Ian does cute and handsome
Happy 35th, sweet boy!
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Thursday, January 9, 2020
Disability Wrongs: Advocacy gone awry
This video is from ACCSES, an organization representing disability service providers including providers of work centers (sheltered workshops). On 7/25/18, the organization held a Capitol Hill Briefing in defense of a broad range of work settings for people with disabilities including work centers for people who would otherwise be unable to compete for employment. Self-advocates who participate in these work programs were scheduled to speak, but they were shouted down and the meeting disrupted by other self-advocates from disability organizations with opposing views.
According to ACCSES, this is what happened:
“Despite what disability policy seems to indicate: People with disabilities are not a monolithic group. Rather, people with disabilities are individuals, with the same right to choose where they want to live, work, and thrive as anyone else. That basic civil right to live life with dignity and respect is being subsumed by feel-good laws that do not benefit many individuals, and advocates who support those laws over individual rights. That’s the rub. Right now, current and proposed laws and regulations, as well as policymakers, agencies, and some advocates—even those with good intentions—are putting a broad range of employment, residential, and community support options for people with disabilities at risk. In doing so, they are taking away the civil rights of individuals with disabilities.
“Despite what disability policy seems to indicate: People with disabilities are not a monolithic group. Rather, people with disabilities are individuals, with the same right to choose where they want to live, work, and thrive as anyone else. That basic civil right to live life with dignity and respect is being subsumed by feel-good laws that do not benefit many individuals, and advocates who support those laws over individual rights. That’s the rub. Right now, current and proposed laws and regulations, as well as policymakers, agencies, and some advocates—even those with good intentions—are putting a broad range of employment, residential, and community support options for people with disabilities at risk. In doing so, they are taking away the civil rights of individuals with disabilities.
“That was never made more clear than on July 25, 2018, when a dozen people with disabilities, some of whom work on the Capitol campus and others who traveled all the way from the middle of the country, wanted to share their stories of why their jobs matter. Instead, they were shut down by advocacy groups that crashed an ACCSES Capitol Hill briefing and frighteningly shouted over the self-advocates with disabilities who were scheduled to speak. The Capitol police had to be called, the individuals who came to speak never got to address the audience in the room. This is where current disability policy has led, not to increased opportunity and respect, but to a concerted effort to take away the civil rights of individuals with disabilities by limiting their choices. It must end. Individuals must be allowed to live, work, and thrive in settings that best meet their needs – not the needs of others.”
The organizations taking the lead in these disruptive activities were ADAPT and NCIL, the National Council on Independent Living. They put out their own version of events on 7/25/18, “Disability Rights Groups Protest Provider Efforts to Continue the Exploitation and Isolation of People with Disabilities”.
The ACCSES briefing included support of a House bill called the "Workplace Choice and Flexibility for Individuals with Disabilities Act". You can read the bill, H.R. 5658, in less than 5 minutes and see for yourself if it has anything in it that would produce the cataclysmic results that ADAPT and NCIL are predicting. There is nothing in it that would limit or impede the opponents of the bill to receive the employment services in integrated, competitive work settings that they say they want. In the ADAPT/NCIL hyperbolic assessment of the bill, they claim that “This bill resurrects walls of exclusion by segregating people with disabilities both socially and economically, allowing service providers to keep disabled people in workplaces that are isolated from the rest of society, and to pay those workers pennies on the dollar for the value of their work.”
The organizations taking the lead in these disruptive activities were ADAPT and NCIL, the National Council on Independent Living. They put out their own version of events on 7/25/18, “Disability Rights Groups Protest Provider Efforts to Continue the Exploitation and Isolation of People with Disabilities”.
The ACCSES briefing included support of a House bill called the "Workplace Choice and Flexibility for Individuals with Disabilities Act". You can read the bill, H.R. 5658, in less than 5 minutes and see for yourself if it has anything in it that would produce the cataclysmic results that ADAPT and NCIL are predicting. There is nothing in it that would limit or impede the opponents of the bill to receive the employment services in integrated, competitive work settings that they say they want. In the ADAPT/NCIL hyperbolic assessment of the bill, they claim that “This bill resurrects walls of exclusion by segregating people with disabilities both socially and economically, allowing service providers to keep disabled people in workplaces that are isolated from the rest of society, and to pay those workers pennies on the dollar for the value of their work.”
