Tag Archives: government benefits

Recommended Reading for October 12, 2010

Darshak Sangavi at Slate: Should you crowdsource your medical problems?

To be sure, many patients with complex or poorly understood medical problems like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis congregate in large virtual communities such as PatientsLikeMe, where they share details of their medical treatments and symptoms with each other—and occasionally even launch their own unregulated and informal drug trials. These communities provide some helpful information and support for many people.

brigid at Feminists With FSD: On the FSD hierarchy and why it hurts all of us

A lot of support groups, both on and off the web do not want to recognize women with conditions such as endo as legitimate cases of fsd. We don’t have vulvodynia, vulvular vestibulitis, or vaginismus so we couldn’t possibly go through the same things as women with those conditions. I’m here to change that misconception.

Michael Janger at Abled Body: Web Content Accessibility Law Needs More Brawn

However, the newly accessible video content is only the tip of the iceberg. The major broadcast and cable networks that are covered under the new law produce about 100,000 hours of video content a year from their TV programs. On YouTube — which is not covered by the new law — almost 13 million hours of video content are uploaded annually, and that number is increasing. Over 99% of this Web-exclusive content is not closed-captioned or video-described, nor will it be required to be, under the new law.

Flash Bistrow at Where’s the Benefit?: DLA and work? Who is confused here?

The government has already said that the new medical test is intended to reduce the number of DLA claimants by 20%. But I am not sure how taking benefit from 1 in 5 people will “reduce dependency” (on what?) and “promote work” – indeed, several of the people quoted in my previous article about DLA would have to stop working if they lost that benefit, because they do not have enough energy or capacity to both care for themselves AND go to work. If the government think that turfing disabled people off DLA will suddenly give them the capacity to work, they are very much mistaken. It will just disable them even further.

Sam Roe and Jared S. Hopkins for the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune: The final hours of Jeremiah Clark (major trigger warning for discussion/descriptions of abuse and neglect)

Jeremiah is among 13 children and young adults at the North Side facility whose deaths have led to state citations since 2000, a Tribune investigation has found. Some of these deaths, records show, might have been prevented had officials at the facility taken basic steps, such as closely monitoring residents and their medical equipment.

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading at disabledfeminists dot com. Please note if you would like to be credited, and under what name/site.

Recommended Reading for September 21, 2010

Natasha Tracy at Breaking Bipolar: Stop Minimizing Mental Illness: Worst Things To Say

I feel, sometimes, that I am at war with the mentally-well world. This isn’t to say that many of them aren’t lovely or that I have a desire to harm anyone, but I do feel embroiled. And it’s mostly because the well population just doesn’t understand what it is to be unwell. They demonstrate this heartily by repeatedly saying the worst things possible to a person with a mental illness.

The Guardian: Letters: Living on benefits is in no way ‘a lifestyle choice’

It is quite possible for a person from a very rich and privileged background to genuinely care about the plight of the poor, and to do something constructive to improve it (Osborne to cut £4bn more from benefits, 10 September). It is much harder for such a person to have any real comprehension of what it feels like to live in poverty, with little or no prospect of escape, no matter how hard they work.

Michael J. Berens at the Seattle Times: Hundreds of adult homes conceal abuse, neglect [strong trigger warning for content related to abuse]

In fact, a Seattle Times investigation has found, such cover-ups by adult family homes are not unusual. The Times found that over the past five years, at least 357 of the adult family homes in this state have concealed cases of abuse or neglect of their residents. Many of those cases involved serious injury or death. In dozens of these cases, untrained or unlicensed caregivers mishandled residents’ medications, sometimes giving them fatal overdoses. In other cases, residents became ill after being denied basic care and hygiene.

Ally at Every Crooked Step Forward: Courage…And Other Things I Don’t Have

That I am a person with a disability who identifies as asexual is not a forgone conclusion. That I belong to both groups is incidental, and that both groups have been mistakenly thought, by people who are not part of that group, to denote a lack of maturation or inability to understand one’s social or physical development, does not mean I am, in fact, immature, or that I do not know my own body. The fact that I am asexual is not proof about the presence, or lack of a sexual desire in a person with a disability, or zir understanding of zir sexuality, or zir ability to express that desire, if indeed it does exist. The fact that I have a disability is, similarly, not proof that all, or even most, people who identify as asexual suffer from some kind of physical, mental, or chemical deficiency.

Blackamazon at Having Read the Fine Print…….: We’re supposed to be impressed

However

I get less and less likely to feel solidarity with it when THAT phenomena where in your experimentation , goals for what inclusion looks like , and execution are serious matters and the stuff you got it from , the places it came from aren’t even notable .

As well as EVEN less likely to believe it’s just experimentation or poking and prodding when certain aspects of those personae like your race,class, sexuality are seemingly

a) ignored

or

b) only poked in ways that continually exhibit you as a edgy for a member of privileged class or consistent appropriator or chosen vessel.

It’s not my job to tell you haw to do it but if you wish to explore why is THAT section so often missed .

Recommended Reading for May 18, 2010

Pharaoh Katt at Something More Than Sides: I Dreamed That I Was Normal

I dreamed the world made sense,
That people never tried
To delve into my psyche and redefine my mind.

Gauntlet at Tumblr: Janet Street-Porter shares her thoughts on depression…

I think maybe what we are seeing here, is women who have a powerful voice in the media through their personal fame or newspaper column, sharing their experience in a way that will hopefully help to normalise the experience of mental health problems and help reduce stigma.

telesilla: 3W4DW — Day ???

