Transcript - slide 6

What about friends?

Many of us move from place to place.
Get out and network.
Go out and do a little something and just continue to expand!

Interviewer: How have you felt employers and co-workers have responded to Dusty in the workplace? Have they treated her any differently from anyone else?

Dale Dutton: Oh, it's been wonderful. She works for 2 hotels here, and I guess its okay to mention the names, the Holiday Inn and the Marriott Courtyard. Both of those organizations have included Dusty in their company parties. They've sent her birthday cards. I've had to occasionally go down and find a manager to get something signed for Social Security. They inevitably talk about how fun it is to have her there and what a valuable asset she is to the rest of the staff. She's been very well involved. It's another set of people that she knows and that know her when they run into her in the movie, in a mall, or in a restaurant.

Interviewer: Well, that speaks to another concern that you hear often. [The concern is] that people would prefer to stay in a workshop setting, because they have friends there, versus going into the community where they wouldn't have friends.

Dale Dutton: True, and I guess you have to look at this as a transition. I suspect many of us move from place to place. About 10 years ago, we moved from Southern California to Northern California, and we had to make new friends. We started slowly with the few individuals that we did know. We networked on Dusty's part, and it's been very helpful to have this support family that lives with her. They have a family. They live here as well. Dusty's gotten involved with them. She's met all the cousins, aunts, brothers, and grandmas that are out there. So, she's got two families now. They're all invested in the community, but the point I think I was trying to get to is that if you never start, you'll never finish.

Get out and do a little something and just continue to expand that. I'll come back to the provider attitude. You've got to find a provider that will support this. Sometimes the providers don't want people leaving their work capacity program, because they've got a vested interested in keeping them there for the product that they produce. I think you've got to find a service provider that talks about their role as enhancing someone's life rather than their role as producing some products in some form or another.