AUGUST 1967
INKPRINT EDITION
VOICE OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
The National Federation of the Blind is not an organization speaking for the blind--it is the blind speaking for themselves
Monitor Headquarters 2652 Shasta Road, Berkeley, California 94708
Published monthly in braille and distributed free to the blind by the National Federation of the Blind, President: Jacobus tenBroek, 2652 Shasta Road, Berkeley, California 94708.
Inkprint edition produced and distributed by the National Federation of the Blind.
Editor: Jacobus tenBroek, 2652 Shasta Road, Berkeley, California 94708.
News items and changes of address should be sent to the Editor.
LONDON BLIND WORKERS DEMONSTRATIONS END IN VICTORY
I.F.B. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING
N.F.B. TESTIFIES IN CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS
By John Nagle
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND STUDENT DIVISION NEWS
By Ramona Willoughby
AGENCIES FOR THE BLIND AND TUNING
By Stanely Oliver
END OF SOCIAL DISLOCATION OF LEPROSY PATIENTS
By O.W. Hasselbled, M.D.
ALOHA TO HAWAII
By Anthony Mannino
BLIND STUDENT STEREOTYPE TESTED
ARE WE EQUAL TO THE CHALLENGE?
By Jacobus tenBroek
THE BLIND IN ARGENTINA
By Hugo Garcia Garcilazo
THE COLLECTING BOX IN THE WELFARE STATE
By Douglas Houghton
NFB TESTIFIES ON REHABILITATION AMENDMENT OF 1967
Statement by John Nagle
"The sharpest lesson of democracy is that no professional elite or caste, administrative or military or scientific, must be permitted to usurp the power of the people and their elected representatives to make the decisions of life and liberty, or of life and death. That the agencies all too often have failed to subordinate the role of the expert is one thing; that they all too often have misconstrued the proper role of the blind is a second thing. But more important than these mistakes is their persistent refusal to acknowledge and accept the elementary principles of democracy and humanity. . . . If than confusion of roles by the agencies is honest, it reflects a profound ignorance of democracy; it is disingenuous, it reflects a shocking contempt for democracy."
With these ringing words before a packed and jubilant banquet audience of five hundred and fifty eight blind delegates and their families , President Jacobus tenBroek symbolized the dominant spirit of the twenty-seventh annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind. The four-day meeting, held in Los Angeles' Statler Hilton Hotel July fourth through July seventh, was infused throughout with a resounding reaffirmation of the representative character of the nationwide blind movement and its often hostile relations with private agencies for the blind.
The convention mood which found eloquent expression in Professor tenBroek's address was forcefully underlined by another banquet speaker, Paul Jacobs, a veteran labor organizer and journalist, whose hard-hitting talk called on the organized blind to "hand tough" in their struggle against the forces of retreat and reaction in the welfare field. The ruling theme of solidarity and resolve was first crystallized in an opening-day speech by Dr. Jacob Freid, a longtime champion of the NFB within the agencies. The same keynote was sounded again and again during the week, in panel discussions on public assistance and state programs, in Dr. tenBroek's report on current legal cases and statutes, and less directly in numerous other talks, reports and discussions throughout the convention.
Although the California site entailed more than the usual travel time and expense for many delegates, there were upwards of eight hundred in attendance from all parts of the country, and from several foreign nations, when the convention was gaveled into session on the morning of July fourth. Under the adept guidance of President tenBroek the general meetings moved from one significant event to the next with a marked sense of seriousness and determination spiced with generous touches of humor and entertainment. For one thing, the prizes--always and important event on the light side--were bigger, better and more numerous this year than ever, headed by a beautiful chime clock presented by the host California Council of the Blind.
A spirited and sprightly series of panel discussions--no less than six in all--were presented during the convention. One of the most provocative was a group session on careers for the blind, featuring a truly outstanding set of successful careerists in agriculture, law, education, engineering, and politics. The panelists, all of them blind, included Mrs. Margaret Wilson, veteran business arts teacher of San Francisco; James M. Omvig , an attorney with the Washington office of the National Labor Relations board whose position involves the analysis of legal cases across the country; Tom Joe, consultant to the social welfare committee of the California State Assembly, whose staff responsibility involves the supervision of research, and the preparation of reports and legislative drafts; Elwyn Hemken, owner and operator of a two hundred and thirty acre Iowa farm, whose duties include handling livestock and raising a variety of crops; Curtis Willoughby, a graduate of Iowa State University, who designs technical equipment for the U.S. Navy and has been a communications and systems design engineer for various concerns; and Bonifacio Yturbide, California attorney who was for twelve years legal clerk to former Chief Justice Phil Gibson of the California Supreme Court--a job involving the regular review of documents, the making of recommendations and summaries, and vast amounts of research and reading.
A distinguished trio of foreign visitors, from Africa and Latin America, addressed the convention as guests of the National Federation. They were Hugo Ernesto Garcia Garcilazo, secretary of the Argentine Federation of Institutions for the Hind; Hernani Vidon, of Brazil, a teacher in a school for the blind, and Bairu Tafia, of Ethiopia, who is presently studying history at Howard University.
State programs and services for the blind were the subject of expert discusssion by three state agency directors under the chairmanship of Ken Jernigan, director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind. The other panelists were Fred Crawford, director of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind; Mervin Flanders, director of Nevada's services for the blind agency, and John Nagle, head of the NFB's Washington office.
Another state official. Perry Sundquist--veteran Federation leader who also directs California's welfare programs for the blind--was chairman of a panel exploring the problems and prospects of public assistance. Others who participated were Don Capps, the Federation's Second Vice-President; Audrey Tait of Nevada; Lawrence Marcellino of California, and John Nagle.
Vending stands and the Randolph -Sehppard Act came under spirited discussion by a panel chaired by John Taylor, assistant director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, along with Bonifacio Yturbide of California, J. Ryan of Minnesota, and the ubiquitous John Nagle. In still another informative discussion. Dr. Isabelle Grant, veteran educator and member of the NFB Board of Directors, talked of the status of blind teachers with Mrs. Onvia Tillinghast of California.
"Present programs and future prospects of the deaf-blind" were discussed in authoritative terms by two recognized experts in the field: Dr. Edward J. Waterhouse, director of Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, Massachusetts, and Harry Spar of the Industrial Home for the Blind, Brooklyn, New York.
Among the many informative speeches on specialized topics distributed through the four days of the convention were a dissertation on the proposed eye research institute by Dr. Straatsma, medical specialist on diseases of the eye from UCLA; a talk on the "promise and problems of Medicare" by Carel E.H. Mulder, director of the State Office of Health Care Services; the brilliant speech on "Public Attitudes Toward Blindness," already mentioned, by Dr. Jacob Freid, executive director of the Jewish Braille Institute of America, and a talk on discrimination against the blind by life insurance companies presented by Manuel Urena, assistant director in charge of orientation of Iowa's Commission for the Blind.
Four incumbent members of the Federation's Executive Committee were returned to office by the convention: Victor Johnson of Missouri, Anita O'Shea of Massachusetts, Harold Reagan of Kentucky, and Ray Dinsmore of Indiana. A new member of the Executive Committee, Uldine Thelander, of Idaho, was elected to fill the unexpired term of Bill Hogan.
Jim Gashel of Iowa was chosen as their new president by the Blind Students Association at a meeting during the convention. Also elected were Roger Petersen of Maryland, First Vice-President; Chuck Walhof, Idaho, Second Vice-President; Ramona Willoughby, of Washington, D.C., Secretary, and Judy Young of Iowa, Treasurer. The Blind Merchants Association, named Elbert Spence of Alaska as President. Other officers chosen were Ingwald Gunderson, Minnesota, VicePresident; Neil Butler, Iowa, Treasurer, and Bill Dressel, Ohio, Secretary.
The Alabama Association of the Blind, after being credentialed by the Executive Committee, was recognized by the convention as the NFB's affiliate in Alabama. President of the state association is Eulassee Hardenburg.
In connection with the Federation's evolving financial and fundraising activities, the national convention approved a recommendation of the Executive Committee that the NFB acquire through purchase the corporation (Fedco) through which most of its funds have been collected. The convention instructed the officers and Executive Committee to work out details and consummate the purchase if the arrangement is seen to be feasible. In the event of purchase, the NFB's officers will vote the stock of Fedco and generally exercise the control that accompanies ownership. This financial arrangement, primarily of a legal character, involves continuation of the mail-order sale of neckties and rentention of the fundraising talents of Bernard Gerchen by placing him under a long-range contract of employment.
Outstanding among the various reports presented to the Los Angeles convention was a summary and analysis by President Jacobus tenBroek of significant recent court cases and statutes in welfare affecting the blind. Emphasizing the importance of the courts as instruments of social reform today. Dr. tenBroek pointed to two court decisions handed down in June, both holding unconstitutional the imposing of residence requirements in the categorical aid programs of public assistance. Both decisions were by three-judge district courts, one in Connecticut and the other in Delaware. One of them held residence requirements to be unconstitutional on two grounds: as violating the right to travel and to establish residence anywhere in the country, and as a violation of the equal protection of the laws. The other decision limited its findings of unconstitutionality to the equal protection ground.
Also brought under review by Dr. tenBroek was the landmark decision of the California Supreme Court in the Parrish case, rejecting as unconstitutional the practice of night raids upon the homes of AFDC recipients--as violations both of the Fourth Amendment right of privacy and of the penumbral right of privacy in the marital relationship (protected by the first Amendment). Although this decision of the state court has not been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Dr. tenBroek observed that in two cases the nation's highest tribunal has held that the protection of the Fourth Amendment extends to invasions of privacy on the part of bureaucrats (such as public agency personnel) as well as on the part of the police.
The NFB president's report made reference to the Argo case, in which blind persons were assured of the right to reasonable safety in traveling about and entering stores and business establishments. In connection with this case, Dr. tenBroek discussed the extent to which the model White Cane Law, embodying the principle of the Argo case, has been gaining acceptance among the states. New Mexico and Iowa have already adopted the model law in its entirety, while three other states (Wyoming, North Dakota and Maryland) have enacted parts of the legislation. The convention was reminded that the NFB played a leading role in the successful litigation of the Argo and Parrish cases, as it had earlier in the Kirchner case. Dr. tenBroek announced the decision of the Executive Committee to file an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the two current residence cases upon their anticipated appeal to the Supreme Court.
In addition to the meetings of the students and merchants, two other occupational groups met during the convention--blind secretaries, under the chairmanship of Margaret Wilson of San Francisco, and blind proof-readers .
Among the reports heard by the convention were those of the Sub- committee on Budget and Finance, delivered by its chairman, Perry Sundquist; the Executive Committee, presented by Dr. tenBroek and Ken Jernigan, NFB First Vice-President; the White Cane Week report, by Anthony Mannino; the report of the Student Division given by Roger Petersen, and a report on national legislative activity by John Nagle.
Other Federation committees which held meetings included the membership, correspondence, resolutions, and nominating committees. At the session of the membership body, Tom Gronning of Washington discussed the current "COMSTAC problem" in Seattle as it affects the membership of the state affiliate; additional comments were made by Eva Gilbert of Massachusetts.
As in past years, the convention banquet was the "main event" of the week's activities and festivities--at once a lighthearted convivial gathering and an occasion of purposeful dedication and declaration. And, again as in most past years, the climactic moment of the evening was an address by the Federation's founder and president. Jacobus tenBroek: "Are We Equal to the Challenge?" identifying the challenge as that posed to the organized blind by various custodial agencies--local, national and international in scope. Among these he enumerated COMSTAC, the "lighthouse keepers" of the sheltered workshops, and the World Council for the Welfare of the Blind. His sharply worded and vigorously delivered speech concluded on a note of defiance and determination:
"Through all the years and decades of our existence as an organized movement, for all our splendid success in gaining allies and winning public support, we have faced the persistent opposition of those whom we may call the 'hard-core' custodians. The main thrust of their attack upon us has always been that blind people are not ready for equality--not prepared for the burden of freedom--not strong enough to stand upright and walk alone down the main streets of society. To this denial of equality by the agencies, the organized blind reply: we are not only equal to you- -we are equal to your challenge!"
