Disability Services Day at the Capitol drew large, enthusiastic crowd

Deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing Minnesotans honored at rally day

Hundreds of Minnesotans who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, and their family and friends gathered for their annual rally day this spring, with the theme of “Access Empowers Us.” Making access happen from the start and not as an afterthought, allows for individuals to fully participate in everyday activities and events. To do so, barriers need to be eliminated in order to make it inclusive for everyone regardless of ability.

Not only did the large crowd advocate for pending legislation, they also took time to salute those who make a positive difference for their community. Several Minnesotans were honored for their contributions to the deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing communities through advocacy, community engagement, education, improving accessibility and other activities to improve the lives of community members.

Lifetime Achievement awards went to five people. These awards are for community members who have done distinctive work for and with deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing Minnesotans for more than 20 years.

Ralph Fuechtmann was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a community-centric person who is known for his commitment to the deaf community for more than 40 years. Fuechtmann has been fondly known as the “Go to” for most community needs.

Fuechtmann has been involved with committees and served as a board member for many organizations and projects, including MinnePaul, International Catholic Deaf Association, Thompson Hall, Midwest Athletic Association, the Minnesota Association of Deaf Citizens, and Minnesota Deaf Senior Citizens. He has a big heart for volunteering within the community and is helpful, caring, resourceful, and happy to share with others.

In 2008, he was honored in the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf Alumni Association Hall of Fame.

He was a basketball player in the 1969 and 1973 Deaflympics, as a gold medalist on the U.S. team in Belgrade and Malmo, playing on the United States team. In 1987, he was added to the Deaflympics Hall of Fame.

Mary Bauer was recognized for her longtime service to the community through her work at the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division. Bauer recently retired after providing resources and support and helped improve the lives of people in the metro and Minnesota with varying hearing levels. She did a lot of work on age-related hearing loss, veterans with hearing loss, and accessible venues for people with hearing loss.

Bauer was the second child in her family with a hearing loss. She taught and then worked as a nonprofit before going to the state. She worked for the state for nearly 30 years, enjoying her clients and coworkers.

She also served on many accessibility advisory committees. As a result of her work on sport stadiums’ committees in the Twin Cities, there is now a national standard (requirement) to have at least one ticket window at stadiums that has a telecoil "loop" installed in it.

Cheryl Blue also received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Another longtime

DHS employee, Blue served rural Minnesota in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Division as a specialist. She’s made a difference in the Duluth community, including advocating for captions on the local news, accessible smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and more.

Blue started her career working in mental health in Los Angeles and the Twin Cities, before joining the Minnesota Deaf Hard of Hearing Services Division in 1988. She moved from the metro office to Crookston/northwest region and then to Duluth/northeast region. Some of her most recent accomplishments include serving on the Arrowhead Agency on Aging, Advisory Committee on Aging for many terms. During that time, she worked with the agency director on an educational video project for the Senior Linkage Line. She also launched the North Shore ASL Community meetings that have been gone on for more than three decades. She recently retired from the state.

Another Lifetime Achievement winner is Paul Deeming. Deeming is a longtime interpreter, who provides language and cultural interpretation between users of English and ASL. He is a specialist in working with deafblind consumers who use low vision, tactile and/or Protactile techniques.

Deeming provide trainings related to best practices, communication and interpretation with deaf and deafblind people. He has been working as a sign language interpreter for 30 years and with the deafblind community for more than 26 years. Before starting his own firm, he worked at Deafblind Services and Metropolitan State University.

The fifth lifetime Achievement Award honoree is Amy McQuaid-Swanson. She was recognized for her work at the DHS Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division. She has more than 40 years’ experience with the state. In her division she is described as the glue that held things together through several transitions and worked to keep her division separate. She has also overseen the distribution of millions of dollars of state funding.

McDaid-Swanson holds a master’s degree in human services administration from the University of Minnesota, St. Mary’s graduate school.

Two people won the Youth Award. Mujahid Zafar was honored for advocating for captions at a local movie theater. Justin Smith was recognized for advocating for accessible housing Citizen Advocate Awards went to Avi Rosen for advocating for improved hospital accessibility and to Jessica Eggert for advocating for Braille prescription labels at pharmacies. Stephanie Steidl and Leah Henrikson were honored with the Civic Engagement Award. They were recognized on behalf of parents who advocated for the Vivian Act, which led Minnesota to become the first state to screen all newborn babies for congenital cytomegalovirus, which can cause hearing loss in babies.

Education Excellence Awards were given to two people. Debbie Golos is a professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and Deaf/Hard of Hearing licensure and M.Ed. coordinator. Michele Heise is a teacher and sports coach at the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf and sports coach.

