NATCON Conference '16

National Council of Behavioral Health

Every year, the National Council for Behavioral Health hosts a conference where professionals from the nation’s health, mental health, and addiction care organizations come together to network and present the industry's latest teachings, practices, and ideas. For the last two years, Telecare has sponsored a booth to connect with industry professionals, and build awareness about Telecare's services, as well as our career opportunities.

Telecare's team was invigorated and inspired by the conference, and delighted to connect with so many passionate people in our field. Thank you to everyone who stopped by the Telecare booth!

(L-R back row) Faith Richie, Senior Vice President of Development; Shannon Mong, Director of Innovative Initiatives; Kent Eller, MD, Chief Medical Officer; Cheryl Malinowski, Regional Director Central Coast and CORE LA; Jennifer Hinkel, Vice President of Development. (L-R middle row) Robert Klar, Director, Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning; Suzanne Rudnitzki, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Anita Barnes, Senior Vice President of Operations; Rich Panell, Vice President of Operations; David Farrell, Vice President of Sub-Acute Services. (L-R front row) Marcelo Cavalheiro, Regional Director of Operations in Los Angeles; Anne Bakar, President and CEO, at the NATCON conference on Monday, March 7.

Forensic Conference

Justice Involved Mental Health and RCCS Poster Session

This month, Telecare hosted a poster session at the 41st Annual Forensic Mental Health Association of California Conference in Monterey from March 16-18. The conference provides trainings and strategies for forensic mental health professionals.
 
"Justice Involved Mental Health and Telecare's Recovery Centered Clinical System" was presented by Gary Hubbard, Vice President of Operations of Southern California and Arizona, and Cheryl Malinowski, Regional Director over Telecare's Central Coast and CORE LA program.

Telecare’s poster focused on how a recovery-centered culture with intentional strengths-based conversations surrounding criminogenic needs can be effective in providing services for the justice involved mental health population.

If you would like more information on the RCCS approach to JIMH, please contact Gary Hubbard at ghubbard@telecarecorp.com or Cheryl Malinowski at cmalinowski@telecarecorp.com.

Cheryl Malinowski, Regional Director Central Coast and CORE LA, speaks to participants during the poster session at the Forensic Mental Health Association of California Conference on March 16, 2016.

New Programs and Employment Opportunities

Telecare is pleased to announce that we will be opening three new programs in the coming months. We are beginning recruitment efforts now for leadership positions. If you'd like to learn more about career opportunities at these programs or Telecare in general, please contact Robert Klar, Director, Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning, at rklar@telecarecorp.com.

San Diego County, CA

On March 28, 2016, Telecare opened a brand new Laura's Law-based program in partnership with San Diego County Behavioral Health Services. The 114-member, ACT-based program will serve individuals who are eligible for services under Laura's Law guidelines for Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT). 

Thurston & Mason Counties, WA

Telecare was recently awarded the contract to operate a county-owned 10-bed triage/evaluation and treatment facility in western Washington state. The customer is currently Thurston Mason Regional Support Network, a behavioral health organization that covers both counties.

Santa Clara County, CA

The Telecare-Santa Clara Bridge of Hope program, Santa Clara's Pay for Success initiative, will be a Full Service Partnership (FSP) and intensive case management program, providing services to 175 members in downtown San Jose. The program is scheduled to open in mid-June 2016. Telecare is partnering with both Santa Clara County and Third Sector Capital Partners to develop the project plan.

Ventura County, CA

Telecare was also awarded a contract to operate a county-owned, locked Mental Health Rehabilitation Center (MHRC) called Horizon View. The program is a 16-bed facility located in Camarillo, California. Subject to construction timeline completion, Telecare is expected to begin managing the facility in August 2016. Our customer is Ventura County Behavioral Health Department (VCBH).  

Clinical Director Opportunities – Martinez and San Leandro, CA

Interested in flexing your skills as a leader, a clinician, and creator of an outstanding workplace and recovery environment? If so, we would love to connect.
 
Telecare's leadership team is growing in Northern California!

Telecare’s Hope House and Jay Mahler are both crisis residential programs that provide support to clients who require crisis support to avoid hospitalization, or are discharging from the hospital or long-term locked facilities, and need step-down care to successfully transition back into their community. The clinical director positions are especially exciting since both of these programs are new to Telecare!
 