I don’t need to explain to anyone why I’m on government assistance, because you know what? It’s none of anyone’s damn business.

Brendan Borrell (Los Angeles Times): Pro/Con: Time to reexamine bipolar diagnosis in children?

In a draft of the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the American Psychiatric Association’s bible — a new label, temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria, is proposed for these behaviors instead. Unlike bipolar disorder, the new label doesn’t specify that the disorder is a lifelong condition.

What is the Real Goal of Fraud Investigations?

California is in the midst of a major budget crisis. The past year has seen immense and drastic cuts to social service budgets throughout the state, including elimination of all state funding ($16 million) to domestic violence shelters (which was later partially restored by legislative action) and near-total decimation of funds for AIDS testing and prevention programs to save $52 million. Even with those catastrophic cuts, the state is still in massive financial difficulty: “The state has a $6.6 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year ending June 30 and is looking at a $12.3 billion hole for the new budget year. There is $1 million in reserve.”

This means that any dollar currently being spent has been extensively reviewed and evaluated and a very conscious decision has been made to prioritize spending in that area. For example, the state is still willing to spend money for California counties to investigate potential fraud in the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program. IHSS is an essential program for many of California’s low-income elderly people and people with disabilities. Through the program, individuals are allotted a certain number of hours of assistance with personal services including bathing and grooming, home services such as cleaning, cooking, and errands including buying groceries and picking up prescriptions. The theory of the program is that assisting people this way allows them to continue living independently in their communities rather than in a long-term care facility, which not only preserves independence and dignity for program recipients, but also is a huge cost-savings measure for the state. If program recipients were to move to long-term care facilities, their costs would almost certainly be paid for by the state’s Medicaid program. And look at the cost differential: “The average cost of a skilled nursing facility is $55,000 a year. The average cost of in-home services in California is $10,000.”

Despite the cost savings realized by this program (I’m beyond the point where I think a state will prioritize and fund a program simply because it’s something that PWDs need to maintain independence and dignity), there have been massive cuts to the benefits portions of IHSS. The hourly wage paid to the home health providers has steadily declined and is now at $8.60 an hour. Needless to say, these extremely low wages make it nearly impossible for a PWD with IHSS benefits to find a home care provider with any kind of training or experience. There have also been steady erosions to the group of individuals who will be eligible for IHSS, with criteria requiring a higher and higher level of disability or functional impairment in order to qualify for the program.

The only area of program funding that has increased is fraud detection, with a grant of $26.5 million to counties to engage in fraud detection. That’s the equivalent of approximately 3 million service hours at the current rate of pay. There are also new requirements in the program that must be met by both recipients and providers in order to receive services: all providers must go through a criminal background check process, including fingerprinting; all program applicants and recipients must be fingerprinted and must place a fingerprint signature on each timesheet submitted for payment. It also requires counties to conduct unannounced home visits.

In the abstract, some of this seems to make sense. We don’t want health providers with criminal backgrounds coming into the homes of vulnerable people and exploiting or harming them. Except that the majority of providers are actually family members or immediate relatives of the PWD and the fingerprints can take up to 9-12 months to be cleared by the state, causing huge delays for PWDs who need vital services and delays in bringing often essential income to low-income families. (Not to mention how low-income people of color are likely disproportionately targeted by law enforcement and subject to criminal penalties.) It also seems reasonable to ensure that scarce service dollars are actually going to people who need and deserve them, rather than people receiving them fraudulently. But there has been a lot of research on IHSS fraud in the past, and it simply does not seem to be very prevalent: an audit released last year (pdf link) found a fraud rate of only 1% in the program. A recent program in Sacramento turned up similarly low levels of program fraud: “The Sacramento County District Attorney, who received more than $3 million from the state for anti-fraud efforts, reported last week that after four months her office had uncovered a total of 19 cases of fraud out of more than 42,000 homecare clients in the County.” That’s a rate of 0.04%. And if we estimate that each of those 19 cases fradulently took $10,000 a year from the state, that $190,000 in fraudulent benefits is dwarfed by the $3 million spent to identify that fraud.

So – these changes and programs are not about protecting recipients. They’re not about preventing widespread rampant fraud. What are they about? Some testimony at a recent legislative hearing sheds some light:

Nancy Jo Riley of San Diego testified that she and her client were “randomly selected” for a fraud investigation last October as part of a new “anti-fraud” initiative by the state. According to Ms. Riley, the agent from the Department of Health Care Services (DCHS) first threatened in a phone call to cut off all IHSS unless she and her client met with him immediately. At the subsequent meeting, the investigator asked her and her client a long series of “humiliating” questions. He then said he could not understand why a person with a severe disability like his should be subject to a fraud investigation in the first place.  He also said that her client, whose hands are frozen in a fist-like position because of his disability, would “probably” be exempted from new fingerprint requirements for homecare consumers.

These rules are an effort to make it harder for people to get services or to continue receiving services. They are an effort to erect barriers to service so substantial that PWDs cannot surmount them. They designed to humiliate and shame recipients for their disability status, to force them to prove themselves, their disabilities, and their functional impairments over and over again. They don’t even make sense from a cost perspective, as they spend far more in detection than is saved by the fraud they ostensibly prevent. They’re not targeting people who are fraudulently receiving services. They are targeting the very people the program is supposed to help.