Rehabilitation Services

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How have you bridged the gap between being included but still feeling left out?

Name: Gary Wayne Roberts
Email: jg86@hotmail.com
Date: 21 Feb 2000
Time: 04:47:34

Story

I worked for eighteen years for a state vocational rehabilitation agency. This is not unusual but the unusual part was that I am deaf and worked out in the field as a counselor with non deaf clients. In this time of employment I worked with every imaginable kind of disability. I encountered all types of human beings often experiencing the worse time of their lives. Many of them were people struggling to find new footing in life and pleading for help. The sad part was that I witnessed in the agency I worked for ever imaginable kind of abuse of clients rights and denial of due process. I was present when people with disabilities were ridiculed and held up for mockery.

It was not surprising that I spend the last seven years of my employment fighting through various complaints using the state system first and then later turning to the federal level. In all the years I worked the only time the powers that be looked seriously at my situation was when I was in the complaint stage. They did not act out of concern for client services or case work standards; they went fishing for issues to use against me. Their goal was to discredit me or pressure me to leave and hopefully to eventually fire me.

Knowing what I know about Rehabilitation Services and the quality of services, I wonder why there are not more complaints recorded. The agency -- when it does consumer surveys -- always points out how satisfied clients are. I know for a fact that people were complaining, but most of the complaints are smothered out at the lower levels. In order to get a full menu of services from the agency, one needs to complain at one stage or another. To let yourself be lead through the process by the counselor is to condemn yourself to nothing positive occurring in your life. In closing, I just wonder why one does not read more complaints signed by clients or former clients. Maybe they are afraid of retaliation or some other type of revenge action from the agency.

Rehabilitation Services

Story

Last changed: October 20, 2003