Here is a list of news articles I have collected since June 24, 2016 announcing program closures, Medicaid cuts, and endless waiting lists for services for people with DD and their families. It seems that DD services are the perfect target for states and local governments to “save” money and balance budgets. As for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), the 2014 HCBS rule from the federal government that is scheduled to be fully implemented by March 2019 is the perfect excuse to "liberate" people from needed services while claiming to protect their civil rights.
Wyoming: “Wyoming cuts freeze enrollment in treatment for disabled” - The Wyoming Department of Health will have $90 million in cuts out of a $975 million budget. The state will also lose $41 million in federal funds. The state will freeze the DD waiver program, provider rate cuts may force some providers out of business, and Medicaid will no longer cover fillings, dentures, hospital calls, prescriptions and other services for adult dental care patients.
New Jersey: “Audit: Move to group homes caused problems for some disabled people in N.J.” - Two intermediate Care Facilities for people with intellectual disabilities were closed ostensibly to save money, but community living resulted in problems for many of the 204 people with profound disabilities who moved: poor quality care, missed medical appointments, and an inability to participate in needed programs because behavioral problems were not addressed. One client went two years without a functioning wheelchair and another consumed foods that were medically harmful and could have caused choking.
Kansas: “State cuts to affect services to disabled” - “…service providers…saw a 4 percent rate cut to targeted case management and intermediate care facilities. This means people who depend on these services can expect to see less of them in the near future.” One provider of services pointed out that for every dollar spent on DD programs, the federal government contributes 60 cents. “For this reason, he believes making cuts to programs that support those with disabilities is an inefficient way of balancing the budget, as the state will see less than half the amount cut returned to the general fund…we shouldn't balance those cuts on the backs of the poor and disabled.”
Tennessee:
Chatanooga -“Regulations end partnership that allowed adults with disabilities to work handling recyclables” - The Orange Grove Center in Chatanooga announced that it will close after 24 years. “It's a substantial change to a longstanding partnership regarded by most as a win-win: the city received a service at an affordable price while providing jobs to members of a historically marginalized population that might struggle to find work.” The reason cited is the federal HCBS rule that “requires” that services be fully integrated and support full access to the greater community.
[NOTE: This is a common though incorrect interpretation of the HCBS rule. There are no specific requirements that mandate a maximum size for settings or that prohibit funding of congregate settings (more than 3 people with disabilities served together) or that prohibit a setting from serving all or primarily people with disabilities.]
Johnson City: “Dawn of Hope transitioning people with disabilities out of facility, in to community” - “At Dawn of Hope over 200 people with a broad range of disabilities get services, from those who are able to work, to those who are non-verbal, not able to walk on their own, and who need around-the-clock care…” To comply with the federal HCBS rule, (see note above), the facility has been getting people out into the public, though some refuse to go and staffing for some people is a problem. While some are looking at work opportunities, for those with more severe disabilities this has been extremely challenging.
Washington State: “Caregiving company departing county” - “Creative Living Services, based in Tukwila, announced in June that it is pulling out of serving clients in Jefferson County…because of what it called ‘extreme staffing shortages’ and pay rates that it also says are ‘not sustainable or competitive’ in the area…Creative Living Services is the only company currently approved by the state to serve adults with disabilities and assist them to live and assist them to live as independently as possible, often with each other.”
Ohio: “DODD report shows most don’t choose community” - Ohio has announced the closure of two Development Centers (Intermediate Care Facilities for people with intellectual disabilities) by 2017. So far this has resulted in most affected individuals choosing to move to other private congregate facilities or developmental centers. “Only 27 individuals of the 89 who have left [the centers] have sought waiver housing”, smaller homes in community settings with HCBS funding. Many of those who have moved have “suffered incidents such as an unanticipated hospitalization or nursing home stay, arrest or detainment by law enforcement, or bodily harm.”
Texas: “Medicaid Cuts Affect Children with Developmental Disabilities” - “Cuts in medicaid funding are making it more difficult for Texas children with developmental disabilities to get the help they need….The North Texas Rehab Center has announced it will not renew its contract with the Early Childhood Intervention program….It's the unfortunate effect of $350 million in medicaid cuts that was earmarked for pediatric therapy.”
Illinois: “Editorial: Illinois fails a moral test” - “During the past fiscal year, Illinoisans were at the mercy of a state budget impasse that disrupted institutions, programs and lives…For the past decade, however, the needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been chronically neglected by those in power…The consequences of that neglect make it more and more difficult for area agencies to serve the needs of people who, as the late Sen. Hubert Humphrey once said, are in ‘the shadows of life.’”
