Pacific Training Centre for the Blind
www.pacifictrainingcentre.ca
BC Government Disability White Paper Consultation Submission
February 23, 2014
disabilitywhitepaper@gov.bc.ca.
Introduction
No public funding for blind individuals to receive intensive rehabilitation or blindness
skills training exists in British Columbia or in Canada; such public funding is necessary for
improving opportunity, employment and quality of life for blind Canadians.
The Pacific Training Centre for the Blind (PTCB), a non-profit Canadian grassroots
service organization founded and run by blind people, is working to change this situation and to
provide a positive skills-training option for blind people in BC and in Canada. The PTCB is
developing a three-year pilot Independence Program that will provide an intensive curriculum of
blindness skills and employment training to up to 40 blind working-age Canadians. The PTCB
will be charging a fee for blind British Columbians to attend this program; thus, blind individuals
will require government funding to pay this fee.
The Pacific Training Centre for the Blind recently received a grant from the BC Ministry
of Social Development and Social Innovation and the Disability Without Poverty Network for its
“Blind People in Charge Program.” This demonstration project teaches employment skills to
blind adults in Victoria and Nanaimo who are receiving disability assistance benefits.
The PTCB recently issued a press release about this issue. Below is an excerpt:
“The unemployment rate among blind adults is unacceptably high,” said
Elizabeth Lalonde, Director of the Pacific Training Centre for the Blind. “This
funding will go a long way towards giving employment opportunities for people
that desperately want to be included in the workforce. This will, in turn, create
opportunities for others in the future.”
It is Lalonde’s belief that if blind adults can learn skills that allow them to compete in a
workforce dominated by the sighted, it will help break down barriers that exist due to commonly
held misconceptions that blind people are helpless.
“The simple truth is that blind people are not helpless. A blind person can do pretty much
anything anyone else can. All they need is the right training, and the opportunity,” said Lalonde.
Pilot Project Summary
The Pacific Training Centre for the Blind is developing a pilot project to provide an
Independence Program to up to 40 working age blind Canadians over a period of three years
starting in September 2015.
Each student will enroll in the program for 10 months and take a nine-to-five curriculum
of classes in blindness and employment skills training, such as Braille, computers, cane travel,
cooking and life skills, recreation, job readiness and a positive perspective on blindness. In the
last month of the program, students will participate in a job internship. They will live in
apartments rented by the centre and will travel to the centre Monday to Friday for classes. Some
independent living classes will be taught at the apartments.
The program is based on an alternative civil rights model of blindness training called
structured discovery learning, in which blind people learn to become fully independent by using
their senses other than sight to navigate their surroundings, read Braille, use adaptive computers,
cook, work, go to school, travel, and become fully integrated, self-sufficient citizens.
This innovative approach teaches blind people how to problem solve, make their own decisions,
have high expectations of themselves and other blind people, and take charge of their own lives.
Students will learn from competent blind instructors in an atmosphere of dignity, self respect and
equality.
As James Omvig, a prominent blind scholar says, a successful blindness training centre
must instill a belief in its students that “blind people are simply normal people who cannot see
and that the average blind person can live a normal life and compete on terms of absolute
equality with people who are sighted, if given proper training and opportunity” (Omvig 2002).
The structured discovery method is currently being used by rehabilitation centres in the
United States, most notably, the highly successful National Federation of the Blind (NFB)
centres in Louisiana, Minnesota and Colorado, where 80 per cent of graduates find employment
or pursue post-secondary education that leads to employment (National Federation of the Blind),
and where centre graduates earn on average $11,000 more per year than people who have not
graduated from a centre (Louisiana Tech Institute on Blindness, 2011).
Why this Project is Essential
“In Canada, the lives of blind people have changed very little since the Victorian era over
the last one hundred years; there is still massive unemployment, fragmented and inadequate
rehabilitation and limited education or prospects for training,” (McCreath 2010).
Several studies show the high unemployment rate, near 75 per cent, and the low average
annual income, between $10,000 and $20,000, of blind working-age adults (National Coalition
for Vision Health 2011; CNIB 2005; Statistics Canada 2004).
Other studies demonstrate the lack of adequate, consistent or intensive rehabilitation and
training for blind Canadians. For example, a national study called “An Unequal Playing Field:
Report on the Needs of People who are Blind or Visually Impaired Living in Canada,” states that
“almost half the people surveyed in this study had “significant needs for assistance in daily life to
offset vision loss,” yet there was “inadequate support for these needs,” (CNIB / Government of
Canada 2005).
Also, according to a 2008 interpretation of Statistics Canada Data, “Canadians with
vision loss were more likely to have their needs unmet,” and adults with vision loss were more
likely to require assistance with everyday activities than the overall population of people with
disabilities,” (CNIB 2008; Statistics Canada PALS 2001).
Keys to Success
1.
The Pacific Training Centre for the Blind pilot project will adopt the same method of
teaching used at the three world-renowned centres mentioned above; this method is called
structured discovery learning, a non-conventional, experiential-style model of instruction,
which studies show, results in far better outcomes for blind students than the traditional
approach. The structured-discovery model taught at the pilot centre will be a positive
addition to the extremely limited, (in many cases, nonexistent), conventional
rehabilitation services currently available in Canada, where students are taught to
memorize tasks and travel routes.
2.
The Pacific Training Centre for the Blind will promote a belief in the unlimited potential
of blind people and high expectations of all participants. The centre will change attitudes
as well as teach skills.
3.
Blind people, not sighted people, will be in charge of this project and will run every
aspect of the centre. Competent blind instructors will serve as role models for the
students and will show by example just how capable blind people can be. As well as
blind staff, blind community members and students at the centre will serve as mentors.
After graduation from the centre, a long-lasting network of support will remain through
organizations of the blind (the Canadian Federation of the Blind and the National
Federation of the Blind).
4.
The project will be a twenty-four-hour 10 month residential-style program and will focus
on integrated skill-building. This longer-term holistic program will allow students to
absorb, process and build on what they learn and will enable them to live their life with
the tools and foundation needed for full independence and freedom; this intensive
program differs markedly from a short-term program of a few hours of individual-skill
training every few months, (the only kind of training currently available in Canada).
5.
The style of training proposed in this pilot project takes students outside their familiar
areas, communities and comfort zones and puts them in new surroundings with new
people; this change in setting helps the person acquire new positive belief systems about
their blindness and helps them connect with other blind people who are also learning and
growing. Families and friends of blind people mean well, but can sometimes become
overprotective, thereby, unintentionally impeding the blind person’s journey towards
independence