News from Inclusion Daily

Another Kansas Woman Talks After Years Of Silence

2006-11-11T18:52:51Z

ARKANSAS CITY, KANSAS--"Georgi, I want to thank you for that bath you gave me last week; it was one of the best baths I've had."

That was De Glaze, a 60-year-old resident at Medicalodge North Post-Acute Care Center, talking to nurse Georgi Hollins on Halloween.

Ordinarily, such a compliment would be welcomed.

But it was a bit of a shock for Hollins: Glaze, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, had not spoken for nearly three years prior to that day.

"It brought tears to my eyes," Hollins told the Arkansas City Traveler. "It was such a long sentence."

Glaze spoke her first words to her husband, Joe.

"She said 'thank you,'" Mr. Glaze said. "It just happened suddenly, and then, wham, she took off (talking)."

"Then she started complaining."

Nobody seems to know why De started talking after all this time. She and her friends credit the power of prayer; a group of friends had gathered every Tuesday to pray for her.

"It's the miracle of my life," she said.

Her physician, Dr. David Schmeidler, explained: "Lou Gehrig's disease is a continually deteriorating disease that continues until a person dies." He added that the diagnosis "was never definitely made with De; it was a working diagnosis from the neurologist."

Glaze was the third Kansas woman in the last two years to make headlines by talking after years of silence.

In May of last year, 30-year-old Tracy Gaskill started talking for the first time nearly three years after her brain was damaged in a car accident. Gaskill was a resident at the same facility as Glaze.

Facility administrator Erik Hatten remarked, "It's just something in the water."

In January 2005, Sarah Scantlin, of Hutchinson, Kansas suddenly started speaking 20 years after a September 1984 auto accident that doctors said left her in a "near coma state".

Related:
Woman begins talking after two years of being a silent Medicalodge patient (Arkansas City Traveler)

Copyright 2006 Inonit Publishing
Article reproduced here under special arrangement with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service. Please do not reprint, republish or forward without permission.

Justice Department Doesn't Penalize States For Failing On Voting Act

2006-11-07T23:41:24Z

WASHINGTON, DC--Officials with the U.S. Department of Justice are not clear about how many states have failed to upgrade their polling systems as Congress required under the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

But one thing is clear: The agency has not penalized any states, even though the deadline for upgrading is Tuesday, November 7, 2006.

Those upgrades include making sure polling places are accessible and requiring voting system alternatives that voters with disabilities can use to cast a private, confidential ballot.

According to the Associated Press, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits against Alabama, Maine, New Jersey and New York for not following the law, but those states still have until next year to comply. Other states are at varying degrees of compliance.

Related:
Despite tough new laws, U.S. states not penalized for failing to upgrade voting systems (Associated Press via International Herald-Tribune)

Community Advocates Oppose Kansas Plan To Reopen Closed Psych Unit

2006-11-06T23:02:07Z

TOPEKA, KANSAS--"State institutions are the pigs of the service system . . . Opening up a new cottage is putting lipstick on that pig."

That quote came from Rocky Nichols, director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, the state's federally mandated protection and advocacy system, in the Lawrence Journal-World.

Nichols is one of many Kansans who are opposed to plans by the state's Social and Rehabilitation Services to spend $400,000 to reopen Willow Cottage, a now-closed unit at Parsons State Hospital, and move between 10 and 22 people with developmental disabilities into it.

Ironically, the push comes as Kansas looks to the federal government for money to move people with disabilities and seniors out of nursing homes and other institutions through a Money Follows the Person grant.

Part of the problem, it seems, is that the state plans to use the MFP project to focus on private nursing homes rather than state-run facilities.

One state official told the Journal-World that the state is trying to build capacity in the community for those now housed in state institutions.

Related:
SRS seeks to reopen state hospital wing (Lawrence Journal-World)

BC Institution Survivors Asked To Prove Abuse Claims

2006-11-03T10:27:38Z

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--For decades, children and adults with developmental disabilities suffered horrific sexual and physical abuse while housed in British Columbia's Woodlands School, until it was shuttered in 1996.

