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Do you wanna start by giving me
a little overview of
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what your job is and
what you do overall?
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I work as the coordinator for the
LINK department at YAI.
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LINK stands for linking individuals to
necessary knowledge.
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So what we do is information referral
resource for the entire YAI network.
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Typically what we do is respond to
inquiries from families, professionals,
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and the people we support in regard to a
whole range of different things.
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What services they might be in need of,
general information, explaining the
OPWDD system.
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So explaining what the office for people
with developmental disabilities does.
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How to get eligibility with them.
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We review evaluations for people.
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Typicallly we get about 400
inquiries a week.
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That's kind of the main part of my job.
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In addition to that we also run some
programs out of my department including,
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independent living skills program.
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Which is for adults 18 and up
who are interested in learning a wide
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variety of different topics.
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We also have some social
skills groups, a ballet yoga program
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that we provide in Brooklyn, as well as
some programs for 17 to 21 year olds
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here in Manhattan.
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Oh wow that's a lot. So now you've
created this database with information
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about COVID-19 so who came up with
that idea?
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It really started from getting a lot of
information from a lot of really good
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meaning people who were sending us
resources directly related to COVID.
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Typically, on a normal day in LINK we have
our IDD resource library.
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Which is where we keep information that's
just general knowledge that would help
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someone that has an intellectual or
developmental disability.
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Things like links to different resources
at libraries, different benefits packages.
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Things like that so they can research
and understand different resources
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that are out there.
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Once COVID began, we started getting
a lot information where people asked,
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"Can you add this to
your resource library?"
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And what we realized is, adding it
to the resource library
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is going to make it really difficult
for families to find it.
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So we started adding it to a page,
but the page became really bogged down.
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The page was huge and it became
again, tedious to look through.
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So the wonderful Cathy Bechler, who works
partially in my department and partially
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in communications. She actually went
ahead and created a database where we
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could enter all this information
that we were getting.
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And it's been growing from there.
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Pretty much everyday we're getting at
least 1-2 resources to add to that page.
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So linksters who work in my department
will go through these resources,
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determine if they're going to be
useful to the people we support.
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How to categorize them so they're easy
to search for the people that are
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looking at the database.
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Who decided which resources to include?
And can you give me an overview of what
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kind of resources you have in this
database?
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We have a lot of different ones. There are
a couple different categories.
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We have everything from entertainment,
information on different zoos and
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aquariums that are doing
online viewing of their animals.
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All the way to these are emergency
resources for accessing food, these are
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emergency resources for accessing
financial help.
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Information on updates that the
government is giving that are
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specific to people with IDD as well as
just to the general population.
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In terms of who came up with the idea.
It was really the brainchild of a couple
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different people. Cathy definitely did the
infrastructure work.
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In terms of determining what goes up there
a lot of times it's people sending us the
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information, but then a linkster, someone
who is an information specialist or
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supervisor in the LINK department is
reading through it and deciding.
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What does this mean to somebody?
Is this something that's useful for our
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population, should this resource
replace another one?
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Maybe there's outdated information
and this is an update.
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So every single day the linksters are
reading through the new information
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that comes in and determining
how it should be categorized.
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How to put it up there, what age group it
applies to. What kind of category.
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Is it an entertainment resource?
Is it an app?
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Is it a mental health resource?
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Categorizing it so that it's easy for
families and professionals to really
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look though it and find it quickly.
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And are these resources tailored to people
with specific disabilities?
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Or are they for everyone,
disabled on non-disabled?
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A lot of the resources could be used
by anybody.
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We do try to highlight those that are
specific to the IDD community.
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There are some resources that specifically
say this is for somebody diagnosed with
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autism., but in reality, a mindfullness
app is useful for anyone who is able
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to get into the app. A lot of social
stories could be used with any age
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of child or any diagnosis.
Although it might say specifically
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that it's for someone with autism,
it doesn't mean that somebody that
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doesn't have autism won't
find it helpful.
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And how about accessibility?
Did you have a specific concept in mind so
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this database is accessible for everyone?
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So we're trying to keep the language to
typically around the second grade level.
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When we're describing the information,
we want to keep it pretty basic.
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We do have an entire category that is
only Espanol.
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Those are all resources that are either
in Spanish or that we've been able to
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translate into Spanish.
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So one of my colleagues, Mara
Henriquez, she is our Spanish linkster.
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So she has been doing a lot of work
translating this is what this means.
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Reading through those resources that are
specifically in Spanish to make sure that
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we're catering to that population.
That they have the same access
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as an English speaker would have.
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There was a lot of criticism around
government efforts that didn't
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quite include people with disabilities.
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So was this somehow a motivation for
you to create this database?
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I mean definitely. We really want to make
sure people with IDD and their families
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are supported in this.
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There is so much going on right now and
it's really overwhelming. And when you add
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in the fact that somebody is either a
person with a developmental disability
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or supporting someone with a
developmental disability, it compounds
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upon that and makes those stressors
more difficult.
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It makes explaining COVID more difficult.
So trying to find those resources
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that help break it down into language
somebody's going to understand,
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and helping those parents and caregivers
stay mindful and help reduce their stress
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and anxiety, and of course always helps
the people that we support.
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We want to give them all the resources
we can so they stay calm and therefore
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are better able to serve the people that
we are helping to support.