Transitioning Australian Disability Enterprises to open employment community hubs using the Australian legislative framework

2.2.1. Objects of Act

The objects of the Act are to:

in conjunction with other laws, give effect to Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) done at New York on 13 December 2006 ([2008] ATS 12);

For the first time, persons with disabilities in Australia will have protective legislation from local and international courts, which support respect, independence and full inclusion in society. From a service provision perspective, providers and consumers of services have significant legislative imperatives to deliver appropriate person-centred employment services. The legislation, however, does little to determine how providers deliver services and while service provision must meet compliance requirements, it does little to enable the provision of services that facilitate true client choice and control.

3.1.1. It starts at the top and the bottom – everyone is welcome to have a say

Current work undertaken CDERP takes a top down and bottom up approach to provider change. In effect, this is about ensuring that everyone understands what is going to happen and its impact on them. Most recent projects have involved detailed meetings with senior management and staff to inform and educate them on the processes, particularly the impact of implementing Customised Employment as an organisation-wide approach to employment. The importance of this approach is widely accepted within employment literature (Mills, Pollack, Rogan, & Sasnett, 2017) and within organisations that have undertaken transformation processes. It was evident within the larger project that informs this paper that senior management must be involved in the transformation process to gain any internal support.

We found different experiences within the three providers that could be described as full buy-in, partial buy-in and management delegation. In the case of full buy-in while the transformation process presents with challenges, the hands-on support from management has illustrated to staff that their work is valued and that any barriers will be worked through. At the opposite end of this was management delegation of the idea which resulted in limited support for staff that had been trained and indeed the process of embedding Customised Employment was viewed as something to be done after all the staff regular duties had been completed. This was also clouded in the issue around who would pay for the staff time allotted to undertaking employment work with clients.

Within the provider organisations, just as important as management buy-in, is the necessity of staff buy-in. In order to embrace the process of changing to what is effectively a Work First approach, it is essential for all staff involved to be able to express themselves openly and without fear of retribution. It is not uncommon during change processes for staff to be selected for a project without any real understanding of what they are involved in and without any capacity to question the process.

In order to address the possibility of creating confusion, it was seen as critical to holding meetings with the selected staff to allow them to ask questions and voice any concerns that they had with both management and CDERP staff. This is best done before any training of staff takes place and before the change process is introduced to the broader provider community.

Once you have a roadmap for the organisation and staff, it is vitally important to inform participants and families. We have found that holding community forums for the participants, families and community members such as schools, teachers and careers advisors is an essential ingredient. For participants who have a long history with the organisation, there can be a palpable shock when significant change is going to take place. In one recent session, it became apparent when quietly listening to the conversations taking place in the audience that the initial impression was that the change would result in the service participants and families were no longer able to be supported by the organisation. This highlights the importance of holding open forums where everyone can ask questions and have their fears allayed. Similar to this, it has become apparent that while service providers exist in their communities and have done so for a significant amount of time, the practical reality is that unless you are a service user, there is a genuine possibility that what you do is mostly a mystery to the community at large.

There is a growing evidence base for the use of community conversations as a tool to engage both participants and the wider community (Flippo & Butterworth, 2018). In their review of the Partnerships in Employment National Transition to Employment Systems Change Project, Flippo and Butterworth (2018) stated;

“Community conversations are a non-traditional approach for systems change and shift the power dynamic from individuals and institutions that tell us what to do and have the authority to do so, to one that gives power to the community as those responsible for turning the policy into practice. Community conversations reinforce the concept that participants are drivers for change.” (p.8)

This process has been used successfully in the Tennessee Works Partnership which formed part of the National Partnerships in Employment program which was evaluated by Flippo and Butterworth (2018). The outcomes from our community conversations and program to educate families and participants support the growing evidence for the effectiveness of community conversations as an intervention for change.

3.1.2. It is more than just training – you have to bring out your dead!

Training staff in a new employment methodology and expecting it to flourish can be a recipe for failure. The training process will challenge staff beliefs about their capacity and that of the people they support. This is a process of culture change, of challenging the old norms and values. Experience has shown us that very quickly staff that don’t believe in the capacity and desire for everyone to pursue meaningful employment will leave your organisation. This is a challenge to be managed by senior staff, but it is an opportunity for renewal. Debbie Ball from Easterseals, California refers to it as a process of getting the right people on the bus and getting the wrong people off the bus (Ball, personal communication, 2017). It has been our experience to date as well. People and the community will often talk about everyone with a disability has the right to pursue meaningful employment, but when it comes to “the rubber meeting the road” this is often met with comments such as, “oh you mean those people.”

Coupled with getting the right people on the bus is the removal of old practice and policies that become barriers to change. Too often old policies and ways of doing things remain the elephant in the room. It should be obvious, but who is paying attention to them? This is where ongoing mentoring on a weekly basis is a crucial ingredient once the training has been completed. Training completion is a bit of a misnomer, in that the learning and training never stop. We have found that supporting organisational change and staff weekly for the first year is an active ingredient in ensuring that progress is made. Often staff are reluctant to discuss issues with management is partly due to the belief that they already understand what the barriers are. Weekly mentoring gives us the opportunity to receive feedback and when necessary develop an intervention. This is supported by monthly meetings with management and staff to discuss progress and plans.

