2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center

Seminars@Hadley

Choosing a Rehabilitation Center

Presented by Ed Kunz Julie Deden

Moderated by Billy Brookshire

July 28, 2010

Billy Brookshire I’d like to welcome you all this morning to Seminars@Hadley. My name is Billy Brookshire. I’d like to welcome you to this wonderful topic that we’re going to be talking about this morning called Choosing a Rehab Center.

I have a great treat for you folks. We’ve got two fantastic speakers to talk with you this morning – Ms. Julie Deden, who is the executive director of the Colorado Center for the Blind, and Mr. Ed Kunz, who is director of the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center here in Austin, Texas.

I think it’s time for me to get out of the way and let you visit with them for a little while. I’m going to turn the mic over to Julie. Julie, if you would, tell us a little bit about yourself, to get it started, and also about your center.

Julie Deden Thank you so much, Billy. Good morning, everybody. I have been the executive director at the Colorado Center for the Blind for over ten years now and started working here about 13 years ago.

I’ve always been blind myself and worked as a rehabilitation counselor before I started working here at the center. There’s nothing more wonderful than working at an exciting rehabilitation program because we really get to see the changes that everybody makes every single day. We get to see the changes that people make in traveling to and from the center each day, in learning Braille, and just really gaining confidence in themselves as blind people.

The Colorado Center for the Blind is a center of the National Federation for the Blind and we’ll talk about that a little bit later. I wanted to relay a little bit about myself. As I said, I’ve always been blind. I have a 16- year-old son so I have a lot of challenges having a teenager.

I have really gone through some processes, as many of you are that are on this webinar today, as far as dealing with your own blindness, figuring everything out and learning about what you need for yourselves. I strongly, strongly recommend that you think about getting the training that you’ll need for yourself so that you can fully live your lives in every way and that you won’t have any limitations as a blind person.

I’ll stop with that and turn this over to Ed. Thank you.

Ed Kunz Hi everybody. This is Ed Kunz. I’m the director of the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center. We’re located in Austin, Texas and we’re part of the Division for Blind Services. That’s the state division that provides services for individuals who are blind in the areas of vocation rehabilitation, independent living, transition, and with children.

Our center is a state run facility. It is not private as Julie’s is, however, one of the things that I really, really believe in and have seen and have experienced to some extent myself, is the changes that can be made by an individual who comes to a full-time comprehensive orientation and adjustment center such as either of these two centers. It’s just incredible.

The person comes in with, in most cases, little to no experience relative to different issues of blindness, very little confidence, and by the time they leave, they’re traveling all over the state, they’re doing all kinds of things independently and, of course, if they complete the program, they are prepared to either go to college, go to another training program, or to go to work and become successful.

We’ll talk more about who might be an appropriate person, what we look for with an individual, what our program is about, and what we believe, or I believe, constitutes a quality program.

A little bit about myself – I’m a middle child of a family of ten and originally from Chicago, Illinois, moved and got transplanted to Texas. I’m currently married. We have adopted children later on in life. We have a total of five children, all of whom are adopted. Andrew, who is 23, and then we have Daniel, Kristin, Caleb and Bethany, ages nine, eight, six and four.

Yesterday was our first school day, so I’ve been able to apply some of my administrative skills, or whatever you want to call it, to the application of a lot of the child raising, as well as the organization of all these little kiddies to go to school.

I’ve been blind since birth. I didn’t know it, but one of the real essential things for me, and something that I try to share with people, is trying to function as a sighted person until at least age 50 or so, and then getting in contact with some people and some programs that were really good quality programs, and then being able to really take a look at not only myself and my own adjustment issues, but also the potential for what I could do and can be with a really good quality training program.

I’m going to leave it at that and turn it back over to Julie or Billy.

Billy Brookshire Let me just introduce the next topics and then I’ll let Julie and Ed get back into it. You can see we’ve got two interesting speakers this morning who are going to talk to you about two comprehensive rehabilitation centers with lots and lots of things to offer. With that in mind, Julie, I’m going to hand the microphone over to you. If you would, talk a little bit about what it means or what kinds of services you offer at the Colorado Center for the Blind.

Julie Deden

Thank you, Billy. Ed, I don’t know how you do it. I have one 16-year-old teenager and you have all these kids. It is so much fun being the director of a program, I have to tell all of you that, but it’s definitely full time, and then with Ed, with all his kids on top of it, I have a brand new admiration for you, Ed, over anything else, having all these kids. Let’s jump into our centers and talk a little bit about what we do. I’m going to talk with you about the Colorado Center for the Blind, but I also wanted to mention that the Colorado Center for the Blind is one center of three that are centers of the National Federation of the Blind.

