THE PRESIDENT PONDERS

By Michael Byington

Your President is pondering good intensions which lead to bad decisions. The bad decisions could have major, damaging impacts on the lives and independence of blind and low-vision Kansans for years to come.

The Kansas Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (KABVI) has at its disposal only those resources of providing cogent, logical advocacy and input to the folks who are making the bad decisions. If that does not work, we have whatever influence we can muster with Kansas Legislators. In either case, our most important tool is you, our members and friends. If you agree with the things said here, let the administrators who are involved know, and help KABVI and yourself by maintaining a frequent and personal relationship with your local State Representative and State Senator.

Start by reviewing some of the problems and perceptions of problems about which decisions are being made. Some of these are fairly longstanding, but new decisions to further compound them keep emerging.

In 2000, responsibility for the Kansas Services for the Blind (KSB) field program was removed from KSB’s administrative staff, and all field positions were transferred to the generalist field area offices of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS). This means that there are fewer and fewer specialists in blindness in the SRS field. Most field representatives working with blind Kansans are also working with many other types of disabilities, so they do not have many blind clients or opportunities to learn much about the field of blindness.

In 1999, SRS top brass resolved to close the Kansas Rehabilitation Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired (KRCBVI). This facility remains open today, and is in possession of some new facilities, because blind Kansans, largely KABVI, convinced a sufficient number of legislators that closing all specialized blind services in Kansas was the wrong move.

SRS top brass were not overjoyed when their plans for closure were nixed by the Legislature in 1999. Since then, these officials, who retained their positions with the change in gubernatorial administrations, have not shown an overwhelming appreciation for the efforts of those blindness related advocates who thwarted their plans. Recently, rumors and rumors of rumors have come out of SRS administrative sectors that some complaints have been filed and grudges have been expressed concerning in-State blind services. It appears that most of these grumblings have come from members of the National Federation of the Blind of Kansas or from representatives of certain not-for-profit organizations in Kansas who are attempting to increase their share of the blindness rehabilitation business from this State.

The complaints have resulted in a new waive of consideration of shutting down any attempts to deliver comprehensive blindness and low vision rehabilitation services as we know them in Kansas. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) operates a private rehabilitation center in Colorado, and it appears that NFB is asking some of its Kansas members to attempt to shut down services here in Kansas so that the NFB Colorado facility can generate more business from its neighboring State. Some of the not-for-profits located in Kansas are using the logic that they might be hired to do more if State services did not exist.

All of this puts your elected KABVI leaders in an uncomfortable advocacy position. There is no doubt that services available to blind Kansans are lessoning in quantity and suffering in terms of overall scope and quality. We should never accept such changes without opposing them. The past five years have seen a few gains, but many more losses. If what is left of comprehensive services for the blind is criticized too strenuously at the moment, the response appears to be to move to shut everything down entirely. If this were to happen, a few blind and low vision Kansans would be sent out of State by their SRS generalist field contacts, some of the not-for-profits might pick up a small additional piece of the pie. Overall, however, most blind and low vision Kansans would simply find that fewer services continue to be available to them, and the availability of comprehensive rehabilitation services for the blind and visually impaired would be a thing of the past.

KABVI’s position must remain several pronged. We want to improve and increase comprehensive services to blind and low vision consumers within Kansas. We want blind and low vision consumers to have greater control over these services; we do not want blind Kansans to have to travel out of State for comprehensive rehabilitation services. We want the not-for-profit service sector in Kansas to understand that, repeatedly, experiences in other States have shown that not-for-profits serving blind consumers generally do not do well in States where all of the State referral sources are generalist ones. We want the not-for-profit service providers and KSB officials to start working together to see how blind Kansans can best be served, and to help each other fill in gaps in services, rather than constantly fighting over who will control or operate the limited services already available.

This background brings us to some of those well-meaning, but terrible, decisions which were made recently by State officials who have stewardship over the limited remaining State operated blind services in Kansas. KABVI’s opposition to these decisions was, in some cases, established by our Board of Directors at its last meeting; and in other cases, the opposition has been established by positions our conventions have taken through resolutions over several years.

