 Green Mountain Support Services to empower neighbors with disabilities to be home in the community. Major support also includes Washington County Mental Health where hope and support come together. Hello and welcome to this holiday year-end edition, this year-end edition, 2019 of Ableton on Air. I'm Lauren Seiler. I'm Arlene Seiler. And also today I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of being a journalist and it's been great doing that for so many years for so many good people. I would like, before we begin this holiday year-end edition of Ableton on Air, I just would like to say thank you to our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health and Green Mountain Support Services for the 2019 year. We begin with this clip 25 years ago. I did a show on Bronx Net Community Access television on cable vision in the Bronx called Special People Special Issues. And in 2010, I had the pleasure of going to New York City's Comic-Con at the Javits Center and interviewing Lou Ferrigno, 1970's Incredible Hope. Let's take a look at this clip from the Incredible Hope. Let's take a look at this. Now let's take a look at a great interview that my crew and I had the opportunity to interview some editors, writers, editors and writers of comic books to find out about heroes of the special needs kind. Daredevil, Professor X and the like at Comic-Con, New York City. Let's take a look and listen to some great advice also from Lou Ferrigno, the former Incredible Hulk. Let's take a look at this great interview. What is one way for kids to think that they're heroes despite it? Well, the best thing you could do is that sometimes you have this function of family. The best thing you could do is that learn to deal with your fears. If you have any fears, think about those fears because whatever you have a passion for, stick with the passion that will help you deal with the fears. And you end up being the hero to yourself and hero to others. No matter what you look like, no matter what kind of disability you have. And remember one thing, everyone is handicapped one way or another. When I was young I had dreamed and envisioned I used to be Hulk in Superman comics. I was fascinated with power and I discovered bodybuilding. It was like a springboard for me because I learned about fitness, learned to be better friends with my body, gave me admiration and self-confidence to be able to achieve my goal. This year in 2019, Ableton on Air in January had the pleasure of being interviewed by WCAX television. Let's take a look at this clip of our show, Ableton on Air, being interviewed by WCAX. Let's take a look at this. A lot of people told me, no, you can't do that, it wouldn't work, such and such. And 25 years later, we're here. Fighting stereotypes his entire life. A journalist and his wife produced a television show, Ableton on Air. Channel 3's Nelliana Ferraro caught up with a TV producer to learn how he's overcoming obstacles. Lawrence Seiler has been producing Ableton on Air for six years. The show focuses on the abilities of people with special needs and guests discuss important issues for their community, like getting jobs and transportation. I wanted to do stories about us, people with challenges. He's had challenges himself. As Seiler describes it, he deals with cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that affects muscle coordination. He doesn't suffer from it. I just roll with it and we keep going. He says people have doubted his capabilities, only seeing the cerebral palsy. Disability, this means not. Ability, when you put it together, means you can't do anything. People with special needs can do lots of things. Stigma has not stopped Seiler or his wife for that matter. She works to overcome her own challenges, having a learning disability, and being a survivor of the 9-11 terrorist attacks in New York City. Running down 68 flights and surviving that whole thing. He says disability goes out the window when they're on set. It's like our own rocky story because, you know, the whole thing with him, with people running up the steps. He just really has a great idea of what he wants to have done. Executive director Rob Chapman says Seiler works hard and Orca Media is glad to help. Well, it's part of our mission. It's public access for anybody in our community who wants to produce a show, obviously, can come here. For other people with special needs, Seiler has some advice. Challenge yourself. If you would like to know more about Orca Media or Lawrence's show, head to our website, wcax.com. In Montpelier, Nelliana Ferraro, Channel 3 News. Look at this clip from GMSS Nursing. That you go through being and working with people with developmental disabilities. Or, you know, in this case, it might be dual-diagnosed. So can you explain some of that? Sure. Yeah, so Green Mountain Support Services has a lot of different training opportunities, not just for nurses, but right across the board for everyone. We have a class that we take called Therapeutic Options with our great staff, Marilyn Carter, who teaches that, and she basically talks about approaches to use with individuals with developmental disabilities. It might be a therapeutic communication technique. It might be communication strategies, just to sort of make the person that does not have as much experience