As Ed had indicated, we are private, non-profit centers. We are not state run centers, so we’re run a bit differently in that we have a lot of opportunities to have a lot of flexibility in many ways, though Ed is very creative and he’s also been able to put that into the Criss Cole Center, too.

So, there’s a center of Blindness Incorporated in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Louisiana Center for the Blind in Ruston, Louisiana. At the end of this I’ll give you the contact information for all of the centers.

What we focus on at our center is not only building skills of Braille, cane travel, computer technology,

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 6 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center home management skills, organizational skills, and we have a wood shop class as well, so all those classes are very integral as far as building the skills that you need to have in order to compete equally with all of your peers, and compete equally so that you can obtain jobs.

We have those classes and those are our core classes that we have. We have classes from 8:00 to 4:30 Monday through Friday. Our students live in apartments that are about five miles away from the center, so each day students take the bus and light rail train to and from the center.

On weekends and evenings, students end up going grocery shopping, getting everything arranged, organized for their apartments, so they’re cooking and cleaning and doing all of those things at their apartments as well. They’re really utilizing the skills that they’re learning that way.

When we talk about that we are a Center for the National Federation of the Blind, what that really means is the underlying philosophy that we have, that blindness doesn’t have to stop us from competing equally with our peers and that, really, we can compete and that we need to have, in order to be

So, we have some core elements in our center and one of them is positive role modeling, whether it be blind staff or sighted staff, it’s the staff must have full belief in blind people that they’re teaching every single day. We do have one sighted instructor right now who teaches home management and then our other instructors are all blind.

We provide intensive training for our staff, if they’re in use of sleep shades, at least six months of training where they have sleep shades on and where they’re really believing in the techniques that they’re teaching each day. That’s a key element that we have at our center and that we have at the NFB centers, and it’s very important to be able to be taught by people that have that full belief in blindness.

We also do a lot of extra kinds of curricula including rock climbing, skiing, and we go canoeing. We just finished up a whitewater rafting trip where we went down the Arkansas River. It was beautiful up there, so we do those kinds of things and those are all about building confidence within yourself as a blind person.

It’s having the skills that you must have as well as the challenge and the confidence kind of all bundled up together so that when you finish up here, ideally, you won’t need any more blindness training at all, but you’ll be ready to jump off and find a job, go back to school and do the things that you like to do.

We also have put a lot of emphasis in the area of career development and employment so when you’re here at the center you would have job classes, you could have an internship, do job shadows, a wide variety of things so that you’ll really be prepared when you finish up here.

It’s definitely a major commitment to choose to come to our center or any center, but it’s going to change your life, so whether you come to Criss Cole or to Colorado, Minnesota, Louisiana, or wherever you’d like to go, I strongly recommend that you consider that.

I’ll turn this over to Ed and maybe we’ll talk down the line more about sleep shade training and all of that. So, here is Ed to talk about training at Criss Cole.

Ed Kunz Thank you, Julie. Basically, I don’t want to repeat a whole lot of what Julie already went through, but I

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 9 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center wanted to talk about a number of things in terms of the training here. We provide a training, we call it orientation and adjustment to blindness training. We call it basic blindness skills that people refer to, but I see that as a foundation for any blind individual.

By blind, I don’t just mean a person who has no vision at all, because 90%, roughly, of people who are blind have some kind of vision, whether it’s light perception or whatever. The basic issue here is a number of activities, a number of situations that a person would normally use their vision to do, if they had it, are done more efficiently through the use of what we call alternate techniques.

An alternate technique is a different way of an individual who is blind to do the same thing a person would do if they were sighted. Alternate techniques are alternate to vision. Most of the people we get, like in most centers, I would imagine, have some vision. We try to get people to understand and move away from what I call vision dependence. Vision dependence is trying to rely on your vision when it doesn’t work for you or when it’s not very efficient or both and learning the alternate techniques.

Julie mentioned earlier about the sleep shade training. We utilize the same strategy with the

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 10 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center individuals we have here at the center in our basic program, which, again, for most people, if they complete the program, could take roughly six months. Basically, we want people not just to deal with the issue of overcoming the fear of blindness, and, quite frankly, unfortunately, there is a stereotypical attitude out there that society has, but we also want people to develop the skill, as Julie mentioned, and also the confidence that the alternate techniques actually work for them and can work for them.

