The METO Settlement

Mary Raasch: That means to have dreams, big dreams, and to keep your dreams. To achieve your dreams. You could have a dream all the way up to going to college if you haven't gone to college. You can get your own driver's license. You can run your own meetings. You can have friends over. You can go out to the movies. You can dance. You can have parties. You can be with your family, with your friends. It means to have, you know to, kind of take aside, take charge of what you want in your life and dream big.

Roberta Blomster: It means that I can make my own outcomes for the year and run my own meeting. And I've even gone through a self-discovery assessment too.

Interviewer: Explain what that is.

Roberta Blomster: Oh, that is where the client gets to mention in terms of a future job, where it should go, and mine came out to be along the lines of public policy, politics.

Brian Jenson: I go to my own meetings and whoever my staff at my group home is, they just sit there and let me do the talking, and I have views, you know, or they come and might ask me if I have any ideas. That's… that's all they ask, and then I say okay, yes, I've done this before or maybe I'd like to try something new.

Mary Raasch: I ran my own meeting for the very first time. I did a very good PowerPoint, and I had some new goals set. I'm working on those goals. I did… I did all of the talking. Hello. Excuse me. Whose meeting is this, you know? Who… Who is here to talk and who's here to listen? We're not sitting there having somebody talk about, oh, what we should do in our lives. It's our lives.

Roberta Blomster: And I've actually been in charge of my annual meeting since 2007, so…

Interviewer: And when you say you're in charge of that, what does that mean, when you're in charge of your own meeting?

Roberta Blomster: I run it. I don't let my support team and my social worker and even my mom do all the talking. It's me that's doing the talking.

Interviewer: And what did you find in the past that happened with that?

Roberta Blomster: I felt like I was being ignored. Like I didn't have a voice.

Interviewer: And now you feel?

Roberta Blomster: That I do have a voice.

Interviewer: And how does that make you feel?

Roberta Blomster: Pretty awesome.

David Donnelly: It's my life.

Interviewer: It's your life, okay. So who should be developing your goals?

David Donnelly: Me.

Interviewer: Do you feel like you have a good life right now, David?

David Donnelly: Yeah.