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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.