Lake County DAC: Looking Ahead on the North Shore

In 2018, Michelle McDonald, the executive director of Lake County DAC in Two Harbors, Minnesota, felt stuck. At the time, Lake County DAC offered only prevocational and day support services. Michelle sensed that competitive integrated employment was the way of the future, but she struggled to get buy-in from staff. She applied for Lake County DAC to receive technical assistance on organizational transformation as part of a two-year project called the Minnesota Technical Assistance Project (MN-TAP) led by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration and the University of Massachusetts – Boston's Institute for Community Inclusion. This proved to be a game-changer for Lake County DAC. With the support of Don Lavin and Cecilia Gandolfo, their technical assistance team, Lake County DAC trained staff in customized employment and person-centered planning, revamped their informed choice process, and began offering employment services. When Lake County DAC staff helped a person supported by the organization to get their dream job at the local Holiday gas station, the floodgates opened. Suddenly, many people wanted a job in the community, and staff had bought in to the transformation.

Today, Lake County DAC supports 20 people in a town of about 3600 people on the North Shore. Eight of those people work in competitive, integrated employment. Lake County DAC ended its work crews because they could no longer staff them—too many people were working in the community—and in the spring of 2024 they ended their long-time recycling contract with the county. The savings in workers’ compensation and insurance has helped make this transition financially viable. The organization will be ending its 14c subminimum wage certificate when it expires at the end of 2024, and the two people who remain in center-based employment have chosen to transition into day support services. Michelle and her team at Lake County DAC continue to look ahead at what’s next. They are undertaking an organizational rebranding and have plans to expand and innovate the services they offer for competitive integrated employment and community life engagement.

MN-TAP ended in 2020, but the Minnesota Transformation Initiative (MTI) now exists as a resource for providers interested in organizational transformation to apply for support from MTI’s technical assistance team. Opportunities to participate in intensive, year-long technical assistance with a cohort of providers and to receive targeted, short-term technical assistance will be announced in our newsletter and the transforming providers area of our website.