Lots of graduation stories with a disability angle this weekend. Here’s a sampling:

• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: First four students graduate from community college life skills program. The degree was designed especially for people with intellectual disabilities, with the goal of helping them become self-sufficient.
• The [Minneapolis-St. Paul] Star Tribune: A journey to better things (autism). Family celebrates the graduation of son with autism who was adopted from Romania.
• The New Hampshire Union Leader: John Clayton: From Special Olympics to autism studies at Yale. Valedictorian who volunteers at Special Olympics plans to attend Yale to study molecular biology and seek the root causes for autism.
• The [Cincinnati] Enquirer: Fitting in was hardest lesson (Asperger’s)
• The Miami Herald: Deaf high school students graduate with pride
• The St. Petersburg [Florida] Times: Student with Down syndrome a part of graduating class
• The Cape Cod Times: Riverview School honors 62 students (learning disabilities — photo above)
• The [Los Angeles] Daily News: Autistic graduates cap off a remarkable comeback

Other graduation stories here.

From the Washington Post:

Some 100 students with disabilities danced the night away in a donated ballroom at Washington’s historic Willard Hotel at their prom, the “Cinderella Ball.” The students raised about $100,000 to stage the annual event, which was launched just three years ago in a warehouse in Woodbridge, Virginia.

No one noticed the occasional meltdown, when the loud music or crowd became a little too much. It didn’t matter that some students needed help feeding themselves. Couples held hands. Wheelchairs twirled. “I think the disabilities disappear when they are all together,” said Kim Cockrell, whose daughter Cari has Down syndrome.

From the New York Times, a feature on 20-year-old Sam Stabiner, who lives among elderly people in a Manhattan nursing home. His parents would like him to live among people his own age, but could not find a place for young adults that could provide appropriate care for Sam’s complex medical needs.

As medical advances have allowed patients who might have died as children to survive into adulthood, the patients are falling into a void in a health care system that has yet to develop institutions for the young and “medically fragile.”

… about 8,000 people under age 30 are among roughly 1.4 million nursing home residents, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“This is a problem that has gone largely unrecognized and is only going to grow,” said Dr. Edwin F. Simpser, the chief medical officer at St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children, the largest provider of intensive rehabilitation and specialized care for severely ill and disabled children in New York.

Son qualifies, but Missouri has no money for services

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan writes again about Richard and Donna Schnurman, who are trying to get adult services for their son Brent. Despite the assistance of a state representative, the Schnurmans are caught on a “journey into the rabbit hole of the Missouri mental health system where nothing is quite as it seems.”

After many phone calls, the Schnurmans get some good news: Brent qualifies for “crisis” services under Medicaid waivers. But there is also bad news: he won’t receive the services because funds are not available.

Another parent tells McClellan he was in a similar situation and successfully sued for the Medicaid services. “I’ve been lied to so many times I don’t trust anybody in state government. The Department of Mental Health should be my son’s advocate, not his adversary,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Schnurmans are tired, and desperate for help. “It does not speak well of Missouri that we have no help to give,” McClellan writes.

Earlier column here.

From the Detroit Free Press, a combination feature and restaurant review of the K.C. Cafe in Pontiac, Michigan, a lunchtime restaurant staffed by 12 cognitively impaired young adults with autism, Down syndrome and other learning challenges.

Special education teacher Harriett Silverman (left, center) set it up with the goal of teaching the students skills that will help them land and keep real jobs.

The food is praised as healthy, delicious and reasonably priced, and health inspectors are impressed by the crew’s use of proper food-handling techniques. “I’m so proud of our kids and what they can do,” Silverman says. “I just wish more places would take a chance and give them jobs.”

Fulfilling lives possible for people with Down syndrome, with proper care

‘We just want these kids to be valued and respected’

The Lexington [Kentucky] Herald-Leader carries a profile of Julia Steinman, a teenager with Down Syndrome, that launches into a deeper exploration of what new parents of children born with Down Syndrome need to know.

Julia’s family and other parents of people with Down syndrome want doctors to speak about the condition more positively. They say from experience that early intervention and a nurturing environment are helping many people with Down syndrome to graduate from high school and go on to live satisfying, productive lives.

Studies by Dr. Brian Skotko, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston and Boston Medical Center, have shown that women whose fetuses or children are diagnosed with Down syndrome often receive inaccurate, incomplete and insensitive information. “Obstetricians simply do not know what the most up-to-date portrait of Down syndrome is,” said Skotko.

Brighter Tomorrows, an interactive educational tool for doctors, aims to change that. It asks doctors to congratulate parents on the birth of their child. It tells them to point out the physical characteristics their child has, how it might point to Down syndrome, and to refer patients to parent groups and other resources.

(more…)

For World Autism Awareness Day, an essay that attempts to help readers understand the complexities of loving a young adult with profound special needs.

Writing for a Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog, Janice Williams says she doesn’t need the smiling children featured on CNN to explain autism to her. Her 27-year-old son “Todd” has autism, along with medical issues and challenging behaviors. He lives in a nursing home — and knowing that he is well cared for there allows Williams to sleep at night.

Williams offers encouragement to young parents who may be fearful about their child’s future.

It can get better. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better, but overall, I’ve found the aging process to help. Some things do pass away with time. New challenges arise, but you’ll be stronger and more experienced, so they will not feel as hard as the challenges at the beginning …

… Today, I salute the parents who love the children who are different. Who don’t fit in. Who never will fit in.

Years ago I made a promise to my child “There is a place for you in this world, and I will help you find it.” I renew that promise every day, with each small loving step I can find it in myself to take — steps made possible by the love and support of everyone in my family. Together, we have found a happy life for ourselves and this unique child. We dreamed new dreams, and who’s to say our dreams are not worthwhile?