and we are the independent consultants. >>Good morning. My name is Carolyn Dudley, assistant staff director for the

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1 DCF Advisory Committee Meeting June 15, 2011 Crown Plaza Airport Hotel, Orlando, FL DISCLAIMER This transcript was created in real time by a Certified Real-time/CART Provider. It has been roughly edited. It is not a certified legal transcript. It is intended for use by the recipient only as notes of the proceedings. HRI CART Communication Access Real-time Translation (cell/text) P R O C E E D I N G S >>RICK KOTTLER: Could I get everyone's attention? Could we get seated? Okay, let's get started. If you haven't noticed, we don't have microphones. Somebody didn't get the memo. They're on their way, but in the meantime, we're all going to share a microphone. So I'm going to start off with the introductions, pass the microphone around, and I will go down and sit by Bob and take it back when it's done. If everybody would take a second and explain who you are and why you are here. Debbie is our newest member, and she's going to be representing the deaf on our committee. She brings a lot of experience. I have known her for many years, and I hope you all will welcome her because we really can use her right now. For the record my name is Rick Kottler, I'm the director of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Services of the Treasure Coast in Jensen Beach and the chairman. >>Good morning. My name is Chris Recinella with the Department of Children and Families Development Unit. I have been on the team that has been developing the curriculum for this training. >>My name is Denise Hunter, also from DCF on the training team with Rick and Marsha. >>MARSHA RYAN: Marsha Ryan, on the training and development team as well. >>Good morning. I'm Michelle Riske-Morris with Justice, Research and Advocacy, and we are the independent consultants. >>Good morning. My name is Carolyn Dudley, assistant staff director for the Department of Children and Families Office of Civil Rights. >>Good morning, Merlin Roulhac, Department of Children and Families. I serve in the role of project manager for the settlement agreement between DCF and HHS. >>Yasmine Gilmore. I assist Merlin on this project. >>Good morning, my name is Marc Dubin; I'm an attorney with the Center for Independent Living of South Florida and serve as director of advocacy there. >>Good morning. Lois Maroney from St. Petersburg. I'm a licensed mental health counselor in private practice. >>I'm not going to use the mic. Hello, everybody. My name is Debbie Lauricella. I know you are expecting me to speak, but I don't do that. I will be using the interpreter. And I am, of course, a deaf person. I use ASL, that's my native language, my first language. And I just love ASL. It's a beautiful language. And my mother and father are deaf. My grandmother is deaf also, so they gave me that language and I pass it on to the next generation; I have a deaf child also. We have four generations; strong language of deaf in my family. And I went to a deaf school and I have gone to different colleges. But I haven't finished quite yet. I have been to five different colleges, haven't graduated. Just haven't finished yet. And I have sat and read English, and it's quite 1 P age

2 different. But Sign Language and a Sign Language community, that's where I belong. And what I am doing here? I am here as a deaf advocate for the deaf community and here to support all of you, as we definitely need that out there. I was the director for a Deaf Service Center in Lakeland a while ago, until I became a mother of a deaf child. His father passed away and he couldn't be alone so I had to take care of my child and it was a very rough time for me because there was really nothing in this state that could offer something to me as a deaf mother. There was nothing, absolutely nothing. I struggled a lot with that. And my mother had Alzheimer's, so the support services here for the deaf people, my goodness, they had no idea what dementia was, Alzheimer's was. I had to live my way, go through my struggles. So I had to quit my job so I could focus on my mother. They had a deaf assistive living facility there in (city) because they had nothing here. So after my mother was there, I retired so I could just be deaf. So I am so happy to be here, honored to be working with you to improve these services for the Deaf and hard of hearing. >>Hi, my name is Susan Herring. I am from Pensacola, Florida, and I am on the committee as a deaf blind consumer, so I put in my little two cents' worth regarding that. >>Good morning, everyone. I'm Cindy Simon. I represent the audiologists here. And I would like to welcome Debbie, and we are really happy to have you. >>I'm Shana Williams, psychologist and director of social services for the Center for Hearing and Communication, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. >>Hi, I'm Terri Schisler, and I represent the Florida Registry of Interpreters. >>Hi, I'm Valerie Stafford-Mallis, I work for the Department of Health, and I do training, education and outreach on behalf of the Florida Coordinating Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. And I am really, really happy to have Debbie Lauricella here to represent the culturally Deaf point of view in our deliberations. Thank you. >>Good morning. I'm Kim Gaut. I'm the executive director of the Deaf Service Center in Charlotte County. >>I'm Bob Fifer. I'm on the faculty at the University of Miami in the Department of Pediatrics, the director of audiology and speech pathology at Mountain Center for Child Development. And I wear a couple of other hats -- former president of the board of trustees for the Florida Deaf Services Bureau, and consultant for the Florida Department of Health and Children's Medical Services and also AHCA. >>RICK KOTTLER: Okay. I want to introduce Gayl Hardeman as our CART provider, and our four interpreters, Judith Britt, Shonna Magee, Jena Szikney -- did I get it right? -- and Nancy Wilbanks. Since I do have the floor, one thing we don't have, obviously, is microphones, so we are going to be passing the microphone. I'm not sure how you guys are going to do your presentations, but if you are going to take questions during it, then I'll just walk around with the microphone. Is that what you are planning on doing? >>MARSHA RYAN: That's fine. >>RICK KOTTLER: Okay. When you do use the microphone, if you put it too close to your mouth, Gayl's not going to understand what you are saying. So use it a little bit wisely. Last month when I walked out of here I thought this was wonderful. I have been in a lot of things with the Council and different commissions and different committees, and, you know, we've obviously been given an opportunity to make a difference, and this group is so diverse, and I wondered whether it was ever going to work, and everybody's pulling for the same thing. And I'm not just talking about the committees; I mean the DCF people and Michelle. I just couldn't be prouder to be part of this, and I want to thank you all very much for what you do, because it's a wonderful thing. On that note, Marsha, you have the floor. >>MARSHA RYAN: Okay. I appreciate everyone's patience in getting out these documents. It is getting so voluminous -- 2 P age

