Author: Glen Jennings

LEND Trainee Morgan Turner headshot

Turner appointed to Kentucky Employment First Council by Governor Beshear

Posted on | by Glen Jennings

In 2020, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear signed an executive order to create the Kentucky Employment First Council, which helps people with disabilities find meaningful employment.

And now, one of our own will be helping out with that work.

Morgan Turner has accepted a position as Vice Chair on that council.

“The Kentucky Employment First Council helps get people with disabilities employed,” Turner said. “I was appointed by the Governor as someone with a disability to represent people with disabilities…attend and host the meetings if the chair isn’t there. I will serve on the executive committee.”

For Turner, this is a golden opportunity. Not only does it give him the chance to work for a cause he deeply values, but also allows him to serve as an example of what’s possible.

“I’m a person with a disability that’s employed and want to help other people with disabilities be employed,” Turner said. “[I want] to help people understand that individuals with disabilities can work and have a purpose and live a healthy life.”

And as someone who has lived that kind of healthy life himself, he’s well-equipped to help others find it. He plans to use his skills to be a leader and he’s looking forward to tackling his new responsibilities.

“[I am] excited about learning new things and how to be good vice chair.” he said.

Learn more about Employment First here.

HDI’s Preservice Health Training Stands the Test of Time

Posted on | by Glen Jennings

Medical knowledge can advance so quickly that it’s a wonder when any tool stands the test of more than a few years. HDI’s Preservice Training Modules were created to help train medical professionals for how to interact with and treat patients with disabilities, and they are still being used decades after they were created.

“Based upon the US Surgeon General’s Report, Closing the Gap (2002), healthcare providers, physicians, nurses, physician assistants, dentists, were not really well-equipped to meet the needs of people, especially people with more significant disabilities,” said Dr. Harold Kleinert, co-instructor for the Kentucky LEND program. “There was a national need to do training for these healthcare providers, both in-service as well as pre-service, as well as meeting the needs of people with developmental disabilities.”

Through grant funds from the Commonwealth Council on Developmental Disabilities, HDI worked with a team that included self-advocates, family members and medical and allied health faculty from the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Eastern Kentucky University. While they aimed to create a resource that would be useful to medical and allied health personnel, the impact they’ve had is far beyond what anyone expected.

“Our self-advocate and family members played huge significant roles in this,” Kleinert said. “It was a tremendous amount of collaboration, and it amazes me that these modules are still accessed today.” The idea was that the modules would simulate a healthcare encounter with a person with a disability as much as possible. While a lot of healthcare training uses standardized patients, essentially actors trained to replicate what a normal healthcare encounter will be like, it can be difficult to find standardized patients with disabilities. Where they can, the training modules fill in these gaps. “There are decision points where the users had to decide what they would do next based upon the information provided,” Kleinert said. “You couldn’t move forward unless you provided a response. It was very interactive.”

This same technology was used to help medical professionals learn how to deliver a Down syndrome diagnosis to a family, either prenatally or postnatally in a subsequent HDI grant funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “A tremendous amount of research shows that physicians really didn’t have the most up-to-date knowledge of Down syndrome,” Kleinert said. “That wouldn’t have happened but for the work we had previously done with the pre-service health training modules.”

Merri Jones, an Associate Professor of Dental Hygiene, uses HDI’s modules for her classes. She first encountered them while teaching a course on special populations about five years ago.

“They were exactly what we would do,” Jones said. “When they see Hunter with Down syndrome and Hunter’s father accompanying him to his dental appointment, they know that’s real…Students get the sense that they can see themselves doing that.”

HDI’s approach is evidence-based and much of what they discuss, especially around communication, hasn’t changed. Jones thinks they’ve worked wonders and helped prepare her students to be confident about treating patients with disabilities.

“Research shows that the reason dentists do not see patients with special needs is they don’t feel they have the training. They don’t feel confident,” she said. “My thought is that as we prepare dental hygiene students, they’re confident and competent and more likely to see patients with disability. The patient’s comfortable, and most importantly, the patient recognizes that.”

And as more people become accustomed to treating patients with disabilities, they help their colleagues learn more. This increases access to care among a vulnerable population.