As a clinical director, you will have the opportunity to guide a team using psychiatric rehabilitation principals and Telecare's recovery philosophy, provide clinical and administrative supervision, and coach and educate team members with appropriate support to ensure courteous, helpful, and respectful services to program consumers.
 
Telecare's clinical directors must be seasoned as an LMFT, LCSW, or Psy.D. If you or someone you know is interested in learning more, please visit our website (www.telecarecorp.com/careers; Job ID: 20133807 for Hope House in Martinez, CA –OR- Job ID: 20133530 for Jay Mahler in San Leandro, CA) to see a job description. You can also contact Victoria LeBruno, Regional Recruitment Manager for Northern California, to talk about the opportunity at vlebruno@telecarecorp.com.

Steps Towards Stability: Part II

Provider Magazine

Last month, David Farrell, Vice President of Subacute Operations at Telecare, co-authored an article for Provider Magazine with Cathie Brady and Barbara Frank, co-founders of B&F Consulting. It is part of an ongoing series that provides ideas and solutions for retaining program staff.

There are multiple ways staff stability is essential to a program's success. "Staff stability is necessary to succeed in this performance business environment," the article states. "Healthcare payers and partners are increasingly focused on outcomes. Staff who work with the same residents and co-workers everyday can prevent avoidable declines. They recognize immediately when something’s wrong and can work together to address it."

The second part of this piece, "10 Steps to Staff Stability Part Two: Maximize Stability By Supporting And Engaging Staff," addresses two ways for companies to create a stable environment, maintain communication, and improve accountability among staff.

• Reduce stress and improve morale
• Create daily stability

You can read the current article here, and get caught up on steps one through five here. If you'd like to reach David directly with questions, please contact him at dfarrell@telecarecorp.com.

Getting a Second Chance to Make a Difference

TABS109 Staff Story

Using Telecare's Recovery-Centered Clinical System (RCCS) to address JIMH issues has been key to creating a recovery-centered environment.

Telecare’s AB Services 109 (TABS 109) reintegration program, funded by Assembly Bill 109, works with members who are released from prison. The program works to address both mental health and criminogenic needs. TABS109 uses RCCS principles to create a welcoming, inclusive, and collaborative environment where staff use techniques such as motivational interviewing and reflective listening to connect with members on what they want to get out of their time in the program. In order to connect with members on a personal level, TABS109 also employs staff with lived experience to help encourage growth and support. This combined reintegration model has been extremely successful and to prove it, TABS109 has a 20% recidivism rate compared to the state’s 59%.

“Our peer component has really helped us engage with our clientele,” said Telecare’s Los Angeles Regional Operations Director Cheryl Malinowski. “New clients will come in to our programs so guarded because they are forced to be there. Then after being in a program for a couple of months, receiving treatment, they realize that staff genuinely cares for them.”

Staff member Rayzhone Davis takes pride in helping others identify their strengths. Rayzhone found himself in and out of juvenile hall and youth prison from the age of 13 to 18, and at 23 was given a jail sentence of seven years. When he got out, Rayzhone started to turn his life around by working on his Associates Degree in Alcohol and Drug Counseling, and was referred to TABS109 from the work he did at another substance use program. Two years, two promotions, and a degree later, he is now a Substance Abuse Counseling Specialist.
 
“My education, past living experiences, and our philosophy of RCCS helps me encourage members to look at life differently,” he said. “Working for Telecare has given me an opportunity to be a part of an ACT program, where I get to work in the community that I was raised in. My biggest joy is helping others who have the same struggles I overcame. The work I do has allowed me to give back to my community and use my past living experiences to help others to become the best people they can be.” 

Housing Specialist Andrea Major, who also has a justice-involved past, applied to the TABS109 program to satisfy her probation terms. She found TABS109 to be a welcoming program that takes care of, believes in, and continuously prepares staff to reach their goals and move up in the organization.  

“After almost three years working at Telecare, I am more aware of my identity and where I want to go. Telecare gave me a second chance and provided an environment that has allowed me the ability to grow and advance,” she said. “Telecare is about breaking barriers, not creating them.”

Telecare's FY14-15 Year In Review

FY14-15 was a special year for us: Telecare celebrated its 50th anniversary of services and supports to people with serious mental illness and complex needs.