In this way a person can really have an informed choice of whether or not to use the alternate technique or if they want to use it in combination with vision. For example, when I travel, I may do that. I’m a Braille reader. I don’t read Braille textbooks, but I read Braille enough to be able to use it for making presentations and lots of different things, of course, adaptive technology.

Cane travel is a critical piece. One of the more difficult things our students have trouble with, and I certainly had with, was dealing with the issue of the cane because the cane tells you, it’s out there and it says, “I’m blind.” It’s really hard, sometimes, for us who have some vision, especially, to be willing to say that and then to internalize, not only am I blind, but it’s

We focus a lot on the development of confidence through immersion. Immersion is, we have about, generally speaking, between 50 and 60 people in this center 8:00 to 5:00 five days a week. We have a lot of different activities in the evening and the weekend. We don’t have water rafting. We have done tubing down the San Marcos River, rock climbing and fishing in Galveston, and lots of different things we can do.

One of the more critical pieces is as important as Braille, I believe. It is one of the things that every person who is blind, whether they have some vision or not, should learn, but the Braille, the cane travel, industrial arts – learning to use power tools in a shop with the only adaptive piece of equipment being what’s called the click rule for tactual verification of measurement.

These are thing that can tell a blind person, “I can do this stuff; I can probably do some other things. If I can make this project in the wood shop, then I probably can get a job and take care of my family. If I can prepare a meal for 60 or so people, then I probably can take care of my family in terms of food prep and shopping and all of that.”

The other thing, and I’m going to transition this back to Julie, one of the other critical pieces, because I asked the students what should a good quality rehab center do for and with them, one of them is certainly deal with the issues of adjustment. I mentioned the cane and the trouble I had with identification with the cane, with the word blind. The skills training, the alternate techniques of Braille and adaptive technology and the cane, organization, retrieval and storage of information, however the medium is.

Probably the most critical thing I think a center like this can do, or at least equally so, is help people who are blind understand and deal with the attitudes of society relative to blindness, what it is and what blind people can and cannot do.

One of the things, when we talk about blindness and societal attitudes, most blind people will agree that often the attitudes of society are somewhat negative and stereotypical. One of the things people realize through our seminars is, “I’m a part of society. I’m a blind person and some of my own ideas and thoughts and things I’ve learned may be some of the things holding me back to be what I can be.”

I want to turn that over to Julie now.

Julie Deden Thank you, Ed. That is a key element of training, and at Ed’s center and our center, the Colorado Center and our NFB centers, is gaining that belief in yourself as a blind person and really dealing with yourself as a blind person.

We use the word blind. We talk about, “I am a blind person,” and feeling proud and good about your identity as a blind person. As Ed said, that’s all centered, also, around using a cane or if you use a dog guide. It’s all centered around that and it’s feeling comfortable and good about the person that you are. It is critical to talk about these kinds of things in seminar and we do that as well.

We have that class here at the center three days a week and then two days a week we have job class, so we focus a lot on all kinds of issues that might come up. Should we, because we’re blind, receive discounted bus passes? Should we go in front of the line at the amusement park because we are blind? Should we have these extra privileges but expect that we should be treated as everybody else? We talk about those kinds of things in a lot of depth.

What’s so wonderful about coming to a residential training center is that you have so much opportunity to get to know students really well. Students work so well with each other and you learn as much or more, I have to tell you, from the students as you do from the staff. Everybody’s at a different process in dealing with their own blindness and figuring everything out, so people care a lot about each other. We’re kind of like a big family around here. That’s what we always say and we really are.

We have between 20 and 25 students here at the center at one time in what we call our independence training program and I know that Minnesota and Louisiana are similar in size. I believe Louisiana has a few more students and Minnesota may be a few less at times, but we’re pretty comparable in that way.

I’ll just put in here that we do have summer programs as well, but today we’re talking about our main programs and the philosophy is the key and doing things that you’ve never done before and pushing yourself past that fear, whether it be going up this rock 200 feet up in the air or higher or going rafting and being scared to death that you’re going to be dumped out of the raft. Whatever it might be, it’s pushing yourself and challenging yourself to gain that belief because it isn’t always easy being a blind

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 15 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center person so you need to have that extra belief, that extra confidence within yourself so that you can compete and so that you can do whatever it is you’d like to do and that’s why we push that.

We do have a requirement at our center, as there are at every center and definitely at Criss Cole as well. Let me talk for a minute about sleep shades as well. Ed talked about how important it is to gain belief in all blindness techniques, that if you have some vision in yourself, your vision isn’t necessarily always useful or effective for you.

