Figure 1
been in decline over the past ten years and has put tremendous pressure on spending priorities. As for access to personal tech- nology, the individuals we serve have often members of the “digital divide”. A survey of The Arc chapters in June 2020, with 292 chapters reporting, showed the following: (See Figure 1) More details of this survey can be viewed at https://tinyurl. com/y2m5g4kb. Many advocacy organizations have focused on the issue of “digital equity” and you can lend your support to their efforts by helping support organizations like the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities who were at the forefront of this movement with their “Declaration of the Rights of People with Cognitive Disabilities to Technology and Information Ac- cess” (https://www.colemaninstitute.org/declaration-tools-2/.) One additional insight to share about the adult care system for people with I/DD is that funding for this system principal- ly comes from Medicaid, a Federal/State sharing arrangement. Traditionally, Medicaid has focused on the health and safety of the people and programs it supports, centered on more of a medical model of care while ongoing learning has mostly been concerned with the teaching of daily living skills. As the care system has moved from an institutional based model to a com- munity integration model, so has the teaching of employment skills and lifelong learning become more important. Just be- cause a person with I/DD has received a certificate of comple- tion from a secondary school, learning doesn’t stop at 21 and we now realize that neuroplasticity combined with lifelong learning are solutions awaiting greater implementation in the adult care system. We had to push through these many challenges and deal with the situation at hand during this pandemic. Our next priority was to reach out to program participants and staff via remote-meeting platforms and provide information on our ef- forts to keep everyone safe and healthy, share information on program status and reduce their feelings of isolation. Many people were separated from their families and friends during a very frightening time and without remote connections, fear and apprehension would have spread. As a personal example, my daughter’s residence was put under quarantine in April for several weeks and without the ability to connect with her via
FaceTime, our concerns would have gone unchecked. Prior to the pandemic, our agency’s operations had been mostly based in physical locations, with travel across a large county and every- one was used to seeing their friends, staff and therapists each day. After addressing that issues of fear and isolation, we expand- ed our focus to share existing web-based resources and we cre- ated a “Learning Resources for Our Community” page on our website (https://arcwestchester.org/news/learning-resources/) that focused on many important topics including Advocacy, Health, Exploration, Mental Health, Daily Living Skills, Art, Read- ing, Technology and other activity ideas. When we started to create our own virtual learning sessions, we discovered some very important (and now obvious to many) things to avoid in this new medium. • Just because you have a camera and a microphone, that doesn’t mean that you can make an interesting and entertain- ing lesson. You have to engage your audience and get used to the lack of immediacy, the distractions and the inability to clearly read body language and easily assess your audience’s interest level. The lack of presenter/audience interaction will doom any session. Enlisting the individuals we support as pro- gram hosts, enlivens any session. • Enthusiasm! The presenter must sound interested! If the pre- senter doesn’t appear to be interested, why should the audi- ence care? • Limit distracting background visuals and sounds – turn off ringers, alarms and notifications on your desktop computer, tablets and smartphones. Be aware of how your visual back- ground appears to viewers. Will the mess on your desk dis- tract from the impact of your message? Is your background too bright, causing your face to be in shadow? Do you have any light source that you can put in front of you to remove shadows? Avoid the ghoulish effect from lighting your face from below. If you’re using a Zoom background, is it making your face darker than the background or making you look like a “cutout”? • Put a sign on your door to let others in your household or of- fice know that you’re in a session and should not be disturbed
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October / November, 2020 | www.closingthegap.com/membership Closing The Gap © 2020 Closing The Gap, Inc. All rights reserved.
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