Emergencies and Time Delay

Apologies to my blog readers for disappearing. WordPress and I had a difference of opinion on who is doing this. Been too busy to work it out.

Work on emergency planning for Chapelwood United Methodist Church has been top on agenda with a Ferno sales rep coming today to demonstrate an evacuation chair that might let us get our persons with disabilities out of harms way in case of any kind of emergency. It’s amazing the number of appliances out there that help people to safety. Our priority is safety for both the person being transported down stairs and for the persons who are doing the transporting. I may be the guinea pig this afternoon as I transfer to one of the chairs. The planning committee is made up of people who are experts in their fields who have worked diligently to put an emergency plan together. I have learned a lot from them, and will now need to amend the Circle of Friends emergency procedures.

Our new service opportunity for teens begins in September, and we are in the process of organizing information and meeting with volunteers to work out safety practices and schedules that will be not only fun but productive.  The group will be small, but we expect it to grow as do all our programs that are based on need. The program will serve high school graduates who have no transition program or place to go due to state cut backs in funding.

CERT Emergency Information for Disabilities

I shared information with the Heights CERT group this week. As usual, I learned a lot from this group of volunteers who have trained themselves as first responders as well as community activists for emergency preparation. A few already had experience with caregiving or disabilities. Main pitch of our discussion was around how to meet a person with a disability and let communication give you clues to your assessment of what is needed. This lets you respond quickly in the correct manner. I stressed the importance of immediate post emergency care in keeping everyone together at the evacuation point or caring for persons who are hunkered down.  There was a lot of interest in how to aid shut ins, and we discussed some of the ways to find shut ins and help them prepare for an emergency. I took with me a prototype of a booklet I am making for first responders, and the group made suggestions for improving it.

Perhaps your neighborhood has a C.E.R.T group: Community Emergency  Response Team. They may be on the job and you never heard about them. They offer basic training in disaster survival and rescue skills. They train ordinary citizens to first take care of themselves, their families and home, and then, if possible to help their neighbors.

Getting Ready for Emergencies

Circle of Friends is updating their emergency material to include additional groups that use their facilities. Hurricane season will do that to you as well as seeing a fire or power outage on the news. A new discovery last week when the power went off: have occupants open their cell phones, and, voila!, light!  Trick is to rotate usage to preserve batteries. In the news this week was a woman and her family trapped under a house-load of debris by the tornado in Joplin. She turned on her cell phone, opened it and rescuers found her in the night because of the tiny rays of light showing.

Our leaders of disability groups are instructed to grab emergency information notebooks as they evacuate. A designated person leads and a designated last person makes sure no one is left behind.

Let’s hope no one needs to use any of this, but we all think emergencies happen to someone else. Not true, is it? Do you have your grab bag and ID ready?

Share Vocational Information

Networking and new information presented by Reverend Greg Edwards encouraged parents at a joint meeting of parent chat groups last week. Greg, who is on the board of directors of the Methodist Mission Home in San Antonio, talked about the arm of the Home that is Southwest Center for Higher Independence. Every parent there wanted higher independence for their student, so there were many questions about evaluation, prospects for future independence. Parents pointed out that many students do not qualify for DARS and function at a different level than expected at most transition institutions. There is a huge need in this area, especially since Texas is cutting funding to most programs that would help these students. It was an informative evening, and some of you are planning to visit the facility. I offered my cabin for an overnight bed and breakfast, but I will wait to buy the eggs and bacon until plans gel.

Hearing Impaired and Church Services

Sign language interpreters at our church are placed in good visual lines to both read and see what is happening. More than one interpreter is needed, and they trade off, sometime with specialty in music for which they have been given words to an anthem or Bible reading for which they have been given advance references. Theological terms are different from regularly signed words, and references are available to help with this. Our church had several signing classes, and about eight persons became minimally proficient and some went on to do advanced study. If you hire interpreters, it costs from $100 up for a few hours, so this becomes a budget item for the general church rather than the worship budget. We also had a speech reading class that helped persons learn to place ideas under a topic for clues to what they were hearing.

Our minister uses big screen power point phrases and verses as illustration of his sermon. This helps speech readers understand categories and idea tags. Make sure the ministers face is well lighted and not in shadow.

A big need for persons with hearing impairments of any kind is socialization. Invite a group of persons who use sign language to lunch. Laugh at yourself at the awkward mistakes. The act of caring enough to do this sends a message of its own. Teach Sunday school teachers to use white board idea words and other visuals to help persons in their groups who are losing their hearing.

I hope this helps the persons who responded with questions on this topic.

The Texas Deaf Ear for Disabilities

There is no voice loud enough to yell at the State of Texas budget cuts to the disabled and elderly. You can’t yell at the cuts. You have to yell at people, but they are deaf. Care givers of persons with special needs and older persons have yelled, they have called, written, faxed, demonstrated to absolutely deaf ears and blind eyes. When nursing homes are closed along with group homes and the closure of two state institutions mandated by the Justice Department puts persons with disabilities on the streets, someone might notice. It will not be our state representatives or the governor. They are in their cool offices drinking Starbucks coffee. It will be the general public saying, “Why didn’t someone tell me?”

