Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

November/December 1998

President's Message

I WOULD FIRST LIKE TO take this opportunity to express my appreciation to the membership of NADE for the opportunity to serve this year as your President. It is truly an honor for me. I want every NADE member to know that I am accessible and I would like to hear from you whenever you have a concern or would like information. Likewise, I will do the same. Communication will be the internal fire that drives the NADE engine. Let’s keep the fire burning! I would like to express my appreciation to SoDADE for the excellent job they did in arranging this year’s national conference. For those of you who missed it, you missed a great conference and a great time! SoDADE has staged two very excellent national conferences in the past eight years and they deserve a lot of credit. The members of SoDADE worked very hard to make our visit to South Dakota very enjoyable and they should be commended for their efforts. We declare to the world that, “NADE’s strength comes from the involvement of our members.” Yet, too few of our members choose to get involved! What impact does this have on our Association’s strength? We tell the world that, “NADE’s voice is made louder by the more members we have.” Yet, if those members’ voices are silent, how loud can our voice be? We need to work together to increase the involvement of our membership and to educate our members as to how they can get involved. We tell each other and our colleagues that, “NADE is YOUR professional association.” One of the goals I have established for the coming year will be to make sure that every NADE member, and every potential NADE member, believes in that statement. Michelangelo once declared that, “The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” NADE has never been a bashful or shy association and we have never been satisfied with maintaining the status quo. We will not start now. We will set our goals high and we will not be content until we have achieved them. This year, with the involvement of every NADE member, we are going to BE about a lot of things, some old, some new. Above all else, we are going to continue to BE a truly professional, highly credible, association whose input and opinion matters to those in the political world who decide how we will do our jobs. We are going to BE about membership. Many of our members have chosen to become complacent over the years, less willing to pay their membership fee, choosing instead to let others fight for them. Complacency is one of the greatest destructive forces in any organization. NADE’s ability to remain a force in the decision making process of how we will do our jobs, and what our work environment will be like, will depend on our ability to find ways to energize our members and encourage their full participation in the activities of our association. Susan LaMorte will serve this year as national membership director but membership is not the responsibility of just one person, or one committee. It is the responsibility of all of us. We must encourage every member to examine their own involvement at the chapter, regional or national level, and what their involvement says about their commitment to themselves as a professional. We must all realize that NADE is not only our avenue whereby we can have input into national issues, but NADE is also our avenue to develop our many other skills and talents, to develop close friendships with our co-workers and with colleagues across the country, and to receive the recognition we deserve for the excellent work that we do. NADE’s voice does need to be louder, and SSA, the Congress, the courts, and the media need to listen more to our voice. We cannot continue to allow the way we do business to be dictated by court decisions and legislative mandates. Our membership is the best trained, most knowledgeable, and the most dedicated group of professionals to ever handle a disability claim. Yet, more and more, it appears that the process of getting from point A to point B of a disability claim has less to do with our knowledge or with our training, than it does with what we are being told to do by the courts, or by Congress, or by media pressure. We are going to continue to BE involved in the legislative process and in the monitoring of court litigation because we have no choice and because the voice of the disability professional needs to be heard in those areas. Martha Marshall and Dale Foot, both of whom have proven their expertise in these respective areas, will continue to direct NADE’s efforts during the coming year. We are going to BE about professional certification. We need to look at our own certification process and perhaps strengthen it. There should be financial incentives for our members who seek to take advantage of continuing education opportunities to increase their knowledge and skills above and beyond the minimum required to perform their jobs. There should be increased recognition for employees who gain certification through NADE. We are going to BE about increasing NADE’s role in providing these opportunities for continuing education, so that our members don’t become dinosaurs in their own field. NADE is going to BE a force in the development of national training standards. We will continue to provide technical expertise to SSA’s Office of Training and we will continue to be represented on the DATS workgroup. We will continue to BE about insuring that NADE remains a visible force in disability redesign. We will push for decisions to be made regarding the various elements of redesign that have been piloted and we will push for these decisions to be made based on factual information and data. We will continue to cooperate with SSA in establishing a solid foundation for the disability program of the 2lst century. This year, we will BE about reaching out to those DDS administrators and other officials, and to our colleagues who have not fully supported NADE in the past. We will show them that we are a dynamic, positive, professional association deserving of their support. This year we are going to BE about a lot of things, but we will need your involvement, and the involvement of every NADE member to make it all happen. NADE is YOUR professional association. Believe in it and be involved in it! Thank you. - Jeff