In the ADAPT/NCIL version of events there is no mention of disability self-advocates and their families supporting the bill who believed they had a meaningful opportunity to express their support, only to be shouted down by other advocates from opposing advocacy organizations who claim to represent everyone with a disability. One of the ADAPT organizers, Anita Cameron, is quoted as saying, “They need to hear from disabled people, they need to hear about the lives we want to live and the communities we want to build. 28 years after the signing of the ADA it is insulting that any organization would pretend to know our needs better than we do.” This was not intended ironically, even as the demonstrators were shouting down other people with disabilities and disrupting the meeting to the extent that the police had to intervene and make arrests.
Another well-known advocate supporting the demonstrators was Ari Ne’eman, a founder of ASAN, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and a former member of the National Council on Disability. He is currently an advisor to the American Civil Liberties Union on disability policy and Medicaid. He is seen sitting in the audience holding up his cell phone at 2:37 in the ACCSES video. He was covering the event by tweet, saying among other things that this was a “Historic event”. He makes no reference to others with disabilities who have opposing views to his own.
No one deserves to be silenced by the kind of bullying displayed by the aggressive tactics of ADAPT, NCIL, and their supporters.
No one deserves to be silenced by the kind of bullying displayed by the aggressive tactics of ADAPT, NCIL, and their supporters.
This whole debacle was exacerbated by disability organizations using the royal “we” when they claim to represent everyone with a disability. I found a word for it, something to add to the multitude of “isms” and other terms that get thrown around and at people who one disagrees with: Nosism. According to Wikipedia, Nosism, from the Latin nos, "we", is the practice of using the pronoun "we" to refer to oneself when expressing a personal opinion. At least “we” learned something new from this tawdry event.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Public forums on the future of Michigan's behavioral health system (a.k.a. Community Mental Health)
Here is the notice followed by links to background information and my personal opinion about the cluelessness of state officials regarding the problems in our system of care and services.
MDHHS PUBLIC FORUMS:
THE FUTURE OF BEHAVIORAL HEALTH IN MICHIGAN
THE FUTURE OF BEHAVIORAL HEALTH IN MICHIGAN
In December 2019, MDHHS outlined a vision for a stronger behavioral health system that integrates specialty behavioral health and physical health services. If you are served by Michigan’s Medicaid-funded behavioral health system or are the family member of a person served, we want to hear from YOU.
MDHHS is hosting five public forums throughout the state and online in early 2020. Department leadership will be in attendance to further discuss the vision, answer your questions, and listen to your feedback. Please join us!
Detroit: January 8, 2020, from 5:00—6:30 p.m.
Cadillac Place, 3044 W. Grand Blvd
Conference Room L-150
Grand Rapids: January 9, 2020, from 5:00—6:30 p.m.
Grand Valley State University L.V. Eberhard Center,
301 W. Fulton, Room 201
Marquette: January 22, 2020, from 5:00—6:30 p.m.
Marquette Senior High School
1203 W. Fair Ave
Little Theater
Saginaw: January 30, 2020, from 5:00—6:30 p.m
Saginaw Valley State University, Gilbertson Hall,
7400 Bay Road
Ott Auditorium
Virtual Forum: February 6, 2020, from 5:00—6:30 p.m.
The link for this event will be shared on www.Michigan.gov/FutureOfBehavioralHealth
in late January.
To learn more about the Department’s vision, please visit www.Michigan.gov/FutureOfBehavioralHealth.
If you cannot attend an event, we would still love to hear from you. You can email your feedback to FutureOfBH@michigan.gov.
*********************************
Speech by Robert Gordon, Director of MDHHS, to the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan
The vision MDHHS is proposing
Section 298 Initiative The 298 Initiative has been abandoned, but it looks like current proposals by the state are trying to resurrect it.
For many years, Medicaid Health Plans, both for profit and nonprofit, have been trying to get their hands on Medicaid funds for behavioral health services (CMH) with promises that they can do it better and for less money than the public agencies that most people rely on. For some very good reasons, people don't believe them. Medicaid Health Plans do not have experience providing the social service supports people with IDD and other disabilities need to survive (housing, case management, caregiving, family supports, health maintenance, etc.). When medical health systems are faced with limitations on funding through a managed care system, they naturally turn to denying and limiting services to the people they are supposed to serve.
Let's not kid ourselves.The community mental health system leaves much to be desired with its inability to recognize or serve the full continuum of services that are needed by this diverse population.
The State's proposals for reforming the behavioral health system (again) do not tell us what they are trying to reform other than a system of financial management for Medicaid funds. It seems to me this is starting at the wrong place again with the wrong people.
If you want a say in the future of Behavioral Health, tell the MDHHS what you know and what they need to know to do a better job. Lead with that, and don't let the state's proposals be the only thing you respond to.
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