Seldom has a speech been better complemented than in the banquet address which followed and graphically reinforced that of Professor tenBroek. The second speaker was Paul Jacobs, nationally famous author and lecturer, presently associated with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, in Santa Barbara, as well as with the center for the Study of Law and Society of the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Jacobs, himself a veteran organizer in the field of labor and the poor, employed sharp wit and vivid anecdote to underline his conviction that only militant organization and courageous action can win victory for the blind against the opposition of entrenched interests in social work and public welfare.
Ken Jernigan again earned, with high honors, the degree of Master of Ceremonies, as he presided skillfully over the dispensation of prizes, the introduction of honored guests and the several presentations of the evening. Russell Kletzing, secretary of the NFB, presented the Federation's Scholarship Award to J. Michael Freeman, of Vancouver, Washington, a student of Reed College. The Chapter of Affiliation to the NFB was presented to Rhode Island, and accepted with a brief speech by the president of the Rhode Island organization, Joseph Silveira.
In another dramatic episode of the week, Minnesota won the voting contest for the 1970 national convention site. Meanwhile Ken Jernigan announced a specific time and place for the Federation's '68 convention in Iowa: namely the Fort Des Moines Hotel, during the week beginning June 30. Ken also disclosed plans for a four-day Mexico City tour following the '68 sessions.
The social side of the Los Angeles convention reached a truly brilliant culmination on Wednesday, July 5, with an afternoon tour of Disneyland attended by hundreds of conventioners. Equally congenial, if less spectacular, were the three evenings of "hospitality" (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) in the commodious Wilshire Room of the Static r Hilton.
On the more serious side, devotional services were held for Federation members each morning of the convention fifteen minutes before the opening of the sessions.
Publicity-wise, few national conventions have enjoyed more "exposure" through the graphic media of television and radio than this one in Los Angeles. The city's NBC-TV station devoted an entire afternoon and part of the banquet evening to an extensive depth report of Federation proceedings and activities--ranging from an interview with President tenBroek to a sidewalk demonstration of travel techniques. The video report for which credit is due to Ray Penix of Los Angeles, will be viewed in the Los Angeles area as a thirty minute documentary presentation; it is hoped that arrangements to exhibit the TV film elsewhere in the country can be made with the station. In addition to his coverage, a series of interviews on various stations (both TV and radio) were conducted during the week, along with other public appearances featuring such Federationists as Ken Jernigan Russ Kletzing, John Nagle, John Taylor, Tony Mannino, Perry Sundquist, Don Capps, Vic Johnson and others. The Los Angeles daily newspapers--notably the Herald-Examiner--published several feature articles on various phases of convention activity.
Among the aspects of the convention which drew interest from the press, the public and Federationists alike was the well-displayed exhibit of the Twin Vision Publishing Division of the American Brotherhood for the Blind. Under the able direction of Jean Dyon Norris, the services on display included Twin Vision Books, Hot-line to Deaf-Blind, original Twin Vision books with raised illustrations. Twin Vision Library, Great Documents series, and braille calendars. The Twin Vision staff of volunteers also earned the gratitude of conventioners by placing braille numbers above the doorknobs of hotel rooms occupied by blind persons, beside elevator buttons, and floor numbers outside each elevator. A braille edition of "Finding Your Way Around the Statler- Hilton", prepared by Jean Neel was available at the convention registration desk.
The recent London demonstrations over blind workers wage increase have ended in victory. Now blind workers have been moved up from group four to group six of the Municipal Manual Workers' scale with the wage being taxable. The minimum wage moves up from twelve pounds, one shilling and sixpence to thirteen pounds, three shillings and fourpence.
Next September there will be a further rise of ten shillings a week. What is most important is that there has been a complete restoration of the link with the Manual Workers, with future increases for the latter group guaranteed to the blind workers. A few single workers will not benefit from the immediate increase owning to the tax situation, but all married workers will benefit.
As a follow up to the May 10th and June 14th marches reported in the July issue of the Braille Monitor, a national demonstration for July 8th had been planned. But with the announcement in the July 2 papers that a march on Trafalgar Square and No. 10 Downing St., would take place if no settlement was reached, the employers opposing the increase requested a meeting of the National Joint Council of workers and managers, a successful agreement was reached, and the demonstration was cancelled.
That same morning there was a meeting of the National League of the Blind to complete plans for the demonstration. The League had long since laid groundwork for the march with the support of the London Trades Council, and League Chapters and Trades Councils throughout Great Britain. The features of such a march are described by Tom Parker, organizer for the League: "The usual technique is of course to use Trafalgar Square as the venue of the meeting. It will hold more than one hundred thousand people quite comfortably. If you want additional pressure you then re-form the demonstration after the meeting to march down Whitehall to Downing St. which is a small street leading off. The marchers are invariably stopped at the entrance to Downing Street and a small number are permitted to enter the street to hand in the resolution or petition. I had advised the Police that the demonstration would disperse at the entrance to Downing street a perfectly legal step to take, but what chaos with all those blind workers gradually edging across the road until the roadway was completely blocked. There would have been a complete standstill of traffic."
The National League was determined to procure the wage increase, but more importantly it was essential that the link between the Manual Laborers and the blind workers be accepted by management. The League received full support from the London Trades Council, which responded with a resolution deploring the unilateral action of the employers in their attempts to sever the link. Also there had been a token strike and demonstration in the Glasgow shops with the secretary of the Glasgow Trades Council pledging support from unions in Glasgow if the worker's demands were not met.
With this resounding victory the future is now assured for blind workers. The success of the League in July opens the way for other legislation and illustrates the potential of organized activity among the blind.
On April 22, 1967 the IFB Executive Committee held its first meeting since the formation of this new world-wide organization of the blind in 1964, at the Prinz Eugen Hotel, Vienna, Austria. The meeting was very well attended. Rienze Alagiyawanna, being the only absentee, was returning to his home in Ceylon after a year's visit to Europe.
During the course of the two-day meeting three major issues were discussed and acted upon. Qualifications necessary to be a national member in the already eleven-member organization, were talked over with reference to specific countries. Spain, the Iron Curtain countries, Tunisia, other countries in North Africa, and Argentina were given special attention. The major question was whether the organizations are genuinely organizations of the blind or agencies of the government. Andre Nicolle of France agreed to investigate the eligibility of Tunisia and the North African countries at the request of the Executive Committee.
The President reported on organizations in England, Italy, New Zealand, and Japan interested in obtaining membership in the IFB. There was considerable discussion about Russell Kletzing's Asian trip. It was expected that he would visit Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and New Zealand and that he would talk with organizations interested in affiliating with the IFB. These countries are to be given admission as soon as the President reviews their constitutions.
The second topic of discussion was that of dues to be paid at various levels. These amounts were approved and passed: $1.00 for membership at large; $10.00 for Associate Members; and a minimum of $25.00 for National Members, to be paid in goods or cash. National Members who can do so are expected to pay much more.
The Executive Committee turned its discussion to the next IFB convention site. It was decided that New Delhi would be the location of the November 1969 meeting. It was suggested that there be an investigation of the possibility of a joint session with the WCWB for ceremonial purposes. The theme of the convention is to be "Development of Organizations of the Blind and Their Role in Promoting the Welfare of the Blind." Program activities were established and three topics decided on: the first. White Cane Around the World, headed by Jacobus tenBroek of the USA; the second Compulsory Education of Blind Children, will be headed by Rienzi Alagiyawanna from Ceylon and the third, The Right of the Blind to Work, will be headed by Horst Geissler of West Germany.
The meeting also decided to create an IFB newsletter to be published intermittently. It will be sent to every member nation in English with the hope that it will be translated for use in national publications.
Henri Frieman of the Netherlands was unanimously elected 3rd Vice-President.
By John Nagle
[Editor's Note: We are happy to report that Congressman Thomas B. Curtis of Missouri, has introduced H. R. 11214. This bill is identical to H.R. 3064, our Federation-King Disability Insurance for the Blind Bill. Congressman Curtis is the second- ranking Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He is also a devoted friend of the blind and of the Federation. Federationists will recall Mr. Curtis' success in protecting and preserving the Missouri-Pennsylvania Aid to the Blind Programs, and know him to be a most articulate and vigorous supporter of our cause.
I urge Federationists and friends of the organized blind movement who have not already done so, to write to their Congressman and ask him to introduce a bill identical to H. R. 3064 if its "voted out" by the Ways and Means Committee, write him and request that he express his endorsement of H.R. 3064 in a letter to Chairman Wilbur D. Mills of the Ways and Means Committee, and send you a copy of his letter--and then you send such letter to John Nagle that he may know supporting action.
Letters to your Congressmen should be addressed:
Hon. House Office Building Washington, D.C. 205101
"It is the policy of the United States that the blind, visually handicapped and physically disabled shall be employed in any program or activity supported in whole or in part by public funds authorized and appropriated under this act on the same terms and conditions as the able-bodied, unless it is shown that the particular disability prevents the performance of the work involved."
This was the wording of an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act offered by the NFB through John Nagle , Washington Office Chief, June 23, in public hearings conducted by the Senate Sub-Committee on Education on S. 1125, proposing changes in the Federal Education Act.
Arguing in support of the anti-discrimination in employment by reason of physical impairment amendment, Nagle pointed out to the House Committee Members that "the recently adopted sweeping statutory changes do not encompass within their scope discrimination based on physical impairment, nor do they provide a means of redress to the physically impaired job applicant who is denied fair and equal consideration for a position for which he is trained and well-prepared and qualified."
Much of the statement to the Senate Education Sub-Committee was devoted to a discussion of blind persons as teachers and to difficulties they encounter in trying to secure teaching positions as well as the successes they have achieved once employment has been obtained- Federation endorsement was given to provisions of S. 1125 which would authorize the establishment of regional resource centers; increase the number of professionally qualified personnel entering the field of special education; include Interior Department-operated schools for Indian children and Defense Department-operated schools for overseas dependents within the scope and benefits of Title VI (the special education for handicapped children title) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and expand existing instructional media programs (originally limited to the deaf and hard-of-hearing) to include all handicapped children and adults.
A written statement was submitted to the Senate Sub-Committee on Public Health, Education, Welfare and Public Safety of the Committee on the District of Columbia, in public hearings on S. 1224 which would establish a register of blind persons in the District of Columbia, and provide mandatory reporting of information concerning such persons. The NFB supported the proposal, asserting that "Although various kinds of services are presently provided and available to the blind of the District of Columbia, it is believed that many blind residents [perhaps 1,000 of a possible 3,000 blind population] are not now being served because their existence is not known to administering agencies, because the existence of the agencies and the availability of special helps and services is not known to substantial numbers of blind individuals. Enactment of S. 1224 would help greatly, we believe, to remedy this most unfortunate situation.
S.222, the "architectural barriers" bill, to insure that public buildings financed with federal funds are accessible to physically handicapped persons, was the subject of a public hearing conducted by the Sub-Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds of the Senate Committee of Public Works, on July 17, and John Nagle presented NFB testimony in support of this most vitally important legislation for all handicapped persons. Nagle pointed out various kinds of "architectural barriers" which cause difficulty, hazard, or which are insurmountable obstacles to disabled person. Among several improving and broadening amendments offered by the NFB to S. 222, the major recommendation was in furtherance of the basic Federation concept that handicapped beneficiaries of a proposed program or planned effort have a right to be consulted in its development and implementation, since they, better than anyone else, know their needs and problems and are best qualified to evaluate the quality and adequacy of proposed solutions. The proposed amendment to S. 222 reads:
"The Administrator [of the General Services Administration] shall consult with representatives of organizations of handicapped persons in the development of said regulations, shall provide for the creation of an advisory committee consisting of representatives of organizations of handicapped persons, to assist and advise the administrator in the implementation of this act."
