|
John's usual--
Apparently I'm turning into that cranky old guy who complains about how soft we are today. That being said-- things just did not close down at all until the snow plows got stuck when I was young. Even 10 years ago we didn't close schools just because the night-time low was in the single digits. I get being safety minded, but once you open the door to every worst-case scenario all the time, it starts to limit your choices. It's definitely making it harder for CLI to determine when to close. Our clients wait in their warm house until we pick them up in a warm van. We just need clear roads. Anyway, we all survived our first taste of an old school Ohio winter last week. This week looks a little bit warmer, which unfortunately usually means some rain, which I do not love. We'll get through it. I wouldn't mind if some actual snow would stick around for a minute so I can do a little bit of cross country skiing at least once.
I've had some questions about what CLI's new services will look like that are part of the DODD ADS Quality Pilot Grant. There will be some enhancements to our current ADS activities, implementing a more structured, DODD-approved curriculum & some new opportunities for community-integrated activities.
In April CLI will be launching a new after-school & Saturday service for young adults still in high school. The three objectives for these new services will be to increase typical opportunities for community integration, use these community teaching moments to improve soft skills, and to help these kids and their families better understand (and plan for) their working and social lives after high school. We're pretty excited about this-- and we'd like to expand our traditional day services to include more evening & weekend services for 20 somethings & 30 somethings if there's enough interest.
There's a technology funding to the grant that CLI is using to explore the practicality of moving to a digital documentation system. CLI's services are paid for by Medicaid and right now we spend a considerable amount of time documenting services on paper to prove that we spent X number of units providing services to people. The biggest 2 problems as we document things now is: #1 that it takes a ton of staff time that gets in the way of actually providing the service, and #2 that most of the documentation collected is just proof of service so we can get paid, but those documents are of very little value to our clients because they are effectively just receipts. CLI staff already have smartphones. It would be nice if we could find a documentation system that could be accomplished more quickly and would generate more useful documents for our clients.
CLI is also planning to use some of the technology grant funds to help people learn to better and more independently use devices & social platforms. Part of this will be classroom curriculum, but we'll be also using some of the money to create a lending library of 5G iPads for the people who are enrolled in these new technology/social media classes. Fun stuff!
That's all I have for now. Stay warm (and dry). Keep washing those hands. Flu & COVID are still out there.
John
| 
