Developing a VR program on the Tohono O'Odham reservation.

Two primary beliefs stand behind the drive to develop vocational rehabilitation services:

* Everyone, regardless of his/her disability, can learn to be a productive, contributing member of the community.

* Paid work can be as therapeutic for one's recovery and stability as medications and counseling.

Beginning in 1994, an Indian Health Services grant funded the development of a day treatment program on the Tohono O'Odham Reservation for adults disabled with mental illness. The location chosen for this program is in a centrally located but rural area of the reservation. It is not widely known that the Tohono O'Odham reservation is the second largest reservation in the country and is the size of the state of Connecticut in land area. Since transportation is a major problem, as it is on most reservations, the program uses its mental health technicians to provide transportation to and from the program 4 days a week. Although everybody does a lot of driving, this setup allows for regular monitoring of each member's residential situation.

The day treatment program has been named Tas Tonlik Ki (House of the Rising Sun) by the members and provides educational, social, and recreational activities as well as individual and group counseling, arts, and crafts, cultural activities, substance abuse groups, talking circles, and community activities.

The day treatment program is based on a psycho-social rehabilitation model which is guided by four major principles:

1. An emphasis on client choice--the active involvement of clients in making decisions regarding their rehabilitation plan and the activities of the clubhouse.

2. An emphasis on strengths and wellness rather than focusing solely on symptoms and deviances.

3. An emphasis on social and community integration.

4. An emphasis to foster relationships with service providers that practice partnerships and advocacy.

Tas Tonlik Ki has a rich and varied daily routine of activities for members, but it did not have a vocational rehabilitation component until 1996.

In September 1995, the regional office of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, Arizona Department of Economic Security, published a Request for Proposal to develop vocational services for people with disabilities living in the rural areas of southeastern Arizona. Desert Survivors, a nonprofit human service agency in Tucson, offered to write a proposal for the Tas Tonlik Ki project that would create paid work opportunities and develop a job training program that was culturally and environmentally appropriate for the tribal members. Since the directors of Desert Survivors have a long history of developing human services on a number of reservations in the Southwest and the tribal support for this project was unanimously approved, the state VR agency generously committed to developing vocational services for the disabled tribal members of the Tohono O'Odham Nation.

This was a great example of bundling services, i.e., combining differently funded programs for persons with disabilities to increase the scope and range of services and interventions valuable to the therapeutic goals of each individual client.

The initial quest for paid work was based on the strengths, skills, and preferences of the participating members of Tas Tonlik Ki. A flyer entitled We are Looking for Work was the result of a few community meetings with the program members voicing their experiences and preferences for the kinds of work they would like to do in the community. We then distributed this flyer around Santa Rosa and quickly received requests to build fences and ramadas, dig outhouse pits, do landscape and cleanup work, patch adobe homes, gather firewood, and bake bread and tortillas. The cost of each job is negotiated by the person or family requesting the work and the vocational coordinator who represents the Tas Tonlik Ki members. The members must agree to complete the work for the negotiated price before the work begins. This type of work solicitation is a valuable resource for the community in that there are many people, especially the elderly, who do not have the extended family, energy, or time to get necessary jobs completed; as in most rural areas, there are few if any businesses to do this type of work.

Another paid work activity that produces a multitude of gratifying results is our once a week "Meals on Wheels for the Elderly." Tribal Services for the Elderly connected Tas Tonlik Ki with a national charitable organization that sponsors nutritional programs on reservations and they provide the funding for our members to cook and deliver a nutritional and often traditional meal for 14 elderly tribal members who are shut-ins.

These examples of job creation are wonderful opportunities for the vocational rehabilitation clients in Tas Tonlik Ki to earn money, develop practical skills, and demonstrate to everyone that they are contributing, productive individuals who make their community a better place to live. The rise in self-esteem of the members involved in these activities has been reported by family members and staff alike, and objective measures of success such as regular attendance and time on task also reflect positive results.

There are many other directions that our job creation efforts are going. We are expanding our garden so that we can grow produce for our members as well as sell excess produce to the community and we are adding a nursery to sell native plants, shrubs, and trees to the local communities. We recently put in a bid to do landscape installation for a newly completed school on the reservation and we are assisting a tribal member who is trying to start a carwash that will eventually employ some of our members.

Most reservations do not offer many job opportunities in general and for those with disabilities, practically none. The reality is that there are many services and products that are lacking on reservations that tribal members are willing to pay for and on these needs a viable rehabilitation program can be built.

Creating employment opportunities on reservations and in rural areas requires a sensitivity to clients' skills and interests and the immediate needs of the surrounding community. Funding for vocational rehabilitation programs is available through a variety of sources and one does not need to wait for a Section 130 grant to get started. The benefits that a vocational rehabilitation program can provide for people with disabilities and their communities are astounding; please find out for yourself.

For more information, consultation, and technical assistance, please contact Joseph Lachowicz, Ph.D. Desert Survivors, Inc., 1020 W. Starr Pass, Tucson, AZ 85713. Telephone: [phone].

Dr. Lachowicz is project director, Desert Survivors, Inc., Tucson, AZ.