1) What’s Happening in the Nation’s Capital?
Another Labor Day, Another Telethon
2) National News
People with Disabilities Face Sharply Higher Jobless Rate
Some State Medicaid Directors Leave Longtime Association, Form New Group
3) State News
PA Supreme Court Rules Guardians Must Seek Care
IN Ruling Halts Caregiver Choices Based on Race
4) Announcements and Additional Resources
Hands-on Web Accessibility Training by WebAIM
Another Labor Day, Another Telethon
The annual Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Labor Day Telethon is upon us once again. For almost 20 years Harriet Mcbryde Johnson took to the streets of Charleston to lead “a civil but adamant protest against” the Telethon. Since her death, our community no longer has her spirited protests to look forward to. So this Labor Day, use your voice to help put an end to pity by asking your friends and relatives to join you in boycott. If you're feeling really fiesty, check out her Step-by-Step Guide to Organizing a Protest Against the Jerry Lewis Telethon.
The Telethon will begin 9:00 pm Eastern on Sunday, September 5 and end on the evening of Labor Day, September 6, 2010.
Lewis Telethon Seeks Recession Rebound; Source: UPI
Jerry Lewis says he isn't overly worried about the effect the U.S. economy might have on donations to his upcoming muscular dystrophy telethon. The recession bit into the proceeds from the 2009 event by some $5 million and marked one of the few times the Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon did not see donations increase.
But the 84-year-old entertainer told the Las Vegas Sun the fundraiser still took in $60.5 million and has raised nearly $6.5 billion in the 60 years he has been the host. "It was bad last year and look what we did," he told the newspaper.
The Sun said that while Lewis doesn't doubt the generosity of his donors, he has concerns about flagging interest on the part of the entertainers who have been the hallmark of the telethon. This year's guest list is light on A-list personalities, the newspaper noted.
People with Disabilities Face Sharply Higher Jobless Rate
Source: Wall Street Journal, by Sara Murray
The government's first detailed look at [disability] employment shows they are far more likely than the overall work force to be older, working part-time or jobless.
The average unemployment rate for workers [with disabilities] was 14.5% last year, the Labor Department said Wednesday, well above the 9% rate for those without disabilities. By the Labor Department's count, there were roughly 27 million Americans 16 years or older with a disability last year.
The employment situation doesn't appear to have improved this year: The unemployment rate for those with disabilities had risen to 16.4% as of July.
This is the first time the government has looked closely at the employment situations of such workers. The study, for instance, found those with disabilities were three times as likely as those without to be 65 or older. Nearly a third of workers with disabilities worked only part-time, compared with about a fifth of those without disabilities.
Workers [with disabilities] with more education were more likely to be employed than those with less—a characteristic they share with the larger work force. But at all levels of education, people with disabilities had higher unemployment rates. The jobless rate for workers with disabilities who had at least a bachelor's degree was 8.3%— higher than the 4.5% rate for college-educated workers without disabilities.
Kathy Martinez, assistant secretary for the Labor Department's office of disability employment policy, says some employers are hesitant to hire workers [with disabilities] because they fear added costs to provide special accommodations or additional training. In some cases this could be considered discrimination, which is illegal. "The biggest barrier for us is attitude and fear—the misconception of what hiring people with a disability might mean," she said. Read More.
Some State Medicaid Directors Leave Longtime Association, Form New Group
A group of state Medicaid directors has decided to split from the association that represents them in Washington, saying Medicaid officials need an organization dedicated solely to the program, particularly as they implement the health reform law.
The National Association of State Medicaid Directors has represented state Medicaid directors as an affiliate of the American Public Human Services Association since 1979, but the NASMD executive committee voted recently to form a separate group.
“We all felt that there was a need for an independent organization focused solely on Medicaid,” Carol Steckel, who heads the Alabama Medicaid program and chaired the NASMD executive committee, told BNA Aug. 24.
Steckel, who will serve as president of the new group known as the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said that with the Medicaid program decoupled from welfare programs, and the considerable responsibilities Medicaid programs will undertake as part of the health reform law, it was time for a change.
Collaboration with other human services organizations will remain critical for Medicaid, but the directors will have an easier time implementing health reform if they have an independent group to represent them, she said. Read More.
PA Supreme Court Rules Guardians Must Seek Care
Source: Associated Press / The Observer-Reporter
The state Supreme Court has clarified the responsibilities of guardians to seek life-preserving treatment for people under their care. The justices ruled unanimously last week that when an “incompetent person” is neither in a state of permanent unconsciousness nor in an "end-stage condition" - and has not designated a health care agent - he or she is entitled to medical help that will preserve his or her life.
The ruling came in the case of a 53-year-old man [with mental disability] whose parents wanted to take him off a ventilator after he developed complications from choking on a hairpin.
The man, identified in court as D.L.H. or as David, an "incapacitated person" under the state's Probates, Estates and Fiduciaries Code, has lived at the state Public Welfare Department's Ebensburg Center for most of his life.
The man's parents, in a court brief, warned of a result in which his lifelong lack of decision-making capacity "causes (him) to forfeit any right to ever control when, where, how and how many times he is forced to submit to a whole range of medical treatments." Read More.
IN Ruling Halts Caregiver Choices Based on Race
Source: Associated Press / MSNBC, by Charles Wilson
Certified nursing assistant Brenda Chaney was on duty in an Indiana nursing home one day when she discovered a patient lying on the floor, unable to stand. But Chaney couldn't help the woman up. She had to search for a white aide because the woman had left instructions that she did not want any black caregivers. And the nursing home insisted it was legally bound to honor the request.
The episode, which led to a recent federal court ruling that Chaney's civil rights had been violated, has brought to light a little known consequence of the patients' rights movement that swept the nation's health care system over the last two decades.
Elderly patients, who won more legal control over their quality of life in nursing homes, sometimes want to dictate the race of those who care for them. And some nursing homes enforce those preferences in their staff policies. "When people write laws, they don't think about these types of things very much," said Dennis Frick, an attorney with Indiana Legal Services' Senior Law Project.
At nursing homes, tension over patient rights and race "comes up occasionally in virtually every state in the United States," said Steve Maag, director of assisted living and continuing care at the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. Read More.
Hands-on Web Accessibility Training by WebAIM
Join WebAIM's accessibility experts for two days of intensive, hands-on web accessibility training September 22-23, 2010 in beautiful Logan, Utah. For more information, visit our training information page at http://webaim.org/training/.
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August 30, 2010