Christina Espinosa remembers Maurice Dawson as a beloved member of HDI’s community.
“Maurice was one of the few people at HDI as a member of our tech team that was able to connect with people across the institute…that was inherently special to be able to be someone got to connect with so many people but was also always very present and willing to help problem solve” Espinosa, the Community Education Division Director, said. “He had his own quirky style of humor. He was amazing with sending memes. He would always send back a meme on chat or in Teams.”
His friends and colleagues deeply appreciated how eager he was to help people with any of their tech-related problems and how quick he was with a joke in team meetings. Many member’s of HDI’s team were devastated when he passed away last year. But since then, HDI has made multiple efforts to honor his memory.
As one of these efforts, they’ve created space for community and education at their new location in Lexington’s Huguenard building.
There are two spaces at Huguenard that were dedicated to Dawson’s memory during its Feb. 16 ribbon cutting – the training room and the meeting room, as he was a common fixture in both places at HDI’s previous Coldstream offices. Some members of Dawson’s family were also there in attendance. His mother said a few words. She was just really grateful that we got to know him and were able to honor him in that place, too,” Espinosa said.
Already the training room is seeing use. “Any project that needs to reserve a space that can house twenty to potentially forty people can reserve it for trainings for larger project meetings,” Espinosa said. “It’s also being currently used as a spot to gather for lunch, as a as an opportunity to connect with other HDI staff.”
In addition, Dawson’s art and photographs of the Coldstream Farm decorate these spaces.
In addition to these dedications, HDI is also honoring Dawson through its Maurice Dawson, Jr. Technology Training Initiative.
It’s never too late to discover a passion, as Suzanne Ross can attest. At 62, she’s trying something new and loving every minute of it.
Ross has always dreamed of making her debut on the stage, and recently, she got the chance, playing her first role in the Morehead Theatre Guild production of “The Odd Couple” as Gwendolyn Pigeon.
Ross remembers first developing an interest in theater when she was young – an interest she and her brother shared, but never talked about.
“We didn’t know it growing up, but we both wanted to do something like this, but just never had the nerve to do it,” she said. “Our high school didn’t have a theater program. And my brother was into sports and that kept him busy.”
So despite her interest, Ross never got the chance to try acting. Even after she graduated, she never pursued the dream. But when her brother retired, he did.
“He was in a production last fall or actually last Christmas season called ‘In-Laws, Outlaws, and Other People That Should Be Shot,’ which was really funny. And I went to see him and he said, Sis, you really need to try out,” Ross said. “I said, Well, I’ve always thought about it, but just kind of a little too scared to do that. So he encouraged me and my husband encouraged me. So I went and auditioned.”
She was nervous going into the audition, but after being cast and actually getting the chance to take the stage, Ross has had many of her nerves dispelled.
“It’s been a blast,” she said. “It’s helped me, honestly, with my seasonal affective disorder. I had a little problem with that in the wintertime where I really get the blues pretty bad, and this has helped me tremendously.”
She’s also found her fellow cast members incredibly gracious and welcoming.
“All of the people that have been theater people for a long time in some form or fashion, behind the scenes and directing and acting, they have welcomed me with open arms and I’ve learned a lot,” Ross said.
So how did the show actually go? Ross said she was nervous as she prepared to make her big entrance, but once she did, it felt natural as could be.
“Opening night was great! The audience was fully engaged and laughed a lot throughout all the production,” she said. “I was feeling nervous as the time approached for me to enter the stage through the ‘apartment door’ in Act II. Once I got out there on stage, I was fine. I remembered all my lines and managed to get some laughs.”
There are a few other shows coming up at her local theater, and she hopes to audition for those as well, and is already seeking new ways to challenge herself as an actor.
“I would like to try something more dramatic just just to kind of see how I do,” she said.
Lakyn Hollandsworth has always believed in helping people where she can.
“I grew up in a family where if someone needed something, you helped them,” she said. “Seeing compassion in others and being willing to help others around you I think is incredibly important.”
