Nancy

00:40

S1 (Speaker 1)

This is Studio one on Vision Australia Radio.

S2

Hello and welcome to Studio One. This week we're heading to New York. New York. So good. They named it twice. Hello, I'm Matthew. And I'm Sam. And this is Studio one, your weekly look at life from a low vision and blind point of view here on Vision Australia Radio. On this week's show, we cross to New York, New York.

S3

The city that never sleeps.

S2

We're going to talk to Nancy de Miller, CEO of Visions, one of Vision Australia's American cousins. As we always say at this point, please do get in touch with the show, whether you have experience of any of the issues covered in this episode of Studio One or if you think there's something we should be talking about, you never know your story and your insight and may help somebody else who is dealing with something similar. You can email us. Studio one at Vision Australia. Org That's Studio one at Vision Australia.

S1

Org This is Studio one on Vision Australia Radio.

S2

You ever been to New York, Sam?

S3

I have. I really enjoyed it as well. No, it's a very special part of the world. It's a busy, scary and exciting.

S2

Yeah, I found a for a start, it was like it was on the telly. That was the amazing thing. The cars were bigger. There was the sound of police sirens bouncing off the buildings, and you certainly knew you were walking on granite. I remember feeling that ground or the pavements were definitely made of tougher stuff than than the pavements at home.

S3

Yeah, I agree with you. The way things the actual buildings do look very, very different and you sort of don't believe it when you're there because as you said, it does, it looks like on the movies or on TV.

S2

Exactly. And the taxis are a really vivid yellow that that also helps.

S1

This is Studio one on Vision Australia Radio.

03:08

S2

Joining us now, gentle listener is a legend I think a doyenne of the world of service provision for vision impaired people. She is the CEO of Vision Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, an organization for which she has been a very important contributor since 1987. Her name is Nancy de Miller. Nancy, how the devil are you?

S4

Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm doing very, very well. And I'm excited to share all the information about the work going on in New York City.

S2

I'm looking forward to it, too. It's firstly also thank you so much for for jumping in to talk to me at such short notice. It's very, very kind of you and much appreciated. But what you don't know is that the second question on this show and you can imagine that some of our guests have a different perspective on this question. So it's a bit of a warm-up and a thought exercise. Can you describe for me where you are right now?

S4

Absolutely. So I am in my office, which is in a six storey condominium building in New York City in Lower Manhattan. I am a short, five foot tall individual with short brown hair, with a few grey streaks in it. I'm wearing a black and white blouse. I wear glasses and I'm Caucasian. I am sitting beside my desk, which is piled with lots of papers that I can tell you honestly. I have been through all of them, even though it looks like they they are stacked. I actually have reviewed them all and this is my home away from home. I've been the executive director, CEO of Visions since 1987. So it's 36 years and counting.

S2

Lovely. Okay, so to all past and future guests on this show, that is an industry leading example, bleeding edge way of answering that question. Thank you for answering that in so many ways. People go, what do you mean what? Where am in the world or where I'm surrounded? And you did a beautiful job, Nancy. It speaks to years of experience, of describing things with people.

S4

Well, thanks. It's important to me to level the playing field. And I can tell you very often when talking with blind staff or blind participants in our program, they often pick up on information that I don't pick up on that may be non visual, but still is really critical. So they'll tell me about sounds that are coming from outside the window or changes in the airflow between the hallway and my office. It's really interesting how people with different expertise and different lived experience come into spaces differently and describe it differently depending on what it is that that they notice or that they think is important.

S2

It's a point I sometimes make, which is for the majority of the time, subtitles on television are objective. There's kind of right or wrong, but if you ask somebody to audio describe or use their words to describe something visual, everybody will have a different perspective.

S4

Yes, absolutely. And and also, whether you're blind or sighted or somewhere in between. When people want different types and amounts of information. Some people are really interested in all the details and others are more interested in the gestalt. You know, what's the what's the basic feeling or, you know, what do you notice most or what's the most important part of this picture? Whereas other people are very interested in, you know, what kind of jewelry am I wearing? Or, you know, where did I buy the blouse that I'm wearing? May not be at all of interest to somebody else.

