About 15 years ago I attended the Transitional Training
Centre, a program of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind based out of
Hamilton, Ontario. Though I learned valuable life skills and had many favourite
staff, the purpose of this post is to list some of the problems with that
program in case someone decides to start something similar.
There were people with cognitive and intellectual
impairments in with people who didn’t have any such impairments. They should
have been separated.
The age range of the TTC, 18-64, was too wide. An 18 year
old just starting their life is different from a 64 year old losing their
sight.
The food was, though good, served in old people portions. I
felt hungry all the time as a 19 year old attending that place.
The program wasn’t uniform. You’d have a class on anger
management one quarter and a class on dressing for success the next. One curriculum
should have been devised to run year round so everybody would have learned
everything they needed.
The program had no set time limit. The staff said I would be
there anywhere from six months to two years, and there were people there who’d
been there three years.
The centre’s psychologist was, in my opinion, a bimbo.
There was next to nothing with regards to socializing us in
the surrounding community.
Other than a sheltered workshop, there was no real
vocational training. The two “jobs” I had at the Transitional Training Centre
were filling pop machines and delivering mail, both of which I did with a staff
member who had some sight.
Over all, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind’s
Transitional Training Centre was, in CNIB’s typically poorly-executed fashion,
a place designed to teach blind people how to live on subsidized housing on disability
pensions and not expect much in life. If anyone starts a program even remotely
similar, it better be radically different.
No comments:
Post a Comment