Sometimes using low vision can slow you down rather than to be of assistance. It can also be dangerous at times. You might think you see things and then you find out that you don’t and there could be a big flight of stairs in front of you, or you might try to use your vision to turn on a dial on the stove and have your hair across a burner or something like that.

So, gaining belief in using blindness techniques, those alternative techniques, is key and when you have six to nine months of training where you’re using your sleep shades, and we require our students to use their sleep shades from 8:00 to 4:30 Monday through Friday. They use them all the time at that point. They really can determine then when it is

For people who have degenerative vision loss, you’re not going to be so nervous or scared or anything about losing more vision because you’re going to know within your heart, within yourself, that you can do it. You’ve traveled all over a large city, you’ve cooked, as Ed said, for 60 people, you’ve done all these things so you know that you’re going to be okay if you happen to lose more vision. That’s really a lot of the reasons for why we use sleep shades as a training tool and that we require that.

I’ll turn this back over to Ed. Thanks.

Ed Kunz That’s a really good point. One other thing I was going to mention, Julie already did. The reason why we mentioned the training being under sleep shades is so that a person can develop the skill, but not only the skill, also the confidence to use the skill and that the skills do work.

There’s a lot of stuff out there, or at least there was in the past, and I think the majority of centers in the country may use some different pieces of these things, but that positive approach, positive philosophy, about blindness, the alternate techniques, the dealing with issues of blindness in seminars and the understanding public attitudes is really a key combination or recipe for that.

Where the sleep shade issue has in the past been an issue that kind of separates, if you will, when people have used it to, quote, “separate people” in terms of, “If you want to go to this center, they’re going to make you wear a blindfold. They’re going to make you take Braille.” I see it as you getting to learn the alternate techniques through the use of sleep shades, getting the opportunity to learn Braille, which most of us who are blind should have had the opportunity to learn as kids through the educational system.

One thing Julie mentioned relative to the seminars I want to talk a little bit about and she mentioned some of the topics about blind people and I think she mentioned discounted tickets and being in front of the line.

One of the things we really try to help people who are blind here focus on, and I know they do at the other centers, I call it the R and R factor. There’s no question, and I know that we advocate and I know that the NFB and the centers advocate for the rights of blind individuals. And as blind individuals, we need to do that to make the playing field equal relative to education, employment and other services.

On the other hand, for an individual who is blind, we also need to understand that we have certain responsibilities. We had situations here, for example, where the students would be in a meeting and at the end of the meeting, the students had a tendency of leaving the putting away of chairs or putting things back together to the sighted people.

Well, somebody pointed that out to us and we talked about that. In fact, that became a seminar topic. We decided that it would be a good idea for everyone to be able to do that, barring any other physical or orthopedic issue, but blindness itself doesn’t prevent

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 19 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center me from taking a chair and putting it back where I got it from. It doesn’t prevent me from getting up at a table if I’m at a restaurant and going through the buffet line if, again, I have the confidence and the skills to be able to do that.

Being blind, we certainly have a number of rights. If we want to really take full advantage of those rights and claim our place in society in terms of work and the community and school, then we also need to take equal responsibility for doing those things that we can do, and certainly are able to do. That only increases our own integrity and sends a real positive message to society that these folks are just like everyone else. The only difference is that they can’t see.

I’ll turn it back over to you, Julie.

Julie Deden Thank you, Ed. I don’t know if we wanted to talk a little bit about making the decision to come to a center and what that entails and what we would recommend. What I recommend is that if you’re interested in attending training and you don’t know where you’d like to attend training, talk with us. You can always give me a call at any time and talk with me and get a lot more information.

Check out a lot of different centers to figure out what fits you. What fits your personality? Where are your interests? What do you think will work best for you? That’s why it’s so exciting that we have a lot of different centers that I think are excellent, excellent centers around the country that you can choose from so that you have the right fit for you.

The key is being ready to attend a center and what we’re talking today about the use of sleep shades and feeling really prepared and ready to make that commitment and knowing that that’s what you want to do, that you want to learn all blindness techniques, that you really feel that that’s something that you need for yourself in your life and that you’re prepared for that.

One thing, also, to keep in mind, and I know a lot of people get nervous about this idea, is leaving your families for an extended period of time and changing, really, what you’re doing. Getting prepared to come to a center means you might need to take time away from school. It means that you might need to take a leave in your job for a while, and it may mean that you need to figure out who’s going to be taking care of your kids for a while or your dog or your cat, actually.