3 >>RICK KOTTLER: I made a faux pas. Has everyone read the minutes? They were distributed. Yasmine added some people who were left out. Does anyone have any other changes to the minutes? Could I have a motion to accept the minutes? Cindy made the motion to accept, Shana seconded. All in favor? [Motion carried.] >>RICK KOTTLER: Okay. Now you can have the floor back. Thank you very much. >>MARSHA RYAN: Okay. Again, we appreciate your patience and your getting these documents late Friday, having to review them on the weekend. We tried to think of every possible way to get them to you, so we finally gave up and gave you what we could in the print. The PowerPoints we gave you this morning. I saw Chris running around this morning with CDs, and we're hoping that those will be -- you will be able to download them to look at them, view them once you are able to get them to your home and are able to look at them. We do have them here, and all of the documents, if you want to see something specific. We are loaded and ready to go. If you want to reference anything, we have it with us. So I brought a great big thumb drive. We've got it! Okay. As far as the process for this morning, I thought what we might do is just use the document that was the comments spreadsheet to go through, and not go through the training detail over and over again but go through the comments. We tried to compile these in groups of topics. They are not all in person order. Some of them are repetitious, had you the same comments. So you might see some that are repetitive, but we tried to weed out some things that are repetitive. So if you see where you might have made a comment but it was already taken in some other person's comments, if that's acceptable, we have moved on with that. Okay. I guess what we'll do again is, if you have comments to our comment on that line, then if you'll just give us the high sign, we'll get a microphone to you. Okay. The first one, Cindy Simon? Let me go back. Rick, do we really want to go through each one of these? Have you all had time to look at them? You want to go through them individually? >>RICK KOTTLER: No. I would say we have comments, let's break them up as we go on a page by page basis. >>MARSHA RYAN: Okay. We do have the pages numbered. Don't have the columns numbered but we can guess what that is if you will give us a second. >>RICK KOTTLER: Okay. I have a question on the first page. Right at the beginning where you talk about role playing, how is that going to be accomplished? You are talking about role playing between two people, and I understand that part. But one of those people is going to be maybe the deaf individual. How are they going to role-play something they don't understand? That's my question. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: I will respond to that. My name is Chris Recinella. The role play, the purpose of that activity, is correctly filling out the forms, understanding what the fields are, understanding what the procedures are, and Michelle has spoken to us, that's something that needs to be focused on, that the DCF staff need to know how to fill out the forms. So the purpose of that activity, it may be disengaged from some of the information earlier on regarding Deaf Culture or the different identities, but what we want is for people to come in and know -- we will give you an example. Denise and I just finished a training. We are paired up. Denise is going to be a DCF staff worker, let's say in her normal job she works for Access. So I'm going to be the client coming in who is coming in for help with the Access program because she has that program knowledge. I will say I am hard of hearing, I need an assistive listening device, so we will role-play what that interaction looks like filling out forms. That's the purpose of that activity. Does that answer your question, Rick? 3 P age

4 >>RICK KOTTLER: Yes. >>MARSHA RYAN: Also, I thought that I heard a little something different in your question: How will you know how to role-play someone who is hard of hearing? >>RICK KOTTLER: Right. >>MARSHA RYAN: We will never know exactly what it feels like from the other person's perspective, because we're not there. We understand that. What we will do is, this is almost like a double test of knowledge here, because we've gone into the culture background and examples of some of the ways to recognize deaf or hard of hearing or -- and when you ask and you need assistance, we've talked about some of the cultural differences in the different and hard of hearing culture. So some of that will already be there. But we will have notes. When we are doing role-play, you will have a little card that says you are hard of hearing. This means that you understand -- if in that case we are going to have in the role play, they might have a bullet that says, you understand English, you can hear, and you can read and write English. You do not understand Sign Language. We may have a bullets that would describe what it is that his case would be as the client. Does that help? >>RICK KOTTLER: Bob is first. >>ROBERT FIFER: I apologize for you all for not having been here the last two meetings. Considering where I was and what I was doing, I would have much preferred to have been here. Trust me. I have a question and a possible suggestion. For the classroom training or the face-to-face training, will that consistently be in a common location? Or will that be regionalized? >>MARSHA RYAN: It will be all over the state, in separate places. It will be regional. >>ROBERT FIFER: All right. I have a suggestion for your consideration, and that would be to have someone from DCF staff -- if you cannot find anyone from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community