  "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." Colossians 3:23-24 Compassion International Share your love, prayers and support with a boy or girl who lives in poverty. Children are waiting now. Bloopers? If it wasn't for our errors in communication we wouldn't have such things as bloopers such as these: ""Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances." --Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." --Al Gore, Vice President "If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record." --Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman "We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people." --Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor. "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." --Bill Clinton, President" 
 People can do strange things. The stange & humorous side of life. The old saying what goes around, comes around. Think a little after reading this. Employment Management Professionals Allen Anderson's website "getting jobs for people with employment barriers" Project Vote Smart "Project Vote Smart, a citizen's organization, has developed a Voter's Self-Defense system to provide you with the necessary tools to self-govern effectively: abundant, accurate, unbiased and relevant information. As a national library of factual information, Project Vote Smart covers your candidates and elected officials in five basic categories: biographical information, issue positions, voting records, campaign finances and interest group ratings." Federal Voting Assistance Program Democratic National Committee Republican National Committee Family Council US Voter Info "Simply enter your Zip code below and see which races/issues will appear on your ballot." Sierra Club Environmental issues The American Conservative Union National Rifle Association Voter Info Parenthood Voter Guide Memory Cross "If you believe that God's Word can change the lives of your kids then you need try Memory Cross�. For less than the cost of a fast food meal your children will hide God's Word in their hearts." You can use Memory Cross: Children's Story/Sermon Time Parents Teaching Kids Scripture Sunday School Classes Vacation Bible School Christian Schools And Much More FOR CENTURIES PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS WERE KEPT AWAY FROM THE REST OF SOCIETY, SOMETIMES LOCKED UP, OFTEN IN POOR CONDITIONS, WITH LITTLE OR NO SAY IN RUNNING THEIR LIVES. TODAY, NEGATIVE ATTITUDES LOCK THEM OUT OF SOCIETY MORE SUBTLY BUT JUST AS EFFECTIVELY. Stigma, why does it matter? "The trouble is, once someone is identified as different, it's hard for them to be accepted no matter how hard they try. They can't shake off the stigma and as a result they lose confidence in themselves. In time they come to believe that they are odd and don't fit in." "People with mental disorders are sometimes viewed as weak, as self-indulgent or as bringing their problems upon themselves. Even people with mental illness may believe they have themselves to blame. In fact, people with mental disorders need you to recognise that they are ill as much as people with physical complaints." What's your attitude about depression, anxiety, learning disability or any other disorder that effects the way the person acts, thinks or communicates? The Working Wounded: Depression In The Workplace "Depression is often manifested in ways that aren't obvious, which is why it's more prevalent in the workplace than people think," says Rob Kramer, Ph.D., who leads Ceridian's employee assistance program and absence management products. "Depression is often exhibited through negative attitudes towards fellow employees, supervisors and the workplace in general. Depression can add to health problems. It can also be a reaction to chronic health conditions, which makes managing these conditions more difficult." Are you inspired by what people with disabilities can accomplish and what people who truely care can do? Is your job a means to earn a living or a means to make a difference in people's lives? Read about an inspirational story. Retirement, Medical & Other Benefits Vitamin D deficiency apparently contributes to Seasonal Effective Disorder Try taking Vitamin D supplements if you suffer the winter blues from lack of exposure to sunlight. South Carolina Deferred Compensation Program South Carolina Retirement Systems REQUEST FOR SERVICE PURCHASE COST "As an actively contributing member of one of the South Carolina Retirement Systems, you may be entitled to purchase additional service credit. By completing this form and returning it to the address above, you are initiating the process to purchase service credit. Upon receipt of all necessary documentation, eligibility will be determined, and you will be informed by mail of the status of your request." Other SCRS Forms North Carolina Serving Employees Charlotte Mecklenburg Gov Site NC Retirement Systems Division "To contact the Division's Member Services Section, please call (919) 733-4191." A recovery built on retirees' backs "Every time Washington juggles numbers to keep the recovery going and make deficits less shocking, your golden years get a little more difficult. The Social Security Trust Fund, the pool of IOUs and current tax payments that funds monthly Social Security checks, is forecast to hit red ink in 2018 and be exhausted by 2042. Over the next 75 years, total unfunded Social Security benefit liabilities come to about $26 trillion, according to the Cato Institute. (The various Medicaid trust funds are also in deep trouble. For example, Medicare�s Hospitalization Trust Fund goes into the red in 2014, even sooner than Social Security.)" TheState.com State newspaper online. South Carolina State Employees Association 2004-2005 Legislative Program South Carolina State Employees Association Legislative Update South Carolina State Employees Association "Retirement, health insurance, dental insurance, deferred compensation, sick leave, annual leave--all benefits South Carolina state employees currently enjoy. But these, and other important benefits, have not always been available to you. Nearly every benefit state employees and retirees have now was provided by the state legislature, and the South Carolina State Employees Association has played a significant