Mills, Craig

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Role of the State Rehabilitation Agency in Service to Deaf People in The Seventies

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JADARA 
Volume 4 Number 3 Article 9 
October 2019 
Role of the State Rehabilitation Agency in Service to Deaf People 
in The Seventies 
Craig Mills 
None 
Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.wcsu.edu/jadara 
Recommended Citation 
Mills, C. (2019). Role of the State Rehabilitation Agency in Service to Deaf People in The Seventies. 
JADARA, 4(3). Retrieved from https://repository.wcsu.edu/jadara/vol4/iss3/9 
ROLE OF THE STATE
REHABILITATION AGENCY IN
SERVICE TO DEAF PEOPLE IN
THE SEVENTIES
CRAIG MILLS
We need strong, creative, and outspoken people to plan and
work for bold new approaches in the rehabilitation of deaf people.
We must recognize what needs to be done and then do it, even if it
requires that sometimes we be less than nice. We must decide if we
want to save feelings or lives. This Convention is providing us with
the opportunity to get together and plan an action strategy for the
future. Are we ready for the challenge? Are we ready to commit
ourselves personally and professionally to common goals? I believe
we are. Let's work together so that the job can be done as it should
be done. Then the 1970's can become a aecade of services in depth
for deaf people.
The only fair way to approach a challenging subject like this is
to be completely honest at the outset, and say that I don't know what
the role will be for State Rehabilitation agencies in services for deaf
people in the seventies. I have no special insight into the future that
makes it possible to predict the role. The things that I have ob
served in the past few years do not establish any firm pattern or
trend. It would even be difficult to describe the role of state agen
cies right now because we see such a varied pattern across the
nation. We might be pessimistic and predict that this variety of
levels of service from state to state will continue, and that there will
be no consistent pattern nor uniform role for state agencies in the
decade of the seventies.
But 1 would much prefer to be optimistic and say that perhaps
we can help to create the role for state agencies in serving deaf
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Mills: Role of the State Rehabilitation Agency in Service to Deaf People
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38 THE ROLE OF THE STATE AGENCY IN SERVICE TO DEAF PEOPLE
people in the seventies, by talking about what it can be or what we
would hope that it might be. For surely much of the great progress
during the sixties came about as a result of the dreams and hopes of
people like Mary Switzer, Jim Garrett, Boyce Williams and so many
of you who are leaders in making services available to deaf people.
It is difficult to give priorities to the things we might hope for,
but I think I would first hope for a basic commitment from all of us
in state rehabilitation agencies, a commitment that we need to do
something significant in improving our services to deaf people. I
think this might best be expressed in a statement of philosophy that
rehabilitation workers would understand. We might say it this way:
The role of State Rehabilitation Agencies in serving deaf people
in the Seventies is to find deaf people where they are and as they are
and to do whatever it takes to see that deaf people get the maximum
opportunity for personal and vocational achievement.
We might make this further statement:
Deaf children, youths and adults as individuals and as citizens,
deserve every right, privilege, freedom, opportunity to achieve, and
every responsibility of any other citizen; and because of their
unique characteristic of deafness in addition to their other
capacities or handicaps, deserve all the specialized services and
technology necessary to compete fairly and to contribute fully to life
in our society.
Now you may object to some portions of that statement or you
may be able to improve on it from your experience. Some of you
may feel that it is just so many idle words. But I am just optimistic
enough to believe that it just might stir a spark of hope if Vocational
Rehabilitation people really were committed to that philosophy and
if all the deaf people in America could believe that the people in
rehabilitation agencies felt that way about them.
Now to make a positive approach and to help create the role we
want for state rehabilitation agencies, let's consider some things
that might be recommended for each state if they have not already
been done.
1. First it seems essential to assign specific responsibility in
the agency for the rehabilitation services for the deaf. In most of
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THE ROLE OF THE STATE AGENCY IN SERVICE TO DEAF PEOPLE 39
the state agencies this ought to be a full-time person who can devote
full attention to program development. It should be a staff person
who can communicate with deaf people and who knows
rehabilitation and who understands the needs of deaf people. This
staff person should be delegated sufficient authority to organize a
statewide program of rehabilitation services for the deaf.
2. The second essential step is the recruitment and develop
ment of an adequate staff of counselors for the deaf to reach and
serve the deaf population in the state. There must be a fundamental
understanding that the job cannot be done by general caseload
counselors who have no skills in communicating with the deaf and
who have large caseloads of other clients. This is still our greatest
problem. This calls for recruitment of counselors who already have
special skills in working with deaf people or providing training for
counselors who have a genuine interest in working with the deaf.
Many states have employed •qualified deaf counselors. Full-time
counselors are needed in most metropolitan areas. Itinerant
counselors may be needed in sparsely settled rural areas. But an
essential role of the state agency is to provide an adequate and
competent counselor staff to serve the deaf.
3. State agencies must, assume the role of establishing an
adequate liaison with the state school for the deaf. This is also
essential to any long-term program of rehabilitation for the deaf.
A substantial segment of the deaf population of the state will be
available to the rehabilitation agency for three to five years at the
junior-senior high school level at the school. It should be the role of
both the rehabilitation agency and the state school for the deaf to
insure that every young person who leaves the school has had
adequate counseling, guidance and planning for continued services.
This period should be used to establish a friendly relationship with
the student, his family and the rehabilitation staff in his home
district. This can be accomplished through liaison counselors at the
school, by periodic visits to the school by district counselors for the
deaf, through summer work-experience programs in the home
district, and by full communication between counselors at the school
and counselors in the home district. Both should be involved in
planning with the student to insure realistic plans and to avoid an
interruption in services upon leaving the school.