H. R. 8981, a bill to amend the Vocational Rehabilitation Act, was considered in public hearings conducted by the House Select Sub-Committee on Education of the Committee on Education and Labor, and on July 20, the views of the Federation on the proposed legislation were presented. Nagle indicated strong Federation support of provision of H.R. 8981 which would authorize project grants for Vocational Rehabilitation Services for migratory agricultural workers and their families.
The bill would eliminate durational residence and United States citizenship as eligibility requirements for migratory workers and their families to qualify for Vocational Rehabilitation Services. It would also increase federal financing authorizations for Vocational Rehabilitation Programs--with the Federation recommending that the present federal-state sharing in the cost of such programs be changed from seventy five percent federal, and from twenty five percent to ten percent state. H. R. 8981 would prohibit durational residence requirements for Vocational Rehabilitation Services--and the Federation offered H.R. 7396 as an amendment to H.R. 8981, to prohibit the "means test" for any Vocational Rehabilitation Service, It would authorize establishment of regional center for deaf-blind children within the scope of services intended for deaf-blind youth and adults, or, preferably, authorization for the establishment of separate centers for deaf-blind children. This testimony is reprinted in full elsewhere in this issue of the MONITOR.
California Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh and Assemblyman Eugene Chappie, Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Social Welfare, announced today that Tom Joe, well known blind Consultant to Chappie's committee, has been selected by the American Public Welfare Association (APWA) and the State of Pennsylvania to devise a model public assistance program to be implemented in Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania State Government and APWA have combined, with the assistance of several federal agencies, to develop a welfare system which will be instituted in the eastern state and is expected to be a model for the nation. Joe has been selected to devise the system. The California Assembly Rules Committee approved a two-month leave for the Consultant earlier today.
"I am very proud that Tom Joe has been selected to do this important work for Pennsylvania," Unruh said. "His selection is a genuine tribute to the system of professional expertise which we have developed in the California Assembly.
"To my knowledge, this is the first time that the federal and state executive branches have gone to the legislative branch of another state to obtain expert advice in devising new approaches to complicated modern social problems.
"All to often, it has been the other way around. I expect that Mr. Joe's absence from the California Legislature for the next several months to work on this project will greatly assist Pennsylvania and other states in improving their welfare systems, and the experience and knowledge which he gains in performing this service should also benefit California greatly in the coining years."
Joe's assignment will consist of comprehensive planning and development of public welfare programs which are nationally financed by the federal and state governments with particular emphasis on the creation of a model program for Pennsylvania. It is intended that a complete reevaluation of the public assistance programs of that state will be attempted as a result of Joe's study.
"Tom Joe has proven his value to the California Legislature in the two years during which he has served as Consultant to the Assembly Social Welfare Committee," Assemblyman Chappie stated.
"His selection for this important task points up a recognition by the federal government of the importance and expertise of state governments which I hope will continue and grow."
Although assigned primarily to Pennsylvania, Joe will also work in other eastern states. His two-month leave of absence from his duties with the California Assembly commenced on July 15.
The entire program is being financed jointly by the American Public Welfare Association, a private non-profit organization, and the federal government. While on leave, Joe will maintain contact with California legislators and will keep them fully informed as to the progress of his studies in the east.
Joe resides in Sacramento with his wife, Barbara. He plans on returning to his duties with the Assembly in the early fall.
By Ramona Willoughby
At the luncheon meeting of the National Federation of the Blind Student Division, July 6, organizational activities, begun at last year's Louisville Convention, were completed.
The proposed constitution printed in the June issue of the BRAILLE MONITOR was adopted without change.
Officers were elected as follows:
President, Jim Gashel First
Vice President , Roger Peterson
Second Vice President, Chuck Walhof
Secretary, Ramona Willoughby
Treasurer, Judy Young
Term of office for these officers will be two years.
Those present decided that dues should be paid at a rate of two dollars per year.
Roger Peterson reported that the directory of blind college students will soon be ready for distribution to those whose names will appear in it. If you would like to have a copy and have not previously sent your name and address to Roger, his address is: 47 School Avenue, College Heights, Chestertown, Maryland 21620. You may also address inquiries about the directory to: Curtis Willoughby, 1636 Park Towne Place Apt. E 12, N.E. Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
The first major project of the Student Division will be to increase membership. For this purpose the organization declared itself a committee of the whole under the chairmanship of Chuck Walhof, 217 Eagleson Road, Boise, Idaho.
Any student or professional person desiring membership should send two dollars dues, along with a statement that he would like to join, to Judy Young, Dunkerton, Iowa. Any person who is not already a member of the NFB , should simultaneously apply for NFB or affiliate membership if he is eligible. If not, he may be as associate member of the Student Division.
Names and addresses of officers and committees will soon be mailed to all members.
I call attention to the fact that the NFB Student Division is not an affiliate chapter. We are first members of the NFB; secondly, we are a national orgization of blind students and blind professionals working with the NFB and for the same goals. Our greatest effort will be to: "Advance the interests and expand the opportunities of blind college students and blind persons in the professions. ..." (Article II, NFB Student Division Constitution). Any college student will agree that in such activities, we are working also for his personal interests. Since students will soon become persons in the professions, it seems clear that these two groups should work together. We hope that all blind students and blind persons in the professions would want to join in this effort.
For many years the organized blind of Minnesota have sought unsuccessfully to increase the amount of personal property which a recipient of Aid to the Blind might possess. This year, however, long and patient effort paid off. The Minnesota Legislature recently enacted Chapter 849 of the Statutes of 1967, amending the Aid to Blind Law.
Section 253.3 as amended increases the amount of monthly earned income from $85 a month to be exempted to $90 a month, plus one -half in excess of that amount. This same amended section provides for a period of up to thirty-six months for the exemption of additional income and resources for a recipient of Aid to the Blind having a plan for self-support and where it is determined that the exemption of such additional income and/or resources is necessary to implement the plan. Under Title X of the Social Security Act the States are required to exempt such additional income and resources for up to twelve months and may disregard such additional income and resources for up to thirty-six months. Thus, Minnesota has taken full advantage of this optional provision.
Section Z56.51 as amended increases the amount of personal property which a recipient of Aid to the Blind may possess from $500 to $2,000 or, in the case of a married couple, from $750 to $4,000. This is in accord with the upper limits provided in Federal regulations and probably means that Minnesota has the most liberal personal property limitations in aid to the blind of any State.
The organized blind of Minnesota are to be congratulated on their great "breakthrough"!
By Stanley Oliver
[Note: The writer is blind, a craftsman member since 1948, served as president and secretary of the Detroit chapter and chairman of the national PTG committee for Problems and Affairs of Visually Handicapped, edited a trade column in Braille Piano Technician for nine years, serves on advisory boards in the Michigan state agency for the blind and the local private United Fund Agency for the blind.]
One of the traditional crafts taught to qualified blind students during the past century has been piano tuning. This came about as a sort of accident in L’hospital des Invalides , Paris, where the blind youngsters mischieviously dismantled a piano. Their teacher locked them in the room with the piano as punishment. "You don't get out until you put all the parts back again." Of course they did, and a little later formalized instruction in repair, regulation and tuning began. Louis Braille, founder of the braille system of reading and writing for the blind was then just pioneering his revolutionary idea.
Today in nearly all state schools for blind children tuning is given to those showing some aptitude in junior and senior years. Understand- ably not enough time or work experience can be gotten from this, however a good foundation has been laid. Beyond the age of eighteen in order to achieve further training and experience the vocational departments of the states can finance a more comprehensive education. The outstanding school under Federal, state vocational rehabilitation provisions has been the one operated by blind PTG member Emil J. Fries, Vancouver, Washington. His minimum course runs around a year, with two generally recommended. The youngsters we have come across in scattered sections of the U.S. graduating from here are resourceful, technically proficient and confident. Their potential for success seems to be of a high order. Emil has had students from just about every state in the U.S. He has expressed himself that the potential for successful pursuit of piano service for the beginner over the age of thirty five is extremely dim due to the variety of skills that must be built up. Ten years ago another outstanding school under regional federal rehabilitation was established at Talladega, Alabama, This institution under the direction of Henry Gentry follows the policy that a student is not fully trained until he has also been located in remunerative employment. There are a few other good training centers in the country.
The situation is dubious, however, when we examine what most often happens to a blind adult receiving "training" under other arrangements within his own state. This unfortunately happens to the majority of applicants to state rehabilitation agencies. Through training, comprehensive work experience under competent instructors is more costly, it also call for long separation from home and possibly a family. It is much cheaper, and handy, to farm out such an applicant to a person who purportedly knows more about tuning than his student and who is willing to take X number of dollars per hour for his pains. In order to better grasp the superficiality and chicanery with which the whole field of rehabilitation is replete, it is necessary first to explain the gobbledegook of the business.
There are a variety of delightful titles which in the course of agency work staff people apply to themselves, i.e., vocational counselor, placement officer, case worker, rehabilitation specialist, ad infinitum. A goodly portion of agency employees are blind themselves. They have had little practical experience and rely on a college degree to aid them in advising other blind people. In fairness, it must be added that another portion of such staff people are competent and helpful to some kinds of applicants. The applicant for services from an agency for the blind is usually referred to as a client, sometimes as a patient. Should he indicate interest in tuning to his case worker he may be first processed through psychological, aptitude, work tolerance tests by other social workers. At the end of prying into his innards, he would be placed in a program to equip him for piano tuning. Very few are ever denied a training program. The client is then assigned to the local "trainer" who is a marginal operator frequently, both technically and financially. He is supposed to further determine if the student has a potential. In view of the fact that such trainers are desperate for bucks, they hardly ever find a student without promise. The course may run from some months to a year on a part time basis usually. The competent successful piano serviceman could not afford the time or loss of income represented in teaching under rehabilitation auspices. It should be noted here that the majority of sighted men in tuning have entered without ever attending a formal school or enrolling in a programmed instruction arrangement. The blind client as the termination of the training is then entered into the records as a "program closure". Every state agency in order to receive federal and state funds must have a quota of program closures. There is much resistance on the part of the agency to reveal details of their operation. Everything is in the annual report of the state agency, which like a bikini reveals the interesting, but conceals the vital. Many of us who are blind and in the PTG are irate at the arrogant double dealing of much agency activity. A competent blind person usually makes his own path in life with minimum outside aid. We at tinges feel depressed not to say embittered to find handicapped people being pushed into tuning although lacking essential qualifications, being coached by incompetents and so foisted on the public.
The apathy or lack of insight on the part of the Piano Technicians Guild in this area condones a travesty on honest rehabilitation. As one supervisor in an agency informed this writer, "I am setting up my own standards, good enough for my program closures. The PTG might be considered an "in group", taking twenty years experience to meet your entrance requirements."
Here, on the other side of the coin, are the recommendations of William Stegman, chairman, tuning school committee, concerning standards for instructors. 1) Eight years or more of actual experience in the field as a tuner and technician. 2) A craftsman member of PTG for at least three years. 3) The ability to teach and demonstrate effectively the many phases of piano technology. 4) Should have a background in music, especially as it applies to keyboard music. 5) Curriculum approved by PTG.
By O.W. Hasselblad, M.D.
Reprinted from Rehabilitation Record May and June 1967
Histories of civilization record the extraordinarily harsh treatment meted out to people with leprosy. Motivated by beliefs that persons who had the disease were cursed, unclean, moral delinquents, or even subhuman, each society devised its own means of dealing with the "leper." These included elaborate "purification" ceremonies, eviction from the community, and burying the patient alive.
Though such extreme measures have been modified, harsh treatment still exists. We still devise cruel and ignorant ways of dealing with patients. Why we do is one of the anomalies of human behavior. It poses questions which must be answered if we are to find the means in each local situation of treating the leprosy patient as a whole man with a disease sometimes simple, sometimes complex, but always complicated seriously by social opprobrium.
