ARISE - EFR
The theme of the podcast is independent living and advocacy for people with disabilities.
ARISE - EFR
Breaking Down Barriers
ARISE/Exceptional Family Resources CEO, Bruce Drake and COO, Dan Kelley talk the agency services for people with disabilities and Dan's role as both an employee and parent of two adult children with developmental disabilities.
This is the Arise Exceptional Family Resources podcast, with your host, ceo, bruce Drake.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. I'm Bruce Drake, the CEO at Arise and EFR, and I am also your host for the Arise EFR podcast. I am thrilled today to be joined by our Chief Operating Officer, dan Kelly. How are you, dan?
Speaker 3:I'm good. How are you?
Speaker 2:Good thanks, dan. Why don't we start off with you telling the audience a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:So well. I'm older than I'd like to be I'll be 60 in September but I've lived my whole life here in Syracuse, new York. I have four kids 37, 35, 20, and 17. And I have two grandchildren, five and three. So I guess my life is full and it's full of people. My two youngest though, my 20 year old Caitlin she has Down syndrome and my 17 year old Evelina has Down syndrome and autism. And my 17-year-old Evelina has Down syndrome and autism, and an assortment of challenges which may cue up why I'm in the field I'm in.
Speaker 2:So why don't we start off with you telling us a little bit about what you do at Horizon EFR?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm the chief operating officer, and so I oversee some programs, I oversee the training, I oversee our human resources department, and I'm really pretty fortunate too because I have the opportunity to mix with some other more advocacy-based groups outside of the agency, but as a representative of the agency, and so I'm on the most integrated setting committee for New York State. I'm on a few different committees through one of our trade groups, and so I get to bring a little bit of dad and maybe a little bit of operational knowledge from inside the agency to those venues.
Speaker 2:So, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk about your dual role, right where you're the chief operating officer for an organization that serves thousands of people with disabilities $45 million a year but also your role as a dad of you know, I know you have four kids, but for this conversation, two kids who receive services that's got to put you in an interesting position. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 3:It's actually my favorite topic and it does put me in a very interesting position. It's an interesting position I like and I think it's one that I have to balance. And so I've been working in human services since 1994, and I worked most of my career in behavioral health services, so mental health services, and so in those experiences we had training in person-centered planning and got to learn that you know people are people, regardless of conditions they may be diagnosed with, and really learned just a quick example is I worked with a person, sally, who had a very severe schizophrenia. She actually jumped from a two-story building at one point. She spent a good part of her life in state institutions but at the same time.
Speaker 3:So you could meet Sally and Sally would say some really really strange things sometimes, but if you sat and listened to her long enough, she would tell you about her grandchildren, she'd tell you about how she makes jewelry. I get to see her jewelry that she makes and you could have these. In some ways I felt like I was talking to my mother, right? So, anyway, what kind of learned was is that you know people are people, like you know, and if you look for the person inside them, you can. You can find that and I. I think that set me up really well to be a dad, but it also set me up really well to work in a field with folks with developmental disabilities. So I made my way over to this field I guess it's about seven years ago because I but interestingly enough is sometimes I want to challenge people in the system that actually sometimes forget about the diagnosis, which is really what?
Speaker 2:do you mean by that? They forget about the diagnosis.
Speaker 3:Well, I think sometimes you get, especially in some of the advocacy circles. You have some folks in OPWDD and then you actually have some service people too that they get really caught up in. The people are people and anti-stigma and really almost militant about you know, pushing against people like. Well, let me give you an example, right? So when I first started in the field, I got talking to somebody and this was somebody from the Alliance and where I was working as the executive director, I was questioning some of the ways we were supporting people in the community to live on their own, and I had said to her you know, in this phrase I said you know, it feels almost irresponsible, some of these folks need 24-7. Very annoyed, social-worky way she says well, I can't wait till we get on committees and talk about person-centered planning with you. And then she went on to tell me about her 19-year-old that just left for college and the dignity of risk and she can't be there for her 19-year-old to make decisions, which is none of the things that I actually meant, you know, in that conversation, but I didn't remind her of this. But I think I found myself reminding folks too that person-centeredness is about what's important for the person as well as what's important to the person.
Speaker 3:So in some cases, like kids like mine, I have my 20-year-old. She still watches Daniel Tiger on a lot of occasions and she can't count to 30. And despite tutoring and a number of things doing, she's not been able to read. And that doesn't mean I need to put her someplace or she has to be in an institution. It's just when we do planning and plan for her care, we need to keep that in mind.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like somebody moving around the world in a wheelchair. They're perfectly a human being. I have lots of colleagues that have that and that's just the way they get around and I don't not see them as people, but I do understand that. You know it's a good idea to have curbs that dip, you know, and it's a good idea to have buses that dip, and it's a good idea to make enough room for somebody to get through with a chair. And I think that's what, if anything, I like to communicate out of my experience with my own kids is that we just, we just can't forget that other part when we're doing the planning, that that my kids may need some accommodation to reach the level of independence that that some folks would expect them to have.
Speaker 2:So that's a great. That's a great perspective. Are you ever put in positions where you have to kind of choose between your professional role and your parental role, and how do you deal?
