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DD Informational interview | Otter.ai

DD Informational interview

Sarah Statham11min

Joslynn

00:01

Hello everyone, welcome my name is Joslynn Bigelow. I am a behavior specialist and teacher on special assignment for the Clackamas ESD bringing to you today our developmental disability services interview with DD service coordinator, Austin Robinson. How you doing?

Austin

00:18

Hi, Joslynn. I'm good. I'm excited to be here. As Joslynn said, I'm a service coordinator, specifically Clackamas County, and I'm excited to talk about DD services.

Joslynn

00:28

We are so excited to learn more. So let's start off with a pretty easy question for you, Austin. What are DD services?

Austin

00:36

Thank you. Yes. So DD services are, first and foremost, they are person centered, which means that you are at the center of the conversation, we're talking about you you're giving your input. And we are making sure that we are personalizing your services, so that they help you become more independent and live life better and have a you know, just have a higher quality of life. So with that very individualized supports. And what this means is again, that we look at services and supports based on your needs. So whatever that you feel you need help with in your day to day life, we are there for you. It's also focused on, again, increasing independence or making sure that you can continue living life with a bunch of people nearby or a bunch of supports. So you feel like that you can have time to yourself and be able to grow and learn and not have to depend on others. Although of course, we all depend on others. So that is okay, as well. And the last thing is we are funded by the state government as well as the federal government. And we get that funding in a couple of different ways. But most importantly, we get that funding from talking with you, by checking in, by authorizing your services or helping you with supports. And so we are here for you, we love talking to you. And always feel free to reach out to us because it does help us with funding so that we can be there for you in the future.

Joslynn

02:08

Thank you. Alright, so we had our overview of DD services. How do I know if I'm eligible specifically for adult DG DD services.

Austin

02:19

So of course, adult is 18 and over so that is when you are eligible for adult DD services. Of course, there are a couple other things needed. First, we need to make sure that you have a documented or written down developmental disability diagnosis. And even if you don't, or even if you do, you will want to go through eligibility and it looks like it's been hyperlinked right there to the state website so feel free to click on it. And basically, you will talk to your county's eligibility team. They will talk to you about what's needed evaluations, diagnoses, any other things that are needed to deem you eligible, and then you are put into our services. And that means that you are in our services for life at age 22 there will be a redetermination if you entered prior to age 22, so within the years of 18 and 22. But after age 22, you have our services for life so we can help you out.

Joslynn

03:24

Wonderful. All right, I'm eligible for DD services, who are you to me, or what is a DD service coordinator.

Austin

03:33

So a DD service coordinator is also a case manager. And service coordinator can sometimes be a little misleading because it sounds like we coordinate everything. But we coordinate your Developmental Disabilities Services under K plan and our DD services and waiver services. And what that means essentially is that we are someone you can come to us with whatever you need. Even if we don't provide the help, we have resources and community partners that we can direct you to. So we are a safe person. And we are not judgmental at all for you to come to and say I need help with this or this or whatever. And either we can fund it or we can find someone that can help you. And like it says there on the third bullet point we help you access services as well as supports as well as resources. And the last thing is we are advocates for you. And we know that you're you are a great self advocate for yourself. And so we want to be there with you to help you with that advocacy and make sure that you're living life as best as you can.

Joslynn

04:43

Awesome. All right, service coordinators sound pretty cool Austin. Now tell us how you keep track of all of that information.