If we do not have precise answers as to why society unjustly penalizes the leprosy patient, we do have facts as to what happens to him. We do not speak now of superstitious and primitive practices of the past. We speak of the sometimes subtler but just as effective means of depriving a man of this status in the community, his security in his home and his ability to make a living.
In the last two decades medical science has achieved effective therapeutic agents which can cure the infection in most cases. Principles of physical medicine can be applied to leprosy. Most deformities can be prevented by early diagnosis and treatment, and many that have occurred can be corrected. Rehabilitation techniques developed for other disabling diseases can now be applied to the disabled leprosy patient.
Despite this medical and surgical progress, we have not learned how--nor are we applying what we know--to prevent social, vocational, and economic dislocation. There is no greater obstacle to the ultimate solution of this ancient scourge.
When one contracts leprosy, his identification changes in real ways. We speak of a person having two identities--his self -identity and his social identity. Self-identity refers to his concepts and beliefs about himself: his own worth, his relationship with others, his capacities, weaknesses, and achievements, his place in society. Social identity refers to the labeling of a person by other based on available information about him.
A striking element in the change of identity which the leprosy patient is likely to undergo is that the identity is far removed from actual fact. What he thinks about himself or his concept of what society is likely to think about him is not based upon known truth. We speak of the "stigma" attached to leprosy and use this word to express the inexplicable reasons a leprosy patient is shunned, both by himself and by society.
Clearly then the first priority in avoiding social dislocation of the leprosy patient is to penetrate with scientific facts both his own mind and the minds of those making up his social milieu.
In medicine, the use of the term "rehabilitation" reflects the recognition that to restore a person to health is not sufficient. The absence of disease does not necessarily mean health. If the patient is unable to take his place in the community as an independent, self respecting, and respected member, restoration is not complete. Thus rehabilitation for the leprosy patient means, first of all, the avoidance of social dislocation.
The second priority in the prevention of dislocation of the leprosy patient is to bring to bear on the problem the efforts of a "rehabilitation team." A whole body of supportive and assistive services has developed to enable the patient to readjust satisfactorily to the social or vocational environment from which he had been separated by handicaps incidental to his disease or injury. Working with medical personnel are physiotherapists, occupational therapists, prosthetists, vocational counselors, social workers, employment officers, members of religious and educational professions. These are all directed in varying degrees to the particular needs of a particular patient. The teamwork of all these professions calls for a high degree of cooperation and efficiency. To restore a socially dislocated leprosy patient requires the services of the same kind of rehabilitation team used for other disabilities.
The third priority to be considered is that leprosy rehabilitation must be integrated into the rehabilitation facilities available in each country for all disabilities. Where rehabilitation facilities for the handicaps of leprosy are in advance of those available for handicaps from other diseases, then all should be integrated. It is neither economical nor practical to have separate programs for each disease. Until and unless leprosy is integrated into the mainstream of general public health programs and physical medicine programs for rehabilitation, not only is the disease placed apart and thus neglected but the patient is also placed apart and neglected. It is because leprosy patients traditionally are cared for in segregated institutions that they suffer unfair and unjust social isolation and often medical isolation.
The fourth and perhaps most important consideration in leprosy rehabilitation must be the prevention of physical disability and social dislocation. It is not enough to try to give back to a patient the social and self-identity he has lost through illness and disability. The emphasis should be on helping him maintain his identities while going through the process of diagnosis, treatment, and cure for his illness. To maintain his identity he must not lose his physical capacities to work and to support himself and his family. He must not lose his place in the community because of fear and rejection. He must not lose his belief in himself as a worthwhile, contributing member of society.
Finally, to break the weary and almost relentless chain of events leading to dislocation, the patient should not be put in an institution designated especially for leprosy. Institutionalization accentuates in the patient's mind and that of this family and community his identity with those "set apart." It further provides an escape from the necessity of maintaining his own identity. Dependency soon becomes one of the most crippling results of leprosy.
With early diagnosis and proper management, the great majority of patients need never enter an institution nor be separated from home and community life. Removal to an institution is indicated only when complications require treatment which cannot be carried out at home.
Rehabilitation must, therefore, begin when diagnosis is made and become a part of treatment. Everything possible must be done to conserve a patient's margin of security within his own social environment. It is a part of rehabilitation to discover ways to help the patient where he is and, at all costs, avoid long term residence in a segregated facility.
Unfortunately there are great many patients who already have been dispossessed socially and economically. Many of them need rehabilitation in the fullest sense of the word. They should not, however, be taken to an institution set aside for leprosy in order to be rehabilitated.
This is obviously illogical. They should be rehabilitated in their own environment. If special facilities for vocational training are required, they should not be provided in a leprosy institution, but in vocational rehabilitation centers for all disabled people regardless of cause.
The ultimate solution of the social problems in the management of the leprosy problem will come only when leprosy patients with complications are cared for in general hospitals like other patients with a mildly contagious disease. The basic treatment, if uncomplicated should be provided in a normal home and community environment. In our sense of urgency for the rehabilitation of the already physically and socially disabled leprosy patient, we must avoid at all costs the carrying out of such programs in segregated facilities that only exaggerate his dislocation.
Prevention of social, vocational, and economic dislocation of the leprosy patient is our ultimate weapon. To offer adequate care after this sequence of events has occurred is a costly and incredibly difficult task. Enlightened courage will permit us to use this new weapon of understanding effectively.
By Anthony Mannino
With the adjournment of the final session of the NFB Convention on Friday afternoon, another glorious chapter was written into the archives of Federation progress. A little tired but buoyed by a keen spirit of anticipation, some one hundred and sixty of the Federationists eagerly packed their luggage, their thoughts westward across the Pacific to Hawaii. The trip to Hawaii was set and three separate jet flights were scheduled to take on the Federation contingent . The first departure from Los Angeles International Airport was early Saturday morning and the last group was airborne at 6:30 that evening, the writer being with this last group. This was a flight whose passengers witnessed a flashing red sun setting over the horizon of the dark blue Pacific.
After an unusually smooth crossing, the huge jet-liner landed at Honolulu's International Airport. Welcomed with kisses and adorned with leis of orchids and other native flowers, everyone was ushered to a waiting bus that carried us down Kalakaua Avenue to the hotel. This ride was really a guided tour as the tour escort described the many points of interest along the way, most of which we were to see or visit during the days ahead.
Later we learned that the earlier arrivals had experienced some delay in getting their hotel rooms, but by now everyone had been settled and most of them were out on the town or beach. Some of us lost little time getting back down to the street in search of an eating place. It was early Sunday morning before the last of the tired Federationists decided to call it quits, after a long twenty seven hour day.
According to the schedule, Sunday morning and afternoon were to be times of leisure, but this was ignored by the NFB quests at the Royal Hawaiian, the Kaimanu and the Waikiki Grand Hotels. Early morning found them on the beach swimming, walking in the park, at breakfast or on their way to church services. Later there were those who went to visit the Honolulu Zoo. In the afternoon, at the Waikiki Shell, there were two enjoyable public concerts, one by the Honolulu Band and the other by the Royal Hawaiian Singers. Some of our people paid their first visit to the International Market Place to mark the beginning of a long shopping spree. At five o'clock came the first gathering of the entire NFB group for a special event--a luau at the famous Queen's Surf Restaurant. There were alohas all around and after the quests were settled in their places, each of them was crowned with a head band of flowers as cameras clicked and flashed into action. Torches and lanterns, music and a continual chorus of voices set the scene for the picturesque luau. The meal turned out to be an adventure in native food. There were gallons of rum punch, long slices of fresh, ripe pineapple, Kalua pig that was baked in an earthen pit, fish steamed in a wrapping of ti leaves, Lomi Lomi slamon stewed in vegetable juices, baked yams, spinach, chicken, cocoanut cake, poi and Hawaiian bananas.
After this exotic meal, the stage lights were turned on and the audience was treated to a Polynesian show of singing, dancing, music and comedy. Some of our own people were called up to the stage to do the hula. This was great fun, especially for the rest of us who were cheering them on. Aft e r the show, we returned to the hotel. Those who still had energy left to burn, again went out to explore whatever excitement Honolulu had to offer for the rest of the evening.
Monday morning brought us all together again, this time at the harbor front to board the luxury yacht, the Kaimanu, for a cruise of Pearl Harbor. This took us to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial and across the waters of the dawn attack on December 7, 1941. Then we returned along the coast with its many installations and passed the shores of the City of Honolulu to Kewalo Basin. The announcer on this cruise gave a very vivid description which projected a real sense of immediacy as we traversed the historic harbor. The end of this cruise brought us to lunch time.
For this noon-day feast we left the yacht and went to Fisherman's Wharf. Here we were treated to probably one of the best meals of our stay on the island. The plates were filled with the various servings of large shrimp, scallops and other varieties of sea food cooked to a Hawaiian King's taste.
After lunch we again boarded the buses and journeyed to one of the large pineapple canneries. The bountiful lunch we had just consumed did not seem to deter anyone from sampling the fresh pineapple juice or luscious slices of the ripe fruit. The packing plant itself was a true model of modern conveyor line and mass production.
From the cannery we went to visit a perfume factory. Here we learned about the basic ingredients in perfume and the companion products. Through lecture and movies, we were told of the various flowers from which perfume was extracted and the methods used to do this. There was a demonstration of the blending of the basic materials with chemicals to produce the enchanting final product. Before leaving, everyone received a sample to take home.
Tuesday was another bright warm day, during which everyone enjoyed the leisure of doing whatever he or she wished. Some went to the International Market Place, others went to the shopping center and still others went to the beaches, or just loafed. In the evening we all met again at the boat landing to board the Kaimanu for a sunset cruise from the harbor out along the shoreline to Diamond Head and return. Thanks to the fine announcer, this also was a very enjoyable and informative trip. More installations and buildings were pointed out with interesting exposition of their purpose or history. Dinner was served on board and this made the cruise a real pleasure.
Wednesday, Thursday and what was to remain of Friday were days of leisure. This gave plenty of time for optional or personal inclinations. This is when most of the Federationists went off in all directions. Some were attracted to the Ulu Mau Village where native culture was manifested in lectures and demonstrations. Some took a tour of the island to visit the Mormon and Chinese Temples, Pali and Lookout Point with its terrific wind stream. Others visited different interesting spots on the Island of Oahu. Some had dinner at La Ronde, the charming revolving restaurant atop one of the high rise buildings, others went to the Foster Gardens; still others went to the monkey-pod wood factory and a garment factory. A few took the eight-island flight tour to the neighboring islands, stopping at Hilo in Hawaii, Maui, Kalaupapa, the famous Leper Colony on the Island of Molokai and Kauai. Some called on friends on the island and were therefore fortunate in being able to spend some time with them. Several of our people visited Puna Hou, one of the local private schools. with its fine library and historical collection of Hawaiian. Still others went to the Waioli Tea Room with its good food, beautiful surroundings and the grass hut which was the residence of Robert Louis Stevenson while he worked at his writings on the island. The night prowlers found time to spend at the entertainment spots in and near their hotel enjoying the music, singing and the Mai Tais. There were final dashes for last minute shopping, one more stroll along the beach, or a final dip in the warm waters. The writer had trouble breaking away from the out-rigger canoe. Even though it was hard work battling out to mount the surfs, the thrill of the surf ride into shore was well worth it.
On Friday it was a reluctant group of Federationists that turned its thoughts to making preparations for leaving this wonderful island. The end of our stay had come all too soon! Bags were packed and preparations were made for departure. At 10:30 p.m. the last of the Federationists had boarded the huge clipper that was to bring us back to mainland. The last minute rush at the airport was a little hectic, but by take-off time we were ready for the flight home, tired but happy with memories of a very enjoyable vacation to Hawaii. Aloha, Hawaii, Aloha!
