OCR Text |
Show Blind Federation Leader Calls For Evaluation Convinced that if work for America's blind goes on another ten years as it has in the last twenty the national government will take over the task of policing polic-ing agencies for the blind, M. Robert Barnett, Executive Director, Direc-tor, American Foundation for the Blind, has called on more than a 1000 agencies for the blind to consider the possibility of voluntary volun-tary self-evaluation. "We must consider the needs for self-evaluation now before it it too late," Barnett said in a statement announcing plans that may lead to a system for accre- and the repeated expression of criticism and confusion on the part of the general public which is asked to support the nation's health and welfare programs including in-cluding the area of blindness." "The American Foundation for the Blind itself," says Barnett in his call to the agencies, "through facts and figures accumulated through survey and research, as well as the constant collection of opinion, adds to these expressions expres-sions its conviction that all too many blind persons are not receiving re-ceiving the type and quality of service which are their privilege in this democracy." Pointing out that some efforts have been made in the past to establish standards and to practice prac-tice self-evaluation in some phases of work for the blind, Barnett affirms that the Foundation Foun-dation intends to assist all appropriate ap-propriate groups to accelerate their studies. It will expedite the creation of a national structure under which such groups could coordinate their efforts and cooperate co-operate for achievement of common com-mon goals. The aim is to evolve an accrediting accre-diting system which would be respected by all legitimate agencies agen-cies and organizations in work for the blind, and which eventually even-tually the general public would recognize as a guide for financial finan-cial support and a source of assurance as-surance of sound services for blind people, according to Bar-nett's Bar-nett's statement. Barnett concluded by stating that present misrepresentations and ineffectual activity in work for the blind make it urgent that all organizations interested in America's estimated 355,000 blind people join together in a pioneering effort to reduce these confusions to the greatest possible pos-sible extent. The American Foundation for the Blind is a private, non-profit research educational and service agency acting as a clearing house for problems concerning America's Amer-ica's estimated 355,000 blind persons. ditation of service programs for the blind. The alert went out to all national and state level, public pub-lic and private agencies for the blind, all public and private schools for the blind, libraries, Vpecialized national and local organizations, including all those listed in the official Directory published by the Foundation. The decision to send out this new challenge dates to a recent annual meeting of the Board of Trustees where it was approved unanimously under the direction of its president, Jansen Noyes, Jr. "The necessity for clarification clarifica-tion of the needs of blind people and setting of standards of programs pro-grams which attempt to meet those needs has been stimulated in general by awareness of opinion opin-ion from' two important segments of our population," the announcement announ-cement states. "They are, the growing expressions of concern by leaders of service programs about the absence of standards and the distortion of the public image of their agency activities |