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July 2006
ADA Celebrations On July 12, the City of Chicago will hold its annual AccessChicago in celebration of the ADA at Navy Pier's Festival Hall A from noon to 7 PM. Some of its highlights will be employment services, social security benefits planning, information about legal rights of people with disabilities, opportunities to test devices and equipment, wheelchair sports, adaptive miniature golf, accessible fishing, enabling gardening, adaptive climbing, ceramics art workshop, renewal of permanent disability parking placards. For more information, call the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities at 312/744.7050 (312/746.5711 tty) or 311. On July 20, the State of Illinois' Dept. of Human Services will hold its 16th annual anniversary celebration of the signing of the ADA. Access to Independence will be held at the Thompson Center Plaza, 100 W Randolph in Chicago from 10 am to 3 pm. An interactive celebration, it will include exhibits, entertainment, assistive technology, an art exhibit, hands-on art activities, workshops, wheelchair basketball tournament, and other activities. For more information about the Chicago event and others around the State, call 312/793.0034 (312/793.3597 TTY). Education advocates demand that Chicago stop special education budget cuts Staff reductions violate 1999 federal settlement agreement CHICAGO -- A coalition of organizations that protect the right of students with disabilities sent a letter of complaint today that calls on the Court appointed monitor in the federal Corey H. class action lawsuit to stop proposed special education staffing cuts by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) contained in its Proposed Fiscal Year 2006-2007 budget. If implemented, the cuts will eliminate 750 special education teacher aides and 200 special education teachers to generate a savings of $26 million. These reductions constitute nearly half of the school-based staff reductions in the proposed budget. In the Corey H. lawsuit, Plaintiffs alleged that CPS was illegally segregating students with disabilities in separate schools and classrooms. In a detailed Settlement Agreement, CPS agreed to educate substantially more students with disabilities in the regular classroom, and to provide these students with needed staff supports so that they could master the academic skills that all students need to succeed in life. "These huge budget cuts will undermine progress that has been made to successfully educate Chicago's children with disabilities in the regular classroom," said Donald Moore, Executive Director of Designs for Change, an organization which is part of the coalition that issued the complaint. "For example, teacher aides are vital so that students with disabilities have the support to learn beside their non-disabled peers, while allowing the regular classroom teacher to successfully teach the entire class." In the letter of complaint addressed to the Court appointed monitor, Kathleen Yannias, the coalition requested that the monitor urgently conduct a school-by-school inquiry to determine how the proposed reductions were determined and what their impact would be. "Our coalition wants students with disabilities to lead productive independent lives. At the eleventh grade level, only 5% of Chicago's children with disabilities are meeting state standards in reading," said Marca Bristo, President & CEO of Access Living "How can the school system make budget cuts that will only make this terrible failure worse?" In addition, the proposed cuts come after the Illinois State Board of Education found in three consecutive years leading up to 2006 that CPS failed to adequately staff schools and appropriately allocate staff to carry out its obligations under the Settlement Agreement. "Chicago claimed that these staff shortages existed because they made aggressive efforts to fill special education positions, but were unable to do so. Now, they are making the situation even worse by firing the special education staff that they already have," said Charlotte Des Jardins, Executive Director of the Family Resource Center on Disabilities. "As an organization that is dedicated to the inclusion of people with disabilities, Equip for Equality is deeply concerned that the proposed budget cuts will jeopardize the inclusion of children with disabilities in regular schools and classrooms," said Barry Taylor Legal Advocacy Director at Equip for Equality. "CPS should not try to balance its budget on the backs of students with disabilities." Before allowing the proposed cuts to go forward, the coalition asks that the Corey H. Monitor:
The Corey H. Case In 1992, a class action lawsuit was brought by the parents of Chicago students with disabilities, charging that the Chicago Board of Education was illegally segregating students with disabilities and the Illinois State Board of Education had failed to carry out its legal obligation to ensure that this illegal segregation was ended. In 1998 and 1999, the two defendants entered into detailed Settlement Agreements negotiated with the plaintiffs to take steps to ensure that Chicago students with disabilities were educated in the "least restrictive environment" with adequate staff. For more information, contact Gary Arnold, Access Living, at 312/253-7000 ext 199, or at 312/253-7002 tty Source: Access Living, 6/22/06. NCD Letter Restates its IDEA and NCLB Recommendations The Hon. Howard P. McKeon Chair, Comm. on Education & the Workforce US House of Representatives 2181 Rayburn House Office Bldg Washington, DC 20515 June 13, 2006 Dear Chairman McKeon: The National Council on Disability (NCD) is aware of the series of hearings on the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) currently being undertaken by this Committee. NCD's overall purpose is to promote policies and practices that guarantee equal opportunity for all individuals with disabilities, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability; and to empower individuals with disabilities to achieve economic self-sufficiency, independent living, and integration into all aspects of society. NCD is required by its authorizing statute to advise the Administration and Congress regarding laws and issues that affect people with disabilities. To further this statutory mandate, NCD is submitting this letter for your consideration. 
