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CADRE HONORS TWO NEW YORK SOCIAL SERVICE PIONEERS
December 1, 2000
A twosome that took the notion of inclusion beyond the classroom won accolades from the Consortium for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education during the organization's first symposium in Washington, D.C. Myrta Cuadra and Richard Lash, founders of Sinergia, a New York City community service group for low-income families with disabilities, won CADRE's first Keys to Access Award.
The husband and wife team were recognized for their broad-reaching efforts to help underprivileged families get the services they need. Cuadra and Lash started Direction Service, the predecessor of Sinergia, in 1977 with funding from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to help children with disabilities get appropriate education and health services. Starting on New York's upper west side, they grew to encompass sections of Harlem and Spanish Harlem and other areas of the city, drawing in more of New York's social services agencies and organizations and influencing policy in other areas of the state, such as in the early childhood resource centers.
Due to the poor state of public services in New York City in the late 1970s, "Direction Service very quickly became an oasis, especially for poor families," Cuadra said. "They had immigrated to New York City to find a better place for their families and more opportunity for their children with handicapping conditions, only to find desperation, homelessness, a huge, impersonal educational bureaucracy and a social services system which intimidated and dehumanized individuals."
Direction Service expanded its focus to try to help its clients in all of those areas. "By necessity, we became welfare and housing advocates as well as educational advocates in order to help families and children survive," she explained. "We could not turn our faces away from people who trusted us and for whom we signified hope."
Demonstrating that they were willing to work hard to improve the community as a whole was the key to gaining acceptance for Direction Service and Sinergia, Cuadra added. That acceptance helped the organizations enlist other community groups for their advocacy efforts. Through that experience, Cuadra said, she and Lash learned the importance of collaboration, one of the buzz words in contemporary special ed planning. "In order to build an inclusive society, we must engage collaboratively in community building and helping to bring to the table individuals who have been left out," she said.
In addition to being committed to the local community, Lash says, a commitment to the concept of collaboration, both within one group and with other agencies, is critical for creating a productive organization. "We couldn't ask them to support us unless we took an interest in what they were doing," Lash said. "When they needed us, we had to respond, whether it was education or not."
Cuadra and Lash are not new to the national special ed and social services communities, having earned several other awards for their work over the past 23 years. At CADRE's award ceremony, several special ed leaders added their praise. "Dick and Myrta have been instrumental in holding the City of New York accountable for their actions related to the provision of a free appropriate public education for all children," Federal Resource Centers for Education Director Carol Valdivieso said in a statement. "They have, through their actions and the work of Sinergia, lived their philosophy of valuing diversity and respecting all individuals."
According to Valdivieso and others, Cuadra and Lash have had a lasting impact on efforts to fight minority overrepresentation in special ed classes, inadequate referrals of minority students to appropriate settings, the overall disparity of services for children from low-income homes, the lack of inclusive programs and combined prejudices against race, ethnicity, language differences and disabilities.
"Raising children with disabilities is a difficult task for everyone, and for families whose income is low, who do not communicate comfortably in English, who do not read well, who are homeless and who may be poorly educated, the difficulty can be insurmountable," noted Suzanne Ripley, director of the National Information Center
for Children and Youth with Disabilities. "Generations have benefited from Myrta and Dick's services."
CADRE plans to present its Keys to Access Award each year to people who have supported special ed programs, early intervention services and other efforts to assist people with disabilities by encouraging cooperative processes, demonstrating the value of diversity and promoting justice and equity for all people.8
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