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