ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
In 2022, the Kansas Legislature passed a bill to allow agencies that provide help to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to be more competitive when it comes to employee pay.
Shortly after the passage of Senate Bill 267, in an effort to hire more workers to make its agency run more efficiently, Mosaic in Southwest Kansas began having weekly job fairs.
Recently, Mosaic Director Janeth Trevizo said those events are no longer needed, as many of the agency’s open positions have been filled and are now in limited supply.
In addition to helping Mosaic run more efficiently, Trevizo said she has also seen a difference in how employees work with each other.
“They are more consistently employed here,” she said. “They’ve been planning events. We’ve been having more things because now, they’re able to rely on each other. Who’s going to be coming to that shift? There’s more activities happening. People are going places.”
In a 2022 interview, Trevizo said with other employers paying as much as $15 an hour, Mosaic wanted to make sure its employees were compensated fairly for their work, as well as provide continuity and personalization of services, which in turn keeps them working with IDD clients. She added recently SB 267 has succeeded in helping the agency reach that goal.
“It helped with being able to provide a more competitive wage,” she said.
In the 2022 interview, Trevizo said SB 267 is beneficial because it makes the difficult task non-profit agencies like Mosaic have of keeping up with competitive wages a little easier.
“We do not have access to the funds,” she said in 2022. “We rely on what the state is giving us for the provider rate of an individual who may or may not need more care than what is being assessed. We don’t just say, ‘The state said they only need this limited support.’ It’s individualized. We provide the support they need regardless of what comes on that paper.”
Trevizo said another factor in helping with the situation is the introduction of Mosaic at Home, which allows for shared living environments, as the agency moves away from its traditional group home settings.
“We’re doing really well, and shared living will help with that,” she said.
