 to this edition of Abledon Air, the holiday edition of Abledon Air, the one and only program that focuses on my needs, concerns, and achievements of the different label. I'm your host, Lauren Siler. I'm your host, Lauren Siler. I'm your host, Lauren Siler. And welcome to this holiday edition. This is our year in review. First up, let's take a look at a clip that we did with Monica Hutt. She is part of Dale, the Vermont Division for Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living this year. Let's take a look at this clip. What are the missions and goals of your organization? So the Department for Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living is the Department and State Government. We are one of the departments under the Agency of Human Services. And Dale's mission is pretty big and pretty broad. It's to make Vermont the best state in which to grow old or live with a disability with dignity, respect, and independence. All this year in 2018, Washington County Mental Health came by for several episodes. Let's take a look at Mary Moulton, the Executive Director of Washington County Mental Health. She was on to discuss how Washington County Mental Health helps people with special needs. Let's take a look at this clip. Lauren's to serve. So to serve those in our community who are in need of mental health services, who are in need of services if they have a developmental disability, if they have a substance use disorder, anyone who is having a difficulty in their life that feels as if they need some help for it. And that's our main message. There's a lot of trauma that people experience in their lives. For example, what exactly do you mean? Since this is Mental Health Month and we're going to deal with a lot of different things, what is trauma and the mental health definition of it? So trauma is unique to the individual. So I would never tell you if you told me of something that was very sad or say you suffered some abuse in your life. I would, I, I and you and it was traumatic to you. That is how you define it. And I would never tell you that wasn't traumatic. It's something that affects you so that it alters how sometimes you view life. And it, it's something you might need to seek support for over time and helps to form your thought process as you go forward. So, you know, a significantly hard thing that happens in life that causes us to have some physical or mental reaction that we have to work through that can be the base of that can sometimes be a traumatic event like say abuse as a child, for example, or a post-traumatic stress disorder. Absolutely. For our trade center or war or something. Absolutely. Several times this year we've spoken about smoking and the importance of not smoking in buildings and how buildings have become smoke free. Let's take a look at a clip with Washington County mental health on smoking. Let's take a look at this. Central Vermont New Directions Coalition is a substance abuse prevention coalition. So our mission is really to encourage healthy behavior and decrease substance abuse, especially in Washington County. When you say decrease substance abuse, what exactly does that mean? Well, the key word is prevention. We really want to stop something before it starts. So we want to decrease the number of kids who are starting to try cigarettes. We want to decrease the number of smokers and where it's causing harm to their health. We want to lower the number of people abusing prescription drugs and we want to limit underage drinking of alcohol. Washington County mental health has a newspaper called Shockwave where they involve consumers of Washington County mental health services in writing, painting, and so many other things. Let's take a look at this clip from the Shockwave episode. Let's take a look at this. What types of things do you guys do within Shockwave? Is it like new stories? The foundation is visual arts, painting, drawing, collage. One thing that's featured in Shockwave that's kind of a little different is we don't just have single artist work. We have collaborative work and sometimes when somebody comes in, maybe they are not feeling confident in doing their own work but they might feel confident collaborating with one or two other people and coming up with a piece of art, we have one person who had never done art before but likes to write and that written word became that person's art and has become featured in Shockwave as part of collaboration with other artists, visual artists and then we discover we have a talent for poetry in groups of folks, different groups of folks that come and some don't necessarily attend but they brought their poetry to us when we asked for it and it was amazing to see how many people not only let us put their poetry in the magazine but came to write poetry and again collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. I don't think there's anything in Shockwave that was written in collaboration yet. Several times this year Abel De Narnere was at the state house with the Poor People's Campaign. Let's take a look at several clips from the Poor People's Campaign. Let's take a look at this. National call for a moral revival here in Vermont and across this nation. Today we are doing something that's never been done before. We are gathering here in Montpelier. We are gathering in Sacramento, California, Little Rock, Arkansas, Montgomery, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi. We are gathering with our sisters and brothers in 37 states and in the colony of the District of Columbia also known as Washington, D.C. We are gathering together as a moral witness to say poverty is a moral. Back in February Abel De Narnere was at the state house for Disability Awareness Day. Let's take a look at a clip from Disability Rights Vermont from the press conference from Disability Awareness Day. Let's take a look at this. And our well-being. With all that's going on in the world and the state lately, this is a timely theme and I think that you folks know and experience what those things outside of what is strictly medical have an effect on our health and well-being. Our housing, our ability to get work, our ability to get support just to get out in the community, and those are all very much, those are all issues that are very much in play this year when we look at what's on the agenda in the legislature either that's been put there by legislators or very much maybe even more pertinently what's been put there in the administration's budget proposal. Three Mountain Support Services recently