role supporting the passage of these benefits, as well as lobbying for consistent pay raises and retiree increases. Many benefits have been added and improved over SCSEA's 56-year history and new ones will likely come. But as in the past, much of the work of obtaining these will be through the Association and its 22,000 members." SC Legislature Online APS Healthcare Web Site "APS Healthcare Inc. is a private, for-profit managed behavioral health organization founded in 1992 by Kenneth Kessler, M.D. Based in Bethesda, Maryland, APS currently provides managed behavioral health, employee assistance programs (EAP), and specialty care management services to over 9.3 million covered lives in the United States and Puerto Rico." South Carolina State Employees you can connect to Online Provider Locator and APS Helplink(TM). State Health Plan Approved Provider List "In keeping with Informed Choice, the selection of a service provider is not restricted to those approved for State Health Plan participation but will include any quailified provider who will accept the department's fee schedule" according to a memo from Kerry dated 2/14/02. South Carolina Budget & Control Board Employee Insurance Program Companion HealthCare HMO CIGNA HMO Ins State Health Plan Medco Health South Carolina Employee Insurance Program Money Plu$ forms Health, Nutrition & Stress Reduction Info Interview with God"�What surprises you most about humankind?� God answered... �That they get bored with childhood, they rush to grow up, and then long to be children again.� �That they lose their health to make money... and then lose their money to restore their health.�" Participation in leisure activities appears to be one of many factors affecting the risk of dementia. A recent study revealed that people who frequently played board games in their leisure time had a reduced risk of developing dementia. Other mind-preserving leisure activities included playing a musical instrument, reading, and dancing. According to Real Age RealAge Depression Health Assessment "Most everyone suffers from a case of the blues now and then. Improving your emotional health and well-being can make your RealAge up to 16 years younger. Take this free, peer-reviewed assessment and find out: Which daily activities might help you beat depression Whether you should see a doctor or therapist Which and when antidepressant medications might be right for you Start living a happier, healthier life now. Take the RealAge Depression Health Assessment and get personalized recommendations today." Your Job May Be Killing You Stress is a "benefit" of many jobs. "Job strain that leads to physical illness has become a fact of life for millions of workers worldwide. Almost half of all working Americans report they are highly concerned about job-related stress, and reports from workers in other industrial countries echo this cry, with all too serious health consequences. High stress on the job generates greater risk of coronary heart disease, scores of studies have shown. Immune disorders, back pain, and mental and emotional strain are other clearly demonstrated risks. Although individuals can and should take steps to reduce and cope with the stress in their lives, solutions also must be found within the health care system, by employers and by those who set social policy. The Facts: Workers in jobs that give them little latitude indecision-making had a 50 percent higher rate of coronary heart disease than those with high job control in ongoing Whitehall II studies of more than 10,000 British civil servants. The same Whitehall II study shows a more than twofold risk for new coronary heart disease among civil servants who make a high level of personal effort on the job but receive little in the way of recognition or promotions. Workers in similar jobs in the United States, Japan, and Canada report similar levels of stress from the psychological demands and decision-making latitudes of their jobs, the amount of social support they receive at work, and their level of job insecurity. Unemployment creates health risks. Even a serious threat of unemployment triggers physiological effects linked to heart disease. Evidence from several countries demonstrates that unemployed persons and their families run a substantially increased risk of premature death. Women tend to experience job strain differently from men, for many reasons. One is that many of their jobs involve actions that must be repeated precisely every few seconds, as in cookie factories and clothing manufacturers." Depression in young women doubles risk of metabolic syndrome "Kinder and colleagues looked at results of a national health survey conducted between 1988 and 1994, covering more than 6,000 men and women ages 17 to 39. Women were more likely than men to have experienced a prior episode of depression, and those women who had had at least one episode were also more likely to suffer from the metabolic syndrome. People with the metabolic syndrome have at least three out of five factors linked to heart disease: high blood pressure; high triglycerides; low HDL (good) cholesterol; high fasting blood sugar; or abdominal obesity. �Depression in women was associated with the number of the metabolic syndrome components present,� Kinder says, adding that the association between depression and high blood pressure was especially strong. The relationship held even when the researchers controlled for age, race, education, smoking, physical inactivity, carbohydrate consumption and alcohol use. Depression in men was not associated with the metabolic syndrome or its components, she says. Kinder notes that depressed people more often smoke, eat unhealthy diets, or lead a sedentary life. They also take their medications less often or otherwise fail to follow their doctors� advice. But that is unlikely to be the whole story, she says. Depression can cause the heart to speed up, and is also associated with poor regulation of the hormonal system and with changes in white blood cell count, blood platelets and other biological markers. �Failure to recognize and treat depression in patients with the metabolic syndrome may have deleterious physiological as well as psychological consequences,� she says."" As I say "It's depressing to be depressed." CFS quizz Did