November 28, 2001 Work Group Meeting Minutes
The William S. Cohen Community Center, Hallowell, Maine

 

Present:   Nat Hussey, Peter Driscoll, Helen Bailey, Chandra Murphy, Deb Parker-Wolfenden, Donna Lerman (Muskie staff), Stephanie Crystal, Stuart Bratesman (Muskie staff), Jonathan Connick, Shirley Bastien, Myra Champagne, Eileen Griffin (Muskie staff)

Not Present:Drew Bolduc, Cary Gifford, Alice Conway, Tom Bancroft, Chris Zukas-Lessard, John Baillargeon, Ron Welch, Tonya Labbe, Christine Bartlett, Linda Jariz, Kathryn Kazenski, Lora Perry, Cynthia Sudheimer, John Shattuck, Tracy Piantoni, Jane Gallivan

Drew Bolduc was unable to attend so Donna Lerman stood in as chair of the meeting.


1. Check-in and Roll Call
Because of low attendance, the Work Group agreed to postpone most agenda items and focus only on the reports from subcommittees and then break out into the Services and Coordination Sub-Groups.


2. Vision Statement
The Work Group read its vision statement:   “Together in community with equality in rights and dignity, in pursuit of happiness and fulfillment.”   Eileen, stepping out of her role as staff to the Work Group, requested that the Work Group add back in the words “All of us…” in front of “together.”   Given the small numbers the Work Group did not address the issue.


3. Meeting Minutes
The Work Group did not review the October 24 meeting minutes.


4.   Reports

Public Communications Team.  Deb Parker Wolfenden reported on behalf of the Public Communications Team (PCT), which met the day before.  She reported that Harriet Schultz, a communications consultant, had provided some analysis of different strategies for getting messages out to consumers and for getting input back.  For outreach strategies, the PCT was focusing on mail, email, public service announcements, and posters.  For getting input, the PCT was focusing on 3 large public meetings, smaller meetings with advisory councils and targeted meetings with people who would be hard to hear from otherwise.  Deb reported that the PCT needed to begin planning meeting dates and had hoped to begin scheduling meetings for May, which means that the Work Group would need to finish its plan by the end of March.  Ideally, the Work Group would finish public comment and be ready to present a “final draft” of the plan to gubernatorial candidates in July.  The PCT is also working on a “public awareness” strategy that will get started sooner than May and, ideally, would involve identifying consumers willing to be interviewed for newspaper or television who would like to explain why the Work Group’s plan is important.  Work Group members were invited to consider whether they would like to volunteer to be interviewed.  The PCT will ask the Work Group for guidance on some key decisions at the December meeting.  

Steering Committee.  Nat Hussey reported on behalf of the Steering Committee, that the last Steering Committee meeting was spent developing a response to the October Work Group meeting discussion regarding the relationship between the Work Group’s mission and the Olmstead decision.  The Steering Committee had prepared a flowchart in its response to be shared with the full Work Group.  Stephanie Crystal said she liked using the term “roadmap,” that she liked the way the flowchart broke things out into three phases, and that the flowchart had addressed some of her concerns.  Helen Bailey said she did not see anything in the flowchart that said the plan is going to collect information on the people living in restricted settings that want to get out.  She wanted to know whether the plan will count the number of waiting lists, the number of people on each list, what services they need in order to move to a less restrictive setting and a schedule for when those needs will be met.  Nat asked, given the detail of what Helen was requesting, whether Helen was looking for something very different from what the Work Group was currently working on. Helen said she thought that establishing a vision was important but that the plan had to address the core parts of the Olmstead plan.  Peter Driscoll wants the plan to set measurable goals and principles that can be used to measure success.  One of Peter’s measures of success would be whether the children placed out-of-state for care were returned to Maine to receive care.  In addition to establishing measures of success, Donna said the Work Group should revisit the SNOW analysis that the Work Group conducted a year ago.  At that time, the Work Group identified its worries, many of which have emerged as part of the discussion about the Work Group’s mission.  The flowchart was on the meeting agenda but tabled until the December meeting because of low attendance.  Work Group members agreed that more clarity was needed in preparation for the discussion at the December meeting.  Helen and Eileen were asked to prepare a document to frame the issues for full Work Group discussion.  

CHCS.  Eileen reported that the “case study” report is being printed and will probably be included in the mailing for the next meeting.   She also reported that the data integration project funded under the CHCS grant had led to the next phase under the Quality Choices grant.   In addition, CHCS had granted a no-cost extension to fund a report on alternative models for continued inter-agency collaboration for serving persons with disabilities.

