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Disability Policy Consortium
Weekly Update
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Greetings!
Sincerely,
Bill Allan
Disability Policy Consortium
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Editorial: Unanswered Questions
I was fortunate to attend Getting Real II last week sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and paid for by you, the taxpayers. I was also fortunate enough to be able to do a presentation Three Rs and a P on our efforts to get Governor Deval Patrick to meet his legal obligations by providing ASL interpreters during emergency related press conferences. The presentation is available as a Power Point show on our web site.
However, I came away from this conference with great concerns that Massachusetts has yet to address most of the real issues. While the DPC expects to hear from the Governor's Legal Counsel Mark Reilly soon with an answer to the ASL issue, I don't expect they will address the second part of our demands: to convene inclusionary planning groups to address the issues in the September 2008 (yes, it's 3 years old) report from the Task force on People Needing Additional Assistance in time of an Emergency.
Marcie Roth,Director of FEMA's Office of Disability Integration and Coordination, summarized the issues of the 2008 Report in a series of question about her friend Blina who dies in Katrina. I've reprinted her questions below and invite you all to email me with additional concerns you have faced or thought about during or after Hurruicanes Earl or Irene, the tornadoes or Triple E. wfallan@dpcma.org
Bill Allan
Disability Policy Consortium
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Unanswered Questions
Printed Without Permission
FEMA Getting Real II, September 12, 2011, Arlington Virginia
I am Marcie Roth, Director of FEMA's Office of Disability Integration and Coordination, an office that was established by FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate in February, 2010.
Benilda's Story
I have often said that I believe that even though some people are going to die in disasters, I didn't think Benilda should have been one of them. I came to FEMA because 1 am convinced the we can do better. And I think the promising practices I am learning about across the country indicate that we are doing
Now in another disaster:
Would she be adequately notified?
Would she have prepared differently?
Would paratransit or some other evacuation transportation arrive?
Would her ride be accessible? Would they bring her DME when she evacuated?
Would she have been brought to a general population shelter? Would she have been turned away?
If she needed assistance with using the bathroom, eating a meal, transferring or taking her medicine, would personal assistance services be provided?
If she had a service animal, would her service animal be allowed in and provided food and a place to relieve itself?
If she had chemical sensitivities, would she be accommodated? If she had autism, mental health or behavioral health support needs would programs be flexible to provide a quiet area or she could participate in maintaining her own health safety ar independence?
In another situation. If she could have stayed at home and sheltered in place, would her PAS (personal care) allowed in? Would she able to let local government know she was there?
Would a registry have offered empty or bonafide value? Woi a registry have assisted or hindered her ability to get her acci and functional needs met?
If she was deaf, would the information on the tv been accessible to her? In the shelter? In registering for assistance
Would evacuation maps be described for her if she was blind she would know where to go? Would she have access to printed disaster related information in alternate formats?
Would press conferences include sign language interpreters'? Would the media keep those interpreters in the camera shot
Would she be assisted to obtain accessible housing? Would t transportation and other key community services be accessit
If Benilda was a child with a disability would she be able to participate in the activities and assistance being offered to other children? Would she return to school at the same time as the other children or would she have to wait for disability accommodations to be added as an afterthought?
When I think about Benilda, I think about these things a lot.
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Dual Eligible Data
MMPI Announces Report
The Massachusetts Medicaid Policy Institute (MMPI), a program of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, invites you to:
Dual Eligibles in Massachusetts: A Profile of Health Care Services and Spending for Non-Elderly Adults Enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid
Monday, September 26th, 2011
8:30 - 9:00 AM Registration and Continental Breakfast
9:00 - 10:30 AM Program
Omni Parker House, Kennedy Room
60 School Street
Boston, MA
RSVP by September 21 to: MMPI@mjhcomm.com
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Disparities Action Network
Welcome to the Fall: welcome to the New Year!
This Friday noontime is our monthly Disparities Action Network meeting. It is at ABCD in downtown Boston (not the MassLeague where we met over the summer). Please join me in welcoming our long-time chair, Elmer Freeman, back from his summer sabbatical. We're all going to be pestering him for stories of Haiti and other thoughts and experiences he had on it, so I've gone ahead and put him officially on the agenda, which is attached.
