When David Whalen launched a disability awareness training program for first responders in 2004, he wanted to strengthen services and support for people living with disabilities.
At the time, Whalen had spent years working as a developmental disability service provider for the Niagara Falls ARC. He was also the father of a son born with spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy. He’d seen firsthand how a lack of awareness about disabilities could ripple across a life, from ruining a dinner out to hindering effective care and treatment during an emergency.
“It’s inequality that doesn’t need to exist,” he says.
And so, Whalen set up a consulting service from his living room and began speaking to local Emergency Medical Service (EMS) professionals. With help from advocates and community members, he assembled a curriculum that provided clear definitions of a wide range of physical and developmental disabilities, outlined specific health challenges, and offered strategies to ensure respectful and effective communication.
As word began to spread, Whalen joined forces with Niagara University, growing the program so it not only offered courses for EMS professionals, but firefighters, law enforcement and 911 operators. Twenty years later, Whalen is now director of national advancement at the Institute on Disability Awareness at Niagara University (IDA@NU) – and the course that began in his living room has so far trained thousands of people from New York to Louisiana to South Dakota.
“Disability Awareness Training for First Responders” is among the spotlighted resources in the National Paralysis Resource Center’s new collection for EMS professionals. The collection, which also includes a comprehensive overview of paralysis-related secondary conditions, wheelchair etiquette and carrying techniques, is available for free at the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation website here.
For Whalen, the widespread success of the training course has been gratifying, but he is far from finished. The course curriculums are ever evolving as Whalen regularly checks in with colleagues and community members about their experiences with treatment and care.
“We don’t work in a silo – it’s just the opposite,” he says. “It’s a massive topic area. I may know more about autism or cerebral palsy than 90 percent of the population, but there’s 10 percent who know more than me. We are always learning.”
Along with instructor-led conversations about identifying and responding to a wide range of disabilities, the training courses also include videos featuring first-person accounts that are meant to resonate. One video features a man living with a spinal cord injury describing his experience after a car accident. When first responders arrived on the scene, they were surprised to find him driving the vehicle and asked if he was allowed to be out alone.
That, Whalen says, is an example of the ill-informed assumptions that can damage trust and effective pre-hospital care from the start. But when he plays the video for first responders in his courses, they are ready to learn what they don’t know.
“This is where we get the positive response,” he says. “Nine out of ten people really want to be up to speed. Most people are genuine and real and want to do the right thing.”
For more information about Disability Awareness Training for First Responders visit the Institute on Disability Awareness at Niagara University’s website at https://ida.niagara.edu/
For more information about paralysis and spinal cord injury, visit the National Paralysis Resource Center website.