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The Penn-Mar HEART Committee is proud to announce our most recent round of HEART Award winners!

The Penn-Mar HEART Award program recognizes team members whose passion and performance leave the mark of their own legacy through exceptional demonstrations of Honesty, Excellence, Advocacy, Respect, and Team Work.

Read the winning nominations here.

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Those of us working at the Consulting arm of Penn-Mar Human Services are delighted to report that we, and our partner TransCen, were recently awarded a $150,000 contract from The Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council (Council) to provide technical assistance to five community service providers licensed, certified, or approved by the Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA).

The five community service providers selected by the Council to participate include:

• The Chesapeake Center – Talbot County
• Langton Green – Anne Arundel County
• Star Community, Inc. – Washington County
• Chimes Maryland – Baltimore City
• Rock Creek Foundation – Montgomery County

The objective of the program is to help these providers reimagine, refocus, and rebuild their business and service models during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the call came in from a Council representative to tell us we were selected from a group of five other proposal participants, three specific reasons were cited for why our recommendations were the strongest of all the entries:

• Our approach was the most organized;
• It held the providers most accountable;
• It suggested a path to help providers go through the process and be accountable for its execution.

Specifically, Penn-Mar and TransCen are being tasked with supporting providers to transform service delivery models and business practices, recover and rebuild as needed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and identify effective strategies that can be replicated.

Through our partnership, TransCen and Penn-Mar staff will bring well over 25 years of experience providing organizational change and provider transformation training in more than 17 states (including Maryland), and long-range provider transformation process both at the planning, organizational, community based outcome and staff development level.

The goal of this initiative is to ensure that people with developmental disabilities receive services in a seamless, individualized, and sustainable way, whether they are at home, on-site with a provider, or in the community.

Penn-Mar Human Services and TransCen have a long history of collaboration and training focused on a replicable community based service supports and business model.

TransCen, Inc., is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving education and employment success of youth and young adults with disabilities. Their work is driven by the belief that employment and active community participation are attainable for all individuals, regardless of disability or other perceived barriers to employment.

We actually engaged the organization back in 2009 to help us transform Penn-Mar’s employment program which today is recognized as one of the most innovative in our industry.

So we have come full circle and believe that our partnership differentiated us in the review process by combining TransCen’s strengths as a well-respected national training organization with a wide breadth of successful current and past initiatives, combined with Penn-Mar’s recognition as a forward-thinking practitioner with proven models of transformative success creating and implementing bold person-driven, community-based supports.

When this initiative is completed in September 2022, Penn-Mar and TransCen will be sharing all of our findings and best practices with other human services organizations out there.

Collaboration is one of Penn-Mar’s most important core values and we have shown time and time again how our successes from continuing innovation have benefited the human services community as a whole.

And that, in a nutshell, is the mission of Penn-Mar’s Consulting Group: to facilitate change by sharing innovative approaches which connect organizations that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to best practices that support a life well-lived for all people, regardless of ability.

Penn-Mar brings over 100 years of multi-disciplinary leadership experience to organizations looking to take a bold step forward and are eager to work with President Laura Owens, Ph. D., and her team at TransCen to show them how to do just that.

This project was supported, in part by grant number CFDA 93.630, from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects with government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official ACL policy.

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Funded by the Council with a grant of $150,000, Penn-Mar and TransCen together will lead the initiative to support the selected providers to reimagine, refocus, and rebuild their business and service models during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify effective strategies that can be replicated. The goal of the project is to ensure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) receive services in a seamless, individualized and sustainable way, whether they are at home, on-site with a provider, or in the community.

Nonprofits Penn-Mar, a provider of supports and services to nearly 2,000 people with IDD in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and TransCen, a national organization whose mission is to improve education and employment success of youth and young adults with disabilities, joined forces to develop their winning proposal, which was submitted in response to the Council’s RFP “Rebuilding DDA Providers Throughout Maryland Through Technical Assistance.”

