The real story in this edition of the Newsletter is how a group of folks known as Disability Navigators were able to mobilize and provide assistance to people with disabilities whose lives had been torn asunder by Hurricane Katrina. If you already know about the Disability Program Navigators, just skip down to that article. If not, this introduction should be helpful and informative.

OVERVIEW: Disability Program Navigators Initiative

In1998, President Clinton signed the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA). This Act reformed Federal job training programs and was intended to create a new comprehensive system to meet the needs of job seekers and keep the American workforce vital and attuned to the needs of the country’s workplaces. The cornerstone of the sweeping reforms that it brought was a commitment to collaboration and partnership amongst the myriad of agencies and services that address career and employment needs of communities throughout the country. As stated by the Department of Labor, “The success of the reformed workforce investment system is dependent on the development of true partnerships and honest collaboration at all levels and among all stakeholders.”

The demonstration of this collaboration and partnership amongst stakeholders is most evident in WIA’s investment in “One-Stop centers” throughout the country. According to the Department of Labor, “The underlying notion of One-Stop is the coordination of programs, services and governance structures so that the customer has access to a seamless system of workforce investment services” – intended to better meet the needs of both job seekers and employers alike.

Interestingly, from the outset, WIA made a strong commitment to universal access: “Any individual will have access to the One-Stop system and to core employment-related services. Information about job vacancies, career options, student financial aid, relevant employment trends, and instruction on how to conduct a job search, write a resume, or interview with an employer is available to any job seeker…” In practice, however, a majority of One-Stops seemed poorly-prepared to provide these services to people with disabilities - even resistant to do so. Attitudinal barriers were rampant and job seekers with disabilities encountered cool, awkward or even hostile reception at the centers. The centers were often ill-prepared to meet any needs for accommodation within their own programs. While One-Stops busily recruited job seekers for their services, outreach to job seekers with disabilities appeared to be minimal at best.

In October of 2002, the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced a partnership to establish a new program to improve the capacity of One-Stops to effectively serve job seekers with disabilities. This new initiative provided funds for Disability Program Navigator (DPN) or "Navigator" positions within DOL’s One-Stop Career Centers. In essence, these Navigators would be the grease that would cause the One-Stop wheels to start turning in favor of folks with disabilities. Now attached to over 200 One-Stops, Navigators do proactive outreach to job seekers with disabilities. They help One-Stops to become more accessible and accommodating to job seekers with disabilities. They provide information and training to employers in their communities. Essentially, they do everything possible to make the One-Stop center and its partners to work as effectively with job seekers with disabilities as they do with non-disabled job seekers.

mong the many distressing images and stories that were released in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, were those that bore evidence to the plight of victims with disabilities – stories of people without needed medication, pictures of abandoned wheelchairs, etc. In fact over 450,000 people with disabilities resided in areas affected by the hurricane. As the Department of Labor observed: “The life-disrupting impact of these disasters is likely to fall heavily on people with disabilities.” Not only were people with disabilities reeling from the loss and dislocation in their own lives, but most of the agencies from which they would normally receive help (like Vocational Rehabilitation) were in their own state of disarray.

While assistance and relief efforts reached these folks in many forms, one particular initiative, the “DPN Katrina Initiative” was focused on helping folks get back to earning a living. Under this program, Disability Navigators from several states were pulled together to form teams that would wade into the disaster areas and provide on-the-spot assistance to people with disabilities. They were charged with seeking out people with disabilities and/or their caregivers - attending to their emergency needs, and employment needs – either by connecting them to available programs and services or, if need be, by providing services directly. With funds from their own program, the teams were able to purchase prostheses, MRIs, hearing aids, wheelchair ramps and any other goods or services that they could not secure from another source in a timely manner.

