Once you receive your budget amount from DDS, you can now begin to onboard your staff. While you need your final budget amount to determine how many hours you can pay staff for, you can start identifying potential employees before that. Below are the top 6 steps that you can do to set up staffing for the PDP program.
- Create a job description: before your child (or you as the EOR) can approach people about working with you, you need to know what you want that person to do. Creating a job description will help put into focus what tasks you want the employee to participate in and what specific skill set they may need. You will go back to information in the person-centered and vision plans to link to the tasks related to the three pillars of transition. Depending on your persons needs, you may have multiple job descriptions (i.e., vocational coaching vs. ADL support in the home would have two different job descriptions.). You can ask your DDS Support Broker for a job description template which gives a starting point that you can then customize for each position. For additional samples, you can also reference Pages 27-28 in the “Self-Directed Services: Participant Directed Program Your Life Your Choice” workbook. You will need to have a signed job description on file with DDS, so this is something that will need to be completed.
- Network to find employees: This is often the hardest and most overwhelming part of the hiring process…….where do I find someone or many to work with my adult child? This is where planning ahead of time can come in handy. As soon as L turned 18 and we knew that self-direction was possible, we started a list of the personality traits that would vibe well with him. Then, we paired that with people that we already knew who could be potential employees in L’s program. We looked at the following categories:
- Current and previous (or retired) teachers, paraprofessionals, OTs, PTs, and SLPs that L had worked with. As an example, for SLP services, we knew that part of his program was going to be to continue working on communication goals and social-emotional goals aimed toward vocational employment and community involvement. We reached out to L’s former private speech pathologist, who was very willing to work with L again. L completed an evaluation with her, which determined the specific goals he needed to work on. Once his program started, he could set up a schedule to work with her every week.
- Peers and community members with whom L already had a good rapport and who would potentially want to take on additional hours and work with him. One example is our neighbor, who is close to L’s age and works in the special education field. We talked to him about possibly working with L after school and evenings, and we had our first hire from that list.
- Local college students: an idea we are looking into for additional support is posting the job descriptions at 2 of the local colleges to us. Both schools have education departments, and students are often looking for additional experience and hours. One drawback is that it is often relegated to the academic year, the schedule can change each semester depending on the student schedule, and these are more “short-term” hires since the students will eventually graduate.
- An agency like care.com: While I have not used this service, a colleague did use it to find support for her daughter in her daughter’s apartment. The one tip she gave was that when posting the job, make sure that you indicate it is for an adult, not a child.
- Family members: While the DDS handbook says you can hire family members, there are more caveats to these hires. As a parent, you cannot be a paid employee for your child’s program. Page 38, “Staffing Supports,” specifically lists those family members who can also be paid employees.
- Interview and Onboarding: once you have interviewed and your person has decided that this applicant will fit their needs, you can start the onboarding process. Working with your DDS Support Broker, they will connect you with your Fiscal Management Program (in MA, we are now using Acumen) and provide the onboarding packet that the employee will need to complete. The good news is that your FMS will give you all of the paperwork you need, so you don’t have to worry about if you are missing anything. They will provide paperwork for taxes and, most importantly, the background checks that need to be completed. This process can take some time, depending on how long it takes for them to receive the completed packet from the employee and the time on their end to process it. Your employees cannot begin working until they get the “all clear” from the FMS, so the more efficient you can be in the process, the quicker you can get them on board and working.
- Training: Depending on who you hire, the amount of training that needs to be completed will be determined. 2 of the three staff had a very solid working relationship with L, so the training was minimal. We had discussions and training for the newer hire about what skills he would be working on when they were together. I also had the new hire do a training with L’s SLP to go over the communication goals we are working on so that they could be carried over and generalized in the workplace. Also, don’t forget to do training related to the payroll system. In MA, we are now using Acumen and the EVV system, which requires employees to clock in and clock out on an app.
- Payroll: Once your employee is hired, onboarded, trained, and begins working, your ongoing responsibility will be related to payroll. You need to ensure that all electronic timesheets are going through the system properly and approve/resolve any issues that arise before the payroll period. It is also a good idea to keep your own track of the payroll records; I created a Google Sheet that acts as my account so that I can see in “real-time” how much money I have left in L’s account. Also, remember that your FMS is going to be taking out more from the budget than just the hourly rate. They also deduct the taxes and workman’s compensation amounts from your budget. Your FMS should be able to give you a chart that will tell you the actual amount being deducted from your account based on the hourly rate the employee is paid.
- Plan for changes: while we have been so lucky with our staffing, things will change. Staff will have life changes that can impact their ability to continue to work with your person, so you should keep a list and continue to network for additional staff. I would also recommend having staff that can act as a “backup” if a staff member is sick or goes on vacation. For the past year, I have been that backup person. Still, now that we have a solid schedule, we are looking for backup staff to work with L so that staff interruptions will not impact my job schedule.
Call to action: Who could you add to your list as potential employees? Where could you network to find employees? Can you start working on a draft of a job description?
Until next time,
Cheryl
#Life Without a Filter 