A2012-01: Regarding Vendor Contracts at State Services for the Blind

Adopted In : 2012

Topics : Adjustment-to-Blindness Training

WHEREAS, State Services for the Blind (SSB) recently created a new contracting system for center-based and itinerant adjustment to blindness service providers, incorporating major elements of the Administrative Rule that the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota helped develop in the 1980’s; and

WHEREAS, the new training contracts require adherence to such requirements as the use of sleepshades in training, positive discussions about blindness, structured discovery learning, and referrals to successful blind consumers and organizations of the blind, things that the NFB of Minnesota has championed for years and which have formed the basis for training at BLIND, Inc.; and

WHEREAS, the new requirements, to be enforced by SSB monitoring, offer the promise that service providers who formerly shunned the use of sleepshades, used only rote learning, promoted restrictive and negative attitudes about blindness, and ignored the organized blind movement will be forced to "get with the picture" and start delivering more meaningful, consumer-focused services; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota in convention assembled this twenty-eighth day of October, 2012, in the city of Duluth, Minnesota, that we commend SSB for making training contracts contingent on adherence to the Administrative Rule, and encourage its director and staff to work closely with the NFB of Minnesota to continue to improve services for the blind citizens of the state.

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