VOR's Sue Jennings, Founder of KIIDS (Keeping Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities Safe - https://thekiids.org) speaks to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC, a division of the National Institute of Health) at their "Workshop on Addressing the Housing Needs of People on the Autism Spectrum".

While most of the conference was directed to community-based options, Susan spoke to the importance of ICFs as part of the continuum of care, and their role in meeting the needs of individuals who are underserved by waiver services, like her son Joey.

Susan Jennings' speech may be viewed here

Earlier this week, we posted 3 videos from Rebecca (Becky) Japko, the new Chair of VOR's Communications Committee. Becky's videos feature interviews with her sister Linda, whose home is the Brenham State Supported Living Center in Texas.

To view Becky's videos, please visit our YouTube page "VOR - A Voice of Reason"

Click here to visit our YouTube page

Federal legislation allocating over $1.8 billion in government spending on autism efforts is one step closer to being approved.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Autism Collaboration, Accountability, Research, Education and Support, or Autism CARES, Act, by a voice vote Wednesday.

The legislation, H.R. 1058, would renew a federal law that originated in 2006 and ensures support for research, prevalence tracking, screening, professional training and other government activities related to autism.

As it stands, the current version of the Autism CARES Act is set to expire at the end of September, meaning that without action from Congress, programs established through the act will come to a halt.

“Renewal is critically important because Autism CARES is vital to pursuing research and high-quality services for people with autism,” said Stuart Spielman, senior vice president of advocacy at Autism Speaks.

Under the measure approved by the House this week, the federal government would spend $369 million on autism efforts annually through 2024.

Continued

If there’s anything that will bring a bipartisan group of U.S. senators together, it’s the topic of abuse in nursing homes and a hearing Tuesday was proof yet again.

Abuse deficiencies cited in nursing homes more than doubled in four years, increasing from 430 in 2013 to 875 in 2017, a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday found. The most common physical and verbal abuse was by staff, at 58%, investigators said.

Members of the Senate Finance Committee, however, directed much of their ire not at providers but rather at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“Not only have abusive incidents doubled in recent years, but the GAO has found that CMS – the agency charged with ensuring that these facilities meet federal quality standards – often cannot access information about abusive incidents after they occur and, therefore, cannot take the necessary steps to remedy the situation,” said Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-DE).

“CMS needs to ramp up its oversight efforts and fix the problems identified by the Government Accountability Office,” added Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the chairman of the committee.

Common ground

All parties at the hearing — which included American Health Care Association’s President and CEO Mark Parkinson — stressed a need and commitment to reducing abuse and neglect in nursing homes. They all also found common ground on better background check practices. 

“Our members need access to the National Employee Data Bank so we can learn when potential employees with criminal backgrounds have moved across state lines. We don’t have this information and we need it,” Parkinson said. 

Disability advocates and former federal special education officials are warning of possible Trump administration moves to alter policy related to a central tenet of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Advocates met with top officials at the U.S. Department of Education last week after receiving what they called “credible information” indicating that the agency planned to change or reinterpret policy on IDEA’s requirement that students with disabilities be served in the least restrictive environment, or LRE.

IDEA states that students with disabilities should be taught alongside children without disabilities to the “maximum extent appropriate.” Advocates said they are worried that the Trump administration is looking to change the law’s presumption that “all children with disabilities will be educated in the general education classroom; except in the rare circumstance that the student cannot get a satisfactory education in that environment even with supplementary aids and services.”

At the meeting, the advocates said they were told by Department of Education Chief of Staff Nate Bailey that “there would be no such

The state's Office of Mental Health failed to properly notify parents of incidents of abuse at several facilities despite a law requiring timely notifications, according to a new audit from the state's Comptroller's Office.

New York adopted "Jonathan's Law" in 2007 to expand the access to information regarding allegations of neglect and physical, sexual and psychological abuse at state-operated or licensed facilities to parents, guardians and other qualified persons.

The law was named after Jonathan Carey, a 13-year-old non-verbal and developmentally disabled child from the Albany area who died while in state care in 2007. His parents made several attempts to obtain information regarding several injuries he sustained during his time at the facility to no avail.

A review of 210 incidents across eight facilities between April 2015 and Jan. 9, 2018, found 42 incidents with no evidence to support a telephone communication was ever made within the required 24-hour window, the audit from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found.

Some facilities also failed to provide requested information to a qualified person within the required timeframe, the audit said. 

“Vulnerable patients are at greater risk when their parents and family members are kept in the dark,” Thomas DiNapoli, the state's comptroller, said in a statement. "State officials must do more to ensure facilities are meeting requirements.”

A motion to dismiss rape charges against a counselor who works with young boys dealing with drug addiction has been granted.

The Justice Center was established as a state agency by Governor Andrew Cuomo to investigate abuses against children and people with special needs.

The agency has a special prosecutor, but in a ruling on Thursday by the Supreme Court Appellate Division, it has no authority to prosecute criminal cases. The state requires criminal prosecutors be elected into the position, but the special prosecutors in the Justice Center are appointed.

According to court documents, only the district attorney or the attorney general has that authority.

“They were founded with this idea that they would be a specialized prosecutor or responding to what was a very important need in the State of New

Virginia officials have responded to a lawsuit over the transfer and feeding of a Central Virginia Training Center resident, saying she can’t ask for the court’s enforcement of a settlement agreement requiring her to be moved from the center.

The Rutherford Institute is pursuing a lawsuit against Gov. Ralph Northam, state health officials and CVTC Director Dick Roberts on behalf of Alisha Gupta. Gupta has a disability that prohibits her from caring for herself and has lived at CVTC for 17 years.

She’s among the last of CVTC’s residents who are in the process of transferring to other living arrangements, as per a 2012 settlement agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and the state which requires them to be moved to homes that are closer to the community.

Gupta’s parents agreed to have her transferred to Hiram Davis Medical Center in Petersburg, where other CVTC residents with severe disabilities have ended up. According to numbers from the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, a total of 26 residents from training centers statewide have moved to Hiram Davis since October 2011.

Gupta’s father, Atul Gupta, initially filed the suit in April. In his complaint, he said staff at the centers said they’d be changing his daughter’s diet from a “natural food diet” CVTC had been feeding her without mechanical assistance to a “synthetic formula” given to her using a feeding machine.

A man whose job was to help adults with disabilities has pleaded guilty to raping two clients in Fairfax County, Virginia, leading to pregnancies for both women.

Bernard Betts-King, 60, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the attacks. 

In one case, the woman was unable to say who assaulted her. In the second case, the woman identified Betts-King as her attacker.

Prosecutors said that when Betts-King was confronted with the evidence, he claimed the women "came on to him." Attorneys said both women had the intellectual ability of children and neither had been taught about sex.

Backlash intensified this week to the D.C. government’s effort to end a 14-year-old partnership with Georgetown University that provides a range of medical and social services for people with disabilities.

The District’s Department on Disability Services has announced that it will end its contract with Georgetown in August, moving the services currently offered by the university in-house or replacing them through another contractor.

City officials say the move has been in the works for years and will maintain the same services now offered while shifting some costs to the federal government.

But the decision has sowed panic among advocates and at least some disabled District residents, who say the city is squandering the relationships and expertise that Georgetown has built over more than a decade. After hearing those concerns at a well-attended hearing this week, D.C. Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) said she will ask Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to extend the contract to allow for a smoother transition.

It is a resonant issue in Washington, where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have endured a long history of neglect and mistreatment, first at the notorious Forest Haven asylum and then at dangerously mismanaged group homes.