came on Abel De Narnere. Executive Director Joshua Smith talks about his organization. Let's take a look at this. Since we're talking about the institution, what in your opinion, what is the definition so our viewers can know what the institution really means? So basically is that what that entails is that you based off of somebody's disability you are segregated so you're segregated from the rest of society and what that in Brandon Training School was closed in 1993 so we've got 25 years since we actually so it's only been 25 years that we've got we de-institutionalized. What that means is that it doesn't matter if you have red hair, you wear a hearing aid, you wear glasses or you have an intellectual disability you deserve to be a part of your own community that it's we are only stronger as you know as Vermont when everybody has the same accessibility to everything else your local hardware store your local coffee shop your your grocery store and your you know your local churches and and synagogues and whatnot so everybody is able to access and be a part of that community. So Vermont was the first state to do that we said you know what it doesn't matter that you have a disability you deserve to know your neighbors you deserve to be treated like everybody us at Ableton on Air we would like to say that you know this year during Hanukkah and during the holidays we should all band together and not have prejudice at our dinner tables. Why don't we bow our heads for a couple of minutes to remember the victims of the worst according to news reports it's the worst event in American in American history with the Pittsburgh synagogue so why don't we bow our heads in a couple of minutes of silence for them again this year we should not have any prejudice at the dinner table with Hanukkah and Christmas and the holidays now back to our clips Good Samaritan this year had their annual event back in September let's take a look at a clip of that event so yeah thank you all so much for coming out tonight to support the shelter and the work that we're doing to end homelessness this level of community support relating means the world to our organization it's what enables us to do the work that we do from the volunteers and churches who provide meals especially Bethany and heading congregations who donate their space for our warming shelters each winter. In the homeless I had to go home to the lives of American shelter, homeless shelter and for me that was not my hard choice easy choice because for me to go into the homeless shelter then come out when apart from me my son was an easy choice for me so I put my son first and I'm going into the shelter was provided a nice clean environment get to do laundry shower you know support my work at the time I was working three to let that night so I you know the curfew I couldn't make so I allowed me to come here late at night and you know take a shower do what I need to do and get up in the morning time and you know going to the shelter was um there was something uh it was it was it was good you know it's something that you gotta do you know you put your son first and put those things first so you're going to do it and um it's something that was great for me um I got an apartment at down street down street housing so my I stayed down street at um real estate department to my son who's a kind now he goes to first grade new elementary school uh I work as a duty so everything great life is great so this year we also had a gentleman that spoke about the third annual cerebral palsy conference at green mountain green mountain support services Jim Kavanaugh let's take a look at this clip support services we have Casey Dewey the development coordinator of green mountain support services of Vermont and um James or Jim tell us a little bit about you and um your story and why uh you decided to create the cerebral palsy conference of Vermont well I was born February 20th 1943 and I'm 75 wow you don't look it and obviously um well besides myself the average cerebral palsy obviously back in the 40s or during that time you know there weren't very many services for people with disabilities and my mother and father wanted to put me away but they said no they said no and thank god they just but I cannot read do I have time books okay go on so and uh no I came up here you came to Vermont from where were you born and from where I was born in Cannae you're born in Connecticut yeah I could not talk but my my grandfather said let the kid let the kid talk and they were quite surprised because he said let the kid talk and I've been talking ever since several times this year Ron Rondon from Brick Arts Media who's been a supporter of Ableton on Air came on to the show as a phone call let's take a look and listen to this clip we are broadcasted on there as well we would like to welcome Ron Rondon our sports anchor for this for this show and welcome Ron oh there and what is the show that you do according to Ron Rondon it's kicking off season number five coming up on October 5th on Brooklyn Free Speech Network okay now Brooklyn Free Speech Network um is what what kind of station is it again so well everything all of most of all of Brooklyn of course representing from our friends are optimum and spectrum and also RCN and also on Verizon's files so in any of these areas here check it out and of course we're also online on at BrickArtsMedia.org also on our social media platforms you can check it out on our Facebook page wrote with Ron Rondon and of course on road trip TV1 on YouTube so a lot of public and some other social media is will put it on the air we'll post it if you're watching road trip right now we'll post all this on the air and you'll see what I'm talking about okay back in September it was the anniversary of 9-11 Washington County Mental Health also participated in this conversation let's take a look at this clip from the 9-11 special let's take a look at this 9-11 was a horrible situation for anybody what exactly is trauma and how does your office deal with it so trauma or a traumatic event or events is any event that does two things it overwhelms our capacity to cope it overwhelms our usual ways of functioning and it results in a an experience of threat to our innermost safety and so experience of threat how so so when we're experiencing a traumatic event we often think that we often believe we don't think we believe we experience that our lives are in danger or that the life of a loved one is in danger and traumatic experiences almost all is our unexpected and they take