To the editor:
As a member of Maine’s blind community, I am dismayed that the state contract for providing community-based services to the blind and visually impaired has not been awarded to The Iris Network as it has been for more than 35 years.
It is questionable that the Maine Department of Labor Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired awarded the contract to Catholic Charities Maine, which will spend more in administrative costs than the Iris Network proposal calls for.
It has no experience in providing community-based services to the adult and elderly blind and visually impaired population, and it does not currently have the professionally trained and certified vocational rehabilitation therapists needed to provide services — though it proposes to hire them away from the Iris Network.
Catholic Charities Maine is not nationally certified to provide these services as the Iris Network is and has been for many years. Hopefully, the appeal process currently underway will succeed in reversing this misdirected decision.