That’s an attitude she’s carried into her career as a Return-to-Work Coordinator with the RETAIN Project at HDI.
“We help individuals with an illness or a non work related injury, return to work or stay at work by assessing their needs with accommodations, working with their employers…to implement some of those accommodations,” she said. “And we also provide resources to other organizations in the community because when someone has an unexpected injury or illness and they’re out of work, that could impact their financial stability.”
Hollandsworth had an unusual path to HDI. She began by getting her degrees from Akron and Kent State universities, then moved to North Carolina for an internship with Vocational Rehabilitation.
The year was 2020 and the internship fell through. Now, Hollandsworth was on her own in a new state without a job and with no significant local relationships. Fortunately, Dr. Phillip Rumrill contacted her about opportunities available with the RETAIN project. Four years later, and Lakyn has earned promotions from intern to Return-to-Work Coordinator. She’s integrated into a system with co-workers that she likes and work that she enjoys.
“At the time I was just shadowing other coordinators, listening in on a phone call as they were doing with participants. And eventually I was able to have my own caseload,” she said. “Without the internship, I think I’d be very overwhelmed. But being able to slowly dive into it and have all the mentors that I’ve had throughout the program and my work with the program, that’s been incredibly beneficial.”
Outside of work, Hollandsworth and her husband have an 11-month-old son.
“Since he’s come into our life, our whole world focuses around him. But he goes everywhere with us,” she said.
And everywhere is a lot of different places. They enjoy exploring breweries, hiking up mountains, and you’ll find them a lot on the lake with boats and jet skis during the summer.
But everything circles back to that desire to help people – and she feels proudest at her job when she sees the proof that she’s done so.
“Some of my proudest moments are when I get feedback from a person that I’ve worked with that they couldn’t have done what we did without my help,” she said.
Now, he’s a return-to-work coordinator on the RETAIN Kentucky project at HDI, but through the years, he’s worked at a number of different jobs across the state.
“Prior to coming to HDI, I was a secondary education history teacher for ten years. Once I became a licensed clinical mental health counselor, I served as executive director of Salvation Army for five years and later executive director of Job Corps for four years,” Glenn said. “I currently own a real estate company whereby we provide adequate housing and mental health services to the homeless.”
There’s a common theme in each of these wildly divergent fields, though – empowerment. Glenn said that he enjoys helping people find the means to push past challenging circumstances and excel through hardship.
“What I enjoy most about my work is having the opportunity to empower individuals to believe and hope again in the face of crippling circumstances,” he said.
And HDI certainly offers him a good opportunity to do that. HDI caught his attention with the RETAIN project, which provides stay-at-work and return-to-work case management services to people who acquired an illness or injury outside of the workplace, making it difficult for them to work.
Now, as a return to work coordinator, he’s helping another group excel through adversity.
“As return-to-work coordinator, I am responsible for carrying out an organized system designed to bring injured or disabled employees safely back into the work environment as soon as they are medically capable,” he said, adding that this often involves organizing for accommodations within the workplace”.
“As I try to return an injured or ill worker to work as part of the return-to-work plan, it may be necessary to modify that employee’s job to help him or her meet the position’s demands,” he said. “These job accommodations may be short or long-term, and they often change as the employee’s abilities change.”
With this work, Glenn has been able to help eligible RETAIN participants and employers maintain their employees and talent. He is proud of that work – as he tells it, it’s good for the organizations and the individuals.
“I came to HDI upon hearing about RETAIN and the opportunity to do something a little differently in terms of social services,” he said. “My proudest achievements at work are the success stories of how we are able to assist our participants with bettering their lives.”
[Patti] Hello, and welcome to the State of HDI, a podcast of the University of Kentucky Human Development Institute. I’m Patti Singleton, and in the studio with me today is Laura Butler, director of the Kentucky Core Indicators Project. Laura, it’s so good to have you here.
