You Have NO Right-----------------

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

Name: Gary Roberts
Email: jg86@hotmail.com
Date: 01 Mar 2000
Time: 13:45:39

Story

The person in front of me was an African-American female who was a program supervisor from the main office of the Department of Rehabilitation Services. Her title was Trust Fund Coordinator and her duties were to ferret out cases involving people on Social Security Disability who may enter competitive employment.

The agency was reimbursed by the Social Security Administration for every case that ended in a competitive employment outcome. A lot of the discussion was on paper work and forms and how to push the right buttons. Finally it started degenerating into a gripe session about the lazy, unmotivated people on disability. I had grown numb to this kind of dialogue over the years. I had sat through hundreds of training programs and, in time, they all blended together.

There was really nothing new under the sun . The lady began to tell a story about someone she had encountered. This was a man who was on Disability due to a back problem. She was quite scornful of him, describing him as fat and unmotivated. Finally, she talked about how he had fathered two children while on disability, and she said, if he were able to have sex, he was able to work.

Her comments brought out the chorus from my coworkers. They said no way would those people on disability give up those big checks and go back to work. It was, they agreed, a waste of time to have to intervene with the majority of Social Security cases.

I stood up in the meeting and addressed the presenter first. I told her, "You have no right to say what you just said." If I had stood up and directed hateful degretory comments about African-Americans the way she and the rest of the room had about disabled people, I would be in serious trouble. I told them that we should not be surprised at the outcome of cases when the counselor held the view toward disabled people that had been put on display at this meeting.The room fell silent and a lot of angry-filled faces stared back at me.

The next day, back in the office, I received a visit from my supervisor. He shouted at me. How dare I attack my coworkers. I told him I would put what I had said in a memo and send it to him and up the chain. He told me that I was a constant irritant to the agency and I needed to change if I was to keep my job.

This encounter with the lady from the state office was typical of views I encountered over 18 years of service with rehabilitation. Years ago, when I worked in a large city in the social service department, I was constantly reminded of the importance of having the right attitude toward my clients who were mostly African-Americans. In the years I spent with rehabilitation, I never attended a session or witnessed discussion on developing the correct attitude toward people with disabilities. There was no emphases placed on the need for the counselor to bond with the client; instead the client was to adapt him or herself to the view of the counselor or the system.

"You don't have the right to say that," or "that is not correct" were statements I found myself making time and time again. The lack of respect and the absence of understanding and empathy were really stark within the agency. In a system that cared about its clients and respected the people with whom it was intervening, the incident described here would not have been tolerated.

SO, are we surprised that so few Social Security cases end up successfully for the agency?

You Have NO Right-----------------

Story

Last changed: October 20, 2003