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Working with the Center for Independence of the Disabled of New York [CIDNY], the self-help model, moving the office to a
safer location
McQuade
Later on--Marilyn I think was now director of CIDNY--but we worked together with the center. There were first two centers,
CIDNY and us. We met with CIDNY, and we talked about how we were dividing up the city, because CIDNY was located in Manhattan.
We were located in Brooklyn, but we were it. We did Brooklyn and Queens, and they did Manhattan and the Bronx. I forget if
we both handled Staten Island or they handled Manhattan and the Bronx, and we handled Staten Island, but we divided it up.
Susan and I met with Pat and Annemarie Tully and we basically divided up the city so we wouldn't have conflicts.
― [Tape 7, Side A] ―
Jacobson
You were telling me about--
McQuade
What we would do, CIDNY and us, we would give presentations to rehab facilities, local OVR offices. It wasn't called VESID
then, it was OVR; that was later when they changed the name to VESID. We would make them aware of what we were doing and what
we could do, and also how we worked, because we were working very differently from most social service agencies. It was a
self-help model. So, if you came in and wanted to apply for Social Security we didn't fill out the form for you necessarily.
We talked with you about what Social Security requires, what you needed to do, made sure you understood it, made sure you
could do it on your own, or if you couldn't do it on your own, we reviewed the application or we would assist you with the
things you couldn't do. But, the whole philosophy was simply not to do it for you, but for you to understand how it works
and how to do things. If you called and you were having trouble, and you couldn't get any satisfaction, then we would call
the agency you were dealing with, and talk about the problem and try to resolve it for you. That was a new thing to people.
A lot of times, people who came to us would say, "Well, what do I need you for?" You need us to explain to you what you need
to know to live independently in the community. Some of the stuff that we did was peer, for me, pure peer counseling. You
would be talking to a person and he/she would be defining for themself what they wanted to do in terms of independent life.
Sometimes it would be just dealing with their fears and concerns. Sometimes it would be getting them to be aware, "It's going
to take a long time for this apartment to come through. There's a lot of things that you have to work on in-between." Getting
people to follow up. Defining roles and responsibility. Most people who came to us were very used to coming to have their
problems handled.
The social worker took care of it, or they didn't know what their benefits were, or they didn't know--really, really didn't
know. They didn't have bank accounts. They wouldn't know necessarily all the things that went into being on your own. We ran
groups sometimes--at our center, when I was there, even when I was leaving, the groups never--they worked a little for a little
while. Then they wouldn't work. We always had trouble getting the groups to really keep functioning. But when I left, other
people, they had other groups, and the groups seemed to take hold and everything.
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We would have presentations, or we might invite somebody to speak. A lot of it was on very practical things, knowing benefits,
or understanding Medicaid. Most people on Medicaid--"How do you handle this problem?" "What do you do with this?" We also--this
is later on, as we grew--we hired an information person. My job became other people's jobs. Of course, they could take on
more. I think when I left, we were doing anywhere between 1,200 to 1,600 people per year. Along with that we would give--when
ADA passed--we went to the trainings that DREDF [Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund] did with the Department of
Justice and all of that, and other staff went after me. Part of your obligation was to do ADA presentations, so we did that.
I worked with EPVA, because Terry had gone for the training. And Harilyn--one year, Harilyn and I and Terry, we had all been
at the same--. [interviewee note: DREDF trainings on the ADA and we committed to train others in our community.]
Jacobson
Terry?
McQuade
Terry Moakley, he's from Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. So we worked together to do ADA training in all the boroughs.
It was a good experience. I want to backtrack for a minute.
The other stuff that we were doing is we didn't have a budget for interpreters so we worked out these barter agreements. Catholic
Charities at that point had interpreters; they had a deafness program. They needed housing counseling. So we took their clients--on
certain days, it was "Deaf Day," or "Housing Day;" it wasn't just housing--we took their clients who needed housing advisement
and assistance, and we provided that, and they provided interpreters. We got a certain amount of interpreting for our clients,
our consumers who were deaf. So, we worked out unique things like that. We also did something with South Brooklyn Legal Services,
where they could refer certain people to us for housing and services they didn't provide and if there were certain things
that we needed, they would do it for us. You know, you did creative things to try and cover what you didn't have. Or you just
put in for it. We need this; this is a service we need to be able to provide.
Jacobson
How ethnically diverse was the population?
McQuade
How diverse? Ethnically?
Jacobson
Yes.
McQuade
I would say our population was a majority black and Hispanic.
Jacobson
Okay.
McQuade
Everybody. We had everybody, but that would be largely that. What we did also, we went from being lily-white--it wasn't a
plan; it was just Sue Fonfa was Jewish and white, and I'm Irish and Catholic. I was disabled. Edmeé Rodriguez was Hispanic,
Puerto Rican, she was our Spanish-speaking counselor. Our drivers generally were African-American. So what we did, we made
it a concerted effort to start getting more staff who were ethnically diverse. We didn't have a large Asian population. Every
once in a while we had some Haitians, but what we would do is, we also got a contract to run a home-care program, the city's
home-care program like CIDNY did. And Allen was
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the director there. So, if we had people who spoke Russian or Haitian, we would get some of his staff to come over sometimes.
We were two different locations, but we did that. We also had made a connection one time to some Haitian nuns, and they interpreted.
[interviewee note: When I left the center in the late Fall of 1992, the staff was very ethnically diverse.]
We were moving [our first move was in '80 I believe, from Winthrop Street to Jay Street], and it was so funny when I think
of some of this stuff. We moved our office. We were in this really awful place. Someone got murdered on the corner. It was
like a bunker. Someone got murdered on the corner, and we made a concerted effort to move our center. It was too tiny. It
was really very, very tiny. You would be talking to someone, and mice would be running back and forth.
Jacobson
Mice?
McQuade
We had mice; we had roaches. It was a great place. We would come in in the morning. We had this secretary that if she saw
a mouse became hysterical, so one of the driver's jobs was to get to the office before she got in to remove the corpses of
the dead mice, because we had traps. We had that gluey stuff. So it was quite a place. Sometimes you'd be siting there and
your eyes would roll back and forth with the person you were talking to you because you would hear [makes a scampering noise
with fingers]--scamper, scamper, scamper.
At any rate, we moved to Jay Street. One, we wanted to be more centrally located. That's downtown Brooklyn. For those who
would get there on mass transit, it was an easier place to get to, and we had the van to transport other people in. We were
near Borough Hall. We were near the colleges. We thought that it would be easier to go out and give presentations and recruit.
We also had to go into Manhattan for meetings, so we could get to Manhattan easier.