The Access Award went to Kaylah Vogt for advocating for equitable employment hiring and onboarding practices.

The Humanitarian Award was presented to Wilderness Inquiry for the programs and opportunities provided to the deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing community, connecting them to the outdoors.

The Minnesota Commission for the Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing is a governor-appointed commission that advocates for communication access and equal opportunity with the 20 percent of Minnesotans who are deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing.

While the labor market remains strong in Minnesota, a new state report shows the situation got better for employers at least in the first half of 2022. But challenges continue in hiring personal care staff, with 7,798 vacancies statewide. There is also strong demand for other health care staff, with high vacancies for registered nurses (5,625) and nursing assistants (4,418).

The report shows the number of overall job vacancies dropped 10 percent during the second quarter of 2022. Minnesota employers reported 184,588 job vacancies during the quarter, with the largest number of job openings in the health care (45,000), retail (28,500), hotel/food services (26,000) and manufacturing (19,000) sectors, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).

There were 6.9 job openings for every 100 jobs in the state, creating the state's third-highest job vacancy rate since the state started tracking data in 2001, officials said.

Coming out of the worst economic disruption caused by the pandemic, the labor shortage at the beginning of 2022 was extreme, so a 10 percent decline was a step forward.

Minnesota had about 72,500 unemployed workers in second quarter 2022, meaning that the labor market remains extremely tight. There were more than twice the number of open jobs as unemployed people in the state.

The survey shows “continued strong demand for workers across the state,” said Interim DEED Commissioner Kevin McKinnon in a statement. “The tight labor market presents opportunities for people looking for work in Minnesota. It also presents challenges for employers who need workers to continue operations and grow their business.”

Despite news of layoffs among giants such as 3M, Bright Health, Facebook, Google and Dell Technologies, the number of job openings in Minnesota has remained level and even grew in recent months.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports state job opening estimates monthly, Minnesota's job openings fell from 231,000 in December 2022 to 212,000 in January 2023, the most recent data available.

Employers and members of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce continue to complain that they can't find enough workers with the skills they need to fill certain jobs.

Chamber and state officials are encouraging employers to offer training and to expand their prospective job candidate lists by considering hiring more immigrants, people of color, workers with disabilities and those with military service or non-violent criminal records.

Guardianship case coming to close

A case closely watched by disability advocates appears to be coming to a close. A judge has vacated a court-ordered guardianship and conservatorship for Cindy Hagen. She has been living in Mayo Clinic’s Austin hospital since last summer. Hagen, 49, is quadriplegic as a result of injuries sustained as a child in a car crash. Earlier this year, a judge put Hagen under emergency guardianship and conservatorship after attempts to discharge her to an appropriate facility failed.

Blue Earth County Human Services petitioned the courts for the guardianship. According to court documents, the county was unable to find in-home care for Hagen, which she had previously had at her apartment in Mankato in part due to widespread staffing shortages. Hagen was offered services in skilled nursing facilities or in an apartment in the Twin Cities but she did not agree to them, according to court documents.

Hagen has said in court documents she instead wanted to go home to her apartment where she lived for years until 2020.Her situation highlights challenges in some of the systems that surround people living with disabilities, said David Dively, executive director of the Minnesota Council on Disability.

Recent legislative changes make it harder to put people living with disabilities under guardianship. But courts and families have been slow to embrace those changes, he said.

“ We want to move as far away from guardianship as realistically and practically possible, because it is so restrictive. And in Minnesota, we do it pretty heavy handedly,” he said.

Instead, disability advocates say the state — and nation — should be moving toward a process of “supported decision-making.”

A big challenge, however, are staffing shortages in assisted living facilities and in the profession of in-home care shortages made worse by the pandemic.

More and more, patients who no longer need acute care end up stuck in the hospital as a result, said Mayo Clinic Dr. Tamara Buechler, who works in Rochester.

“In these past couple of years with the pandemic, the challenges have only increased,” she said. “In any given quarter we have over 900 delays related to post-acute care. On any given day, in our hospital 10 percent or more of the population are patients who are delayed in the hospital setting because we need to establish a next level of safe care for them.”

Court documents say Hagen's guardianship and conservatorship will be reinstated if she doesn't move home within 45 days.

(Source: Minnesota Public Radio)

Students practice mental health response

"I need to get that B average; otherwise, I'm going to lose my scholarships, I'm going to lose my place in this program, I'm going to lose everything," exclaimed second-year nursing student at St. Catherine University Madi Pohl.

