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10. Street-Level Worker Knows Best Story 10.1. Midwestern Vocational Rehabilitation “The Big Bad Counselor Strikes Again” This story is kind of an example of—it reminded me of this yesterday because [the vocational rehabilitation counselors] were talking about how in some organizations some people are angry at us because they feel that we decide for the client what they are going to do and we don’t let them do what they want to, and our answer to that is, “Well, sometimes we don’t let them do what they want to because it would not be practical or it would not be feasible.”1 An example of this came to my mind. This person named [Mary] came to me and she wanted to buy a computer system and vision aids for her and she wanted to go to college, to complete a two- or maybe a four-year program and then go back to work as a secretary or something like that. Well, this is all ‹ne and good until we get records up for her and we ‹nd out that she is mentally retarded, that her academic abilities are basically low primary school, and she had a hard time even learning to take care of herself, to walk around her neighborhood, and things like that. And yet she comes to me with all these things.2 I told her, “These are the services that we can provide you. We can make sure that we have the equipment that you need and the training that you need to take care of yourself in your home. We can help you ‹nd a job—maybe at a workshop or in the community, maybe as an assembler, or maybe even as a receptionist at a fairly simple job where you don’t have to do a whole lot.” But it was stuff that she would be able to do as much as she is able to do. 123 Well, she didn’t want to do that. She wanted me to get this stuff for her, to help her go to school. And I said, “Well, we are not going to be able to do it.” And the next thing I know, I get a call from our local state representative on our client’s behalf saying, “Why are you doing this to this person? Why doesn’t she have, you know, a chance to succeed? Because she is a black woman in a poor neighborhood ? Are you going to hold this against her and discriminate and not provide services to her?” Of course, this is a black representative , which didn’t help any. As it turns out [the black representative] was a real big help on this case. But, you know, he sort of hinted that maybe this was a problem, which just sort of got my attention and kind of led me to wonder, you know, how some of the people think in the legislature: that not only do [voc rehab counselors] hold clients back, but if they are black or impoverished, we rip them off even more, we cheat them even more. So I told him what was going on, and he wanted information about it. So I got the release that I’m supposed to get from Mary and sent him all sorts of information from the case letting him, letting [the black representative], know what is going on— her abilities, her intelligence level, her work evaluation that we did to support the fact that she would probably be best placed at a very low level of employment due to her abilities. We did all that, and he looked at them for a while, and he called me back and he said, “Well, it looks to me like you all have done a really good job in providing services to her.” He said, “I have talked to her, and I want her to learn to take care of herself at home so that she is not dependent on the system.” He said, “I don’t think you are going to be able to get her in college because it looks kind of obvious on the report that she is not going to be able to do that, that she is not going to benefit from a computer system.” And he said, “I have talked to her, and I have told her to cooperate with you and what we should do. I don’t see how you can...

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