to come and actually play the part as a professional actor, so to speak, then my suggestion would be to have someone from the DCF staff be a single client consistently. And the reason why is this has been demonstrated to be effective in medical school training programs and many other training programs where if you have someone who is can consistent and in the client -- or, in our case, the patient role -- that person gets better and better and more realistic as time goes on. My concern is that if you give this card to someone who is being trained, they will have no clue, and the role-playing will be much less effective than if you have someone who is real from the community or someone consistent to be the person roleplaying in that particular role. >>MARSHA RYAN: Thank you. >>MARC DUBIN: As you role-play, I was wondering, how are you getting feedback on how the role-play is going? Are you utilizing anybody from the deaf or hard-of-hearing community to give you feedback on how realistic the person playing the role of a deaf or hard-of-hearing person is? And do you have any staff in DCF who are deaf or are hard of hearing whom you could utilize? And if not, do you plan to use any members of the community who are deaf or hard of hearing in these role-plays? >>MARSHA RYAN: We have not planned to have the community person, an advocate from the community, to play that role or to be in that role for the role-play. We had not planned to do that. What we had planned in the curriculum was to have two staff that were in the room, if it were the Single Points of Contact or the direct service, to take those roles. That's what we had planned. We could certainly take that into consideration, and the community advocate will be invited to the training, and hopefully will be there, and can provide some information during that time when they're there and give some insight to. Again, we certainly were having advocate representation but not specifically planned to do the role-playing. >>MARC DUBIN: I'd also ask whether you have any DCF staff who are deaf or 4 P age

5 hard of hearing. >>MARSHA RYAN: I believe there are folks in the staff who are Deaf and hard of hearing. We do not have any on our training staff, and I don't know that we would have anyone that is currently in the department be in the training. I don't know; we haven't taken a survey of those spots. I don't know, maybe Carolyn can speak to that. Are there any deaf or SPOCs? She says that she wouldn't know. >>RICK KOTTLER: Debbie's next, and then Bev. >> >>DEBBIE LAURICELLA: I'm a little bit confused about the role playing. If you are not deaf, how do you know how deaf people should feel or act? You should have a deaf person who can understand what we look like, and deaf and hard-of-hearing people are different. So that's the only thing that concerns me, you know? To have a real, live deaf person that is there, involved in the training, and working with that point of contact, they should be able to explain in depth our perspective. So, you know, you are giving a card to somebody, they are kind of, you know, in make-believe, acting what it feels like to be in my shoes. So that's really my own concern is to really please have a real deaf person that's in there, you know? Because that way, they can be creative and lead the people. If you have somebody who is hearing they may lead them in the wrong direction and that will cause more problems later on down the line, so if you have this training with a deaf person first, then the results should be fine. >>RICK KOTTLER: Okay. Do you have a comment to that? I think we have to make sure we are staying on the same track. We are talking about doing this to get forms filled out, and that's the important part of this whole thing. Valerie? >>VALERIE: Hi. This is Valerie. I am wondering why we would not want to make sure that the trainers themselves are trained to play that role when necessary for filling out the forms. They're always going to be at the training. I mean, I agree with Debbie Lauricella that it is best to have a real live person who is deaf or hard of hearing to play that role, but in the event that that's not possible, then the trainers have been trained to do that. >>MARSHA RYAN: Yes. Actually, logistically, for training, I would say that that would be a nightmare for us. I mean, just logistically. Not practicality. I think practically, I would agree that it would be best to have the real deal. And to show that and actually see that in action. That's always the best. But I don't think logistically -- we have scheduled over 200, actually -- let me consider all this -- we have scheduled or are anticipating scheduling 262 sessions across the state between July the 12th and December the 31st. 262 one-day trainings. That's going to go around in the state. Logistically, getting a, quote, real deaf person in that training is going to be very difficult, because there are oftentimes persons who are hard of hearing but are not deaf, and as you would know, and I certainly won't instruct you, but there is certainly a gamut on that spectrum there. There's a lot of difference. And it would be best to have someone. We are planning and attempting to have an advocate at each one of those sessions, but it would not be to do the role-play, but would be there as we did in the demonstration where Valerie played the part of our community advocate in that last month; she was open to questions, any questions, and she even offered I believe at that time to take off her implants and let people look at them. I don't think anybody took her up on that in that group. But certainly being open to that in the session, it would be a different place. It wouldn't be specifically in a role-play. But that's our plan. And if you see us venturing from that we could consider that but I think it would really put a burden on the logistics of trying to make that happen. >>RICK KOTTLER: Susan? >>SUSAN HERRING: Thank you. I was just thinking. I have not experienced this before, and I have heard that there are products out there called the Simulator, and 5 P age