“We’re excited to begin this transformational initiative with Penn-Mar and TransCen,” said Rachel London, Council executive director. “Our review team felt that their combined experience coupled with their proposed activities aligned with the outcomes the Council wanted to see –that people with developmental disabilities live the lives they want with the supports they need.”

Reimagine, Refocus, and Rebuild

The Council’s five-year state plan includes the objective of increasing access to community-based services and supports for people with developmental disabilities. The goal of the demonstration project is to meet that objective in response to the challenges wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

“COVID-19 created unprecedented responses by federal, state, and local governments that impacted the lives of all Marylanders, including people with developmental disabilities and their families,” said London. “Over the course of the year we saw differences around the state in how people with developmental disabilities received the supports and services they needed, with many providers meeting the challenges brought on by the pandemic in new and creative ways.

In line with our advocacy and policy work, we’re advocating for change and creativity and the possibility of rebuilding a system that really supports people to live the lives they want. We knew that we could use our funding to shape that change.”

Strategic Partnership

Penn-Mar and TransCen have a decade-long history of collaboration that began when Penn-Mar transformed its employment services to include Customized Employment – the competitive community integrated approach that matches the talents and skills of an employee with the needs of an employer.

“TransCen has a very unique and comprehensive set of strategies and skill sets around training and education. They are seen nationally as a thought leader in this space,” said Michael Shriver, director of Penn-Mar Consulting. “From our perspective, we see ourselves as a very capable, forwarding-thinking practitioner with proven models of transformative success creating and implementing bold person-driven, community-based supports.”

Laura Owens, president of TransCen sees their partnership as having come full circle. “What is great about this collaboration is we have the knowledge about Customized Employment and how agencies move forward, and now Penn-Mar also has that knowledge. They’re the boots on the ground. They transformed their services and are able to share their insights and success.”

Both organizations will assist the Council in selecting the five Maryland providers to participate in the initiative.

The proposal includes listening sessions with advocates and families, agency self-assessments, webinar training around “building meaningful lives,” Value Stream Mapping based on Lean principles (a process for creating a more effective business by eliminating wasteful practices and improving efficiency), strategic and implementation action planning, staff development training and technical assistance, and best practices implementation. The project will end with a statewide conference that will give an opportunity for project pilot providers to showcase their change efforts and feature universal presentation topics of interest to professionals, families and self-advocates that can be replicated.

“The biggest thing we hope for is a change in philosophy that will lead to a change in practice,” said Owens.

For more information about the Rebuilding DDA Providers initiative, contact Michael Shriver, director of Penn-Mar Consulting, at michaelshriver@penn-mar.org.

About the Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council

The Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council’s (Council) mission is to create change to make it possible for people with developmental disabilities to live the lives they want with the support they need. The Council works with people with developmental disabilities, their family members, organizations, and community members. Together we find solutions to problems and take action to bring about change. www.md-council.org

About Penn-Mar Human Services

Penn-Mar Human Services’ mission is to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) live courageous lives full of self-determination, independence, and equity. Founded in 1981, Penn-Mar serves nearly 2,000 adults with IDD each year through its community living, day learning, customized employment, family and peer support, and respite programs in Carroll, Harford, Frederick, Howard, and Baltimore county in Maryland, and in southern York county in Pennsylvania. Penn-Mar’s approach is innovative, person-centered, and successful, and through meaningful employment, community inclusion, and residential choice, the people Penn-Mar supports are empowered to live their best lives. www.penn-mar.org.

About TransCen

TransCen, Inc. is a 501(c)(3), private non-profit corporation that was created in 1986 to develop programs, methodologies and systems integration to enable effective school to work transition of youth with disabilities. Working with both local and national projects, TransCen—a name adopted to illustrate its role as a “transition center”—is known for its training and technical assistance in school-to-work transition initiatives, systems change in education, career development of individuals with disabilities, and related research and dissemination. TransCen has become a leader in the industry with a national and international reputation for promoting employment and community participation of people with disabilities through direct services, consulting, technical assistance, and research. www.transcen.org

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