Wisconsin: “Paul Lundgren: Finding housing is very hard for the developmentally disabled” - A married couple with developmental disabilities finds it almost impossible to find appropriate housing despite having a housing voucher that guarantees payment of rent. “…no preventive measures are designed to help people such as Shawn and Terri avoid homelessness. They will have to become homeless before anyone will help.”
Pennsylvania: “Families Face Indefinite Wait for Services” - Supports are available until age 21, then families experience "falling over the cliff”. Pennsylvania has a waiting list of 14,000 people waiting for Medicaid funding through the “Medical Assistance home and community-based waiver” with nearly 5,000 people on the “emergency list.”
This is from the ARC’s newsletter Capitol Insider for the week of October 26th, 2015:
Rights/Long Term Services and Supports -- Court Rules That Illinois Can Close Murray Developmental Center: Citing a nation-wide trend to increase home and community based services (HCBS) for people with I/DD, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently ruled on the contested closure of Murray Developmental Center (Murray DC). The court held that Illinois could move forward with closing the facility. The ruling cited a growing number of studies that show that people with disabilities experience a higher quality of life in community-based settings as opposed to facility-based care. The ruling in its entirely may be viewed here.
Here is the rest of the story:
Despite the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Rauner administration has already determined that Murray Center is not closing and all seven of the state’s developmental centers are in the 2016 budget, according to a report from WJBD News, 5/20/15. Rita Winkler, President of the Murray Parents Association also reported in May that a new Director of Nursing was being hired for Murray and the process was underway to hire a new Assistant Director and Director of the facility.
While focusing on the relatively small number of residents living in developmental centers for people with intellectual disabilities, The ARC and other federally-funded disability rights advocates divert attention from the larger issue, the overall failure of Illinois to adequately serve people with DD.
The Court decision of 10/15/15 includes these disturbing statistics: The State Developmental Centers have about 1800 residents, while roughly 10,000 people with severe developmental disabilities live in community-based facilities housing 1 to 8 individuals. The Illinois Department of Human Services provides services to approximately 25,000 people with DD. Another 23,000 are on a waiting list to receive services, of whom 6,000 are considered to be in emergency situations, yet do not receive even essential services from the State of Illinois.
For all the talk about trends in delivering services in community settings, the huge waiting list and failure to provide even basic services to so many people with severe developmental disabilities is the real story that cannot be solved and may even be exacerbated by closing the state’s developmental centers.
"How do I tell an elderly mother that her 'job' 24/7 is to take care of her adult son/daughter forever, that services are changing — and not for the better?"
This is an editorial by Cheryl Englert, the mother of a son with disabilities and a special education teacher from rural Upstate New York: “Insights: Our families will not be silenced”, 4/11/15.
After more than 30 years of working to see that New York state provides necessary supports to meet the needs of men and women with disabilities at work and in their homes, Cheryl Englert sees all that hard work being undone:
“While our local representatives have been supportive, Gov. Cuomo is turning his back on our most vulnerable citizens. Examples include a plan to close all sheltered work centers within six years, and a decree that actually prohibits new workshop employment right now. On the residential front, he has vetoed four bills that would have begun to address an expanding list of individuals who await housing because their family members are growing too old to effectively care for them."
Cheryl’s son Matt has a good life living in a 4-person home that provides 24-hour/day care to him and his best friends. He also works and socializes at a local sheltered work center. His mother can no longer speak confidently to the other mothers she talks to that those opportunities will continue to be available.
“The lack of choices and opportunities has had drastic effects on those families. It is like flying into a storm where you cannot see where you are going or how long will it take to reach the sunshine…”
But they will not be silenced:
“Right now, hundreds of us across the state are writing letters and making phone calls to our elected representatives. We are organizing and expanding activism efforts, such as The Arc’s Family Advocacy Group (www.lwarc.org) — all in the name of better lives for individuals with disabilities and their families. It’s time to get this great state back on track!”
Read the whole article here.
An editorial from the Lynchburg Virginia News Advance questions the wisdom of the state legislature failing to address the concerns of parents and guardians of Virginia’s four remaining residential “training centers” [Intermediate Care Facilities for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities or ICFs/IID].
