By Jamica Whitaker
The Daily Dispatch

Community input is needed on the top priorities facing people with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

The North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities held a listening session Friday afternoon at Aycock Recreation Center to gain face-to-face insight on living with an intellectual or developmental disability. The session was one of more than 10 across the state to help the agency gather feedback on what's working, what isn't working, and top concerns of people living with intellectual or developmental disabilities before the council drafts its goals for the next five years.

There are 56 councils representing the United States and its territories.

North Carolina's council works on behalf of more than 182,000 residents with an intellectual or developmental disability and their families.

Each council operates under a five-year plan and in order to do that, we have to be out listening to what it is that matters most to you all, to help us focus the attention over the next five years, Chris Egan, executive director of NCCDD, said. We need to hear from you. We need to learn from you.

The NCCDD has a 40-member, governor-appointed board. Of the board, 60 percent of its members are required to have an intellectual or developmental disability or have a family member with a disability. The remaining 40 percent include the heads of state agencies and local management entities. The NCCDD falls under the state Department of Health and Human Services and works to ensure that people with intellectual or developmental disabilities are able to make choices, be independent, productive, integrated and included in community life.

The five-year plan allows NCCDD to use its more than $1 million budget to fund various initiatives. The current focus is jobs and transitioning from school to work, Egan said. Those choices have been pretty limited for many people, he said. We want to strengthen the visibility, the importance of people with disabilities in the workforce.

The listening session was composed of three questions relating to people with an intellectual or developmental disability: what's going well, what needs to change and how could it change. Participants said the people they knew with an intellectual or developmental disability were living independently, but limited in their progress by the restrictions surrounding their Social Security or disability benefits. Some said people with intellectual or developmental disabilities were unable to work because the potential income would put them right over the income limit for assistance, and they would lose benefits.

Vernelle Hicks attended the session and provided input. I needed to learn about this, she said. It was very useful. I learned a lot.

Egan said the session was very personal and very useful. I thought people really shared form the heart what matters to them, it was very real, he said. We have to hear from the people we're here to represent and serve.

TO PARTICIPATE: People unable to attend the listening session can do an online survey at www.nccdd.org.

The original article was published on June 26, 2015 in the The Daily Dispatch.