working with someone with developmental disabilities a little easier. Just things that, you know, we've all picked up on in the past, things of that nature. I've also been offered through the agency to do a death doula certificate course through the University of Vermont. Say that again? It's called a death doula course. What exactly is that? So that actually helps support the person who is in the middle of end-of-life care, just helps them and supports them with that process and working with them to sort of make that process easier. It's called death doula. Death doula. So doula is a Greek word. It basically means, I think it's helper or something along those lines. So it basically assists someone in their end-of-life dying process. This year we had a pleasure interviewing city council member, Donna Bate, with Mayor Anne Watson. Off-air you gave me a long piece of paper to read and that was about the infrastructure of Montpelier and the goals of the city of Montpelier. Can you explain a little bit about that? Sure. The city recently did a self-evaluation, had a consulting firm help us figure out what we needed to be doing as a city to be making sure that our public facilities and services were accessible to people with a variety of disabilities. So the document that came back was a transition plan for us that was very detailed and had a lot of very specific recommendations about how the city can be doing better, like what kind of infrastructure we would be needing to be more fully accessible. The infrastructure would be cracks in the sidewalk, buildings being fixed. Yeah, it included things like having van accessible parking spaces and having tactile exit signs and things like that. Well, as far as infrastructure, there's something in buildings called the grandfather clause, which means that the building is old and old, they don't necessarily need a ramp or need to be accessible, how can the city infrastructure fix those things or work on fixing that? I was going to say there's a difference between being required to and doing it. So you can do it, but you may not be legally required if you're in a historical building. I think the city's intention is to make things accessible no matter how old they are. It may mean that not every building has an elevator, but there are services you can provide downstairs to make sure the public can at least be connected to any services upstairs they don't already have. Brett Campbell, PhD, Alzheimer's. We're talking Alzheimer's today and tell us a little bit about, well, what is the definition of Alzheimer's disease and how your family dealt with it? First of all, with the doctor, that's a PhD in a totally different field, so I'm not any sort of medical expert on Alzheimer's. My experience with it is having been the primary caretaker, caregiver for my mother for the last year and a half of her life while I was watching her succumb to the disease. It's a disease that's eating away at your brain. How so? Well, someone showed me one time three scans of brains and it was color and the red areas showed the active areas in the brain. And with a child, you had almost kind of a Swiss cheese thing going on, different areas of the brain active. As we grow into adulthood, those red areas expand. The third image was the brain of someone suffering Alzheimer's and it was very much like the child's brain of the smaller. The only difference being those are just going to get smaller. And that was when I realized, when I saw that, that my mother had always been very immaculate in terms of taking care of the house and such and now she was leaving a lot of crumbs behind and we had an ant infestation. And I would try to talk with her about, let me get her to remember to put it, and when I saw those scans, it made me realize she's all done learning. She's all done learning and changing behaviors. And so I had to just learn that I had to work a little harder and be more accepting of her limitations. This year we had the pleasure of, Green Mountain Support Services had the pleasure of sponsoring our program. Let's take a break and look at their public service announcement. Here is Green Mountain Support Services. Do you know an elderly person who doesn't need round-the-clock nursing care but would benefit from companionship and assistance to get the most out of community, family and friends? Green Mountain Support Services Adult Family Care Program is looking to serve elderly individuals who may need assistance, working with homeowners to become shared living providers. To find out if this is right for you, go to gmssi.org or call 802-888-7602. This year we also had the pleasure of interviewing Zachary Hughes from Washington County Mental Health. Let's take a look at his interview. We're used to promote independent living to the best of people's abilities, with mental illness, and so on. Okay. For those that don't know what's the difference between a mental illness and a mental challenge, is there a difference? I think it's a name change, a name difference. So it'd be like me saying I have a disability versus handicap. Okay. What are some of the new things that are happening with Washington Mental Health? Right now, some of the new things I'm aware of right now is that we're working on a couple of projects. One of them is that we're working on tiny houses