Each year, we create an annual report and short video to capture some of our proudest achievements from the year and showcase some of Telecare's unique programs and services. 

In FY14-15, we served more than 34,000 unique individuals across eight states and 90+ programs.

We worked with counties, hospitals, health plans, criminal justice agencies, and developmental disability systems. 

And we delivered cost-conscious, outcomes-focused, recovery-centered services to our clients, while helping our customers make an impact in their own systems of care.

In our FY14-15 video, we focus our new Laura's Law programs, which provide court-ordered care in a client-centered, respectful, collaborative way. 

AB109 Transition Training for Staff

Creating Safe Environments With Strengths-Based Approach

"What happens is that when people graduate from AB109 programs, they enter traditional mental health clinics where staff aren’t used to working with this specific population," said Marcelo Cavalheiro, Telecare Regional Operations Director for Los Angeles County.

"Due to what has been going on recently in the news, staff have been going to their supervisors with safety concerns. They have the belief that the people entering the program are dangerous, or are criminals, and that can inhibit the quality of care."

As one of Telecare’s operations leaders, Marcelo partners with David Heffron, VP of Operations, to oversee all of our programs in Los Angeles, including two AB109 programs. The number of Telecare’s AB109 slots has grown dramatically since the legislation passed in 2011, from 48 slots originally to more than 270 slots today. In Telecare’s LA AB109 programs, clients typically stay for about two years before transitioning to other programs in the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health’s Adult Systems of Care (ASOC) and Older Adult System of Care (OASOC).

“AOSC heard the concerns of their direct providers and wanted to do something to support the staff. They reached out to us to see if we could create a training for those programs and staff to help them not only feel safer personally, but also feel more comfortable and confident in their work with this population.”

David and Marcelo created a six-hour, strengths-based training, grounded in Telecare’s Recovery-Centered Clinical System (RCCS) principles. Overall, it’s a fun, engaging training that helps staff look at five key areas such as common misconceptions, day-to-day practices, maintaining a supportive recovery culture, and specific conversations that staff can have with clients that can transform recovery and staff/client relationships. The goal is to help staff see a wide variety of ways they can shift the program—and their own interactions with clients—to create a safer environment, better services, and better results.

We’ve included a brief overview of the principles. If you’re interested, you can view the full training here. 

Start by Challenging Misconceptions

One of the most essential steps in the training is challenging misconceptions, the most common one being that those living with a mental illness are violent and are prone to acts of violence. Although these instances are few and far between, they carry more weight when brought into the public eye. This stigma is extremely harmful to both participants and staff of mental health programs. Furthermore, these preconceived notions can influence how we interact with program members and how we design our environments, as well as create an undercurrent of prejudices and negative expectations for what we think might happen. In actuality: 

Tools for Maintaining a Recovery-Centered Environment

When working with the Justice Involved Mental Health (JIMH) population, it is important to keep in mind that they need a caring and supportive environment, not a punitive and power-over one. Marcelo and David's training, "Justice Involved Mental Health: Community Re-Entry and Recovery," recommends the following practices and program changes. 

• Create a welcoming environment. The choices a provider makes about the use of control can convey a lot to the people who are receiving services there, which can also affect how people behave and interact. For example, an environment that has metal detectors at the door feels like a very different place than one with a reception area that’s welcoming and inviting, with someone who greets you with a handshake. A welcoming environment sets the stage for a good partnership with the client.
• Treat members with respect and dignity. When a program promotes a collaborative verses a provider-driven approach to treatment, members can take comfort in knowing their voices are being heard, and can truly express their hopes and dreams without fear or hesitation.
• Reconstruct their narrative. By helping members reconsider and rebuild a strong personal identity, one that goes beyond the limiting definitions of being someone who has been in jail or has a mental health need to address, programs can better support members in successfully aligning their goals and choices to move forward in their recovery. Members who transition out of correctional facilities or programming need to be treated as people who have the capacity to make good choices and achieve personal goals, instead of being treated as former inmates who do not get to have a say in their recovery.
• Encourage mistakes. Recovery is not a simple, linear process. Relapse happens. It is extremely important for a program to have a culture that allows mistakes to happen, and lets members know that they have a place to come back to that won’t give up on them.
• Focus on criminogenic needs. In order to successfully reduce recidivism, providers need to offer a wraparound approach that addresses both a member’s mental illness and the risk factors that can contribute to the member re-offending, and provide treatment options appropriate to the member’s risk level. 