So, it’s kind of figuring out all of these things and I know often times I’ll advise people and talk with people about that. I think that for anybody that wants to attend a center, because it is such a commitment, I feel it’s important to really check things out thoroughly and to have several conversations before you make that big decision.

All states work very differently as far as funding people and let me say this in a great way, their ability or their willingness to really take a look at funding people to attend different centers, so I always assist people in that area, too.

So, I’ll turn this back to Ed so he can talk with you about how things work for him in Texas. Thanks.

Ed Kunz This is Ed again. Of course, Texas is a very large state. We work through our field staff in the vocation rehabilitation program and the independent living program. People in Texas would go through their counselor who would make application. Basically there is no tuition once that’s put on a program plan or an IPE and there are some incidental costs to an individual for personal items and those kinds of things.

For people out of state, because we became consolidated into a larger state agency under health and human services, we do have the ability now to take people from different states who are registered with their vocational rehabilitation program. We have not received any requests from people who are not affiliated with any program as of this point and, certainly, we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

We’ve had a few people from different states. We had some from Florida and we had somebody from New York. We have an admissions department. An individual would make application, if you’re outside of Texas, through your VR counselor. We can get that information put on this website in terms of our admissions office, my e-mail, my phone number.

In terms of preparation, our center, just the physical plant itself, if you will, is something like 98,000 square feet. It’s a big area. It’s located in the heart of Austin, Texas, the capital of Texas.

One of the things we want people to know, of course, is that we want them to be prepared to come in order to complete the training, which generally takes six to nine months. We also have a career focus program similar to what Julie was talking about, except that at

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 23 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center the end of training we have a very specific program in technology and career development. We also work with individuals in the business enterprise program to get them ready for that kind of programming. One of the things a person really needs to think about and make sure they have is the physical stamina, the motivation. We want a person to really be motivated to make a life change because it will be a life change.

The only other requirement we have, in fact, the only eligibility issue we have is an individual must meet the definition of blindness and that’s in state statute. You must be, actually, a legally blind, and by legally, I don’t mean with some vision, I mean according to the Social Security and other definition.

That’s our only state required eligibility factor. We know that when individuals have other health issues, if they’re planning, for example, on having surgery or getting a dog guide, it’s better for them to come to the center after that time.

One other thing, and Julie, you may want to just add a couple of comments on this, is what we’ve found really effective in terms of the success of people who come here, and for people making an informed decision, is to come for a tour. We’ve structured our tours where an individual could come for just a brief

Participate in the training, try out what it would be like to be in classes, traveling outside, cooking, and then the wood shop, all of that under sleep shades, and then make an informed choice whether or not they think this is for them. The tour thing is something I stole from a couple of other people, Pearl Van Zandt in Nebraska, and it really has helped us and helped our students in terms of making an informed choice, readiness and then success when they do come.

Julie?

Julie Deden We also love to have people come for tours and we can set it up in different ways depending upon how it works for anyone that would like to come. When you come for the tour, if you’re coming for a couple days or so, you’ll stay in a student apartment so you’ll get a feel for what that’s like. You can obviously spend time at the apartments, too, and then get a feel.

We’ll have you travel to and from the center taking the bus and the train. We do have you work with an instructor. We just don’t say, “Good luck; we hope you make it to the center,” but we’ll work with you and

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 25 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center show you how to arrive to the center. And then it is just being in class, getting a feel for what the center is all about. We also have a DVD and it’s on our website so you can take a look at that.

And then just talking to people. I always love to link people that are interested in coming with students that are either currently at the center or have been at the center previously. You can get their perspective as well. That always helps. So, there’s a lot of ways that you can get all kinds of information about our center and other centers so that you can figure out if you are ready for this commitment.

It makes a big difference, then, when you start because you already have a very clear idea about what to expect. I do tell everybody, though, that the first couple weeks of training, it is not easy. It’s the most challenging time because you’re getting used to everything. You don’t know anybody quite yet; you’re utilizing your sleep shades if you have some residual vision, so there’s a lot to get used to. But, everybody gets very used to it all and people do a tremendous job.

I wanted to mention where we’re located. We’re located in Littleton, Colorado and that’s just a few miles south of Denver. It takes only about 15 to 20

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 26 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center minutes to take the light rail train into the city of Denver. We often times go down to Denver for different events, and in fact, tomorrow the whole center, our adult program and our summer program, about 70 people, we’re going to the Rockies baseball game tomorrow, so it should be pretty fun, very fun, and busy to have that many people traveling all together.

I’ll turn this back to Ed.

