Transcript of “Rights Here, Rights Now –

Episode 26: Happy New (Fiscal) Year with Colleen Miller!”

Produced by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia.                                                            

[INTRO]: The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. Instead, all information, content and materials available are for general informational purposes only.

[Enter host, Ren Faszewski.]

[REN]: Welcome to Right Here, Right Now! A podcast about disability advocacy and activism. I'm your Advocate host, Ren Faszewski.

[Enter host, Virginia Pharis.]

[VIRGINIA]: And I'm your Advocate host, Virginia Pharis.

[REN]: Every two weeks we dig into to relevant issues, current events, and avenues for self-advocacy.

[VIRGINIA]: Because someone has to.

[REN]: And it might as well be us.

This podcast is produced and edited by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia, the Commonwealth’s protection and advocacy agency for disability rights. Find out more at: www.dlcv.org.

[Enter, host Virginia Pharis, singing, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. LOL ]

[VIRGINIA]: “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the- Fiscal – year!”

[REN]: I mean—[pause] I mean it is considering… how we ended the last Fiscal year- so I (we) don’t have to be nearly as stressed out!

[VIRGINIA]: We can at least say it's not…[brief pause] 2020. And, it is a little true.

[REN]: It is a little true! Um..[pause] and that’s all that matters!

[VIRGINIA]: [Laughs] Yes, dear listeners, here at dLCV, as of Oct. 1^st we have entered fiscal year 21. So, I don’t know about the rest of you but, we find ourselves sort of on the other side of this year- that just will not end [TRUTH].

[REN]: Say it! Say a fair ‘Bon Voyage’ to fiscal year 20, and on to fiscal year 21. And the esteemed Colleen Miller to tell us what does that even mean?

[VIRGINIA]: Yes. Our fabulous executive director took time out of her busy schedule to just sort of talk about what it is that we're doing this year, what our goals are, [she’ll] tell us a little bit more about our work around the election, and accessibility, and it's a real good time guys. J

[VIRGINIA]: Buckle in enjoy the ride.

[VIRGINIA]: Colleen, thank you so much for joining us and being back on the podcast.

[Enter, Executive Director Colleen Miller.]

[COLLEEN]: I am happy to be here!

[VIRGINIA]: So the idea of our episode today is to talk about the work that [we’re doing] in this brand new exciting fiscal year 21! It sounds so much less exciting when we say fiscal year, [….] but ,it's still exciting to me//today!

[COLLEEN]: Right, we (all) just we just celebrated New Year's on October 1^st! Because we operate with Federal programs, we do have a different understanding of what a new year looks like. But, our new year starts on October one, yes. And while the rest of the world maybe just desperately running towards the finish line of 2020 -- we sort of feel like we're already there!

[REN]: That's right. Now, with that in mind, can you tell us a little bit about how dLCV sets up its work for the year in terms of setting goals in that kind of thing?

[COLLEEN]: Yes, that’s a great question, Ren,

It's important to know that the disAbility Law Center of Virginia has an enormous ability to reach into pretty much any legal rights issue that affects somebody with a disability. [Yes, truth! J] But, we don't have enormous resources. [Also true!]

[CONTINUED]: So, there's roughly a million people with disabilities in the Commonwealth of Virginia and we’ve (only) got 36 staff at the disAbility Law Center of Virginia. So, you know, if you think about every single County, every single government office, every single business, school district, all over the Commonwealth of Virginia and there's 36 of us to do it all. We really have to narrow down the work that we're going to do. […] We really have to focus in. And we try very hard to pick areas to focus on where we think we can make a difference, where we think that if we put our energy to work there- (that) we're going to actually change things and make things better for the greatest number of people. By setting up our what we call our goals, our focus areas and objectives, and it's a very detailed work plan for each year.

[CONTINUED]: Each fiscal year, we've got a number of lofty goal(s) statements that were trying to pursue. And then, we identify specific areas where we are doing work in the hopes of changing the world.

[REN]: So when they (we) come up with the project—what is the project [that] we’re working on this year?

[COLLEEN]: That’s great question, Ren. The first one, I really want to talk about, is-- it's not so much a new project but it is a new emphasis that we are putting on voting rights-- for people with disabilities. The COVID crisis has really crystallized for us how difficult it can be for people with disabilities to exercise this really fundamental right to vote. So, we are setting aside some very dedicated resources to enable people to be able to vote. And, to enable people to check if they have the right to vote. And it's brand new Focus area for us this year. [Pause] We've done it in the past, in conjunction with other programs (in order to)—to design and make government accessible.

This year, we're focusing specifically on the right to vote. I'm hoping that everybody, -first of all- will vote. I'm hoping that by now you have registered because the deadline to register has passed. And if you are planning to vote and haven't voted yet we really would appreciate it if you would get on our website and fill out the survey form to help us understand how accessible voting places are all over Virginia. And, especially if you're voting early. We have not done surveys of early voting sites in the past, and (so) it’s really helpful to know how the early voting sites are looking.