6 they imitate or try to demonstrate for an individual what it's like to be deaf-blind. I know the Helen Keller National Center has this sort of equipment. And I am thinking we could find more about those and maybe those Simulators could be used to help demonstrates to these people that are in the training program what it's like to have vision loss or hearing loss or just a hearing loss. And I don't know if it works in degrees or just gives you an idea. But it may not be as perfect as having an actual hearing loss person playing that role, but I think it would help for these people to understand or get a little inkling of what it's like to not be able to hear, or not be able to hear and see, or to have some sort of idea of what they are trying to do. If you are interested in getting that information, I would be happy to send you contacts of somebody who could give you more detailed information on how this equipment works, and how to get it. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: If I may respond to this. Thank you, Susan. We have downloaded the National Institutes of Health "Hearing Loss Simulator" program and have added to the presentation a Hearing Loss Simulator. I worked with Cindy a little bit to verify that it's a good program. So there is a clip that is played with both foreground and background noise. There is a man speaking and there is background music. It goes through and actually has the decibel loss at several different bands of frequency and adjusts accordingly for those different levels of hearing loss that we go over in the training with the mild, moderate, and severe. The other thing we have added is, we have excerpts from a couple of FTRI videos that add some brief interviews with individuals. There's a deafblind individual, there are some culturally deaf individuals using ASL. There are some hard-of-hearing individuals using the different services, and so those interviews, I think, give a great demonstration of what interaction with that community looks like. We are working with -- I have called the federal VRS. They have bounced me to the Sprint VRS, who has finally bounced me to the Z. And the executive account manager of the Z for the South and I have been speaking this week, and he is going to be sending some video that they have with their outreach program with the VRS, so that's in the mail. We will see if it is usable. But that's also there. So know that that is in process. The other video we have here today, and at a break or if there is an appropriate time -- we don't have sound hooked up to the laptop, but we can show you what that video looks like if anyone would like to see that. >>ROBERT FIFER: This is Bob. Given the scenario that you just described, the trainer is going to be the vital key to make the role-playing realistic. The trainer is going to have to spend time with members of the community in order to develop some level of understanding in order not to have role-play move into what I call, for lack of a better term, the area of silliness. Because individuals who have this role thrust upon them may feel ill at ease, especially in the beginning. And when you feel ill at ease, there is a tendency to be a little bit silly, because you are trying to get the nervousness out. And it's going to be extremely important that this be as realistic as it can be, given any logistical constraints. So I come back to my earlier point -- consistency of the role-player is going to be absolutely essential. Now, the DCF staff intake person can be someone who's from the audience being trained. And have a critique of what the person did right and what the person did not do quite right, and what the person did that was really not right. As a result of that -- and that can also be a part of the learning experience itself, but the role-player is going to be critical to the entire process. Moving ahead just a little bit to another related topic, and that's the ALDs. In my experience, it's going to be essential to let people who are not familiar with 6 P age

7 TDDs, for example, or amplified telephones or CapTels or whatever, play with them, to the extent that you can in that office or that classroom-type setting, so that they have some familiarity and they're not intimidated the very first time they are called upon to use these -- when a client comes in, or for a form fill-out for care, whatever -- that will be necessary for communication. So familiarity there will also be a key element. >>MARSHA RYAN: Point well taken. What we will do is, we will look at the role-plays and make them as authentic as possible within our resources. We can be very creative in trying to do some things and we will try our best to be as authentic as possible. >>RICK KOTTLER: Lois? >>LOIS MARONEY: I think role-playing is really important in the education process. I think people learn a lot. But I do have concerns about that some of the advantages we are going to lose not having a person who is really deafened, deaf or hard of hearing being at the other side, because I'm afraid that some of the acting might continue to perpetuate the myths about hearing loss or deafness. So that makes me a little bit nervous. I would like to see it videotaped, have it done one time, have a good representative of deaf, late-deafened, hard of hearing, deafblind, and show that around. >>MARSHA RYAN: That's a good comment. Actually I think we are on the same brainwave here, Lois. I have written down a note, a video of the role-player, and if that's possible, if we could do that, and then have the participants to come up with the example of how to do that. And as a note to Bob's comment, I understand that it can get in the training room and in the training lab, if you want to look at it that way, that people who are very uncomfortable can get to the silly. But we would much rather them work through that in the training lab or a training situation where we can make corrections and make those -- make it come out right, than actually when it happens with a client or a customer. So going through that stage of becoming comfortable with their responses, that's the whole point of the role-play, is for them to become comfortable with exchange and having effective communication with their client or customer as they are filling out the form, so they can get that information. So that's the point of the role-play. And I think that having like Lois said maybe a tape of several different roles, whether it's a person who needs an interpreter, whether it's someone who prefers a hearing device, listening device, whatever that role would be, to put on the form, I think that that might capture your need and your concern for it to be as authentic as possible. And it would be on video. That would be, I would think, more logistically possible than having the person in the room at all these 262 sessions. And it's a very short -- at this point, it would be a short exercise, a short activity, in comparison to the entire training. It