For roughly the past two years, the state of Vermont has operated a program to help people like René Pellerin.
Pellerin, who lives in Waterbury Center, has dual sensory loss — he is deaf and has a condition that has caused his vision to deteriorate. To do many activities in his daily life, Pellerin uses state-funded support service providers: trained aides who drive him to social events, help him do outdoor activities and guide him when shopping at the store.
But with the funding for that state program scheduled to dry up this fall, Pellerin and others fear that it will leave them without crucial support.
Without the program, “it would be much more isolation, staying home, using just a computer to send out communication, no social interactions, and I’d just be sitting around getting fat,” Pellerin said in an interview through an interpreter.
Vermont’s support service provider pilot program was funded by a two-year grant of $121,000 from the federal Administration for Community Living.
The nationwide interpreting firm Vancro was awarded the grant to operate the program. According to Cory Brunner, Vancro’s vice president, support service providers received 268 separate requests for help in its first year. In its second, that number had increased to 470.
Vancro’s program serves 32 Vermonters and has a short waiting list.
Brunner, who lives in Vermont and is herself a support service provider, estimated that more than 30 other states have permanent state-funded support service provider programs. Clients of Vermont’s program are devastated that it might shut down, she said in an email.
The program’s clients have ranged from teenagers to octogenarians and include people with vision and hearing loss for a variety of reasons — military service, medical conditions and age among them.
Pellerin, the Waterbury client, said support service providers have taken him to medical appointments, helped him shop at grocery stores and brought him snowshoeing.
“It’s an opportunity to get out more,” Pellerin said.
Nancy Wisner, a Pittsfield client of the program, has used the program for appointments and hopes to attend some local concerts. Wisner is legally blind and has some hearing loss but is not deaf.
The program gives her the opportunity to socialize with more people, she said.
“We’re social animals,” she said. “We need other people to survive, keep our mental health. That was proven during Covid.”
Fred Jones, the director of Vermont’s Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired, part of the Agency of Human Services, said the initial intent of the grant was to improve clients’ “social integration.” Its ultimate goal, he said, was to combat the isolation experienced by people with dual sensory loss.
“I feel like it’s been very, very successful,” said Jones, who is himself legally blind.
But the grant money, which initially came from federal Covid-19 aid, is slated to expire by Sept. 30.
Jones and other state officials are looking for other potential sources of money that could help extend the life of the program. Without an appropriation from the Legislature, however, it’s not clear whether the state will be able to continue to fund it after that.
“We know it’s not a lot of people, it’s not a lot of money, but it makes a huge difference in someone’s life,” Jones said.
Wisner echoed that sentiment.
Losing the program “would be a very, very sad thing for a lot of people,” she said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermonters with hearing and vision loss fear end of a pilot program.