It’s a very sad situation indeed. I’m talking about our state, Illinois Washington
I can deal with that. What I’m having a hard time dealing with is the funding that has kept so many of my clients working over the past 20 years is being yanked away, rug pulled out.
Will a 35 year old woman who has folded laundry for the last 8 years and who could be compared to a 3 year old really understand that our state has no money to pay for her job coach, no…she won’t. She will be upset and cry when it’s time to go to work. She will have behaviors like a 3 year old would when she can’t go do her work. I can’t say I blame her. If all of a sudden someone told me I couldn’t go to a job I loved I would be upset as well.
Every day she gets up and is does her “programs.” Lord knows the world will stop revolving if she doesn’t learn the correct way of brushing her teeth. I’m not bashing residential homes, everyone has to have goals but her work is the most important part of her life, not brushing her teeth a specific way or making her bed so that you can bounce a quarter on it. Being productive and feeling “normal” mean everything to her. One hour a day, she’s like you…me…everyone else.
Now every afternoon at 1:15 she’ll come back to my office and stand there looking at me. She’ll say, “Debbie…work. Not today…not today” .
Let me ask you this. Before you go to work in the morning have you laid out your clothes the night before and pinned your nametag on your shirt, stood back to look at it several times to make sure it’s perfectly straight, probably not. He’s done the same thing for 18 years. Who is going to tell him he can’t go to work July 5th? Honestly, I couldn’t do it, it would break my heart. Actually, it is breaking his parent’s hearts.
I’ve worked too damn hard to see this happen and I’m mad, real mad. I can’t believe the people we trusted and voted in office have totally botched the funding issues for the DD population.
I feel a bit like Gomer Pyle, I just want to scream, “Shame, shame, shame.”
I’ll keep bitching about the roads, yes. What I don’t want to face is the fact that all the work I’ve done over the past 20 years was for nothing.
Oh Deb, the work you've done was NOT for nothing, it was for everything. Look at what you've done to and for all those clients. They've made a friend in you, and you of them.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry your state has no money, that is really sad. I can't imagine how the clients will react when they are told they have no jobs to go to. It makes my heart sad to hear that the people who WANT to work, don't have jobs to go to.
I hope things start to get better soon for IL, for the US.
Sometimes I think its the special people we work with everyday that save us.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started working with people with disabilities in 2004 at Pekin High, I remember coming home crying and crying because: "they will never find true love" "they will never get married" "they will never get a driver's liscense" "they will never live alone" "they will never raise a family" "they will never...etc." My mom told me, that what they have is JUST as special as what we have- its a type of happiness that WE will never understand. Its like looking at the world through rose colored lenses ALL the time, and being happy and content with what you HAVE.-- Something we with low salaries, slimy politicians, distant wars, random crimes, will never have the full opportunity to experience.
If I didn't work with the population that we do, I don't know what else there would be for me. I was literally thinking that today, poolside. What on earth could I do well, and feel so rewarded doing? Nothing.
When I left Pekin High to move to DeKalb, the Lifeskills class all signed a card that someone had presumably purchased at Walgreens before school that day. The card changed my life. It had on the cover of it a little boy who was lifting his dog up, so that the dog could lap up some water in a drinking fountain. Under the picture it said: "And what do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other." I decided that I wanted to work with these special people for the rest of my life. That phrase became my mission statement, and it still is. That statement is the only way that I can handle spirituality and understanding why I am here on Earth- to help people. (THAT big of an impact!)
It is so disheartening to hear about the current state of the clients at TCRC. They deserve EVERY opportunity that we have. The state funding makes me so mad...there goes my rose colored lenses again...