wouldn't be an all-day thing. It's a very short exercise. So... >>SHANA WILLIAMS: A couple of questions. When we were talking about equipment, are each of the train the trainers going to have PockeTalkers and Ativas with them so they can demonstrate, touch them, feel them, so they can get a sense of that? Will they have actually seen AVP so they know what that looks like? And then on the role-play issue, I think this is one section where -- I like the video idea -- this is one session for filling out forms, but role-play in its entirety helps person to understand the material. And I think the reading of law is not as clearly demonstrated and not as effective a learning tool. >>ROBERT FIFER: Just a follow-up comment. The individual playing the role, the deaf individual or hard-of-hearing individual, et cetera, will be the key. That person will be the key to keep things out of silliness, and definitely on track. And that person has to have the ability through prior contact with members of the community to really immerse himself or herself in that role. The people being trained are going to be nervous. And they may move into the area of silliness, you know, just by virtue of their 7 P age

8 nervousness, and it's going to be the role-player's responsibility to bring them back to reality and make it serious again in terms of -- I need help, you are here to help me, let's focus. But the key to it all will be the individual playing the role of the person who is going to be the client or customer. >>VALERIE: Hi, this is Valerie. Thinking about role-plays and the experiences of other disability organizations have had with that, they do open the disability organization up for criticism from the persons with the disability when role-plays are used. I think you have heard some of those concerns here today. If the DCF decided they didn't want the to place themselves in that position, an alternative would be to do the video thing like we talked about with people with real disabilities going through the forms and the trainer facilitates the discussion afterwards, what went right? What were the skill sets? How do you apply that to learning? And draw the participants in that way. That's the approach that we used for our legal systems access for persons with hearing loss training that we do for law enforcement officers. We actually videotape real live law enforcement officers conducting law enforcement encounters with real live deaf people and then afterwards, the trainers elicit that discussion and point out those relevant skill sets, so that way we weren't involved in that role-playing which has proven offensive to many people in the disability communities despite the well-meaning intentions of the people that do it. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: And I think that's a great point. We're taking notes of everything you are saying here. I want to come back to Shana's question about the assistive listening devices. Those will be in the SPOC trainings so that they can see and touch and feel those. >>CINDY SIMON: I just have one quick question. Would it be helpful if you know you are in one of our areas to let us know when you are going to be here so we can make it, we can come in and watch what's go on and maybe assist with that or maybe you could find someone in the community that you could use for the role-playing? >>MARSHA RYAN: We are actually inviting for every session -- we haven't actually done it yet; we need to have an approved training plan and have the training, know what we are asking them to do, finalized, which the deadline is the 28th of this month before we actually contact the advocacy organizations. But in the training and the settlement agreement, we are asking representatives from advocacy organizations around the state to be in those trainings and to assist and to have a part of the training and to be there to answer questions, those kinds of things. So that is part of the settlement agreement. We are matching that. I don't have the logistics of that at this time finalized, but that's certainly what we're doing, yes. Actually, I think that we discussed this adequately, that we will make every effort to look at the role-play and to honor your feelings here and your concerns, so we will move with that. And Shana, you I think you had another one? >>RICK KOTTLER: I have one too. And this isn't a question. Well, it is. I know your drop-dead date is July 28th? >>MICHELLE RISKE-MORRIS: No, June. >>RICK KOTTLER: Okay. But after that point, is this going to be a dynamic training program? Can it be changed after that point? Or can it be approved as you go along? Or is it cast in stone? >>MARSHA RYAN: I think that the definition of training is that it is dynamic. We will not -- as we find things that don't work, we make them work better and we will adapt and work better. We will also hopefully be able to add more opportunities. I don't know how much more we can actually stuff into the training that we have now. As you start doing activities and start adding more and expanding that out, it can certainly get bigger and bigger. Not to say that you don't need more information, but you don't have to get it all in one day. We've realized that as adult learners, you can only take in so much in a day anyway, so what we would like to do would be to develop some follow-up products that might be online or might be what we call blueprints for SPOCs to use when they are talking with their direct training service employees locally. 8 P age

9 It would not be part of that training specifically but we could add more information and hopefully we'd have some -- we would hopefully be able to add some other enhancing things. Like maybe have a visit from a local -- have a forum for staff to come and talk to someone from the advocacy organization in the community. Our whole point in our training plan is, we put forth advocacy organizations to be there to develop a relationship locally with those providers and the providers of the services that DCF have, whether it's a DCF employee or a contracted provider, so that relationship is built, and certainly that would be encouraged and would have other opportunities throughout the year. It's not just one event, as I see it. Does that answer? >>RICK KOTTLER: Yes, that's fine. >>SHANA WILLIAMS: How is the process of getting the reading levels on the forms and materials gone through? We had talked about that we wanted to make sure it is on a 4th or 5th grade reading level. And Michelle and I were talking that it might