>> I'm Mary O'Meara and I am the Executive Director for the Department
of Special Needs Ministries for the Archdiocese of Washington.
So I run what is a pastoral ministry service based program which is an outreach to people
that live in the District of Columbia and 5 counties in Maryland which provide services
for people who are deaf, people are disabled either developmentally
or physically disabled, persons who are blind.
And our 2 new outreaches are for those for mental illness and for veterans with PTSD
and TBI's, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury.
So on a daily basis we have people in the office some days
or most days folks are out of the office.
We try to keep Tuesday's as the day that everybody's on site at the same time
so we can have staff meetings and the like.
But for the most part our staff including myself are out in the parishes
or in other service agencies in the district or in those 5 Maryland counties
that we serve assisting folks access into churches or religious education programs
or any program within their parish community if the person is deaf or disabled,
blind or has any sort of disability.
Pretty much on a weekly basis that we also serve an outreach and provide adapted materials
so that they are able to participate in religious education and receive the sacraments
and be part of the church community with everyone else.