your job stress cause CFS? Center for Nutrition Policy & Promotion "works to improve the health and well-being of Americans by developing and promoting dietary guidance that links scientific research to the nutrition needs of consumers." Stress Affects Immunity In Ways Related To Stress Type And Duration "Psychologists have long known that stress affects our ability to fight infection, but a major new "meta-analysis" � a study of studies � has elucidated intriguing patterns of how stress affects human immunity, strengthening it in the short term but wearing it down over time. The report appears in the July issue of Psychological Bulletin, which is published by the American Psychological Association. Major findings are three-fold. First, the overlapping findings of 293 independent studies reported in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1960 and 2001 � with some 18,941 individuals taking part in all -- powerfully confirm the core fact that stress alters immunity. Second, the authors of the meta-analysis observed a distinctive pattern: Short-term stress actually "revs up" the immune system, an adaptive response preparing for injury or infection, but long-term or chronic stress causes too much wear and tear, and the system breaks down. Third, the immune systems of people who are older or already sick are more prone to stress-related change. Psychologists Suzanne Segerstrom, PhD, of the University of Kentucky, and Gregory Miller, PhD, of the University of British Columbia, analyzed the results of the nearly 300 studies by sorting them into different categories and statistically evaluating relationships. For example, the five stressor categories included: Acute time-limited stressors: lab challenges such as public speaking or mental math. Brief naturalistic stressors: real-world challenges such as academic tests. Stressful event sequences: a focal event such as loss of a spouse or major natural disaster gives rise to a series of related challenges that people know at some point will end. Chronic stressors: pervasive demands that force people to restructure their identity or social roles, without any clear end point � such as injury resulting in permanent disability, caring for a spouse with severe dementia, or being a refugee forced from one's native country by war. Distant stressors: traumatic experiences that occurred in the distant past yet can continue modifying the immune system because of their long-lasting emotional and cognitive consequences, such as child abuse, combat trauma or having been a prisoner of war. The psychologists also looked at the effects of the various stressors on different immune responses, such as natural and specific immunity. Natural immunity produces quick-acting, all-purpose cells that can attack many pathogens; they bring fever and inflammation. While they fight on the front line, the body takes a few days to mount a more efficient attack on specific invaders via the lymphocytes (T-cells and B cells) of specific immunity. Specific immunity has both cellular responses, which fight pathogens that get inside cells (such as viruses), and humoral responses, which fight pathogens that stay outside cells, such as bacteria and parasites. Scientists have identified the blood markers of these different immune responses; stress studies measure them to indicate stress response. As a result, Segerstrom and Miller were able to assess how different types of immune response correlated with different types of stress. Write the authors, "Stressful events reliably associate with changes in the immune system and�characteristics of those events are important in determining the kind of change that occurs." Acute time-limited stressors, the type that produce a "fight or flight" response, prompted the immune system to ready itself for infections resulting from bites, punctures, scrapes or other challenges to the integrity of the skin and blood. In evolution, this response would be selected as adaptive. Brief stressors enhanced quick, energy-efficient natural immunity, to help the body meet the challenge prompting fight or flight. At the same time, certain aspects of specific immunity that consume time and energy were suppressed. Stressful event sequences seemed to be weakly associated with different immune consequences, depending on the type of event. The data suggested different patterns for bereavement (loss) and trauma, but the authors didn't see associations strong enough to make new claims. In this regard, further study is needed. The most chronic stressors � which change people's identities or social roles, are more beyond their control and seem endless -- were associated with the most global suppression of immunity; almost all measures of immune function dropped across the board. Duration of stress came into play: The longer the stress, the more the immune system shifted from potentially adaptive changes (such as those in the acute "fight or flight" response) to potentially detrimental changes, at first in cellular immunity and then in broader immune function. Thus, stressors that turn a person's world upside down and appear to offer no "light at the end of the tunnel" could have the greatest psychological and physiological impact. Finally, Segerstrom and Miller found that age and disease status affected a person's vulnerability to stress-related decreases in immune function. They attribute this to how illness and age make it harder for the body to regulate itself. The authors are satisfied that their meta-analysis confirms the value of looking at stressors and immunity in greater detail to learn the mechanisms underlying the body's response to stress. In this case, defining stressor types and examining natural vs. specific and cellular vs. humoral immune responses turned up useful information. Says Miller, "A meta-analysis lets you ask questions that are too big for any one study to answer. You see if things are consistent over the gamut of labs, methods and people." Future studies, the authors hope, will look at the role of behavior in the stress-immunity pathway. For example, optimism and coping are known to mitigate the immune response to stress. Further, they write that the most pressing question facing researchers is, "the extent to which stressor-induced changes in the