From the Associated Press/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Des Moines Register:

Iowa’s social service agency acknowledged Tuesday that it twice looked into a company’s treatment of its disabled workers, once in the 1970s and again in 1997, but did not act. Officials said they lacked jurisdiction or sufficient evidence to proceed.

Twenty-one men with intellectual disabilities were evacuated from a battered and padlocked bunkhouse near the town of Atalissa, Iowa, earlier this month after a fire marshal concluded it was unsafe. State officials say the men had been living there for decades and were paid little for their work. An investigation is continuing.

The state file includes a Dec. 4, 1974, memo from social worker Ed George, who told district manager James Strickland that the mentally disabled men lacked adequate housing and were deprived of their families, among other problems.

George wrote that once a man becomes an employee of Henry’s Turkey Service “he for all practical purposes loses most basic human rights.”

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Cassie James Holdsworth and Nancy Salandra say current Medicaid policy doesn’t provide daily living services to  people with disabilities unless they move to a nursing home. Holdsworth and Salandra call for the passage of the Community Choice Act so that people can get services in their own homes. An excerpt:

Advocates have long been asking Congress to allow people at risk of being admitted to nursing homes to have the option of staying in their own homes with Medicaid dollars. Not only do the vast majority of people prefer living at home; it’s also cheaper.

… So why hasn’t this legislation been approved? The chief barrier is the influential nursing-home industry, which has been entrenched in American society for more than four decades.

Holdsworth and Salandra are director of policy and advocacy and director of independent-living services for Liberty Resources, a nonprofit organization that promotes independent living for people with disabilities in Philadelphia.

From the Chicago Daily Herald:

Chip Davis lives in his parents’ basement, and has been on a state waiting list for housing of his own for nearly 15 of his 32 years. Davis is among some 16,000 people with intellectual disabilities in Illinois who wait on such lists.

Tight budgets mean state services are limited to those in emergency situations — who have abusive or neglectful caregivers, for example. People like Davis, whose parents are healthy and supportive, might never receive services until their parents get ill or die.

Even if Davis got emergency status, he’d have to fall in line behind 2,671 other people with similar designations. And then there’s the problem of finding the housing itself: there’s a serious shortage of housing for people with disabilities in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Says Joyce Helander, executive director of a local disability service coordinator:

“The number of people waiting for care is just ridiculous. We spend a whole lot of entitlements on education for the developmentally disabled up to age 21. Then what? All that just pours out of their ears because there isn’t state funding to help these people continue on with meaningful programs.”

Earlier post here.

From the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Mothers from the Down Syndrome Network of Northern Nevada are among a national group heading to the Down Syndrome Affiliates in Action conference in Washington this week. They will be lobbying for programs and resources that are important to people with disabilities.

Improved access to education and health care have brought brighter prospects for people with Down syndrome, who are increasingly graduating from high school and going on to college. But Colette McKenzie, president of the Down Syndrome Network of Northern Nevada and mother of a five-year-old boy with Down syndrome (at right above), says she worries that people with disabilities will be hurt by impending budget cuts.

“We want them to know we exist and know that we are here,” said Theresa Grant, secretary of the Down Syndrome Network of Northern Nevada and mom to 11-year-old Elliott (at left above).

(Reno Gazette-Journal photo)

From the Idaho Statesman:

Only 20 percent of Americans with a disability have a job, compared to 65 percent of people without a disability, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The jobless numbers for people with intellectual disabilities are believed to be even worse, although many are good workers when matched with the right job and supports, experts say.

The Statesman offers brief profiles of three people with disabilities who are in the work force. Sue Rodenbaugh, who has a developmental disability, works as a library page; Jeremy Watson, who has cerebral palsy, works full-time in the shoe department at Wal-Mart.

Kara Burnet, who has dysthimia, was working successfully in a clothing store until the state decided she no longer needed her job coach. The store disagreed, and fired her. She’s trying to find another job.

Gordon Graff, disability program navigator lead at the Idaho Department of Labor, called people with disabilities “a great untapped source of skills.”

“But in this economy, job openings for any person are dwindling to small numbers. A barrier, whether it is a disability, or language barrier, makes it that much harder for a person to get connected,” he said.

Questions raised: Why aren’t they regulated?

From the Washington Post:

A new generation of prenatal tests for Down syndrome is due to hit the market soon, promising a safer way to detect an extra fetal chromosome earlier in a woman’s pregnancy. But the tests are renewing questions. Among them: Why don’t regulators require such tests to be accurate before allowing them to be offered to the public?

At the same time, abortion foes and disability rights advocates fear that the new tests will prompt more terminations. Advocates also worry that the tests will encourage discrimination against people with Down syndrome and their families.

“We have a history in this country of a eugenics movement where people tried to eliminate certain people from the gene pool,” said Andrew J. Imparato of the American Association of People With Disabilities. “People could start wondering, ‘How did you get born?’ “

From USA Today:

An increasing number of adaptive winter sports programs, including sled hockey and skiing, offer people with physical disabilities more independence and improved fitness.

Mike Doyle, 53, who lost his right leg above the knee in a motorcycle accident when he was 20, has spent the past decade establishing a sled hockey team in the Philadelphia area. The team now boasts a roster of “20 players who practice three hours a week and travel to hockey venues along the East Coast to compete against other teams in the Northeast Sled Hockey League.”

For someone in a wheelchair or with prosthetics, winter or snow is not a friend, says Jenny Walsh, sports and recreation program coordinator at the Courage Center in Minneapolis, which runs five adaptive snow sports programs. But skiing changes that. “It brings freedom and dignity,” she says.

(USA Today photo)