Ed Kunz One other thing I’d like to mention that we’ve been talking about is the center that Julie runs, our center here in Texas, and by the way, this center, it’s a huge center. We employ about 100 people. We have a pretty heavy budget. We provide a lot of support for the field. We provide training for field staff as well as our own staff.

We provide services on training for rehabilitation teachers. We have a state O & M consultant who trains people who can work with people in travel to teach them to travel properly. The other areas in Texas, for people who don’t come to the center, and actually about 95% of the people who are eligible to come here don’t. They make the choice to get the services from their home areas, so we support a lot of

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 27 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center the other agency efforts to provide services of one kind or another. Braille training, teacher training, diabetes consultation and education, we do that.

We also have an outreach program. One of the things I wanted to point out was, I’ve been mentioning, we haven’t really spoken specifically of it, there are a lot of other centers out there that will have you come for a shorter period of time, in some cases, come as many times as you want. Whether or not that meets your needs, you’ll have to make that decision.

I’m not sure if it’s distinct, but I’ve had the benefit of running a center both ways, running it the way we currently do now and running whereby people came in. We have a lot of recidivism, a lot of people returning a number of times and there’s nothing wrong with an individual who, because of an incident, maybe something happens in the family or there’s a medical issue that comes up, leaving and then, of course, returning.

One of the things we found is that providing the short term training in terms of the basic fundamentals of blindness, I’m not talking about some specific area of training or the career development, but for the basic fundamentals of blindness. To deal with the issues involved, and also provide the training and skills to

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 28 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center give you an opportunity, really takes immersion, really takes a number of months, generally speaking, for newly blinded persons, six to nine months.

The bottom line is other places don’t generally have that kind of expectation or requirement and, quite frankly, what they will do is they will provide training with a person with the use of vision. I’ve been there; I’ve done that. I’ve decided for me and most of the people we work with here, the approach we’re currently using is much more effective because we have a much higher employment outcome rate.

We have less returning people and we have more people who are just out there doing things. We no longer transport people to the bus or to the train or to the airport when they finish training because they have the skills to travel. They make their own meals, they do their own shopping, they do lots of things, but there are other centers out there. There are other alternatives that are shorter and that, from my perspective, are easier in the short term because they don’t have the kind of challenges and expectations that some of the other centers do have.

Do you want to comment any more on that, Julie?

Julie Deden

I think what Ed said is just exactly right on in that it just makes all the difference in the world and for any of you in your life is to go ahead and get the full training that you need at this point so that you don’t need to go back and have additional blindness training down the line.

What we teach our students is that you can gain everything. If you can travel independently around the whole city of Denver, you can go back to San Antonio or Miami or wherever you live and you do not need to have an instructor teach you that city. Your skills are transferable and you have the freedom, then, as a blind person, just to do anything you want to do.

You won’t need to have additional training and that’s the key. When you attend a center like one of our centers, it does make a big difference, Criss Cole or our NFB centers or a few other centers around the country. We have that philosophy and it does make all the difference in the world.

I’m wondering, is it time now to open this up for questions?

Billy Brookshire Julie, I think this is a great time to do it and I’ve got a number of questions that came in from the chat room

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 30 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center before I open it to the microphone. Let me, if I could, Julie and Ed, read off the questions from the chat room and then we’ll open the microphone for others to ask questions.

Here are the basics. There are some questions related to sleep shades. One question is, “Do all centers use them?” And another is, “If somebody has a balance problem and they can’t wear the sleep shades, are they then released from the center?”

Two questions for you, Julie, specifically. One is, “Do you get federal funds?” That’s from Olivia, and from Jessica, she asks, “Does the Colorado Center for the Blind work with folks who have other disabilities in addition to blindness?”

The last three questions here, Olivia asked for any statistics you have on employment after a person completes rehab center training in either of your centers. Also, she asks, “How do you define blind?”

The last thing is Diane, who is looking for a center, wants to know, “Is it costly, rehab center training?” because she’s looking to go to some center out of Florida or near to Florida.

So, now I’ll turn it over to you guys. Okay, Julie, do you want to address any of these?

Julie Deden These are great questions, I’ll tell you. Let me try to keep as many of these as I can in my mind and then Ed can jump in, too, and answer questions. Regarding balance and utilization of sleep shades, it is required for the person to be able to use sleep shades while they’re here at the center in training from 8:00 to 4:30 Monday through Friday.

