Tag Archives: Intellectual disability

Age, Health + Ability

U.S. Feature | People with Disabilities

The New Segregation

Long-term care for people with chronic illnesses and certain physical and cognitive disabilities has become an important civil rights battle ground over the last two decades. While media attention has focused on government responses to civil rights issues including anti-LGBT legislation and racial inequalities in the criminal justice system, the U.S. Department of Justice has opened more than 50 investigations into what it reports has been the segregation of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities in nursing facilities. Effectively institutionalizing people with disabilities, nursing facilities have detached an estimated 250,000 from economic opportunity and social life, despite a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that people with disabilities should only be placed in nursing facilities if medically necessary. The New York Times analyzes the push for home-based care and the DOJ’s active investigations into violations of protections secured under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court’s 1999 decision.

Read:
“South Dakota Wrongly Puts Thousands in Nursing Homes, Government Says” (The New York Times)

Additional:
“Feds: Relying On Nursing Homes For Those With Disabilities Not OK” (Disability Scoop)
Letter on results of investigation into South Dakota’s healthcare practices (U.S. Department of Justice)
“Senate HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin Releases Report Showing ADA’s Promise of Integration is Not Being Met for Many Americans with Disabilities” (U.S. Senate press HELP release, July 2013)

(Image Credit: Thinkstock, via Disability Scoop)

Health + Ability

Zimbabwe News | Intellectual Disability

Zimbabwe organizations fight for sexual rights and education for people with intellectual disabilities
  • A recent panel in Harare focused on access to sexual reproductive health and HIV services for people with disabilities in Zimbabwe, who face marginalization due to lack of understanding about the spectrum of intellectual disability.
  • One leader of the Zimcare Trust, an organization focused on the empowerment of people with intellectual disabilities, noted that the legal and social infantilization of people with intellectual disabilities led to their being ill-informed about their own sexual health, increasing the likelihood of disease and pregnancy.
  • The National AIDS Council indicated it has established a special desk to ensure access to reproductive and HIV services.

“There is a thin line between Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act that regards a sexual encounter with a ‘mentally incompetent’ person as rape and a person with intellectual challenge choosing to have sex. … Persons with disabilities are regarded as perpetual minors no matter how old hence have no access to SRH [sexual and reproductive health] services.”

Read the full story at NewsDay.