[blindlaw] FW: [MARKETING EMAIL]Federal Employees with Disabilities - Moving your career forward

Tue Apr 19 15:23:27 UTC 2016

From: Norman, Gary C. (CMS/OSORA) [mailto:Gary.Norman at cms.hhs.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 7:53 AM
To: Gary Norman home (glnorman15 at hotmail.com) <glnorman15 at hotmail.com>; nellyburker at aol.com
Subject: FW: [MARKETING EMAIL]Federal Employees with Disabilities - Moving your career forward

From: Federal Employees with Disabilities (FEDs) [mailto:fedsfirst=gmail.com at mail213.atl171.mcdlv.net] On Behalf Of Federal Employees with Disabilities (FEDs)
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2016 9:22 AM
To: Norman, Gary C. (CMS/OSORA)
Subject: [MARKETING EMAIL]Federal Employees with Disabilities - Moving your career forward

Get the most up-to-date and accurate information about the Federal Employment of People with Disabilities.

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Strategic Planning: Important to Advancing Conversations on Employment

Language: Barrier or Beautifier to Human Experience

Accessible Sports – Yoga

Who is FEDs?

________________________________
Strategic Planning: Important to Advancing Conversations on Employment
By:  Mark J Benedict, J.D. – FEDs Vice President and USDA FSIS DEPM

[Image removed by sender. EEOC Logo]Progress does not exist in the level one hopes for employment and upward mobility for leaders with disabilities. Unfortunately, no silver bullet exists for making the federal government the model employer it should be. Strategic thought leadership, as one point of leverage, may help advance the goal.

In the Spring of 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a Federal Sector Disability Employment strategic planning session. Senior Federal leaders and subject matter experts in disability employment met; discussing the challenges and opportunities posed by Executive Order #13548 requiring 4 % of all new Federal hires to be persons with targeted disabilities and 10% of all new Federal hires to be persons with a reportable disability. Jason Olsen, represented Federal Employees with Disabilities at that one-day strategic planning session. Mark Benedict attended representing the United States Department of Agriculture -- FSIS in his capacity as the FSIS Disability Employment Program Manager. On May 28, 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the Department of Labor engaged in a follow-up the Disability Employment Federal Strategy Planning and Engagement session.

A result of that one-day gathering was a series of follow-on actions, including, the creation of multiple working groups; each tasked with addressing issues identified as priorities and to develop resources and tool kits for addressing those identified issues that could be shared with all session attendees. The 4 working groups focus on the following:  Proposed Changes to Schedule A, known as the Schedule A Authority working group; Reasonable Accommodations; Partnership and Collaboration - Disability Employment Resource Groups, known as the Collaboration and Partnerships to Improve Inter-Agency and Intra-Agency Collaboration working group; and, Empowerment & Upward Mobility -- meaning Retention and Advancement after the hire, known as the Empowerment to Improve Upward Mobility, Advancement and Retention of Persons with Disabilities working group. Jason and Mark each serve on several of these working groups and were recently interviewed by the working group Chairpersons to get their views on the various issues identified and to help build the issue-specific resources for inclusion on the issue toolkit.

Each of the working groups will be a de facto data warehouse for each identified disability employment strategic issue. Each member of each working group should provide the working group Chair links to or copies of any policies, practices, and procedures developed by their agency concerning that working group’s focus. That would include, for example, any official announcements or policy statements on Employee Retention and Advancement; or also for example, Memoranda of Understanding, formal regulations, policies, Standard Operating Procedures, or Best Practices. For questions or to contribute, please contact Mark by phone at (202) 205-7913 or via e-mail at mark.benedict at fsis.usda.gov<mailto:mark.benedict at fsis.usda.gov> .

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Language: Barrier or Beautifier to Human Experience
By: Vittorio S Santoro, PhD, LCSW-C

[Image removed by sender. Photo that reads "hello" in different languages]The language that frames conversations about people with disabilities, a word I reluctantly utilize, often serves to limit thinking as much as it clarifies. As an individual, who might be described as a person with a disability these days, who would be described definitely as an older adult who has semi-retired from a career in the federal government to the shade of my fig tree, I focus a lens of personal and professional experience to that conversation.

