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Employment Service Transformation
Key benefits
- Increased knowledge of the differences and the reasons for delivering customised employment methods
- Increased knowledge in the key components to service transformation
- Obtain a roadmap to service and mindset change bringing along staff and operations
On this page
Who is this for?
Senior Managers and CEOs, Operational Managers, Organisational Development Professionals HR Managers, People and Culture Leads and anyone involved in strategic direction planning in Disability Services.
About these resources
Building stronger employment sector capability - service transition support resource materials.
Customized employment expert Sara Murphy recently visited Australia and shared her expertise and knowledge around service transition and the concepts of ‘Employment First’ . NDS together with a number of Victorian partners including IDV, Koomarri, Centre for Social Impact - Swinburne University, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Yooralla and MiLife have developed a package of support resources designed to foster service transition, methodology and considerations under a modernised holistic ‘braided’ model. By adopting this service approach service providers can build capability and create community based employment outcomes for participants with more significant disability.
These resources address the methodology and considerations under a modernised holistic braided model of employment. From the preparation process, including ways to gain commitment at all levels of the organisation from the Board to frontline staff, to practical ways to realign resources and developing the skills necessary for successful employment and community integration.
Supported Employment in Australia
Supported employment services are those which support the paid employment of people with disabilities. These services support people who, because of their disabilities, need substantial ongoing support to obtain or keep paid employment.
Australian Disability Enterprises (ADEs) or Social Enterprises are organisations that provide supported employment services. They are an important service providing people with disability who have high support needs with employment opportunities. There has been an increase in advocacy for fairer pay and better employment pathways to open employment.
This led to Government and advocates holding a Supported Employment Roundtable in 2022 where they agreed on a set of guiding principles for supported employment. These principles were established by the Department of Social Services (DSS).
Guiding principles for the future of supported employment - for people with disability with high employment support needs
These principles align with NDS’s long-term goals and vision for a strong and sustainable supported employment industry. Read about NDS’s vision for the sector here. An Industry Vision for the Supported Employment Sector (nds.org.au)
These employment Vision and Principles offer Supported Employment Organisations a chance to transform and adapt to a new way of working. A braided service model has the potential to lead the way.
Innovation in Employment Service Delivery
There have been several transformational examples in the US, that have changed whole organisational operations and successfully provided transition pathways to open employment for participants.
One example is Sara Murphy’s Worklink service in San Francisco. Sara is an expert on employment for people with disability, who has successfully helped organisations manage the transition to a braided model across the USA. The implementation and transformation of these businesses, enables them to use a braided model of support whereby participants are upskilled through various methods based on community participation and identifying transferable life skills to the workplace.
The braided employment service model is a person-centred approach to employment supports and services and may lead the way in delivering on some of these principles. The goal of customised employment is to tailor a job to fit the skills, interests, strengths and support needs of a person with disability whilst meeting the needs of business.
Below are some of Sara’s implementation methodologies and resources as a guide to other organisations transformation journey’s.
Service Transformation
“We must ‘re-frame’ how we support and serve people with disabilities – its about people not programs”. Sara Murphy, TransCen
Learn about:
- Braided services of work and non-work
- Community-based instruction, utilising public resources, not special programs
- Focus is on building skills, social self-sufficiency and pathways to open Employment
- Customised Employment placement methods
- Pathways to Employment – a braided team-based approach
- Making Big Change
Learn from others who have transformed their services. How did they do it?
- Incorporate what you are learning into your organisation’s policies, hiring practices, job descriptions, training and marketing materials
- Find your pioneers, innovators, big thinkers. Bring them into the discussion
- Work with your funding agencies
- Showcase changes & successful efforts
A Path Forward
- Build a Transformation Team
- Build a road map for change (Value Stream Mapping)
- Develop a Strategic Plan and implementation/action plan
- Set concrete goals. Collect and share data throughout
- Provide training and step-by-step instructions. What looks like “resistance” is often a lack of clarity.
- Remember: “Change” is a process that includes failure and learning- and that’s OK
Build your Team
- Recruit from all levels of the organisation (leadership, management, direct service personnel, families, funders…)
- Objectives are to plan, coordinate and manage transformation efforts across the organisation
- Give staff time and room to work, create a “free space” for brainstorming
- Embrace a “throw the flag” “bring out your dead” mentality
- Provide training and resources: tour agencies who have transformed, build a local community of practice
Process Improvement through Value Stream Mapping (Lean Management Strategy)
- Visualise your current service process
- Align your team and gain buy-in for change
- Re-Focus services and processes on the right things:
- Our customers
- The services requested or needed
- How do we provide these efficiently?
Value Stream Mapping - Why Use Value Stream Mapping
Strategic planning in organisations tends to focus at a “high level”. New goals are developed by the leaders, but “day to day” processes are not evaluated or new roles and methods not clarified to the frontline operational staff. Managers and direct service workers have the goal but not the how to achieve it. This is where Value Stream Mapping (VSM) can be helpful in guiding the transformational change, it provides:
- An inclusive, empowering process - includes leadership, administration, management, direct service personnel and individual/families
- Looks at the entire process from the perspective our customers
- Outlines and analyses current service processes/method - what is contributing? What is not adding value?
- Identifies “bright spots” and shifts focus: What do our customers want? What are we doing right? How can we do more of this?
- Develops a Future State map and an Implementation/Action Plan. What would services look like in a perfect world?
- Shifts perspective and focus: from “programs” to “customer”, creating an individualised, person-centered service model
- Identifies underutilised use of resources and inefficient processes
- What should we stop doing? What do we scale up? Where are the gaps? What’s a better way? Where do we start?