“The modules have really helped me as a dental hygienist learn more about not only the special needs that persons present with, but what other professionals do that support them,” Jones said. “It really helps us provide the best treatment planning and the best care for our patients.”

man wearing a striped shirt, sunglasses, and a hat standing in front of trees

From Hollywood to HDI

Posted on | by Glen Jennings

Gregory Bow loves using his art to tell stories.

For a while, that meant working in Hollywood in the animation industry. Now, it means working at HDI.

It might be surprising to learn that animation has a role at HDI

“I create video content that acts as supplemental materials for students to take their standardized testing. So far, I’ve worked to create animations that tell a story with the hopes that these videos will help visualize the story for the student to understand,” he said. “I also work as an illustrator creating picture boards and response options for the tests. Each test has five questions with three answers to choose from. Each of these answers has an illustration to go with it to aid the student in understanding the answers when making their choice.”

Bow got into the arts young. He started young and grew into his passion for art, taking as many classes on art as he could throughout his education.

“I’ve always had an interest in the arts ever since I was a child. I was fortunate to have a supportive family who encouraged me to work on my talents and develop my skills, and I took as many art and creative classes as I could in school,” he said. “I knew in some way I wanted to get into the world of animation. I loved Studio Ghibli films, and they really inspired me to go on that path.”

Bow studied at UK for two years, then transferred to the Savannah College of Art and Design. After three years, he had completed a bachelor’s degree in animation. He called his college career fun and formative. After he graduated, he had dreams of making it as a background artist for Cartoon Network and moved to Hollywood to make it happen.

It was difficult, though. Bow spent time unemployed and working at a movie theater before he finally found work in his dream job.

He did manage to make it though – he worked as a color stylist for Bento Box Entertainment on Legends of Chamberlain Heights and briefly did background art for another project from the same studio and then as a background artist for more than two years on Cartoon Network’s Mighty Magiswords. His work on Mighty Magiswords, bolstered with a little bit of freelance art, continued until the show didn’t receive a third season.

Bow again found himself without a job, and felt burnt out from his work in the industry. He returned home to Kentucky in 2019, shortly before the pandemic, and remembered a project at HDI he had worked for right after he graduated college back in 2009.

Now, he’s back, and he’s embracing a new story that he and his art can tell.

“Working on these animations brings me back to my college days when I created short films, working on all aspects from background art to character designs, animation and sound editing,” he said. “It’s really satisfying to see it all come together! The extra layer that these videos are not for entertainment, but for the sake of education and helping students pass their tests makes the work that much more satisfying.”

In his free time, Bow enjoys video games and playing with his beloved cockapoo, Willow. He has started caring for plants and developed quite the green thumb. On a final note, Bow noted that he feels we can learn a lot about how to take care of ourselves from plants.

“I think people are like plants, we all have our specific needs, and we enjoy and prefer certain environments,” he said. “Growing as a person, it helps to know what you personally need to be happy and healthy and build your life and environment around those things. You can’t serve the world if you yourself are withering away.”

LEND Trainee Photo of Nick Hoffman

Hoffman receives prestigious Kevin Burberry Award

Posted on | by Glen Jennings

Kevin Burberry was a trailblazer. A tireless self-advocate, a gifted academic, and a dedicated leader.

Every year, HDI recognizes someone who demonstrates these qualities with the Kevin Burberry Award. This year, HDI is pleased to present it to Nick Hoffmann, who worked with the LEND program.

“The biggest thing that impressed me about him was his self-awareness about how he came into the LEND program thinking that he knew a lot about disability and realized that a lot of what he thought he knew wasn’t the best way to approach it and was willing to change the way he viewed disability,” said Dr. Tony Lobianco, chair of the Burberry Award Selection Committee. “The work that he’s doing providing supports for people who are on waiting lists is pretty awesome too.”

Hoffmann became involved with HDI’s Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities program during his practicum work. He saw the opportunity to work with LEND and took an interest since focused on a multi-disciplinary treatment approach, something in which he had a significant interest.

“Learning about all the different ways that all these different fields can come together and provide supports…It was, I guess, a little humbling,” Hoffmann said. “I had to sit back and think about how I could be just a piece of this person’s support.”

He came away with a whole new perspective.

“I learned about the value and validity of self-advocate perspectives,” Hoffmann said. “In all of my training, in all of my schooling, we never at any point talked about self-advocates and their very valid argument of nothing about us without us, that if you want to be a member of a support team, you really do need to take our perspectives into account and you need to hear what we have to say about them…Neurodivergence is something to be celebrated, not something to be changed.”

