Lesson 9: Community Resource

Attention

There are many resources in the community that consumers must access and interact with to recover and develop self sustainability. Keeping track of them all in an organized way will make your job be much easier. They will be at your fingertips so that you are able to refer your clients as they are appropriate. Developing a resource file will also assist you in collaboration with those on your team as the resources you bring to the table may just be the glue that allows the process for your client to continue towards success. 

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

• Develop a plan to organize and quickly access community contacts (e.g., other agencies, recreational facilities, hospitals, schools, Internet sites, etc) that you will need to contact each day to provide good service to the consumers you are working with. 
• Develop the knowledge and application of the American with Disabilities Act by determining the accommodations that may be required for an individual with disabilities to successfully obtain and sustain employment.

Teaching

Read and Review Instructor Notes and the following web sites: 

http://www.ada.gov/
http://askjan.org/

In a holistic therapeutic environment community rehabilitation staff need to interact with many different agencies and resources to provide the support consumers require to live and work in the community.  These include state agencies, hospitals, doctors, private non profit agencies, physical therapy, specialty centers such as those which focus on brain injury, family members, clergy, educators and many others.  Additionally, internet sites (use the bookmark function on you web browser)   can provide a very quick reference to problem solving for particular consumer service.  You should have all these resources made readily available.   The systems that a consumer must interact with to obtain and sustain employment include the Career Center, on line services such as Indeed.com, employers, Maine Job Bank and others.  Professional rehabilitation providers need to have a readily available resource list of contacts and other resources so that when they need assistance they can easily make contact. Time spent looking up agency names and addresses is wasted time that could be spent with the consumer or completing necessary documentation.   You and your clients will benefit from you setting up a file or list in your computer contacts.

Being aware of the provisions of the American with Disabilities Act is an important resource for community rehabilitation service providers.  You are an ambassador of sorts for individuals with disabilities and having a clear understanding of the ADA, it’s application and context in the community is an important part of the professional knowledge base of a community rehabilitation provider.  Follow this link for information which will be very applicable to the work you do in the future. http://www.employmentforme.org/providers/legal.html

Assessment

Lesson 9 Quiz

1. Write a brief description of your plan to keep track of all the various community resources you might need to contact to assist your client with employment related services. Include the sources you will use to access the American with Disabilities Act.  
2. List three links related to ADA law that you think you might want to keep handy and why. Be sure to include the actual links in the answer.

Lesson 9 Discussion

Take some time this week to seek out resources in your community that you didn't know about. These can be resources specifically available to persons with disabilities or available to serve the general public. However, given the topic of our course I am hoping you will seek out those resources that could benefit you as you enter the field utilizing on your MHRT/C and that sharing these will help each other in the future. 

Lesson 9 Assignment

In this lesson you are going to use the app Evernote to record contact information for 3 communty-based resources.

For each resource you are going to record the following characteristics:

Type of Resource: (housing, employment, education, transportation, state program, accessibility, etc.)

Name:

Phone Number:

Address:

Website:

Description:

After you have completed three of these send each one to your instructor's KVCC email. Your instructor will collect them all together and send them to everyone in the class to add to your own resource list.