Mary serves at the Executive Director for the Department of Special Needs Ministries for the Archdiocese of Washington. The special needs department provides pastoral services to those in the District of Columbia and surrounding areas. who are deaf, blind, or disabled. Mary states that working with the disabled is one of the most rewarding careers because every day she is reminded of what is really important. She advises those interested in working with special needs individuals to test the waters and make sure reality is close to what they envision it to be before jumping into the role.
Transcript
>> 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.
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