The rest of the letter is available on NCD's site.
Source: Mark Quigley Jun 6/23/06 Most Disabled Americans Have Jobs By Stephen Ohlemacher WASHINGTON, May 12, 2006 -- More than half the nation's disabled people hold jobs, but they often have lower incomes and less education and are less likely to have health insurance than people without disabilities, the government said Friday. Nearly one in five Americans - about 51 million people - had physical or mental disabilities in 2002, according to the Census Bureau. About 33 million of them had severe disabilities. The likelihood of disabilities, not surprisingly, increased with age: Fewer than one in 10 people 15 and younger had a disability, while more than half of those 65 and older - and 72 percent of those 80 and older - had them. "The primary obstacle that people with intellectual disabilities face is the attitudes of people around them," said Chris Privett, a spokesman for The Arc, a service and advocacy group for people with disabilities. "Once people understand that someone with an intellectual disability is not as different from anyone else as they would assume, things get simpler." The Census Bureau surveyed 26,800 households for the report, asking people about their health and if they had difficulty performing various tasks, said Sharon Stern, chief of the bureau's poverty and health statistics branch. People were classified as disabled if they had difficulty performing tasks such as seeing, hearing, bathing or doing light housework, or if they had conditions such as Alzheimer's disease or autism. They were considered to have severe disabilities if they were unable to perform any of those tasks, or if they had severe cases of specific conditions. About 56 percent of disabled adults, ages 21 to 64, had jobs in 2002. Among those with severe disabilities, 43 percent had jobs. "People are starting to look more at people's abilities instead of their disability," Privett said. "But in the advocacy community, our work is far from finished." The first President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, outlawing discrimination against people with disabilities and promising them access to buildings, services and transportation. Since then, schools have added elevators, private companies have erected Braille signs and employers have been prohibited from denying jobs to disabled workers. Karen Wolffe, director of professional development at the American Foundation for the Blind, credits the law with raising awareness of people with disabilities. "I can remember when I was a kid. We didn't have cutouts in the sidewalk for people with wheelchairs," Wolffe said. "Now, people are accustomed to Braille in the elevators and they are accustomed to ramps." Wolffe, however, said many employers still are wary of hiring disabled workers because they are worried about getting sued if they later discipline them or deny them a promotion. Among working age adults who were blind or had limited vision, 55 percent had jobs in 2002, according to the census report. Among all working age adults, 83 percent had jobs. Among the report's other findings:
Census Bureau
Waiver of the Late Enrollment Penalty for LIS and Katrina Mark B. McClellan, MD, PhD, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced a demonstration program allowing certain Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in a Medicare prescription drug plan with no penalty through December 31, 2006. The program is available for seniors and people with a disability who qualify for the extra help for their Medicare prescription drug coverage, or who live in an area affected by Hurricane Katrina. People who qualify for extra help account for the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries who have not yet enrolled in Medicare Part D or do not have other "creditable" coverage. Today's Action The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a demonstration program allowing certain Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in a Medicare prescription drug plan with no penalty through December 31, 2006. The program is available for seniors and people with a disability who qualify for the extra help for their Medicare prescription drug coverage, or who live in an area affected by Hurricane Katrina. People who qualify for extra help account for the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries who have not yet enrolled in Medicare Part D or do not have other "creditable" coverage. Eligible Beneficiaries Late enrollment penalties will not be collected for certain beneficiaries who enroll in a prescription drug plan under the new Special Enrollment Period: 1. Individuals who enroll in the low-income subsidy; and 2. Individuals who were affected by Hurricane Katrina Individuals who apply and are approved