Glenn Olsen is one of our business associates. He is the High Risk Population Specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. In this capacity, he is also the Disability Program Navigator Lead for Wisconsin. Glenn had led one of the DPN Katrina Initiative teams and shared some of his experiences with us. I invited him to be interviewed for this article and he readily accepted. When I asked Glenn about his first impressions of the disaster area, he replied; “A picture is worth a thousand words - and a thousand pictures can never describe the area down there. Where towns had been there was just devastation… rubble. We didn’t see a stray cat or a dog – or even birds flying.”

By mid-September, two highly-mobile teams were already deployed in Mississippi. Living in RVs and cruising neighborhoods in SRVs, these teams immediately conducted “reconnaissance missions” to learn the areas, develop an inventory of available resources, and conduct outreach to people with disabilities. (According to Glenn, available community resources were always a “moving target” as service agencies came and went or moved operations from one location to another.) The Mississippi team provided assistance to over 200 people in just the first four days!

As an example of their experience, Glenn told me “One of the Navigators had driven past an area near Ocean Springs that was just blasted. The building there was flattened. She saw a blue tent and a ship’s wheel with a lot of award medals and hanging from it – obviously connected to the military in some way. There was also this strange little grotto of wheelchairs and scooters.” This vision intrigued Glenn and the team – enough so that they kept returning to the property to seek out the owner. After a couple of days they eventually met up with the woman, Glenda (not her real name) who owned the property. While trying to get a trailer to live in, she had been spending nights at a nearby Air Force Base and returning to her property during the days – trying to protect her belongings. Glenn explained, “She used a scooter that had a ‘She Served Too’ sticker on the back. She had a combined service career of 11 years with the Air Force and the Navy. A ‘powder keg’ would be the best way to describe her – full of gumption. The ‘grotto’ turned out to be her source of spare parts for her scooter.” Working with her, Glenn and the team expedited the task of getting an accessible house trailer from FEMA. That process also educated FEMA staff on the technical specifications required for true accessibility.

As Glenn related more of their experiences, I got the picture of a roving troupe of Navigators cruising through communities, seeking out people with disabilities and, wherever they encountered them, finding out what unmet needs they had and working with them, cutting through red tape and doing end runs to make those things happen. That was true Glenn concurred, but after the first few days, as the Navigators made contact with the police, fire station and schools, “We didn’t have to go out finding people with disabilities. The project became known in the community and they began coming to us.”

The Navigators met up with a man who was a “shrimper” – he made his living catching shrimp. They found out that his hearing aid had been broken in the storm and his boat had been damaged – rendering him unable to make a living. While they couldn’t readily replace his $6000 hearing aid, as Glenn put it “You don’t need to hear too much on a shrimp boat anyway, but if you are not out there – you’re not making money. So we worked with him to repair his boat so that he could start generating income and find a way to replace his hearing aid on his own.”

A man who had lost his prostheses in the hurricane hooked up with the Navigators. A welder by trade, he couldn’t go back to work without replacing his $4000 prostheses. “We got him fixed up and he started off making $18/hour. He switched jobs and was making over $20 an hour by the time we left.”

Glenn explained that, in some cases, the Navigators helped people to earn incomes through self employment. “On the Houma Nation we set up a woman with pots and pans so she could do cooking in her home. Then she would take the food out to the nearby oil refineries and sell lunches to the workers.”

The stories go on and on… with Navigators weaving their way through communities delivering wheel chairs, connecting people to job openings, building ramps, securing medication, comforting and counseling people, and connecting folks to income assistance programs. Drawing on the talent and commitment of fifty Navigators from thirteen different states, the Initiative continued through to December 18, 2005, bringing hope and help to hundreds of people with disabilities whose lives had been torn apart by the Katrina.

In summary, Glenn told me that the Navigators that participated formed a strong bond through this extraordinary experience and that, for many, it was a life-changing experience. One of the Navigators, Doug Denning from Oregon, summed up his experience with these words; “It was a great opportunity to represent the State of Oregon. It was a great opportunity to represent the Navigator program. But it was a great opportunity to represent myself. When the catastrophe took place, we all asked ourselves ‘What can I do?’ How cool was it to be able to go and provide hands-on, one-on-one assistance? It was the opportunity of a lifetime.”