immune system have meaningful implications for disease susceptibility in otherwise healthy humans." The field of psychoneuroimmunology has yet to tie together the various threads of research to determine whether immune system changes are the reason that stress makes people more likely to get sick." Misc Info WIS TV Columbia website will give info on SCVR closings due to hazardous weather conditions. Office of Human Resources link to the Hazardous Weather Updates  Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary & Thesaurus. Robert, enjoy! CARFAX Buying a used car? Get it's VIN number & check out the car. Free Services: Lemon Check, Record Check, Recall Check & Problem Car Check. Kelley Blue Book Check car values for trade in vs purchase of used car. It's amazing the difference. Also you can use this to get an estimate of the value of cars in general. Geico Save $ on your car insurance. Call 1-800-830-3060. "Welcome to GovBenefits.gov, the official government benefits website! This is a free, confidential tool that helps you find government benefits you may be eligible to receive." Community Food and Nutrition Program "1) To coordinate private and public food assistance resources to better serve the food and nutrition needs of low-income populations 2) To assist low-income communities to identify potential sponsors of child nutrition programs in undeserved or unserved areas 3) To develop innovative approaches at the State and Local level to meet the nutrition needs of low-income individuals, including displaced workers, elderly people, children, and the working poor and other low-income individuals" Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) "is a Federal program that helps supplement the diets of low-income needy individuals and families, including elderly people, by providing them with emergency food assistance at no cost." Employment and Training Assistance "Services are provided through One-Stop Centers in local communities." Individual Development Accounts (IDAS) "Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are dedicated savings accounts that help lower income individuals and families pay for postsecondary education, purchase a first home, or start a business. Deposits made by IDA participants are matched up to a total of $4000 by federal and locally provided funds." The Lewin Group "premier national health care and human services consulting firm with more than 30 years of experience finding answers and solving problems for leading organizations in the public, non-profit, and private sectors." Welcome to "At Your Service: Welcoming Customers with Disabilities." "objectives of this course are to: Increase understanding of the needs and experiences of people with disabilities Present how to adjust general customer service standards to meet the needs of the customer with a disability Develop basic etiquette for interacting with a customer who has a disability Show how to comply with statutes regarding service to people with disabilities, particularly the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 U.S. Department of Labor Employment & Training Administration WIA Waiver Authority: Increased Flexibility and Improved Programmatic Outcomes Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Principles One of the principles is "Empowering individuals in several ways. First, eligible adults are given financial power to use Individual Training Accounts (ITA's) at qualified institutions. These ITA's supplement financial aid already available through other sources, or, if no other financial aid is available, they may pay for all the costs of training. Second,individuals are empowered with greater levels of information and guidance, through a system of consumer reports providing key information on the performance outcomes of training and education providers. Third, individuals are empowered through the advice,guidance, and support available through the One-Stop system, and the activities of One-Stop partners." Work Opportunity Tax Credit WOTC "The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), authorized by the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-188), is a federal tax credit that encourages employers to hire eight targeted groups of job seekers by reducing employers� federal income tax liability." Publication 954 Tax Incentives for Empowerment Zones and Other Distressed Communities Includes Work Opportunity Tax Credit SCOIS South Carolina Occupational Information System
Web Directory to York County South Carolina Yorko.com Serving Rock Hill, Fort Mill, Tega Cay, Lancaster, Lake Wylie, York, Chester and Clover York County Contact List Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification
South Carolina State Election Commission Switchboard Inc. "Switchboard provides a fast and easy way for people and businesses to find each other on the Web. Each day, millions of consumers find the businesses they need through Switchboard�from a local florist, to a nearby car dealership, to the restaurants closest to a planned travel or vacation destination." The Beaumont Foundation of America grants Toshiba branded equipment to support digital inclusion for underserved individuals. The Foundation will grant $350 million over 5 years in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Cando.com Need to get hard-to-find products, resources and information that inspires greater independence and better daily living for your client and/or their family? SAMHSA's National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information You can order books and other resources on drug and alcohol addiction for free! Sober Recovery.com Other job search sites from the Employment Services handout South Carolina Department of Vocational Rehabilitaion 1995 South Carolina Statistical Abstract � Health and Public Welfare It's interesting reading North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Michigan Bulb Company You can order annuals, perennials, shrubs, vegatables and all kinds of plants. I can vouch for the bulbs. They come up in our yard every year. IQ and EQ Tests How smart are you? How mature are you emotionally? Curious? Check it out (at home of course. Big brother is watching you at work.) How do you react to people with disabilities?Are you an advocate?  |