in Barrie. People would live in these tiny houses, and peers would be part of that. Over in my program. What do you mean by tiny houses? Well, tiny houses are, I don't know if you're aware of it, but they're these small houses that are more economical. Then break into housing. So we could take a look at Green Mountain Support, Josh Schmidt, Direct Care Services. A direct support professional, and what do they do? Okay, yeah. So a direct support professional is the staff, it's the person that provides that direct support, well, because it's a direct support professional, provides that direct support to the person that we provide services for, whether it be someone with an intellectual disability, a brain injury, or just a physical disability. And what they do is, their job is as unique and different as the people we provide services for. So there's not, the only thing they all have in common is that they make sure that the person they're providing services for has access to the same things in their neighborhood and community as anybody else would. For example? Well, for example, if someone has a job and needs the help of a direct support professional, if someone is going shopping, anything that anyone would do that you and I would do in the community and somebody would still need help to access that through direct support professional, that's what they would do. Now, what is some do's and don'ts of a direct support professional? Ultimately, what they do is that keeping in mind, too, is that a direct support professional's job, as I say, is to be there and to advocate and to make sure that person can access. They are very much like, I'd put it this way, think about it, and this is what Joseph Macbeth, who is the executive director of the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals, has done an analogy where a direct support professional is like the Sherpa helping somebody climb Mount Everest. When somebody succeeds in climbing up Mount Everest, the Sherpas are not in the picture. They are behind that. They are there to make sure the person is able to succeed in their goals, in their hopes, in their dreams. That's what a direct support professional does. A direct support professional is not a babysitter. A direct support professional is someone who is there to advocate, to assist, and to ensure that people are making good decisions. To go through down street community housing development over on Taylor Street, let's take a look at the housing development and the bus depot. Let's take a look at this. I'm calling the phone. How is the more important of today's event behind this beautiful house? The importance is that we're building a transit center that's going to be accessible and usable by everybody, and we're building housing that's needed desperately in downtown Montpelier. It's an energy efficiency building. No fossil fuels are going to be used to heat it. And it's about building our strong downtown community. The thing that's so inspiring to me is that there's one obstacle after another that all the folks who had this vision had overcome. And they did. And they did by working together. And it is an example of the power of cooperation and persistence. So this is a special day where there's a lot to celebrate. And this transit center in this housing is going to be available for generations. So congratulations to all who played a role. Let's take a look at special needs lawyer Jim Cafferty. I'm going to describe what we do in our office as special needs planning, which is primarily a state and future planning for Vermont families that are affected by disabilities in some way. Okay. Now, so that runs the gamut. It can go... It does. What classifies in terms of your law practice, what classifies what a disability is, the types of disabilities, because there's a whole lot of fraud out there that people, you know, as far as disabilities are concerned. So in our office, we're primarily concerned, or primarily we're working on planning. And so we don't do social security claims that would address the issues of fraud, possible fraud that you've mentioned. But primarily what we're doing is a state planning for families and families in which there is a person with a disability. And as you know, there's a wide spectrum of needs and abilities, and so our planning is tailored to the needs of that individual family. Typically, that includes all of the traditional estate planning, wills and revocable trusts, health care directives for family members, and then also a special needs trust. By the way, Abledon Arnair, before we get to the next clip, would like to say special congratulations to Kirk, Postal Weight of Washington County Mental Health and his new job at Rutland Hospital. But he was on, Kirk Postal Weight was on, with Washington County Mental Health, talking about the Zero Suicide Program. Let's take a look at this clip. The mission statement, you know, basically of Washington County Mental Health is the promotion of recovery, self-determination, and resilience in the people that we serve, and the inclusion of everyone in the community together, kind of being connected and not having people, you know, have to live kind of on the outskirts of the community. We really promote a lot of connection and just people, you know, seeing each other as, you know, one part of one big community. Okay. The Zero Suicide Project, which is both of your area, what is the purpose of that? And I know suicide is a huge thing. It's a two-part question. And the second part is I know that suicide is a huge thing, especially how media plays a role in educating people about suicide. So pros and cons to that particular area. Yeah, yeah. We're the media person. So we started our Zero Suicide Project back in August of 2018. 