Speaker 3:with those. Well, I mean, that's a balance, you know. A good example is that, as we had a situation we were discussing about a year and a half ago I was overseeing QA and so this conversation came up, and so what we had found the report was that the DSP had told this individual who was acting out, so throwing things and pinching and doing a lot of things, anyway. So what the DSP disclosed is she said well, you know, so what I did is she then wanted the TV on while she was acting up, and so I told her that you know that I won't turn on the TV until you settle down, until you stop doing this, right. So our QA person and one of the directors themselves said well, you know, that's a human rights violation. You're denying them you know this the opportunity to watch the TV, and they can't do that, and this is a bad thing.
Speaker 3:And myself and one other parent who was in the room, who works in our HR department, were like, oh wait, a minute, you know.
Speaker 3:So for one, we had brought up the fact that the parents may have actually taught this DSP to take that approach, that we all set boundaries with people. You know, if my wife were yelling at me at the kitchen and throwing plates and all that stuff at me, and like that I might say I'm not really going to take out the trash until you're done throwing this stuff, but in this case there was sort of the leap on there. So the parent in me says we need to have certain ways to kind of encourage certain behaviors or lack of behaviors, behaviors in our kids, and we can't have it as harshly judged as that. At the same time, though, the CEO in me right, and the person who oversaw QA, says that we still have to investigate, that we still have to look at that. I can't just dismiss it based on on my dadly views. You know what I mean. So I think there's always sort of that balancing thing in those type of decisions.
Speaker 2:Dan, I think you and I have talked a number of times and I've been in the field for 40 years and I feel that I'm an advocate. But every time I talk to you and your perspective you bring as a parent just humbles me a little bit, in the different way that you look at things, and I think you're a real asset to the organization, not only because of your professional skills but because of your perspective. But I'd also like to talk a little bit about things not related to your family. I know you have a real passion for staff development and in your role as COO you've really done some great things that helped us improve the development of our existing staff. Do you want to talk about some of your favorite things that we've done with staff development?
Speaker 3:You know, my favorite thing is the simplest thing we did is that we researched some books and then we did a book club so we gave folks copies of this book. The name of the author is Rita Sever and she wrote a book called Supervision Matters and to me it fits the values of our agency and it fits my values very well in terms of how we should approach supervision. So you're giving people the benefit of the doubt first have we given them enough information before we move into progressive discipline? Given them enough information before we move into progressive discipline? You know how do you resolve conflicts, because as a supervisor you deal with conflicts and anger, and I think of the group we got together in doing that.
Speaker 3:We had some really, really great, great talks, not always on the same topic, but that we read about. But it really gave us all sort of an opportunity to talk about leadership. I don't think you can be a leader without trying to practice your craft or try to bring additional information from the outside in to do that and to be able to talk to each other, and I think that's what we skip. You know sometimes that when we're doing it. So I'm also pretty proud of some of the supervision trainings that we've created. I've worked with Heather Hodge-Teapolt, which is was our trainer in there, and I I think we really really have come up with some some really really good stuff, and there's a few methods in there, like help method and like that, for helping folks learn how to deal with with anger right, because that's what we all experience in the field.
Speaker 2:And is that something that do you intend to continue to focus on going forward as a staff development?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I'm actually waiting for some of the smoke to clear on our merger. I think everybody's been so busy trying to transfer this into that and this into that and all of those things that we've kind of taken a little bit of a hiatus on putting out additional supervision trainings. But as soon as we do that, or as we start getting towards the end of the year, we'll start coming up with a plan and a curriculum, and I think it's paramount. I think that if we want to deliver services the way we want to deliver services and we want people-oriented services and responsive services and all that, I think we've got to really teach our supervisors to be able to interact with people in a way that encourages our staff to behave in those ways. I agree that's great.
Speaker 2:We only have about a minute left. I did want to just ask you real quickly about independent living centers, because I know it's something that's relatively new for the both of us. Independent living centers have a philosophy of being consumer-controlled, community-based and non-residentially focused. Have you found that philosophy something that you can easily embrace, or has it been an adjustment for you through the merger?
Speaker 3:I've actually been. I found it easy to embrace so far and I want to say, in the shortness of time I hope everyone who listens to this will take it's about an hour and 30 minutes it's a documentary called Crip Camp Netflix, and I'll tell you what. I watched that and I'm in such admiration of the folks that were in it and all the work they did. It kind of tells the tale of how folks with disabilities advocated for what ultimately became the ADA, which is super huge. Now I had the advantage on my MISS committee I was working with, I mean, folks I'm advocating with are in wheelchairs and have different conditions and cerebral palsy and like that. So I've had that opportunity to meet those folks as people and to see their skills and abilities. And when I walk away you know each time that we meet as a group what I think is like. Why would we want to put up barriers to these folks that can contribute so much to our society, our management, our organizations and our advocacy and how we view the world?
Speaker 2:Dan, I could talk with you about this subject all day long. Unfortunately, we're just about out of time, so I wanted to thank you for coming, make you promise that you'll come back again so we can have some more conversation. Sure, and thank all of our listeners and we appreciate you tuning in.
Speaker 1:Thanks, this has been the Arise Exceptional Family Resources podcast with CEO Bruce Drake, recorded and produced at the WCNY Public Broadcasting Studios. For more information, visit our website at contactefrorg. You can also follow us on Facebook. Thank you for listening.