Photo Credit: Jeremy Gasowski | UNH Marketing
IOD Celebration Recognizes Students and Trainees
Shirley Tomlinson, Office of Health Equity at the NH DHHS, gives keynote address at the first annual IOD Year-End Celebration.
On May 8th, 2023, the Institute on Disability hosted the first-ever IOD Year-End Celebration. The programs and people recognized encompassed dozens of learners and four separate programs, all working to make a meaningful, lasting impact in the New Hampshire community. Shirley Tomlinson, MA, from the Office of Health Equity at the NH Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), was the keynote speaker, and IOD Director Kelly Nye-Lengerman, PhD, hosted the event.
The NH Leadership project, which strives to empower individuals to create positive change for people with disabilities across NH, recognized 24 graduates. NH Leadership Class of 2023 graduate Will Walker spoke, reflecting on his cohort’s experience. Alex Beauchner received the Annie Forts Award, a scholarship for individuals with Down Syndrome or people entering the Special Education field. Alicia Buono received the NH Leadership-based Brianna Dillon Award.
The NH-ME Lend project celebrated 17 trainees; each completed over 300 hours of training. Their mission is to improve the lives of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities by educating members of the maternal and child health field.
The UNH-4U project supports students with intellectual disabilities in achieving their academic, life, and career goals through a two-year immersive program at the University of New Hampshire. In 2023, UNH-4U celebrated its first cohort of students graduating from the program and recognized three of the student employees who supported UNH-4U students.
Building Futures Together is an apprenticeship program that prepares paraprofessionals to provide specialized enhanced care coordination to children, youth and their caregivers whose parents are impacted by opioid use disorders (OUD) and other substance use disorders (SUD). Building Futures Together had ten 2023 awardees, one of whom, Awardee Luise Porres, gave a speech.
JoAnne Malloy: New Hampshire Social Worker of the Year
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JoAnne Malloy animatedly speaks during the Embrace NH Bus Tour meeting with Waypoint and UNH officials.
Photo Credit: Jeremy Gasowski | UNH Marketing
Research Associate Professor JoAnne Malloy was named Social Worker of the Year by the New Hampshire chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. She received the award at the Social Work Celebration in Concord, NH, on March 3, 2023. JoAnne has worked to advance improved behavioral health for children, youth, and families in the state since 1982. In 1996, JoAnne developed RENEW (Rehabilitation, Empowerment, Natural supports, Education, and Work), a transition and career development planning model for youth with emotional and behavioral disorders. RENEW has since been replicated in educational, mental health and juvenile detention settings in New Hampshire and six other states, producing positive educational, vocational, and behavioral health outcomes. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on employment and transition for youth with emotional disorders and adults with mental illness and teaches at the undergraduate and graduate level at UNH.
IOD supports New Hampshire’s compliance with Medicaid requirements
For eight years, the IOD partnered with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Bureaus of Developmental Services (BDS) and Elderly and Adult Service (BEAS) to ensure compliance with the Home and Community Based Services Final Settings Rule. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created the rule to ensure that Medicaid service recipients were provided services in non-institutional settings that offer choice, control, person-centered services, and a high quality of life.
Each home and community-based setting had to be compliant with the Final Settings Rule by the March 17, 2023, deadline. NH’s efforts included education, new processes, and on-site visits to people receiving Medicaid services.
On-site reviews included interviews with service providers, service recipients and or guardians, tours of the settings and reviews of policies and procedures to identify if a setting was compliant. Any setting found to be out of compliance was provided time to remediate areas of concern. Anyone being served in a setting that was unable to reach compliance was required to transition to a compliant setting.
“To check back in with a person who needed to relocate and hear them tell you their new living situation is ‘Heaven on Earth’ compared to where they used to live, makes it all worth it. This is why we do this work,” said Mary St Jacques, Project Director at the IOD who facilitated the Final Settings Rule work with BDS and BEAS.
Building Futures Together Trains Paraprofessionals throughout New Hampshire
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Graduates of the Building Futures Together 2023 Cohort pose with Program Director Macey Muller and IOD Director Kelly Nye-Lengerman at the May 2023 IOD Celebration.
Building Futures Together, is a grant-funded program designed to prepare paraprofessionals in healthcare and school settings to provide specialized care coordination to children, youth, and their caregivers impacted by substance use disorders. The three-year-old initiative has trained 72 paraprofessionals and recovery peer support workers so far, filling the workforce pipeline for much-needed behavioral health professionals in New Hampshire. In recent months, project director Macey Muller recently appeared on Your Health New Hampshire radio show on WKXL - NH Talk Radio to help expand awareness of the program, and both she and Building Futures Together Principal Investigator, JoAnne Malloy, met with representatives from Waypoint (formerly known as Child and Family Services of New Hampshire) in Manchester to explore opportunities to further strengthen those connections to address diverse and ongoing challenges.
Disability Justice Advocacy Presentation
If there is one universal truth in the fight for disability justice, it is that we are stronger together and have greater impact when we share ideas, coordinate priorities, and celebrate wins with our partners and allies. The directors of the Disability Rights Center NH (DRC-NH), the NH Council on Developmental Disabilities (NHCDD), and the Institute on Disability (IOD) met to discuss how their organizations work together to remove barriers to people with disabilities living fully inclusive lives in their communities. Stephanie Patrick (DRC-NH), Isadora Rodriguez-Legendre (NHCDD), and Kelly Nye-Lengerman (IOD) talk about the importance of building leadership and supporting advocacy.
Strengthening Meaningful Person-Centered Supports Event
In the spirit of “nothing about us without us,” the Institute on Disability’s Consumer Advisory Council presented an in-person and online event focused primarily on strengthening our commitment to prioritizing person-centered planning. Person-centered planning means coordinating services and supports that an older adult or person with a disability may need, where decisions are directed by the person who receives the support. Speakers included Valerie Bradley, a nationally recognized expert in the intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) field and founder of the Human Services Research Institute (HSRI), and Alexandra Bonardi, Vice President of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities with HSRI and co-director of the National Center on Advancing Person-Centered Practices and Systems.
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Graphic Facilitators created this visual representation of the discussion at the in-person Strengthening Meaningful Person-Centered Supports Event in 2023.
Supporting Families During COVID via Telehealth
The Healthy Families Flourish Program, a parent-coaching intervention for families of children with special health care needs, was developed for telehealth to provide a convenient portal for families to engage in the program meaningfully. When COVID emerged, the program serendipitously filled a need for high-quality services for families who experienced significant disruption in previously existing supports. Research to evaluate the program included eleven families -- 17 parents and 27 children -- who completed the 10-session intervention. Each family was provided with parenting education and individualized coaching. As documented in the Occupational Therapy Journal of Research, IOD research team members Sarah L. Smith, PhD, Betsy P. Humphreys, PhD, and Semra A. Aytur, PhD, found positive relationships between family participation and cohesion as well as participation and adaptability.