The Yugoslav delegation and its President Mr. Stevan Uzelac welcomed the WCWB Executive Committee to its April 17 to 23 1967 meeting in Belgrade. Dr. Carl Strehl of West Germany was absent and requested that Dr. Geissler act as his substitute for the duration of the meeting and this request was granted. Also Mr. A. Kebede of Ethiopia asking that the same be accorded to Mr. A. Shimelis. Three new members were present because of the recent deaths of Professor P. Bentivoglio of Italy and of Mrs. Tulio of Portugal and the ineligibility of Mr. T. Kasin from the Norwegian delegation. Postal ballots had been conducted and resulted in the election of General A. Ammannato, Senor I. Satrustegui and Mr. E. Hakkined to fill these vacancies.
One issue that was given considerable attention was that of new memberships: it was reported that since the New York assembly two countries, Kuwait and the Sudan had joined the Council, bringing the total membership to forty five countries. The Associate membership had increased by eleven since the New York Assembly when the new arrangement of an annual payment of fifty dollars was instituted.
It was announced that the Yugoslav delegation and its President Uzelac was able to encourage further recruitment in Eastern Europe and particularly in the USSR and Bulgaria. Mr. Uzelac announced that he had already received a letter from the President of the All-Russian Society for the Blind that a decision to join had been made.
President Boulter reported that after the New York Assembly he had appointed a special sub-committee of three members of the council with Mr. Uzelac as its Chairman and Messrs. Colligan and Seireup as its other members to consider the representation of countries which are divided into two or more separate areas. Resulting from the investigation was Uzelac' s proposal, that the Council recognize that the blind in all parts of the world are entitled on humanitarian grounds to representation in the WCWB through the appropriate organizations of and for the blind in their respective areas. Therefore, if a country is divided into two or more parts, with each part having national administrations which operate independently of each other, then these countries, at the discretion of the Executive Committee, and in accordance with all requirements of the Constitution, should be granted membership. It was unanimously agreed that the German Democratic Republic be admitted to membership of the Council.
The General Assembly will hold its next meeting in New Delhi in the later part of October or early November, 1969.
A pre-college Summer course for blind students was demonstrated during the three-year period of a VRA grant to Arkansas Enterprises for the Blind, Inc. in Little Rock, according to a recent release from HEW dealing with VRA demonstration grants. The results of that research confirmed the need for pre-college training. Blind students who participated in the study found that increased typewriting speed, as well as the skillful use of tape recorders and braillewriters, was essential.
The study also revealed that:
*Blind students had a higher retention rate than their sighted classmates.
*Students with a mixed background of residential, public, or private schooling did far better than those with a background of just one school.
*High proficiency in one communicative skill was found to be more desirable than low proficiency in a variety of skills.
*The totally blind did better than partially-sighted students, the partially sighted used fewer of the new techniques, in direct ratio to their degree of vision.
At it's forty-eighth annual convention, held at its home and center in St. Paul, Minnesota, May 26 and 27, 1967, The Minnesota Organization of the Blind elected the following officals: James Schleppegrell , President, Torger Lien, Secretary, Arman LaBerge, Director, Jenny Lien, Representative to the Minnesota Council.
In September James R. Slagle, blind and holder of a Ph.D. from MIT will become chief of a prestigious and pioneering heuristics laboratory in Bethesda, Md., under the auspices of U.S. Department of HE W s Division of Computer Research and Technology. Since 1963 he has been head of the Artificial Intelligence Group (specializing in computer heuristics) at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, California. He also has taught a graduate course on the same subject at the University of California in Berkeley.
When she recieved an expense check for one hundred dollars Minnie Sloan, assidious MONITOR correspondent from New York, donated the entire amount to the MONITOR at the NFB convention in Los Angeles.
Alberta B. Turner, Ph.D., Director of Research, Ohio Youth Commission, Columbus, Ohio has been appointed to the National Advisory Council on Vocational Rehabilitation. (Release, Monday, June 26, 1967 U.S. Dept. of HEW)
The 1967 convention of the Michigan Council of the Blind will be held September 30 and October 1 at the Tuller Hotel in Detroit.
On September 3, 1967 Sweden will change from driving on the left to driving on the right. On that day an army of 50,000 men will work to reverse traffic signals, repaint lines, reverse one-way streets. Special information has been devised for the deaf, dumb, and blind. (Los Angeles Times June 1967)
Two young Greater Cleveland girls, both blind, accidentally stepped into an elevator shaft at the Akron Central YWCA and plunged seven floors to their deaths. They were Donna Clifford, seventeen, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Clifford, 3 5246 Chestnut Ridge Rd. , North Ridgeville, and Genevieve Ryncarz, twenty-one, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Ryncarz, 2584 W . 11th St. Both girls were waiting for the automatic elevator on the seventh floor. Donna Clifford intending to return to her room on the eighth, and Genevieve Ryncarz to return to her room on the 10th floor. (Kansas City Star)
A fifteen story apartment building for the aged and the handicapped will be built in Astoria, Queens, New York by Goodwill Industries. The building will contain four apartments on ground level that will be set aside for paraplegics or others confined to wheelchairs. All of the apartments will have such special devices as extra railings in the bathrooms, nonskid tile and easily opened cabinets. It is estimated that the rents will be about $27.96 a room per month, which is about $5 below the usual rate for buildings constructed under the Mitchell-Lama program, which provides city and state loans for construction of middle-income housing. (Sunday June 25, 1967 New York Times)
Curtis and Doris Willoughby, of Cedar Rapids Iowa, married late in June, honeymooned at the Los Angeles Convention and Hawaii.
A new kind of eye test for drivers has been recommended today based on examinations of 17,5 00 California motorists over the past five years. The test would check the driver's ability to perceive and size-up a moving object, in contrast to the usual static eye chart examination for license applicants. The new kind of test for "dynamic visual acuity" (OVA) was developed by a UCLA research psychologist as part of the most exhaustive study ever undertaken to relate vision to driving performance. (Thursday, July 13, 1967 Van Nuys Calif. THE NEWS)
Luna Hamilton of Nebraska, and George Schulman of Boston, who first met at the Boston Convention, announced at the Los Angeles Convention that they would be married on July 25 in Boston.
At the banquet of the Los Angeles Convention George Hoppenstedt, paid full price for a ticket, consumed an entire meal and was wide awake throughout. He was celebrating his third birthday.
An address delivered by Professor Jacobus tenBroek President, National Federation of the Blind at the Banquet of the Annual Convention Los Angeles, July 6, 1967.
When last we met together in this Golden State-eleven years ago, in that "other California" whose unofficial capital is San Francisco--I delivered another banquet address which I daresay some of our grizzled members still remember. It was entitled "Within the Grace of God." It was frankly a fighting speech--and I'd like for a moment to recall to your minds and memories what the fight was all about.
That 1956 speech was principally concerned with the development of our movement- -the organized blind movement- -in the United States, and with the relations of that movement with the private voluntary agencies, and combinations of agencies, in the field of work for the blind.
The state of our relations with the agencies, at that turbulent point of our history, can be briefly characterized. It was a state of war. We were in fact the targets of concerted opposition--both nationally and within many of our affiliated states. The purpose of that attack was to break up the organized blind movement and return its members to the alienation, dependency and disorganization of the status quo ante bellum--that is, the good old days before the blind were organized.
Among other things , that agency opposition took the form of a verbal campaign directed against the basic premises and pillars of our movement. In editorials, speeches, books and broadsides, authoritative spokesmen for major agencies reminded the blind over and over of their legendary "lacks and losses"--their irremediable dependency, their emotional imbalance, their obvious inequality, their desperate need for professional guidance and custodial care until their dying day--or, alternatively, until that future golden age as one agency director expressed it "when each and every blind person is a living advertisement of his ability and capacity to accept the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship."
Now we are together again in California- -eleven years after. How goes the battle today? How do we stand now in relation to the agencies?
Before confronting those questions, let it be understood that our embattled relationship with the agencies is only one phase of a many-sided movement of the blind reaching toward integration, equality, and independence. It goes hand in hand with our struggle to improve life and livelihood through legislative action--national, state and local. It has its counterpart also in the arena of the courtroom, where dramatic struggles against discrimination and exclusion continue to be fought--alternately won and lost and won again. On still another front we are engaged in positive relationships with other groups and associations, in particular those of the disabled, the disadvantaged and the deprived. Our concern must always be with the lame and the halt as well as with the blind! And then there is our own domestic front: the internal order of the Federation, with its constantly renewed challenges of diversity and democracy.
On all these fronts and more, we are called upon to devote our fullest energies and creative efforts toward the discovery of new solutions to changing issues and evolving needs. But in each of these areas, the agencies loom as both a fact of our lives and a factor in our planning. Nor is this a peculiar problem of blind Americans. Elsewhere in the world-- everywhere else in the world--much the same tense and tortuous relation- ship exists. It exists, to be sure, at different stages and in various forms. In many countries of Europe, although rear-guard battles are still being fought, the course of the struggle has long since been determined. The pattern has been one not of extinction of the agencies but of their conquest and assimilation. The blind people of Europe have organized themselves and have taken over the agencies.
In England, on the other hand, almost alone of the principal European nations, the battle continues to rage unabated. There a large national organization of the blind stands on the battle line against and entrenched and powerful agency and its satellites. It is an unequal struggle, though far from one-sided; and the organized blind of Great Britain have no early hope of carrying out the continental pattern. Rather they seek to secure their goals through increasing governmentalization, thereby gradually superseding the voluntary societies by having the government take over their vested interests.
In Canada the story is perhaps the saddest and sorriest of all. In that northern clime an agency colossus bestrides the world of the blind from coast to coast, making free use of company-union tactics wherever any independent sentiment dares to express itself among the disorganized blind. Only a handful of undaunted spirits remain to hold the banner aloft in the deserted battlefield.
Still a different pattern exists in some European countries, and especially those beyond the Iron Curtain, where large national organizations of the blind exist, apparently dominant in their field. There, for the most part, private agencies and voluntary socities are virtually nonexistent but the question remains whether the blind organizations are genuinely self-determined and self-directing or only the passive instruments of governmental policy and action. If the flow of communication is truly from the blind to the government, as well as the other way around, if there is genuine dialogue and not just authoritarian monologue, then in those lands the three-cornered struggle among the blind, the agencies and the government has been resolved into a two-sided partnership. Let us hope that this is indeed the case.
In the United States, meanwhile, the wheel of fortune has not yet turned so far. The private agencies and voluntary societies are very much in evidence, as powerful as they are visible. Are they our collaborators or our calumniators? When the agency official passes by who goes there: friend or foe?
The answer today, no less than eleven years ago, must be qualified and doubtful. There are agencies aplenty marching with us, fully attuned to our aspirations and activities, alert to our petitions, admiring of our programs. Doubtless too, their numbers have grown since 1956. But there are also large and powerful agencies abroad in the land, considerable in number and vast in influence, which remain hostile to our movement in thought, in speech, and in action.
And the worst of these, it may well be, is the newest: namely, COMSTAC. For COMSTAC seeks to impose upon the blind not less but more authority and custody than ever before. Under the guise of professionalism, it would perpetuate colonialism. Its philosophy is a throwback to the age of the silent client, before the revolution in welfare and civil rights which converted the client into an active and vocal partner in the programing and dispensing of services. In its lofty disregard of the organized blind, as the voice of those to be served COMSTAC betrays its bureaucratic bias, that is, its distorted image of the blind client not as a person to be served but as a defective mechanism to be serviced.
Nowhere is the relationship between blind Americans and the social agencies more distressing or scandalizing than in the sheltered workshops where the relationship is one of pervasive exploitation on the one hand and an elemental struggle for survival on the other. He re the normal dignity of worker-management relations is not to be found; on the contrary, blind shop workers find themselves regarded not as workers but as wards, not as visually disabled simply but as emotionally disturbed as well. They have been denied the status of organized labor, denied the right to strike, denied even the protection of minimum wage standards given as a matter of course to other workers.
The inmates of the St. Louis Lighthouse have been out on strike since last March, in spite of these deprivations -just for the right to sit down and talk with the lighthouse-keepers. Other strikes have broken out across the country as blind shop workers have decided to stand up and speak out. Because of this rebellious spirit, this show of backbone, they are beginning to make progress. But their gains are coming, step by painful step, against the bitter-end opposition of the overseers in what must be still be designated the sheltered sweatshops of America.
