SARAH LAUNDERVILLE: So the next part that we're going to go through is reviewing your organizations and really looking at how you're working with folks who have psychiatric disabilities as a whole and really being thoughtful about what that looks like within your centers, and so when we look at reviewing our organizations, you want to start, or maybe you don't want to start here but one place to start is at your documents.

Looking at your policies, your procedures, your applications, and other paperwork, and are they inclusive towards a cross-disability structure?

I just want to say as aside, in addition to, to sort of looking at psychiatric disability but I want to give a shout out, to an ILRU training I went to a long time ago on cultural competency that was held in Boston and Tawara Goode from Georgetown University has some really, for me, these assessments on cultural competency that relates to centers for independent living, and if you go to Georgetown University, the cultural competency, maybe ILRU has on their website, I'm not sure, yes, as well, you can, you just, you plunk in your e-mail address, and for free, you can get this assessment tool around cultural competency that I just have, it was allowed us to start conversations around culture at our center, so just wanted to plug that.

So looking at your bylaws, other legal documents and do they include cross-disability language?

Are they still kind of set in the '80s?

Do your historic, does your history training include people who have psychiatric disabilities or their survivor movement?

Really starting to take some of the information that you learned here at this training and plug it into any of those history trainings that you do out in the community or with individuals.

Do you have board members, staff and volunteers who have psychiatric disabilities?

Do you have folks in leadership positions who have psychiatric disabilities?

You know, are folks given opportunities and you know, what I do a lot is look at, it's kind of a weird grid that I created that I was on the Vermont arts council for years, I stole from their executive director and it really had a whole bunch of sort of categories kind of a weird way to look at it, of you know, folks that I wanted to make sure that I was rising up in leadership positions, so I kind of looked around my leadership team and I look around our Board of Directors and you know, do I have people of color?

Do I have people that represent different groups within my organization, and that's kind of how it keeps me on track, and how I'm thinking and really thoughtful about that on a regular basis.

Is your programming accessible to people with psychiatric disabilities?

I think there's a lot of training opportunities around that, like trauma informed work that's done, things that we've talked about over the last couple of days that you might want to look into, that when people walk through your doors for the first time, are they really met with respect?

We had a situation where I had a new receptionist and she hadn't been around the community for a really long time and somebody came into our center and he was, he was having a hard time, and she hadn't been fully trained, but we needed a receptionist really bad to answer the phone and she thought the next logical step was to call the police when he wasn't, you know, behaving the way she thought he should be, so it was a horrible moment in my mind to think that we were calling the police on somebody who just walked through our door, but we need to be really thoughtful on how we train every single person on our staff around, what do we do in these situations?

When someone is, you know, presenting with something that you're not used to, then what are you going to do and what are those steps you're going to take training people and what that looks like, not reactive, not judgmental, all of those sorts of things are really important to think about and talk about and talk about and talk about.

Because her, where she came from, it was such a different situation when someone was doing sort of the threatening things that she was perceiving as, and where I came from, it was kind of just common, so it was really different philosophies, and as leaders within your communities having those conversations are important.

Are you aware in working towards including people who have psychiatric disabilities in planning work and systems, advocacy issues and we've talked a little bit over this time there are some really significant systems, advocacy issues that we need to be out there and fighting against.

Right now, it is a very, very scary time.

You know, I find that our liberal Democrats that we're friends with on so many issues believe in, come from a very social worker point of view around helping people, which actually is a backlash when it comes to things like involuntary commitment and involuntary medication and so we find that in that, you know, treatment world, we find that people, we want to have them have access to the hospital as soon as possible or we want to have, and so what happens is, we start to strip away the judicial processes that allow people time to be able to make their case as to why as they should not be committed, right?

And so through that process, we need to be really careful, or we have to be mindful and say, gosh, what is our state doing around this?

I did a study of all of, and there was a report that someone had talked about, women's caucus had done a study, how many states still have on the books that you can terminate parental rights based on disability across the board and there was so many states that still have that on the books.

It's not around your parenting skills or styles.

