Mama and Dad

Home » intellectual disability

Tampilkan postingan dengan label intellectual disability. Tampilkan semua postingan

Son's death sparks a search for justice

By Louise Kinross

In 2013 Connor Sparrowhawk (with sister Rosie) drowned in a bath alone in a National Health Services assessment and treatment unit in Oxfordshire, England. The 18-year-old had autism, epilepsy and intellectual disability (referred to as learning disability in the UK). The NHS trust that ran the unit initially attributed his death to natural causes—but his parents called for an independent investigation that found his death preventable. Twenty months later, Connor’s mother Sara Ryan, a senior researcher and autism specialist at Oxford University, is still seeking justice for her son.

BLOOM: Tell me about Connor.

Sara Ryan: He was very quirky and quite eccentric. He had an enormously brilliant sense of humour. He loved transport—buses and coaches. He had a bit of an encyclopedic knowledge of history. He was very good with facts and figures and loved the legal system and the police. But he couldn’t leave the house on his own because he had no road sense and he couldn’t count to ten.

BLOOM: When did he go to the unit called Slade House?

Sara Ryan: He went to secondary school from 11 till he turned 18 and he was a delight really. Then when he turned 18, almost overnight, he got really anxious and very unlike himself. He was difficult to engage with, had lots of dark thoughts, and was in and out of school because he was aggressive. He began bashing his head against the wall and I was worried he was going to hurt himself or someone else. The night we admitted him he wanted to go home and they had to restrain him on the floor with four people face down and section him. In all his life with us, we’d never laid a finger on him.

BLOOM: You had concerns after he went in, specifically about him having seizures there?

Sara Ryan: He was part of a happy family and the minute he went into the unit, because he was 18, they treated him as an adult. We had to phone up to get permission from him to visit, which was very odd. They didn’t engage us at all and changed his medication. I visited and could tell he’d had a seizure because he’d bit his tongue and was very disoriented. They disputed that.

BLOOM: What happened the day of his death?

Sara Ryan: I got a call that he was unconscious and on the way to the hospital in an ambulance. When I got there the consultant said straight away that he was ventilated but there was nothing they could do. They switched off the machine while I was there. Two weeks later the NHS trust published in its board minutes that a ‘service user’ had died of natural causes.

BLOOM: At the time of his death, Connor had been in the unit for 107 days but hadn’t been assessed or treated. What were they doing?

Sara Ryan: He was there for 107 days and the psychiatrist saw him three times. The psychologist filled in some questionnaires, but they didn’t come to anything. They said they were going to do social stories with him, but they never did that. He was a school boy and they should have been taking him to school. But they gave him choices, so he’d say no and stay in his room and watch DVDs.

BLOOM: How did you get an independent investigation into his death?

Sara Ryan: Before he went into the unit I’d been blogging about our family's life with Connor. It was about all the amusing things he did. Lots of people subscribed to it and became very fond of him. When I posted one line on the day he died it went viral. And when we found out the trust was saying he died of natural causes—and was going to do an internal investigation that clearly wasn’t going to find out anything—we made a lot of noise online and eventually they capitulated.

BLOOM: What did the independent investigation find?

Sara Ryan: That it was a preventable death. The staff had the knowledge. They knew he was epileptic and I’d told them he was having seizures in there and was sensitive to medication change. They hadn’t properly assessed his epilepsy and he was left unsupervised in the bath. Twenty months later we’re still waiting for an inquest and the police are still investigating.

BLOOM: I understand the unit was later closed?

Sara Ryan: Nothing happened after Connor died and we contacted the Care Quality Commission. They were about to do an inspection there. They were so shocked by what they saw that they failed the unit on all 10 quality and safety standards and the trust decided to shut the place down. There was no battery in the defibrillator. It was dirty and there was no therapeutic environment.

BLOOM: What accountability do you want from the NHS trust?

Sara Ryan: We want the staff to be disciplined, as appropriate, and a corporate manslaughter charge brought against the trust. We want meaningful involvement at the inquest, which is provisionally set for Oct. 5. We also feel that the commissioners who were commissioning the service—which cost about $1,000 a day—have some role to play. The commissioners spend money on services that you wouldn’t let your dog stay at.