This condition of cold war between agencies and the organized blind is being waged with particular force and fury within the World Council for the Welfare of the Blind at whose gates the organized blind of nation after nation have come knocking, and have either been turned away or relegated to second-class membership. The American Blind, through the NFB, have battled for years to occupy the seat that is rightfully theirs upon the World Council's executive board and to gain equal representation with the agencies, but have been spurned, insulted and ignored. The effort of the organized blind of Australia to gain a single place in that country's delegation to the World Council, long opposed by the controlling agencies within Australia, has now been blocked by a ruling of the World Council that the organized blind need not be represented at all.
The rationalization for this action and this attitude is contained in a 1964 resolution enacted by the World Council as a compromise to stave off a motion by the NFB. That resolution states that "where in any country there exists a substantial group of blind persons organized into associations and where there are blind persons occupying leading positions in agencies for the blind, adequate provision should be made for their representation in the national delegation." The emphasis is upon blind persons, wherever they may be, and not upon the difference between elective associations of blind people, on the one hand, and professional agencies on the other. The lack of distinction is significant; for it treats alike the roles of the agency professional and the elected representative of a democratic group. If that confusion of roles is honest, it reflects a profound ignorance of democracy; if it is disingenuous, it reflects a shocking contempt for democracy.
What is the difference between the two roles? I have been informed by many earnest persons, all of them agency officials, to be sure, that the difference is negligible, but that what little difference there is favors the agency professional. For if he is blind himself, then does he not know the experience of blindness as well as any elected leader? And since he is a trained professional, does he not know social policies and programs better? And, finally, cannot the professional administrator consult his clients as much as any elective fellow and having spoken with them qualify to speak for them?
These seem plausible arguments on the surface but they convey an astonishing misconception of the democratic process and its meaning. Put aside the fact that there are elected blind leaders who possess at least a modicum of knowledge of the welfare field, and appointed agency officials who possess little. That is beside the real point which is that in a democracy the proper role of the expert and the professional is not to govern, not to rule, but to advise the governors; it is not to make policy decisions but only to implement them. An engineer may tell us how to build a highway; what he cannot do is to make the decision for us whether we should build the highway or whether we should build instead a college, a ball park or a civic center. The sharpest lesson of democracy is that no professional elite or case, administrative or military or scientific, must be permitted to usurp the power of the people and their elected representatives to make the decisions of life and liberty, or of life and death.
That the agencies all too often have failed to subordinate the role of the expert is one thing; that they all too often have misconstrued the proper role of the blind is a second thing. But more important than these mistakes is their persisting refusal to acknowledge and accept the elementary principles of humanity and democracy.
The blind have a right to live in the world. That right is as deep as human nature; as pervasive as the need for social existence; as ubiquitous as the human race; as invincible as the human spirit. As their souls are their own, so their destiny must be their own. Their salvation or failure lies within their own choice and responsibility. That choice cannot be precluded or prejudged; those lives cannot be predetermined or controlled.
In a democracy the blind have a right to share in the fruits and obligations of the community. They have a right to participate in the decisions that affect their lives and fortunes. And beneath and beyond these democratic rights there is a further one: the right to organize for collective self-expression, and to be represented through their own associations. This, if it does not go without saying, surely goes without disputing.
But no: that basic and bedrock right is challenged directly by many agencies--no less today than a decade ago. Not only by their actions, but by their words, do they stand condemned of throwing stumbling blocks in the path of the blind. I call to your attention an editorial published last September in the Matilda Ziegler Magazine, written by its managing editor, Howard M. Liechty, who is also the longtime managing editor of the New Outlook for the Blind, the official journal of the American Federation.
Editor Liechty's editorial is a straightforward, unequivocal, and sweeping attack upon the notion of equality as having any present application to the blind, and also upon the effort to move toward equality by organized action and legislative reform. "Any attempt to force social-equality," writes Editor Liechty, "would mean legislating it, and any thinking man must know that you cannot legislate such a thing of the heart, and force men to accept their fellow men as social equals." And he goes on to quote with favor the words of a former Supreme Court Justice, Charles E. Whittaker, to the effect that no minority group has ever achieved acceptance in America until, "by long years of exemplary conduct, a majority of its members have earned the respect and liking of the people generally."
Well, there you have it. To Editor Liechty today, as to his colleagues a decade ago, the hope of the blind for such peculiar values as full citizenship, individual rights, social acceptance, and human dignity, must continue to be a hope deferred. If anyone should ask how long, oh lords, how long must we be kept waiting, the answer comes back: until by exemplary conduct you have proved your worthiness- -all of you together, and each one of you individually.
This requirement so righteously imposed upon the blind, this test of exemplary conduct or good behavior, has a strangely familiar ring. It is the echo of the ancient poor law, that separate and unequal body of legal demands and strictures enforced upon the poor, the indigent, and the disabled as the precondition of eligibility for public aid. In scarcely diluted form, these requirements of exemplary conduct are now to be the conditions of eligibility for citizenship itself, not for others, but only for the blind.
To assert, as Editor Liechty does, that the rights of equal opportunity, of equal treatment, and equal access, of participation and expression, cannot be legislatively secured and judicially enforced is to fly in the face of our entire constitutional and political history. It is also to disregard the not inconsiderable history of the organized blind movement from the Kletzing case to the Model White Cane Law.
Of course we cannot be required to love one another; but we can be prevented from expressing our hates, our superstitions and our prejudices in terms of public law and social policy. We cannot require the sighted to embrace the blind as brothers; but we can stop them from placing obstacles in their path.
We need not suppose that the end of discrimination against the blind will bring an automatic end to prejudice; but we can choose to be guided by the sense of justice, the voice of reason, the commitment to equality and the passion for freedom which together make up the ancestral faith of American democracy.
Why is it always the defenders of injustice and inequality who cry out against the use of force to bring about change? For it is force they are themselves defending: the force of habit, the force of custom, the force of poor laws and of corrupt institutions. Against this combination of forces there must be brought another and opposing set of forces: the force of conviction, the force of aroused public opinion, the force of responsible government, the force of law.
And why is it, finally, that the means test of "exemplary conduct" always fall upon the victims of oppression, exclusion and discrimination rather than upon the perpetrators? Whose conduct is it that most needs to be challenged and examined? Who is it that should be placed on trial in this case? Is it the blind or is it the men of short vision and little faith, the obsolete custodians of the lighthouse and the sheltered shop, who seek to defend their vested interest by subsidizing the ghost of the helpless blind man?
Through all the years and decades of our existence as an organized movement, for all our splendid success in gaining allies and winning public support, we have faced the persistent opposition of those whom we may call the "hard-core" custodians. The main thrust of their attack upon us has always been that blind people are not ready for equality--not prepared for the burden of freedom--not strong enough to stand up- right and walk alone down the main streets of society.
To this denial of equality by the agencies, the organized blind reply: we are not only equal to you- -we are equal to your challenge.
By Hugo Garcia Garcilazo
[Editor's Note: Among the foreign visitors who attended our Los Angeles Convention, we were particularly delighted to have Hugo Ernesto Garcia Garcilazo representing the organized blind of Argentina. Hugo and his charming wife, Maria Clara, are in the United States on a State Department grant sponsored by the NFB. As he explains in his Convention talk, Hugo is the Secretary of the Argentine Federation of Institutions for the Blind, Despite its title, this Federation is an association of organizations of the blind. There are nine affilitated groups. Principal among these is the Argentine Association for the Rights of the Blind, which boasts a membership of some nine hundred blind persons in the greater Buenos Aires area. Two other Buenos Aires affiliates of the Federation are the Fraternal Society of Buenos Aires, which was founded in 1916, the first organized group of blind people, and the Argentine Library for the Blind, a charitable corporation whose current president is sighted but whose board of directors is composed entirely of blind persons. The president of the Federation is Jose Fernandez, a blind vending stand operator, who represents the Argentine Association for the Rights of the Blind. Of the remaining affiliated organizations, most are provincial societies or associations or groups organized in other cities. The typical form of organization is that of a charitable corporation with a board of directors and a general membership. The boards of directors and presidents are all blind in most cases.
In addition to the legislation mentioned by Hugo, providing for sheltered shops, for a braille printing plant and for a blind band and choral group, the National Parliament enacted a law in 1950 establishing a quota system for blind government employees--one out of each one hundred jobs with the government is to go to the blind. This provision is to be implemented by a commission consisting of four government representatives and three representatives of organizations of the blind. Legislation also provides for loans to blind persons who wish to engage in small businesses.]
First of all, I would like to thank you for the honor I have of attending this Convention and, what is more, of being able to inform you, at least in a superficial way, of the conditions of the blind people in my country.
As you must know, Argentina is in the extreme south of the American Continent. Its territory has almost three millions of square kilometers, which means that it is the third part of the United States. Immense meadows (that we call pampas), high mountains, lakes, rivers, jungles and deserts, form a country of different climates, characteristics, and especially of many natural resources, and possibilities. So far, its main exploited resources have been agriculture and stockbreeding, which satisfy the necessities of the internal market. Various products, derived from these two resources, are exported to European and American countries.
Industry had a recent development and will only reach its true importance when steel production is sufficient. Oil, mines, fishing are other possibilities which still have to be exploited in a more complete way.
The scarcity of population that live in this immense territory conspires against its development because it does not constitute an internal market good enough to support a wider and more varied production. Almost half of its twenty two million inhabitants are in Buenos Aires , the capital city, whereas in the provinces there are vast desolate regions.
Of those twenty two million people, approximately 20,000 are blind, a figure that represents less than one out of a thousand. The majority of those blind people are adults who live in rural regions, in poor and distant provinces and who have never received instruction. Only 5,000 have been educated and approximately 2,000 have a job.
The education of the blind in Argentina began at the beginning of this century in Buenos Aires, thanks to the task of an Italian blind man called Francisco Gatti, who created a private school which later was taken over by the Government in 1908. Soon after, and on the basis of this school, the National Institute for the Blind was created, which carried out for a long time a very complete task, giving the blind students primary education, musical education, training in handicrafts and preparing them in a convenient way.
As time went by, this elementary preparation was not enough for the increasing demands of the blind. Later on a Braille press was created and also a choral group and symphonic band, the members of these three organizations being paid by the Government. Workshops which are really sheltered workshops, complete the main resource of work for the blind in Argentina. All this went through forty years, concentrated mainly in Buenos Aires.
Fifteen years ago there arose in the provincial government a movement in favor of the education of the blind. Nowadays, there are small schools in provinces like Mendoza, Cordoba, Tucuman, Salta, Entre Rios and the city of Bahia Blanca and also of La Plata. But so far, neither in Buenos Aires, nor in the provinces, are the blind educated in a complete way which would give them a training to enable them to be independent in accordance with their inclinations and possibilities of their environment. In Argentina, only forty blind persons have finished the secondary school. There are only four lawyers and one Doctor of Philosophy. There are, however, fifteen students of different careers in the University. We also have a physicist-chemist. Then there are piano tuners, people who own vending - stands, a seller of insurance policies and some musicians. Many blind people are working in private factories such as Kaiser's car factory, Standard Electric, Philips, Cinzano and their employers are quite happy with their work.
In 1916, many blind people started to associate themselves in a private way in Buenos Aires and the provinces in order to get more rights and possibilities, trying to fill in in the blanks left by the Government in the services it provided. Nevertheless, all the action of these private societies had a local influence without any coordination among themselves and this of course, weakened their effectiveness.
