Directly Speaking
Direction’s Newsletter
Volume 2014, Issue 1
Directions in Independent Living, 512 West State Street, Olean, New York 14760 Voice &TTY 372-4419 FAX 373-4604
1-800-330-6305
http://www.oleanilc.org /OleanSSAN@live.com / info@oleanilc.org
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Marcella Richmond
Christina Veno
Sheryl Robertson
Richard Trietley
Laurence Knight
Pam McGarry
Brett Marvin
Fred Schiccitano
John E. Bartimole
Pat Vecchio
FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK
President
Vice-President
Secretary
Treasurer
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
A letter from Lenny Liguori
Summer is upon us and many people feel
the need to get out and be active. We here
at Directions encourage this. We
encourage our consumers to utilize the
YMCA and other recreational facilities to
Common Core Resources
For Parents of Students with
Disabilities
https://www.engageny.org/resource/commoncore-resources-parents-students-disabilities
determine exactly what kind of recreation
they want to do. As a reminder if you are
not sure what kind of recreation you’d like
to do, why not become involved with our
STRAWW program. Our mobile peer
advocates can help you determine what
Many parents have asked questions about how New
York State’s adoption of the Common Core Learning
Standards will affect their children who have
disabilities. Some of these questions arise from a lack
your spark of life is and determine a goal
plan for you to pursue. Why not stop in
and check it out?
of understanding of what the standards are; others
from concern about how their own children are
struggling with these new standards; others from
concerns about how schools are providing needed
supports for their children. These resources were
designed to encourage high expectations for how
teachers provide instruction to your child and how
your child’s progress toward those standards is being
monitored.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: LENNY LIGUORI
PROGRAM DIRECTOR: HOWARD CORNWALL
ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR: ROBIN LAND
Intellectually disabled face job struggles
DIRECTLY SPEAKING
by Sam Hananel.
Most Americans with intellectual or developmental
disabilities remain
shut out of the workforce, despite changing attitudes and
billions of
dollars spent on government programs to help them. Even
when they find
work, it's often part time, in a dead-end job or for pay well
below the
minimum wage.
2014-2015 HEAP Updates
Regular HEAP starts Nov 17th 2014 and ends Dec
31st 2014
Emergency HEAP starts Jan 2nd 2015 and ends
March 16 2015
Employment is seen as crucial for improving the quality of
life for
people with these disabilities and considered a benchmark
for measuring
the success of special-education programs. Yet the jobs
Heating Equipment Repair/Replacement begins
Nov 10th 2014
Cooling Assistance Program begins May 1st 2015
and ends Aug 28th 2015
picture is as
bleak now as it was more than a decade ago.
Benefit Amounts
Deliverable Fuel (Oil, Kerosene, Propane)
$575
Deliverable Fuel (Wood, Pellets, Coal Corn)
Continue to “Intellectually disabled face job struggles” on
page 6
In This Issue…
$500
Utilities/Municipal Electric Heat (Natural Gas, PSC
Regulated and Municipal Electric Heat)
$350
Board of Directors
1
Add On Amounts
Common Core Resources
1
+$25 for Tier 1 household
Letter from the Director
1
+$25 for Vulnerable Member in Household
HEAP Information
2
Heat Included Benefits
Intellectually Disabled Face Job Struggles
2, 4
Parent Advocacy Class Information
3
Family Table Food Ministries Information
3
Directions Information
5
Tier I= $35
Tier II=$30
Heat and Electric Included=$21
DIRECTLY SPEAKING
Directions in Independent Living
To offer Parent Advocacy Class
To Aid Parents with School Service
Plans
MAKE YOUR FOOD DOLLARS GO
Directions in Independent Living will
offer a parenting advocacy class to
assist parents in advocating for their
Special Needs Students in school. A
broad range of topics will include
discussions on Common Core,
available technology, planning for
Committee on Special Education
Meetings or 504 Meetings, review of
Procedure B (Parent Rights for
Students with Disabilities ; Ages 3-21,
what questions to ask school
personnel, and many others. The
group will be facilitated by Mr. Ron
Higley, a parent who has successfully
completed Parent Advocacy Trainings
through the Advocacy Center in
Rochester. New York. Meetings will
be approximately 1-1.5 hours long in
the conference rooms at Directions
located at 512 West State Street in
Olean, NY. Times and dates have not
been established. Parents interested
in signing up for a contact list can
telephone Jeff Capitani, Youth &
Family Services Coordinator at
Directions at716-3734602 or jcapitani@oleanilc.org.
FARTHER!
