Living Independently

CPWD again shows progress with a focus on results

By Tim Wheat

This year’s “704 Report” shows more clearly the emphasis on accuracy and outcomes that we began two years ago. The 2012 Federal report undoubtedly shows that we are working with people to accomplish their goals and we are focusing on outcomes over effort.

Chart shows CPWD goal success rate increase from 10% in 2009 to over 50% this year.

The highlight of the 2012 report is the consumer goals. This year CPWD reported that consumer’s set twice as many goals as in 2011 and that goals accomplished expanded by more than three times. Most CPWD consumer’s have more than one goal, which helps us to track and understand what people with disabilities want and need through from the Independent Living Center.

Another highlight of the report is our outreach. CPWD has expanded services to people with hearing loss by 133% over last year and we nearly doubled the number of consumers in Adams County. Now Adams County makes up about 15% of CPWD’s overall consumers. Although are emphasis is on outcomes, we have greatly expanded the number of services we are reporting. This year CPWD provided 2,608 Independent Living services an increase of 53% over what we reported in 2011.

CPWD also is reporting this year a goal success rate of over 50%. Last year our success rate was 27%; in 2010 it was 19% up from a low of 10% in 2009. Our shift from attempting to report big numbers of people has steered CPWD to focus on the results of our consumers. The higher success rate this year is a reflection of the increased independence in our community. The low results in the past were mainly due to reporting interactions with individuals, but not concentrating on value and outcome of our interactions.

Last year at this time I wrote about the annual federal report that CPWD submits at the end of the year. When we adopted our new emphasis on accuracy and outcomes we honestly reported a drop in people served by 48% and were worried that funders and bureaucrats would not understand the change. We were mainly afraid, in a time of shrinking budgets that the shock of such a large decrease would be seen as lack of performance. However, I believe the direction toward reporting outcomes has made us stronger and provides a much better idea of what a Center for Independent Living does.

This year CPWD is reporting a 15% overall drop in consumers; but within that decrease is a 25% rise in the number of new consumers and we “carried-over” 30% fewer people than last year. I hope this shows an end to the stagnation of records in our report and that CPWD is making a solid difference in people’s lives and in our community.

Graph shows the expansion of CPWD IL Plans

Still the numbers can be discouraging; going from 664 to 565 looks like a step backward. Actually this change represents CPWD’s new focus on real numbers. In the past our database would keep track of anyone and we “opened” a Consumer Service Record (CSR) for them. Literally thousands of people contacted us and successful or not we had no reason to “close” their record. We had no reason to keep it open either, except maybe years later they may have another issue and there was the CSR ready to go. We also had a bias about closing, it sounds so negative and final.

The true advantage to real numbers however is that it better describes what we do and who works with CPWD. The numbers we report now are people we know and are currently working with. The fact is we have much more demand than CPWD can supply, but that is more evident now with our commitment to real numbers and reporting outcomes. Staff spends more time, and more quality time with each individual. The staff can use the record to “tell a story” about each individual’s struggle toward independence rather than just list services and time.

And the closed file problem is gone. If we don’t work with someone in the reporting period, we don’t report it, but we don’t have to close their file for this fact to be in our reports. We also don’t have to talk with people about what this means because closing your file has an unwanted connotation while achieving your goal is certainly what we want.

Independent Living 704 Report, CPWD

The 2011 CPWD 704 Report

The “704 Report” is the annual federal report we make to the Department of Education and to the state of Colorado about our performance. It is a very bureaucratic document, but we have made it available for our consumers and the public to see. It is a public document, named after the “Title VII” section that authorizes our federal funding.

You may examine this document at: http://www.cpwd-ilc.org/download/704/2011-704.htm

One general picture you can get of CPWD from our 704 is how many people we have worked with over the past reporting year, from October 1st to September 30th. This year our 704 shows that we have worked with 716 fewer people than we did last reporting period (Oct 2009 to Sept 2010). Our 2010 year total was 1380 and this year the total is 664. If you are just focused on big numbers you may think that we really fell short this year; however, we believe that these numbers actually show some great progress.

Total Consumers 2008 - 2011

There are three things that we have changed this year that have really impacted this report. First is we have shifted our reporting emphasis achieving goals rather than reporting time spent. Secondly, CPWD has a new commitment to real numbers and real time in reporting, and finally we have a new online database tool for our reporting.

The change to reporting goals is to better track our outcomes in Independent Living while still being able to report what we do with our time and the federal funds. The change is looking more at what people accomplish rather than how staff spends their time. In the past CPWD had used a database tool that was focused on keeping track of contacts with people and provided this long list of services that may describe what we did with individuals. The sum of all these interactions may show generally how someone was working for independence, but often it only showed a disharmonious collection of events.

Focusing on goals not only clearly illustrates what our role as an Independent Living Center will be, but it directly challenges people to work for equality and for individuals to define success. It also allows for disappointment and the essential and valuable lessons one can learn from failure.

Goal Success Rate.

Of course by emphasizing goals we can also assist and teach the necessary components of success. We have not developed this direction to claim our consumers’ accomplishments for ourselves; as a matter of fact, most goals are in progress and will teeter on collapse. Most goals will change and many will be abandoned. This year however, our 704 report shows significantly more people setting and meeting their goals (27%), and an overwhelming number of our consumers have developed an Independent Living plan with goals (81%). This is up from a 10% goal success rate in 2009, with only 17% of consumers developing an Independent Living Plan.