for the low-income subsidy experience a significant change in status, in particular, they become eligible for very comprehensive drug coverage at low or no cost. With this change in status, they have a special enrollment opportunity to enroll in a prescription drug plan anytime throughout 2006. If they do not enroll in a plan on their own, Medicare will facilitate their enrollment into a prescription drug plan with a premium below the low-income benchmark, but they will have the opportunity to change plans before December 31, 2006. Individuals who are affected by Hurricane Katrina will be considered eligible for this demonstration as if, at the time of the hurricane (August 2005), they resided in any of the parishes or counties declared as meeting the level of "individual assistance" by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA has identified the parishes and counties declared eligible for "individual assistance" as a result of Hurricane Katrina. More information can be found online. Timing/Duration The demonstration program is limited to beneficiaries who enroll beginning in June, 2006 through December, 2006. As long as they stay continuously enrolled in a Part D plan, they will not be assessed a late enrollment penalty. If they disenroll after 2006 and do not have creditable coverage for a continuous period of 63 days or more, they would then incur a late enrollment penalty when they re-enroll in a plan. Late enrollment penalties will not be collected for those beneficiaries who enroll in a prescription drug plan under the new Special Enrollment Period as a result of qualifying for the low-income subsidy; or who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. MEDICARE FACT SHEET, dated June 14, 2006 CONTACT: CMS Media Affairs, 202/690-6145. 
More Medicare's New Prescription Drug Plan news
Source: US Department of Health & Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of External Affairs NY, Philly, it's happening everywhere... By MICHAEL VITEZ Lee Roy Cade, 66, did something remarkable last month. He moved out of a nursing home. Cade arrived at the Centennial Village nursing home in Philadelphia two years ago after a stroke. He needed a feeding tube and a diaper, and was unable to hold up his head. He had lost his left leg to diabetes. When he got better, he had no home o family to return to. "For a quite a number of decades, when an older person had been in a nursing home for more than three months ... nobody thought they would leave," said Rosalie A. Kane, a professor at the University of Minnesota and national expert on long-term care. "Inevitably, that would be their last home." This has been changing in places around America. In the 1990s, Oregon and Washington began a major shift to move people out of nursing homes and back into their own homes, where most people would much rather be. Today, nobody is in a Washington state nursing home for more than seven days before a case manager shows up to discuss community options and discharge planning. In the last five years, efforts to transfer people out of nursing homes have accelerated. Since 2001, New Jersey, for example, has relocated 5,000 people. Staffers wouldn't let Cade leave with his belongings in plastic bags. They dug around in storage and found two old suitcases. They also celebrated with a small buffet of pastries, Sanka and fruit salad. They tied five balloons to his wheelchair. Cade, who once worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and invited health problems by heavy drinking, had wanted to leave the nursing home for a year, but never thought he would. Until Arnetta Ragland came to see him. "God must have sent her to me," he said. Ragland is a social worker, the nursing-home transition coordinator with the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging. Cade was referred by a state-funded nursing-home ombudsman. Ragland began hunting for a place for Cade to live - often the biggest impediment to leaving a nursing home. Housing is often too expensive or inaccessible to people with wheelchairs. Cade's only income is Social Security, just under $1,000 a month, and all but $40 a month went to the nursing home to help pay for his care. Leaving the nursing home, he will regain custody of his finances. Ragland found him an efficiency apartment at Overmont House, a high-rise, subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, for people age 62 and older. He will pay $272 a month in rent, one-third of his income. Ragland took care of virtually every aspect of the move: She bought him a bed, dresser, sofa, kitchen table and chairs, lamps, blankets and towels, even his groceries, spending close to $3,000. She ordered a motorized wheelchair and arranged for home-health aides to come morning and afternoon to help with cooking