It's really based on you can take a child away because somebody has a physical disability or a mental health issue.

So you should research what does your state say?

And if it says something, you should make that a priority to change that.

We've seen a lot of gun law changes.

In Vermont we went through a process this last year where governor said I'm not going to sign any gun laws, any restriction on guns in our state.

We had the whole hunting community come out, you know, say we don't want this, we don't want this, and in the end, a gun law did pass and the only people that are affected by that gun law are people who have gone through criminal system and people who have been involuntarily committed.

There's, Mike actually had given me, I don't know where Mike is, but given me some excellent information and we can share that if this is an advocacy issue important to you that allowed me to put our testimony together to talk about violence rates and folks with psychiatric disabilities, and how it's, some of the stereotypes and myths that go along with that.

Actually, we said in committee, one of our partners talked about, you know, that young white males who play video games, that's who we should be targeting if we're going to target anybody in this law.

But legislators didn't listen to that.

There's these registries, the bad Murphy bill, there is a good Murphy bill and a bad Murphy bill, and at the national level, and the, you know, having these registries that people's names are being put forward, if you've had involuntary commitment and you know, those are all things that we definitely don't support.

And then advocacy, around the different quote treatments, so medication, or electric compulsive therapies or other therapies that are out there, really talking and finding out from your consumer base or your peers, you know, when you're taking those medications, is that good?

Is that bad?

All of those conversations really need to happen and decide how your CIL can really be involved in some of that, that work.

So media is another way that you can be really involved, so are you responding to media stories that further stigmatize folks with psychiatric disabilities?

On any given day, if there's any violence that happens, you can go and see, there's been studies shown and reports that show how many times somebody will connect psychiatric disability with violence in our media and so to counter that, we need to be vocal about it.

So it could be meeting with the media, it could be conversations that way, or it could be just one of those public postings to just write it up there and say, I disagree, and this is why, and the more voices saying that, you know, the more that it gets out there.

And I heard one time that somebody said they don't post to Facebook to contradict other people, they post it so that their like-minded friends know they have friends out there, because that's kind of what it comes down to.

If you're like that poster, put something that's very different than what all your friends are posting on Facebook to know that there is a community out there that supports that point of view is sometimes a good thing.

There are stories that assume medical model is correct and those are things that are feeding into our lawmakers, our administrators.

That in addition to whatever, wherever they're coming from, so I think those are places where you can look.

And stories that use inappropriate language and assumptions about mental health issues.

We talk, when we are among friends, we reclaim our language, and we can really talk with you around language stuff.

But when we're talking about things going out to the mass public who really don't understand when you know, people talk about crazy or those sort of things, it's important to call it out and really talk about language and stories that are kind of going that medical model.

And then looking for your allies.

You know, are you making strong connections and collaborating with other groups, organizations working with people who have mental health issues or survivor movements, so we you know look to survivor organizations, recovery organizations, domestic and sexual violence organizations are great groups that folks really should be reaching out to if you haven't.

There are so many disabilities that can come from that, not only psychiatric but physical as well and so brain injury, so it's important to really cross-pollinate with those groups.

State protection and advocacy organizations, I am president of our disability rights Vermont, which is our P&A, executive director of our P&A is on the VCIL board.

Having these relationships that are not conflicting, you have to figure that out, I guess.

But making sure those voices are heard in different ways.

Clubhouses, and there's lots of other allies.

I told you about our human rights coalition.

You know, where we've really started to have conversations.

You know, our migrant justice organization and our state is doing a whole work around farm workers and they're finding farm workers coming into the state who, we have a higher percentage of folks who have intellectual disabilities who are farm workers, and working with those groups, finding out, what are the issues they're experiencing when they're coming into our state?

We have a high number of Vietnamese individuals who are deaf that have come into the state, and so in addition to being new Americans, they also have language barriers that they're trying to figure out and struggle with, so making sure you're asking them what it is they need, not assuming what they need.

And then I don't know if we have this handout but there's this independent living center mental health services assessment, I don't know if Mike, did you, I don't know who put this slide up?