The mortality rates of people with learning disabilities in the UK are shockingly high.* Because the trust said Connor’s death was ‘natural causes’ we were concerned that learning disabled people might die regularly in hospitals and units and their deaths wouldn’t be properly investigated.

Through our campaign we had a meeting with the chief executive officer of NHS England and he agreed to commission a review into deaths since 2011 of people with learning disabilities and mental health issues in the care of the trust.

We want the law changed so that families don’t have to pay for legal representation at the inquest and we believe there should be an independent investigation if someone with a learning disability dies in a hospital or other secure setting.

BLOOM: In a report you produced, you wrote about the lack of humanity in how your family has been treated.

Sara Ryan: I think how they treated Connor was extended to us after he died. They stripped away any sense of him being part of a family and treated him as an object. Once he died they didn’t demonstrate any empathy or compassion or understanding for the pain they caused us and for all kinds of delays and obstructions and deceit really. It’s made what was such a horrific and unimaginably awful situation so much worse. For example, they had the trust’s barrister sit in at a pre-inquest review and try to argue that drowning is a natural cause of death.

BLOOM: What will your legal costs be?

Sara Ryan: Families in the UK don’t get any legal help for inquests and it will cost us almost $50,000. The NHS trust draws on public funds to arm itself with very good legal representation. We were able to raise the money we need through our social media campaign and selling postcards and other fundraising efforts, which is quite remarkable.

BLOOM: In your report you say ‘The ultimate barrier appears to be that learning disabled people are seen as less than human.’

Sara Ryan: Generally, in the way our social life is organized, our kids tend to go to special schools and leisure activities aren’t accessible, so people don’t come into contact that much with people with learning disabilities. The chance of having a job is low, so there isn’t a big community presence. When I started blogging about Connor I made him human in a way that he hadn’t been seen outside of his family and school. Even my colleagues started to chat with me about him. After the weekend they’d say ‘it was hilarious that Connor did this or that.’ They began to see that he was a quirky, funny young man. Ultimately we need to bring the human back so people can appreciate these kids as individuals like anyone else, who just have their own ways of doing and saying things.

BLOOM: You’d like to see more money allocated to community supports?

Sara Ryan: Assessment and treatment units like the one Connor was in have complicated costing arrangements and the money doesn’t tend to follow the person from the unit back to the community. Often the local authority has to find the cost of the support package. You might be able to stay in a place that costs $1,000 a day (indefinitely sometimes, a National Audit Report published last week found the average stay for someone in an assessment and treatment unit is 17 years), but when you come out the local authority hasn’t got the funding because of cuts to welfare costs. In addition, no one seems to know what good care looks like.

*A 2013 inquiry into the deaths of 247 adults and children with intellectual disability in England and Wales found women with intellectual disability died 20 years earlier on average than the general population and men with developmental disability died 13 years earlier. Over a third of the deaths could have been prevented with good health care.

Please see a talk Sara Ryan gave at a patient experience conference at the University of Oxford: How to hear voices that are seldom heard

Sexual violence against our kids: Why isn't it on everyone's radar?

By Louise Kinross

Yesterday I was outraged to read this story about the case of a 9-year-old California girl with an intellectual disability who was sexually assaulted five times in 2010 by a non-disabled student during an after-school program. The assaults began with her being kicked and hit. Her parents sued the Los Angeles Unified School District for damages to cover the long-term therapy they say their daughter needs to treat her emotional trauma.

Sounds bad huh?

It gets worse. The school district hired a psychologist to say that this girl was less likely to suffer emotional trauma because of her low intelligence.

Dr. Stan Katz said that her mental disability would "protect" her from the degree of emotional stress and depression that a regular student would experience from sexual assault. Further, Katz interviewed the girl in 2012, two years after the assaults, and determined that any emotional problems she had at the time resulted from not having a father in her life and her mental disability, not from the molestations.

According to the story, two experts reviewing Katz's testimony said there's no science to support his assertion that low intelligence minimizes a child's emotional trauma.

