Editor’s note: This commentary is by Burlington resident Nancy Welch, who is an English professor at the University of Vermont where she is a member of United Academics’ Delegates Assembly and Civil Rights committee.
[F]or some time now I have been asking my husband if he feels ready to seek work. It’s a difficult question for him — not only because of the economy and his age but because eight brain surgeries since 2005 have taken their toll. He carries in his wallet a note to explain, should a police officer stop him as he weaves down a sidewalk, that he is not drunk but brain injured. His smart phone substitutes for his wiped-out working memory, reminding him to shave and brush his teeth. The holder of a Ph.D. in communications, he now struggles to find his words. All this and more has swayed him to stick close to home, to rely on me to bring him news of the wider world.
So when he recently replied that yes, he would like to learn if there are employment options for him, I sang hallelujah and contacted a good friend who until recently worked for the state Department of Human Services division of Vocational Rehabilitation. On a snowy Monday I brought my husband to a Voc Rehab orientation where he learned about their services, filled out an initial form, and requested — and was given — an appointment with the counselor that both our friend and my husband’s brain injury support group recommended. The next day he received a letter from that counselor with a few more forms to bring to their first meeting. “I’m looking forward to finding out what they might have for me,” my husband told me. “Maybe I can work in office.” Hallelujah, indeed!
What a blow, then, when we returned that evening from my husband’s monthly brain injury support group meeting to find a phone message from Voc Rehab: They had canceled his appointment. He would not be permitted to meet with this counselor. In fact, he would not be permitted to meet with any counselor, not from the Burlington office. Why? Because in filling out his orientation form, my husband had made a serious mistake: He responded to the question Who referred you to Vocational Rehabilitation? by writing the name of our friend, John Howe.
The message from Voc Rehab was clear: John Howe may not make referrals to our office. John Howe may not make recommendations.
John Howe is the man who first introduced us more 18 years ago, when my husband was still working as a commercial photographer and John Howe, his next-door neighbor, had just started his job as a Voc Rehab counselor. John Howe is also the man who made news headlines last spring when, in apparent retaliation for his whistle-blowing testimony to the state Legislature about financial mismanagement in the Department of Human Services, Voc Rehab put him on leave and initiated an extensive disciplinary investigation against him. “We Are All John Howe” became a rallying cry, appearing on lawn signs across the region and featured at a Statehouse May Day demonstration. It was a rallying cry for everyone concerned that state employees be allowed to speak up, without fear of losing their jobs, when state agencies mishandle public funds and public trust. By early June, John’s name was cleared; by fall, he had won his bid to move to a position with Vermont’s Community High School. When my husband wrote John Howe on his orientation form, neither of us dreamed that this would interfere with his ability to receive services.
To be sure, management at Voc Rehab has purview over how clients and counselors are paired. If this particular counselor is overbooked, the appointment we were given made in error, we would understand. But that’s not what has happened here. By refusing to give my husband an appointment with any counselor from the Burlington office, Voc Rehab’s managers have made it dismayingly clear: The retaliation against John Howe continues … and extends to disabled clients who admit to knowing him.
When my husband went to the Voc Rehab orientation, he took an enormous step — a leap of faith about his abilities and about looking beyond his wife for help. What’s happened since is a terrible — a callous and unnecessary — setback. Making phone calls is difficult for my husband, but that’s what I have been asking him to do: Call Voc Rehab again, leave another message, all in the dwindling hope that someone will call back, give him an appointment with a local counselor, extend to him the support that this office receives state funds to provide, and do so before his job-finding resolve evaporates. And just as John Howe went public last winter and spring, in the hopes that his testimony to the Legislature and his struggle against retaliation would bring change to the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, I am going public too: We are all still John Howe and the problems in this state office, problems that risk the well-being of the disabled clients it purports to serve, remain unresolved.