“The training center closings result from a consent decree Virginia, under the administration of former Gov. Bob McDonnell, entered into with the U.S. Justice Department, which has been pushing states to care for its disabled citizens in community-based group homes, rather than in residential hospital-type settings. In the 2012 settlement, it is important to note that the Justice Department did not require the closing of Virginia’s four training centers; rather the state chose to go that route to come up with the money for group homes.” [emphasis added]
Most of the remaining residents in the facilities have the most intense needs and include people who have profound physical, mental, and behavioral disabilities. Under the terms of the Department of Justice settlement, these people would be moved to community settings where they would theoretically receive the exact level of care that they now receive at less cost to the state:
“Except — and here’s the scary part for guardians and families — the needed group home infrastructure in the commonwealth simply does not exist. Currently, there are thousands of people on the state’s waiting list for a group home spot. And that waiting list has only grown in the three years since the McDonnell administration decided to embark on the closure of the training centers, a path chosen because Richmond didn’t want to spend any additional money to build out the group home network before the training centers would close.” [emphasis added]
The editorial board asks, “To all its foes — from the Assembly Democrats and Republicans to the McAuliffe administration, we ask this question: Are you too tightfisted to care properly for the least among us?…Time and again, though, the answer has been yes.”
The argument being made to close Southbury Training School in Connecticut, an Intermediate Care Facility for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ICF/IID), is the same faulty argument being made in Michigan to justify closing programs that provide residential, employment, and day program options in congregate settings. It goes like this: When compared to the average cost of serving individuals in the community, congregate settings are far too expensive — close them down and there will be plenty of money left over to serve more people with disabilities!
Often overlooked in this calculation, is the fact that the people served in licensed congregate settings generally have more severe disabilities and need more specialized services than people living at home or in the so-called community. When people with highly specialized needs are served in community settings, it can be just as costly if not more costly than in group settings. In reality, costs savings often come as a price to people with disabilities and their families in the form of fewer services of lower quality.
Comparing the average cost of supporting people who require less intensive supports in the community to the cost of supporting distinctly non-average individuals who need more intensive supports and services is not a fair or accurate comparison. While costs should not be the only consideration for where and how a person with DD is served, it is inevitably raised as a factor by disability advocates who try to justify eliminating programs that do not conform to their ideology of full inclusion for every person with a disability.
The following are excerpts from an editorial that appeared in the Hartford Courant on 2/20/15: “Using Southbury Training School Is Only Real Solution” by Martha Dwyer and Tamie Hopp. Martha Dwyer is president of the nonprofit Home and School Association of the Southbury Training School. Tamie Hopp is director of government relations and advocacy for VOR, a national nonprofit that represents primarily individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families/guardians.
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There is a crisis in the care of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Connecticut. At least 2,000 individuals who are living with their families are on the waiting list for placement in a residence, many for more than 20 years and many in desperate situations. [emphasis added]
Many people believe that closing Southbury Training School and the state regional centers and moving residents to four-person (or smaller) group homes will free up funds to enable individuals on the waiting list to be placed in residences. This is incorrect and will create more problems than it will solve...
The numbers don't add up. There are approximately 313 individuals at Southbury and 191 at regional centers. At least 125 new group homes would have to be renovated and staffed to provide highly specialized services for these individuals. Moving a resident of Southbury to the community generally takes one to two years, and this during periods when only a few residents are moved at a time. To move 500 people would take years and a huge amount of money. Residents at Southbury and regional centers have been given priority over people on the waiting list for years and that would have to continue indefinitely to close Southbury and the regional centers. That would help no one on the waiting list for many years.
…Seventy-eight percent of Southbury residents have severe or profound intellectual disabilities, the vast majority have significant functional disabilities (a majority need help walking, eating, toileting, or dressing), and 83 percent have additional disabilities such as cerebral palsy, blindness, deafness, epilepsy or mental illness...they do not live in a segregated environment but interact on a frequent basis, to the extent they physically and intellectually can, with people in the community. They will be moved from their familiar surroundings and they will be exposed to a smaller group of unfamiliar people...
There is a better, more comprehensive solution that no one is talking about: Open Southbury and the regional centers for future placements and use Southbury for outpatient services and skilled nursing care for aged members of this population and respite services for families. Repairing and reopening cottages on the Southbury campus and using available regional center beds would be less expensive and faster than seeking homes in the community for individuals on the waiting list.
… The state should expand the sophisticated medical, dental and psychiatric facilities already in use at Southbury and make them available to people on the waiting list and in the community. It would make more sense to use the facilities the state already owns, and thereby bring down individual costs, than to waste this beautiful resource. We believe this would save money and improve service throughout the state.