Four years ago, the provincial government formally apologized for the residents' mistreatment, and announced a special fund for support and counseling.

The government's failure to provide any compensation to the abuse victims, however, prompted a group of them to take the government to court.

But a proposed deal recently hammered out between the survivors' attorney and the government is literally adding insult to their injuries, say members of the We Survived Woodlands Group.

The proposal would force those with claims of abuse to prove in court not only that the abuse took place -- which would be nearly impossible for many because they cannot speak, and records either were destroyed or never kept -- but also the level of abuse they endured. Certain forms of sexual abuse, for instance, would warrant more "points", and a larger compensation package, than others.

"They can stick it right where the sun don't shine," former resident Gary Hill told CTV about the proposal. "Because I'm damned if I'm going to go and drag up garbage from the past, again. I don't need it and what they're asking us to do is inhumane, totally inhumane."

Congresswoman's Wheelchair Slam Showed "Insensitivity", Says Opponent

2006-11-01T16:17:15Z

CHEYENNE, WYOMING--Republican U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Cubin and her Libertarian opponent Thomas Rankin disagree on many things.

But what made the headlines last week was their disagreement over what Cubin told Rankin after last Sunday's televised debate.

According to Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a motorized wheelchair, Cubin came over to him and said, "If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face."

"It took me totally off guard," Rankin later told the Star-Tribune. "I said, 'Barbara, if you feel the need to slap me, go right ahead.'"

Rankin said Cubin's statement showed "her insensitivity to people with disabilities."

Cubin recalled that, after Rankin misrepresented her record, she went over to him and said, "if you had said that to anyone else, they probably would have smacked you."

During a radio interview Tuesday, Cubin said, "It was person to person, and it was not an attack on the disabled."

"In retrospect, I was wrong in what I said, and I apologize."

Rankin responded that Cubin had not apologized directly to him, and added, "Barbara has been a loose cannon too long. She needs to be reined in."

Related:
Cubin tells challenger, 'I'd slap you' (Casper Star-Tribune)
Cubin: 'I was wrong' (Associated Press via Jackson Hole Star-Tribune)

Supreme Court To Decide Whether Parents Must Use Attorneys In IDEA Cases

2006-11-01T16:03:35Z

PARMA, OHIO--The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday that it would hear arguments to decide whether parents can act without an attorney to sue a school if they believe the school has failed to accommodate that child's disability under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The case involves Ohio parents Jeff and Sandee Winkelman, who say they cannot afford an attorney to represent them in their suit against Parma City School District. They want the district to pay for their son, Jacob, to attend a specialized private school that caters to students with autism, at an annual cost of $56,000.

The Supreme Court will not decide whether the school must pay the tuition. The Justices will focus on the parents' right to sue without an attorney. While the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Winkelmans had to hire a lawyer, other federal courts in other states have ruled differently.

The case, Jacob Winkelman v. Parma City School District, 05-983, will likely be heard early next year, with a decision by next summer.

Earlier this year, the Cleveland Bar Association came under sharp criticism when it announced it would fine another Ohio couple, Brian and Susan Woods, for illegally practicing law when they settled a lawsuit against the Akron School District over special education services for their son, Daniel, who has autism.

The lawyer's group made that threat after Parma School attorneys accused the Woodses of providing legal advice to the Winkelmans. The association later apologized to the couple and withdrew their threat.

Related:
Supreme Court to Decide Whether Nonlawyer Parents May Sue Under IDEA (Education Week)
Lawyer Association Accuses Parents Of Illegally Practicing Law May 2, 2006 (Inclusion Daily Express)

Auditor Faults Lax Laws For Oakwood Contracting Woes

2006-10-28T17:04:17Z

SOMERSET, KENTUCKY--Residents of Kentucky's largest institution have suffered an increase of abuse and neglect while operated by private companies under contracts that do not have enough standards and oversight to ensure their health and safety, a state audit has revealed.

