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Comment Period Ends July 23, 2007!
Federal Government proposes Early Intervention changes! The National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center has more information, including a side-by-side comparison.
June 20, 2007: Volume 1, Issue 4
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The State Council Wants to Hear From You! The State Council gets money from the Federal Government to help make California services better for people with developmental disabilities and their families. The Council tells the federal government this by creating a five-year State Plan that includes what activities the Council thinks are the most important to work on during that time. The current State Plan started in October 2006 and covers activities up through September 2011. Every year the Council needs to look at the Plan again and see if any changes or updates should be made. The Council is now asking for people to review and comment on those possible changes. This year’s review and comment period is from June 15 to July 30, 2007. Copies of the Draft Plan Amendments are on the Council website at www.scdd.ca.gov, or can be requested by calling the Council Office (toll-free) at 1-866-802-0514. |
Subscribe Today! eletter@scdd.ca.gov |
 Happenings
2. Partners In Policy Making 3. Tips for Heat Emergencies (PDF) |
Things to Come
2. Governor’s Revised 2007-2008 Budget Consumer Friendly Governor’s Budget Overview 4. NACDD Conference October 7-9, 2007 |
Council Vice-Chair, Marcia “Marcy” Good, was appointed to the State Council by Governor Schwarzenegger in September 2005. A resident of Palos Verdes Estates, Marcy serves as the Council’s representative from Area Board 10 (Los Angeles). Marcy and
husband Tim, pictured here at the Governor’s Inaugural Ball, are the parents of 21-year-old twins, Alex and Meredith. Alex was born with disabilities from Down Syndrome. Marcy has served as a volunteer in many capacities, including two terms as president and two as past-president term as chair of the Community Advisory Council of the Southwest Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA). She is also active in the PTA, Special Olympics (South Bay Area), and the Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles. For the past five years Marcy has represented the Palos Verdes Unified School District on "Special Education Day" in Sacramento.
Marcy has been a leader in the effort to bring special education classes into the local school district. Seventeen years ago, when her son was being transported many miles from home each day for special classes, she began a dialogue with local school district officials on the benefits, both to students and the school district, of educating special needs students in their local community. Through her efforts, elementary level classes were established in the district.As her son grew older, Marcy worked with the district to establish classes at the middle school. She served on the planning committee for the high school program and remains involved on a regular basis. She is credited by many local parents as the catalyst for the District’s transitional programs that exist today for their sons and daughters.
The Consumer-Run All Star Café in Bakersfield, launched under a State Council Community Program Development Grant, is a model micro-enterprise that operates a consumer-run snack bar and coffee shop in the lobby of Kern Regional Center. The cafe provides consumers with job experience in coffee drink and food preparation as well as the operation and management of a small business. The cafe has proven so successful that it has since expanded into catering and in August 2005 alone catered over 15 events in addition to the day-to-day operation of the cafe. The model is being considered for replication elsewhere in California.
Tracey Mensch, Manager, described the Cafe in a presentation before the Council:"I am the Manager of the All Star Cafe. We started developing training for the clients to learn how to open their own business. We have been open for about a year and a half now. And we do a lot of different trainings as in helping them learn how to operate the equipment in the public and how to make drinks We also do catering in the community and within our agency at the regional center, our vendors. It has just been a really nice opportunity for me to be involved with this. I had never done management before, and it is really exciting. I love to see the opportunities being opened up for us, thanks to this project, and your support and many others. I would also like to tell you, and this is exciting for us, we just had a catering for 500 people and it was an outside catering event. So it was really exciting for all of us to be able to do that. We also teamed up with the local high school district in Kern County. They have students come in and we train them how to open their own business. I am just so happy to be here and have the opportunity to share this with you."
Tracey also reports that this job has interested her in cafe management and she now intends to open her own business in the future.
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The Bay Area Spanish speaking community of families with sons and daughters with developmental disabilities has benefited from leadership development and education under the guidance and technical assistance provided by the Council’s Area Board 5.
Congreso Familiar is a yearly event that takes place at a local community college and provides education and information in a culturally appropriate manner and in the language of families. Young parents of children with disabilities have assumed the leadership for planning the event, and, in doing so, increased attendance from 350 to almost 1000 people.
The conference offers traditional disability-related workshops of interest to families as well as other workshops on family relationships, benefits, etc. All proceedings are in Spanish. The general session has featured an interactive play where the audience offers advice to the characters in the play on disability related issues. Childcare is provided and members of the extended family are invited to attend. There is music and food and an information fair that attracted about 100 displays last year.
The parents who have become involved in the leadership of the conference have taken an extra step and have incorporated themselves into and organization to bring information and education to families and to develop leadership among the Latino community. Parents from several geographic areas have joined together in this endeavor. Area Board 5 has been a catalyst for this collaboration and has provided technical assistance and support throughout. Parents are developing their capacity to take a seat at the table in policy-making decisions and to speak out on behalf of others. They recently presented compelling testimony in front of California’s Autism Blue Ribbon Task Force on Education.
By providing young Spanish speaking parents with the tools and support that they need, a new cadre of leaders is growing and maturing in several Bay Area communities and hundreds of parents are receiving the education and information they need to help their children be an integral part of their community.
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© 2007 State of California
The content found herein may not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Schwarzenegger Administration.