Still the numbers can be discouraging; going from 1380 to 664 looks like a huge step backward. Actually this change represents CPWD’s new focus on real numbers. In the past our database would keep track of anyone we worked with or called us and we “opened” a Consumer Service Record (CSR) for them. Literally thousands of people contacted us and successful or not we had no reason to “close” their record. We had no reason to keep it open either, except maybe years later they may have another issue and there was the CSR ready to go. We also had a bias about closing, it sounds so negative and final.

CPWD Records Closed 2008 - 2011

Starting back in 2009 we began to incrementally close the CSRs we had created and lost contact with the individual. Before 2008 we would typically close between a 15% and 25% of the consumer files. In 2009 we closed about 45% and last year we closed over half of the total of active consumers. What CPWD learned was rather than less, this condensing of records made us more responsive and aware of the people we work with. Rather than a long list of faceless consumers, each staff had a much more reasonable number of people they work with.

Five and ten years ago a new CPWD staff member would suddenly be looking at a list of two-hundred consumers of which they may only know a handful. That is what happened to me back in 2004. I felt my job as an Independent Living Adviser was to be the caretaker of that huge list, not to get to know all the people personally or recognize them in public. Now, there are very few consumers that a CPWD staff member has not met personally and I would guess that any individual staff member would recognize each of the people they work with if they happen to get on the same bus.

The true advantage to real numbers however is that it better describes what we do and who works with CPWD. The numbers we report now are people we know and are currently working with. The fact is we have much more demand than CPWD can supply, but that is more evident now with our commitment to real numbers and reporting outcomes. Staff spends more time, and more quality time with each individual. The staff can use the record to “tell a story” about each individual’s struggle toward independence rather than just list services and time.

And the closed file problem is gone. If we don’t work with someone in the reporting period, we don’t report it, but we don’t have to close their file for this fact to be in our reports. We also don’t have to talk with people about what this means because closing your file has an unwanted connotation while achieving your goal is certainly what we want.

Number of goals set 2008 - 2011

The final part of this new emphasis on accuracy and outcomes is that CPWD is using CIL Suite as our online reporting tool. This new database helps us to track outcomes and goals and we can report accurately what we need to report to organizations that provide us funding. The numbers reporting predisposition of our previous database led us to think of the database as just holding numbers. Now we can use our reporting tool and new emphasis on goals to show more accurately what we do as an organization.

Additionally, CPWD does not have any reason to look at our consumers as numbers. Our reporting tool helps us to understand each person and that individual’s Consumer Service Record will be more of a reflection of them and less of a collection of numbers, dates and times.

There is actually a lot more to the 704 Report. The Center’s goals and direction, what we feel our needs are and what we plan to do to change our community. Mostly I hope you see that this report shows how CPWD is working in partnership with people to obtain and maintain choices for independent living by promoting self-determination, self-respect and equal opportunity. That is our mission.

-Tim Wheat
The Community Organizer for CPWD
tim@cpwd.org
303-588-7069

Independent Living 704 Report, CPWD

By Tim Wheat

Tim Wheat in the historic ADAPT Free Our People March. photo by Tom Olin

The “704 Report” is the annual federal report we make to the Department of Education and to the state of Colorado about our performance. It is a very bureaucratic document, but we have made it available for our consumers and the public to see. It is a public document, named after the “Title IV” section that authorizes our federal funding. We provide it in Adobe “pdf” and a rich text file formats.

Adobe http://www.cpwd-ilc.org/download/704/704-2010c.pdf

Rich Text Format http://www.cpwd-ilc.org/download/704/704-2010c.rtf

One general picture you can get from the 704 is how many people we are currently working with. We report 1075 “Active CSRs” that is the current “Consumer Service Records” and this year we report 85 more than we did in 2009. We also reported closing nearly twice the number of CSR this year as we did in 2009. In 2009 we closed 322 CSRs, this past report period we closed 609.

Much of the report is details of demographics, type of service and narratives of what CPWD plans for the upcoming years but there is no real “bottom line.” Working with people often it is hard to turn the numbers into a picture of success. Numbers seemingly only go up and down. Up is good and down is bad.

However, hidden in the vast table of records is one number that I hope is very telling of the new direction of CPWD. We have been working to be not only more accurate in our reporting, but we are also determined to be more “goal oriented” with our consumers. The central focus of Independent Living when it began in the 1970s was a peer-to-peer learning and mentoring. The Independent Living Philosophy was a no-nonsense approach to accomplishing goals and becoming integrated into typical community life.

Last reporting period we showed that CPWD had developed and completed goals with consumers. The overall success rate was 11%. The overall success rate for this reporting period is 18%. The federal report does not ask for this percentage, but it is there if you look at the numbers. It still shows many people are not realizing their goals and the old bureaucratic viewpoint would be to burry the numbers that show failure 4-out-of-5 times.

However, CPWD is making progress. Learning and accomplishing a goal today also means greater self-sufficiency the next time someone faces a problem. I believe that the more goals we can set with consumers and successfully accomplish, the more our community benefits from our participation and the less dependent people are on charity and paternalism.

Independent Living 704 Report