Health and Disability

For Immediate Release May 1, 2008

For information contact:
Bob Kafka 512-431-4085
Marsha Katz 406-544-9504
http://www.adapt.org

Disability Rights Advocates Challenge McCain and Republicans on Lack of
Support for Community Choice Act: McCain's Office Responds by Arresting
Over 40

Washington, D.C.--- ADAPT took over the offices of Sen. John McCain and
the Republican National Committee Tuesday, demanding support for the
Community Choice Act (S799, HR1621) from the only presidential candidate
who has thus far not signed on as a co-sponsor. What they got for their
efforts were arrests, excuses, and statements about how the National
Republican Committee doesn't have the power to call its own presidential
candidate to ask for a meeting.

"I don't get it," said Cassie James, an Organizer with ADAPT of
Pennsylvania, "Sen. McCain's website says 'There is no cause greater
than protection of human dignity.' We were at his office asking him to
partner with us to protect OUR human dignity by supporting legislation
that allows all older and disabled Americans to live in their own homes
instead of being forced into nursing homes where all dignity and personal
privacy are lost. This is not rocket science; it's basic human and civil
rights!"

About 250 ADAPT activists filled Sen. McCain's office in the Russell
Senate Building and the halls just outside the office. A few blocks away
another 250 ADAPT activists stormed the offices of the Republican National
Committee (RNC), with 5 wheelchairs gaining entry, and the remainder
blocking all the doors and driveways. There was a nine hour standoff into
the night, during which the RNC staff refused access to the bathroom for
the ADAPT members who were in the building. The main ADAPT demand was that
the RNC assist to schedule a meeting with Sen. McCain where ADAPT
representatives could talk about support for the Community Choice Act. The
RNC staff repeatedly stated that they did not have the power to call their
candidate's campaign staff to ask for such a meeting.

"I find it very hard to believe that the organization that raises so much
of the funding for the presidential campaign can't talk to its own
candidate," said Randy Alexander, Tennessee ADAPT Organizer, who was
trapped inside the RNC building for nine hours and not allowed to use a
bathroom. "We weren't asking them to guarantee a meeting, just to pick up
the phone, call Sen. McCain, and try to get a meeting set up. Any person
on the street could make that call, yet they said they didn't have the
power to do that."

During the nine hours ADAPT spent trying to gain cooperation from the RNC,
many Congressional co-sponsors and supporters of the bi-partisan Community
Choice Act came by to personally meet some of the people affected by this
important legislation and to congratulate their efforts to get it passed.
The 500 ADAPT activists in Washington this week from nearly every state in
the union represent thousands more ADAPT members back home who don't have
the ability travel to the nation's capitol, a very expensive destination,
to make their voices heard. And those thousands of ADAPT members
nationally are only the tip of the disability voting bloc nationally, a
voting bloc that is currently feeling disrespected and ignored by Sen.
McCain and the Republican Party.

# # #
FOR MORE INFORMATION on ADAPT visit our website at http://www.adapt.org/

*Our man Teddy is holding the big yellow/white umbrella. -s

500 ADAPT disability activists from the county surround the US Department of Health & Human Services in the pouring rain. They demonstrate in support of the thousands of people with disabilities and older Americans who continue to be unnecessarily forced into and kept in nursing homes and other institutions because of the inaction and development of barrier-ridden regulations by HHS and the Bush Administration.

Keep up to date on what is happening: http://www.disabled-soapbox.org

Photo: Under yellow & white umbrella is Teddy Fitzmaurice. 7873 Woodingham, West Bloomfield, MI
--
Susan Fitzmaurice

Disabled Soapbox - everything I do under 1 roof!
http://www.disabled-soapbox.org

Teddy's Ts - Messages of Empowerment
http://www.teddyfitzm.info

Rice University, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and Technology For All (TFA) have received a $1.5 million federal grant for research in east Houston that will examine ways to provide novel, low-cost, personalized health monitoring to people with chronic diseases living in working-class communities.

The researchers plan to examine how patients with chronic diseases use inexpensive handheld wireless monitoring devices called Blue Boxes, to participate actively in their own medical treatment. The National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will pay for the development and testing of the Blue Boxes and the wireless broadband network that will connect the devices to a central source for analysis.

“It is clear that a change in culture is needed - that both health care workers and health care organizations need to change the way they think about direct-care workers and, in particular, that the direct-care workers need to be seen as a vital part of the health care team,” says Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The institute is part of the National Academy of Sciences.

The report, from the IOM’s Committee on the Future Health Care Workforce for Older Americans, also calls for concrete improvements in the quality of direct-care jobs. It advocates a three-pronged approach:

• More, and more effective, education and training;
• Increased wages and benefits; and
• Improvements to the work environment, such as empowerment strategies and culture change.

When the IOM talks, Congress generally listens. Past IOM reports have led to major improvements in our health care system - like the Nursing Home Reform Act of OBRA 1987, which grew out of an IOM report on long-term care. The current report is focused on how we can prepare for the coming baby boomer “age wave” by ensuring that the nation has an adequate and capable geriatric care workforce.

CMS on Thursday added to the Nursing Home Compare Web site a searchable database with the names of nursing homes that rank in the lowest 5% to 10% in quality based on state inspection results, the Wall Street Journal reports. CMS first released the information in the database as a list of Special Focus Facilities that includes about 130 of the 16,000 nursing homes in the U.S. In addition to the database, the Web site, which CMS updates monthly, includes summarized information from state inspections and data that nursing homes must submit to regulators about their residents.

Video too!!

Chairman Kohl, Ranking Member Smith and members of the Committee: I appreciate the invitation to testify before you today and am honored to be here.

You have chosen a subject that is increasingly critical to our quality of life—not only for older Americans but for family members who care for them. I look forward to learning from the work of the Committee as it continues to examine this issue. The experience of the distinguished professionals on your panel today will be important as well.

I respond to your invitation today as a member of a family whose eyes were opened by personal experience—and to share what we have been learning at the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

As his wheelchair is pushed through the doors of the nursing home, Michael (Gordie Arsenault) wipes a tear from his eye.

The actor is portraying a man with an intellectual disability who has had an accident.

Michael has fallen off a stepladder and broken his leg.

But that’s not what hurts him the most. Michael has a broken heart. Ever since the accident happened, his sister has wanted him out of her home. She is going to have a baby and can’t take care of him anymore.

The Guardian photo

That is why he is moving into a long-term care facility.

And he’s not happy about it.

“Bingo and no beer, boy this place is going to be hard on the head. The only thing left is solitaire,” says Michael as he listens to the orderly, Ralph (Norman Pickering), listing off house rules.

It’s a scene from a new play by Vian Emery. From Pillar to Post will be performed by the People First Theatre Troupe at The Guild in Charlottetown on April 24.

The play deals with what often happens to persons with intellectual disabilities, following an accident or the death of a parent, when they are placed into long-term care facilities because there’s nowhere else for them to go.