How much do we love Bangor’s AmeriCorps?

We don’t have enough space to tell you!!!

Once again, Mr. Robert Cyr and his group of AmeriCorps volunteers have brought some wonderful changes to the Warren Center. After several years of light pinkish-mauve paint, we have new, washable, pale blue walls all throughout the building! Take a look the next time you’re in - the place looks bright and soothing - just in time for spring! And they even tiled the floor of the ladies’ room!
Many, many thanks to AmeriCorps volunteers for making our home look so good!

Administrative Director Mary E. Poulin Takes New Orleans by Storm!

Well, o.k., perhaps not exactly by storm, but on April 11 and 12, Administrative Director Mary Poulin did attend the annual meeting of the National Association of Speech & Hearing Centers (NASHC) in New Orleans. NASHC is an association of directors of not for profit speech and hearing centers throughout the United States. Mary serves as treasurer of the association.

At the New Orleans meeting, educational sessions were held on a variety of topics including HIPAA regulations, public relations positioning, the newest in hearing aid technology and developments, staff productivity, and board development. There was also a session clarifying the new NASHC certification process. The Warren Center is expecting to receive formal notification of NASHC certification very soon.

Speaking of HIPPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, has caused any organization dealing with health information to conform to certain patient privacy laws. The Warren Center’s privacy policy is posted in the Warren Center lobby, available online at www.warrencenter.org/privacytext.html or through Client Coordinator Sally McNamee at the Warren Center office. Any questions regarding the privacy policy should be addressed to Administrative Director Mary E. Poulin.

Third-Annual Voices to be Heard Yard Sale

Of course, Saturday, May 10 is the day of our big annual yard sale from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.! Held in the Warren Center parking lot rain or shine (or snow, the way spring has been this year!) Whatever the weather, we’ll have cool things for the whole family! All proceeds from the yard sale help benefit the Voices to be Heard program, which helps those who are deaf or have serious hearing loss, learn to listen and speak. Speech-Language Pathologist Amy Bragg works very hard to ensure that the yard sale has lots of fabulous stuff. Last year’s items included wonderful records (even some educational LP’s with frog and bird songs!) a profusion of Beanie Babies, plenty of toys, books, glassware, dishes, housewares and many other delightful items!

If you’re looking at doing some spring cleaning and have some items you just don’t have room for any more, please donate them to the Center’s yard sale! Remember the old adage that “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure!”
For more information, check out the website at www.warrencenter.org. If you’d like to volunteer or become a business sponsor, please call the Center for details at 941-2850.

Music in the Night Benefit Concert

On the evening of May 10, at 7 p.m. the Warren Center will be having a concert to benefit Warren Center programs. The concert will be held, right down the block from the Warren Center at the beautiful and historic Union Street Brick Church.

Guitarist Robert Ford will perform some wonderful music for classical guitar to help usher in Spring. Rob is a teacher of music at the Bangor Campus of the University of Maine at Augusta and performed with an Arcady award-winning classical guitar trio. While a Master’s student at the University of Maine at Orono, Rob was awarded the prestigious Liberace Scholarship.

Rob can be found playing and teaching music for guitar in a variety of styles, however for us, he will play some of the most lovely music written for the instrument in the last several centuries. (And perhaps some more modern surprises!)
Tickets are available at the Warren Center, Knapps Music and the Grasshopper Shop’s “Hop,” and will be available at the yard sale and at the door the night of the performance. Please come and support a wonderful organization while celebrating the beauty of music, spring and sound!

For more information, check the Warren Center website at www.warrencenter.org or call the Center at 941-2850.

Notes from the Program Director…

Spring has sprung, the grass has risen, I wonder when the playground will dry out so we can play outside. . .

Outdoor play is a great way to stimulate language and practice social skills. Every child needs to practice their turn-taking skills for outdoor as well as indoor play. Waiting for their turn for the swings or slide is just as an important skill as sitting at circle time. Here at the Warren Center we are fortunate to have a large enclosed play area to practice these skills. While it might be true that the adults enjoy getting outside after the long winter as much as the children, it is with a treatment goal in mind. Many of the preschool children that we see have difficulty finding and using the words to be an active social participant on the playground. While it is our goal to help children be successful in their future classrooms, it is just as important that speech and language disordered youngsters are successful on the playground, because school is a very social as well as academic place.

We have new GRANDMOTHERS!

Speech-Language Pathologist Judy Sternal’s family must love the Warren Center a lot, because Judy’s first grandchild, born April 2, 2003, is delightfully named Warren B. Ricker. And on April 14, 2003, Administrative Director Mary Poulin had her first grandchild, Riley Joseph Poulin-Bickford. Congrats to our new grammies from the Center.

Meet the Staff!
Featuring Cindy Phinney.

Since you’ve been getting to know our new staff members, we thought it would be nice to introduce you to some folks who have been working with us for a while. We decided to start with a wonderful clinician, Cynthia Phinney. (It’s kind of a Warren Cent-ric “It’s Your Life!”)

Well, Cindy started at the center in 1986 as a part-time secretary for Bangor Regional Speech and Hearing—as we were known. She also worked as a Speech aide, and a Child Development Trainer. She must have thought that what the clinicians did looked like fun, because in 1994-5, she went back to graduate school to get her Masters’ Degree in Speech Pathology from UMO. Cindy graduated in 1998, and began her Clinical Fellowship year with us, and will have been an SLP with us for 5 years this May.

Cindy’s specialties are preschoolers, she is the main clinician at the Davis Road Child Development Center. She serves six classrooms in that building. She spends all of her mornings there. In the afternoon, she is at UCP working with the multi-handicapped classroom. She has had additional training in the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and in pre-literacy skill training. We are very thankful to have her on our staff, she is gentle and kind with all her clients, and the teachers in the classrooms that she serves feel that she is one of their best resources. She is married, and has two children. Her daughter, Emily is currently studying to be a daycare teacher, and is working as a therapy aide for another clinician.

Warren Wellness at Work
by Theresa Amos, Wellness Coordinator

“A healthy body means a healthy mind.” What good words to live by! Here at the Warren Center the Wellness Coordinator focuses on encouraging each employee to improve and strengthen the mind, body, and spirit. We’ve been busy at the Center, working on healthy life-styles. This column will keep our Warren Center family up-to-date with what we’ve been doing!

Warren Center employees have risen to the challenge – and enjoyment – of fitness and overall well-being by participating in Move and Improve, an EMMC program designed to increase the physical activity level of Maine people. Incentive prizes are offered to those who participate. Ours have included gardening tools, comedy show tickets, hiking books, and frisbees.

Our fourteen WC Participants are: Joyce Allard, Theresa Amos, Amy Bragg, Katie Fraser, Lisa Hosfeld, Colleen Nilan, Priscilla Parsons, Cindy Phinney, Mary Poulin, MaryBeth Richards, Erica Ricker, Amanda Samoluk, and Kylie Spratt. In Maine, 74.9% of adults over the age of 18 do not meet the recommended amount of physical activity for health benefits. We are trying to change that! We are keeping each other motivated to move more and feel better!

And in final wellness-news, three Warren Center staffers participated in a “Women’s Wellness Weekend” at A Fierce Chase, a cross-country skiing center, in Monson. The “weekend” consisted of two days of cross-country skiing and learning from a variety of speakers presenting on health and wellness issues. They enjoyed a vegetarian lunch while meeting and networking with other Maine women.

So that’s the wellness news from the Warren Center! Until the next newsletter, remember the god words of Thoms Jefferson, “A strong body makes the mind strong.”