We're going to find this for you if you can't find it online.

So any questions around any of that section, on 

AUDIENCE MEMBER: First of all, I know there is some collaboration with sexual assault and violence organizations.

Like in Delaware, Dept. of ?? stability, partnered with Stop the Abuse Now and every week day they give a class that's open, in public.

And it's out in Delaware.

And also you're talking about clubhouses quite a bit.

I never heard that concept.

I know you talked about it earlier, but could you explain more what they are?

SARAH LAUNDERVILLE: Thanks for asking that question about clubhouses, what they are.

We have a few in our state.

Anybody else have clubhouses in their state, where folks can come in and hang out?

Another Way is an organization in Plainfield, do a Google search on them.

One of the things that they do, it's really around socialization, it's around coming together, and we have some commonality, but they've built like a rap studio, not wrap, W-R-A-P, but rap, R-A-P.

It's a recording studio.

People are going in and doing recordings.

We've had some old time folks come in and do poetry readings and slams there.

We have a lot, a lot of music and connection that way.

We have another group that does a lot of wellness laughter, yoga, all those sorts of things, so a large array of stuff that's happening at some of these clubhouses.

It's a place to just hang out.

Another way is actually making some money by providing, I told Lindsey I'd get this in, but she's not here.

They has gluten free and vegan meals, another way that they are providing to community for a fee, they started this catering service where people who are learning a skill around cooking and feeding and delivery and all of that sort of stuff, and they're also bringing money back into the organization to provide that service.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So first I wanted to echo an amplify what you were saying about partnering with DV and sexual violence organizations.

In Boston, we have an ongoing partnership with our local rape crisis center and also our local public transit authority working on, among other things, increasing competence around serving people with disabilities who have experienced sexual assault on public transit, and that sounds very specific, but it's actually a lot of people.

But also building competency in all of our organizations.

The other thing is, I wanted to put a plug in for working with domestic workers organizations in your area.

Not only because in a lot of cases it's the right thing to do, but also because domestic workers not only are crucial to PCA users but a lot of domestic workers also people with mental health disabilities or intellectual disabilities, or chronic illnesses, etc., so there is a lot of common cause that can be found there as well.

SARAH LAUNDERVILLE: Thanks for those comments.

It's interesting you said the thing about transportation, because we've heard as stories as well, and you know examples of folks who have intellectual disabilities who aren't believed about the sexual violence that's happened, and so they retell their stories openly and publicly, and then they're revictimized and we've heard of stories of bus drivers and public transportation, that sort of thing happens quite often.

I think the other thing to know is that you know, there's the violence against women's act.

There's victim of crime act money that's available, and right now states have, there's money coming down to the states where folks who administer within your state, for our state it's Crime Victim Services, so I don't know what it's called in other states, they're supposed to be reaching out to underserved populations and it specifically talks about independent living centers, and you guys should be at the table around how money is spent around victims of crime.

We go in and we talk about trauma, we talk about the, the shelters and programs are not accessible to folks across the board, programs, physical accessibility, all of that.

There's one thought I had.

I lost it.

Thank you so much for those comments.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: When you talked about the story about the receptionist and calling the police.

Do you have policies in place?

We have to balance safety for our staff and volunteers and consumers against not putting somebody in a worse position because they came to our center?

SARAH LAUNDERVILLE: That's a wonderful question about policies in place.

We spent a lot of time actually, in connection with a voca grant we worked on with our violence center around violence free workplace policy, and it's a huge, it's, we did a lot of thinking and I'm happy to share that through whatever channels, and it really looks at our policies and procedures across the board around violence free workplace and it's not only for folks coming through the door but it's around protecting of employees so that, you know, you know one example might be that someone is calling and looking for their wife and you know, unless we have permission to say, you know, that they're actually working that day, we're not going to really talk to family members, whatever, because we don't know what their situation, their home life is.

We're in a small center where we do know a lot of stuff but we don't ever want to make assumptions so our policy is pretty deep into that, so I'm happy to share that.

Thanks for asking that.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay.

Thank you very much.