"I have never seen developmental disability in a child that age used as a protective factor with respect to how they handle trauma," said University of California San Francisco psychiatrist Dr. Lynn Ponton. "In fact," she added, "developmental disability quite often puts them at risk for this type of trauma."

What was the LA school board, charged with educating and promoting the wellbeing of its students, thinking in hiring Katz and his discriminatory and unfounded arguments?

According to a 2012 review by the United Nations World Health Organization, children with intellectual disabilities (and mental illness) are 4.6 times more likely to be sexually abused than their non-disabled peers.

Instead of raising awareness of this heightened vulnerability, and taking steps to protect students, the LA board, through its psychologist, appears to be rationalizing the high rate of abuse of this population: 'They don't feel pain the way other kids do' is the message being sent.

Remember that archaic medical belief that infants and children don't experience pain the way adults do? The idea is being trotted out again here, but in relation to students with intellectual disability.

According to the girl's attorney, the jury was "offended" and "disgusted" with Katz's line of reasoning. They awarded the girl $1.4 million in damages. The LA board attorney had argued that she needed $10,000 to $12,500 for therapy.

In related news this week, this Daily Beast piece suggests that although women with disabilities are at greatest risk of sexual violence, they are not welcomed by feminists working against violence.

"When Stephanie Woodward blogged about #YesAllWomen, she was excited to join the movement and share her own life experiences as a woman with a disability," writes Elizabeth Heideman. "She never expected her post to spawn hostile messages from activists scolding Woodward for trying to 'detract from the real issue' and instead make it about disability."

"Do women with disabilities not count as women?" Woodward is later quoted asking.

And finally, this is an investigative piece into sexual assaults by staff against clients of one of Australia's biggest disability service providers. Disabled clients and former staff "tell how complaints were ignored and whistleblowers targeted, their warnings not acted upon. As a result, two men employed by the organization, and now allegedly a third, went on to rape and sexually abuse disabled clients."

It hurts to connect the dots, doesn't it?

Community Living looks beyond adult 'group homes'

By Louise Kinross

Several years ago Chris Beesley wrote a BLOOM piece about how raising his son Mitchell, who has Fragile X and autism, had changed his life and career aspirations.

I met Chris last week in his new role as CEO of Community Living Ontario. I wanted to talk about options for housing for adults with intellectual disabilities.

Next week 100 of Community Living’s executive directors are coming to Toronto to brainstorm ideas that move beyond the traditional group home. The group will hear updates from an Ontario Developmental Services Capacity-Building Task Force on Housing, the federal program My House, My Choice, and a partnership between the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services and MaRS research hub, which issued a challenge brief to develop creative housing solutions for people with developmental disabilities.

Earlier this year an interim report from the Select Committee on Developmental Services noted there were 12,000 Ontario adults on a list for group homes with a wait of 20 years. TWENTY years.

So with my son now 20—as is Chris’s son—I wanted to hear about possibilities for change.

BLOOM: What is Community Living Ontario?

Chris Beesley: We support individuals and families in creating full citizenship for people with developmental disabilities. That means living where and with whom they want to live, inclusive education, work—either paid or volunteer—and recreational and social connections. Everyone needs to have friends.

BLOOM: Can you update us on new provincial funding for developmental services as a whole?

Chris Beesley: In the provincial budget $810 million dollars over the next three years was put into developmental services. The Ministry of Community and Social Services currently has a budget of about $1.7 billion. When this is rolled out in its entirety, it will bring the ministry's budget to a little over $2 billion per year. The net result is that there will be an extra $372 million annually in the system.

BLOOM: It sounds like a lot of money, but given the needs, it isn’t.

Chris Beesley: The money will be used to eliminate the wait list for Special Services at Home and Passport funding, and to cover new people coming into the system. They’ve also committed to 1,400 residential spaces.

BLOOM: But if 12,000 people are on a wait list, 1,400 spaces is just scratching the surface. What kind of residential spaces?

