Ohio

Ohio AgrAbility has recently partnered with the OSU College of Nursing and the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities to form the Caregiver Support Network to present a planned series of workshops and webinars for caregivers, advocates, and service providers. To make the workshops easily accessible to people across Ohio, OH AgrAbility is hosting the workshop at several local sites across Ohio. Each local site will connect to the workshop electronically and have on-site facilitators to lead conversations about each topic. The facilitators at each site are a mix of Extension educators, staff from the Dept. of Developmental Disabilities, and staff and volunteers from various advocacy organizations. The first workshop is February 22, 2020.

Ohio AgrAbility (OAP) has long enjoyed a good working relationship with Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities (OOD), the state vocational rehabilitation agency, but even good relationships can be improved and strengthened through teamwork. Rachel Jarman began working for Ohio AgrAbility in June 2019 and quickly began developing a rapport with farmers, OOD counselors, and vendors. Building rapport and connections is especially important, since she is one of the two OAP rural rehabilitation coordinators (RRCs) and is responsible for writing assessments that request funding from OOD to purchase modifications and equipment to keep Ohio AgrAbility farmers safely working on the farm. In November, Rachel was assigned a new client, a farmer who was recovering from a health crisis that left him with permanent damage to his inner ear, which impacted his balance and strength. He was struggling to adapt to his disability and was unsure if he could continue farming and was skeptical about working with OOD. Rachel asked Jessie, an OOD counselor she has a good rapport with, if they could work together to better serve the farmer to learn firsthand how to communicate agricultural work, equipment, and assistive technology, to a non-agricultural OOD counselor, and to better understand what information and explanations OOD needs in an effective assessment.

Rachel and Jessie went to the initial farm visit together, explained the vocational rehabilitation/OOD process, and outlined their roles as the vocational rehabilitation expert (Jessie) and the agriculture expert (Rachel). They returned to the farm for Rachel to gather information for writing the assessment and for Jessie to ask for further explanations about agricultural work and equipment. The farmer expressed his appreciation for their work and their transparency about the vocational rehabilitation and assessment process. This collaboration was very successful for Rachel, Jessie, and the farmer. The farmer could see that they were both interested in his work and were committed to providing him with the best service and assessment possible. It was efficient and thorough, and the client has been well-served. Rachel said that the farmer has gained confidence about his ability to continue working and seemed to be adjusting to his disability better than when she first met him.

Submitted by Laura Akgerman