Public and Private Support are Critical to Social Enterprise.

We spend a lot of time and energy marketing our commercial products and industrial services that generate the financial currency to fulfill our social mission.   We do this because it is necessary to survive and promote our cause.

There are reasons to supplement the funding for the mission of  The Nezinscot Guild so as to accomplish the goals of our social purpose.  Private and Public  partnership is necessary!

Yes, we manufacture quality wood products and we perform respected repackaging services for industry, but we also do many of the professional activities associated with social service agencies.

The human capital of our organization is our most important product.  It is why we exist at all.

We are a manufacturer of quality products and services on the surface.  But first we advocate for and train our potential employees.  We analyze their skills and any possible barriers to productivity.    After assessment we create jigs and other disciplines to overcome whatever physical and cognitive obstacles that may exist to prevent successful employment.

We create an environment of support and encouragement well beyond the norms or expectations of regular small business.  We acclimate people to the culture of the work place.

We provide an environment of trial and error experiences in a dynamic small business.  We feel the time we invest in a potential worker with disabilities will benefit our enterprise, the individual and the community.

This attention to making people with special needs successful is part of our success as a social purpose enterprise.  But it does have a cost beyond the operations of a small business.  Time spent encouraging and enabling people to succeed doesn’t fully get recaptured in the cost and profit we return on our products and services sales.  If we were to charge the full cost of our social investment in addition to  our commercial products and services costs we would no longer be competitive in the market place.

Social services are, by  their nature, not profitable. Combining enterprise with social service has the real potential to slash tax payer costs and eliminate the inefficiencies of government bureaucracy in meeting society’s obligation to its less fortunate citizens.  While savings to the American tax payer is clearly an outcome, only the naive would suggest that social enterprise can cover the full cost of services for social responsibility.

The Nezinscot Guild has self supported itself for 31 years.  We currently fund 95% of our operational expense through our businesses.  We need public and private partners to grow our special services and mission as we strive for 100% self sufficiency.

Confusion about MaineCare and The Obama Public Option

I read an article in The Wall Sreet Journal about how MaineCare is a bad example of  the Public option for National Health insurance. This was quite an eye opener since Maine doesn’t seem to realize that it is a bad example.      http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574322401816501182.html  .  Maybe Maine doesn’t understand what the current State of Maine administration is doing.  I hope that’s it!

I think part of the problem is the lack of transparency in the whole MaineCare approach.  For years it has been a Baldacci driven initiative with very little disclosure or input from the developmental disability service provider community.  The Baldacci administration was supposedly saving money by putting services for the developmentally disabled under one umbrella of The Maine Department Of Health and Human Services.  It had previously been a separate bureau.  The notion that people with developmental disabilities’ services should fall under a medical model is flawed from the get go.

I continue to ask how does universal health care relate to services for people with developmental disabilities.  I have not heard one interview or read a single article that  addresses the cost of providing services to people with developmental disabilities in relation to health care.  If MaineCare is the State’s model for universal health care, are services for the developmentally disabled a legitimate Medicare expense?  Are people with developmental disabilities all elderly and sick?  I think not.  Should their genuine needs be compromised by the one box fits all accounting that pervades current state governments.  I hope not, because the years that were dedicated to increasing development of individuals lives over mundane maintenance will have been for nothing.

People with developmental disabilities have special needs.  Most of them have nothing to do with medical model reimbursement from the Feds.  The state is trying to push all the services for everybody into the MaineCare model.  It’s not innovative, its just a strategy to get federal funding to  support the ever growing DHHS state budget.  Mainecare medical model and services for the dynamic population of ambitious citizens with developmental disabilitities is a bad match.