Chris Beesley: Some will be group homes, some will be individuals living with a family, like a foster situation, and some will be supported independent living. Our goal is to see government support individuals in their residence of choice in a flexible way. Eventually, we’d like to see residential dollars flow through Passport funding. Passport is individualized funding, but it’s currently capped at $25,000 and can only be used in the community, not for overnight support. Right now there are individuals who receive hundreds of thousands of dollars for residential support a year, but it flows through agencies. We’d like the option, where appropriate, to unbundle that from the agency and give it to the individual, so the individual is in control of where they live and who supports them.

BLOOM: What’s an example of out-of-the-box thinking?

Chris Beesley: Twenty five years ago 10 families came together to create an intentional community in Pickering. They accessed federal and provincial funding to construct a housing co-op with 115 units, seven of which would be occupied by their sons and daughters. They pooled the support funding their children received.

BLOOM: How has it worked out?

Chris Beesley: It’s worked very well. But the parents have had to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Those parents are now in their 70s and wondering how they’re going to keep this up. We’d like to see better coordination and planning across government ministries, municipalities and agencies, so parents aren’t the ones trying to make all the connections.

BLOOM: What are you discussing at your housing conference?

Chris Beesley: We want to hear from our executive directors about what they’ve done, or seen, in their communities, that’s promising. What’s working, what isn’t, what are the barriers and the opportunities? We want to get a lay of the land so we can look at moving beyond group homes. We want to identify practices and models that the government may want to invest in.

BLOOM: Is there anything new you can share with us?

Chris Beesley: I just learned about how Community Living London has been successful in finding investors who want to buy houses, so that the agency’s money doesn’t get locked up in the bricks and mortar. They have 30 homes and 21 of them are owned by investors.

BLOOM: Do these investors have a connection to disability?

Chris Beesley: No, not necessarily. They’re people who want to buy a house as an investment and they want a reliable tenant who won’t skip out, and we’re able to provide reliable tenants. Community Living London has become known as a facilitator for matching great tenants and investors.

BLOOM: How can parents learn about what comes out of your conference?

Chris Beesley: Once we’ve had the event we’ll write a report that we’ll post on our website There's good stuff going on, but our challenge is to create the space for this conversation and to bring all of the parties together.

BLOOM: What ideas are you thinking about in terms of Mitchell moving out?

Chris Beesley: We’ve thought about selling our house and buying two townhouses, so we're close: one for Mitchell and one for my wife Lori and I. Maybe we'll move near a college or university so we can find a student who can live with Mitchell for cheap rent, and in return would agree to be there every night and morning. Of course we'll need be part of the support, but this is a model that works for others so it's definitely something we'll explore.

Brother with disability dies from hospital neglect

People with intellectual disability grow old alone: Study

By Louise Kinross

On Monday I got home just as D’Arcy and Ben were walking up the 26 steps to our house.

Ben, who had just got off his bus, was wearing his black and brown Tim Horton’s uniform—including a button-down shirt and visor—and D’Arcy was waiting for him as he climbed each stair. They got to the landing and Ben sped up with his characteristically lopsided gait, the result of a surgery that left one leg shorter than the other.

I was flooded with happiness.

I knew how lucky we were that Ben had two co-op placements in his last year of high school, and the human and transportation supports to make them happen.

But the moment was bittersweet. I quickly reminded myself that these supports will evaporate next year. When Ben leaves high school, he'll experience what families of children with significant disabilities refer to as "falling off the cliff."

And the findings of a large, longitudinal Irish study released last week paint a grim picture for people with intellectual disability decades later, in their middle to old age.

The research—the first in the world—compares the physical and mental health of 753 people with intellectual disability over the age of 40 with the general population over a three year period.

I was particularly interested in the findings on relationships in the study, which is called the Intellectual Disability Supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Aging (you can download it here).

In contrast with the typical aging population, researchers found older people with intellectual disability are generally alone—single, without children, and living in a different area than other family, which makes seeing family difficult.

Three-quarters say paid staff are their most important “social partners”—read “friends.” Just over half have friends outside their home. For respondents with severe intellectual disability, more than two-thirds have no contact with family. Researchers found lack of friends and reliance on staff was just as problematic for older people living in community group homes as it was for those in larger, more traditional institutions. Respondents said they were most likely to confide in paid staff, well ahead of siblings and friends.