One method that we have found very useful in aiding in the elimination of old policy and practice is the use of Value Stream Mapping (VSM). VSM has its origins in manufacturing where it is used to highlight waste and focus resources on practices that add value to the customer service or product. In essence, it is about improving efficiency and was introduced to CDERP by Sara Murphy at Worklink, San Francisco (Murphy, personal communication, 2017). Worklink have been using VSM as part of their organisational change practices with great success. In our work with provider transformation, we have found that the use of Present State Mapping (PSM) is a highly useful tool for identifying what happens to organisation clients. Using PSM, we work with management and staff to chart a week in the life of a client who enters the service provider. This process always throws up unexpected barriers and duplication, along with processes that everyone is undertaking, but no one can understand why. This process highlights the disconnects, the gaps in service delivery and the system redundancies that stand in the way of efficient service delivery (Martin & Osterling, 2013). Using this process, we can eliminate barriers that prevent staff from working to their potential and improve client participation. One outcome of this process has been clients use the outcomes to revise their mission statement and values.

3.1.3. Holding hands with staff, participants and families

Change within any organisation brings with it a certain level of anxiety. This is particularly so for participants and family. Being a part of a stable organisation brings with it a level of security and safety by the trusting relationships that have been built up with staff and other families. Change throws up the possibility of this being dissipated and the real possibility that we may not have the services that we want. For staff, there is a different type of anxiety, no less real that surrounds perceptions of job security and what if I get this wrong questions. There is a benefit to be obtained by staff undertaking the Discovery process on themselves. In our work, we teach the Griffin-Hammis developed Discovering Personal Genius (DPG) which has in our view a better-developed job development framework through the use of Vocational Themes, in particular, the Lists of Twenty. This process widens the job search and is useful for staff who have undertaken it themselves to conduct a handful of informational interviews in businesses that relate to their themes.

Education and information is king in this situation. For families and participants, we have found that you can never give them enough information. The CEO of one of the participant organisations made a point of having an open-door policy that allowed everyone; staff, participants and families to come through his door and ask questions. Allied with the use of community conversations (Dutta, Kundu, Johnson, Chan, Trainor, Blake & Christy, 2016), this process very quickly allayed fears and developed interest amongst potential participants and families.

These first adopters form the nexus of the change process which evidence and experience highlight that starting small with those that are enthusiastic creates a wave of interest once other people see the success (Rogan & Strully, 2007). The first families are supported with the same information that staff have been trained in, along with an abridged version of the Customised Employment training. In reality, our experience has shown that training families in the use of Self-Guided Discovery creates a robust understanding of the processes that their child will participate in and aides in the development of trust in the staff and organisation. This creates the conditions of safety that many families are fearful of losing in any change process. This process is similar to the Family Employment Awareness Training (FEAT) that was trialled in Kansas. FEAT is noted as a family-focused employment intervention designed to increase employment expectations and knowledge amongst families of participants seeking employment (Gross, Francis & Pijim, 2014).

There are many benefits in developing this type of relationship, particularly when you consider one of the primary outcomes of any employment process should be heightened levels of self-determination and self-advocacy for the participants (Wehman, Taylor, Brooke, Avellone, Whittenburg, Ham, Brooke & Carr, 2018). With the client, an active partner, an informed participant they along with their employment support staff member go on the learning journey together. They make mistakes together, and they share in the successes together. Relationships have been shown to be one of the primary factors influencing meaningful employment outcomes for people with a disability (Smith, 2018) and this process creates those relationships anew. Our experience to date has shown that parents of participants who successfully achieve meaningful employment outcomes become the organisations greatest advocates and supporters of the employment initiative.

3.1.4. Employers – we are not the enemy!

It is not uncommon for employment staff to view employers as the enemy with a dislike of employing people with a disability. This view can also be shared by people with a disability, primarily based on their employment and job search experiences (Smith, 2018). Despite decades of disability awareness training, employment rates for people with a disability remain stubbornly low; indeed there’s an argument to support the proposition that they have flatlined for decades (Australian Commonwealth Government, 2016). It raises the question as to whether the approach adopted by traditional employment service providers is still fit for service.

Customised Employment utilises a different approach through the use of informational interviews to engage with employers on a more personal level. Informational interviews are can be likened to a conversation with a purpose. That purpose is to discover information about the business such as what happens here, what sort of skills do staff need to get into this industry and general information. It is not about looking for a job, but about building a relationship (Griffin, Hammis & Geary, 2007). This is one area where we find newly trained staff will fail, not because they do not know what to do, but in their zeal to find success, anxiety gets the better of them, and they go straight for the job. All too often this results in a negative response, which has the downside of halting a relationship before it gets going and also diminishing the consultant’s emerging confidence (Smith, 2018).

It is this part of the employment process where we have found that ongoing support and retraining is often needed, which highlights an area of skill development that needs a greater focus. It is our view that consultants would benefit from having a deeper understanding of why employers, particularly small and medium-sized businesses (SME) hire. While there is significant evidence on the hiring practices of large business, the SME sector remains under-researched.