It opened Hoffmann’s eyes to how even well-intentioned practices can be harmful.

“It was a little shocking, but it also taught me how to be humble. It taught me how to sit and listen and truly take those perspectives and learn from them rather than become defensive,” he said.

But he did listen, and since then, he’s updated his approach to reflect his new learning.

“In my training, there’s a lot of emphasis on parent perspectives within the family. And I think parent perspectives are valid and I think they’re important,” he said. “But most of the treatment approaches I was taught saw parent perspectives as the one perspective to follow in your treatment. Treatment targets didn’t necessarily reflect self-determination. A focus of mine this year…has been trying to check in with the client and make sure their voices are heard. Trying to make sure that if we’re looking at something as a target for change, that it’s a goal that the client has, it’s not something being forced on them.”

When asked about receiving the award, Hoffmann expressed that he learned a lot from and greatly enjoyed working with HDI and said that receiving the award left him feeling “humbled.”

“I just feel like I’m doing what somebody in my position should be doing. I’m really excited and have a lot of gratitude towards HDI for recognizing me,” he said. “I wish that there were other people focused on humanistic approaches so that it wouldn’t be award-worthy to have this kind of focus, but it feels good to be recognized.”

LEND Trainee Morgan Turner headshot

Turner wins Gold!

Posted on | by Glen Jennings

Though everyone working at HDI is a champion of some sort, one of us has the medals to prove it.

Morgan Turner, a program education assistant for HDI, won three games at the Kentucky Special Olympics Summer Games, which were held in Richmond from June 2 to 4. In total, Turner played and won three games. He competed alongside his cousin Sam, who served as a Unified Partner – that is, a person without a disability who participates in the games alongside someone with a disability.

“I’ve won several medals in the past, however I’ve never won a medal with my cousin and that made it even better,” Turner said. “I told him before I didn’t care if we won or lost, I was just happy to compete alongside him and whatever happens, happens and luckily a gold medal came out of it.”

In preparing for the games, Turner faced a challenge – he and his partner both had busy schedules that made it difficult to practice together.

“My cousin is a senior at Danville High School and played baseball for them,” he said. “I have my own set so me and him would practice on the weekends”

However, it certainly didn’t help that they, quite literally, had a lifetime of experience playing with one another.

“We also would play bocce ball on our family vacations through the years,” Turner said. “I feel like that helped prepare as well.”

That, and Turner has a ton of experience at the Special Olympics, having already competed in a number of sports and taken home multiple medals in his fields.

“I’ve competed in Special Olympics for about thirteen or fourteen years,” he said. “I compete in softball, basketball, flag football, and bocce ball.”

These events give him the chance to do what he really enjoys – to make new friends and to play the games he loves.

“I just love sports and love to compete and meeting new people and getting to know them,” he said. “Special Olympics allows me to do all of that.”

Turner wasn’t the only representative of HDI at the Special Olympics. Trent Marcum, a Disability and Health Program Facilitator, assisted in running the health promotion tent for the Healthy Athletes Program alongside Lindsey Mullis, who led the team, and other HDI volunteers such as Andrea Deweese, Kristen Dahl and Lisa Amstutz along with other volunteers from EKU and UofL.

“We work several different booths where we collect information for Special Olympics including basic data like height, weight, and blood pressure.” Marcum said. “Additionally, we have a set of questions to ask athletes on topics regarding tobacco, hygiene, sun safety, nutrition, and physical activity. We also host several more fun and engaging activities where participants can win prizes and play games while learning how to improve their health. The heart of what we do is in the conversations we get to have with athletes and their families, and that’s where we hope to leave a lasting impact.”

They also offer fun and games at their booth. This was the first time they were inside, which Marcum said was a welcome relief from the sun, and plenty of HDI volunteers showed up to help out.

“It went really well,” Marcum said. “We’ve had games in the past where we haven’t had a lot of volunteers…This year, it was nice to have ample people for all the booths.”

It also helps get people from the community involved and helps educate them about how to support people with disabilities.

And they had another helping hand – none other than Morgan Turner, who was too busy competing to work the event, but helped out with setup. “He is always extremely helpful,” Marcum said. “He helped me on Friday get all of our stuff ready to take…he’s the best.