be useful to have a deaf speaker look at the forms. But is the reading level being addressed? >>This is Merlin. I have sent some of the forms to our communications department with a request for a review. I have not heard back from them to this date. But that is in the works, that we are pursuing that. >>RICK KOTTLER: Michelle? >>MICHELLE RISKE-MORRIS: I just wanted to add that one of the things of the training plan we are encouraging is, we go out and do site visits. We are also getting responses from the advocacy services that are going out in the next month or so as well as assessments that the community has reviewed. But those are ongoing processes. We are gathering information from the SPOCs, from the organizations. We are also doing focus groups, incorporating them into our site visit. One of the things with the training plan is, I encourage them when we go out to get information, they start to incorporate that into additional trainings in the future. So it will be an ongoing process. And as new things arise, new difficulties or areas that we didn't think are problematic but now he we see are problematic, that they will take that information. So the refresher training will not just be the same training that was developed here. It will be constantly an evolving process to address outstanding issues and needs that are arising through this accumulative act of monitoring as a requirement of the settlement agreement. >>RICK KOTTLER: Moving on to page 2. Comments? Terri? >>Terri Schisler: Hi. You mentioned that you were working with ZVRS and some other VRS agencies to get more information and you are incorporating some of the material into your training. Correct? >>CHRIS RECINELLA: If it's propose. >> >>TERRI SCHISLER: Okay. I have several comments that I submitted to you guys and several of those were marked as being referred to OCR. And so I was wondering if you've gotten any further information on those since that time, if any of those suggestions or comments have been deemed appropriate. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: Anything marked -- and I will clarify this -- anything marked along this document is forwarded to the OR. By and large, those dealt more with policy issues, not dealing directly with the training material or activities, some of them have been under review. Your document was one of the first ones to go over there because it was one of the earlier ones sent in to us. Carolyn would have to speak to where the staff is at reviewing that and approving that. I don't know. >>TERRI SCHISLER: My main comment here is just generally about VRS and how it is being treated in the training. I mean, you guys have done an amazing job and there is so much here that you have included but making sure that your staff are clear on the use of traditional text-based relay services and video relay services, and I also did a little bit of research -- haven't really gotten any confirmations. Went onto the FCC 9 P age

10 Web sites and looked at their definitions of TRS and VRS and how they might be handled by users, like DCF or other entities that might be interacting with the deaf community, and I just wanted to make sure that -- I have not found any reason why VRS would not be a viable alternative for communication and the training materials are heavily weighted toward TRS. Video relay service is a TRS service. It is funded differently and it is operated differently, but it is still a TRS service. And so, I just was wondering, you know, waiting for OCR to respond to those procedural or policy issues. I am anxious to see what they might respond but if within the training materials this was -- you know, this is something that I would like to see, make sure that we have clarified that, and there's confusion business the use of 711 and TTY-TDDs, and the difference in interacting with someone who is calling through a TRS, text-based relay, versus a video relay service. And that's the training part that I would like to see clarified. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: And that was confusing, in what you guys saw last month. There was what I will call TRS, the 7-1-1, the FTRI programs. Then the VRS, VRI, and that confusion. We are not introducing VRI and VRS together anymore. Okay? There was a point, the legality issue, had kind of combined them. But it gets too confusing, and we got in mud. So VRI is now introduced just with interpreting services. You have just like CART, just with interpreting services, you can have face to face or remote. That's what the point needs to be, really. And I think it's much clearer now. With the VRS, here's the thing. Because of FTRI, it's much easier to gain access to training materials, to images, to information on the TTY, the voice carryover, those services. I have been contacting several VRS providers. Perhaps -- this is my guess -- it's corporate; it's a little different. It's much harder to get things that "I'm promoting my company and this is how this works." So I am hoping this video that what Z is sending me is just confirmation about how a video phone call works. My conversation with that representative was actually a VRS call, so it was great for me to experience that as well. It is different from the phone calls. I am hoping that it is the FTRI video -- we will show the difference between the identity and cultural. I think we get both of those captured in that. And I would love to have a video. I really believe if anyone here knows of any demonstration videos on the video phone system, please send it our way. It is really hard to come by. But we have set it apart so it is no longer a fly-by on the VRS, but we are going to stop and talk about it a little more on this time around. >>TERRI SCHISLER: The other point I would like to see in that revision is to really clearly delineate that the people who use the text-based service and people who use the video relay service are going to be two different populations for the most part. So if their primary focus is text-based relay, then they still don't know how to deal with the Sign Language population. So we want to make sure that they see them both as viable options, both as equal services, both as provided nationwide. So what we are seeing in my field -- and I work with VRS full time, and I can work with my company to see if they can get you some materials, see what I can do -- what we are seeing is many companies and some government agencies, when a relay call comes in, it is automatically shifted to a text-based relay service or shifted to your TTY department, because that's the policy that that company has put in place. And video relay service has not been readily accepted in certain businesses or certain fields due to privacy concerns and maybe -- I'm not sure what other reasons. But we make calls every day to companies, and the minute somebody says, "Relay" when the operator has to announce that's a relay call, when that is said, sometimes even without a response, that is transferred to a TTY department. That effectively ends the conversation, because I am not a machine. You should let your staff know, oh, relay call, transfer call -- that is something you cannot do. You have, in effect, cut the line, and you are not allowing anybody access through a phone line. 10 P age

