Narrative: i. 2.

DBVI continues to have concerns about the ability to recruit and retain qualified staff in Maine due to the low salary scales. Recent recruiting efforts have included electronic vacancy postings on national and State of Maine websites, local postings with community providers, and information sharing with universities and colleges across the country that offer a rehabilitation/blindness program. Recruitment methods used continue to be extensive and include internet postings on a variety of specific and general job bank sites, ongoing contact with graduate programs throughout the country, promotion of DBVI staffing opportunities at national conferences, networking with community rehabilitation providers, other state agencies, our contracted partners and job listings in Maine Career Centers.  Additionally, DBVI offers professional internship opportunities to pre and post-graduate level students.

Maine DBVI Leadership Team has recently entered ongoing communications with UMass Boston regarding our current 2 O&M vacancies in order to provide for internships that would potentially lead to increased recruitment efforts for current vacant and anticipated vacant positions in the future.  The UMass Vision Studies program is holding recruitment informational meetings for both the TVI and O&M programs. This program also has a newly developed AT certification. A webinar provided by UMass Boston Vision Studies program Northeast Resource Center for vision education is available to discuss graduate career opportunities in vision education and rehabilitation.  These types of webinars assist DBVI to encourage undergraduates in Maine to take advantage of the current grants offered that lead to certifications in the Blindness rehabilitation fields and will assist with our recruitment efforts to obtain qualified staff.  Viewing these webinars is also an opportunity for staff to encourage clients that we work with to go into the blindness rehabilitation field.

Maine state government continues its efforts to better promote state jobs to person with disabilities. The Bureau of Human Resources provides a system, referred to as ‘Special Appointment’, to facilitate the recruitment of people from minority backgrounds and individuals with disabilities in filling State government vacancies. Through this initiative, the individual must meet the qualifications for the position and then can be hired under this program in an “acting capacity” for up to one year. The worker receives the same pay as other workers in this classification and earns sick and vacation time after 90 days but does not accumulate seniority time. If at any time during this year the supervisor deems the worker has performed their duties satisfactorily, he/she will be placed in the position as a new employee subject to the usual probationary period of new State employees. A unique feature of this initiative is that the Human Resources Department throughout all of state government is centrally connected to this process, which allows for people with disabilities from anywhere within the state to be contacted at the very first point the state becomes aware that there will be an open position. In this manner we can recruit from across a comprehensive network to fill vacancies within DBVI, providing the applicant meets the minimum qualifications of the State position.