[humanser] Persons with disabilities unwelcome at home with programs

[Lisa Irving]

Hi Carlie,

I'm attempting to respond to your remarks about the full inclusion of persons with disabilities at homeless shelters and other human services related programs. Things are not always appear with they seem to be. That is if I look below the service what I see I am more apt to see what's really happening. In my opinion, and based on some of my personal experience, and the personal experiences of others I contend that there are huge gaps in service delivery to persons with disabilities within the realm of human services.

San Diego has a huge homeless population do, in part, to the nice weather we have most of the time. Many of the homeless shelters are older buildings. Because they are older they have been grandfathered in and do not have to meet accessibility requirements which would otherwise enable persons in wheelchairs to receive services at the shelter.

I am personally acquainted with the victims of crime program in California otherwise known as safe at home. Between 2009 and 2014 there have been many many boondoggles when it is come to the agency providing their information in digital format. As of last summer the agencies EEOC officer was also the agencies ADA compliance officer; a job that he is not competent to handle.

I attempted to work with this individual and others at the agency to include a blind professional on their advisory board. The safe at home program is located in Sacramento California.
Therefore, I had recommended that the ADA compliance officer contact the Sacramento society for the blind. Needless to say there are still no blind individuals on the advisory board. I surmise this is true and other instances with the other programs.

I need a completely different note I'd like to update those of you who have been very supportive of me when I applied for a recent position. Although I did not get the job I am completely confident that my blindness at absolutely nothing to do with the program director hiring another individual. I am keeping my eyes open for future positions with this particular organization.

I believe that in order to create best practices for serving persons with disabilities there needs to be a whole lot more education from the top down. Such an opportunity to provide some community education happened to me as a result of a recent and poorly written job posting for a large organization. I am happy to let you know that I will be having a conversation with the director of human resources, the West Coast director, for Recovery Innovations or Recovery options. If you work for this organization would you please contact me off-line. I look forward to sharing positive results about the upcoming conversation with their human resources director. If those of you who work closely with your human resources director have advice or recommendations for me to share with the individual home I will speak with please let me know.

From,
Lisa Irving

P. S., I will be so glad when I get a working laptop return to me because I do not like using the dictation feature on my smart device.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 22, 2015, at 8:04 AM, dotwriter1--- via humanser <humanser at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone. I think this is the perfect place to ask this question seeing as we are all in Caring professions. I recently had lunch with my friend Naomi who used to work at our local Salvation Army and then worked with our local interfaith homeless shelter type program. She witnessed The supposedly caring caseworkers snaking snap decisions about people with physical disabilities not being able to participate in the programs. Now I realize that it is church-based there for the ADA doesn't force them to do anything. The current building is not handicapped accessible because of the historical nature of the building. It is a former school built in the 1800s I believe. At least one blind person with no other problems was denied and this is wrong of course. Anyone have done education with these programs before? I could contact people in my state and FB, but I'm looking for something from you because you are in the human services field. Any ideas off line or online would be appreciated. I am working with a non-prophet, Interfaith human rights advocacy group to accomplish changes. They are fully behind me.
> 
> Ericka
> Sent from my iPhone
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