I have observed that people with disabilities combat (even with the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act and laws that have followed) barriers to employment – both the barriers they erect for themselves; and most of all, the barriers erected without their control. Language comprises one form of barrier in this regard. I perhaps did truly not know this, until I also fell into the disability classification. As such, it falls incumbent on leaders to frame conversations powerfully.

Family members, co-workers, healthcare professionals and allied professionals, and individuals with disabilities themselves can become imprisoned by the words used to describe disability? When terms describe a person who lacks one or more senses, often the person receives myopically a description as “blind”, “hyperactive”, “of limited mental ability” instead of labels as a citizen, as a person, as a contributor. Well, that this limits employment, that perhaps looms foul enough, but it may also deleterious impact health.

Personal story: In addition to my physical therapy sessions, which I energetically completed, as rehabilitation to a series of streaks; the medical staff prescribed an anti-depressant medication without evaluating whether or not I was depressed. My daughter Gina, a psychologist, noticed the medication and asked me if I was depressed. One presumes the medical staff prescribed the medication; grounded in a stereotype that, an older adult, suffering through the pains of post stroke rehabilitation, must be apriority depressed. That unfortunate older adult -- sick, physically or mentally hindered by illness. And so, the thinking is that, if someone has a stroke, he or she must be depressed. He or she is a “stroke victim” instead of a leader with a rich life story.

Given inertia imposed by external actors of authority, such as physicians, such as career counselors, individuals with disabilities may fall into defining themselves as disabled – not as a badge of pried, not as a classification that enables certain opportunities but rather as a Rubicon that divides. Unfortunately, this comprises a fixed, rigid, way of thinking, rather than having an expansive perspective that seizas each moment as opportunity to adapt, to think about and commit to strategies and actions that enrich.

So often in my psychotherapy practice, I have seen this “buying” of a stereotype by patients. I have been heartened when I have met an individual who does not see “handicap” as a term that exhausts the understanding. This expansive approach is also how I have adapted to life post-stroke.

When I worked at the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind in Washington D.C., I was fortunate enough to meet and work with individuals with a growth approach. They adapted to their situations sometimes with difficulty but always the goal was the same: to continue to grow.

________________________________
Accessible Sports – Yoga
By: Gary C. Norman, Esq.

“Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play.” John Muir, the [Image removed by sender. Picture of a calendar that says "yoga" for "today"] Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913) PP. 186-87

How many people have been on the commuter train listening to riders discuss their ten thousand steps in what seems like a daily obsession to meet the demands of the fitbit?

Despite the stereotypes of disability, federal employees with disabilities may be healthier – at least within the boundaries of their abilities and not disabilities. Yoga, an exercise that engages the mind-body connection, provides a low-impact form of exercise accessible, in a great range, to the blind and to others who may have a physical limitation.

Whether people with disabilities, in confronting the benefits and the challenges of difference, are less than or are more than super hero, it is important to recognize that difference causes stress, a kind of wear and tear on the physical and mental body. While this is true of all Americans these days in a faster and faster technological-driven society, people with disabilities have unique stressors resulting from the benefits of being the unique dog handler in the room or the challenge of hearing somehow one is less than because they access the computer differently. As the expanding body of research shows, stress and anxiety, when unmanaged, causes disease, including, but not limited to, a negative energetic space around one’s body. Particularly, people with disabilities may be recognized as ailing from health disparities, including, equal access to recreation and sports. And, as a consequence, people with disabilities are, at a minimum, perceived as being unhealthy. Yoga, an exercise that engages the mind-body connection, provides a low-impact form of exercise accessible, in a great range, to the blind.

According to Nelly Burke, a Licensed Massage Therapist in Maryland as well as a yoga instructor, “Since yoga is a study of the self, it's great for anyone, including the blind.” In basic terms, yoga relies on a range of poses that engage various energy and physical pressure points in the body. I have no more difficulty than sighted colleagues in performing any of the various moves interestingly if usually named for sundry kinds of animals. While one performs a posture, one must focus on breathing; thereby engaging the spirituality of physical movement – actions not limited to the sighted.

Nelly also stated, “As a blind person, the poses are accessible,” bringing their practitioner into a state conducive to reaching meditation, “which is the ultimate practice of yoga.”
So I recommend the next time a blind colleague feels fatigued, engage exercise.

________________________________
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