11 I just got an this week, through the Florida Coordinating Council, that the D.O.J. has a settlement agreement that came out last month against Wells Fargo for that exact same action. And in that settlement agreement, that outlines those procedures that that is what is happening with that particular company. And the D.O.J. agreements are right there saying some of the same things I have put into my recommendations. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: Thanks. I will be brief. One of the two videos we have excerpts from is "Don't Hang Up, We'll Do Business." So the intro that is played shows people hanging up -- no, thank you; take me off your list; we don't have time. So I think that video does a really good job of saying when you hear, "Hi, you are receiving a relay call; have you received a relay call in the past?" -- and they also have those demonstrations of the calls taking place -- my hope is that they will really get that down. We will look at the language of the instructor guide and make sure that we say you have seen voice carryover, you have seen TTY, here's another relay service, and make sure that that's crystal-clear, that this is another and equal type of service. It's not a ( ) but it's an equal type of service, another relay service. So we will check on that. Thank you. >>VALERIE STAFFORD-MALIS: Regarding the D.O.J. settlement agreement with Wells Fargo, one of the beauties of these things is that there are model policies that actually have the language and the instructions on how to come into compliance. So when I get home I can send you a copy of that model policy. And it'll pretty much lay out for you language that you will want to put in your trainers guides. >>MARSHA RYAN: Perfect. >>RICK KOTTLER: Lois? >>LOIS MARONEY: Just keep one thing in mind that relay calls. Not all of ( ) will be identified as a relay call. So when I use the relay service there is no mention at all that I am deaf, so in your training be sure that people understand that, that you might have calls from somebody and they are deaf, but you won't know that. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: Right. >>MARSHA RYAN: Duly noted. Thank you. >>RICK KOTTLER: Anything else? Okay. On to page 3. Nothing? Page 4? >>MARC DUBIN: On Page 4 they are saying they are training the staff on relay calls. Are they also training the staff on TTY and video relay calls? >>CHRIS RECINELLA: The reception of the video relay call, as Lois said, you know, sometimes is identified, sometimes not identified as a relay call. I think that that is adequately covered in the instructor guide as it is in this new revision. As for receiving a TTY to TTY message, we don't have that currently in the materials. If that's something that needs to be looked at, we can discuss that. >>MARC DUBIN: Well, I will leave it to others to say what they feel about that, but my view of that is that if someone is using a TTY and they are calling your TTY number directly or one of your partners' TTYs directly, there needs to be training on how to use a TTY. Not interrupting people, being able to do Go Ahead and all the rest of it. And if your staff and partners are not being trained, I would suspect that that would cause some problems for some TTY users. That's my view. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: Forgive my ignorance, I might be ignorant in this situation. When you are discussing TTY to TTY phone, you are speaking without the communication assistance? >>MARC DUBIN: That's correct. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: Okay. We do discuss the turn-taking and how that works with the TTY-TDD phones. So the appropriate etiquette and Terri, the great language is the turn-taking, thanks, really like that. And we go over that. And it's in the offices where those TTY phones are set up. I know our Office of Civil Rights has one set up. Carolyn might be able to speak to that. 11 P age

12 In the offices where those have been set up, has there been a prior training for the staff on how to use those when communication comes in? It's not part of this training. I don't know if it's been part of a prior training. >>CAROLYN DUDLEY: Yes. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: Carolyn says yes, that has taken place. >>RICK KOTTLER: Bob? >>ROBERT FIFER: One of the key things on a TTY is to simply let them listen to what those tones sound like because there will be some offices that do not have a dedicated TDD or TTY phone. They will have a portable, where they answer the phone, they hear this strange sound, and then they have to recognize that as a TDD communication line, switch on their device, and then put the hand set down in the cradle. It is a really weird sound the first time you have ever heard it. And it sounds like, you know, somebody is coming from Mars, because it is so unusual in the combination of tones that come through. So to have them just listen to that type of call communication, to recognize the sound of a TDD, will be of tremendous assistance, should they have a non-dedicated phone in the office. >>RICK KOTTLER: We get a lot of hang-ups on those calls. It sounds like a fax machine, for lack of a better term. >>MARSHA RYAN: Okay. >>RICK KOTTLER: We will move on to page 4. >>LOIS MARONEY: There should be more emphasis about CART. I am looking over to -- I love that comment, and then I am looking over to the other side, and I see noted for possible future supplemental training. And I'm starting to feel worry coming up from my body. I feel like, oh, no! So I thought I would ask for facts first. What do you mean and why is it not being included? >>MARSHA RYAN: Okay. We have some information in the training on the CART. But to go into -- we're not doing a demonstration. Is that correct? Do