A year ago, both the President and DHHS made a big public hoopla about the June 22, 2009 tenth anniversary of the Olmstead Decision. That was the Supreme Court ruling that gave people with disabilities a civil right to not be institutionalized.
This year there is a small article on the government's Disability Blog. Considering that at least twenty-two states have come under some sort of regulatory attack for violating the civil rights protected by Olmstead, it may not be too surprising.
The Children's Disability Rights Education Association has published a three page webzine on the failure of the Olmstead Decision. We have had some success advocating here in Hawaii and legal documents are linked.
The point was also to put a face on the people who are actually being targeted for state Medicaid budget cuts across the state.
There are three sections:
The Failure of Olmstead
The Victims when Olmstead Fails
Successful Advocacy in Hawaii
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
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About Me
- Disability Mom
- I'm the mom of a child with disabilities. Hannah's first neurologist said she might never develop beyond the level of a 2 month old infant, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. The brain damage was just too severe. Nine years later, she walks, uses a touchscreen computer and I've just been shown she can learn to construct sentences and do simple math with the right piece of technology. Along the way, I discovered I needed to teach myself what Hannah's rights to services really were. Learning about early intervention services led to reading about IDEA and then to EPSDT. I've been waiting for the Obama administration to realize the power and potential of EPSDT for the medical rights - including the right to stay at home with their families - of children with disabilities. The health reform people talk about long term care, and the disability people talk about education and employment, but nobody is talking about EPSDT. So I am.
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