New subject: [Nomc] Assisting in a Parental Rights Case

20 Aug 2021

      Hi everyone,

We have a parental rights crisis in Vermont, and I have the opportunity to assist. Our national office is involved, and we are working on all the legal processes that we can. I am going to describe the scenario and why I am helping as an NOMC. I want to ask you all to share any wisdom or experiences that you may have, either on or off list, that may help me to be effective. I'd like to ask that list members avoid talking about this with others off list as much as possible. I'll let you know when the baby is back in her mother's custody and when it becomes another public story.

This is my understanding of the situation. A blind woman, about my age, has recently lost her vision. She's been largely in denial and trying to function with her residual vision. She has never used a cane and has never been offered any kind of blind services, even after her eye doctor diagnosed her legally blind. She was walking the front of a business, in the fire lane, with her 3-month-old baby in a stroller. A semi truck, moving at about the same pace as her, was driving parallel to her. Somehow, they merged together, and the front wheel of the stroller got crushed by the tire of the semi truck. The baby was fine, but ultimately the state child welfare agency found out about the incident from the police and raided her home to take the baby. She gets to visit her daughter twice per week as they wait for an October 7 hearing. There is no reunification plan yet.

The child welfare agency is claiming that, because the mother does not use any kind of mobility device, the baby is in eminent danger, and thus they cannot allow her to keep her child. She wants to use a cane, but she has not had the opportunity to receive instruction. We do not know what else they will throw at her in the hearing, but one thing is for sure: someone needs to teach her how to use a cane. That person will be me.

Here is my plan for tomorrow:
We will meet up at a small indoor shopping mall about the size of the Pecanland Mall in Monroe, LA. We will eat lunch at the attached Applebee's first, my treat, and just talk about life, hopes and dreams, and basic blindness philosophy. Part of my job here is welcoming her into a family of 50,000 blind people who will have her back. I will also talk with her about VR and the possibility of attending an NFB training center. Her sister, who she lives with, has been a huge support and could possibly care for her baby while she is in training if she decides that. Then, we'll begin working on using a cane. Thankfully, I have one to give her. I am thinking to do this much like we would a cane walk at national convention. It's a crash course with the goal of getting her comfortable with a cane so that she will keep using it. We might even go shopping for a new stroller, one that she can pull behind herself. Shopping will be a nice activity to do with the cane once she gets a little practice, including the part about going up to people in public spaces with a clear identifier that she is blind. We can do indoor and outdoor travel, especially good when the forecast is about a 50% chance of thunderstorms. I'll give her a few extra cane tips and show her how to change them. If any of you have extra thoughts on this, I'm happy to hear them.

The part where I start to feel more uncertain is where my limits are on how I can help in an expert witness capacity, formally  or informally, to advocate for her in her process of getting her kid back. The remedy for this situation should not have been to take her baby; it should have been to call a cane travel instructor right away. I believe that, as an NOMC, I am qualified to speak to the realities of blindness and how blind people can walk safely and independently, including with a stroller. I even know of some blind people who get strollers with an awning so that they can pull it like a sidecar on a motorcycle, but I think this new traveler is better off pulling a stroller behind her. We'll see how she does. What will be more important, I suspect, is being able to speak to this particular blind person's capacity for safe travel. I think I know how to articulate my thoughts and feelings about a student's abilities. Have any of you ever written some kind of formal statement of your understanding of a student's cane travel skills to justify them to a court or government agency? I feel like I will be asked if I've done an assessment. I think the answer will be yes because we are always assessing our students as we are working with them. The NOMA is really aimed at kids right now, unless I'm behind on some updates, so I don't really have any other assessments that I should use. If someone has an idea on this, I would be especially grateful. My hunch at the moment is to say what I just said, that we as instructors are always assessing our students, and my professional credential says that I know how to construct a wholistic understanding of the capacity of my students. I don't want to wield the NOMC inappropriately, but I think it makes me the right kind of authority figure to help this newly blind mother get her baby back. I won't mislead anyone, and I expect that the truth will set her baby free.

Thanks, everyone, for reading and offering thoughts. Again, our national office is helping with all of the legal parts.

Aloha,

Justin

Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury
he/him/his

Phone: 808.797.8606
Email: President at Alumni.ECU.edu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-salisbury
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Justin_Salisbury

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."

Cesar Chavez

Assisting in a Parental Rights Case

PRESIDENT＠alumni.ecu.edu

ebell＠pdrib.com

PRESIDENT＠alumni.ecu.edu

rb15＠iquest.net

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