“Our findings show that movement to the community does not necessarily equate with community integration,” says principal investigator Mary McCarron of Trinity College Dublin, echoing a theme in this earlier BLOOM post. “Unless the community is truly organized and resourced to support aging people with intellectual disability…their experience may instead be one of social isolation, loneliness and new forms of institutionalization,” Professor McCarron said.

Almost two-thirds of older people with intellectual disability in the Irish study have trouble getting into the community, or don’t go out at all—with “need someone’s assistance” as the main reason they're stuck inside.

Researchers note that “living in the community” for older people with intellectual disability bears little resemblance to life in the same neighbourhood for the general aging population.

While older people with intellectual disabilities had significantly lower rates of high blood pressure and heart attack than the regular population, a majority were overweight, engaged in little physical activity and had osteoporosis.

Compared to a 33 per cent employment rate for the general aging population, only 6.5 per cent of older people with intellectual disability were employed at the three-year mark of the study. About 80 per cent attended a day program.

At the beginning of the study, 32 per cent reported never having attended school. At the three-year mark, over 80 per cent said they had trouble reading, writing, doing simple math and using money. More than 60 per cent could not read their own name.

The researchers note that for the first time in history, people with intellectual disability are growing old in considerable numbers.

I'm grateful that such a large, rigorous study is shining a light on this marginalized population.

But its results cast a shadow on my hopes for Ben's future.

Watching Ben climb the stairs with his dad on Monday I was happy that he had a co-op placement at Tim Horton’s, that he was wearing the standard button-down shirt despite his sensory aversion, and that son and dad were so pleased to see each other.

Ben prefers it when his dad waits at the end of the bus ride. Sometimes when I pick him up he’ll pretend to snap his fingers in a gesture of “darn.”

“I know,” I’ll say. “I’m your second favourite.”

I recognize we’re incredibly lucky that we have one more year for Ben in the school system, and that he is doing co-op five days a week: two days at Tim Horton’s and three days at Variety Village, the adapted gym. He has an assistant who goes with him. This allows D’Arcy and I to work regular hours.

But at 21 our children lose the learning stimulation, routine and social connections of school, with nothing to replace them. Hiring workers to support your adult child can be extremely expensive. And you may be starting at ground zero to organize activities that are meaningful for your child.

We have a small group of workers, family and friends who met last weekend as a follow-up to a life-plan day we did with Ben, where we looked at his goals for the future and how we can support him. I hope we can come up with a mix of activities for him when he graduates that may include part-time work and a day program. People like my son deserve a better future.

I'm not convinced that the Irish study will result in richer lives for the seniors studied. I don't think the average person is concerned with, or willing to invest in, the happiness of people with disabilities. How can we change that?

In the community, but alone

By Liz Lewis

What does it mean to be part of a community? To recognize oneself and be recognized as a member of a social group, neighbourhood, or everyday world? As an anthropologist, these questions are standard fare. As the only sister of a woman with disabilities and deafblindness, they are deeply personal.

On paper, my adult sister has a great setup. Katie receives government funding to live in a home five minutes from my parents, with a lovely roommate and conscientious caregivers. Yet my sister lives in near total isolation, with no friends, activities or hobbies. And I know that as an adult with complex disabilities, she is not alone.

Katie has a genetic condition called CHARGE syndrome and needs 24-hour care. She’s never communicated verbally, although she knows some signs and her expressions of happiness and dissatisfaction are easy to read.

Katie can’t drive, cook, or really care for herself, although she can feed, bathe and dress herself with a little assistance. As the mother of a toddler, I'd say that she and my son operate on similar levels. Although I'd prefer to write something lighter and more optimistic, the truth is that Katie can’t do most of what able-bodied adults, or even children, can.

These complex disabilities mean that independence, communication and social connections look different for Katie. She finds agency in deciding what she’ll have for her snack, for instance, or whether she’ll relax with television or ask to go for a ride in the car. She asserts herself by refusing to participate in an activity or by showing joy and excitement over trying something new. She expresses love and caring by sitting quietly next to someone, giving hugs, or simply smiling. She likes to pat my son on the head, but has been known to pinch him when she’s fed up.