S2

Yeah. I mean, I have just made an attempt to describe my visit to New York, to my colleague just before this interview. And the conclusions that I came to were, you know, you're in a piece of granite because the pavements or sidewalks, as you would call them, feel really hard. And also it's the sound of the sirens and the car horns echoing off the buildings and sort of reverberating. It's quite a unique place to be, isn't it, New York?

S4

It is. It is. And I remember after 911, Visions was one of the agencies that provided free mobility training for people who needed to reorient themselves when there were completely new sounds where there was sunlight before, there wasn't any where the tactile markings or the smells from the different shops and bakeries were landmarks that they used. And when the World Trade Center buildings came down, the landscape, not just the physical landscape, but everything else in downtown New York changed. So we were, you know, we were on the front lines helping people figure out not only what subways were running or what buses were running, but how to recognise areas that felt totally different because two major buildings weren't there any longer.

S2

Yeah. Where were you when the planes hit, Nancy?

S4

It's a great question. I was actually on 42nd Street in a seminar being given by the Pfizer organisation, and they immediately stopped when the first plane hit. And I rushed out, took a taxi down to Visions, which is about a 15 minute taxi ride when there's no traffic. I got to my office because I figured the staff would be terrified. We're only less than a mile from ground Zero. And I got there, you know, just around the time the second plane hit. And then we were told by the fire department to stay in place. They finally let us leave at about 3:00 in the afternoon. And by that time, lower Manhattan was filled with soot. All of the vehicles that were around the World Trade Centers had been removed and most of them had been squashed by the buildings coming down. And we were just told to walk to the tip of Manhattan and take the ferry to get wherever we were going. And hundreds of boats came to lower Manhattan to take people out of lower Manhattan, either to New Jersey or to the upper parts of Manhattan or Westchester. So it's very vivid in my memory, even though it was a long time ago. It was, you know, obviously a catastrophe. And I'm glad I was able to get back and be with my staff during the day because it was it was very, very frightening.

S2

Unimaginable. My my nine over 11 story, of course, it's what from my half a generation above me, always remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, you know, even in the UK. And I remember I was I was doing cold call sales in a small office in East London trying to sell text message advertising in 2001. So my story is not as traumatic as yours, but the bosses had two choices at that point, didn't they? And it was a mark of who they were. Either continue to work, carry on, which is what my boss did at the time, in a job that I already wasn't happy in or stop, breathe. Let's find out what's going on. I guess you were in the latter category. How long did it take you to get back to proper work and what must have been a huge new task for you?

S4

Well, it was you know, first of all, we were so close to ground zero that our office was unavailable for several weeks. The smoke and, you know, needing to remove all the debris meant that there were streets closed for weeks. So a group of us walked from 23rd Street where we have another office location and came with shopping carts, picked up all our payroll records and any paperwork that we needed. And we just set up shop in our other office space and we worked out of that space for about three weeks until we were allowed back. Um, but I basically told staff, look, everybody's going to get paid, take as much time as you need. Um, many, many of our staff had family members that were missing. They weren't sure what the conditions were. Um, the smell and the odor was just overwhelming in, in this particular neighborhood. So we, you know, we basically told people, take what time you need and when you're ready, you know, come back or work from home or, you know, do what you need to do to reintegrate into a New York that was very, very different from from what it was like previously.

14:28

S2

I didn't intend us to be talking about this. Nancy is a fascinating subject and a unique insight. I'm English, so we don't normally talk about emotions and stuff we've been through. We were trying to push it all down and carry on. It's fascinating to hear you talk. And actually New York is often perceived as a bit tough. Like we Londoners are. And my city's been through a number of traumas. But it's interesting to hear you say working from home, which, you know, in London when we had the bombings in 2005, you know, I had a couple of friends who were missing for a while, but everything was cleaned up by 3:00. And the city itself didn't change because there were only vehicles that were destroyed. So I understand the concept of a city going through a trauma, but obviously you've just said working from home, which points us directly at a more recent trauma that all of our cities have been through, I guess, how was how was the pandemic for you as an organisation and you personally?