18 or 19, 18. Mm-hmm. So last year, yeah. So not quite a year ago. And what our mission and goal in promoting Zero Suicide is related to helping make sure that everyone has access to treatment when they are feeling suicidal and are feeling despondent and in crisis. So we're wanting to promote screening for folks, so asking questions of folks to identify if they are feeling suicidal, have suicidal thoughts, and then promoting treatment specific related to decreasing suicidal ideation and intention and plan, and helping make sure that we have the best services possible for communities when the community has experienced a loss or a death related to suicide. Zero Suicide itself is a national initiative and they are promoting wanting to have zero suicide, so no deaths by suicide would be our goal. And so that's what our mission of our little committee is. And Mary Moulton, our executive director, has signed on passionately to say we want to support this project and we want to get the word out about this project. And in terms of how the media plays out, there's been many TV programs both past, present, and future. Prime example, 1950s, I love Lucy, for example. She put on a Superman cape, pretending she was Superman. There's George Reeves and Superman jumps out the window. That type of thing. But suicide is not a laughing matter. That's the point with your project and to educate. When you take your life, you take your life. Some religions frown on suicide. It's all through the Bible. But you guys educate. So go ahead in terms of how does the media really do that when educating, you know, because it's not a laughing matter. So I think a couple of things. One thing that we're promoting is we want people to know, first of all, that Washington County Mental Health has an emergency service number 24 hours a day, seven days a week that folks can access. Research shows asking people questions related to are you feeling suicidal? Or do you have suicidal thoughts that does not increase a person's suicidal ideation, nor can I sort of put that idea in somebody's head. So I think sometimes those are myths that get promoted of. We just shouldn't ask about it because otherwise we'll make the person think it. And much more reasonable is that the person is already having those thoughts isolated and alone. And we want to decrease the stigma related to mental health and also related to suicidal ideation and increase connection. Describe ideation in this case. Yes, thoughts. So I'm thinking about suicide. So in my world in emergency services we break things related to suicide into three categories. So I have suicidal thoughts. But I'm not thinking about acting on those. I just think about it. Some folks are experiencing thoughts and they have plans. And some folks have thoughts, plans and have acted on those plans. So we look at that as kind of a continuum and where is the person at. And we want to be able to intervene at each of those places to keep people alive and offer treatment and connection. Now let's take another break and listen to Green Mountain Support Services public service announcement. Let's take a look at this public service announcement. I've been a service coordinator with Green Mountain Support Services for two years. It is a wonderful job. I go home at the end of the day and I feel like I have helped someone or made someone's day just by being able to go out and visit them and help them get what they need to be living in a home. The best has made me have the ability to become more independent and it has opened up a whole new world for me really. And the more I found out about this program, the more I liked it. I'm happy. I wasn't happy before. I am now. Now let's take a look at Washington County Mental Health's interview with Mindy Sprague on art and wellness. Let's take a look at this clip. On this topic, we will focus on art and people with special needs. Recently, we had Abel Danoneer have the opportunity to go to the Berry Opera House and look at the art exhibit that was presented by Washington County Mental Health and many other sponsors. Let's take a look at that art exhibit. All the arts I did. What type of art have you done? Like the mask. Is this one that a real face of mine did I did? Yeah, we're going to see pieces of it in the video. And the one that I did with the real face, that mask one I did, was awesome. I like that. So why did you do masks? Was there a reason behind it? Why did you want to do the mask instead of a regular painting? You want to add to that? What was the reason behind it? The art show that we are doing at the Berry Opera House right now. It's going on until the 29th of July. The original theme was a mask. To do masks. I try and introduce different types of art. Oh, you're the art teacher. Well, I'm one of them. I try and introduce a lot of different things for Mindy to try. And one day we were working with