[VIRGINIA]: You’ve told us a little bit about what we're doing with regards to voting,—and, if people are interested in learning more about our efforts with regards to voting […]- we have a couple more episodes. go back check. We've got some episodes with the wonderful Joliefawn Liddell, where she tells us all about how the public can get involved helping us survey polling locations for accessibility, and all of that stuff.

[CONTINUED]: So, I just wanted to emphasize that is really excited right now in relation to the voting and stuff. [Pause] I realize this is a bit of an Insider's perspective, but, we talked about impact projects a lot at dLCV Can you tell us a little bit more about the concept of an impact project and what that means for us?

[COLLEEN]: Yes, so, we have some new projects that we’re working on. Maybe three or four specific projects. And we call them systemic impact projects. And those are projects where we think that if we bring all the resources of the agency together, in an interdisciplinary approach, that we can make a really significant difference. All the impact projects deal with systemic issues. This impact project—this podcast you’re listening to right now is a system impact project. We involve everybody, from all aspects of the office, in question and answer sessions, and highlights the “Disability in the News” part. And, [we] really try to bring all of our resources to bear, in order to really make a difference in how people understand Disability Rights. Another thing we did last year—and we're continuing as an impact project next year—is what we call(ed) the Disability Rights Expo.

And that was a one-day conference, where, or seminar, with a whole bunch of different people presenting a wide variety of issues on Disability Rights-- from […] and supported decision-making, and Social Security, it had a whole range of ways in which people could participate(for instance) One-on-one sessions, clinics training; So, it was really a wonderful day. We had a total of about 500 people who participated in that in one form or another. Some of it (was) on Facebook live. So we decided it is a great outreach tool, and we're going to continue that again next year. In areas outside of Outreach we also have a couple of impact projects where we're really intending to change practice as it affects people with disabilities.

One of them will be in our -probably-- our third year of an impact project and this has to deal with incident reporting from ‘Community Providers’ [i.e.: Nursing Homes] and we get thousands of incident reports from Community Providers on a regular basis. We load them into a database and then we analyze those reports to try to figure out ways in which we can make the greatest impact on people living in the community receiving services. And we call that our CRIS Impact Project.

[CONTINUED]: And then, the newest impact project that we're going to take on this year has to do with the children and adolescents who are in treatment facilities, psychiatric treatment facilities, usually they are residential treatment facilities and we've really decided to try to focus everything that we can to, you know, assist those young people when it comes time to leave the facility, so that they have the greatest chance of success, so that they don't continue a life of institutionalization—which often for many of these young people ends up being a correctional settings. So, we're really going to try to focus in on serving these young people as early as possible-- helping them get vocational training transition services, and the skills they need to succeed once they have left the residential treatment facilities, and are back into the community.

[REN]: There has been several times during this exchange where you've talked about the idea of systemic work—and systemic change, and if you wouldn't mind elaborating on (that) if there any areas that dLCV is working towards this year in regards to systemic change?

[COLLEEN]: Well, sure. I think it's hard to pick one or two to talk about. But just a reminder, there are many, many more people with disabilities in Virginia than we can ever serve one-on-one. And all of those people with disabilities could have, you know, half a dozen different legal rights issues. And we just really can't reach out to all of them. So, our board decided a number of years ago that we were going to try to focus on systemic change. And recently the board kind of focused that a little bit to say systemic change that is driven by individual cases. So we don't want to fix things just because we think it’s a good idea. We want to fix things that individuals have told us about.

One of the longest term, I think, efforts in that area has to do with the use of seclusion and restraint in public schools. [Wow.] And, probably-- 15 years ago we were doing a lot of individual case work there. And we realized we were never going to fix that problem if we did it one at a time. We did a series of public reports on the impact of seclusion restraint on children, and the way that it was being implemented across the state. And the legislature responded to that by requiring regulations in every school district that would greatly restrict the use of seclusion and restraint. Those regulations are at long last finalized! [Amazing.] And they take effect on January 1 of this year.

So this is been a systemic change project we've been working on for a very very long time and we're not done yet. The way we're going to use our resources now is to really make sure that school districts, all across Virginia, are implementing these regulations—are understanding these regulations. We are confident that some school districts find loopholes in the regulations. And once we identify those, we will take them back to the Department of Education or take them back to the legislature and try to get those loopholes closed. So it is systemic change will make a huge difference for children in public education, for the rest of our lives. But it is a very very long term project for us.

[VIRGINIA]: So, to bring it down a notch because you know I have to be Debbie Downer on all of these… I think when we were, a couple months ago, dreaming of the coming fiscal year, we were dreaming of a coming fiscal year without COVID-19 and that's just kind of not reality. So unfortunately, we got to talk about what dLCV’s doing and moving into fiscal year 21. First and foremost, is dLCV still taking precautions against COVID-19?

