ultramar This was a training program specifically for persons who face a low chance of succeeding in the workplace without supportive help. They said they needed to know explicit details about the nature of my mental health diagnosis, in order to know how to best support my success in the program. I really appreciate you saying that this all sounds like "a very strange process." The more I think about it, the more it seems that way to me.

When I was first contacted by this organization, the person who called asked about my circumstances. She asked if I had a disabillity. I answered, "Yes." She then said, "Can you tell me about it?" That seemed a bit strange to me. I responded that I didn't what to give a lot of personal information out to someone callling me on the phone whom I had never met. (This was a program I applied for over 2 years ago. I never heard anything for 2 years. So I was skeptical about how interested they really were to take me on as a client. I should have stuck with that skepticism.)

At the orientation, they asked that I bring them a note from a doctor. I asked if this was really necessary, since I was a recipient of SSDI. The answer was, "No." One of the presenters of the orientation said it was only needed that they make a copy of my award letter from Social Security.

Then, at the meeting with my assigned coordinator, the "fishing around" started again. I had provided them my psych diagnosis and med list in writing. The coordinator asked for a note from my doctor. The coordinator had read a lot of my intake info, so it seemed strange that this fishing continued. I mean, I wondered what more they wanted to know? It was a long interview that seemed to involve a lot of fishing. I even said that the Social Security Administration does not grant SSDI lightly and that they had deemed me as having a disability.

I don't think all this repeated querying is exactly legal. Maybe it falls in that grey zone between perfectly legal and illegal.

My understanding is that it is appropriate to focus on what sort of "reasonable accommodation" will the participant/employee need. To clarify that, I said that it always takes me longer to become oriented to a new work situation than it does most people. I said that I have anxiety that is very tough, until I have become acclimated to a new work environment. The interviewer asked, "Do you become overwhelmed?" I said that I would not say the problem was quite that bad." I tend to be slow at my work when it is new to me.

I said that I thought that lack of computer literacy was a big impediment to me limiting job opportunities. We were discussing me being placed in a position where I would be answering phones and making copies of things. That is way less demanding that the professional jobs I've done in the past.

Then the interviewer asked if I was interested in "administrative" work or "teaching." That seemed a bit ambitious for me, at this stage of the game, and I said that I did not think I had the confidence for that level of responsibility, but that, with some success under my belt doing something less challenging, that it might be a future possibility.

The interviewer did not make this decision. Her supervisor did. When I said that I understood that the program did help people with very serious impediments to getting back in the work place, the supervisor said that they could not discuss personal information about other participants. Now, to me that was just a red herring. I was not the one trying to violate anyone's privacy - kind of ironic for them to take that tack. It got to be just another instance of fishing around for something.

I think their approach to recruiting participants is deplorable.