Persistence

Education Pays
Off For Disabled

by Deborah Phillips

| come from a long line of non-
_conformists — my mother's heart
is on the wrong side, and | have an
undiagnosed disability. When my
parents discovered that my dis-
ability was developing (I lost the
use of my arms when! was 7 years
old), they, as non-conformists do,
disregarded the advice of the ex-
perts and kept me in the parochial
school where | was enrolled and
never treated me differently from
anyone else.

The important thing to remem-
ber about dealing with people who
have disabilities is that there are
many resources in the community
from which to get help. My office
happens to be one, and there are
similar commissioners’ offices
in most of the major metropolitan
areas. | admit there are only a few
female commissioners and direc-
tors of these offices, but as women
with disabilities, that just means
we have a double problem to over-
come.

Our office is part of the metro-
politan city government, and we've
been in existence for five years —
not as part of the mayor's office,
but as part of the Department of
Human Services and the Depart-
ment of Welfare. Our job is two-
fold: One is to serve disabled peo-
ple and the other is to serve the

Deborah K. Phillips is the director of the Mayor's Office on the Disabled in St. Louis, MO.

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city of St. Louis. We have the in-
teresting position of being a non-
political body whose primary func-
tion for city government is to ad-
vise and confer.

Anyone who works with archi-
tects or engineers knows thatthere
is absolutely nothing you can tell
them about accessibility. We came
into some money two years ago,
and the chief architect for the city
decided to make City Hall accessi-
ble. He contacted me for my input,
and | suggested he make one set of
the public bathrooms accessible
and that he lower the telephones
— things like that. There are also
about one thousand steps just to
get to the front door of the build-
ing. We've convinced our board of
public service to give usthe money,
so hopefully the Civil Courts build-
ing will be accessible for mobility
impaired people.

This is the kind of work we do,
and this is the kind of resource
we try to be for organizations like
Paraquad.

We don't take the approach that
everyone is alike. Our approach
is to match the individual person
to the resources that meet the
needs of that person. You have to
articulate your needs. It’s very im-
portant, especially in Missouri,
to be persistent. It is very low in

 

legislation for the disabled, and
because of that, some of the met-
ropolitan areas like St. Louis
and Kansas City have been more
progressive. When dealing with
a metropolitan municipal part
of government, you need to pre-
sent your information in a con-
cise way. It’s persistence and
perseverance that’s kept us in
business, and we're fortunate
that the city considers us one
of its priorities.

I never went to a special school,
and | don’t feel cheated or warped
from the experience. I've always
had the fortunate luck to have got-
ten a good education. Parents of
disabled children need to realize
that education is one way we can
overcome and become part of the
mainstream of society. Another
way is to develop an excellent
sense of humor.

It’s important to remember that
even though a person has a dis-
ability, it's exactly that, and that
having a disability does not make ~
us a homogenous group. Within ~
our population is as much diversity
as in any other population. And
that's a good reason to have an
office like mine and an organiza-
tion like Paraquad to work together
to help meet some of the needs of
disabled persons. @