From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (registration required), Google/AP:

The federal Department of Justice has filed suit against the state of Arkansas for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, alleging that the state illegally segregates hundreds of people with developmental disabilities.

The lawsuit accused Arkansas of a “systemic failure” that places people with disabilities in large institutions instead of pursuing less restrictive options for their care in community-based settings.

“The state gives individuals with developmental disabilities the draconian choice of receiving services in segregated institutions or receiving no services at all,” the lawsuit reads.

“Arkansas illegally segregates hundreds of individuals in institutions across the state and places hundreds more at risk of needless institutionalization,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We are acting now to remedy discrimination against these individuals.”

Arkansas officials said the state is complying with the ADA, and pledged to fight the federal lawsuit. “We will defend the right of our families to choose where they will have their loved ones served,” said a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

From the Washington Post:

A planned four-acre development at Gallaudet University represents a dramatic shift in philosophy at the nation’s only institution of higher learning for deaf students. For the first time in its 144-year history, the school is designing buildings and streetscape with the express purpose of bringing together deaf and hearing people.

Officials say the changes at the campus in Northeast Washington are driven by cultural shifts, as a younger generation of students desires more integration into the broader world. Historically, the school’s separation was prompted by public stigma against deaf people, and a corresponding belief that they were better off immersing themselves in their own culture.

“It would create a connection to the city and tear down the walls,” said Hansel Bauman (above left), an architect retained by Gallaudet to help design the project. “It’s a sea change in thinking.”

Gallaudet drew national attention two years ago, when students shut down the campus to demonstrate against the selection of a new president.

(Photo: Hansel Bauman and Fred Weiner, Gallaudet’s executive director for preogram development. From the Washington Post )

With no hope for recovery, death is the only way out

Ann Curry, on Dateline NBC, takes a film crew into Serbian institutions that look much the way institutions did in the U.S. a generation ago.

People with intellectual disabilities are shunned and warehoused, imprisoned without supervision under filthy conditions behind crumbling walls and rusted bars. They are given no treatment and meager care that may include being drugged or tied up day after day to control the anxiety and aggression that comes of being locked away. One man has been imprisoned in a crib for all of his 21 years. Among those shown are people with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other conditions.

Disability is a source of deep shame in Serbia, and parents are urged to put children with intellectual disabilities away in remote government institutions or risk financial ruin. Some surrender their children without ever glimpsing their faces.

Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of the institutions, acknowledged that the conditions are inhumane, but said the government does not have resources to fix the situation.

Said Laurie Ahern, associate director of Mental Disability Rights International:

The idea of being locked away and the idea that somehow these people, that their lives aren’t valuable, that they are less than human, because they were born with a disability. It’s horrendous.  And it’s awful. And it shouldn’t happen.

The video is here.

See earlier post here.

See also:

Reporter’s notebook, by Tim Sandler, NBC News producer

Shunned: Photos from inside Serbia’s mental institutions

From the Kansas City Star, Indianapolis Star:

The AMC Theaters in Kansas City have begun a series of special screenings for people with autism-spectrum disorders and their family members (at left). At a recent screening of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” managers turned up the lights, turned down the sound, and didn’t insist that patrons remain quietly in their seats. Children occasionally stood up, clapped, flapped their arms or ran around in circles in the aisles.

A similar event occurred in the Kansas City restaurant T-Rex Cafe, where managers recently reserved a secluded section for people with autism and served a buffet tailored to avoid certain foods at the direction of parents. A Kansas City-area gym opens its facility once a month to children with special needs, turning off the music for the occasion.

AMC Theaters is also exploring what it calls “sensory-friendly” films in nine other cities nationwide.

(Photo from Kansas City Star)

From tampabay.com (St. Petersburg Times):

Seven nursing home residents backed by the AARP Foundation have filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Florida under the Americans with Disabilities Act. They say the state’s Medicaid program is biased toward institutional placements, and want the right to determine where they live.

Florida spends 87 cents of its Medicaid dollar on nursing homes when caring for the frail and disabled. Only nine other states commit a smaller portion to home-based care. [The Florida practice] “perpetuates the segregation of persons with disabilities,” the suit says.

Here’s a fascinating internet collection of public documents and video that documents the nation’s changing perception of intellectual disability in the postwar era: Parallels in Time II. Central to its story are the efforts of the administration of President John F. Kennedy in promoting public awareness and launching new programs for people with intellectual disabilities.

Assembled by the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities, the collection reminds viewers that as recently as the 1960s people with intellectual disabilities were routinely locked away, warehoused and abused in institutions. Photographs from the era show inmates who were physically restrained, malnourished, and lacked clothing.

Worth thinking about as you peruse the exhibit: President Kennedy’s sister Rosemary had an intellectual disability that was described as mild in childhood, but became completely incapacitated after being lobotomized in 1941 by Dr. Walter J. Freeman at the direction of their father, Joseph P. Kennedy. Rosemary spent the last 56 years of her life in an institution.

In a videotaped interview included with the exhibit, Elizabeth Boggs, a member of the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation, says the Kennedy family didn’t want Rosemary’s condition mentioned.

A partial chronology of exhibits:

1962 — Video of President John Kennedy explaining his legislative proposals to “help fight mental illness and mental retardation.”

(more…)

A lawsuit against a Wisconsin school for children with disabilities points up the complexities faced by special educators as they strive to comply with federal law.

Lakeland School in Walworth County is being sued for allegedly violating a federal law requiring that students be educated in the least restrict environment. But some parents say that the separate school setting actually allows their children to function more independently.