[Laura] Thanks, Patti. I’m happy to be here.
[Patti] Laura, today’s topic is on quality improvement and data. So, tell me about this project.
[Laura] So, the National Core Indicators is a project where we survey adults who are receiving services from the state. So, in Kentucky’s case, it’s two Medicaid waiver services, the Michelle P waiver and the supports for Community Living waiver. 48 other states also participate in the survey. And there are other surveys within the project as well.
[Patti] So, 48 states, that’s a lot of data. So, based on the data you’ve collected, and you’ve seen, how is Kentucky performing as compared to some of the other states?
[Laura] So, it depends on the items that we look at. And that is one of the things that our quality improvement committee does look at is to see how Kentucky does rank in terms of some different areas. They call them indicators for this survey and to see how Kentucky is performing nationally, and compared to some other states that might be benchmark states for us.
[Patti] And you mentioned a committee, can you tell me who is represented on that committee?
[Laura] Yeah, so the committee is made up of some other HDI’ers, as well as some folks from different state agencies, including the division of developmental and intellectual disability, and also most importantly, family members of people who are receiving the services and people who are actually receiving the services.
[Patti] So, I assume this dataset can really help people with advocacy and policy efforts.
We’re seeing that happen more and more on a local and state level, which is really exciting. And then the data are also being used for federal quality management and assessment measures.
[Patti] So having such a large data set likely also gives a great picture of progress of people with disabilities over time. And so, what are some of those trends?
[Laura] As with everything else, we saw changes during COVID. We did stop surveying in March 2020, when everything else stopped. But we did have about three fourths of our surveys completed at that point. So, we did look at that data as an immediate pre pandemic snapshot. And so, we – like the rest of the country – saw people, fewer people working, fewer people spending time in the community, things like that. But we’ve seen a really significant rebound in that in the last year. The survey has changed somewhat, it does change in response to different things that are going on in the community. So, there are survey questions that have been added to measure what is called often the final rule or the settings rule that Medicaid has. And that’s about how people live as you would think with the settings rule. Those are newer questions. So, we’re seeing some changes there. As people, as agencies and providers try to get in line with that role. We see other changes as well in terms of employment, it goes up and down. Other items in terms of people who have meaningful relationships, or people who feel lonely, those go up and down. But generally, we see positive trends for Kentuckians in those items.
[Patti] I certainly think a lot of people have probably a stress response when we think about data. And so, tell me how this project is making data into information we can all use.
[Laura] Yeah, so it’s really important for us that people use the data, the big survey that we use is collected directly from people who are receiving the services. So, it is a really important perspective. So, we want to see it used. So, what we do is present the data in a number of different ways. We have just the data tables for people who are really into just raw data and looking at that. We have those out there. Then we also work to create some easy-read documents. The National – National Core Indicators folks do that as well with a larger data, but we do it with the data that we see here in Kentucky and specifically with the items that the quality improvement committee looks at. So, we work with people with disabilities to help us develop those and make sure that they work for a different variety of people. So, we probably have some that are meant for provider agencies, some that are meant for people who are receiving services, others that can be used for policymakers.
[Patti] And we’ll make sure that we have links to those in the show notes today. So finally, what changes do you see in the future?
[Laura] So, it’s really hard to tell. I think the national folks that design the survey are really responsive to what is happening in the community and what’s happening with policy and politics, honestly. And so, as things change, we’ll see that change as well. One of the issues that’s really big right now is getting enough people to provide services. So, the workforce of people who are providing services is really challenging right now. And that really impacts the quality of life for people who are receiving these services. So, we’re seeing right now the emphasis on that workforce, the direct support professionals, and we’re seeing a lot of emphasis on making sure that those people are retained and paid well and treated well, and we do have a survey. It’s called the State of the Workforce survey that’s specific to measuring that in terms of compensation and retention of the direct support professionals.
[Patti] Well, Laura, it was so great to sit down with you today and learn more about your project.