ONLINE ORDERING AVAILABLE
AT
www.familytablefoodministries
.com
2 locations
Faith Bible Church
Little Genesee, NY
585-928-1856
6:30am-9am
Distribution Day: Saturday
September 27, 2014
Bible Baptist
Friendship, NY
(W. Main St. across from
School/library)
585-973-7158
716-307-0288
Distribution Day:
Saturday September 27, 2014
DIRECTLY SPEAKING
…Continued from “Intellectually disabled face job
struggles
”
on pg. 2
Only 44 percent of
intellectually disabled adults are in the labor force, either employed
or looking for work, while just 34 percent are actually working,
according to a survey by Special Olympics and conducted by Gallup and
the University of Massachusetts at Boston. That compares with 83 percent
of non-disabled, working-age adults who are in the workforce.
"The needle has not changed in more than four decades," said Gary
Siperstein, a professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of
the authors of the study. "We just can't move the barometer. And we've
invested a lot of resources with lots of good programs around the country.
Intellectual disability can include conditions such as autism or Down
syndrome. But the vast majority of cases are those with limited
intellectual capacity - generally an IQ of about 75 or less - and
limitations in handling basic life skills, such as counting money or
taking public transportation. About 28 percent of working-age adults
with intellectual disabilities have never held a job. Even those who do
find jobs often end up working only part time and get lower pay than
workers without disabilities, the study found. On the positive side, 62
percent of disabled people who work in a competitive setting have been
there three years or more, showing they can work and stay with it.
"A lot of the problem has to do with low expectations," said Lynnae
Ruttledge, a member of the National Council on Disability, an
independent federal agency that advises the government on disability
policy. "Schoolteachers don't have high expectations, and parents tend
to be very protective of their children. But attitudes are changing, she
said.
There are now more programs to help disabled children gain work
experience while in school, making it easier to find a job. Many
intellectually disabled people work in fast food, and retail chains such
as Walgreens, Best Buy and Safeway have stepped up to hire them.
Another hurdle is that about 30 percent of intellectually disabled
people who work do so in sheltered workshops, where they perform basic
tasks but are segregated from non-disabled workers. They can legally be
paid less than the minimum wage under a 1938 federal law that allows
wages to be based on comparing their productivity level with that of a
non-disabled worker.
Disability rights advocates call these workshops outdated and say it's
discriminatory to pay them less than other workers. Critics say they
don't do enough to build skills or help transition intellectually
disabled workers into a mainstream work setting.
Defenders argue that
thousands of severely disabled people would be left sitting at home
without the carefully structured environments. Of the 420,000 disabled
people who work at sheltered workshops, only 5 percent ever leave
for other jobs alongside non-disabled workers.
Matthew McMeekin, 35, of Bethesda, Md., has spent 14 years working at
Rehabilitation Opportunities, a nonprofit sheltered workshop where he
and other disabled workers are bused each workday to stuff envelopes,
collate files or shrink-wrap products – all for far less than Maryland's
minimum wage of $8.25 an hour. "He's not working there for the money,"
said his mother, Bebe McMeekin. "He has a job to go to every day for
eight hours a day, five days a week. On Fridays he brings home a
paycheck. He has a work environment with his friends that he's gotten to
know there. Asked whether he would ever consider working anywhere
else,
McMeekin answered an emphatic "No! and rattled off the names of all his
work friends. His mother said that it would be hard for him to get
another job considering his limitations and vision problems.
The National Council on Disability has called on the federal government
to phase out sheltered workshops, a move that some states are already
making. Vermont became the first state to end the use of sheltered
workshops and sub-minimum-wage employment in 2003. "Sheltered
workshops
at least give them some social context and self-esteem, but it is still
segregating, not really mainstreaming them," said Stephen Corbin, senior
vice president of community impact at Special Olympics. "We prefer a
competitive employment situation.
Disability rights groups won a victory when President Obama signed an
executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for federal
contract workers. The order includes several thousand disabled workers
at sheltered workshops run by federal contractors.
At the other end of the spectrum is Ken Melvin of Crawfordsville, Ind.,
a truck driver who is among the few intellectually disabled people
living independently and working full time at a regular job. Melvin, 45,
earns about $50,000 a year making deliveries and pickups. He's married
with four children, has been a member of the National Guard and even
served in Afghanistan.
"My biggest disability is reading," Melvin said. "I can read something
and not understand it until I've read it 18 or 19 times. Even simple
tasks such as putting his shoes on can be hard. He was 11 years old
before he learned to put on his clothes correctly.
One of his teachers, who had a farm, helped him learn to drive a
tractor, then a truck. He got his commercial driver's license at 19 and
has been driving for a living ever since. "Anyone looking to hire
someone with a disability, they are going to get someone that's more
determined and more focused, because they've got to be," Melvin said.
DIRECTLY SPEAKING
Directions in
Independent Living
512 West State Street
Olean, NY ZIP 14743
Phone:
(716) 373-4602
Toll Free:
(800) 330-6305
Fax:
(716) 373-4602
E-Mail:
info@oleanilc.org
We’re on the Web!
Visit us at:
http://www.oleanilc.org/
Directions in Independent Living
512 West State Street
Olean, NY
14743