[nfbmi-talk] Fantastic Point About Department of Labor vs. Department of Education

[Christine Boone]

Kane, 
I want to take a minute to address your question about how it is that Senator Harkin could have sponsored this legislation.  As you know, Tom Harkin has long championed the rights of persons with disabilities.  I honestly believe he may be unaware of the pitfalls that lie within a transfer of the public VR program to the Department of Labor.  On the surface it looks like a grand idea right?  After all, vocational rehabilitation is all about putting people with disabilities to work.  It made sense to me.  For the first 20 years of my work in the field of VR, I really thought that we would make huge progress in understanding and response time if only our programs could be in the DOL.  Then came the Workforce Investment Act in 1998, mandating that all state VR agencies were to partner with one-stops and develop positive working relationships inside the Workforce Investment cadre which was headed by the Labor Department.  In fact, the VR agencies were supposed to have a seat at the table as part of each State Workforce Investment Board.  
Time is indeed a teacher, and as time passed we discovered that the DOL saw the vocational rehabilitation system as a burden to be borne and nothing more.  This was our experience despite the fact that I was in Pennsylvania at the time, where the blindness agency had recently been moved from Public Welfare to Labor with largely positive results.  The bottom line is that our numbers are simply too small, and the ratio of staff to customers is too great within the one-stop system.  People with disabilities, and especially those of us who are blind, just disappear.  Many readers of this list already know what happens to them if they present at an unemployment office seeking assistance in getting a job.  If they are lucky they get sent to the VR agency, which probably sent them to the unemployment office in the first place.  If they are not so lucky they are shuffled from person to person only to find that yes there may be an accessible computer in the office, but either no one knows which one it is, or someone else is using it, or the access software has been disabled and so on.  

Sorry for the ramble, I really just wanted to say that I can understand why Senator Harkin and others could think that moving VR to Labor could have positive results for the bottom line of successful outcomes.  Logically it should work; but the past 15 years have clearly demonstrated that it does not.  This is why I think it could be powerful for you to reach out to him, as a former resident of the HawkEye state.  Thank him for all that he has done for this population in the past, and provide some education about what really happened when rehab and labor consummated their arranged marriage in 1998.  

Thanks for listening.  
Warmly,
Christine
 
 
On Feb 5, 2014, at 5:02 PM, Kane Brolin <kbrolin65 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2/5/14, Christine Boone <christineboone2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ...  I think that our first priority needs to be asking [Congress] Not to transfer
>> Rehabilitation out of the Department of Education. We have a great deal to
>> lose. One of our primary obstacles here in Michigan lies in the fact that
>> our rehabilitation agency is in a department that is part of the labor
>> system. Sadly they have no understanding of vocational rehabilitation
>> programs and worse yet, they do not desire to have any.  ...  We may not have a > whole lot now, but we will have less if Senator Harkin's amendment transferring
>> RSA to Labor goes through. That same
>> amendment strips away all of the professional requirements for direct
>> program staff. In other words, any DOL staff person could work in delivery
>> of vocational rehabilitation services.
> 
> Amazing, Christine.  I had no idea of the scope--just how nefarious
> this next edition of the Workforce Investment Act actually is.  As
> someone who grew up in Senator Harkin's home state, I am flabbergasted
> that he is this ignorant--or this underhanded--and that he would want
> to leave office this year with this as his legacy for disabled
> Americans.  Makes me wonder what he is getting out of it in terms of
> quid pro quo.
> 
> This is why I am grateful to be on the Michigan NFB listserv, even
> though I am no longer a Michigan resident.  It seems that many active
> Federationists up there are extremely passionate, knowledgeable, and
> active in speaking truth to power.  Makes me wish I had been active
> during the 4-½ years I lived there back in the '90s.  Thank you for
> taking time to share.
> 
> -Kane
> 
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