I appreciated your article (The Case Against "Special Needs"). I've worked with people with disabilities for 30 years, and I've realized, over the years, that we are all people. I think the worst situation is when service providers come up with what they think people need. I worked in the mental health field  for years and never once did I hear providers asking the people we served about what they needed. Instead, providers decided what people with disabilities needed. I finally had to quit my job because it became so bizarre. I realized that listening to people is most important. The agency might have thought it was doing a lot of good providing case managers, thick files of information, impossible treatment plans, etc., and then I would discover that what an individual really needed was a coat or a sandwich!

One of my pet peeves is how service provider agencies run people's lives! Again and again, I see them setting people up with so many daily activites that they never get to do what they want. I was a program manager at a group home and one of the clients would want to go for a drive, or go look at horses in a field. But there was rarely time to do it because if we did go out, we would have to be back to do some activity or other. And some of the parents were worse. We had one young woman who loved music, and her favorite thing to do was to sit and listen to music and be read to. But her parents reviewed her activities weekly and became irate if she didn’t go out a couple of times a day. She sometimes threw her shoes at us when we helped her in the car, and that seemed like a clear message to me about what she didn't want!

Now, I have the best job ever as the travel trainer for a transit company! I get referrals and very little information about a person—and I love it. When I don’t know all the "details" about the person, I expect more and get more. I talk to the person, listen carefully, and adapt the lessons to the individual without having to worry about stuff like "level of functioning" and more. I teach what I need to teach, and people with disabilities learn what they need to learn.  And most of all? I have fun getting to know my bus riders and really enjoy them as I teach.

Thanks for all the info on your website and your newsletters—and thanks for being based in reality!

Sue L., professional in the field