In a report released Oct. 19, State Auditor Crit Luallen reportedly focused on the millions of dollars worth of contracts with private companies to serve residents of Communities at Oakwood, which houses 250 people with developmental disabilities, in recent years.

Luallen said that state contracting laws have so many loopholes that nearly every contract could be exempt from state oversight.

In the past 22 months, Oakwood has been cited 24 times for jeopardizing the health and safety of residents. Most of those citations were issued after day-to-day operations shifted from the state to Liberty Healthcare under a multi-million dollar contract last fall.

"The situation at Oakwood has been a travesty,'' Luallen said.

According to the Courier-Journal, Luallen's report includes 22 recommendations, such as eliminating many of the exemptions in state laws that agencies use to by-pass oversight.

The non-profit Bluegrass Regional Mental Health-Mental Retardation Board is set to manage Oakwood under a new contract that begins November 1. State officials have expressed confidence that conditions for Oakwood residents will improve, partly because all workers will be employees of Bluegrass, and would be exempt from state merit rules.

Fifteen former Oakwood employees have been arrested in the past two years and charged with abusing and neglecting residents.

Dozens of people have moved out of Oakwood and into homes in the community in recent months.

Related:
Report: Kentucky's privatization laws are ineffective (Associated Press via Herald-Leader)
Communities At Oakwood (Inclusion Daily Express Archives)

Utah Activists Skirt Barricades To Defy Feds On Off-Road Access Rules

2006-10-20T00:46:29Z

SAN RAFAEL SWELL, UTAH--While about 40 off-road enthusiasts cheered them on, a group of disability rights activists drove their all-terrain vehicles around a barricade and down a remote road last Saturday in direct defiance of the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The advocates, one of whom reportedly had strapped his oxygen bottle to the front of his ATV, want the agency to reopen some of public lands that have been put off limits to them.

"We want our land back," said Richard Beardall, president of the Americans with Disabilities Access Alliance and organizer of the public act of civil disobedience.

Beardall told the Salt Lake Tribune he expected to be fined for his activism. He said he plans to fight the penalty, a possible $250 fine, in order to force the courts to look at the issue.

"To preserve civil rights, sometimes action has to be taken," Beardall said. "[Rosa] Parks wouldn't go to the back of the bus, and we want the right to use the road."

BLM manager Roger Bankert said that officers were made aware of the action, but that he decided it "would not be wise" to send officers to the site during the protest.

Related:
Disabled activists fight feds (Salt Lake Tribune)
BLM will cite defiant ATV rider (Associated Press via Casper Star-Tribune)

"Crippendales": "Murderball" meets "Full Monty"?

2006-10-19T16:46:00Z

LONDON, ENGLAND--Remember the movie, "The Full Monty", in which six unemployed steel workers follow one man's dream and together form a comedic male striptease act?

Now, imagine that same plot line, only with the leader in a wheelchair, and his buddies all having physical disabilities.

That's essentially the idea behind the new documentary entitled "The Crippendales".

The 24-minute documentary reportedly follows Lee Kemp, a cool wheelchair user who wants to be a stripper. He recruits his friends to learn to bump, grind and dazzle the ladies at the "girls' night out" clubs.

Director Havana Marking told The Guardian that the film, which is being screened privately in London this month, was an attempt to challenge the assumptions many people have about the sexuality of people with disabilities.

In preparing for the movie, the five lead actors worked with The Adonis Cabaret Show, and trained under Jo King from the London School of Striptease.

I haven't seen it, but disability groups in England are raving about the film, which has been chosen for the New York Film Festival.

Related: The Crippendales

Airport Responds To Advocate Concerns

2006-10-19T16:36:13Z

ROMULUS, MICHIGAN--Disability rights advocates have dropped threats to sue Detroit Metropolitan Airport because the facility has responded to their concerns that accessibility problems amounted to civil rights violations under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

According to a brief story in The Detroit News, advocates were angered in June when they learned of the airport's new policy banning taxi and limousine drivers from picking up passengers at baggage claim areas of two terminals.