Austin

04:52

Yeah, so individualized support plan or we call them an ISP will probably say ISP a lot to you. So just try to memorize that but we will always be there to explain it. It's a plan for your future. It's a plan that has your hopes, your dreams and goals. It's also the plan that gives you access to the services we provide. So let's say that you have a goal to go to the grocery store and learn how to shop for yourself. Well, we actually have some services where we can pay someone to take you to the grocery store, or we can get you a bus pass to go there. And we also can pay someone to help you pick out items and pay for it. Whatever you need, we have services that can assist you with your daily living skills to help you grow. It also identifies personalized goals. So it doesn't just have to be something that helps you with life, it can be something like you want to go to Disneyland, of course, we're not going to pay for you to go to Disneyland, but I had people say I want to go to Disneyland. So I want to save up my money from my job, or my Supplemental Security Income, slash SSI, I want to save up some money and I want someone to help me with budgeting. We can pay someone to help you with budgeting. So it can be as little as a goal as you can think of it can be as big of a goal as you can think of just whatever is on your mind, and you feel as important to you let your service coordinator know. And we can put it in your plan. And again, it also outlines the services, and who's going to be on the ISP team every year? Because this is an annual document so we do it once a year, it's going to be you, of course nothing about you without you. So we make sure you're involved. And also we include your family if you want. You're the driver in this situation. So if you want family, their family can be there. If you want a friend to be there that knows you best, that's great. If you are in a transition program, and you want your IEP team there, that's okay, as well. So anybody you want to be there can be there.

Joslynn

06:59

Excellent. So ISP is kind of that map for that road trip you just started talking about, we're in the driver's seat. Now, what are some of those pitstops on that journey? What are some of the services available to us?

Austin

07:14

Yeah, so we have a ton. And there's a lot listed here, these are some of the more common ones. But like I said, always reach out to us because we will have more. And if we don't, we can always connect you with someone who does. So one, we have relief care and attendant care, I'll kind of couple those together. That is when we pay someone called a personal support worker, or they can also be called a direct support professional to come and work with you on task, it could be in home, if you want to work on housekeeping, laundry, the hygiene or it can be out in the community like I exampled earlier, if you want to go into the grocery store and have help paying and picking out groceries, there's also that possibility. With relief care, each client gets 14 days per year. And so you will get 14 days to give your family a break. If you live say with your guardian, or mother, father or parents, whoever you may live with. And that gives them a chance to have you stay with a PSW. The personal support worker or an agency, could even be a residential program that has 24 hour care, so that you can give your people you live with a little bit of a break. If that if you're interested in that. And they're interested in that. We also have support. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a great resource. We also have supported employment. And I won't get too much into the weeds because this is a huge service. But we provide Discovery over at the county, which is 90 days of discovering what you want to do for work by working one on one with someone who again, either comes to your home or meet you out in the community and and goes to informational interviews with you, or goes to Job shadowing opportunities, takes you around to places so you understand what jobs are out there. And we also can connect you with Vocational Rehabilitation, which can have a whole nother set of supported employment opportunities. We also offer job coaching if you need assistance with your job,

Joslynn

09:18

Who else can help us?

Austin

09:20

Yeah, there's there's a lot. There's residential services. Again, that's the 24 hour care if you want to go into a group home with with individuals that also have disabilities. There's behavior support if you have some challenging behaviors that you want to work on. There's transportation I talked about last slide. We can pay mileage to any support workers in your life or we can fund a bus pass so that you can ride your local bus for free. And there's also medical supplies and more and medical supplies can include wipes if you have incontinence issues, or issues with your bowels. And again, so much more. So talk to your service coordinator about anything you need.

Joslynn

10:01

Excellent. That's really great to know that it's almost an ever expanding list. Now, there's so many services to access. How do we get them?

Austin

10:10

Yeah. Again, talk to us, talk to your service coordinator, we will let you know if that is a service that or something that we can help with. Or if we can direct you with a resource or to a community partner, always ask. But after you get into services, if you have Medicaid, this is a requirement for our for most of our services, not all of them. We will get you set up with an Oregon needs assessment. We also call call that the OWNA, and basically that will understand your needs and your wants and help us understand as service coordinators. What services are available to you, how can we help and what can we fund to help you with those needs. And then we will meet as an ISP team and couple slides back, we talked about the ISP, we will do that document. And then each year we'll do the OWNA and the ISP over again, just re assess your needs and what services that you qualify for.

Joslynn

11:10

Well, awesome. Thank you so much for your time. This was great information.

Austin

11:14

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Joslynn

11:17

Thank you

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