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Getting to Work
People with disabilities bring their talents to the workplace. Member Denise Mc Quade (second from left), seen with colleagues Sheryl Patillo, Eunice Poku, Dolores Miller, and Carol Zwick (at desk), brings skills she gained as a disability rights activist to her job with MTA/New York City Transit.
Misc.
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE: Building on Our Strengths
DIRECTOR’S NOTES: The Prime of Life
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: Talk to Us!
PROGRAM NOTES
LEGISLATIVE NEWS
RESEARCH FRONT: Study Participants Wanted
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Features
Overcoming Your Fears of the Job Search
The key to conducting a successful job search is to focus, not on what you can’t do, but on [...]
For some of us, returning to work after we were injured was not a question; it was what was expected. In my case, my grandfather had polio. He used canes and a wheelchair; he also went to work every day in a machine shop. My father injured his spine in the Navy and is one of the hardest working people I know. So when I was injured in the Marine Corps, the question wasn’t, “Will you go to work?” but, “When?”
Statistics show that most spinal cord injuries occur to people in their 20s and 30s, and most people are in their 30s when first diagnosed with MS. This is an age when one is supposed to be entering the most productive years of life.
A survey of persons with spinal cord disabilities United Spinal Association commissioned in 2004 indicates that although 80% of respondents were employed prior to injury, only 20% were employed post-injury. While we did not survey the various causes for unemployment, other than transportation (49% of respondents indicated that transportation issues have contributed to their lack of employment), it [...]
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY: A Treasure Trove of Information on Assistive Devices
Let’s say you’ve just completed a physical or vocational rehabilitation program, and you’re ready to pound the pavement to find gainful employment. Before you begin, you may want to insure that you are connected. A place to learn about special equipment you may need is United Spinal’s assistive technology database, located at www.usatechguide.org. Once you are there, choose an equipment category like “computing,” where you will find adaptive input devices or voice-activation input/output systems. Or if you select the “communications” category, you can review plenty of information on adaptive [...]
U.S. Justice Department Sues New York for Failing to Improve Its Voting System
On March 1, the United States Department of Justice sued New York State for failing to upgrade its voting system as required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). New York is the first state the federal government has sued for violating the law. HAVA was enacted to address the severe problems that came to light during the 2000 election debacle.
FES Exercise and the Health of Young Persons with SCI
Children’s Specialized Hospital in Mountainside, New Jersey is recruiting children and young adults (ages 5-21) with spinal cord injuries to participate in a clinical study. The study is being conducted to see if these patients will be helped by a functional electrical stimulation (FES) bicycle exercise program (The bike is an FDA-approved device). It is known that children who are unable to walk because of spinal cord damage experience loss of muscle mass and bone mineral density over time, which puts them at risk for bone fractures. Through this exercise program, [...]
Letters to the Editor may be sent by e-mail to action@unitedspinal.org, or to Action Editor, United Spinal Association, 75-20 Jackson Heights, NY 11370-1177. Please keep letters to 300 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for clarity or space.
The key to conducting a successful job search is to focus, not on what you can’t do, but on what you can.
By Tom Scott
Individuals with disabilities face numerous barriers to employment, including accessibility, transportation, and health care issues, lack of training and education, and discrimination. Other factors include limited job opportunities and a lack of employment agencies that assist in the placement of people with disabilities into the workforce. The psychological effects of these barriers may cause fear and anxiety and prevent many people within the disabled community from seeking employment.
U.S. Department of Labor’s EARN program posts between 600 and 800 jobs each month.
By Rob Ingraham
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) has one of the largest networks in the country dedicated to bringing employers and qualified individuals with disabilities together. Launched in 2001, the Employer Assistance and Recruiting Network (EARN) program is a free service for employers with a specific interest in hiring people with disabilities and it currently works with between 1,500 and 2,000 companies and not-for-profits nationwide, explained EARN Outreach Coordinator Michelle McGrath. She noted that the organization posts between 600 and 800 [...]
United Spinal has a 60-year history of assisting members with vocational retraining and employment.
By Terry Moakley
In the inaugural edition of The Paraplegia News (PN), published by our charter members in July 1946, Sidney Brent, chief of the Bronx Veterans Hospital Retraining Service, noted that “pre-vocational experiences such as the production of this publication are of particular interest to us.” In fact, in the next issue of PN, a brief story discussed the development at the Bronx VA of a “prosthetic appliance which enables one with quadriplegia to write.” No doubt it was John M. Price, a quadriplegic and the publication’s [...]
You really are entitled to reasonable accommodations from employers if you need them.
