Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Moms pay $1,000-a-day to hire disabled members to skip lines at Disney

Excerpt from: Fox News (click for full article)

Please see Patti's other post about this event here

 

Forget the FastPasses.  Apparently the secret to skipping the long lines at Disney World is to hire a disabled person. 

The New York Post is reporting that some deep-pocketed New York City moms are hiring a motorized scooter-bound guide to pose as a family member so they and their kids can jump to the front of the lines.

According to the report, families book tours through an outfit called Dream Tours in Florida, which on its website claims to provide "quality based, memorable, and affordable vacations, to people with special needs."  The Disney guide charges $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day, citing a Manhattan mom who claims she hired a tour guide using a motorized scooter.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she told the Post. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

 

Disability in Neo-Liberal America

Excerpt from: Planet of the Blind (click for full article)

 

An article in today's New York Post, that deleterious rag, offers the provoking headline: "Rich Manhattan Moms Hire Handicapped Tour Guides so Kids Can Cut Lines at Disney World". Gotcha! By God! What a scandal! Something's rotten in the Magic Kingdom! I smell perfervid mendacity and liniment. Christ! I'm about to faint. And then I read: "Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned."  "Hortense, get the smelling salts! The cripples are conning Minnie and Mickey! Help, Hortense, I have the vapors!"

Yep, there's some real investigative journalism. Forget the dubious claim that people with disabilities are posing as family members--it might actually be true, but let's be clear--the tour guide in question who uses a wheel chair, has the right to earn an honest living. If her wheelchair gets her and her charges to the head of a line, well, whoop dee do. The article is piffle, jazzed up, electrified, powered by the oldest ableist outrage of them all--the notion that there are people faking disability.

$7.9 Billion in Improper Social Security Payments in FY 2012

Excerpt from: CNS News (click for full article)

 

The Social Security Administration (SSA) needs to focus on "program integrity," a polite term for reducing fraud and payment errors, the agency's inspector general told Congress last week.

Reducing improper payments is one of the challenges facing the next SSA commissioner, Patrick O'Carroll, Jr., the agency's inspector general, told the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security on April 26.

In fiscal year 2012, the Social Security Administration reported $4.7 billion in improper payments in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, a 9.2 percent improper payment rate. (SSI is funded by general tax revenues, not payroll taxes. It helps elderly, blind, and/or disabled people who are poor.)

DOJ Issues Important Pronouncement on Application of the ADA to School Voucher Programs

Excerpt from: Disability Law (click for full article)

 

A few weeks ago (but just publicized last week), the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to Wisconsin's state Superintendent of Public Instruction regarding the Division's ADA investigation of the Milwaukee school voucher program.  The letter contains a number of important pronouncements regarding the responsibilities of states that operate voucher programs to prevent discrimination by the schools -- public and private -- that receive vouchers under those programs.

The first important pronouncement is that, even when parents use vouchers to attend private schools, the state retains an obligation to prevent discrimination against students with disabilities by the schools participating in the voucher program:

DPI's obligation to eliminate discrimination against students with disabilities in its administration of the school choice program is not obviated by the fact that the schools participating in the program are private secular and religious schools.  Indeed, courts recognize that the agency administering a public program has the authority and obligation under Title II to take appropriate steps in its enforcement of program requirements to prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities, regardless of whether services are delivered directly by a public entity or provided through a third party.  [Many case cites omitted.]  In short, the State cannot, by delegating the education function to private voucher schools, place MPCP students beyond the reach of the federal laws that require Wisconsin to eliminate disability discrimination in its administration of public programs.

Family members concerned about under-staffing of long-term care homes

Excerpt from: Global News (click for full article)

 

Sunset Extendicare admits they’ve had some short-staffing in the past that they’ve now dealt with and said they are providing more than adequate care to the 152 residents.

“Our professional staff here at the facility are doing an amazing job of providing care to our residents here,” said administrator Kevin Siebert.

