The Fall River Commission on Disability held its meeting on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Following the recitation of the open meeting law and a roll call, the minutes from the April 13 meeting were approved unanimously. The primary agenda item was a presentation by Sarah Netgerman from the Massachusetts Disabled Persons Protection Commission (DPPC), who detailed the agency's role in investigating abuse against adults with disabilities (ages 18-59) by caregivers, provided their 24/7 hotline number (1-800-426-9009), and discussed their abuser registry and training programs. The Commission noted that the DPPC is listed on their website as a resource. Updates included the chairman's plan to provide an ADA update at the June meeting, and a report on the scholarship program. The scholarship luncheon is scheduled for June 4th at 1 PM, with ten recipients from five schools (Arcgis Collegiate School, Atlantis Charter School, Bishop Connolly High School, Durfee High School, and Diman Regional Technical Vocational High School) each receiving a $3,000 scholarship, totaling $30,000. The deadline for guest counts for the luncheon was adjusted from May 27th to May 20th to meet McGovern's Restaurant's 10-day requirement. Commissioner Dan Robillard inquired about the status of funding appropriated for the Veterans Department at the previous meeting, to which Chairman Dennis Paull Sally confirmed the Veterans Agent, Michaela, had expressed gratitude and he would follow up to ensure smooth processing. The meeting concluded with the announcement that Sergeant Kevin Dolan would be the guest at the June meeting.
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okay this is the meeting of the fall river commission on disability for wednesday may 11th 2022.
0:11i'm looking for my copy of the open meeting law statement i know i have it so would you like me to recite him um if you don't mind not because i'm going way past it well pursuant to the open meeting or any person they may pursuant to the open meeting or any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting attendees are therefore advised but recording those transmissions are being
0:45made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible thank you commissioner and it stands to figure that just when you started reciting it i found my copy but but thank you i appreciate um i appreciate that very much okay roll call chairman dennis paul sally president vice chairwoman debbie pacheco president i'm sorry i have to deal with an emergency i'm present
1:24commissioner lisa silva present commissioner dan robillard commissioner ann o'neil souza president okay i will call three times for public input do i hear any public input do i hear any public input and do i hear any public input okay hearing none i'm going to go on to the next item which is the approval for the minutes of the meeting of april 13 person with that motion toward that thank you do i hear a second thanks
2:15um any discussion those in favor of virtual meeting well i apologize roll call chairman dennis paul sally uh yes vice chairwoman debbie pacheco yes commissioner lisa silva yes commissioner dan roblard yes commissioner ann o'neil souza yes thank you all the next item is our guest presenter today a very very important agency the massachusetts commission the massachusetts disabled persons protection commission
3:02representing that agency uh is sarah netgerman i hope i said your name correctly um she has been outreaching to the various municipal disability commissions i'm sorry that i waited this long but i'm so glad that you're you've agreed to come and address us so the floor is all yours all right thank you so much for having me um like you said i've been reaching out to commissions around the state to kind
3:31of let people know about who we are and about our abuse reporting hotline so i wanted to talk just a few minutes about that um in case any of you have opportunity to suspect abuse of an adult with a disability and want to make a report and because you have this really important connection to the town of fall river that we're really trying to reach we're trying to do public
3:59outreach and let people know just who we are so the dppc is an independent state agency we investigate abuse by caregivers against adults with disabilities so by adult we're talking about people between the age of 18 and 59 at the time of abuse by disability we're talking about people who need some assistance with their daily living needs so that can be help with finances with medication with
4:30transportation or more basic stuff food showering things like that by caregivers we're talking about either paid or unpaid caregivers okay so these can be professional caregivers like pcas like medical professionals like van drivers or um unpaid folks like relatives who are just helping the person out as long as that person is helping them meet those daily living needs so if you're familiar with um like child
5:01protective services we do similar investigation work just in a different population so adults with disabilities instead of kids i usually like to mention one other agency here which is the executive office of elder affairs they're separate from us but if you ever suspect abuse of someone aged 60 or older you would call them instead so their number is 1 800 922 2275 i know a lot of commissions work
5:35closely with senior centers and the like so i like to mention them but if you suspected use of somebody in our age range you would call the dppc hotline so that number is nine zero 1-800-426-9000 nine i'd recommend writing this down or putting it in your phone whatever is going to make it available to you if you ever need it so one more time that's zero 1-800-426-9009 it's a 24 7 hotline so anytime you call