S4

So, you know, we were on a mandatory closure for three months. Again, I told the staff the same thing. We're going to get through this. We don't know whether we're going to be allowed to reopen, but do the best you can from home. If you need help in figuring out work that you can do. You know, we're here to help you. Staff was incredibly creative. They found ways to do some of the training that we do. Normally. We do it in the home, but if somebody had an Internet connection, they were doing training virtually. We were able to do thousands of check in calls to make sure that the blind participants that we work with were okay. We help them get vaccine appointments. They were very tough to get early in the pandemic. We helped them get transportation, which is being offered free of charge. We help them just feel that they were connected. So many of the people that we work with felt isolated. They felt they couldn't leave home. They didn't know if they were six feet distant from the next person, if they had not gotten sick, they were afraid of getting sick. Many of them didn't know how to use the Internet to order food, so they were eating up the last cans of food that they had, and they were feeling very food insecure. 

So our staff basically connected people with resources. We have a program on 23rd Street in Manhattan, which is an apartment building for people who are blind and also our older adult center. And so our concern was the 200 apartments of blind people when all our services, you know, had had basically ended in person. How are they going to get the services that they needed? So we were able to connect them with the National Guard. We connected them with a local restaurant that was willing to deliver, and we did all this remotely for three months until we were allowed back in our offices on the 1st of July. And we came back, but in a hybrid form, which we still have now of 106 staff. There are 14 staff that just work from home 100% of the time. Their job description. This is both blind and sighted staff. They're doing data entry or they're doing phone work or they're doing work that's just on the computer. And we've given them the option of either coming into the office or working from home. Our rehab staff are back doing in-home services, but we've not required them to come in the office. So all of their staff meetings are being done, virtually their report writing any phone calls they need to make they can do from home. They have the choice of working from home or working from the office. We have a skeletal crew of about 12 staff that come into our two Manhattan offices just to make sure that, you know, the phones are working and that we're collecting the mail and that we're, you know, providing the services we need. But even our older adult center, we're now offering 80 classes a week that you can take either in-person or virtually.

S5

Hmm.

S2

It's interesting the way the world has changed in that way. I didn't intend to get down this particular alleyway. I want to find out more about the services you provide on a day to day basis. But I'm just going to park something to germinate in the back of your mind, which is institutional memory is very important, isn't it? And the idea that this isn't the first time that you'd been confronted by the task of getting people to stay. Home. I'll be interested to see how you are coping with the current funding environment, given that we. Well, I'm long in the tooth enough to have seen this cycle happen a couple of times before. I'll get your thoughts on that. But before we talk about how you fund it, let's talk about what you do. What services do you provide for people?

S4

So we work with people of all ages, from babies to older adults over the age of 100. Our primary services are to help people who have impaired vision or no vision at all to be as independent as they want to be at home, at work, in the community, at school. And for those people who want to work to be able to get a job commensurate with their education, expertise and interests. So our work is really connecting people with resources that are available in New York, connecting job seekers with willing employers, connecting older people who may feel isolated with other peers through our older adult center services. And we also have a residential training facility, a 37 acre campus about an hour north of New York City. And that's a facility that's used all year long, both for health and wellness programs for people who want to come and meet other people who are experiencing vision impairments, as well as very dedicated work readiness training programs for blind youth and blind adults and older adults. To interesting that 27% of the job seekers that we work with are 55 years of age or older. So somebody may have been sighted most of their life and then they lose their vision in their 50s or 60. And rather than retiring, they say, I still have something to contribute. I'd like to get back into the workforce, but they may change careers or they may change their skill set to better match the job openings that are available right now. 