and cleaning. She found a doctor nearby, so he can get there by himself. She arranged for a nurse to give him a refresher lesson on how to inject himself with insulin. She ordered medications at a local pharmacy. She and her supervisor, Jessica Mack, moved Cade into his new apartment and set it up. The idea, said Mack, is to give Cade intensive assistance to start, and back off as he adjusts to life on his own. A few clients end up requiring no services at all. One, aged 76, just applied for a job at Dunkin' Donuts. Mabel Skinner, 94, moved out of the nursing home a few months ago and is living on her own, though she cannot manage by herself. Every day she travels by van to a program where she receives what is known as all-inclusive care - doctor's attention if she needs it, meals, and social activities. "I'm very happy," she said. Ulysses Woodall, 70, left the nursing home after two years. "I do my laundry. I do cooking. I got a girl comes here two or three times a week for three hours a day. She helps do the heavy stuff." He goes to church on his own, and to a senior center two or three times a week. "They did me a great favor, oh, man," he said of social workers who moved him. "They're the greatest people I know." Michael Nardone, executive director of the Pennsylvania governor's Long Term Living Task Force, estimates that at least 3,000 of the 55,000 Pennsylvanians who have exhausted all their funds and now have taxpayers underwriting most of their nursing home care could be relocated back to the community. The state wants to care for people in their own homes because it is where they'd rather be - but also because it is much cheaper. Pennsylvania, for instance, spent $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2004 on nursing-home care under the Medicaid program. A nursing-home bed costs taxpayers about $144 a day. Caring for someone at home: $56 a day. While Pennsylvania is just getting into the effort to move people out of nursing homes, it has worked hard with some success over the last decade to keep people out of nursing homes to begin with. This also follows a national trend that started in Oregon. More than 20,000 Pennsylvanians this year - all sick enough to need a nursing home and poor enough to have Medicaid pay for it - will be given services, paid by taxpayers, to allow them to remain home. The number was 12,000 in 2002. "It's a fairly dramatic expansion," said Nardone. As a result of this trend toward home- and community-based care, the occupancy rate of nursing-home beds is falling - in the 80 percentile range nationally and the high 70s in a few states. Cade, meanwhile, is enjoying his freedom, talking about taking a bus to Atlantic City. "I want my check back to myself," he said of his Social Security. "I want money in my pocket. I want to go where I want to go, do what I want to do." Source: The Bradenton Herald, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 6/15/06 US Dept of Transportation Proposes Changes in ADA Transportation Regulation Your comments needed
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is proposing positive changes that are being very strongly resisted by most public transportation providers. Disability advocates' support is crucial to the outcome. DOT is also seeking comment on other questions of importance to the disability community. Topics in this rulemaking include:
At a minimum, please submit a brief comment supporting DOT's addition of a requirement for transit agencies to make reasonable modifications of policies, practices, and procedures. Your comments MUST include the docket number 2006-OST-23985 and they are due by July 28. Comments may be submitted electronically. Instructions for submitting comments, reprinted from the DOT notice, appear below. From DOT's instructions for submitting comments: You may submit comments identified by the docket number [OST- 2006-23985] by any of the following methods: 1. Federal eRulemaking Portal (follow the instructions for submitting comments) 2. Website (follow the instructions for submitting comments on the DOT electronic docket site).[NOTE: DREDF found this the easier electronic option] 3. Fax: 1-202- 493-2251 4. Mail: Docket Management System US Dept of Transportation 400 Seventh St, SW, Nassif Building, Room PL-401 Washington, DC 20590-001 Comments must be received by July 28, 2006. Comments received after July 28, 2006 will be considered to the extent practicable. You should include the agency name [Department of Transportation] and docket number [OST-2006-23985] or the Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this notice [RIN 2105-AD54] at the beginning of your comment. All comments received will be posted without change to the site, including any personal information provided. Source: Justice For All, 6/26/06.