6:09that number you'll get a live person on the other end they'll ask you a few basic questions what happened where when who was involved give any information that you have and then that person is going to send that report to where it needs to go if the report gets screened in meaning it meets all of our requirements it'll get assigned an investigator these are civil investigators not criminal
6:35and their job is to be fact-finders so they're trying to figure out what happened if the report gets screened in you'll probably get called by an investigator to do a more detailed interview and if they find that abuse did happen they can make what we call protective services recommendations to either support the victim and moving on from the abuse things like counseling health care or to prevent future abuse
7:02things like respite services or other resources training policy changes things like that we also have a new abuser registry specifically for people who are professional caregivers working through the department of developmental services they can get put on this registry if they have abused someone with an intellectual or developmental disability and then they are prevented from either
7:28keeping their current job or getting a new job with that same population so that's to prevent people from abusing in one place and then turning around and doing it somewhere else the hotline person can also send that report to other agencies if we can't investigate it sometimes they can we also have a state police detective unit that is screening all the reports that come in for criminal abuse they can
7:52do a criminal investigation alongside our civil investigation and we have a sexual assault response team that is screening all the reports for sexual abuse and they will work directly with survivors to get them the support that they need i also want to briefly mention mandated reporters in case anybody on this call is a mandated reporter or if you know of any groups in town who would benefit
8:17from more information on this mandated reporters are specific professions that are more likely to be aware of abuse and because of that they are legally required to make a report to dppc when they suspect abuse okay so anybody can make a report but they are legally required to so these are people like medical professionals police officers teachers and folks working directly with people
8:45with disabilities like staff of group home stay programs things like that we offer uh training for mandated reporters specifically um less an hour hour and a half so if you know of anyone who would benefit from that feel free to connect us we can also do trainings for non-mandated reporters just the general public as well i also want to mention that you don't need proof to report okay all you need is suspicion that
9:18abuse is happening okay so you don't need evidence you don't need to have conducted your own investigation you just need to say you know i think something might be happening here and then you would call that number and that's pretty much it if anybody has any questions if we have time for that i'm happy to address those now anyone have any questions i should say um we do have a link to the disabled
9:55person's protection commission on our website the fall river commission on disability has a website and there's a resource section um state agencies persons with disabilities and i do know that this this commission is mentioned on our website that's great to hear okay anyone have any questions none at this time okay sarah thank you so much uh very very much for reaching out to us um
10:37and then as i said as i said we do have uh information on our website for for people if they want to get in touch or um and i'm sure we can we can circulate it to other places too but thank you so much for reaching out to us thank you very much for your time okay bye everybody
11:06okay the next item on our agenda are updates and under ada i think i'm going to have something more to say about updates on ada at our june meeting because there are some good and interesting things happening but um i don't want to jump the gun so i want to wait till our june meeting and and i promise you we'll we'll give you an update on things that are um that are going on and
11:38i'll do that at the june meeting any update on policies from our vice chair no updates at this time thank you um and you all have the the you all have the budget report um for april under finance under outreach things are moving things are moving along smoothly in our scholarship program i already have the names of all of the recipients and their institutions that they are attending
12:22i don't i don't want to do any pr to the herald news or anything like that to be with without communicating with the principals because i don't want to overstep whatever mechanisms the schools may have in place so i'd like to consult with them um before doing any of that but you all have you all have our recipients for this year and the institutions they are attending and i hope this year to make the
12:52distribution of contacting colleges smoother because i thought of something that i probably should have done last year which is called communicating with disability offices on the prospective campuses so i think this year things should go a lot smoother so we're all set um i gave each of the principals a deadline of may 27th friday i figured making deadlines on fridays the end of the week