It was only in 1965 that the Argentine Federation of Private Institutions for the Blind, of which I am the Secretary, was created in order to join effort s and get more and better services, either from the state or from private agencies. But it is necessary to admit that in Argentina, in many of these aspects, we have to start everything all over again. The services that are provided in schools nowadays are still primary education and handicrafts and although we think that blind people should get their secondary education together with sighted students, it is necessary to train them previously in a satisfactory way. The majority of the people have never received a supplementary instruction, such as typing, either in braille or on an ordinary typewriter, mobility or behavior in society. There are no good instructors or teachers that try in an efficient way to educate in the complete sense of the word, and the blind that know how to behave in society and have a good mobility, for example, must be grateful to their families who did what the school should have done. This however does not apply to the majority, whose families do not know how to train them conveniently.
This sad situation must be changed in a radical way. In order to do so, it is necessary to create many services that do not exist in Argentina. Since last February, I have under my charge, the task of directing the Institute Roman Rosell for blind boys and young men, the most important in Argentina. It is supported by the Government but its budget is insufficient, and that is why we are trying to get private help in order to develop new services. This task of directing the institute is being carried out by myself, together with two other blind persons, a very unusual fact indeed, since so far the blind had never had the chance of directing our own educational institutes. This opportunity will be, perhaps, the only one we shall ever have and we cannot but try to make the most of it. The Institute enjoys a great many possibilities. Apart from the primary school it has four training workshops, and we are going to start other supplementary services, such as mobility, gyms, typing, at least a foreign language and also farm training for those who come from rural provinces and wish to work in rural tasks. Our aim is to keep the students in the Institute as short a time as possible so to prepare them so that when they leave, they can either get a job or continue studying together with sighted people. The Argentine blind people and my government have great hopes in this trip I am making through the United States. It is well known in Argentina that the American blind get many services and that they work in many different activities and professions. I have the mission of observing everything that is being done here, of acquiring the experience and of making valuable contacts which will enable me to know, once I go back to Argentina, what can be done and how it should be done for the welfare of the blind. Let me be permitted now to thank most heartfully Dr. Jacobus tenBroek for helping me so much in order that I could come to the United States, I also wish to thank all the people I have met in the cities I have visited so far for their kindness and cordiality. I wish to thank you all who allow me to know the activities of this Federation which is doing so much in favor of the blind. Now, it is my task to work for the blind of my country, even if I have to give up my job as a lawyer in which I have worked for almost ten years. Once again, thank you very much.
By Douglas Houghton
(Reprinted from the New Beacon, June 1967)
This is the full text of the recent BBC Home Service broadcast which last month was the subject of our editorial. The Rt. Hon. Douglas Houghton, CH, MP, was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1964-66) and Minister without Portfolio (1966-67). The text is reprinted from The Listener of April 13.
Throughout the year, and especially at Christmas, the collecting boxes go round for charity. We see moving appeals in newspapers, on posters, and on television; the Week's Good Cause has been a radio feature for years. Some of us get personal letters asking for donations, covenants, or bequests. Other money-raising efforts have become popular, like selling charity Christmas cards, a rake-off from football pools, and other flutters of various kinds. All this adds up to big money. The grand total runs into millions a year.
This alone makes it a matter of public interest, though of more importance is the work and future of voluntary action in our so-called welfare state. Ever since the big social reforms of 1948 the question has been "What should the voluntary societies do now?"
I turn for the answer to three impressive sources--Beveridge in his book Voluntary action; a government-appointed Committee on Charitable Trusts; and R.A. Butler when, as Home Secretary, he introduced the Charities Bill in I960. All agreed that the scope of charity is, first, to pioneer new fields of development in charitable work; and, secondly, to fill gaps in the social services. Beveridge and others lifted the concept of voluntary action far above its practical details to being a contribution to democracy--"a distinguishing mark of a free society".
"Pioneering" means identifying emerging needs and trying to meet them. It means drawing attention to particular groups whose interests are being neglected or insufficiently provided for in the welfare state. For example, we are becoming much more alive to the problem of civilian disablement, and the need to open up a fuller life for handicapped people. This is largely the result of the active work of a new voluntary society.
The "filling of gaps" side of the matter is more complex. If this means providing services which are the statutory responsibility of central government and local authorities, voluntary bodies are doing quite a lot of that. Take children: of 80,000 children in care, about 15,000, or one-fifth, are in voluntary homes or boarded out by voluntary organisations. About 5,000 children are actually put in voluntary care by local authorities, who pay £1-1/2 million a year for their keep.
Another example is single homeless persons. When a census was taken one night in December 1965, there were some 27,000 men sleeping in hostels. Fewer than one-fifth were in public authority hostels and reception centres. The rest were sleeping elsewhere, mostly in long-established voluntary and commercial hostels and lodging houses, and largely paid for by National Assistance. Then there are homes for the aged. About 11,000 are in voluntary homes, compared with 75,000 in
care of welfare authorities.
Measured in terms of money, the best estimate I can make of the value of these services is that voluntary societies receive between £.9,000,000 and £1O.OOO.OOO a year from government departments, and probably another £.3,000,000 from local authorities. They get this money for services rendered on behalf of the statutory authorities, or for social or other approved work they do within the field of government responsibility. At a guess (and it is no more) I should say that this amount covers between one-third and one-half of the total expenditure of all voluntary societies. Surely this means that charities are doing things which the state services should be doing.
It varies in degree from one society to another. Some are working in a field where government and local authorities have heavy commitments (child care, for instance). Others are pioneering where government responsibility does not yet exist. It also varies between one area and another. The widening range of social services provided by central and local authorities means heavier calls upon their resources and greater opportunities for co-operation with voluntary societies.
The extent to which public authorities rely on voluntary services depends on many things, such as the nature of the service required, the capacity of existing public services to cope, and the willingness or otherwise of local authorities to give social services preference over other pressing demands.
Is this what is meant by "filling gaps"? Should charitable and public funds go into partnership in this way? Should both be applied to the same objects, with no clear idea of how to divide them up, or where to draw the line? As a general rule I do not think charities should be used permanently to relieve the Government of a responsibility which Parliament has accepted; nor should they be used directly or indirectly for the relief of rates and taxes.
It is not possible to draw the line firmly there yet, but both voluntary societies and the Government should positively aim at doing so. Voluntary action should eventually withdraw from services which the state agencies should provide. There will be plenty to do elsewhere.
Concern with the quality of life
Our social aims today go far beyond the relief of material distress. We now aim at the enrichment of life for those who, from whatever cause, are missing or losing what lies in our power to give. We are concerned with the quality of life. That is a wide enough field for voluntary action to pioneer and to experiment. I believe the necessary impulse and initiative will be forthcoming. The inspiration behind voluntary service is strong in this country--stronger perhaps than in any other.
Meanwhile, whenever the gaps in the welfare state are more truly deficiencies and faults, voluntary action should provide first aid while pressing state agencies to provide the remedy.
If this dual role of voluntary societies is accepted, if they are to stay as partners with the state and not rivals, on what conditions can harmony and co-operation be ensured? Obviously they must be up to the job. A worry about this is whether they will be able to find the heavy capital cost of new premises and equipment. I have had evidence of this already where a society has said that they could provide the service if they could get help with the capital outlay. Something of a crisis looms ahead for some societies who will not be able to maintain approved standards without special appeals or help form the Government.
Then there are problems of staffing. Here the voluntary societies and government services share a common problem, and a common source of recruitment. Social workers are now professionals. They are trained in methods of treatment. Nothing is simple--or cheap--any more. The amateur is on the way out. Education, training and experience are essential. Trained social workers are needed in larger numbers. Both local and central government and voluntary societies are after the same people, and they will have to pay adequate salaries to get them. There is obvious need for collaboration there.
Taking these two problems together, voluntary bodies will find the pace being set by the statutory agencies. If they are to pioneer and experiment they must not fall behind. They must provide better services or different services: otherwise they become merely time-servers. The existence, side by side, of voluntary and state services should stimulate mutual criticism and be of mutual benefit. Non- governmental agencies have flexibility and freedom from tightly drawn rules and regulations. They can pioneer; they can experiment. The question is, will they do enough of it? We do not want them sitting round the camp fire with public authorities merely swapping yarns and waiting for the rations to come up. They must push on.
Finding the right purpose
Some people may question whether charitable work should be given pride of place in a highly developed and socially-conscious community like ours. Charity is a legacy from the wide differences between rich and poor and the class distinctions of the past. What justification is there for it now? None of us wishes to stifle the impulse to do good. It is a matter of finding the right field and purpose for it.
That is why this side of voluntary work--what I call the "inspire action", religious or humanist, is important. It is surely the only justification for voluntary effort continuing at all. Voluntary societies should therefore remain true to themselves. If they lose the widespread and directly-given moral and financial support upon which they were founded, they will become just another bureaucracy- -me rely alternative institutions where the furniture and the food are much the same, different from local welfare authorities only in the way they are financed, and in their immunity from public accountability.
This has to my mind a bearing on methods of fund-raising, some of which I question strongly. We do not want voluntary societies to become offshoots of the bingo society. To steal a phrase: they are a crusade or nothing. But even crusaders should not rattle their collecting-boxes without some sense of priorities. Charitable fund-raising is now big business with skilled operators at work. Some appeals stir the emotions more than others, and get a generous response. Cynics tell me that animals and children are the best selling lines. How can we get our priorities right if some societies with a strong emotional and financial pull exploit this regardless of other causes just as good?
Again, rivalries, even animosities, can be extremely tiresome. Anyone can start a voluntary society: some have come into existence only because of a squabble on the committee of a particular body which ended in a split and the formation of a new society by a dissident group. Many voluntary bodies are divided rather than brought together by a common purpose, by common problems, by vested interests, by religion, and by their cherished place in the hearts and pockets of the people.
There is far to little co-operation between voluntary societies, even when working in the same field. I know this from personal experience.
A free-for-all is not the way
We need in voluntary effort as much regard to social needs combined with good administration as we expect of local authorities and governments. In these days of coordinated effort, a free-for-all is not the way to run societies appealing, collecting, and spending millions of the nation's money every year. Exploitation of public emotion and generosity is a serious matter. Inefficiency, waste, ineffective use of funds--all sorts of faults in organization and administration may go unnoticed and unremedied. Democratic control by members or subscribers is frequently absent. Committees may be composed of tame nominees of the ruling clique.
Voluntary societies have a public responsibility. They could come closer to discharging it more fully if they asked for the setting up, under government auspices but not under government control, of a strong central body to co-ordinate activities, to promote efficiency, economy and research--to regulate appeals, to lay down a code of conduct, and to consider whether the law of charities should be further strengthened. At present the law governing the constitution and conduct of charities is weaker than the laws relating to friendly societies, building societies, or even trade unions. Charities are under no legal obligation to publish their accounts, or to render accounts to the Charity Commissioners in any standard form, or to have their accounts audited, although of course the bigger ones are.
Although the new Register of Charities is open to inspection at the office of the Charity Commissioners, the information available there is not yet complete. The Charity Commissioners have been too busily engaged for six years registering over 60,000 charities of all kinds to use their limited powers of scrutiny and investigation on any scale. When the register is complete it will enable a body like the proposed central council and others to find out what they want to know about the finances, sources of income, and cost of administration of the various voluntary bodies. It will also provide other information needed to get a better informed comprehensive view of voluntary societies in Britain.
This central council I have suggested could become the collective voice of the voluntary movement to the country and the Government. The need for this was surely felt when charitable bodies hurriedly scrambled together to claim a refund of SET. If nothing is done I feel sure that this scattered and disconnected field of social work, worthy and dedicated as most of it is, is in danger of losing its way.
STATEMENT OF JOHN F. NAGLE
Before the House Select Subcommittee on Education Committee on Education and Labor July 20, 1967
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
The National Federation of the Blind endorses and supports Section 5 of the pending bill, which would make it possible for migrant agricultural workers and their families to obtain vocational rehabilitation services when they become physically or mentally disabled by disease or accident.
These workers perform a much needed and important service in our national economy, but in the pursuit of their employment, they do not fit into the customary social pattern, and constant movement and impermanence--the dominating requirement of their occupation--prevent them from obtaining vocational rehabilitation services and specialized help from state vocational rehabilitation programs.
