In an interview with the Dallas Morning News,  a co-owner of Henry’s Turkey Service defended his company against allegations that it exploited and neglected 21 workers with intellectual disabilities in Atalissa, Iowa.

Kenneth Henry said he and his company followed the law. He said critics underestimate the cost of the 24-hour care required to supervise the workers – a cost that he says was legally deducted from their paychecks.

“These boys cannot take care of themselves,” said Henry, 68. “The constant care is the part that nobody wants to talk about.”

… “We haven’t tried to hide from anybody. We’ve had 1,500 boys go through the program. It was a lot better than letting them rot in a state institution.”

Federal and state investigators are evaluating charges that the firm underpaid workers, improperly deducted money from their paychecks, and violated their civil rights.

From the Chicago Tribune:

For students with disabilities, the prom and graduation at the Blue Cap Instructional Center in Blue Island are bittersweet events.

Once they turn 22, these students will no longer be eligible for public education, and will find few adult services available. Many will end up staying at home all day, and will likely lose the educational gains they worked so hard to achieve.

“Thinking about it puts a cold chill up my spine,” says Carl Wanzung, whose daughter Vianey will age out of the Blue Cap program in a few months. She’s been on a waiting list for adult programming for more than two years. If she doesn’t get in, her parents must decide between hiring a day-time aide on their own or one of them quitting work to care for her.

Writing in the New York Times, Karl Taro Greenfeld says adults with autism aren’t getting adequate support and care, nor are researchers trying to find out how best to help them.

Even though autism is now among “the most financially successful and mediagenic diseases ever,” Greenfeld says, it has been portrayed as a childhood disease  — which means that no help has been forthcoming for adults like Greenfeld’s 42-year-old brother, Noah.

This has to change, Greenfeld says, before society is flooded with hundreds of thousands of adults in desperate need of lifetime support.

See also: Two brothers, battling autism — Washington Post

Earlier posts here.

Writing in the Boston Globe, columnist Joan Vennochi says the debate over closing Massachusetts’ state institutions is a fight over money that is pitting family against family, with advocates for the institutions’ 858 residents battling against the 33,000 people who are already integrated into the community. More than that, she says, the dispute highlights society’s fears and ambivalent attitudes toward people with intellectual disabilities.

Vennochi critiques one lawmaker’s “weaker” argument that the institutions should be kept open because localities are resistant to group homes. “That suggests that society’s discomfort with the mentally disabled is a good reason to sequester them,” the columnist writes.

Last week, Vennochi says, state lawmakers heard testimony from Julie Peck, whose grandson is thriving in a community-based group home. Twenty-three-year-old Matthew Peck has significant disabilities and qualifies for care in an institution. An excerpt:

[Julie Peck] doesn’t look at him and see a hopeless soul, incapable of love, affection, and interaction with other human beings. She sees a young man who can, with appropriate care, experience life despite great physical and mental limitations.

… Anyone listening to Peck has to wonder whether the tragedy might be letting the fear of doing the wrong thing for one group of vulnerable citizens stop Massachusetts from doing the right thing for all vulnerable citizens.

Earlier posts here.

(Photo from Boston Globe)

Time magazine carries a portion of “Boy Alone,” an upcoming memoir by journalist Karl Taro Greenfeld about growing up in the shadow of his autistic brother, Noah.

Greenfeld writes here about his family’s attempts to find an acceptable living situation for Noah, whose challenging behaviors have included head-banging, pinching and grabbing others. Greenfeld says the expected surge in the number of autistic adults creates a likelihood that people like his brother “will be a burden to parents, siblings and, eventually, society.” An excerpt:

We are largely unprepared to deal with this crisis. Autism funding and research, so far, have predominantly focused on children. When I have visited autism conferences, there have been exceedingly few research projects devoted to low-functioning adult autistics. It remains difficult for families of adult autistics to find the programs they need, to access those services that are available and even to locate medical professionals and dentists who can handle adult autistics. Too much of the burden rests on the families themselves, who remain in the picture as caregivers, advocates and, too often, the only party with the autistic adult’s best interests in mind.

… Will I always be there for Noah, as my parents have been?

I wish I could say, Yes, definitely, I will be there.

But I honestly don’t know.

Noah Greenfeld was the subject of an earlier trilogy of books by their father, screenwriter Josh Greenfeld: “A Child Called Noah,” “A Place for Noah,” and “A Client Called Noah.”