...Southbury is a ready, compassionate solution centered on meeting people's true needs, not a numbers game that simply does not add up.
Read the complete editorial here....
This is an animation from the Madison House Autism Foundation
Where will 4.903 million individuals live?
Here are the facts:
There are 3.775 million people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (I/DD), 77%, who do not receive publicly funded residential supports.
1.127 million people with I/DD, or 23% do receive publicly funded supports. Of those, 56% live with family and 44% do not live with family.
Of the 44% who do not live with family, 127,000k or 27% live in their own home. The other 73% live in group homes (290k), foster homes (44k), nursing facilities (34k), and less than 1k live in psychiatric facilities.
From 2001 to 2011, 275k additional people got residential supports: 180k stayed with family and 95k moved out.
77k are on the waiting list for services needed in the next year. 853k are living with caregivers aged 60 or over.
Remember: 3.775 MILLION OR 77% GET NO PUBLICLY-FUNDED SERVICES AT ALL!
This is from an editorial in the Miami Herald, "Floridians with developmental disabilities need more help " by the President of the Autism Society of America Ven Sequenzia, Jr., 9/25/14.
Rick Scott, the Governor of Florida, claims to be helping people with DD by increasing the state budget to reduce the "critical needs" waiting list for services. The truth is, according to Sequenzia, that:
- "The Medicaid Waiver budget for 2013-14 was $915 million, or $46 million below the 2008 budget. It was actually the third lowest budget in the last six years.
- "This while the waiting list grew from 15,648 in Sept. 2007 to 21,140 in June 2014.
- "Now the final straw. The Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) returned approximately $80 million 'unspent' from this fiscal year to the state treasury. Yes, you read that correctly. Gov. Scott not only reduced spending, the agency returned unspent money, while 21,000 people are languishing on a waiting list."
Furthermore, to add insult to injury, "[The Governor] allows the wait list to increase by almost 5,000 people in 2014, all the while taking thousands of families to hearings to deny needed services based on the iBudget rules and an algorithm that the District Court of Appeals threw out as illegal. He included $4.5 million dollars in the APD budget for legal fees to fight families, and those funds go to the law firm that his chief of staff is associated with."
Floridians should be fuming.
This is from an article in Disability Scoop, "Disability Spending Drops for the First Time in Years" by Michelle Diament, 7/22/13, based on the 2013 State of the States in Developmental Disabilities, a report from the University of Colorado:
- "Overall government spending on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for 2011 — the most recent year for which data is available — was $56.65 billion, the report found.
- "Of the funding distributed nationwide that year, about 20 percent went toward programs providing family supports, employment services, personal assistance and similar aid.
- "Almost 60 percent went toward residential settings for six or fewer people while 5 percent funded living environments with seven to 15 residents. State-run institutions with 16 or more residents received 11.5 percent of total spending and 3 percent went to institutions that were privately run.
- "Nearly 80 percent of government spending on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities was funneled through the Medicaid program in 2011, the report found. Other funding came from the states and federal programs like Social Security."
More information on the State of the States Report was presented here in a Webinar on Feb. 27, 2013, hosted by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD).
The presentation shows some disturbing trends:
"Current Trend: Support Services Waivers Characterized By:
- "A low dollar cap on the total amount of HCBS Waiver services authorized for each beneficiary
- "Flexibility in the selection of services within the dollar cap
- "Expectation that unpaid family caregivers will provide significant support to Waiver participants [emphasis added]"
"An Estimated 853 Thousand Persons with I/DD Live at Home with Aging Caregivers"
Intellectual and Developmental Disability (I/DD) spending per $1,000 of state aggregate personal income, shows that Michigan ranks 26th at $3.75, a reduction in spending of 0.2%
In addition is this from another 2013 report from UCP, "The Case for Inclusion":
"Waiting lists for residential and community services are high and show the unmet need. More than a quarter of a million people (268,000) are on a waiting list for Home and Community Based Services. This would require a daunting 44% increase in states' HCBS programs! However, 20 states report no waiting list or a small waiting list (requiring less than 10% program growth). This measure has gotten much worse over the life of the Case for Inclusion. Since the 2007 Ranking, the size of the waiting list nationally has almost doubled from 138,000 to 268,000."
In Summary: Less money is being spent on people with DD. Waiting lists for services have almost doubled since 2007. 853,000 people with DD live at home with aging parents. The expectation is that unpaid family caregivers will provide "significant support" to waiver recipients. And there don't appear to be any plans to relieve the burden on families by expanding residential options for people with DD.