It can take time and patience for people to learn how Katie expresses her needs, preferences and desires. Yet again and again I have witnessed her win over caregivers, professionals and acquaintances with her unique charms. This makes it even sadder to me that when I visit my hometown, where I no longer live, my sister is largely alone.

Among adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the U.S., Katie is considered one of the lucky ones, meaning that she neither lives in an institutional setting nor in her childhood home. Her access to a high-quality home and staff ensure that my parents don’t bear the brunt of Katie’s lifelong caregiving needs, which will become more complicated as we all grow older. Still, as both an anthropologist and a sibling, I am disturbed by what I see.

When I visit my sister, I can't help notice her neighbours’ lowered gazes as they quickly shuffle from their driveways to their own homes; we've never exchanged a word other than “hello.” I can only imagine what the children and teenagers on the block think of her house. Katie does not go for walks—indeed, I don’t believe her street even has sidewalks—so her only time outside is when she walks the 10 feet to a waiting car to take her somewhere, typically to a park or the drive-thru of a fast food restaurant. Katie might be in the community, spatially speaking, but she is not there in any meaningful way.

Even more disturbing is my sister’s lack of activities and hobbies, which would provide a sense of accomplishment and give her new social connections. For several years, she loved attending weekly equine therapy classes, but then the program lost funding and eliminated its offerings for adults with disabilities. My family investigated volunteer options, such as sorting food containers or recycling for nonprofits or donation sites, but came up short. One well-known local organization even told us that they couldn't let Katie volunteer for them because she might harm herself, offering paternalism as a thinly veiled substitute for blatant discrimination.

The longer Katie lives like this, the farther she seems to withdraw into herself. She loses skills she once had and, at least to me, seems less able to connect with others. She develops essentially anti-social behaviours, such as eating with her hands instead of a fork, which would likely be interpreted as a product of her disabilities even though they are completely new. Although I now live in another state and can no longer participate actively in my sister’s daily life, I am consistently saddened by what I see when I visit. And this is in a state that rates average or above in disability inclusion. To be sure, the situation is far worse in many parts of the U.S. and elsewhere.

The inadequacies of the current independent living and social inclusion movement are more than disability rights issues. They also connect closely to individual safety and public health. We are all safer when we have networks of people—family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and acquaintances —looking out for us. Katie has very few of these. Similarly, there is increasing scientific evidencethat social isolation is bad for our health. How might it look if we as a society began to approach social engagement for people with disabilities not as a luxury, but instead as a pressing public health issue?

While great strides have been made in recent decades regarding the integration of people with disabilities, there's much more work to do. The need to rethink what we mean by inclusion is urgent. In the U.S., only 13 states plus Washington, D.C. have closed all of their institutions and, thanks to changes in federal lawsuch structures will soon be a thing of the past. According to United Cerebral Palsy’s most recent annual study, The Case for Inclusion, since 1960 over half of our existing institutions have closed, and 16 more are slated to shut their doors by 2016.

Why not seize this transitional moment to prioritize a new approach to community services and opportunities that make social inclusion a reality, such as increasing access to recreational and employment programs for adults with disabilities? The challenges are large-scale and will require a powerful effort to effect change in existing structures, practices and assumptions. It must no longer be acceptable to equate integration with community living services. Families, self-advocates and allies must demand a more holistic, respectful form of inclusion that acknowledges the social rights and needs of people with disabilities. I, for one, think the time has come.

For more on community living and inclusion, refer to the University of Minnesota’s Research and Training Center on Community Inclusion and to United Cerebral Palsy’s The Case for Inclusion 2014. The Center for Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies at Syracuse University also has an extensive listof relevant resources.

Please follow Liz on her fascinating blog Disability Fieldnotes or on Twitter @LizLewisAnthro. Her last piece for BLOOM was Disability was home: From big sister to anthropologist.

Does disability make you a less worthy transplant recipient?

