Partnership

Partnership

The Braille Monitor

August/ September 1997

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Mae Nelson

Director, Louisiana Rehabilitation Services

Partnership:

Working in Cooperation with Consumers

by Mae Nelson

Joanne Wilson: I've been asked to introduce

our next speaker, Miss Mae Nelson. When I was asked to introduce her, I thought

of this saying, "It takes knowledge to build bridges, but it takes wisdom

to know where to put them." As the director of the Department of Social

Services under Governor Roemer for four years and then for the past ten years

the director of Louisiana Rehabilitation Services, Mae Nelson has worked tirelessly

to get rid of the dead wood and to build a strong agency with strong and just

policy procedures and a wonderful staff, many of whom are here at this convention.

Mae has learned and has had the wisdom to know that, if she was going to build

a strong agency, she needed to bridge the gap of suspicion, distrust, and frustration

that had been held by blind people for many years in this state. She developed

a relationship with the National Federation of the Blind that has built a strong

agency. We in Louisiana have learned that, if we're going to have a strong agency,

we need a strong National Federation of the Blind. If we're going to have a

strong National Federation of the Blind of Louisiana, we need a strong agency.

I would like now to present the Director of the Louisiana Rehabilitation Services,

Miss Mae Nelson. [applause]

First I want to add my welcome to the

National Federation of the Blind and thank you for selecting Louisiana as the

site for your 1997 convention. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to

be introduced to you as the director of Louisiana Rehabilitation Services (LRS)

and as the public official responsible for blind services in Louisiana. More

important, I'm an individual who believes in the ability of blind people. [applause]

One has only to review participating

organizations at this convention to have one's commitment to the abilities of

blind people renewed. What abilities do blind people have? The ability to be

students, secretaries, merchants, lawyers, doctors, and many other professions

when preparation and opportunity present themselves.

The theme of my comments this afternoon

is "Partnership: Working in Cooperation with Consumers." I realize

that, in order for blind people to achieve certain goals, individuals may need

temporary assistance from Louisiana Rehabilitation Services. I believe that

we at Louisiana Rehabilitation Services have demonstrated that we are willing

to work with the National Federation of the Blind to change what it means to

be blind. Louisiana's shining example of cooperation and partnership toward

providing blind people with preparation to take advantage of opportunities is

the Louisiana Center for the Blind at Ruston. We are very proud of the Center,

their accomplishments, and the alumni who are well represented at this conference

and throughout the nation. They provide excellent opportunities to blind people

so that they may be prepared for independence and employment.

Since we believe in the Louisiana Center

for the Blind and, more important, the Director Joanne Wilson, we have consistently

provided resources for the expansion of services at the Center. Louisiana Rehabilitation

Services' most recent cooperative project with the Center has been a total of

one million dollars in grant funds to expand the Center's programs at Ruston

[applause]--not to fund the projects and services that I as director felt were

needed by the blind, but to carry out the values and ideas that were presented

to me by the Director Joanne Wilson.

LRS has provided funding for the Center's

STEP Program, which is a summer training and employment program. This is a new

pilot this year that we are implementing with the Center. This pilot is a transition

program for students. Joanne and I have been talking for years about the inability

of vocational rehabilitation--because we are an employment program--to begin

early enough in the process with students to help them with their self-esteem

and to lift their expectations about what they can do as blind persons. This

year we will start a pilot program where we will take students in the lower

grades and track them through graduation and through their training and college

programs to demonstrate in Louisiana and to provide additional funding and projects

to show that, if students are received early enough in the Center for the Blind

program and provided with opportunities, those students can achieve whatever

goals they set. [applause]

We have utilized the Center as a site

for Louisiana Rehabilitation Services staff training. We feel that our staff,

if they are to believe in the services that can be and should be provided to

people who are blind, need to be exposed to the philosophy and programs at the

Center.

Our cooperation and a cooperative endeavor

with the Center enabled Louisiana to be the first state to come online with

the Newsline(TM) service, pioneered by the National Federation of the Blind.

LRS funded this project with federal grants for the older blind secured through

the grant-writing skills of Suzanne Mitchell, who is a Federationist. I had

the forethought and common sense to hire Suzanne Mitchell as my assistant and

executive director of Blind Services almost three years ago. LRS has also provided

additional financial support to add a pilot job information line to the news

service.

Last year Suzanne came to my office to

discuss with me the shortage of orientation and mobility instructors in the

state and wanted to know from me if I would commit to and if we could write

a grant to try to bring this training to Louisiana. I don't think Suzanne is

quite used yet to coming to my office, proposing an idea, and sitting down together

and coming up with strategies to make it happen. Suzanne wrote the grant, and,

through this cooperative project with Louisiana Tech University for O &

M specialist training, it is now coming online, and the project has come to

fruition. Also last year Suzanne came into my office to say that the need was

overwhelming. We needed additional resources; could she write another grant?

I said, "Sure." So we wrote another grant, and we have secured additional

funding to provide an additional instructor so that we may enroll additional

students in that program through the Center for the Blind and Louisiana Tech.

In terms of partnership, we must thank

our grant partners for those grant funds. If this sounds like bragging, it is

not. I wish to convey to you that Louisiana Rehabilitation Services has made

an investment in changing what it means to be blind in Louisiana. [applause]

We are also a participant in the National

Federation of the Blind's Comprehensive Braille Training Project. Counselors

have received their first in a series of Braille-training activities sponsored

by this project. Three counselors and Louisiana Rehabilitation Services Assistive

Technologies Program specialists have attended Braille technology training at

the National Center for the Blind.

Louisiana Rehabilitation Services regards

the National Federation of the Blind as an excellent resource for consumers

and staff and encourages the distribution of information and publications routinely

to benefit consumers. The Braille Monitor is included in our library in a prominent

place. Our counselors and staff participate in local and statewide meetings

of the National Federation of the Blind. All of our counselors and others of

our staff have been in attendance at this conference, not by mandate, but by

choice. They are true partners in changing what it means to be blind.

I have a lot of other issues here that

I could go on and on with that would demonstrate our commitment in philosophy

and resources, but due to time I will leave some of it out. However, I do want

to say that at our first meeting Joanne and I had a very tenuous kind of meeting,

and not understanding the relationship between the Federation and some commissioners,

I did not understand why it took almost eight years for me to receive from NFB

the Administrator of the Year Award, but it is one of my most prized possessions.

It is because I know through the Federation that, if I received the Administrator

of the Year Award, I got it the old fashioned way--I earned it. [applause]