13:23is a lot easier i don't know if that theory is true but so far it hasn't failed me so um friday may 27th we should have the numbers for including guests um for the june 4th scholarship luncheon which is at 1pm this year 1pm um so does anyone have any questions we have five schools just to let everyone out just to kind of remind everybody we have five schools um they are the arcgis uh collegiate
14:01school the atlantis charter school bishop conley high school durfee high school and diamond regional technical vocational high school these five schools there are two recipients from each school they will be getting three thousand dollar scholarships we appropriated the money at our april meeting for a total of thirty thousand um so there any questions mr chairman just one housekeeping matter very briefly
14:33i don't want i don't want to throw a wrench into the process in any way whatsoever i think it's on track and smooth but we need to give mcgovern's account 10 days before the event so i i did reach out to them and i told them that um i told them that we're going to we were going to do friday may 27th um i figured friday might be easier for the principals but
15:00if i have to go back earlier i'm sure um because i've already heard from one school so if i need to go back to say friday may 20th i think we can do that okay so mcgoverns is requiring a hard count ten days before the event so okay okay i'll go back to the principle i'll go back to the principles and see if we can do friday may 20th i am thank you
15:32are there any questions on scholarship program just want to commend the work group for the work that they've done on it thank you very much and lisa's doing a very good job with um decorating and plans for that and really um dan's been our kind of our go-to person for mcgovern's restaurant so i i want to express my appreciation and thanks to dan for that too um let me think where are we okay
16:10i can mention the citations that you requested are all done um they'll be ready tomorrow we just have to put the fields on them so i can drop them off downstairs in the health department or i can hold them here and just have them uh picked up before the event okay we can we can work out those details well thank you so much we are way ahead of where we were last year um so far so
16:43um is there any old business
16:54okay hearing none one very brief comment okay go ahead commissioner thank you we appropriated funding for the veterans department at our last meeting uh have we heard from the veterans agent by way of email or anything since she was unable to dial in i will um she did thank us um but i i will also follow up the thing to see how things are going but i did inform her right after the meeting and
17:30she thanked us very much for the vote um i'm sorry i didn't report that today i apologize but let me follow up and just make sure everything's going smoothly on that end i just i i just want to make sure that the process of getting that funding does not hit a glitch that we've had in the past that's my that's my main issue with it uh i'm sure she's very appreciative we've had a great working relationship
18:01with the veterans department on their former agent ray hay and i expect that to continue uh with michaela i see no reason why it wouldn't she gave us a presentation and was very informative when she did come i just want to make sure there's no funding glitches on our side holding up the process from the veterans department getting the funding that we appropriated and getting those scooters available to
18:33them as soon as possible i i agree i'll just make sure i'll follow up dan and um commissioner and and my colleagues i'll follow up and make sure that that um you know nothing's following through the glitches i think i did all that i was supposed to do after the last meeting wrote the appropriate letter but let me just i agree with you i don't want any um anybody anything to fall through the
19:04uh through the cracks we also have a new auditor on board so that's uh she was introduced to the city council several weeks ago and our our commission account is in the auditor's office i don't know what role what role they formally play in the funding uh procedural process but i know that account is technically held in the auditor's office okay thank you the person just just so everybody knows
19:44the person that that i you i'm i'm supposed to work through um and it's very helpful um is is the head clerk for health and human services trust me i have my name i have her name in my notebook but i've drawn a blank right now and slow cell is a knockout michelle alves so i was drawing a blank on her last name so no disrespect to her um is there any other old business
20:22okay is there any new business just to let everybody know that that uh sergeant kevin dolan will be coming to our june commission meeting um if anybody has any questions that um or issues that um that they want covered um when he gives us his his review of the past year um you can either let me know um and i can get them to him i i have a couple of things already that
20:53that i'd like them to cover but if anybody else does um if you don't mind letting me know i'll make sure they get to him okay hearing no new business do i have a motion to adjourn motion towards you second all right roll call vote chairman dennis paul sally yes vice chairwoman debbie pacheco yes commissioner lisa silva yes commissioner dan roblog yes commissioner ann o'neill says though yes we are adjourned thank you
22:26you