DOT's full Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
AARP report on Consumer Direction of Services AARP in their policy & research section has released a report on consumer directed services with graphs charts bells hoops and whistles!
Check it out.
House Delays Renewal of Voting Rights Act By Laurie Kellman, Associated Press WASHINGTON, DC - 6/21/06 - House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed a vote on renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act after GOP lawmakers complained it unfairly singles out nine Southern states for federal oversight. "We have time to address their concerns," Republican leaders said in a joint statement. "Therefore, the House Republican Leadership will offer members the time needed to evaluate the legislation." It was unclear whether the legislation would come up this year. The temporary provisions don't expire until 2007, but leaders of both parties had hoped to pass the act and use it to further their prospects in the fall's midterm elections. The statement said the GOP leaders are committed to renewing the law "as soon as possible." The four-decade-old law enfranchised millions of black voters by ending poll taxes and literacy tests during the height of the civil rights struggle. A vote on renewing it for another 25 years had been scheduled for Wednesday, with both Republican and Democratic leaders behind it. The abrupt change of plans in the House could affect the renewal in the Senate, where an identical bill was set for consideration next week by the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. "There's less pressure to do it if the House is not doing it," Specter said in a telephone interview. The shift came after a private House GOP caucus meeting earlier Wednesday in which several Republicans also balked at extending provisions in the law that require ballots to be printed in more than one language in neighborhoods where there are large numbers of immigrants, said several participants. "The speaker's had a standing rule that nothing would be voted on unless there's a majority of the majority," said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., who led the objections. "It was pretty clear at the meeting that the majority of the majority wasn't there." The legislation was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a 33-1 vote. But despite leadership support, controversy has shadowed the legislation 40 years after it first prohibited policies that blocked blacks from voting. Several Republicans, led by Westmoreland, had worked to allow an amendment that would ease a requirement that nine states win permission from the Justice Department or a federal judge to change their voting rules. The amendment's backers say the requirement unfairly singles out and holds accountable nine states that practiced racist voting policies decades ago, based on 1964 voter turnout data: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Westmoreland says the formula for deciding which states are subject to such "pre-clearance" should be updated every four years and be based on voter turnout in the most recent three elections. "The pre-clearance portions of the Voting Rights Act should apply to all states, or no states," Westmoreland said. "Singling out certain states for special scrutiny no longer makes sense." The amendment has powerful opponents. From Republican and Democratic leaders on down the House hierarchy, they argue that states with documented histories of discrimination may still practice it and have earned the extra scrutiny. "This carefully crafted legislation should remain clean and unamended," Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who worked on the original bill, which he called "the keystone of our national civil rights statutes." By his own estimation, Westmoreland says the amendment stands little chance of being adopted. The House also could bring up an amendment that would require the Justice Department to compile an annual list of jurisdictions eligible for a "bailout" from the pre-clearance requirements. That amendment, too, has little chance of surviving floor debate. Other efforts to chip away at the act have faltered under pressure from powerful supporters. One such measure, sponsored by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, sought to strip a provision that requires ballots to be printed in several languages and interpreters be provided in states and counties where large numbers of citizens speak limited English. However, Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., called that logic an effort to mix the divisive debate over immigration reform with the Voting Rights Act renewal. Three-fourths of those whose primary language is not English are American-born, he said. Source: Justice For All Moderator, 6/22/06. Senator Shares Story of Son's Suicide Oregon's Gordon Smith and Wife Hope Reaching Out Helps Others Oregon's Gordon Smith and his wife, Sharon, hope reaching out helps keep other families from meeting the same fate. Their 22-year-old son, Garrett, took his life in 2003, after a