By Kleo King
Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is not designed to mandate employment of people with disabilities. Rather, it is designed to give people with disabilities equal access to the job market. It is important to keep in mind that employers have the right to hire the best qualified candidate for a position. It is also important, however, to consider that a qualified employee or applicant with disabilities is one who can perform the essential functions of a job with or without reasonable accommodations. [...]
Denise Mc Quade turned a passion for independent travel into a career.
By Donna Fredericksen
Getting from one place to another-independently- was always a cause that Denise Ann Mc Quade could rally around. Independent travel means so much to her, in fact, she’s made a career of it.
Mc Quade, who was diagnosed with polio at age 3 and a half, now works as Public Information coordinator in the paratransit division of MTA/New York City Transit, which serves a population of 14.6 million people in the 5,000-square-mile area fanning out from New York City through Long Island, southeastern New York State, and [...]
Opportunities are growing for people with disabilities to learn job skills and find permanent employment.
By Jennifer M. Rodriguez
Paralympian skier Beth Livingston got her job at Home Depot as part of its program to employ Olympic and Paralympic athletes. (Photo by Sean Sperry, courtesy of The Bozeman Daily Chronicle)
The Home Depot
The Home Depot (www.homedepot.com), through the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Olympic Job Opportunities Program (OJOP), allows U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes and hopefuls to work part-time in exchange for full-time compensation and benefits.
“The program helps to accommodate the athletes’ busy training and competition schedules while offsetting our expenses,” says Elizabeth [...]
United Spinal/NY coalition lobby lawmakers at state capitol.
By Rob Ingraham
Despite a record-breaking blizzard 24 hours earlier, United Spinal Association joined New Yorkers for the Advancement of Medical Research (NYAMR) on February 13 to urge New York state legislators to approve $100 million in funding for regenerative medicine, and particularly for embryonic stem cell research. Representing United Spinal with the NYAMR coalition were President Clair Russell Hesselton, General Counsel James Weisman, and Legislative Director Dan Anderson.
By Tamar Asedo Sherman
Think about it: What’s keeping you from working or being independent in activities of daily living? Whatever it is, your state’s vocational rehabilitation program is there to help you. If you’ve stopped working due to injury or illness and want to get back to work, or if your impairment is making it harder for you to get to the job or perform your tasks once there, vocational rehabilitation can help you.
Federal law requires every state to have such a program, frequently a division of the Department of Education, but not always. The official title varies. New York’s [...]
By John M. Williams
In the last several years, cell phones, or smartphones, have played an ever-increasing role in the lives of people with disabilities as they search for ways to become connected to their families and the Internet. These devices have opened up a new world of communication and convenience to consumers with disabilities worldwide. While a pocket PC or personal digital assistant (PDA) can be used at home or on the move, the touch screen on these devices makes it impossible for blind, visually impaired, cognitively challenged, and amputee consumers with disabilities to use.
By Beth Livingston
Just months before I was injured in a car accident (see Growing Pains, “Chronicles of a Young Woman Coping with Paralysis,” in the January Action), I had relocated to Bozeman, Montana, from the East Coast. I was still settling in, so to speak, when I caught a Med-Jet to the trauma center in Chicago in August 1989. Returning home to Bozeman in November was bittersweet.
By Ed Lash
There are numerous contributing factors involved in multiple sclerosis (MS): age, geography, genetics, immune regulation, environment, nutrition, stress, emotions, and so forth. Self-help explores all factors, but concentrates on those which we can control.
Consciously, or unconsciously, we are all participants in our own health. We have the responsibility to give our bodies sufficient nutrition, sleep, exercise, water, recreation, and all the other necessary ingredients for health and fitness within our own limitations. We also have the obligation to avoid the toxins, indulgences, emotional overload, and anxiety that place a drain on our systems and have a negative effect [...]
by Kathleen M. Muldoon
When I lived in Pennsylvania, I attended a large church where most folks knew only the people who sat near them. Still, I couldn’t help but notice three teenage girls who always sat in the front pew. One reason they stood out was because most kids sat in back or up in the choir loft. The other reason was because all three girls had Down syndrome.
One Saturday I brought something to the church office and I saw one of the girls sitting at a table in the workroom. My curiosity got the best of me and I [...]
By Tom Scott and Jennifer M. Rodriguez
United Spinal Jets (from left to right) George Taborsky, Luis Marcelo, Keith Cavill, Brian Amundsen and Jim Bennet Jr. visited our executive offices in February.
Murderball . . . A Triumph of Love over Loss
On February 15th, United Spinal Jets quad rugby player Keith Cavill, star of the award-winning documentary Murderball, gave a presentation to staff and guests at United Spinal’s National Headquarters in Jackson Heights, New York. Cavill, who broke his neck in a 2003 motorcross accident, discussed how his life has been affected by spinal cord injury, his role [...]
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