Welcome to the G.I.M.P. Roundup - Growing Involvement in Media and Politics. This is a semi-daily (Mon-Wed-Fri) diary series dedicated to highlighting disabled news, activism, politics and punditry.
In the June 18th, 2010 GIMP Round-up:
- I Need Your Input!
- Today's Headline News - Family Sends Disabled Student Back To School, Floortime Therapy To Return In LA, Autistic Student Graduates Top Of Class
- Closing Thoughts - Another Way The System Makes Me Pay
I NEED YOUR INPUT FOR BOOK PROJECT
At the moment I'm calling it Everything You Never Wanted To Know About The Disabled, But Should Be Asking. It's going to be my view as a disabled person on the things that normal people really don't know or understand about us because you are usually uncomfortable asking. Things like, yes, gimps CAN have sex, and we can be quite good in bed, to boot. I can't count the number of times I could tell a girl was interested but figured things didn't work down there, or just wrote me off in general because of my disability. It'll also cover things like your children asking us those embarrassing questions in the store, or staring at us in restaurants, and whether or not we want you to offer us help and how to do it.
Gimps For Dummies, basically.
Here's the thing - I only know the questions that I wish you'd ask. I'm sure that there are many more questions that you have that I'm utterly unaware of. So here's your chance. In the comments below (or in email, if you're uncomfortable asking in public), ask me the questions you've always had about the disabled in general, from medical issues to social issues and everything in between. They can be from past experiences you've had, questions in general or even specific questions for me. Anything is fair game, and I really appreciate your help!
TODAY'S DISABLED NEWS HEADLINES
FAMILY GIVES DISABLED SON'S DIPLOMA BACK, SENDS HIM BACK TO SCHOOL
Via CBS 2 in Chicago:
A Chicago family makes their son give back his diploma. He's missed a lot of days, and they can't understand why he still received a passing grade.
CBS 2's Kristyn Hartman reports even the student, Abraham Esquivel, agrees and wants to stay in school.
By law, as a special education student, he can until he's 22. That's exactly what his parents fought for -- and got.
Even though he'll have less than a year in another school, they say something is better than the nothing they believe he's gotten thus far.
Esquivel, 21, walked at graduation. But his family says they're returning his diploma. They wrote a letter to CPS citing their concerns he wasn't ready.
The bottom-line: They're not happy with the education he received at Las Casas Occupational High – a school for some of the district's most challenged kids.
Good for them. This was likely an example of a school simply passing a child to get him out of the system, and this happens way too often to the disabled. For many, Special Ed is little more than babysitting. My roommate and current care provider was accidentally put into a Special Ed math class by a vindictive teacher, and she spent her class periods keeping a fellow classmate from eating the Lincoln Logs they were supposed to be counting. Honest truth. She wasn't there for long, but the horror stores were easy to see.
'FLOORTIME' THERAPY RETURNS FOR LOS ANGELES AUTISTIC CHILDREN
Via Disability Scoop:
A state-funded Los Angeles treatment center will continue to offer an autism therapy some consider experimental — perhaps providing it to more children than ever before — under a preliminary court settlement.
Last year, the Eastern Los Angeles Regional Center stopped offering a therapy known as “DIR” or Developmental, Individual Difference, Relationship-based treatment after a change in California law barred state-funded centers from using “experimental treatments.” But a group of families sued arguing that the method is the only one that works for their children.
Now under a preliminary settlement expected to be finalized in September, the center will be required to offer DIR to anyone they serve with an autism diagnosis — whether or not they previously received the treatment.
Interesting that this is being offered to all autistic kids, not just those previously enrolled. And congrats to the parents for successfully fighting to get a valuable therapy back for their children. As you'll see in our next item, early intervention with therapies like this can lead to astonishing success stories.
AUTISTIC STUDENT GRADUATES SALUTATORIAN OF CLASS
Via Disability Scoop:
Eric Duquette didn’t utter his first word until age 5, but this week the teen with autism graduated as the salutatorian of his high school class.
As a child, Duquette’s parents were told he would likely need to be institutionalized. But instead, early intervention paid off and this week Duquette graduated from a Smithfield, Rhode Island high school with the second-highest grade point average of anyone in his class of 199.
Time and again it's being proven that the biggest key to success with an autistic child is to get them involved in education and therapy as early as possible. Congrats to Mr. Duquette, and good luck in college!
CLOSING THOUGHTS - ANOTHER WAY THE SYSTEM MAKES ME PAY
So one way the Republicans in California proposed cutting 'waste' in social services was to make every in home care provider have to retroactively undergo fingerprinting and background checks. Now, the idea is a good one from a 'protecting the client from harm' perspective, but that wasn't at all the intent behind the measure. The idea was that obviously millions of dollars are being wasted paying illegal immigrants to be care providers, and we can save money but finding them and getting them out of the system. So every care provider now has to pay - out of their own pocket - to get the DoJ checks done if they want to keep their jobs.
Ignore the fact that if there were massive amounts of illegals serving as in care providers (and there aren't), purging them would further reduce the number of providers in a system that is already short on providers. Ignore the fact that this whole thing wastes more money than it will save. I want to talk about the deeper issue, here. The one that's hurting the clients, like me.
Clients with live in providers - whether a spouse, parent, child, or in my case, a friend - often pool their resources to survive. We clients don't make much on Social Security, and our providers hours are constantly being cut (mine has lost a third of her hours in the last year). We also, despite minimal income, are expected to pay a portion of our provider's check ourselves (mine is now $100 a month, money that I don't have), meaning that if you live together and pool your resources and expenses as we do, that income is simply lost. I'm supposed to essentially give her money I already share with her for her paycheck she already shares with me. Basically, she's working those hours free of charge, now. It fucked us up pretty bad, and we're still in a bad spot because of it.
Now we have to pay $70 or so to get her fingerprints and DoJ background check done just so she can keep her job.
But hey - only lazy people need the safety net, right?
Fuck you, Governator. And fuck you, California Republicans.