Return to Registration Brochure > Table of Contents Breakout Sessions: Enhancing the Quality of Supports and Services1. Developing Effective Recruitment and Retention Strategies: How to Ensure a Competent and Reliable Workforce – The panel will talk about successful strategies to recruit people, to keep them in their jobs, and to maintain a qualified and dependable workforce. The session will focus on direct care workers, educators, and health and allied health professionals. Moderator: Amy Hewitt, Ph.D., Institute on Community Integration, University of Minnesota2. Quality: Full Participation…for All – A chance to imagine a quality system that will ensure accountability for the individual outcomes of everyone who needs support. A review of quality assurance approaches that rely on people with disabilities, including tools that measure how well agencies provide services and how these tools are used to improve service performance. Recent changes in federal approaches monitoring and improving the quality of home and community- based services will be discussed. Moderator: Sue Swenson, The Arc of the United States 3. Improving the Capacity to Manage a Diverse Workforce – A review of best practice in supporting staff from a wide range of racial and cultural backgrounds. Moderator: Sarah Mitchell, New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, Inc. 4. Enhancing the Ability of Families to Provide and Manage A Support System for Their Family Member – The panel will talk about how families can be informed and supported to provide decent, empowering, ongoing unpaid supports and a discussion of how families can learn what they need to know to participate in and/or manage self-directed supports. Moderator: Rud Turnbull, Beach Center on Families & Disabilities 5. Enhancing the Ability of Individuals with Disabilities to Provide and Manage Self- Directed Supports – A discussion of how individuals can be informed and supported to manage self-directed services. Moderator: Theresa Wilding, Idaho State Council on Developmental Disabilities 6. Risk and Self-Direction: How to Make Individual Dreams Come True and Ensure Physical Well-Being and Safety – A discussion of new practices and policies that attempt to strike a balance between risk and self direction, the regulation of individual providers, and the training of individuals and families regarding risk. Moderator: Clarence Sundram, United States District Court 7. Increasing the Competence of Direct Support Professionals: Voluntary Certification Initiatives – A look at state initiatives that identify the competencies necessary to furnish high quality direct supports and the steps that have been taken to assess and certify the presence of such competencies. Moderator: Marianne Taylor, Bristol Community College 8. Creating An Organizational Culture That Values Quality and Encourages Mentoring – The panel will talk about providergenerated strategies to create a culture that supports individual choice and community participation. Included will be strategies to encourage competence and commitment among all staff. Moderator: Bonnie-Jean Brooks, OHI 9. Information Systems and the Measurement of Performance – A discussion of the use of computer technology to collect, analyze and disseminate information about the quality of services to a wide range of stakeholders. Moderator: Gary R. Rossman, Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare 10. Health Disparities: Who and How Will We Lead Our Way Out of Them? - This session will outline the challenges in accessing necessary health services for children and adults with developmental disabilities. It will also focus on potential partnerships, public information, research, directions and policy initiatives designed to reduce disparities in health care for those with disabilities. Moderator: Fred Palmer, MD, The Bowling Center for Developmental Disabilities |
