This workshop is designed for people working in the field, on the phone, managers and supervisors. Participants will learn best practices for working with people with disabilities, how to have conversations around reasonable accommodations and how accessible doesn’t always mean expensive. This is taught by people that live with disabilities and work in a information and referral field. This session is for you to ask questions, learn to expand your systems and be more inclusive of hiring, training and engaging people with disabilities.

​Does your call center team show signs of being overwhelmed and burned-out from managing the stress of the pandemic while also working with the stress of high call-volume and high-emotion callers? This session will help you identify the signs and symptoms that indicate a team-based intervention could be undertaken to support your staff. You will learn about an innovative team check-in model that was successfully used for team support during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic by a 211 call center. This model was designed to support the well-being of telephone crisis workers, and promote workplace wellness, positive coping, and team support.

​All too often when you hear the phrase ‘brace for impact’ there is an immediate sense of an impending catastrophe, but why can’t we alter that mindset, why aren’t we collectively bracing for our IMPACT, viewing our network as Individuals Making Progress Across Communities Together. 211, long a critical yet more recently overlooked community asset, has experienced a renewal over the course of the past year. 211s are creatively leveraging program infrastructure to advance their mission and create more equitable access to vital community resources. The concept of the Modern United Way challenges 211 leaders to leverage each of our unique assets in order to create stronger communities in ways that require a growth mindset, hard work, creativity, and continuous learning. This session will focus on how approaching these challenges with both a growth mindset and an eye towards continuous learning can not only increase impact but create a stronger 211.

Collaboration and innovation have been central to strategies employed by Aging Network I&R leaders to meet the growing challenge of loneliness and social isolation as the COVID-19 pandemic persists. This workshop highlights why social engagement is so important to the mental and physical health of older adults and people with disabilities; how I&R programs can incorporate social isolation into their work on social determinants of health; and reviews collaborative and innovative best practices from the federal, state and local perspectives. Join us to hear from your colleagues about what has worked and share your own social engagement successes.

Community Information Exchanges present a major opportunity for I&R providers to serve as essential elements of a cooperative ecosystem of coordinated care. In a Community Information Exchange, an I&R would serve not just as a source of information about services for people, but as a hub in a network of sharing information about people among services. Contrary to some popular beliefs, however, a CIE does not entail the deployment of a single software solution. Community Information Exchange entails the development of shared infrastructure, open protocols for data exchange, and systems of community governance.

Review the skills and knowledge you will be tested on during the CRS-DC exam.

Did you know that 87% of new employees are not fully committed to a new job for at least the first six months? Employees report ineffective training, unclear guidelines about job responsibilities, lack of interaction or attention from co-workers and management, as primary reasons for leaving an organization. This process can be more frustrating when you introduce new hires to a remote onboarding process. Within our organization, Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida, we worked tirelessly to ensure that we did not compromise new hire experience while working remotely during the pandemic. This was accomplished by studying our existing onboarding program experience and discovering ways to integrate new technologies and procedures to ensure that our attorneys, staff, and interns were properly trained. Throughout the forced time away form our office, we learned how to engage new hires differently and increased overall satisfaction.

The focus of this one-hour keynote presentation is to inspire leaders to understand the critical role they play in the health and well-being of their organization in a way that they may never have considered. That they are indeed the "emotional regulator" for their teams and staff, helping ground the organization itself and the individuals working in it. They will be invited to view their organization through the lens of neuroscience and nervous system regulation, as they learn about the brain, stress, and the impact their own nervous system activation has on others and even on the growth of the organization. Most importantly, they will be inspired as they learn about self-care, the management of their own internal states, their ability to regulate the emotions of others, and how to help their organization stay steady. The result of this powerful keynote presentation is a deeper awareness of what self-care for themselves and their staff really is, and ultimately, what it means to be a leader.

211 and Help Me Grow programs are partnering up to provide I&R and care coordination to families across the country. This partnership provides the opportunity to strengthen your ability to reach at-risk families, expands your resource knowledge and offers expertise in hard to navigate areas like social determinants of health and early intervention services for children. Working together, both programs provide professional development opportunities and support for each program.

I&R services across the country have pivoted to virtual operations while also taking on new programs. At Greater Twin Cities United Way 211, this included hiring, training, managing, and coaching more than 30 temporary staff for a new state housing program -- all in a virtual world. In less than two months, we created and launched a program in partnership with our state housing agency to disperse funds for rent, utilities and other bills to prevent homelessness. In this session, presenters will share the insights they learned from working with a large group of non-traditional hires during a disaster-related ramp-up, and help participants learn how to address some of the challenges with onboarding, training and coaching that can arise in these situations.