For more information about this training, please feel free to reach out directly to David Heffron or Marcelo Cavalheiro, who can share more details and answer any questions you may have. 

Helping the Homeless in Stanislaus County

Point in Time Count

Photo courtesy of the Modesto Bee

On Thursday, January 28, Telecare's Westside Stanislaus Homeless Outreach Program (SHOP) partnered with Stanislaus County Housing and Support Services Collaborative to conduct the county's annual Point in Time Count. 

See the full article on the Modesto Bee website.

The count is a part of a nationwide effort by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that requires the collected data for funding from the Supportive Housing Program. SHOP has participated in the homeless census for
10 years. 

Gathering information on the county’s homeless population and their specific needs helps Stanislaus Housing & Support Services Collaborative provide better resources for its residents. The survey includes questions regarding physical or mental illness, substance use, PTSD, domestic violence, how long the individual has been homeless, and the last place of residence.

Along with the count, consistent outreach helps maintain relationships, which is important when working with the homeless population. Telecare SHOP has three teams that work year round in partnership with each other as well as other agencies and service providers in the area to assist members with linkage to community resources. The Outreach and Engagement 1 team consists of two case managers who go out to those living in parks, rivers, and homeless shelters. Their Outreach and Engagement 3 team has a case manager and clinician that provide psycho-education and mental health services with the intent of reducing stigma in mental health and connecting people in the community to mental health resources. The third team, Latino Access, has a case manager and a clinician who specifically provide outreach and psycho-education on mental health to the county’s Latino population.

ATLAS/TABS/AOT-FSP: Living Our Values

Morties Video Contest

In commemoration of our 50th Anniversary, Telecare introduced the Morties Video Contest. Categories included Living Our Values, Inspiration, and Recovery Stories. We invited all of our programs and staff to submit videos and vote for their favorite. The winning programs were showcased in our December newsletter.

Although we could only have one winner per category, we wanted to keep spreading the Morties spirit and share the other videos that were submitted. This month, we are happy to present ATLAS/TABS/AOT-FSP program's submission for the Living Our Values category.

IHOT Earns a Family's Thanks

San Diego In Home Outreach Team

Recently, a mother of a member from San Diego's IHOT program reached out via the Telecare website and left a sweet message for staff:

"Your entire staff in San Diego County are the most compassionate, intelligent, and professional people our family has encountered in the too many years we as parents of a mentally unstable adult have met. We thank Shanna, Liz Heinz, and every person we even briefly talked to on our son' s behalf. You accepted him. Thank you for that. Your positive, sacrificial, professional 'coaching' will always be a golden memory. Thank you IHOT San Diego County."

Taking Steps Towards Staff Stability

Provider Magazine

David Farrell, Vice President of Subacute Operations at Telecare, along with Cathie Brady and Barbara Frank, co-founders of B&F Consulting, co-authored an article for Provider Magazine’s January 2016 issue.

The piece, titled 10 Steps to Staff Stability, addressed the topic of high staff turnover in nursing care facilities, how it affects remaining staff, and the proper measures to fix the problem.

“Staff stability is the precondition for quality outcomes,” it stated. “Stability allows for staff to work consistently together with the same residents, so that they recognize early warning signs of changes in conditions and can act to prevent avoidable declines.”

The two-part piece highlighted the first five steps for achieving staff stability through the hiring process.

1. Look at the data.
2. Evaluate if the center can attract motivated, high performers.
3. Improve the local pool of candidates.
4. Improve the hiring process.
5. Improve and extend the orientation and welcome.

You can read the full article here and send any questions you may have to David through email.

The Morning Meeting

Using Data to Target Risk and Overcome Barriers to Recovery

In July 2015, Sacramento Outreach Adult Recovery (SOAR) Administrator Shannan Taylor (right) introduced a new process to her team: the data-driven morning meeting. The goal: use data to help staff become more effective and focused in serving the right clients, at the right time, with the right, recovery-focused interventions.