Establish an Organisational Change Mindset
- Engagement, input and buy-in
- Understanding, transparency, collaboration
- Planning and a clear road forward
- Ability and capacity: resources and training
See more information in the Resources provided below. We thank those organisations who supported Sara Murphy’s visit to Australia.
Sarah Murphy Biography
Sara Murphy is a Senior Training Associate for TransCen, Inc. and the Director of TransCen’s WorkLink program. TransCen is an American non-profit organisation dedicated to improving education and employment success of youth and young adults with disability. TransCen’s work is driven by the belief that employment and active community participation are attainable for all individuals, regardless of disability or other perceived barriers to employment. For the past 30 years, Ms. Murphy’s focus has been on community inclusion and employment for people with disability.
She has extensive experience in program development, person-centered community-based services, Customised Employment methods and system change and service transformation.
As part of TransCen’s training and consultation team, Ms. Murphy provides technical assistance and training at multiple levels: US federal/state agencies, school districts, service providers and individuals/families. Ms. Murphy has participated in a number of American federal and state initiatives, such as Social Security Administration’s Youth Transition Demonstration Projects, the Federal Department of Education’s Customised Employment training project and Wisconsin’s Building Full Lives Project.
Currently, she is a Subject Matter Expert for the US Federal Department of Labor’s Office of Disability and Employment Policy (ODEP) and is supporting state agencies and providers across America with system and service transformation efforts. In addition to this work, Ms. Murphy also consulted for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital’s Project SEARCH program, replicating the project model, and helping to establish Project SEARCH’s Learning Academy.
Credit: Sara Murphy, TransCen Inc
Related Resources
For Organisations
Videos and Podcasts
Podcast: Turning the Queen Mary Podcast
Credit: Sara Murphy
Listen to the podcast
Video: Appealing to the Emotion
Credit: Starfire Cincy, www.StarfireCouncil.org
View the video: Starfire 'How do you define your life?'
Video: Employment and Micro-business
Ticket to Work - Kyal's story
Credit: Brotherhood of St Laurence
Our Stories - Ticket to Work
View: Kyal's story
Video - Customised Employment: Customised Employment stories by Ticket to Work
Credit: Brotherhood of St Laurence
Initiatives | Customised Employment - Ticket to Work
Video and podcast - Inclusive Career Development
Credit: Ticket to Work, Brotherhood of St Laurence and with the Australia Centre for Career Education (ACCE)
News - Ticket to Work
Webinar - Employment Pathways for people with a disability: Lessons learned from the United States Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University
View the webinar
Credit: Jennie Crosbie, Swinburne University
Presentations, Flyers and Fact Sheets
Presentation: Building Lives that Matter, by Sara Murphy powerpoint presentation
Credit: Sara Murphy
Download Presentation [PDF]
Manual: Provider Transformation Manual 2.0
Credit: www.econsys.com
Download manual [PDF]
Presentation: Service Transformation Guide
Credit: Sara Murphy
Download Presentation [PDF]
Download Presentation [DOC]
Fact Sheet: Life Skills Assessment Fact Sheet
Credit: Sara Murphy, TransCen Inc
Download Fact Sheet [PDF]
Presentation: Customised Employment 2.0: Principles to Practice
Credit: Sara Murphy and IDV
Download Presentation [PPT]
Presentation: Building Meaningful Lives – A new day for Day Services
Credit: IDV
Download Presentation [PDF]
Resource: Customised Employment, Work First Customised Employment™ Program Outline
Credit: Centre for Disability Employment Research and Practice (CDERP)
Download Program Outline [PDF]
Presentation: Engaging Employers and negotiating customised position for young job seekers with disability
Credit: Brotherhood of St Laurence
News - Ticket to Work
Credit: TransCen
Download document - what's your elevator speech? [DOC]
Download document – Examples of Waste in Business [DOC]
Download document – Cost Analysis Example [DOC]
Download document – Cost Analysis Example [XLS]
Download Presentation [PPTX]
Flyer: Imagine the Possibilities: Increasing employment opportunities for people with disability with US based expert, Sara Murphy.
Credit: IDV, Yooralla, MiLife, the ‘Ticket to Work’ team at the Brotherhood of St Laurence along with the Centre for Social Impact at Swinburne University and Koomarri.
Download flyer [PDF]
Templates
Form: Life Skills Assessment Template
Credit: Sara Murphy, TransCen Inc
Download Form [XLS]
Form: Positive Personal Profile (PPP)
Credit: Sara Murphy, TransCen Inc
Download Form [DOC]
Download Form [PDF]
Form: Employer Proposal template
Credit: Sara Murphy, TransCen Inc
Download Template [DOC]
Form: Informational Interview form
Credit: TransCen Inc
Download Form [DOC]
Form: Work Integration Social Enterprise and Ability Self-Assessment Tool for Organisations
Credit: Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology
Download Form [PDF]
Training
Training: TransCen Online Training
Credit: TransCen Inc
TransCen Online Training
Training - NDS Lean Transformation In-House Workshop series
For Families, advocates and people with disability
Video: "Imagine the Possibilities: Creating Pathways to Meaningful Lives" presented by Sara Murphy – TransCen, Inc. 8 May, 2023
Credit: Yooralla
Imagine the Possibilities is a discussion on employment for all people with disabilities presented by US-based Senior Training Associate with TransCen, Inc., Sara Murphy.
Presented in partnership with Yooralla, IDV, MiLife, the ‘Ticket to Work’ team at the Brotherhood of St. Laurence along with the Centre for Social Impact at Swinburne University, this session is designed for people with disability and their families and advocates to learn about the benefits of person-centered discovery and Customised Employment as a means to enter the workforce and sustain a job.
Thank you to the following organisations for providing contributions to this resource:
For any enquiries, please contact Kym Vassiliou, Project and Engagement, submit enquiry/feedback, show phone number