIND, Inc. for adjustment to blindness training.  He freely admits that when he first came there, he was one of the skeptics.  “Why do I have to go to wood shop,” he would say, or “Why do I have to learn travel skills?”

But, as time went by, he also went through that shift from thinking about being blind as a limit to thinking about all the possibilities that were still open to him.  Here’s one quick story about Dave.  Recently he went on a Caribbean cruise with his wife.  One day, his wife decided to stay on board, and Dave decided to go on the daily island excursion.  As he was waiting in line to get off the boat, a concerned crew member said, “You can’t go by yourself.”  Dave said, and I’m quoting, “The hell I can’t.”  And he did, and had a great time.

Dave is living the life he wants.  In addition to being a working Minnesotan, Dave is also an employer.  This year, his business, Alternative Homes, which provides housing for people in recovery, took on a visually impaired young adult as part of an effort to give more blind, visually impaired, and DeafBlind young Minnesotans real-world work experience.

We love your message Live the Life You Want and that is the message we want to go out to young adults.  Last year, I told you about a major piece of federal legislation called WIOA, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.  With WIOA comes an increased emphasis on making sure that young adults, especially high schoolers have the tools, training, experience and life skills that they need to succeed in college, work and life.  I’m really proud of all that we’ve done in the last year to ramp up our services to young adults between the ages of 14 and 21.  To start, I’m really pleased that we were able to hire Sheila Koenig as our coordinator of Transition Services.  With Sheila’s help, and the hard work of other staff, we’ve been reaching out to students across Minnesota.  Last year we had about 62 students who qualified for Transition Services.  Now we have over 101.

Just this summer we sent out a request for proposals, looking for programs to be developed that would work with blind, DeafBlind and visually-impaired students year round, to build on the summer opportunities that are already available.  Just a few short months later, there are already options around the state for students to take part in, including a new program through BLIND, Inc.

I’ll be honest with you, because of WIOA, we’ve had to take funding away from adult services, and this has been really tough for us.  On the other hand, I know that there will be long-term benefits, including cost savings for SSB and the state of Minnesota.  Our goal is to equip these young adults to live the life they want — to set goals and meet them and to see their visual impairment not as a liability.  We’re hoping that as they head out to work and college with strong skills and positive, confident attitudes, maybe we’ll hear from them again only when they contact our Communication Center because they need a book put into braille or scanned into e-text.

As always, our Communication Center is humming along.  We’re continuing to sync up services with the Braille and Talking Book Library in Faribault.  Now, our Audio Services shares the same toll free number with the library, speeding up the time it takes to answer customer questions or track down a book, and cutting back on the hassle of having to call Faribault for books and SSB for equipment.

Just a couple weeks ago, we said goodbye to Donna Marhoun as she retired from heading up our Braille section.  We’re pleased to welcome Jay Maruska who has already started as the new Braille supervisor and who is off for his Adjustment to Blindness training.

All of that — a Communication Center that is continually improving its services, record numbers in Senior Services and employment, the new Aging Eyes Initiative, and enhanced transition services — all of that is the good news.

The bad news is Order of Selection.  As I said, our budget situation made it necessary to waitlist some new customers.  We were under obligation to pay for a new statewide case management program, to the tune of nearly a million dollars per year for the next two years.  WIOA required that we shift 15% of funding for employment services to high-school students between the ages of 14 and 21.  Those are a couple examples of the budget constraints we’re working with.  Bottom line, we don’t have enough money available to pay for the anticipated number of people coming to our Workforce Development unit.

When that happens, the federal government requires that agencies like ours impose Order of Selection.  For SSB, it means that we can only take on customers who have the most significant barriers to employment.  There’s a set of criteria for identifying these customers, and applicants have to have five or more barriers in order to receive services from us.

Let me be clear about just what Order of Selection means and doesn’t mean.  First of all, we’ll continue to provide services to everyone who was determined eligible by the end of September.  Second, folks who come to us looking for assistance to keep the job they already have will also be served.  Third, transition students will be able to receive pre-employment transition services even on the waitlist.  Finally, our senior services team and our Communication Center will continue to provide services as usual.

Nonetheless, there will be people coming to us looking for employment services who will be put on a waiting list.  We’ll only be able to serve them when we have the funding necessary to do so.

I want to let you know first of all, that I’m doing absolutely everything in my power to make sure we end Order of Selection as soon as we possibly can.  I am working through our internal process for legislative proposals and I have been reviewing each staff position as it is vacated and making decisions to not fill positions that are extraneous to direct services to our customers.  We have a really strong staff right now, an involved and dynamic council, and good relationships with our Community Partners like BLIND, Inc., and consumer groups like the NFB of Minnesota.  All of that will make a difference, and I’m committed to turning this around soon, if not sooner.

Meanwhile, we have open hours at our Resource Center staffed by our Assistive Technology staff, we’ve published a resource guide on our website, and we’re looking at any and all options to do whatever we can to help anyone who has to go on the waiting list.

I hope that when I come to you next, I can say that Order of Selection is over, and that we’re back in business serving ALL blind, visually impaired and DeafBlind Minnesotans as they strive to live the life they want.  I’m proud of what we’ve done, I’m incredibly impressed by the customers I have the privilege to meet every day, and am 100% committed to keeping that success going.

Let me stop there and use any time I have left to answer your questions.  If I don’t get to your question, you can stop me later today, or give me a call, send me an email, or drop by my office.