Two little girls with genetic conditions that include intellectual disability needed a life-saving organ transplant.

One, in Philadelphia, needed a kidney. The other, in Chicago, needed a heart.

The first, three-year-old Amelia Rivera with Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, was turned down for a kidney transplant in 2012 because of her ‘mental retardation,’ according to her parents. “She is not eligible because of her quality of life—because of her mental delays” the parents said a nephrology doctor told them.

Special-needs parents lit up the blogosphere in protest and over 50,000 people signed a petition at change.org asking the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) to reconsider its decision. All the major media networks ran news stories on the case and CHOP reversed its decision. Last year Amelia received a kidney transplant from her mother and is thriving.

The second girl, a baby dubbed “Annie Golden Heart” on a Facebook page run by her parents, had Down syndrome. She was in heart failure, but was ineligible for a new heart because of her disability. Last week, she died at age two. Despite her Facebook page, Annie's story didn't garner the media clout to influence hospital policy like Amelia's had. I wonder how her parents explained her death to her two older sisters?

This change.org petition questions why children with Down syndrome are not considered candidates for organ transplants. It has almost 40,000 signatures, but it hasn’t caught the imagination of the media.

Last year CNN reported on a five-month-old baby with a heart defect who was okayed for a heart transplant, only to have this decision reversed two days later when it was discovered that the child had a genetic condition. The doctors said his genetic condition compromised his immune system, making him a poor candidate for transplant, and told the parents to take him home and love him till he died. His mother went online and researched the syndrome, reading studies and contacting the expert her son's syndrome is named after. The study authors and the expert said that the condition is not associated with immune problems and is not a reason to deny the child a transplant.

The syndrome is, however, associated with intellectual disability and there’s a long history of categorically excluding people with intellectual disability from eligibility for transplants; they’re not seen as worthy of these scarce resources.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has published an excellent toolkit on transplant discrimination based on disability.

In its Guide for Clinicians the authors note that “the most common barrier is the misconception that people with disabilities—especially those with intellectual, developmental, or psychiatric disabilities—are unable to comply with post-operative treatment regimens and that, as a result, people with disabilities have a lower likelihood of transplant success. In addition, providers may incorrectly assume that people with disabilities have a lower quality of life than people without disabilities and therefore would not benefit as much from life-saving transplants…”.

The guide includes recent studies that show that with adequate post-surgery care, people with intellectual disabilities have survival rates for kidney and heart transplants that are comparable with those in the general population.

The guide includes case studies, like the one of a 9-year-old boy with autism who needed a heart transplant. Two transplant centres refused to even evaluate the boy, who types to communicate, based on his disability.

In its toolkit on transplant discrimination, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network says that “as early as 1992, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services took the position that deeming people with disabilities to have a lower ‘quality of life,’ and refusing health care on that basis, would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

It goes on to say that “Clinicians’ estimates may, as a result of their own ‘horror of handicap,’ dramatically undervalue the actual quality of life of disabled patients. In reality, people with significant developmental and intellectual disability—including those who need assistance with basic tasks, those with co-occurring physical disabilities, and those who do not communicate using language—may lead long, rich, and fulfilling lives in their communities. Moreover, patients with disabilities who received organ transplants may experience marked improvements in quality of life.”

Ironically, two days before “Annie Golden Heart” died last week, a state lawmaker from Philadelphia introduced legislation to end discrimination against people with disabilities in need of organ transplants. The bill, spurred by the fight of Karen Corby, whose 24-year-old son Paul, with autism, needs a heart transplant but isn’t eligible, is called Paul’s Law. “...To find out that he is not a candidate for a heart transplant—which is the only cure—because he's autistic, is the most terrifying thing a parent can go through," Karen Corby said.

Last year, Dr. Art Caplan, a bioethicist writing for MSNBC online summed up the situation beautifully: “Children with intellectual disabilities do not appear on transplant waiting lists with the frequency that should be expected…There are reasons why anyone with an intellectual or physical disability might not be considered a good candidate for a transplant. But those reasons, to be ethical, have to be linked to the chance of making the transplant succeed. Otherwise they are not reasons, they are only biases.”

