Developmental Disabilities Board 10/25/2017

What is it?

This Board deals with county programs for the developmentally disabled and related county activities. You'll notice a lot of folks in the audience that appear to be at work and almost all of them are. The various agencies that provide services and deal with the county programs for the disabled, independent living, accessibility to work, etc interact with the Board at these meetings for reports, success stories, and to provide the Board with information.

Their main page is here: http://www.co.champaign.il.us/MHBDDB/DDBMeetingDocs.php

Also... I finally got some building layout maps to help people find rooms and entrances better than my scribble sketches here.

At this particular meeting: (Agenda packet and audio)

The recent art expo's success was discussed as well as some of the ground work for the upcoming art expo in April.

Ed McManus' newsletter, input for funding priorities, and having him attend to consult in the future was raised. He's apparently an expert on DD services and if you're interested, here's some information about his consulting company (assuming I have the right Ed McManus dealing with DD services).

A new reporting system for all agencies is apparently in the works and coming soon.

Integration success stories were shared as well as honoring a local business and an exceptional employee there. It was a bit difficult for my layman ears to keep up with a lot of the acronyms and jargon, so if you're planning on attending a meeting it may help to familiarize yourself with local programs. The April expo link has a bunch of resources as does the Regional Planning Commission website. It all depends on how interested you are in the subject and how much you want to dig.

For non-wonks, one issue raised that was a bit heart breaking was hearing about families who survive and live independently because of programs that are funding, at least in part, through medicaid, worried about the bottom dropping out with all of the deregulation and massive spending cuts to medicaid and the dominos falling towards programs essential to their livelihood and well-being.

At this meeting they were organizing their thoughts on how to get community input on concerns and fears in order to better inform those who may be worried with the drastic government changes in this new America.

It's all more than a little unnerving the way it's reaching out and hitting the most vulnerable first. To loyal applause and raging intimidation and cruel mockery from every corner of comments sections and real life. But never mind that...

They were looking at options for live streaming with public input and working out the details on accessibility for TTY, closed caption, an ASL interpreter, and CART services. Also whether or not facebook as a social media platform with live video may have features that can cover this.

A good idea was raised for these meetings as well. The audio only is recorded, and someone mentioned that video helps make sense of who is talking to who and other context that would be helpful. Seems quite possible given how the room is wired for exactly that.

It was more brief than most meetings I've attended at the county, starting at about 8:05am (yes, those agencies work banker hours, so this is an early bird meeting) to about 8:44am.