Components of the Data-Driven Morning Meeting

You can download this PDF to get a more comprehensive overview, however in brief, the morning meeting process includes a handful of steps and/or components, including:

• Member status surveys, completed at least weekly for all 225 SOAR clients
• Priority snapshots of all clients, produced from survey data
• A structured morning meeting process to input data, review snapshots, and prioritize care
• Routine reports to check client progress and overall program performance

The new process was created using only a few simple, inexpensive tools (Excel and SharePoint) and is done in the same time as a regular morning meeting.

How It's Helping Us as a Team

"By focusing our team and focusing our services, we are able to prioritize our member's needs and are better able to identify risk," Shannan said. "The best way to transform the ideas of recovery into actual recovery is to plan your day around those practical steps. We do that using data."

"Our hope is that by collecting information in the morning meeting and archiving it, we can help plan for care as a team. We became much more effective just by turning a loosely structured case review discussion into something that is a lot more fast-paced, data-driven, and collaborative."

Happy Holidays from Telecare

In 2015, Telecare celebrated 50 years of service to people with serious mental illness.

As the year comes to a close, we look back gratefully to those who made these 50 years of service possible: our staff, our communities, and our customers. We are eternally grateful to be part of this work and to partner with you to make a difference in people's lives.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and relaxing holiday season, and our sincerest thank you for your goodwill throughout the year.

From all of us at Telecare, we send you our best.

San Mateo County Recognizes Telecare Program for Housing

Housing Hero Awards

The Behavioral Health and Recovery Services of San Mateo County held its annual Housing Heroes awards ceremony on October 22. Telecare’s Transitions program was among the selected programs and organizations recognized for excellence in providing stable housing for people with mental health and substance use issues. Transitions Administrator Kevin Jones accepted the award.

In 2008, San Mateo County began awarding individuals as Housing Heroes to acknowledge those who work towards ensuring that those living with a mental illness are able to afford housing in their community. This is Telecare's second award; current FSP Housing Coordinator Lee Cates was recognized for excellence in housing in 2013.  

 (L-R) Ohevet Fotofini, Board and Care Operator; Georgia Peterson, Mental Health Association/Spring Street Shelter; Kevin Jones, Administrator, Telecare Transitions; and Karen Francone, Service League of San Mateo receive their Housing Heroes awards on October 22. 

Housing Heroes award, received by Kevin Jones on October 22.

Care and Recovery in a Home-Like Setting

Jay Mahler Recovery Center

Front entrance of the Jay Mahler Recovery Center.

On Thursday, October 29, Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services hosted a celebration to commemorate the opening of the brand new Jay Mahler Recovery Center. Approximately 200 attendees were offered tours of the new 16-bed crisis residential program. The program opened on November 9, 2015. Telecare will be the provider of services.

The visually stunning crisis residential facility, will be an unlocked, voluntary psychiatric program that provides a calm, beautiful environment and clinical services to help adults stabilize their mental health symptoms, develop effective self‐reliance skills, and restore a sense of hope and purpose.

Jay Mahler giving a speech at the opening of Telecare's Jay Mahler Recovery Center on October 29. 

The program is named after Jay Mahler, a long time consumer advocate. Jay was a patient at an inpatient facility on the same grounds in the 1960s, when treatment was more focused on control and containment and less focused on healing and consumer choice. This new program showcases the progress that has been made in providing respectful, empowering services and the incredible work Alameda County has done to advance the standard of care.

Pay For Success in Mental Health Weekly

First PFS Initiative to Focus on Those Living With a Mental Illness

Telecare's Pay For Success (PFS) project has been featured on page one of Mental Health Weekly’s October 26 issue. PFS is Telecare's opportunity to share what we learned about people with mental illness and complex challenges.

The Santa Clara PFS program is being designed to serve residents with acute mental illness, who are among the highest users of the county's psychiatric emergency and inpatient services. It is a funding model where the government pays for services only if a service provider, Telecare, achieves clearly defined results.

"For this group, we anticipate reducing their predicted use of these acute and costly services by 35 percent," said Faith Richie, Senior Vice President of Development at Telecare.

Toni Tullys, MPA, Director of Behavioral Health Services at the Santa Clara County Health and Hospital System, praised Telecare’s impressive track record of developing programs that aim to reduce hospital stays, saying that Telecare has "the expertise of working with individuals with very high needs and developing, designing, and implementing services to support the needs of that population."

"We’re bringing government and philanthropy and the private sector together with the unique focus on innovations and outcomes," said Anne Bakar, President and CEO of Telecare.