Because there have been some complaints, and grumblings about closure, Diane Hemphill, Administrator of KRCBVI recently announced limiting of the scope of services offered through the facility. Under Ms. Hemphill’s newly established policy, only individuals who have specific, established employment goals will be served at the KRCBVI from now on. People who lose their vision in later life after having retired, or who want to undergo comprehensive rehabilitation training in order to live independently, raise their family, etc. will not be considered for services. They may be able to receive a limited scope of services through the Rehabilitation Teachers for the Blind or the Kansas Seniors Achieving Independent Living (Kan-SAIL) program, but such individuals will be denied comprehensive rehabilitation training.

Ms. Hemphill’s reason for this edict stems from the best of intensions. She is, however, tragically wrong.

When KABVI took the lead in saving the KRCBVI from closure in 1999, I was involved in helping marshal those efforts. I also worked nearly full time as a lobbyist for some other issues, so I had many opportunities to watch the Legislature, and to learn who can be counted upon to advocate and who can not. The KRCBVI owes its existence in the greatest degree to those clients who had been assisted in continuing to live independently - to older clients who feared that their blindness would force them into a nursing home. The retired clients who had benefited from services at the RCBVI emerged from the woodwork to work hard on behalf of saving the KRCBVI. They wrote the letters, made the calls, etc. A few working aged folks helped with the advocacy efforts too, but not very many by comparison. It seems that the majorities of the working aged folks, who have benefited from KRCBVI services, leave the program, get their job, get their life back, and then do not want to hear from the KRCBVI again, or to be heard from. They have fulfilled the “me” part of their own rehabilitation crisis, and there the relationship ends. In making the restrictive decision she has, Ms. Hemphill is limiting and snubbing the very advocacy base which resulted in her facility remaining open.

Ms. Hemphill’s intensions are good in that she is attempting to satisfy federal direction. The original Kansas Division of Services for the Blind received funding from a large variety of human services categorical pots. With the steady diminishment SRS has practiced regarding Blind Services over the years, now almost all of the funding received by Kansas Blind Services is from one source, the United States Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA). It is quite true that the RSA is increasingly narrowing its focus toward employment of persons who have disabilities. Ms. Hemphill’s compliant decision may make the RSA very happy, but it does not address the needs of blind and low vision Kansans. Her goal should be to expand and diversify the funding streams flowing into the KRCBVI so that all who need its services can receive them whether they want to return to a job, a family, or simply to the dignity of an independent lifestyle.

To review the next well meaning, but bad, decision we must travel up one level on the administrative organizational chart of SRS, but the confounding structure under which SRS operates its blind services makes it difficult to ascertain who is in charge of that level. It was decided not to fill a recently vacated rehabilitation teacher for the blind position which served northeast Kansas. Robby Nichols had ably filled that position. He transferred to Wichita when Donna Wood vacated the position serving that area of the State. Robby’s old position served people in roughly six counties in northeast Kansas, including Wyandotte, Johnson, Leavenworth, and Douglas. The loss of Robby’s position leaves one rehabilitation teacher position to serve that extremely heavily populated area. At the very time the decision has been made for the RCBVI to do less for people who are blind and who have not established employment goals, the field services, now administratively severed from blind services administration, is also dumping a specialist in blindness position.

Placing blame for this decision is a murky process because the control of the rehabilitation teachers for the blind is oddly divided between Kansas Blind Services Administrative staff, and the area office directors who are in charge of human services in each area of the State. Apparently, Dale Barnum, Director of Kansas Rehabilitation Services, and the area office administration have to agree that the position must be filled. Dale Barnum has been an honest and ethical person in his dealings with KABVI, and we know that he is very frustrated at having to operate a major service section of SRS with about 20% less positions than he needs. The administrative entanglement he has been forced into with the area office directors, however, often limits his options in addressing personnel problems of this type.

Mr. Barnum would have greater authority, however, to fill the two positions serving older blind in the State-wide Kan-SAIL program. These positions have been held open and unfilled for many, many months even though they receive about 90% federal funding. The goal to keep the State budget within balance is undoubtedly a laudable one. The savings of the roughly 10% of State funding allocated to these two positions, however, is not making a significant impact on the State’s overall financial picture.

So there you have it. Some good people within State Government are making some wrong decisions for all of the right reasons. KABVI’s position here is a bit complex. We are going to have to navigate carefully through torturous waters. I hope I have been able to articulate our positions so that they make sense.

Diane Hemphill and Dale Barnum are both good folks with whom we can work. They both really do want blind and low vision Kansans to be well served. When they make an isolated bad decision here and there, we simply need to help them make course corrections. At the same time, their bad decisions can cause irreparable damage. We must be very direct in telling them when they are off course.