The pandemic was actually very helpful to many of our job seekers because so many employers now advertise 100% remote positions, which means that they can be working for an employer on the West Coast but be living here in New York City. So that has increased our our job placements since the since the pandemic. We've been able to help more people get work that is both paid but paid commensurate with the skill set that they have. In addition, we work with the families of people who have vision impairment because we find that if the family is supportive of a person really achieving their highest potential, it's much more likely that the person with vision impairment is going to have higher expectations. And whether it's a spouse or a parent or a sibling. It's really important that the entire family is invested in giving a person who is experiencing vision impairment all of the support they need to be. As good as they can be. And I always say, you know, if you meet one blind person, you've met one blind person. No one is exactly the same as somebody else. Even if they have the same eye disease, they react to it very differently. But family can make it or break it for somebody who wants to age in place and not go into an institution or for somebody who wants to enter or re-enter the job market. If they have cheerleaders in the family, that's going to make a huge difference. And so we try to work with the family as much as possible, even inviting them in training sessions, having them come along on mobility lessons, you know, seeing how their family member is able to cook independently if that's something they want to learn or keep. House. So many blind grandparents want a baby set and their sighted children may be reluctant, but we can show the parent how a blind grandparent can be a great babysitter. So these are all the things that that make my work so rewarding and why I love coming to work every day.

26:13

S2

You're ringing all my bells, I have to say, as a 49 year old man living in a sheltered housing for the vision impaired in London while working remotely for an organization in Australia, I have to say the scale of what you're doing has amazed me, But but it's really lovely to hear that although we're in different cities and different environments, the priorities are the same. I mean, one of my things, I was born in 1974 and my mum and dad were amazing and they pushed me hard. I certainly wasn't as employed as I might want to have been, and I didn't necessarily know what vision impairment was. I think it's this job that's given me a bit of an insight. So the stuff you talk about with families is fascinating. But in my day, back in the olden days, the choice was between my mum. My mother was faced with a decision. She basically said to her, No, you need to send him to the special boarding school in Birmingham for kids who are sight impaired. And my mother went, Now he's going mainstream. And recently I've met somebody who was born within a year of me who went to the special education facility. And these days, of course, my kids have inherited my eye condition. And for them it's mainstream school all the way, which I think is the general the the general idea these days, isn't it? That's where that's where things are going. Certainly in Australia, in the UK, I don't know about over there in the States.

S4

Yes, I think most families prefer to have their child go to their local public school, and most parents choose that. However, if you are a person with multiple disabilities and we see more and more children who are not just born with an eye disease, but have multiple issues that they're dealing with. Many of those children do find better education at the specialized schools. You know, some of the public schools, you know, in New York City, but really around the states aren't really equipped, don't really know how to properly educate a child that may have multiple disabilities. And so it's really up to the parents to try to figure out whether boarding school or, you know, being in the home environment is the best experience. I can tell you from from my experience working with a lot of youth that the the youth that go to the specialized programs end up being fantastic. Mobility travelers have excellent Braille skills. So the quote, blindness skills they are experts at, but their social skills tend to be wanting. The children that go to public school tend to have very, very good social skills. They can, you know, integrate into just about any classroom or group or setting. They've learned how to overcome bullying. They've learned they've basically learned to live with whatever vision they have. But they're not always the best at Braille or mobility or self care. 

And so what many parents in the States do, they may have their child go to a mainstream public school, but in the summer they send them to a specialized blind camp or a program that is adapted so that their child can basically learn how to be blind and meet other blind kids and get a support network and still keep all their sighted friends and, you know, friends that they've made in school. The kids that go to the specialized schools often get work experiences after school where they're in a mainstream setting. And so they begin to improve their social skills, whether it's working in a store or a library, someplace where they're interacting with the sighted public. And that somehow compensates for whatever they might have lacked in whatever school setting they're in.