The advocates reportedly said the policy would create dangers for travelers with disabilities, and called for airport management to launch an investigation into how the facility complies with the ADA.

Since then, the airport has agreed to pay for an independent accessibility audit, appoint two employees to respond to complaints, and consider a volunteer board to examine airport policies.

The airport also added to its website a link to information for travelers with disabilities.

"This is a really great blueprint that is going to bring Metro Airport up to the same standard that other airports are functioning at," said attorney Richard Bernstein, who is blind and spearheaded the advocacy group.

Related:
Traveler with Special Needs (Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport)

Virginia Plan: Replace Massive Institution With Massive Complex Of Huge "Homes"

2006-10-15T23:20:11Z

LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA--While many states have taken a path in recent decades to closing institutions in favor of community living, the Commonwealth of Virginia appears to be on track for replacing its largest institution with a massive complex of "homelike" buildings on 50 acres at the same sprawling campus to house about 300 people.

A Central Virginia Training Center Reconstruction Task Force -- which includes parents of residents, architects, CVTC staff, representatives of area Community Services Boards, the Department of Mental Health Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, and local politicians -- has been meeting to decide the future for the 500 or so people with intellectual disabilities who are currently housed at the 96-year-old facility.

The News & Advance reported last Friday that the task force met with an architectural firm, which proposed a complex of 15 one-story buildings and a three-story central administration building. A cluster of five one-story buildings each would be located on two sides of the 170,000 square foot central building. The final group of five buildings would be located "behind and slightly separate from the main area, and each other" for people with "behavioral problems".

Each one-story building would be about 20,000 square feet, and would contain four "homes" of 4,000 square feet each, plus another 4,000 square feet of staff support areas for "things the residents don't use". Each residence would have at least four rooms to house a total of 16 to 20 people.

Last year, Governor Mark R. Warner proposed a record breaking $170 million in new funds for community services for people with intellectual disabilities and mental illnesses, along with another $290 million to fully replace two aging psychiatric hospitals and two institutions, including CVTC.

With about 1,400 employees, CVTC is Amherst County's largest employer. Earlier this year, however, Virginia's Office for Protection and Advocacy criticized the state for failing to provide enough staff at CVTC, causing its residents to experience high rates of injuries, along with chemical and mechanical restraints.

CVTC, which began as the State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in 1910, housed nearly 3,700 people in 1972. It is estimated that about one-half of the 8,300 Virginians that were sexually sterilized during the height of the eugenics movement, between 1927 and 1972, were residents of CVTC.

Related:
Task force keeps homelike theme on the table for CVTC (The News & Advance)
Design of new CVTC ongoing (The News & Advance)
CVTC Mission Impossible? Inclusion Daily Express Weblog

California's Class Of 2007 Can Graduate Without Passing Exit Exam

2006-10-13T16:43:21Z

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA--On September 29, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a measure that will allow current high school students with disabilities to graduate next spring without passing the otherwise mandatory California High School Exit Exam.

Senate Bill 267 extends last year's exemption that allowed more than 20,000 students receiving special education services, who completed all graduation requirements, to receive a diploma without having to pass the test.

The exemption came about as part of an August 2005 settlement of a class-action discrimination lawsuit. The non-profit legal firm Disability Rights Advocates had sued the California Department of Education in 2002, claiming that the exam unfairly discriminated against students with disabilities. Under the settlement, the Department agreed to exempt from the exam seniors with disabilities who had met certain conditions and were scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2006.

Education officials told the Press-Enterprise that all future high school seniors should assume they will have to pass the exam, unless if similar exemptions are put in place or the state comes up with an alternative test for students with disabilities.

Related:
Exam exemption extended for pupils with disabilities (Press-Enterprise)

Bones Believed To Be Victims Of Nazi Euthanasia Program

2006-10-12T01:46:19Z

MENDEN, GERMANY--Skeletons of children believed to have had physical and intellectual disabilities were found last week in an unmarked grave near a hospital where Nazis performed euthanasia during World War II.