I read reports, so you don't have to and this one is a doozy: "Building a National Agenda for Supporting Families with a Member with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities".
The Supporting Families report came out of a conference held in March 2011 in Racine, Wisconsin. The conference was sponsored by the federal Administration on Developmental Disabilities (ADD) [now called the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD)]. Almost all the participants (see page 24 of the report) were professional advocates from programs and advocacy organizations funded, at least in part, by the federal Developmental Disabilities Act and administered by the ADD. Many of the participants are also identified as parents of children or adults with DD, but they attended the conference as representatives of their programs or organizations.
Like many ideas coming from advocacy groups for people with developmental disabilities, the idea of Supporting Families is a good one. When one looks deeper, however, and considers the report's recommendations and how they might be applied in the real world, "Supporting Families" proves to be, at best, lacking in common sense and, at worst, potentially harmful to the people the participating advocates claim to want to help.
The Supporting Families report establishes that families do, indeed, need help:
(from Page 4) "Today there are more than 4.7 million citizens with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States. More than 75% of those living in their communities without formal disability services and relying on their families for varying levels of support. [emphasis added] Of the 25% receiving services, over 56% live with their families; in some states, the figure is as high as 80%. For many families, the support provided neither is short term nor does it end when the family member turns eighteen years old".
(from Page 5) "Families often are faced with emotional, social, physical and economic demands that they may not have experienced had their child not been diagnosed with a disability.
- Twenty-eight percent of children with disabilities live below federal poverty levels as compared with 16% of children without disabilities.
- Parents of children with disabilities have lower rates of, and diminished opportunities for, employment and advancement than parents of children without disabilities.
- Over 58% of parents/caregivers spend more than 40 hours per week providing support for their loved one with I/DD beyond typical care. 40% spend more than 80 hours a week. [emphasis added]
- Long waiting lists for services and the increased lifespan of individuals withI/DD have contributed to a growing number of individuals with I/DD households where the primary caregivers are themselves aging."
Several things bear repeating before going on: 75% of people with DD receive no "formal" (read paid) services. 58% of family caregivers spend more than 40 hours per week, the equivalent of a full time job, caring for their family member and 40% spend more than 80 hours, the equivalent of two full-time jobs, caring for their family member.
As a parent who cared for one or the other or both of my two sons with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities at home for 28 years, I know enough about the difficulties that families face to know that the report and its recommendations coming out of the conference on Supporting Families is not the report I would have written. There is useful information to be extracted from from the report, however, and it reveals a great deal about how policy becomes twisted to serve interests other than those of people with disabilities.
Given the set of facts about families presented in the report, it appears to me that the first step in easing the burden placed on families by an inadequate system of care and services would be to increase services available and appropriate to the individual with DD. In addition, respite services that give families a break from care giving could be combined with expanded recreational and social activities for the DD family member giving the person with DD a much needed opportunity to have a life outside of the family home. Competent paid caregivers that come into the home to relieve families of constant care are also needed for both the family and the person with DD. These types of services go a long way toward keeping families together and reducing costs over the long term by delaying the need for residential placement outside the family home.
There are always situations where it is better for the welfare of the individual with DD and the family to have the option for the person with DD to reside outside the family home in a safe setting that provides services appropriate to the needs of the individual. We need to be especially cognizant, however, of people with DD who do not have families or whose aging parents no longer have the energy, ability, or will to care for another adult. We need to make sure that these individuals have the same rights and protections from harm that are are afforded people who are fortunate enough to have close and engaged family and friends who know and care what happens to them. It is often the case that people with DD with close connections to family and friends have their rights upheld and respected because a devoted family member or friend fought for them.
It is likely that providing appropriate services to the person with DD and expanding direct services to families such as respite care combined other activities for the person with DD may require an increase in funding from federal and state governments, but perhaps not as much as some policy makers fear. Families who have cared for loved ones with DD into their adult years are realistic about the effort and time that goes into caring for a person with severe disabilities and are least likely to squander resources on frivolous expenditures. In my experience, when families get together to fill gaps in the system of services that are lacking in their communities, they are extremely resourceful and marshal community resources that local service agencies are not able to do alone. Of course this means listening to families, respecting their expertise, and allowing them to do what they do best, which is acting as check on a dysfunctional system of services to make it work better for their DD family members.
That's my two cents. There's not much new or original here. It just makes sense in helping both people with developmental disabilities and their families to make the dysfunctional system of care and services work better. Now, what is it exactly that the advocates participating in the Supporting Families conference would do or not do to help families?