31:23

S2

For me, there's another element to that from my own experience and as a father of daughters with a vision impairment, I think I you know, I would say it's also the incidental pastoral things that make a difference. So as you say, it's the peer to peer counseling. So the answer that I've chosen for my kids or there hasn't really been much choice is is mainstream education with a bit of peer to peer counseling, even if that peer is me, if you see what I mean. But I think that's I think there's a I think you're right to pick out the social skills and as you put it in air quotes that I actually heard, you know, the blind skills, I think I think you're on the right answer there. Just quickly, I wanted to ask you about the funding environment. I mean, the size of your 200 people with a vision impairment being looked after in your apartment block and an enormous facility outside of New York and two offices. This can't be cheap to run. And these are straitened times where people are tightening their belts. How how are you coping? What's your funding model? And is it are you okay? I think it's the modern parlance, isn't it?

S4

Well, we serve a little over 7000 people each year. We cover 14 counties of New York State. I don't know how familiar you are with the geography, but we basically cover half. Of New York State from the capital, which is in the middle of the state and everything south. So it's a very, very large territory. Um, we're somewhat unusual in that we have very different but steady funding sources. So we have a budget of about $16 million. That's our annual budget and about 5 million comes from government contracts. That's primarily through the state and also some city funding to work with the older adult population, which is not blindness specific. Actually, our older adult center is funded the same way a sited center would be funded. The only difference is our center is completely adapted and many of the staff at the center are blind themselves. So somebody who is visually impaired can walk into our center and immediately be involved independently. So, you know, our classes, our class schedule is available electronically in Braille, in large print, in whatever format an individual wants. We have a telephone number that you can call and the courses that are being offered will be read off to you by phone. So we look for every way of making information and material accessible. So that's funded by the city government. We also get a little over $1 million from foundations. Now, foundations don't exist in all parts of the world, but there are many charitable foundations that fund social services, and we get funded by many of those foundations for about $1 million. We also have individual donors, people who maybe have a member of their family who is blind or they're blind themselves, and they've done well financially and they want to support the work that Visions does. And then we have an endowment that's our reserves for a rainy day, which we actually use during the pandemic. But this is money that is invested, that is set aside. We only use the interest and dividends from that endowment.

S2

Don't touch the principal.

S4

Exactly. So withdraw about 4.5% of the value of the endowment every year. And that gives us about 40% of our budget. So it's a combination. We do some special events, but that's just a small, small percentage. The majority is really an investment income. Government Grants Foundation grants, individual giving, and then some special events.

S2

So I guess a balanced portfolio. Well, and partly the institutional memory that you clearly have, you personally and the institution as a whole means that you feel you can weather the current storm.

S4

Yes. And you know, I have to say that, you know, the pandemic was as difficult to catastrophe as 911 was. But in different ways, you know, we were basically closed for in-person services for three months. And some of them are funding is outcome based, which means that we get paid when the individual that we're working with achieves a skill. If we're not there to teach the skill, there's no outcome and we get no payment. What the federal government did is they created a loan to grant program where nonprofits that had lost a percentage of their revenue because the government closed us down, we were able to apply for a loan and then if we met certain criteria, that loan was forgiven and Visions was able to apply for two of these special federal loans, both of which were forgiven, which gave us about $2.5 million of income that compensated for not having any revenue for that three months.

S2

It's interesting, like most of your clients, it seems that you as an organisation want to stand on your own two feet. It's incredibly impressive. Nancy, I wish we had more time to talk. I begged you for 20 minutes. We've hit 37. I want to thank you so much for your time. It's lovely to meet you. And thank you so much for coming on.

S4

Well, thank you so much for inviting me. It's been a pleasure.

38:53

S2

Right. That's your lot for this week. A huge thank you to Nancy Miller for taking my call and for agreeing to appear on the radio within two hours of our initial conversation. And thanks, of course, to you for listening. We'll be back next week to talk travel with Tony Jiles, a young man who has been to over 130 countries in spite of the fact or perhaps in conjunction with the fact that he is totally blind. But between now and then, please do get in touch with the show. Whether you have experience of any of the issues covered in this episode of Studio One or if you think there's something we should be talking about, you never know. Your story and your insight may help somebody else who is dealing with something similar. Email us. Studio one at Vision Australia. Org That's Studio one at Vision australia.org.

39:35

S1

Vision Australia Radio gratefully acknowledges the support of the Community Broadcasting Foundation for Studio One.