Friday, September 16th
12:00 noon to 1:30 pm
Room 102, 1st Fl. ABCD
178 Tremont St., downtown Boston
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| White Cane Day
October 14, 2011
Please Come to Celebrate
International White Cane Day
Celebrate the independence of white canes and raise public awareness of the White Cane Law!
October 14, 2011
State House, Boston MA
10-Noon-Grand Staircase
Show Your Independence!
White Cane & Guide Dog Users Bring Family, Friends, Orientation & Mobility Specialists, Vision Professionals and Others to raise White Cane Awareness!
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Double Jeopardy
Health Disparities when Race and Disability Intersect
Thursday, October 6, 2011
3:30 pm - 5:30 pm
(light refreshments served at 3:00 p.m.)
Melnea Cass Room, Third Floor
ABCD Central
178 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02111
Panelists:
Derrick Dominique, Executive Director, Multi-Cultural Independent Living Center of Boston
Rick Glassman, Litigation Director, Disability Law Center
Gayle Johnson, MAAP coordinator, Union of Minority Neighborhoods; Disability Policy Consortium, MILCB & MassVOTE Board of Directors
Ed K. S. Wang, Director of Multicultural Affairs, Department of Mental Health
And others
Join us for a discussion of the issues:
· How does living as a minority with a disabilty impact health and well-being?
· How does this double jeopardy affect access to jobs, education, housing, freedom from prison and the ability to live a stable, dignified and full life?
· Has Health Care Reform improved care and outcomes for disabled communities?
· What keeps the health disparities in place? What must we do to remove barriers?
· How do we address racism, "ableism" and their impact
For information, reasonable accommodation or to RSVP, by September 30th please contact
Roxanne Reddington-Wilde redwilde@bostonabcd.org or call 617-348-6214
TTY: 617-423-9215
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Social Security & MassHealth
Joint Greater Boston Employment Collaborative/Employment Now Coalition Workshop Social Security and Mass Health Benefits and Employment
October 27, 2011
On behalf of the Greater Boston Employment Collaborative (GBEC) and the Employment Now Coalition (ENC), it is my pleasure to invite you, as well as those of your consumers who have disabilities or with a lived experience of a mental health diagnosis to attend a workshop on retaining Social Security and Mass Health benefits upon entering or reentering the workforce. Because we very much wish this to be a consumer-driven event, we would greatly appreciate your forwarding of this invitation to those of your clients who you feel could benefit from participating. We anticipate 75 to 100 participants and want the majority of them to be consumers.
The workshop will take place on Thursday October 27, 2011 from 12:30 to 4:00 at the Boston Public Library's Boston Room, located near the front entrance at700 Boylston Street, Copley Square. The library is conveniently located not far from the Copley and Back Bay MBTA stops. Parking garages are also nearby. A brief pre-registration form appears at the bottom of this message. The registration deadline is October 20. If you require any special accommodations, you must let us know this by October 13 at the latest. Participation is first-come, first-serve, so please respond as soon as possible in order to ensure a place at the workshop.
The primary objective of the workshop will be to assist persons with disabilities to better understand the ins and outs of retaining Social Security and Mass Health benefits when considering entering or reentering the workplace.
The program will run from 12:30 to 4:00 (registration starts at 12:30 and presentations begin at 1:00). There will be three presentations, followed by question and answer and audience discussion. The presentations will be in the areas of: Social Security benefits, Plans to Achieve Self-Support (PASS), and Mass health. Each expert presenter in these areas will be coupled with a now-employed consumer who will briefly recount his/her own experience retaining benefits.
With support from Work Without Limits, the Greater Boston Employment Collaborative brings together leading providers of competitive employment and rehabilitation services for individuals with disabilities to provide a comprehensive set of services. Also assisted by Work Without Limits, the Employment Now Coalition is a cross-disability organization seeking to increase competitive employment of people with disabilities. Our goal is to reduce stigma and promote pro-employment, consumer-focused changes in the employment support and educational systems and other public and private sector policies and practices.