Preliminary design and planning work is being done now. The program is scheduled to launch in 2016.

Laura's Law Resources

General Laura’s Law Resources:

• Assembly Bill 1421 Outline
• Laura’s Law Outline
• 2014 State Standards for Assisted Treatment
• Peace Officer Mental Health Training Legislation Signed Into Law

Laura’s Law Counties:

• Nevada County: Approved May 2008
• Yolo County: Approved June 2013
• Orange County: Approved May 2014
• Los Angeles County: Approved July 2014
• San Francisco County: Approved July 2014
• Placer County: Approved August 2014
• Mendocino County: Approved November 2014. Postponed opening.
• Contra Costa County: Approved February 2015
• San Diego County: Approved April 2015
• San Mateo County: Approved June 2015
• Kern County: Approved July 2015
• El Dorado County: Approved August 2015
• Shasta County: Approved October 2015

Orange County Assisted Outpatient Treatment

California's Laura's Law

Video: A staff member at Telecare's Assisted Outpatient Treatment program in Orange County talks to a client. Watch the video of his day at the program here. 

Orange County was the third in the state to implement Laura's Law in May 2014. This law specifically pertains to individuals in California who are experiencing frequent mental health-related challenges that are not being treated, and as a result can end up cycling through emergency rooms, contacts with the legal system, or symptoms can become so severe they are a danger to themselves or others. Laura’s Law enables the mental health department and the court system to become involved in a more proactive way, which sometimes leads to a person being court-ordered into treatment in an Assisted Outpatient Treatment program. The goal of the program is to ensure people get the proper care that they need and not fall through the cracks.

"Our community in Orange County is fortunate to have Laura’s Law. To have Orange County be one of the leading counties in Laura’s Law shows how important this is," said Anna Bowes, Administrator at Telecare’s Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) program.

The AOT program saw its first member graduate on August 8, 2015. "The AOT program let me know that I’m not alone," he said. "I learned a lot about structure, having something to do, and showing up every day to do it. Mostly, just knowing that I’m not alone with the illness."
  
The hard work does not go unnoticed. Orange County Judge Gerald Johnston praised Telecare and the AOT program for all their hard work. "Telecare provides the kind of outreach that is necessary to effectively serve this population. I have nothing but admiration for the mission and the implementation that I see by Telecare."
 

Telecare’s Court-Ordered Program Roundup

A complete list of our court-ordered programs can be found here.

October 2015 Developments Newsletter

The end of summer has been a busy and exciting time at Telecare. This month, we're pleased to share some of the new and notable things we've been working on recently.

We've Opened New Programs With New Customers:

• In Skagit County, WA, we opened a new evaluation and treatment center (an acute inpatient program). Created in partnership with North Sound Mental Health Administration Regional Service Network, the new program will help prevent long waits in emergency rooms and give people much-needed supports in a recovery-based acute setting.

We've Helped Our Existing Customers Expand to Meet Changing Needs:

• In Clark County, WA, we opened a new, peer-centered Transitional Case Management Team to help people transition from acute services back to the community with greater supports. 
• In San Joaquin County, CA, we assumed operation of a prevention and early intervention program, helping young people and families to better understand and manage the onset of mental illness — and more importantly, to stay healthier now and remain healthier in the future.

We're Creating Healthier Environments With Evidence-Based Practices:

• The Horticulture Therapy program at Cordilleras Mental Health Rehabilitation Center is growing, thriving, and producing results in clients' lives and nutritional choices.

We're Helping to Change Perceptions of Disability:

• Telecare contributes to Superfest International Disability Film Festival

If there’s anything we can do to serve you or your communities more effectively, please let us know. We are always eager to improve.

All the best,
Faith Richie, SVP of Development, Telecare Corporation

Telecare Makes Contribution to Film Festival

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival Contribution

Telecare Corporation made a contribution to Superfest: International Disability Film Festival, which takes place in the Bay Area on November 14 and 15.

Superfest showcases films that focus on disability culture and is the longest-running festival of its kind. The festival is a way to celebrate disability and change and challenge the limits people assign it. Anyone can submit work for the festival. Although the submission deadline for this year’s festival has passed, you can still sign-up to be a sponsor or community sponsor by contacting Jennifer Sachs at jsachs@lighthouse-sf.org.