plaster and pregnated gauze. And that's what pregnated gauze. Which is what? It's gauze that has plaster Paris inside of it. What you do is when you first attempt it, the subject has Vaseline put all over their face. Mindy? Mindy, yes. Or anybody who has it done. They have Vaseline put on their face so that when the gauze hardens, you can get it off without tearing their skin. So what you do with this gauze, it's got plaster in it, you dip it in water, and then you smooth it on their face. And their face doesn't burn while it's happening? No, that's why you have the Vaseline on it. It creates a barrier between the plaster and their face. I had the pleasure of interviewing Alexis Carriac from Washington County Mental Health, talking about her art, her wellness, and the reason why she paints and the type of objects that she paints. Let's take a look at this interview. I'm an artist. What type of art do you do? Fine art, female nude, interiors, florals, and my work is available online. How do you use your art? Everybody has challenges. But how do you use your art to go past your disability? I was thinking about that this morning, and I have to say that the need, the impulse, the surge of needing to paint puts me in a place that makes me able to see beyond the troubles. Working in the field of special needs takes a lot of care and help and care when it comes to working with special needs. It's extremely important for a living wage when you're working with people with special needs. Yesterday, I had the pleasure, able to learn and have the pleasure of interviewing Jerry Smith, the producer of a documentary out of the University of Minnesota called Involvable about the direct care worker shortage when working with people with special needs. Let's take a look at this trailer and interview with Jerry Smith. Let's take a look at this. Thank you. Walter, he's very outgoing and he loves to get out into the community and socialize and we go shopping. This is a classic. And he loves rock and roll. Walter has many gifts and Walter has cerebral palsy. He needs support in getting around and meeting people in his community and he also needs assistance at home with things like fixing meals and getting dressed, budgeting and shopping. Through state and federal programs, Walter and others with intellectual and developmental disabilities have professional staff to provide critically needed support. I tell you what, seeing his confidence and his self-esteem really sore has been just fabulous. So explain to me what's happening today and your premise behind Involvable. I'm here today at the Savoy Theatre in Mount Peeler, Vermont and I've been invited by a number of provider organizations supporting people with disabilities to talk about this film that we created called Invaluable. Invaluable is about the unrecognized, undervalued and underpaid profession of direct support. Explain a little bit about the field of direct support professionals and why they are underpaid and undervalued. Sure. We have such an interesting history in this country. There was a time when people that had the label of intellectual disability received no services at all or they lived in an institution which was horrible and dehumanizing and we changed that. We closed most of our institutions and provided supports in the community where people could have the same great life as anybody else could have but that requires having support and that support as we've defined it is a unique support. It's not just caretaking. It's somebody who can provide relationships in the community. Somebody who can provide help in getting a job, maintaining relationships in addition to the supports that we all need in just taking care of our lives and that profession, that title is called direct support professional. It's a very complex title. It changes with each person that you support. It requires a tremendous amount of skill, a lot of fortitude, a lot of training and for all of that you would think that this job pays about $50,000 a year which it deserves. It absolutely does. But for some reason it's considered entry level work and the average wages are around $11 an hour which is criminal. I would like to thank Orca Media and our sponsors Washington County Mental Health and Green Mountain Support Services for a great 2019. Thank you guys for sponsoring and also I would like to thank Gary Axelbank of ThisIsTheBronx.com and Bronx Talk on BronxNet as The Bronx Buzz for this wonderful Christmas greeting, holiday greeting and thank you again Gary. And this puts an end to this edition of Abledon Air. I'm Lauren Siler. See you in 2020. Hi there, it's Gary Axelbank from This Is The Bronx TV and Bronx Talk and The Bronx Buzz on the television. I want to wish Larry Siler and all my good buddies from Abledon Air a very happy holiday and a happy new year because you know you got to keep fighting for what's right and that's what Larry has done since I've known him for years and years before just now. So anyway, all the best. Everybody have a wonderful, beautiful holiday and let's make 2020 even better in the next few days. Major support for Abledon Air Green Mountain Support Services to empower neighbors with disabilities to be home in the community. Major support also includes Washington County Mental Health where hope and support come together.