We are telling you now. It is heartless, shameful and wrong to take away the foundations and futures of all these people and their parents. Yes, I am angry. Because I hear and see the terror of parents and loved ones who have had the rug pulled out from under them. Their safety net is gone.

The economic impact will also be felt across the state. Intellectually disabled persons who have no place to spend their days in work and transitional programs must stay home with a caregiver who will have to quit a job to be there. These are the caregivers who work to save a nest egg for the aging years of their loved one. In another area, thousands of workers will be laid off from care, work and nursing centers. We are about to see a huge drain on the government for unemployment. Has this been figured in by those in Austin? I doubt it.

If you haven’t faxed or called your representative, now is the last minute. This is definitely a rainy day.

Bleak Future for SN High School Graduates

In light of government funding to community based and private sector partnerships, the future is bleak for students who have graduated high school. Their parents, some of whom have had to quit jobs, have become the sole companion for the day, week, etc. Many of them are on waiting lists for any sort of help, but now is the time for them to reinforce the skills they learned in school, both intellectual and social. Now is the time for them to have a reason to take care with grooming and get out there in the world.

We are exploring an exciting new opportunity for students who have finished high school and have no place to take their talents. It’s a postage stamp on a full scale problem, but it may be an opportunity for churches. A day program for service to the community is on the drawing board. Fact finding is important before we decide to undertake a new program at Chapelwood UMC. Does anyone out there have a day work program for teens and those slightly above that age level? If so, please share your expertise. Our churches aim of making disciples includes helping them become disciples, so this has huge importance.

Two students from our recent special needs confirmation class want to put into action what they learned about giving something back to the church and about helping others. At our first exploratory meeting we set goals for the students and the parents and discussed how to accomplish these goals. Every program that meets student’s needs will grow, so our preliminary fact finding is taking that into consideration. It’s exciting, but also a little daring even daunting in these hard economical times. I’m convinced that big hearts make big plans, so watch this billboard to find out if this is a go.

Proposed Budget Cuts Terrorizing Parents of Disabled

The eyes and voices of parents of persons with disabilities reflect sheer terror about the futures of their children in light of proposed budget cuts in the state of Texas. The safety nets for their children and themselves is shredded! Group homes will be under-staffed or closed, day sheltered workshops that allow students to be productive will be limited or eliminated, and many community services will be so underfunded the long waiting lists will get even longer. When a child has no place to work or “be” during the day, a parent will have to quit work and stay home with them permanently, and this is at a time when they are saving for when they are gone and there is no one to care for their child.

We are already faced with waiting lists in the hundreds for job training or workshops for students who just graduated from high school at the age or 22. The future is bleak for them. They need to be productive citizens to have a sense of worth. They need socialization in order to keep the personal skills they learned in school. They have had the misfortune to have parents who live in Texas, a state that contributes less to their care than any in the United States. People in general value persons with disabilities, but somehow our leaders do not. It’s not malice, just lack of understanding and in some cases heart. It’s a shame, too, because most of them profess to be Christian or have other religious values with guidelines that say they are to do for the persons least able to do for themselves. Maybe we need to educate them.

Please call AND write your congressman and find out who is on the finance committee that could use your information. It’s urgent. Don’t wait.

Confirmation for Persons with Disabilities Yesterday

Four spectacular students aged 14 to 45 were confirmed yesterday at Chapelwood United Methodist Church in an awesome service of sacred flow and celebration. Along with the five leaders who helped them in this quest, the students stood before the congregation to make their verbal and American sign language promises to God and the congregation. After the vows of membership and a reaffirmation of their previous baptisms, the congregation joined in a holy hug with every member gathered toward the confirmands at the altar and touching the shoulder of another person in a spiritual chain. In an impressive and reverent, spirit-filled moment, Reverend Denison, who led the class, then gave a prayer for each student as she recounted the blessings each brings to the body of Christ. There was a holy hug of silence before the congregation broke into thunderous applause, the longest applause I have ever heard in our sanctuary. Everyone there REALLY supports and speaks love to all the persons in our programs of special needs. Do we feel blessed? You bet.

At a reception later, parents were thanked for entrusting their children to the church, and Reverend Denison presented each confirmand with a prayer box with a commemorative card with the cross and flame, symbol of the United Methodist Church. On the back of the card is listed the promises each student made. It was fun with family and friends, the Circle of Friends adult and teen Sunday school class and good sandwiches and a cake with the confirmand’s names on it. I personally ate “Alec.”

MS Eye Facility

Hardly anyone has seen inside his own eye, but with the right equipment someone can. An eye examination led me this week to Dr. Rosa Tang, neuropthamologist at the University of Houston multiple sclerosis eye facility. It may be the only such facility of its kind in the United States. The latest equipment and specialists in using each one plus a staff of thorough doctors and technicians makes the examination amazing. In addition, everyone there was friendly, and wonders of wonder, there were legitimate van parking places close to the ramp. On a bitterly cold day, this was important.

According to Lighthouse for the Blind one in every 20 persons has low vision, an amazing statistic if you don’t know you have low vision. Maybe you think everyone sees those letters as blurred or fragmented, or squiggly (my non-medical term). Also amazing on the internet and elsewhere are the number of assistive aids available, everything from timepieces, telephones, talking books, reading machines to GPS programmed for persons with low vision. Never have the fixes for low vision been more abundant.