Luna's ongoing saga with Services for the Blind
Back in May I had a meeting with the regional head at Services for the Blind about my case. She overrode my case manager’s earlier decision not to sponsor graduate-level study, and added an amendment to my plan stating that my eventual career is “attorney,” meaning that I was approved for assistance with tuition totaling just over 10k, 1k for books, financial assistance with housing, and assistive technology (so a new computer).
But then today when I called the office I was told that my case manager hadn’t authorized anything, and my blood dropped out of my face. How is this possible when her boss already approved everything? What I think is likely is that she hasn’t been keeping up with my case and didn’t read the amendment that was added to my file. I sent her an email detailing everything that her boss approved and I mentioned that I faxed a bunch of paperwork over there and never heard anything back. I have a feeling I’ll be able to get everything I need but I will have to nag them to get all the paperwork done on time.
It’s just…this is so typical for this agency. Compared to the services for the deaf, services for the blind is like a tiny backwater office with people who are never there. Services for the deaf and hard of hearing have an office in every county of the state while services for the blind has maybe three or four offices total. There were two schools for the deaf in NC and one school for the blind and the state tried to close down the school for the blind, meaning lots of blind kids wouldn’t have had access to education, but they would have kept those two deaf schools open???? A lot of people got angry about that plan so the state changed its mind and decided to “consolidate” the two schools for the deaf into one school. I mean, I guess that’s better but why are they taking money away from such vulnerable populations in the first place?
Also, there is only one person in the whole state who oversees the deaf-blind population in NC. That seems crazy to me because if someone has multiple disabilities they probably need more services, how can one person possibly handle all the casework? My guess is that they can’t, and that people’s needs fall through the cracks like mine have.
Before all this started I had a wonderful case manager but he retired and now all the people from my county got added onto this woman’s caseload. It’s probably way too much work for her to do alone, it isn’t fair for the state to give so little money that they can’t afford to hire more people, but I’m not going to let all these issues get in my way.
I am going to law school and I’m going to get the grant money to pay for it no matter how many phone calls I have to make.
But then today when I called the office I was told that my case manager hadn’t authorized anything, and my blood dropped out of my face. How is this possible when her boss already approved everything? What I think is likely is that she hasn’t been keeping up with my case and didn’t read the amendment that was added to my file. I sent her an email detailing everything that her boss approved and I mentioned that I faxed a bunch of paperwork over there and never heard anything back. I have a feeling I’ll be able to get everything I need but I will have to nag them to get all the paperwork done on time.
It’s just…this is so typical for this agency. Compared to the services for the deaf, services for the blind is like a tiny backwater office with people who are never there. Services for the deaf and hard of hearing have an office in every county of the state while services for the blind has maybe three or four offices total. There were two schools for the deaf in NC and one school for the blind and the state tried to close down the school for the blind, meaning lots of blind kids wouldn’t have had access to education, but they would have kept those two deaf schools open???? A lot of people got angry about that plan so the state changed its mind and decided to “consolidate” the two schools for the deaf into one school. I mean, I guess that’s better but why are they taking money away from such vulnerable populations in the first place?
Also, there is only one person in the whole state who oversees the deaf-blind population in NC. That seems crazy to me because if someone has multiple disabilities they probably need more services, how can one person possibly handle all the casework? My guess is that they can’t, and that people’s needs fall through the cracks like mine have.
Before all this started I had a wonderful case manager but he retired and now all the people from my county got added onto this woman’s caseload. It’s probably way too much work for her to do alone, it isn’t fair for the state to give so little money that they can’t afford to hire more people, but I’m not going to let all these issues get in my way.
I am going to law school and I’m going to get the grant money to pay for it no matter how many phone calls I have to make.