According to Deutsche Welle news service, excavators found bones of twenty children between the ages of 1 to 7 years, alongside skeletons of five adults in the mass grave.

The local prosecutors said there was reason to believe the remains belonged to victims of the Nazi euthanasia program, which was practiced publicly from 1939 to 1941, and secretly until the end of the war in 1945.

An estimated 70,000 Europeans with disabilities were killed during Adolf Hitler's campaign to rid his "Master Race" of what the Nazis called "useless eaters".

Methods used to murder millions of Jews and people from other groups -- such as lethal injections and mass gassing -- were first performed and perfected on people with disabilities, most of them children.

Wal-Mart Compensatory Damages Were Too Punitive, Judge Rules

2006-10-09T02:33:07Z

CENTEREACH, NEW YORK--A federal judge on Monday cut to $900,000 the original disability discrimination award of $7.5 million that a jury ordered Wal-Mart to pay former employee Patrick S. Brady.

Brady, who has cerebral palsy, claimed in his lawsuit that on his second day of work in August 2002 the Centereach Mall Wal-Mart moved him out of the pharmacy and to a job collecting shopping carts and picking up trash -- even though he had two years experience as a pharmacy assistant.

Brady further alleged that he had been reassigned despite the company's policy of giving employees a month to learn to do a new job. When he asked for a schedule, the pharmacist put him off, as did the personnel office. A store manager later told Brady the pharmacist determined he was not fit to do the work, he said.

In February 2005, a federal jury sided with Brady and ordered Wal-Mart to pay him $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.

In June 2005, Eastern District Magistrate Judge James Orenstein reduced the $5 million punitive damage award to just $300,000 citing a federal limit on punitive damage awards in the Americans with Disabilities and state laws.

According to the New York Law Journal, last Monday Judge Orenstein submitted a 102-page ruling, in which he reduced the compensatory award to just $600,000, saying the jury's compensatory damage award of $2.5 million might actually have been punitive in nature because it was significantly different from similar awards.

Brady's attorney said his client had not decided yet whether to accept the $900,000 total award.

Related:
Compensatory Damages Sliced In Disability Discrimination Case (New York Law Journal)

Advocates React To "Idol" Judge's "Prehistoric" Comment

2006-10-06T01:58:54Z

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA--Well it's happened again: For the second time in two months, a radio host has resurrected a term many of us hoped had vanished with the dinosaurs.

Kyle Sandilands is a famous co-host of a popular morning radio show and judge on the "Australian Idol" television show.

During the Sunday night airing of "Idol", the 35-year-old criticized the performance of contestant Bobby Flynn by calling him a full "mong", which is short for "mongoloid".

Until the 1970s, "mongoloid" was the recognized term for people with Down syndrome. Today it is considered insulting and degrading.

Disability advocacy groups and ministers of state and federal disability and community services responded immediately by calling for Sandilands to publicly apologize for the slur.

Anna Magnus, president of the Down Syndrome Association of Queensland, told News Limited that parents have been flooding the organization with complaints over Sandilands' "prehistoric terminology."

Jann Stuckey, Queensland opposition spokesperson for disability services, said: "For a judge on a show which is watched by so many young people he is clearly not displaying an appropriate level of maturity or empathy to those in our community who have disabilities."

By Tuesday, the television network that airs "Idol" had not commented publicly on the controversy.

In late August, a disc jockey at an Alliance, Ohio radio station was suspended for a week and forced to apologize for running a radio contest he called "Name That Tune with Mongoloid Mike". The WZKL Q92 host, known only under the on-air name "Igor" had contestants guess the title of a song, the words of which were mumbled by a caller trying to imitate a person with an intellectual disability.

Igor apologized on the air in response to a campaign launched by parents and advocates of people with developmental disabilities, which included threats to boycott advertisers.