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CQL Releases Breakout Sessions for 2015 Conference

The 2015 CQL Conference: Outcomes, The Gateway To Quality, is featuring breakout sessions from presenters covering a wide range of critical topics affecting human service providers and governmental agencies. These sessions go beyond principle, and share resources, guides, action steps, and practical insight that other organizations can actually apply in their daily work. Here is the listing of topics, presenters, and session descriptions. Keep in mind, all speakers and presentations are subject to change.

  • Supported Decision Making
  • Exercising Rights And Respect
  • Organizational Quality Assurance
  • Innovations Throughout The World
  • Putting Outcomes Front And Center As A DSP
  • Using POM to Inform the Person-Centered Plan
  • Personal Outcomes Across The Life Cycle
  • Demystifying Factor 10
  • Building Social Capital
  • Improving Health Outcomes
  • State-Level Quality Assurance
  • Using Data To Meet CMS Requirements
  • CQL Accreditation & Online Data Tool
  • Quality – Starts & Ends With The Person
  • International Perspective From Australia
  • Quality Metrics, Behavioral Health & The CQL POST App

Supported Decision Making

  • Sarah Gimson

Supported Decision Making has enabled people with disabilities to exercise their rights as decision makers in their own lives. In this session we will discuss the core principles of Supported Decision Making, explore some practices from other countries, discuss how it works and share some simple tools that enable us to implement these concepts within the way we provide supports.

Exercising Rights & Respect

  • Cathy Ficker Terrill
  • Tia Nelis, SABE
  • Joseph Macbeth, NADSP

Exercising rights is a cornerstone of the new HCBS standards. Come hear about the importance of exercising rights from the perspective of the direct support professionals, self-advocates and professionals.

Organizational Quality Assurance

  • Kim Zoeller, Ray Graham Association
  • Jennifer Becher
  • Andrea Misenheimer, Cardinal Innovations
  • Barbara Agnello, Cardinal Innovations

Providers accredited by CQL will share how they have used information and data garnered from Personal Outcome Measures® interviews, Basic Assurances® reviews, and Person-Centered Excellence strategic planning to impact organizational change through discovery, evaluation, personal and organizational planning.

Innovations Throughout The World

Highlighted during this session will be innovative and emerging practices in achieving outcomes for people with disabilities throughout the world. These initiatives have enabled people with disabilities to attain individual outcomes in the areas of exercising rights, employment, utilizing data to inform the person-centered plan and organizational change.

Putting Outcomes Front and Center as a Direct Support Professional

  • Joseph Macbeth, NADSP

This interactive session will reflect on the evolving role and expectations of community-based service organizations and their direct support workforce. The focus of this discussion addresses questions presented by the CMS Rule and System Transformation: How do we support people with disabilities to make informed decisions? How must community-based service provider organizations transform their culture from ‘care-giving’ to ‘providing support’? What are the workforce demographics and projections to fulfill these responsibilities? Do they possess the tools, resources, and skills to uphold this responsibility?

Using Personal Outcome Measures® to Inform the Person-Centered Plan

  • Becky Hansen

After you have asked, you must act! Learn how to take the knowledge gained from the Personal Outcome Measures® assessment and infuse it into the Person-Centered Plan. This session will focus on tips, tools and techniques to maximize your use of Personal Outcome Measures® to customize supports and develop a plan that produces results.

Personal Outcomes Across The Life Cycle

  • Sheli Reynolds, UMKC-Institute for Human Development

This session will provide a framework for thinking about personal outcomes across the entire lifespan. By using the LifeCourse framework, attendees will have the knowledge and tools for having conversations that support a trajectory toward a “good life, as defined by the person.” Specific focus will be on strategies for supporting people within the context of their family, friends and community, as well as the importance of “life experiences.”

Demystifying Factor 10: Using Data for Organizational Improvement

  • Drew Smith

This session will provide agency staff with an overview of collecting, sampling and reporting data to meet CQL’s requirements under Factor 10 of Basic Assurances®. It will focus on applied analysis and reporting to assist agencies in data-based decision-making.

Building Social Capital

  • Cathy Ficker Terrill
  • Beth Terrill, Self-Advocate

This session will focus on three key concepts: the importance of allowing individuals to define their own quality-of-life measures; the significance of building social capital and connecting people to supports in their local community, especially when resources are scarce; and understanding the need for organizational change from a model of traditional services to a model in which Medicaid dollars are re-purposed to help people build community connections. This presentation will explore ways we, as a field, can help support individuals in developing and maintaining enhanced social roles.

Improving Health Outcomes

  • Sheryl White-Scott, NY Metro DDSO

Health is a major factor in improving the quality of life for everyone. Health outcomes are one way to measure the effectiveness of health care delivery and health promotion interventions. Person-centered approaches to supports and services are enhanced by healthy outcomes. This presentation will provide an interactive format to identify health outcomes, discuss the challenges in measuring health outcomes and illustrate strategies to address the health needs and health promotion interventions.

State-Level Quality Assurance

  • Jeff Williams, AL
  • Kate Bishop, NY
  • Dan Lusk, SD
  • Laura Vegas, TN

State leaders from Alabama, New York, South Dakota and Tennessee discuss innovative approaches to outcomes-based quality assurance, by integrating CQL tools and processes into their statewide quality improvement systems. Topics will include: incorporating CQL’s Personal Outcome Measures®, Basic Assurances®, and online data systems with other state and national quality measures to meet new CMS requirements; and emphasizing person-centered policies, practices and quality-of-life measurement.

Using Data to Meet CMS Requirements

  • Drew Smith, CQL

This session will review CQL’s Toolkit for States and identify how agencies and state systems can use CQL data to satisfy new reporting requirements under the HCBS Settings Rule released by CMS. The session will also review changes in the Personal Outcome Measures® data collection which directly align with the CMS rule.

CQL’s New Accreditation Options & Online Data Tool

  • Becky Hansen
  • Kerry Melda

More options. More opportunities. Same high quality. Come learn about CQL’s three new accreditation options. This expanded menu offers choices regarding which accreditation experience best fits your organization’s needs. CQL also now offers organizations an Online Data Tool for tracking, analyzing and reporting data collected through Personal Outcome Measures® interviews, Basic Assurances® reviews and Person-Centered Excellence activities. Let’s get started! Learn how you can use this system to inform and improve what you do.

Quality: It Starts & Ends With The Person

  • Tia Nelis, Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE)
  • Liz Weintraub, Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD)

National self-advocate leaders will discuss the importance of defining and measuring quality from the perspective of the person receiving services. They will focus on key quality-of-life areas such as exercising individual rights and balancing risk-taking with responsibility.

International Perspective From Australia

  • Sarina Bunnett, Melba Support Services

Melba Support Services has been walking side-by-side with CQL’s Personal Outcome Measures® for over a decade. In that time Melba has reflected on and revised practices; mindfully measured improvement; and learned by listening to people supported as they share what really matters to them. Sarina aims in this session to tell Melba’s story.

Quality Metrics, Behavioral Health & The CQL POST App

  • Cathy Yadamec
  • Cherene Allen-Caraco, Promise Resource Network, Inc.

People using services, funders and regulators expect behavioral health agencies to support people to have jobs, relationships and homes. This session will identify quality metrics necessary to demonstrate accountability and responsiveness. Personal Outcome Measures® and CQL’s POST App are two tools that provide data to use as evidence that an agency meets their quality metrics.