What that means is we have worked with people who have balance issues, possibly using a support cane or something like that along with a long white cane, but if they truly are not able to utilize sleep shades as a training tool at our center, then at this time in somebody’s life, it probably just isn’t the best time for them to come here, but there certainly are other alternative ways that a person can receive training.

Now, we do work with people who have a wide variety of other disabilities as well as being a blind person. Right now we have two students who have Usher syndrome. They have very severe hearing losses, so what we’ve done in working with them is modified one piece of their program a little bit. That’s their cane travel class where they use their sleep shades a great

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 32 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center deal, but they have done some work without sleep shades in that class so that they can determine how they’re going to be able to be traveling when they finish up here.

We have worked with them to talk with them about what’s going to happen when they lose more and more and more vision, and because they’ve had so much sleep shade training, they feel so much better than what they did prior to coming in to the training that they’re going to be okay. They’ve all learned Braille. Actually, it’s three students right now that we have that have Usher’s, so they have very severe hearing loss in conjunction with being blind.

We seem to be getting a lot of students who also have a brain injury along with being a blind person and we have a staff member who’s done a lot of work with people who have brain injuries, so that’s been most helpful. Again, mostly everybody in the world seems to have another disability or something else going on, possibly a learning disability or some mental health issues that don’t even have anything to do with blindness. We’ll work with you and we’ll help you figure out what needs to happen.

The key for us, because our students do live in apartments, is that you need to have the ability before

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 33 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center you come in to do some simple things, to prepare some very simple things, even if it’s things in the microwave and all of that. We’ll work with you to develop those skills further, but you need to have some self-sufficiency prior to coming to the center.

We do receive money through vocational rehabilitation, agencies all over the country, so yes, we do receive federal money that way. I work with people from around the country and with your voc rehab counselor to get that.

We have taken international students into the center before as well, and most of them have been able to be on a type of scholarship. So, that’s been a lot of fun. We have right now two students from Saudi Arabia and our international students always add a lot to the mix of it all.

I’ve covered a few questions. I think that there are more. I’ll have Ed jump in and then we’ll go back and forth a little bit.

Ed Kunz On the sleep shade issue, pretty much the same, except what we found is that when individuals have an issue and start asking that question, often it’s a

However, one of the things I would recommend, and I don’t know if this is possible in the state where the person is from who raised that question, but for example, if there is a local rehabilitation teacher or O & M provider who uses non-visual training, that would be a good place to do some experimenting.

I think the idea of a balance cane, support cane, is an excellent one. We’ve also done a similar thing for persons with severe hearing impairments. We’ve modified some things, and to me, the issue isn’t in terms of the sleep shades as I talk about it, we’re not the blindfold police. We want to convince that person that this makes sense. It’s going to provide them with better overall training and a better outcome in terms of their confidence and skill and that’s why we take the time to do the initial tour.

Initially, we understand that when I was in training I pulled off my sleep shades a couple of times, and our job isn’t to try to catch people and then send them home, our job is to encourage people and then keep them. So, I would encourage that person to look into that possibility of trying it out a little bit at a time and then maybe making a selection if this kind of center is

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 35 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center the one they’re interested in. There are other health related issues whereby we would not want a person to come at the time until some of the stuff was remediated or I help them find a solution.

A couple of other questions, I want to go over these real briefly. Cost, our cost for an out-of-state individual through their VR agency is roughly $3,500 a month and that covers literally everything except for any technology equipment and things, so that would be the estimated monthly cost.

By the way, our residential area is right within this building. There are times that I really wish that it weren’t because I think we could do some other things differently. We certainly offer people the opportunity to commute and to live off campus and all that. Ours happens to have been built that way, so I wanted to mention that.

Employment outcome. In summary, for people who complete the program, not for people who come here and don’t complete, if you count people who are employed in competitive employment, that’s about 75%. Other people who may go to college, other individuals who may go to another training program.

For people who complete the training program, it’s around 90%. I don’t have the figures. Highly, highly successful. Very few people make the decision not to go to work and not to do different things. Roughly nine to ten of the people who complete the program are successful in terms of those issues resulting, ultimately, in competitive employment.

We have a very low homemaker outcome. There was a time when half the people in the center used to have a vocational goal of homemakers, and now only about 7% or 8% are people who come, maybe, for the Independent Living Program and go back to function independently in the home.

I think the final issue was the definition of blindness. I’m not turning it back over to Julie, but basically it’s the statutory definition, 2200 or better, and the best eye with corrected vision or the 20 degree or less of a field would be, but really, the thing is the functionality. What can the person not do, or could do better, using alternate techniques? Julie?

