Who's
behind
Freedom
Clearinghouse?
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What's happening now?
What's happening right now to make home and community-based services a reality? Watch this page for news, commentary and activism.
Click here to learn more about ADAPT -- American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.
AROUND THE STATES . . .
One backward state gets its comeuppance
Missouri Governor signs freedom bill
Delaware Adapt and Arc Win Governor's Edict on Olmstead Louisiana advocates sue state to implement Olmstead
Colorado Activists meet with feds Hawaii: Institutions gone, advocates sue for services Louisiana: Institution operators sue to keep Medicaid money Massachusetts: DD inmates of nursing homes settle lawsuit; state promises integration Massachusetts: "No Big Brother Here" says one advocate Michigan: Nursing home inmates sue to get out Missouri meets the Feds to start a State Plan Montana advocates file OCR complaint to force state to implement Olmstead decision Oregon closes its last institution "for the retarded" Oregon advocates fight the waiting list in court How Tennessee's People First group closed the DD institutions Washington state: class action settled for integration
AND
. . .
Court challenges after Olmstead A Real Threat: U.S. Supreme Court May Declare Title II of the ADA Unconstitutional Legal Theories Behind State Challenges to Constitutionality of Title II of the ADA (and Section 504)
Who are these people? What do they want?
Lying in the road,
chained to a wheelchair, blocking traffic on the main drag in Baltimore,
Maryland, what did this man hope to accomplish?
The man shown here is nursing home survivor, one of hundreds of members of ADAPT who, for two days in the autumn of 1991, blocked the doorways and driveways and underground parking garages of the ten-block-square national headquarters of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) in Baltimore, Maryland.
ADAPT is a national organization of disability rights activists, people with little or no money at all who practice civil disobedience to effect social change. (The name "ADAPT" stands for "American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.") They don't seem to have a boss of any kind. And they don't have a national headquarters, but they do have people power. And they want to live in their own homes, not in nursing homes.
As a result of ADAPT's action that autumn, and its continuing visits to a variety of places where HCFA does business, some of its members were invited to meet, repeatedly and over a number of years, with HCFA's top managers. Since 1997, they have been meeting with HHS Sec. Donna Shalala. It was Shalala who secured meetings between ADAPT's people and President Clinton.
As a result of those meetings, HCFA has changed its tune about home- and community-based services. Where once states had to go through 57 varieties of hell over a period of years to get HCFA to approve one measly waiver application, today's waiver approval process takes 60 days or less and requires little if any special pleading.
Nowadays, HCFA positively encourages waivers and Donna Shalala, today a true believer in Our Homes Not Nursing Homes, told state legislators that much and more face to face in a recent speech. See excerpts from her speech to the National Conference of State Legislators.
Freedom Clearinghouse is a project of
Free Hand Press,
publisher of Mouth
magazine.
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Organic Works.
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