you have answers that you want to speak about? >>CHRIS RECINELLA: That's correct. >>MARSHA RYAN: We don't have a demonstration or trial or showing of that in the training. We would like to be able to get some video possibly of other assistive listening devices and other tools that could be used. We don't have those at this time, but we could certainly add those as supplemental. To continue to go into every device and go over every training for that -- we are giving brief information so they know what it is, explain it briefly, but then we are moving through in the curriculum. So we have put here as our response for supplemental training, we would like to get other video in the future that can be added as a supplemental information on devices and auxiliary aids, possibly online, that people can go in and look at. So we at this time don't want to add additional information, if possible, to the current training, but to spend the time that we have on filling out the forms and actually what their responsibilities are for getting the information and providing the services; and having a general knowledge of what CART is. >>LOIS MARONEY: At the next meeting we are going to be having a CART provider -- we are working on that. I am working with two CART providers in my area. I can't have other advisory board members invited to that because of sunshine so I am taking the lead for that with two other CART providers and going over policies and procedures and seeing what content we need on CART. I think I have always been a strong advocate here to have the CART, and I think about ten years ago -- I knew no sign, no hearing at all; speech reading was about 25 percent, because I had no residual hearing. And if I went to DCF, I would need CART, period. So I just want to be sure. A lot of times people think, oh, just Sign Language is the only thing that's needed. So I want people, when they leave there, to truly understand about that population and that they need CART. Now, I would have to go through all the training materials again, but I know that I made notes too that more is needed about CART. Maybe I need to be more specific 12 P age

13 about what is needed. Not necessarily a videotape of it but, you know, more needs to be in those materials. I guess I will need to go through it again but I was a little dismayed when I saw future, future. And I really want it now. >>CHRIS RECINELLA: Marc, if I may? I just want to say, what's currently in the training, we have added a little bit to the CART section, and we have talked about when it's released to the client, when it's public record, how it's handled, once you have that document. We go over that it is this verbatim transcript. We have an area where we talk about some of the unique needs of the late deafened. If you have very specific comments, like this would be really helpful for your staff to know, dot dot dot that would be invaluable. Again, I need to emphasize, we don't know what we don't know. In writing this, we are learning a lot. And so if there's something where you say, okay, by and large, information might be useful later on, but there's something that is a linchpin to this being executed well, that's the kind of very precise information that would be very helpful to us in writing this curriculum. >>MARC DUBIN: I want to emphasize that I think a response that says, "noted for possible future supplement trainings" sounds fudgy to me. I really want to emphasize how important I think CART information is. You have a very large population of late deafened adults who don't know Sign Language, who don't use hearing aids, who have no way of being effectively communicated with in the absence of CART. It needs to be emphasized as Sign Language Interpreters is in my opinion. It should be in this. It shouldn't be supplemented possibly in the future. It should be here now. Here's my thinking. The number one injury for veterans coming back from wars is hearing loss. DCF, late deafened adults, has a whole division dealing with veterans programs. I rarely see any notice identifying that if you need CART, we will pay for CART. And in the absence of that notice, in the absence of emphasizing any training, there will continue to be a failure to provide CART. And I can't emphasize enough how much I think that's a violation of the ADA. And you are thinking taking out these violations, again and again and again, if anybody comes forward to say, I need the CART and it wasn't provided. And I think we should be stepping up and saying, CART is important, CART will be provided, and in your notices, as one of the auxiliary aids and services you offer, just like you could say, including, for example, Sign Language Interpreters, I urge you to say, including, for example, CART. And explain to your staff. And it's not just your statement it is all of your partners throughout the state who don't know a thing about CART, who have never been asked for CART. And it seems to me that this is one of those things that is a linchpin in my view. I think you have to step up and do it and do it right or you are going to find, particularly in the veterans programs that, they are going to continue to violate this. And I just can't emphasize it enough. >>MARSHA RYAN: I think we can strengthen that some. But I would actually like to say that we would like to have additionally -- we can strengthen the current training, but additionally, I would like to have other auxiliary aids, information out there that people can go back to and look at online, consistently, and if there's new devices, new information, then that can be added to that, so people can stay up to date with new technologies as well. >>RICK KOTTLER: Bob and then Susan. >>ROBERT FIFER: I want to second what Marc just said because the stats on returning veterans are pretty glum. And the majority of them who don't come back to jobs already are coming back to virtually nothing. The unemployment rate among returning veterans, especially those combined with disabilities, is very, very significant. The V.A. is falling short of being able to take care of all their needs, so if there's one population where you might see an increase in a particular group of individuals, it will probably be returning veterans who are qualified for Medicaid, unemployment, a lot of other benefits upon their return and discharge from the military. And this group may or may not be able to use hearing aids, they may or may not be able to use assistive listening devices, and if they come in for long-term services or 13 P age