Ontario, MaRS pose citizen-centred housing challenge

By Louise Kinross

Two years ago we had the assessment necessary for getting an adult with an intellectual disability onto the list for community services, including group homes, in Ontario.

Ben, D’Arcy and I spent 3 ½ hours filling out what was a highly cumbersome, overly complicated survey that was supposed to measure how much support Ben needed.

Given we'd taken the morning off school and work it was galling to be told during the assessment that there were no services to be had.

We were asked to pick a lead agency that would be responsible for Ben’s needs, and we chose L’Arche, the homes for people with intellectual disabilities developed by humanist Jean Vanier.

Since then we haven’t heard a peep. Recently we met with a woman who helps families plan for their child’s transition and she encouraged us to reconnect.

This is the update D’Arcy provided after a phone conversation with Developmental Services Ontario:

-There are no longer “lead agency” designations (why were we not informed of this?).

-Ben needs 19- to 24-hour support in a home with no greater than 3:1 resident/support worker ratio, but these types of homes are non-existent. Any available spots would go first to people with complex medical needs.

-The list Ben is on is not a waiting list, but a needs-list. We are low priority because our family has two working parents.

-To have any hope of getting a call-back, it was recommended we raise the resident/worker ratio to 5:1.

Every parent dreams that their child will lead a rich adult life, one in which they choose to do things that matter to them, and are supported in a way that allows them to thrive and be happy.

To have your child’s future reduced to a conversation about worker numbers, with no discussion about the actual group home, its philosophy, the way it works, its strengths and weaknesses, where it’s located, and who else is there, is a slap in the face.

Back in March, I tweeted about the Select Committee on Developmental Services looking at the crisis in housing for adults in Ontario. At that time, the committee said there were 12,000 Ontario adults on a list for group homes with a wait of 20 years. TWENTY years. The report also notes that 2,300 families of adults are waiting for respite in a province with only 225 available respite beds.

It’s common knowledge that the only time people are placed in group homes long-term is when their parents die. Once that happens, who will be there to ensure the fit is a good one? Our experience has indicated that this is a numbers game that has nothing to do with the human being involved and their hopes and dreams.

Today I was thrilled to see this challenge to find solutions to the crisis by the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services and MaRS, the medical research and social innovation hub in Toronto.

In defining the problem, the MaRS Challenge Brief says that $1.15 billion is spent on residential support for about 18,000 adults with developmental disabilities in Ontario each year, but 7,300 adults are on a wait list (not sure about the discrepancy from the Developmental Services Committee numbers). The brief says that as of July last year, there were over 800 complaints by families to the ombudsman.

The Community and Social Services Ministry has partnered with MaRS Solutions Lab to develop and test new approaches to transform the system.

The challenge question posed was: “What would homes and communities need to look like for citizens with developmental disabilities to achieve citizenship: to live in the communities they choose, to grow and lead full lives?”

Six areas of research were identified. The paper says next steps are to:

-Convene partnerships across the four to six ministries of the government that impact people with developmental disabilities

-deepen understanding about people with developmental disabilities and citizenship

-Explore pent-up demand and information strategies that better inform future planning

-Explore and co-design citizen-centred alternatives. “Many social problems are often defined from an institutional perspective,” the brief says. “The lab takes a different view. Using tools from design thinking we try to gain a deep understanding of the problem from a citizen or user perspective. Not by just analyzing the numbers, but by also studying the people."

-Transform the system by exploring how to increase capacity to support family- and community-led innovation.

-Clarify and quantify developmental services objectives that are citizen-centred.

A number of our readers are very involved in these issues. Please give us your feedback on the details of the challenge PDF!

Mama and Dad

Son's death sparks a search for justice

Sexual violence against our kids: Why isn't it on everyone's radar?

Community Living looks beyond adult 'group homes'

Brother with disability dies from hospital neglect

People with intellectual disability grow old alone: Study

In the community, but alone

Does disability make you a less worthy transplant recipient?

Ontario, MaRS pose citizen-centred housing challenge

Postingan Populer

Label

Arsip Blog

Cari Blog Ini