Quality Choices.   Eileen went over the flowcharts showing the different projects associated with different Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs).   There are four TAGs, one for Person-Centered Services activities, one for Quality activities, one for Access activities, one for Data.   Work Group members are invited to sign up for any or all of the four TAGs which will meet in January to begin work and to identify other people who should be part of the TAG.


5. Snow Policy
The Work Group discussed the best way of dealing with bad weather and meeting cancellations.   The major issue is the best way to get word out to everyone.   Some people need at least two-hours notice since they would allow that much time to travel in the snow.   According to last year’s policy, the Work Group meeting was cancelled whenever SAD 47 was cancelled, so people could listen for the announcement on TV or the radio.   Helen offered the 1-800 line at her office as another way to find out. Her office could be notified about the cancellation and would pass the information along to people who called. The group also discussed the fact that everyone should decide for themselves whether traveling is safe, even if the meeting is not cancelled, given regional differences in the weather.   Peter mentioned that a group he participates in cancels the day before the meeting, based on the forecast.   Eileen and Donna will come up with a plan based on the discussion.


6. Announcements
Eileen announced that Work Group members had received two invitations to speak at meetings. One invitation came from Steve Hoad, president of the National Federation for Blind (NFB) in Maine (and a brand new member of the Work Group).   He was asking for a speaker at the NFB convention for the weekend of December 1. The other invitation has come from the Visually Impaired-Hard of Hearing/Deaf Blind Network of Maine. They have a quarterly meeting on January 15.  Eileen will be attending to talk about Quality Choices.   A Work Group member is invited to attend to talk about the Work Group.   Eileen also announced that the Public Communications Team had suggested that the January 23 meeting be extended to begin at 9:30 to give the Work Group more time to work on the plan.


7. Sub-group Activities
The Work Group broke into the two remaining sub-groups:  Coordination and Services.

Services Sub-Group. (Present: Helen Bailey, Peter Driscoll, Myra Champagne, Shirley Bastien, Deb Parker Wolfenden, Chandra Murphy). This sub-group discussed where their drafts currently stand. The sub-group has not met since summer.   Members had been asked to share the current drafts among themselves and make revisions. The group reviewed revisions to two drafts with edits made by Helen and Deb. For the draft relating to flexible funding and self-direction, the group agreed to delete references to a Bureau of Elder and Adult Services rule since the specificity seemed inappropriate given what the draft was trying to say and because the rule was probably going to be revised anyway. The group also agreed to make sure that the document was focused on flexibility and self-direction for more than personal assistance services (e.g., housing and transportation) and across all populations.  The group had less time to discuss the advocacy draft, but discussed some edits. Eileen agreed to incorporate the changes the sub-group has discussed and send it out to sub-group members as soon as possible.  

Coordination Sub-Group. (Present: Jonathan Connick, Stephanie Crystal, Nat Hussey). The Coordination Sub-Group developed the following plan for completing their plan within the March timeline. The Sub-Group's final report is due by Feb. 20, one week before the February Work Group meeting.  To meet this deadline, the following interim goals were established:

  1. BY DEC. 12th - each of the drafting groups will revise their section of the paper and forward a copy to Stuart so that he can distribute it to the full Coordination Sub-Group in advance of the next Work Group meeting. 

  1. DEC. 19th Work Group Meeting  -  Sub-Group members are asked to bring their notes and suggestions on all the drafts to the Work Group meeting to discuss at the meeting.  Sub-Group members should also have suggestions on how to merge the sections into a single document.  Three or four volunteers will be asked to join a drafting group to work on the merger.

  2. BY JAN. 16th – Stuart will work with a drafting team to merge the individual sections into a single paper and then mail them to Sub-Group members.

  3. JAN. 23rd Work Group Meeting - We will discuss the new draft and members’ editing suggestions.

  4. BY FEB 20th - The editing team will complete the draft for submission to the full Work Group.

  5. NEXT STEPS:  Stuart is adding notes to each of the existing drafts and will e-mail them to the members of each individual drafting group by Wednesday, December 5.


8. Drafting Meeting
A sign-up sheet was passed around for members to sign up for the drafting meeting scheduled for December 5, 1:00 to 3:00.


9. Next Meeting
Agenda items for the December meeting include: items tabled from the November meeting agenda.   The November meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, December 19 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Cohen Center. Cary Gifford is the chair of this meeting.