long struggle against depression. Tracy Smith has their story. Politicians usually don't like to put their personal lives in the spotlight. But Sen. Gordon Smith and his wife, Sharon, are doing just that, in the hope other families can learn from the very private and tragic story of their son's suicide. The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith says the Smiths were a picture-perfect family, devoted to public service, their religion, and each other, until one terrible day when their son's darkest problem came crashing down on them. "He played football," Sharon told Tracy. "He was an Eagle scout. He just was an all-American boy and had tons of friends." He seemed to be the perfect son, of a perfect father, a United States senator. "I just felt," says Gordon, a Republican from Oregon, "like I had failed as a dad. I'd been out trying to and, in some way, to save the world (through) public service. But, I failed to save my own son." Garrett Smith was the second of three children Gordon and Sharon adopted. Although diagnosed at a young age with severe dyslexia, he seemed happy growing up, Tracy reports. Then, when he was 17, Garrett "dropped a bombshell on us, that he was an alcoholic," Gordon says. Gordon and Sharon discovered that their son was drinking right in their own home. "Garrett had said," 'It makes me feel like I can speak up far in class better,' "Sharon recalls, "that, 'I'm just more relaxed around the girls.' " Garrett got help, and the drinking stopped. "At the time," Smith asked, "did you think, 'It's just a phase. This is typical'?" "(We thought it was) typical teenage behavior," Sharon responded, "and I think a lot of parents would think the same thing." But then, Tracy says, came another warning sign: A year later, on his application to be a Mormon missionary, Garrett admitted that he suffered from depression. "(I asked him) 'Why would you check that?' " Sharon told Tracy, "and he said, 'Well, because I'm depressed. And I am more and more all the time.' " The Smiths were shocked. But Garrett insisted he'd be fine if he went away for two years. In fact, he was. But, Tracy says, when he returned home for college, he started drinking again, and seemed to fall into a dark hole. "He just started screaming out that he felt hopeless," Gordon remembered. "(He felt) his life was pointless, vain, meaningless. He wished that his birth mother had prevented his birth. He wished that, that he could just go to sleep without waking up." The Smiths sent their son to a psychiatrist, who prescribed antidepressants. But he was spiraling down, faster than they knew. The message on his answering machine could have been the final alarm. "It just said," Gordon told Tracy, " 'This is Smith. I don't feel well. Do not call me anymore.' " Then, Gordon described the moment when their doorbell rang: "The police are at the door. They just said, 'We don't know how to make this easy. But your son was found -- dead in his apartment. And -- it appears to be a suicide.' " The day before his 22nd birthday, Garrett Lee Smith swallowed a fistful of sleeping pills and hanged himself in the closet of his college apartment. Wracked by guilt, the senator worried that he'd put his political career ahead of his son. "Was I complicit in killing my son?" Gordon says he wondered. … Part of Garrett's note to his parents read, "Put me in the ground, and forget about me." "Well," Gordon remarked, "We haven't listened to him." The senator decided to ignore his son's dying wish, and his own instinct to withdraw from the spotlight. In an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Gordon said, "I didn't volunteer to be a champion of this issue, but it arose out of the personal experience of being a parent who lost a child to mental illness and suicide." A year after Garrett's death, President Bush signed the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, authorizing $82 million in grants to help prevent suicide by young people. Among the things the funds were earmarked for: mental health screenings in schools. "We take our kids for physical vaccinations, dental exams, eye checkups," Gordon says. "When do we think to take our -- our son or daughter for a mental health checkup?" Sen. Smith has spent most of his career as a public servant, but it's his private pain that could be his most enduring legacy, Tracy Smith observes. "So," she asked Gordon, "to parents out there who watch this story and say, 'Well, that might be my kid, but probably not,' what would you say?" "If this can happen in our house, it can happen in your house," Gordon replied. Suicide takes the lives of more than 30,000 Americans every year, and is the second leading cause of death among college students. Sen. Smith calls it an epidemic. That's why he wrote a book about his son's life, "Remembering Garrett: One Family's Battle with a Child's Depression." Gordon and Sharon hope that, by sharing Garrett's story, other parents will catch the signs of teen depression much sooner. Source: CBS Broadcasting Inc., June 20, 2006. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