[COLLEEN]: Absolutely! Absolutely we are! As far as our internal operations, we are open to people coming into the office—we are open to drop-ins or in-person appointments. We prefer if those are scheduled appointments because it gives us a little bit of time to prepare the area where we'll meet with you. We've got sneeze guards that we can put up. We can setup some tables with some distancing. But if somebody comes in and hasn’t given us a warning that they’re coming in, we can still respond to that. In the office, everybody wears masks—and that include visitors and staff. And we maintain social distancing in the office.

We also a more heighten schedule of cleaning and sanitizing—making hand sanitizer available in a bunch of strategic places in the office. As far as our work out in the world goes, one of our greatest responsibilities is to monitor conditions where people with disabilities live. And that has been an especially challenging task for us since March, because many facilities have shut down and have not allowed outsiders to come in. And as we know, the tragedies we hear of people who are approaching the end of their life and can't even be visited by their family members.

The shutdown has been really—really difficult for people with disabilities. Because of the disAbility law Center's unique role in Virginia, we actually had never been prohibited from going into these facilities. We've actually had legal authority to enter every one of these facilities, at any time, to investigate legal rights claim. But, we also recognize the risk that our presence there could pose—that one of us could be a carrier and not know about it. That we could be exposed to somebody in a facility who is a carrier and hasn't yet identified it. So we try to approach our in-person monitoring carefully.

If we know of an actual outbreak in a facility or any kind of identified infection in a facility—we won’t go to that place, we won’t go to that cottage or to that unit where the outbreak is identified.

[CONTINUED]: When we do the on-site monitoring, which I personally had done, we maintain distance—we wear masks. We don't shake hands. We don't hand things to people. We maintain some really basic protocols. And in some places that's a little tricky because the residents living there may not understand the need to keep that kind of distance. It has been a little bit tricky for us to do that. But we really think that the value of on-site monitoring is enormous. There are things that we can learn about through remote conversations, through phone calls—sometimes we have some video access to places.

But there's really no replacement for the “on-site monitoring” that we need to do. We've also been doing training in a new way—training and Outreach in a new way. And I have to say I don't think we've nailed that one completely. We're doing a lot of Zoom trainings or video training kind of things. But we recognize that that kind of format is not available to everybody with a disability. That there are people who do not have internet access or do not have the skills to operate videos because sometimes these are complicated things. So we’re trying to explore other ways to increase our access across the Commonwealth during this COVID crisis. And the things that we learn how to do, we’ll be able to use when this COVID crisis passes.

[VIRGINIA]: We’re wandering into a new landscape that may end up having a lot of best practices applications for people with various disabilities.

[COLLEEN]: I think that's right—I think that's right. The lessons we’re learning in this pandemic will serve us well every year during flu season. [Yes] There will be good reasons to continue these protocols when flu season returns—which it does every single year.

[VIRGINIA]: Colleen, thank you again so much for taking the time to come and talk to us about the work that dLCV is going to be doing this year. We’ll have you back, hopefully very soon, to talk about some of the general assembly stuff. Working towards the legislature for the coming year.

[COLLEEN]: I will be very happy to return! Thank you for having me!

[REN]: Thank you! And now a dLCV call to action.

[VIRGINIA]: Throughout this episode, Colleen Miller has talked to us about dLCV voting projects. These efforts ran in the election in lieu of a dLCV highlight about the great stuff that we have done so far, we want to remind you that there is still a lot of work to do!

If you are interested in working with dLCV—completing accessibility surveys of your own polling place or early voting location, please visit us on our website at www.dlcv.org. Or if you have limited internet access and have more questions or want to participate, you can also call us at 800-552-3962.

[Enter, again, Virginia Pharis and Ren Faszewski.]

[REN]: So, once again thank you to Colleen for joining us and explaining about some of the work we're going to be doing this year! Smooth sailing from what I understand, easy peasy we're going to fix everything! {LOL}

Laughter!

[VIRGINIA]: We're still in the part of the year where I'm like full of Hope and Vigor and hopefully that should instead just less all the way through the year! But you know it's especially now it's a really exciting time so if you have issues that was a great time to call dLCV for assistance or resources.

[REN]: Absolutely and thank all of you for listening to this episode of Right Here Right Now, brought to you by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia. We are available on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review

[VIRGINIA]: If you need assistance or want more information about dLCV and what we do, visit us online at www.dLCV.org.

[VIRGINIA]: You can also follow us on Twitter @disAbilityLawVA and we also have a Facebook disability Law Center of Virginia—share that with your friends. Until next time I'm Virginia Pharis--

[REN]: And I’m Ren Faszewski and this has been Rights Here!

[VIRGINIA]: Rights Now!

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