Pohl participated in a recent simulation at St. Kate's as a crisis actor portraying Casey, a student overwhelmed by anxiety. The simulation was the first of three this year intended to help students, particularly health care students, respond to similar situations that could arise at college and beyond.

K rista Anderson, director of simulation at the school of health, said an environment of increased hostility toward health care workers joined with recent violence on college campuses escalated the importance of providing this training. In the 2020-2021 academic year, more than 60 percent of college students met the criteria for one or more mental health diagnoses, a 50 percent increase from 2013, according to research on trends in college student health and help-seeking in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

“ We hear here on campus that there's a lot of students who are struggling with mental health, whether it's depression, whether it's anxiety,” said Anderson. “And then you think about the news, and there's shootings and there's violence and there's things happening, and we really wanted to provide some education that would apply to anybody.”

T he training, attended by about 20 students, began with a presentation on practical steps to recognize, respond and refer to a person in crisis due to high anxiety. Among them were approaching the person with a wide, open stance, using short, soft words and offering validation. Students were then split into groups to practice the skills they had learned with a crisis actor like Pohl, who sat turned away, one leg bobbing up and down, as she breathlessly explained the impossibility of completing the overwhelming tasks in front of her.

Two students approached Pohl at a time, practicing different techniques to see what would be most effective in deescalating her emotions.

According to Anderson, simulation is growing as a method of training for health care students, especially since COVID-19. She said research indicates little difference in learning for students completing all clinical experiences in a professional setting versus those replacing half of them with simulations. For a small, private school like St. Kate's, providing more learning on campus is often more practical

(Source: Star Tribune) and convenient for students.

“ You only have so many clinical sites," said Anderson. "If we can support and create health care simulation scenarios that represent a wide variety of different types of clinical situations, we can provide those experiences internally.”

(Source: Pioneer Press)

Delayed assessments are concerning Delayed assessments of autism in children remain a problem, particularly in Minnesota, that worsened in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evaluations of children at age 4 had been increasing from 2017 to 2019 but sharply declined in mid-2020, according to a report Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tallied autism rates in the Twin Cities and 10 other U.S. communities. Evaluations increased later that year in most other communities after lockdowns and other COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, but not in Minnesota.

Research over time will tell whether the disruption resulted in delayed diagnoses that affected growth and development of children with autism, said Amy Esler, a University of Minnesota psychologist who co-authored the CDC report.

“ What we know from other research... is that any delay to identify, any delay to intervention, has long-term impacts,” she said.

Despite the delays, a companion study found an increase in autism prevalence in 2020. One in 34 8-year-olds in Minnesota had autism based on medical or educational evaluations, according to the CDC report, which is based on data from school districts in Hennepin, Ramsey and Anoka counties.

“Autism really is no longer a lowincidence disability, based on these numbers,” said another U co-author,

Jennifer Hall-Lande. “If we think of an average third-grade class in Minnesota, it is now likely there will be at least one child with autism in that class.”

The CDC group for the first time estimated that more than 1 percent of female 8-year-olds have autism, though the diagnosis remains four times more likely in males. The increased prevalence isn't necessarily a sign the developmental condition is becoming more common. Diagnoses had been lacking in minority groups, and at least some of the increase reflects better recognition of the disability in those groups.

T he 2020 version of the biennial report was the first to estimate a higher prevalence rate of autism in black and Hispanic children in the U.S. compared with white children. Diagnoses historically were more common among children from white middle- and upper-income families with the means to seek evaluations.

A mong the sites studied, Minnesota had the highest percentage of children with autism who had only received a special education designation and the lowest percentage with a medical diagnosis. The median age of a medical diagnosis among the 8-year-olds with autism was 4 years, 11 months in Minnesota. That was 10 months longer than the national median, which is a problem because a diagnosis unlocks services that aren't available with a special education designation, said Ellie Wilson, executive director of the Autism Society of Minnesota.

“

We use a diagnosis like a ticket in order to qualify for those service programs,” she said.

Even in a non-pandemic year, it takes months to get medically evaluated because of a shortage of providers in Minnesota. The U's autism clinic stopped adding names in 2021 after its waiting list reached 600.

School closures contributed to the decline in 2020 in school and medical autism evaluations. Children weren't in day-care facilities or schools, where teachers often notice developmental differences among other children and recommend autism screening.

Children with autism also are more likely to have other health conditions that can worsen the risks of severe COVID-19, which might have convinced parents to delay evaluations until a vaccine was available in 2021, said Rebecca Vaurio, a neuropsychologist at Children's Minnesota.

(Source: Star Tribune)