The specially oriented projects proposal contained in Section 5 of H.R. 8981 to meet the vocational rehabilitation needs of migratory workers and their families seems sound and sensible to us--but if this provision of the pending measure is to provide the help intended to those intended to be helped. Section 5 must be amended to eliminate durational residence and citizenship requirements for eligibility to receive services under the special projects.
Failure to make these changes in the bill would completely nullify the very purpose to be served by these special migratory worker projects.
Then, too, Mr. Chairman, we hope that projects established to provide vocational rehabilitation services to migrant workers and "to the members of their families who are with them" means that physically or mentally impaired children, however young, may be eligible for physical restoration, therapy, adjustment training and similar rehabilitative services under such projects.
Since this would not be so under present practice in regular state vocational rehabilitation programs, where a child must be fifteen or sixteen years of age and about ready to enter the labor market to qualify for vocational rehabilitation services, we recommend that the committee report issued with reference to H.R. 8981 make very clear the intention of Congress that the special projects authorized to be created to provide vocational rehabilitation help to migrant workers and their families are intended to serve the needs of all family members.
And this action is necessary, Mr. Chairman, for though a migrant worker's children may not be of an employable age, they are just as mobile as their parents and older brothers and sisters, and because of this, they are just as ineligible for the usual community services and programs as are the older family members.
The National Federation of the Blind endorses and supports the provisions of H.R. 8981 which deal with the authorization of federal participating funds for state programs of vocational rehabilitation, and we commend the Administration for substantially raising the level of such authorizations.
Mr. Chairman, it has always been the belief of the National Federation of the Blind that only two conditions should be met by a person applying for vocational rehabilitation services--that he is physically or mentally disabled, and that the provision of vocational rehabilitation services could reasonably be expected to help him--at best, to achieve complete self-support, or, at least, to gain an increased ability to cope with the difficulties of his disabling condition.
The National Federation of the Blind has always believed that a handicapped person should be able to obtain vocational rehabilitation services wherever he happens to reside, even though such residence has just been acquired or is of very short duration.
To refuse vocational rehabilitation services under such circumstances amounts to a denial of this most necessary assistance.
It imposes a restriction upon his freedom of movement, upon his freedom of choice in residence--it "freezes" him where he lives, and discourages and prevents him from seeking better employment opportunities--it does not allow him to go to a state where he believes he might secure the kind and quality of vocational rehabilitation help he needs.
We believe he should be able to do just this!
Mr. Chairman, it may be said, in opposition to the residence abolition proposal, that states which have acquired a reputation for the high standards of the vocational rehabilitation services provided to their disabled people may be inundated by non-resident handicapped people seeking to benefit from such programs and to be helped by them, since they had received little benefit and no help from the vocational rehabilitation programs in the states where they formerly lived.
If experience shows that this is happening, Mr. Chairman, we would hope this committee and the Congress would consider providing a bonus payment formula for such states, that they may continue to provide quality vocational rehabilitation services to all disabled people who apply, that local taxpayers may not become disproportionately burdened and penalized financially because their vocational rehabilitation agencies are doing such fine work and achieving such constructive and commendable results for physically and mentally impaired men and women.
Mr. Chairman, just as the National Federation of the Blind opposes residence requirements as a limitation upon the availability of vocational rehabilitation services to disabled people, so too, we are opposed to the continued imposition of a "means" test as an eligibility condition for the receipt of any vocational rehabilitation service.
But, Mr. Chairman, federal dollar authorizations and federal dollar appropriations for vocational rehabilitation services only have meaning in the lives of physically and mentally impaired men and women when the federal dollars are actually paid to the states for case service expenditures.
In fact, Mr. Chairman, very few states take full advantage of federally -provided money for vocational rehabilitation services.
In fiscal year 1965--the last year under the old amendments of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act (P.L. 83-565)--when one dollar of state money brought about two federal dollars, only seven of the fifty-four state and territorial jurisdictions claimed, in full, their share of available federal money for vocational rehabilitation services.
In fiscal year 1966, the first year under the new Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments (P.L. 89-333)--when one dollar of state money brought three federal dollars for use in providing vocational rehabilitation services to handicapped people, only five jurisdictions claimed, in full, their share of available federal money.
Figures are not available for this fiscal year since it is not yet completed, but, Mr. Chairman, it is estimated that during fiscal year 1967, only sixteen jurisdictions will claim, in full, their share of available federal money for vocational rehabilitation services.
Why do the overwhelming majority of states fail to take full advantage of available federal money for their vocational rehabilitation services programs?
We believe there are several reasons for this--because of the increasing demands for more and better state -provided services; state government costs are rising far more rapidly than are state revenues to meet them; in the competition for state dollars to match federal dollars in federally-aided state programs, vocational rehabilitation agencies, too often, come off "second best" and then, the practice of state officials to use limited state funds to match federal money in programs where the greatest return in federal money can be obtained.
But whatever the reasons, Mr. Chairman, the full amount of congressionally-provided funds for rehabilitation services for handicapped people is not being used and available and reflected in expanded and improved living and livelihood opportunities for handicapped men and women.
We think the most practical solution to this situation would be to change the financial matching formula in Section 2 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act from the present seventy percent federal, twenty five percent state ratio, or three federal dollars for each state dollar, to ninety percent federal and ten percent state, with nine federal dollars obtainable for each state dollar.
Thus, a state which now receives $75,000 federal money for $25,000 state money, would receive, under the revised formula, $225, 000 federal money for the same $25,000 amount of state money.
Mr. Chairman, the National Federation of the Blind believes this suggested change in the Vocational Rehabilitation Law is much needed and we urge its adoption by this committee and the Congress.
At a time in our Nation's history, when there is a growing awareness of the gain, not only to the individual but to the entire Nation, when a physically or mentally disabled person is restored to productivity and usefulness, it is most essential that state vocational rehabilitation agencies be sufficiently well funded to provide services of the highest possible caliber to their disabled clients, to the Nation's physically and mentally impaired citizens.
The population growth, improved case-finding methods, greatly advance adjustment, training, and other rehabilitative techniques which now give hope, help, and opportunity of restoration to normal life and regular employment to disabled persons and disability categories only a short time ago considered beyond the scope of rehabilitation and remotely beyond the possibility of self-reliant, independent living--all of these factors make the responsibility and the opportunity of state vocational rehabilitation agencies greater and more costly today.
We of the National Federation of the Blind believe these agencies must be fully equipped to fulfill this greater responsibility, fully able to take advantage of this greater opportunity.
Mr. Chairman, attached to my printed testimony is a suggested amendment to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act which would accomplish the change in the federal- state financial matching formula which we recommend.
We urge your approval of this amendment.
The National Federation of the Blind endorses and supports Section 6 of H.R. 8981, which would prohibit residence requirements in state vocational rehabilitation programs.
In 1965, this committee caused to be removed from the Vocational Rehabilitation Act the requirement that some vocational rehabilitation services should be provided to disabled people upon a financial needs basis.
With the removal of this federal requirement, states were then free to abandon needs tests practices in their vocational rehabilitation programs.
But, Mr. Chairman, even though a year and a half has passed since the 1965 Amendments to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act were enacted into law, as of March 15 of this year only fifteen states and one territory have acted, either administratively or through their legislatures, to abolish the economic needs test in vocational rehabilitation.
Only ten states have eliminated economic need as an eligibility requirement in vocational rehabilitation programs for the blind. Only eleven states and one territory have eliminated economic need as an eligibility requirement in general vocational rehabilitation programs. In short, Mr. Chairman, so far as can be learned, only the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Oregon have abolished economic need in vocational rehabilitation programs for all disabled clients, whether blind or otherwise impaired.
To accelerate this snail-pace progress, the National Federation of the Blind offers as an amendment to H.R. 8981, the bill H.R. 7396, introduced in the House by Congressman Philip Burton, California, able and distinguished member of the Committee on Education and Labor.
H.R. 7396 would prohibit the needs test as a condition for receiving any vocational rehabilitation service from any state vocational rehabilitation program.
Enactment of this measure into law would make it possible to provide vocational rehabilitation services solely upon the ground that a person has need for such help because he is physically or mentally disabled.
When such a person determines to rebuild his shattered life, Mr. Chairman, the entire Nation benefits from the example of his courageous efforts, and when he succeeds and achieves self-support, the entire Nation gains materially and substantially--for such a restored and rehabilitated person need no longer depend upon others, the resources and taxes of others, but he contributes by his taxes, by his productivity, to the general welfare and the strengthening of the Nation.
Mr. Chairman, the National Federation of the Blind urges approval of H. R. 7396 by this committee and the Congress.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, the National Federation of the Blind endorses and supports Section 4 of H.R. 8981, which would authorize establishment of national centers for deaf-blind youths and adults.
As blind men and women, the members of the National Federation of the Blind are fully aware of the problems incidental to blindness and the difficulties of functioning, sightless, in a world geared to sight.
As blind persons, we are also fully aware of the extent to which we depend upon our hearing ability as we endeavor to compete and cooperate with physically fit people.
Therefore, Mr. Chairman, those who must confront the uncertainties of life without sight and without hearing have our profound respect and admiration, and, of course, our full and unqualified support--for theirs must truly be a Herculean struggle against adversity, against seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
But, Mr. Chairman, in spite of this, there are men and women, deaf -blind, who are living, functioning demonstration that, when given specialized help, when given special training directed toward meeting their particular needs and solving problems peculiar to their doubly handicapping condition, it is not only possible for all of such persons to live fuller, more worthwhile lives, it is also possible for some of them to achieve independent, economically self-sufficient lives.
Mr. Chairman, the National Federation of the Blind urges this committee and the Congress to act favorably and promptly upon H.R. 8981, in order that the provision dealing with the establishing of a national center for the deaf-blind youths and adults of the Nation may be started upon its very essential and most worthwhile work as soon as possible--for the deaf-blind have waited centuries for this help and they should not have to wait longer for it.
But, Mr. Chairman, just as there is a great need for the creation of a facility exclusively oriented toward meeting the very special needs of deaf-blind youth and adults, we believe there is even a greater need for a similar facility oriented solely toward meeting the even more special needs of deaf-blind children.
Born without sight or hearing, or with extremely impaired sight and hearing, or sustaining the loss of these basically essential faculties in infancy--this is the sorry plight of a considerable number of children. today, damaged by the ravaging effects of German measles.
These unfortunate children and their desperate parents are in urgent need for the kind of assistance that would be available to them at a national center for deaf-blind children.
Mr. Chairman, it is the belief of the National Federation of the Blind that this committee should either expand the proposed national center for deaf-blind youths and adults to include deaf-blind children, or you should authorize to be established a separate national center for such doubly-defective, doubly-handicapped children, and we believe the separate facility would be preferable.
Proposed Amendment to Section 2 of P.L. 89-333
Federal Grants to States for Vocational Rehabilitation Services
Section II (i) of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1965 is amended by deleting all of the present text and substituting in lieu thereof the following:
"Section II (i). The federal share for any state for any fiscal year beginning after June 30, 1968, shall be 90 percent."
Topical Outline
The National Federation of the Blind Supports:
1. Project grants for vocational rehabilitation services for migratory agricultural workers and their families;
2- Amendment of Section 5 of H.R. 8981 to eliminate durational residence and United States citizenship as eligibility requirements to receive vocational rehabilitation services under this section;
3. Committee report declaration that all children of a migrant worker, however young, may be eligible for vocational rehabilitation services under the migratory worker projects provided for in Section 5 of H.R. 8981;
4. Authorization of appropriations;
5. Amendment to Section 2 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1965, making the federal share 90 percent of the cost of vocational rehabilitation services;
6. Prohibition of durational residence requirements for vocational rehabilitation services;
7. H.R. 7396 to prohibit the "means" test for any vocational rehabilitation service;
8. Centers for deaf-blind youths and adults;
9. Inclusion of deaf-blind children within the scope of the centers for deaf-blind youths and adults, or, preferably, authorization for the establishment of center for deaf-blind children.