"Nothing About Us Without Us": An empty slogan for residents of facilities for intellectually disabled

Unfortunately, this is typical of how residents of Intermediate Care Facilities for people with intellectual disabilities (ICF/IID) and their families are treated in discussions about closing these facilities. This is from the VOR email news update of 8/10/18:



The Press and Us

A small online news service in Connecticut ran a series of articles this week, ostensibly about how the state's financial problems affect non-profits that offer a variety of services to people in the CT, and how they need more support from the public, religious groups, and the State. While the 10-article series covered a number of non-profits, the focus of the reporting was limited to one topic.

What this series really amounted to was this year's forum for the opponents of Southbury Training School [a state run ICF/IID]. Last year, they funneled $50,000 through the CT Council on Disabilities and the ARC of CT to pay for a program on Connecticut Public Television wherein they made their claims that everyone does better in the community and that closing all ICFs will magically provide services for people on the waiting list. All of this is opinion dressed up as news, and none of the people involved in this story have ever bothered to visit Southbury Training School or any of the three remaining Regional Centers.

We've heard this all before. We know different. We've seen tens of thousands of beds disappear from ICFs over the last three decades while waiting lists have grown at an even greater rate. We have seen the differences between what is offered at ICFs and at HCBS [Home and Community-Based Services] waiver settings. We know that one size does not fit all and that the needs of the higher functioning members of the IDD population have little in common with the needs of the most severely intellectually disabled.

We are not going to link to these stories this week. Our members have read this before, and we don't want this news outlet to get any more "hits" than they already have. Instead, what we are going to do is remind our readers of how important our contacts with the press are, how much power the press has, and the need to find reporters who are interested in all sides and nuances of the stories they write, and to work with those reporters. It's not a matter of fake news - it's about good, responsible reporting...