Klassen and Seabourne disagree, saying that even if the facility is ‘fully staffed’, there simply aren’t enough workers.

Extendicare wasn’t forthcoming with an exact ratio of number of patients to a single care worker, but Klassen said they told her on average that ratio was around one care worker for every 9 patients and as many as 12 patients in the evenings. She says she’s worried about the stress load of frontline staff.

More kids diagnosed with mental health disabilities

Excerpt from: Health 24 (click for full article)

 

Significantly more US children have a neurodevelopmental or mental health disability than did a decade ago, according to new research.

Disabilities that impair a child's day-to-day living have risen 16%, with the greatest increase seen in richer families, according to the study. Conditions such as autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder appear to lie behind the increase, experts said.

But the surveys of parents in 2001-'02 and 2009-'10 also revealed some good news: The rate of disability due to physical conditions went down, according to the study, which is scheduled for presentation at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting in Washington DC. Data and conclusions presented at meetings are typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

U.S. Wins Record $240 Million Discrimination Verdict in Iowa

Excerpt from: Bloomberg Business (click for full article)

 

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said an Iowa jury awarded $240 million in damages, a record for the agency, in a trial accusing a Texas-based turkey processing company of severe abuse and discrimination against workers with intellectual disabilities.

The jury in federal court in Davenport, Iowa, found that Hill Country Farms Inc., doing business as Henry’s Turkey Service, subjected 32 men to verbal and physical harassment, harsh living conditions and other abuses from 2007 to 2009, after 20 years of similar mistreatment, the EEOC said today in a statement.

The Goldthwaite, Texas-based company employed the men in Iowa, where they worked eviscerating turkeys. The EEOC presented evidence that the company exploited the workers because their intellectual disabilities made them vulnerable and unaware of their rights, the agency said.

Justice Dept. Warns Wisconsin Voucher Schools Against Discrimination

Excerpt from: Education Week (click for full article)

 

The U.S. Department of Justice said Wisconsin private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers must not discriminate against students with disabilities in a new guidance letter.

The Justice Department was prompted to investigate the situation in Wisconsin after a complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union and other state groups that claimed that Milwaukee was essentially creating a system of segregated schools.

The complaint said that 1.6 percent of the students using vouchers in Milwaukee were classified as having disabilities, compared with 20 percent of Milwaukee's public school students. The 22-year-old program is administered by the state and enrolls about 24,000 students who receive vouchers of approximately $6,400 a year. (Here's some more facts and figures on the Milwaukee program.)

Mental Health Counseling Week and Disability

Excerpt from: Atlantic Highlands Herald (click for full article)

 

Besides having penned this newspaper column about disability since 2002, I'm also a licensed professional counselor and national certified counselor.

Recently, the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) sent an email to its membership declaring May 6-12 as "Mental Health Counseling Week" and urging all AMHCA members to "set aside time during (the week) to participate in local activities to promote and reinforce the importance of mental health."

So today I'm tossing in my two cents. A disproportional percentage of people with disabilities also have a mental illness.

Overall, America is becoming more "disabled" as its population skews older and medical science becomes more skilled at preserving the lives of people with medical issues. The number of people claiming disability benefits is skyrocketing. The federal government generally determines a person has a disability when that person has a significant impairment in any major life function, such as walking, seeing or thinking.

Why mom may need a break

Excerpt from: houmatoday (click for full article)

 

One in four Louisianans care for a child or adult with disabilities or an older adult in their home.

It is estimated that 917,000 adults are caregivers in this state, providing more than 600 million hours of care each year that is valued at over $5.7 billion.

The average caregiver in our state is a middle-aged working woman who is caring for an aging mother in the home.

When you consider that 10,000 individuals turn 65 every day in the U.S., this role will only increase.

Caregiving for children with disabilities, adults with disabilities and adults who are aging in place starts out as a manageable activity, juggled with one’s work and other family obligations, but within five years, the caregiver often feels overwhelmed.