Julie Deden Thank you. Yes, the definition of blindness is just exactly what Ed had mentioned. We also do look at, as he indicated, functionally. Are you not able to use your vision effectively to perform tasks? Are you not

We have worked with people who have had strokes. I worked with somebody who had visual agnosia at one time. I can’t even tell you the exact definition of that. There are a lot of variables when we take a look at blindness and the exact definition. There’s the legal definition of blindness that Ed had mentioned and there are always some other factors that we like to take a look at.

Regarding employment, our center is very similar to what Ed had indicated. Over 90% of our students as well, who complete training here, are either working competitively in a job and/or they’ve gone back to school for their training in one area or another. It’s exciting to see that. We know that this model of training works when you look at how Criss Cole has transitioned from where Criss Cole was. There’s such a change in that and that is exciting so you can know that this model of training is a very effective model. Thanks.

Billy Brookshire I want to give the folks who have microphones a chance to ask some questions, but we have two more from the chat room that you might want to address.

Enecio asked, “What percentage of clients complete the program?”

Olivia asked, “How many people do you train each year?” I’ll leave the microphone open for any microphone questions and Ed and Julie, if you would think about those questions also and your responses. Thanks.

Caller My question is this. Are there any centers out there that don’t require you to use sleep shades or blindfolds or whatever you want to call them?

Julie Deden This is Julie. I’ll just jump in. Yes, in fact, most centers do not require you to use sleep shades still, so definitely, you have the option to attend a center where you’re going to focus more on using your vision and low vision skills. There are centers all over the country that you would be able to attend where you could do that.

Obviously, too, you could obtain field training in most states and receive training where you wouldn’t be using sleep shades fully. So, yes, definitely, you’re able to that.

My mind is a sieve because Billy had those other questions and I’m going to have Ed answer them because I’m not thinking of even what they were at this second. Thanks.

Ed Kunz There were a couple of questions about the percentage of people. I don’t happen to have the percentage of people who actually complete the training. I know that it’s around 70%.

We have a lot of people who leave, and by the way, let me define the word complete training. Complete training doesn’t mean the person comes here, stays for a while and then leaves, it means that they have a plan developed with them to complete contracted Braille or technology or applied technology, independent travel, those kinds of things.

We do have people who, for one reason or another, usually because of medical issues, some due to attendance, a few due to standards of conduct, and some who have to return because of family issues. So, I would ball-park the figure, I would say, probably about 70, or a bit more, actually, complete their whole program training without having to return.

That’s the other thing – if you complete the program here, you’re going to return. Our recidivism is literally zero since changing to the program.

The other thing, there was another question about how many people do you serve. Being a large center, there was a time where we served about 300 people a year, but that’s when our average training time was about two to three months. We serve about 150 to 175 people in full time training as well as a few hundred more in what call specific services, many of which are completed out in the field.

So, about 175 on the number, and in excess of 70% on persons who actually complete their whole plan of training.

Billy Brookshire Folks, I hate to tell you this, but we have come to the end of another broadcasting day here. This time flew by. I really enjoyed the presentation. I want to remind you all that this seminar, like all the seminars at Hadley, is archived on our website. It’s available 24/7 so you can go there anytime to listen to these again or download them and listen to them on your car stereo. Some related courses you might want to check out from Hadley, we’ve got courses on independent living, another on finding employment,

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 41 of 43 2010-07-28-Choosing a Rehabilitation Center and lots of courses in Braille you might want to look at to see something about the different options that are available for training.

I’d like to thank everybody for attending today. I would like to especially thank our two speakers, Julie Deden and Ed Kunz. Do you guys have anything else you’d like to say or any farewell words you’d like to say to participants?

Ed Kunz This is Ed. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to have presented this. This is real neat. I’d like to do this again sometime, Billy.

Billy Brookshire I hope you do, Ed. How about you, Julie?

Julie Deden Billy, I’d like to thank you for the invitation to be here today and I’d also like to just put a plug in for Blindness, Incorporated in Minneapolis, Minnesota – Shawn Mayo, and the Louisiana Center for the Blind – Pam Allen, and feel free to call me, as well. I’ll give you our 800 number – 1-800-401-4632, and it seems like probably all the information will be up as well. Thank you very much.

Billy Brookshire Thanks again for coming, folks. As you know, we value your feedback. Please, if you’ve got any feedback you’d like to give us today, all you’ve got to do is e-mail it to [email protected]. Please keep your cards and letters coming.

Thanks, my friends, and goodbye. Hope you have a very pleasant day. Bye, bye.

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