CNN’s Nancy Grace did an extended segment last night on allegations that workers in a Long Island group home beat up and abused a nonverbal 50-year-old woman with autism. Police say they have arrested two workers and are seeking two more in the incident, which was videotaped by hidden camera at PLUS Group Home Inc. in Nassau County. One of the workers was also charged with stealing the camera after he noticed it. Grace viewed the case as “the tip of the iceberg,” calling it an indication of widespread abuse against vulnerable people with disabilities.

From the transcript, an exchange between Grace and Lawrence Carter-Long, director of advocacy for the Disabilities Network of New York City.

Grace: Lawrence Carter-Long, this is an epidemic, an epidemic in nursing homes, in home health care, paid individuals coming into the home. What`s going on, and how do we stop it? There are laws on the books, but my God, if the nursing home hadn’t thought on their own to put in a secret videocamera, we wouldn’t have a case.

Carter-Long: Absolutely. What would we do without videotape? Studies will show you that as many as eight out of every ten disabled women have been abused at some course in their lifetime. So what we`re talking about is a situation within these nursing homes, within these assisted living facilities, where low expectations, low pay, bad training is a breeding ground for abuse.

There is no national registry for these so-called caregivers, as there is for, let’s say, sexual offenders. So what happens is, they go from job to job, bouncing around from position to position without being adequately followed, screened or really gauged as to what their competency is to do this type of work. And this allows this type of abuse to continue.

… You know, these types of situations, again, as you said at the top of the hour, are epidemic. Four to five times higher are the rates of abuse for people with disabilities than that of the general population. If we do not properly screen, if we do not properly train the people working in these facilities or in the homes, we are sending the signal, we are sending the message that it’s OK to abuse people living in assisted living facilities, and that’s something that shouldn’t happen.

Story from Newsday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 4:56 am and is filed under abuse, caregivers, group homes, health care, law, violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.