Transcript - slide 7

There's no such thing as readiness.
Have a clear assessment of the barriers.
Know what supports are needed to be successful.
Get to the passion.
Just start!

Interviewer: So what advice would you give to a parent who is a little hesitant about their son or daughter getting out in the community? Do you have a piece of advice?

Dale Dutton: I learned early on that there's no such thing as readiness or waiting to be ready. Certainly not on the part of a person with a disability and really not on the parents part either. The readiness is having a good clear assessment of what the barriers are and knowing how you're going to get around them. Know what it's going to take to support and be successful and then having the service provider as a partner, as a team. Make sure that it's fun and that you're getting to this passion that we keep talking about. But you have to start somewhere. You just have to start and do a little bit and let it grow.

Interviewer: We're hitting all the major concerns that I think people have. You have such a positive attitude. I'd like to ask you about the fear of losing benefits when people go to work. You brought this up a few minutes ago about getting SSI information signed. What is your advice to parents on the benefit issue.

Dale Dutton: Well I know it's a complicated issue. Lord knows we've gone through SSI just to get SSI. You do have to watch what you're doing with that. I've never seen a case where, with the exception of the medical benefits, that working won't produce more income than what you're getting otherwise. You may lose some of the cash benefits. There are so many ways now of protecting the medical benefits, and there's so many things that you can do through PASS and the IRWE plan to help with that as well.

This field of benefits counseling seems to be expanding rapidly. Most Independent Living Centers offer benefits counseling now. I think there's a program there at VCU that has an online benefits counseling package. There's a lot of ways that you can make certain that you're still coming out financially ahead and that you're not losing the medical component that is very, very valuable. Again, I think that's part of the support service that a provider should be willing to learn, understand, and help with.