GBEC and ENC activities benefit from strong consumer input. This workshop is being organized by the GBEC Consumer Committee. You can learn more about GBEC at:
http://www.gbecollab.org/
and about the ENC at:
http://www.employmentnowcoalition.org/Default.aspx
I very much hope you can attend and, on behalf of the Consumer Committee, look forward to seeing you on October 27.
Sincerely,
Susan Loucks
Manager, Greater Boston Employment Collaborative
If you wish to attend the workshop, please fill in the pre-registration form below and send by email, regular mail, or phone it in to:
Kimberly Warsett
GBEC Communications and Outreach Coordinator
JVS
29 Winter St.
Boston, MA 02108
TEL (617) 399-3229
TTY (617) 451-1496
Email: kwarsett@jvs-boston.org
PRE-REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Name:
Organization (If Applicable):
Email:
Phone:
Special Accommodation Requirements:
How did you hear about the workshop?:
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Dual Eligible Data
Highlights
This report - released today - was produced in collaboration with the Massachusetts Office of Medicaid ("MassHealth") and is intended to support broad discussion of how to improve the coordination of care for dually eligible non-elderly adults in Massachusetts. With a grant from the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services, the MassHealth program is currently developing a proposal to integrate the care and financing for people ages 21 to 64 enrolled simultaneously in Medicare and Medicaid in order to support improvement in the coordination, quality and cost-effectiveness of care for this population.
Key findings from the report include:
- Combined Medicare and Medicaid spending for these duals totaled $2.5 billion in 2008, which translates into an average of $23,700 per person per year. However, average per person spending masks the wide variation in spending, and, in particular, the concentration of expenditures on high-cost individuals. Approximately six percent of all duals incurred 37 percent of combined Medicaid and Medicare spending for duals in Massachusetts, while seventy percent of duals accounted for only 16 percent of combined spending.
- The vast majority of duals live in their communities, not in institutions, with only 3 percent of the population living in either a nursing facility, an intermediate care facility or long term in a chronic or rehabilitation facility.
- Fewer than 20 percent of duals both resided in the community and received a high level of long term support services. On average, duals residing in the community and receiving a high level of long term support services cost roughly half of what duals residing in institutions cost.
- Nearly 60 percent of duals have diagnoses in two or more of three major diagnostic categories (physical, behavioral and developmental).
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Gopen Fellowship
Applications are now being accepted for the 2012 Barbara Wilensky Gopen Memorial Fellowship. This is a wonderful opportunity for a person with a developmental disability or a family member to spend a year gaining knowledge and professional work experience in the disabilities field.
The Gopen Fellow works 20 hours per week on a self-designed project of interest. The Fellow works primarily at the Institute for Community Inclusion in Boston, and spends one day per month at the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council in
Quincy.
The deadline to apply is Friday, October 14, 2011. Interviews will take place in November, and the Fellowship begins in January, 2012.
The Gopen Fellowship is sponsored by the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Network: Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI), Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council (MDDC), Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center and Disability Law Center (DLC). For more information, visit the MDDC's or ICI's website:
www.mass.gov/mddc
http://www.communityinclusion.org/project.php?project_id=37
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Name that Bureaucracy
Hello Stakeholders:
MassHealth is running a contest to name its program to integrate Medicare and Medicaid for dual eligible adults ages 21-64. Additional information about this new program is available at www.mass.gov/masshealth/duals. The name should be easy to say and understand. We need your suggestions!
Here is what we need from you:
- Name of the program? ex: Health Integration Program
- Name the organizations that will serve individuals in its program: ex: Health Integration Programs, Health Integration Organizations
- Why did you choose this name? (optional)
- How do you say/abbreviate it? ex: HIPs ("hips"), HIOs ("H.I.O.s")
Please send your suggestion (either anonymously or with your name if you want bragging rights!) to duals@state.ma.us no later than September 30, 2011 at 5pm.
Thank you!
MassHealth |
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