Next meeting, after DD Council on December 11th, at YAI
Present:
Lynn Decker
Marilyn Rubenstein
Cliff Datys
Carol Lincoln
Elly Rufer
Kathy Kelly
Jessie Backe
Irina Tuchina
Margaret Puddington
Trish Chapman
Lynn Decker reported efforts to invite Borough President and Public Advocate staff to DD Council. PA staff responded and felt that little city $ was at work in our space but are interested to hear if and when issues concerning city $s or policies are implicated. No call back from BP so far.
Following discussion touched on some of the political elements affecting the family advocacy space at this time, including ‘acting’ commissioners at OPWDD for four of the past five years, pre- and school-aged children’s families being focused on securing placement or less mobilized because IDEA does provide entitlement to appropriate services once a family succeeds in navigating entry to a suitable placement.
Some discussion of whether the possible closing of the Guild for Exceptional Children might be a catalyzing event for families with young children, but observation that new placements for those children will be a clear responsibility for the DoE and the situation may be resolved with a new vendor taking over the school from the prior agency, which would avert any crisis, at least from a media perspective.
Also, a longstanding trend of established agencies closing Early Intervention operations, including UCP AHRC, Rusk Institute and the Kennedy Child Study Center, has not meant an outright shortage of EI vendors, only an increasing specialization and reduction of depth of offering and/or center-based programming.
Some of the cultural and organizational barriers to reaching out to District 75, non-public, and Carter or Connor funded school settings were touched upon.
A proposal to use the Resource Fair to promote our January meeting to parents with a talk by Peter Pierri of IAC (who recently gave a well-recieved talk at Brooklyn DD Council), was made by Marilyn Rubinstein and met with wide approval.