~ Rob McInnes

(In publishing this article, we want to applaud the decision-makers within the DOL and the SSA that recognized the unique plight of people with disabilities within the communities affected by Hurricane Katrina, and who took the initiative to dedicate funds and mobilize these teams from the DPN Initiative.)

© Rob McInnes, Diversity World, January, 2006

(If not used for commercial purposes, this article may be reproduced, all or in part, providing it is credited to "Rob McInnes, Diversity World - www.diversityworld.com". If included in a newsletter or other publication, we would appreciate receiving a copy.)

Solutions Marketing Group is a marketing consulting firm dedicated to providing businesses with innovative marketing strategies that target consumers with disabilities. To demonstrate how talent can transcend disability, they have added a fun little quiz to their website – where readers are asked to match well-known persons to their (often not-so-well-known) disabilities.

One of our stalwart readers, Elliot Lazerwitz, alerted us to this article that the Philadelphia Inquirer published in December 2005. Subtitled “Employees at a counseling agency have similar problems as the clients', and their coping skills could work anywhere”, it has been very well-received by folks who experience mental illness. We provide this link to it provided by OpenMindsOpenDoors in Pennsylvania.

Business Abilities is an online resource for people with disabilities who want to start their own businesses. It has online tools for people to research their business ideas and prepare their business plan. They also offer follow-up business management workshops.

This is the lead article in the December issue of EQUITY e-newsletter. The article profiles three successful programs in Iowa that are expanding employment opportunities for people with disabilities – the Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Program of The Abilities Fund, the Improving Transition Outcomes program of Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services, and the Smart Start program of the Employment Policy Group.

The Internet Business Development for Entrepreneurs with Disabilities (IBDE) Program is a free three month on-line, web design course followed by a three month segment where students put their new skills into practice building a web site under the guidance of their instructor. Once the participant completes the training portion of the program they can build a website for their own business or design a website for another business, throughout the work experience segment. The skills learned in the IBDE program are used as the basis for establishing an affordable home-based web design business, in as little as six months.

Are you interested in learning more about disability and employment issues? Are you an employer? An educator? A service provider? A job seeker with a disability? In our store, DiversityShop, we carry over 20 of the best books and videos that we have found on issues of disability and employment. Check them out now!

Is your organization holding an event that might be of interest to our 3000+ readers? Would you like to add your event to our listings?

March 20-25, 2006: Los Angeles, CA

“Technology and Persons with Disabilities”

This is a comprehensive, international conference, where all technologies across all ages; disabilities; levels of education and training; employment; and independent living are addressed. It is the largest conference of its kind!

St. Louis, MO, April 10 – 12, 2006

The National ADA Symposium is the most comprehensive conference available on the Americans with Disabilities Act and related disability laws.

San Diego, California: July 18-22, 2006

"Charting the Course for Change"

The annual international AHEAD conference brings together professionals in the fields of higher education and disability for a week of information-sharing, networking and theoretical and practical training.

Would you like information or advice on a particular issue related to disability & employment? Tie into our network of over 3000 readers! Send us an email and we will post your question in our next newsletter.

I am in the middle of writing a research paper on Work Ethics..... I am requesting input form job developers, teachers, employers, students and anyone who shares my passion and frustration on this topic. I believe our young folks entering the world of work today are lacking basic work ethics. Many of my students and young adults want a job but don't seem to want to work. Once they get the job, they quit shortly after, don't show up, delegate their work schedule to the employer, talk back to the employer, are disrespectful, late, don't take initiative just to name a few. HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS? Any input will be greatly appreciated.

- Robin Rask, Job Developer & R.O.P. Instructor Victorville, CA

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