away our sense of control and sort of the order of our universes and and 9-11 is a great example of that horrible example not great fine it's a it's a perfect example how about that there were people there who were going about their business they were working they were doing all the things that people were doing in the towers and all of a sudden their entire world's changed the Vermont Worker Center was on Ableton on air the Anna Gayette and another guest was there as well let's take a look at this clip from the Vermont Worker Center we are trying to get the word out for everybody to be able to get universal health care what exactly is universal health care it is health care for everybody nobody is excluded it doesn't matter if you're in poverty or you're there's a lot of money it's for everybody during an event back in February at the state health disability awareness day I taped several workshops with a camera let's listen in to one of the workshops the human cost of cuts and this year there's been many service cuts to the special needs community let's take a look on how you can help that that you can help America not be cut by disability services let's take a look and listen to this even if they don't cut health care by cutting something like housing or food or something else they might impact health care so I wanted to just kind of talk about a couple of the budget cuts and get some feedback from all of you guys about how those budget cuts will impact actual people people like you people like your friends people like your family people who vote and vote for these elected representatives so I think if we can start telling the story of if you cut personal care attention services and someone can't get to work this is how it's going to impact their day and their life and their children and the family gary gordon the director of emergency services for washington county mental health was on abledon on air talking about suicide prevention let's take a look at this clip what are the missions and goals of your department and what is the screener okay missions and goals uh well generally our mission obviously dovetails with the mission of washington county mental health services in general which we serve the needs of our population in our catchment area we cover all of washington county and three towns in orange county washington orange and williams town all are considered part of our catchment area and we serve the mental health needs of the people in that area uh generally our philosophy is based on the recovery model you know we believe which is what what is just kind of in brief based on our idea that an individual's recovery from an illness is they're in charge of it you know everybody's individual um their needs are different um we try to work with them to develop programs or within the programs and things that we offer models of uh of treatment that works for them you know we're collaborating with them in their efforts to to um to to manage and recover from their illnesses so in general that's i mean that's maybe a snapshot of it um there's more information about that on our website at wcmhs.org zac hughes and kirk post away of washington county mental health public relations department was on ableton on air on uh back in may let's take a look at this clip and also the interview included a clip from hurabu revera let's take a look at this clip zac hughes peer support specialist for washington county thank you thank you for joining us on ableton on air thank you what are the missions and goals of washington county mental health well uh i have to say the mission is to uh to support the individuals in our community to enable them to live independent productive lives in our community to the best of their ability okay now when we say independent uh to the best of your ability what exactly does that mean in layman's church well i mean we all want to be able to uh go home at night and live our lives right go downtown shop and do all kinds of things in our lives right washington county mental health also came on to talk about the learning network and all the activities of the learning network let's listen to that clip learning network is a program within the developmental services area of washington county and it is a extensive program that occurs during the daytime for our individuals who live with intellectual and developmental disabilities and the mission is to provide a wide variety a very diverse variety of activities programs classes events opportunities to go on trips for community integration that will offer that offer everyone the opportunity to network and develop friendships to gain a better understanding of who they are in the world and their gifts and their potential um developing skills in that will help folks become more independent um to have fun you know part of the mission is to have fun and to to learn about yourself recently the transportation committee for the power transit committee of vermont was unable to learn there i'm part of the transportation committee let's take a look and listen to this clip about transportation and people with special needs vermont is getting in the future more power transit for people with special needs let's listen in to dan courier and the committee let's take a look at this what is the missions and goals of the central vermont planning regional planning commission and the the chance the power transit committee sure so the center of your planning commission is a regional planning commission we have 23 towns in our region that that we helped do municipal planning for regional planning and that can be natural resources that can help them with energy planning that can be a transportation study and specifically with transportation we are focused on a the implementation of a new para transit system that the green mountain transit has proposed for our region and so through a grant with the cta which is the community transportation association of america we have brought together stakeholders as well as users of the existing transportation system well we would like to um say happy holidays to all of us from abledon earlier happy hanukkah merry christmas happy kwanzaa and again let's not have any prejudice at the dinner table this holiday let us all remember the uh tree of life synagogue in pittsburgh um again um let's bow our heads for uh for that and um happy holidays happy hanukkah and merry christmas from all of us at abledon air see you in 2019 and many happy tidings see you next year i'm lauren silo i'm ironing silo see you next year