Many states have developed cooperative programs which are
jointly funded and which utilize the excellent resources of the school
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40 THE ROLE OF THE STATE AGENCY IN SERVICE TO DEAF PEOPLE
lor evaluation, personal adjustment training and vocational
training. Some are developing job-experience programs and ex
perimental living facilities to break the pattern of dependency on
institutional living arrangements.
While this kind of effort calls for full cooperation by both the
school and the rehabilitation agency, we can urge the rehabilitation
agency to help develop this role and to give vigorous leadership to
such a program.
4. The fourth important role for state agencies is the
development of adequate liaison with the deaf community. Many
state rehabilitation programs have good contacts with the state
association for the deaf and with the private and volunteer agencies
who serve the deaf. But to achieve what we hope to do in the
seventies, it seems to me that state rehabilitation agencies must
join hands with all organizations for the deaf in going far beyond
anything wc have yet done together. We need to help develop an
effective lobby for the deaf in every state. We need better com
munications and better publications. We need an effective voice for
the deaf in the state legislature. We need to bring a stronger in
fluence to bear on city, county and state merit systems and
regulatory bodies who set the requirements for licenses or ad
mission to certain fields of work. We need to reach the disad-
vantaged deaf in central cities and rural areas and in racial and
ethnic groups. We need to promote a greater involvement in
recreational and socialization activities for deaf people.
All these activities will represent a new and different role for
many state rehabilitation agencies. They will require more staff
and a different kind of staff function from that which most state
agencies have provided.
5. There is critical need in most states for a competent and
professional life-time counseling and referral service for deaf
people and (heir families. This function is performed well by
private and volunteer organizations in many large cities. But there
is no governmental agency that fills this role throughout the
country. For the decade of the seventies state rehabilitation
agencies may need to assume this role and seek whatever statutory
authority and financial support may be needed to carry it out. As
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JADARA, Vol. 4, No. 3 [1971], Art. 9
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THE ROLE OF THE STATE AGENCY IN SERVICE TO DEAF PEOPLE IN 41
competent counselors for the deaf are developed in state
rehabilitation agencies, with their network of district offices, they
should be in the best position of any governmental agency to provide
advice and referral information to parents of deaf children, deaf
youth and adults seeking help on problems of education, legal ad
vice, vocational training, job placement and a variety of other
needed information. It should be the role of the state agency to be
the place where deaf people can always find someone who can
communicate with them and give them competent counseling and
information.
fi. in connection with the information and referral role, state
agencies should accept the role of being the permanent census
agency for the deaf. Every effort should be made to obtain the
name and address of every deaf person in the state through every
means available to the agency. This should be true of children and
adults, employed and unemployed. This should include deaf people
in tuberculosis hospitals, mental hospitals, facilities for the men
tally retarded, juvenile offenders and correctional facilities. Every
deaf person and his family represents a valuable resource to other
deaf people and to counselors serving the deaf.
We can never get the resources we need to serve all deaf people
until we know who they are, where they are and what their needs
may bo. The slate rehabilitation agency could provide this role and
function if given the resources to do so. This ought to be one of our
goals for the seventies.
7. We have made great progress in in the sixties in the
development of workshops and facilities for handicapped people.
These have brought about a new dimension in work evaluation and
in personal adjustment training. State agencies need to take the
leadership in making a sufficient number of these facilities
available to their deaf clients. Many low-achieving deaf people
could benefit by these programs, and some of these programs could
be opened to deaf clients if staff could be trained or employed who
could communicate with the deaf or if interpreters could be em
ployed to work with deaf clients. State agencies could promote the
development of such programs by employing interpreters or by
agreeing to pay for interpreter services provided by the facilities.
8. State agencies need to develop a similar role with Junior
Colleges, with Area Vocational Technical Schools and with Adult
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42 THE ROLE OF THE STATE AGENCY IN SERVICE TO DEAF PEOPLE
Education Programs. The projects at Delgado, Seattle and St. Paul
have indicated the effectiveness of adapting vocational-technical
programs to serve the deaf. Other states have followed suit by
placing interpreters and other staff support in these settings to
assist deaf clients.
9. Finally, I think the greatest challenge facing state
rehabilitation agencies in serving deaf clients in the seventies is in
developing an effective working relationship with public school and
day-school programs for the deaf. Many states are moving toward
a mandatory special education program for all handicapped
children. This may be a great thing for the orthopedically han
dicapped, the mentally retarded, and even the blind. But I have
grave concern about how it will develop for the deaf. In
metropolitan areas parents seem to be demanding day-school
programs of education for their deaf children in preference to the
residential school. When such children have not received total
communication instruction and when parents and family members
have not been able to learn to communicate with deaf children, real
adjustment problems develop. The task of state rehabilitation
agencies in serving these deaf youths will be much greater if this
trend continues.
To help avoid this problem state agencies and their staff
members need to bring their influence to bear with local school
boards, with parent organizations and other groups to foster
realistic educational programs and foster community programs in
communication skills.
Summary
In the last half of the decade of the sixties we witnessed a
substantial increase in the interest in rehabilitation services for
deaf people. The Las Cruces Conference in 1967 was a real
milestone in bringing together State Directors of Vocational
Rehabilitation, Superintendents of Schools for the Deaf, Educators
of the Deaf, and many Deaf leaders. The follow-up conferences in
regions and states have done much to keep the spirit of Las Cruces
alive and to foster cooperation in developing programs for deaf
people.
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THE ROLE OF THE STATE AGENCY IN SERVICE TO DEAF PEOPLE 43
The organization of the Professional Rehabilitation Workers
with Adult Deaf has served to bring together the leaders in the
rehabilitation movement who serve the deaf. You are a respected
voice in the field of rehabilitation and you can exert a professional
influence in the role of state agencies in serving the deaf. I hope you
will exert all your collective influence to making this role a realistic
expression of our philosophy.
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