One thing is clear. The Supporting Families advocates are not about to stick their necks out and push for any increases in funding to directly provide services to families or to people with DD living at home. With the big push toward deinstitutionalization, which DD Act programs have supported wholeheartedly, the report acknowledges that as supports have shifted to community settings, (page 5) "the demand for long-term supports continues to increase and funding continues to be severely limited. This is further enhanced as the aging of the baby boom generation brings with it an increased need for public resources… These pressures, combined with a weak economy and large federal budget deficits require that developmental disability service systems transform the way they provide services and support. These changes include first recognizing the key role of the family as a primary [and mostly unpaid] source of support and for naming the source of day to day caregiving, and, second, supporting the capacity of the family members to provide needed assistance when necessary over time. Supports to the family unit must be a fundamental consideration in budgetary and long-term care policy as our nation moves forward."
The Supporting Families crew has opted to accept rather than challenge the idea that national economic conditions will inevitably result in fewer services and options for people with DD and their families and that families might as well get used to doing more with less. Where the Supporting Families advocates are willing to help is in supporting the capacity of families to do more with less.
stay tuned for more...
It seems there is more substance than I thought to the charge that Indiana has a policy that recommends homeless shelters as an option for people with developmental disabilities. According to a report from TV Channel 6 in Indianapolis, a discharge plan form is given to people who are either not eligible for services or who choose not to receive services. The form lists a Homeless Initiative Program as a resource and refers to a list of homeless shelters.
My guess is that people who "choose not to receive services" do so not because they are particularly fussy, but because the services offered make no sense for their family member or are of such poor quality that nothing is better than something. As for people who are not eligible for services, we might be surprised at the severity of the problems people have who have been rejected by the system of care for people with developmental disabilities.
A spokesman for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration acknowledges the existence of the discharge form, yet still denies that homeless shelters are offered as an option.
So the real scandal is all those things listed below, plus evidence that Indiana has a policy of offering homeless shelters to at least some families as options for their developmentally disabled family members.
An AP article reports that parents of severely disabled children and adults in Indiana have been told to drop their family members off at homeless shelters, if they can no longer care for their children at home.
As it turns out, this is not an official state policy and there are no confirmed cases of parents actually following through with that suggestion. It appears it was more of a threat by frustrated employees of Indiana social service agencies to get parents to back off from their complaining about the unavailability of Medicaid waivers that could pay for services at home.
The real scandal is this:
- 20,000 people are on waiting lists with some people waiting 10 years for services.
- Governor Mitch Daniel ordered budget cuts that eliminated 2,000 Medicaid waiver slots since July.
- Foster children with disabilities have been moved to a less costly program that doesn't provide services for special needs and they had a food benefit taken away.
Almost everyone agrees that we should help the "truly needy", but doing it and paying for it are something else altogether.
Click here to see a You Tube video called "Disabilities Don't Wait" from Noewait ( National Organization to End the Waitlists). In Michigan we don't have Waiting Lists. We have Priority Lists. Does that make you feel better?
NOEWAIT is the National Organization to End the Waitlist through Advocacy, Information and Transformation. To join, contact _DnvrFox@aol.com_ (mailto:DnvrFox@aol.com).
Here is the main part of an email I received about this new organization:
Dedicated to ending national waitlists for services for adults with Developmental Disabilities through ADVOCACY within the political system, the sharing of INFORMATION from all sources, and the TRANSFORMATION of the laws, leading
to all individuals with Developmental Disabilities receiving appropriate services of their choice within the community.
Waitlists for services for adults with developmental disabilities are a national disgrace. Some states have over 100,000 adults with extreme needs waiting for services. A few states have passed legislation to end the waitlists. Yet, individuals in most states are fighting for services on a person-by-person, state-by-state basis. There seems to be no national awareness nor coordination, yet this is truly a national issue.
The moderator, Denver C. Fox, Ed.D., is a parent of two adult children with profound disabilities. He is the moderator of the Colorado listserv, Parents of Adults with Disabilities.
Dr. Fox and PAD-CO participants have been very active in the Colorado attempt to reduce the waitlists for about 7,000 adults with developmental disabilities in the Colorado system.
This listserv is open to all parents, friends, professionals, politicians and others, and is designed to gather information about the extent of the waitlist in each state, to find out what attempts are being made to solve that problem within each state (and their success), and to develop a national agenda regarding ending the disgraceful waitlists.
