Incompass provides residential and day/employment programming for a dually diagnosed, forensically involved population as well as a residential program for individuals diagnosed with Huntington’s Disorder. In this webinar, Chris Snell, MS and Dorian Crawford, PsyD of Incompass Human Services will provide an overview of community-based service promising practices for an emerging, dually diagnosed population.
Early intervention program planning can be challenging at times for students, parents, teachers, service providers, and administrators—but it doesn’t have to be.
Enter your information below to watch a free video. You will hear from Dr. Rachel Brady about IDEA Part C & B, program planning requirements, and strategies that support more meaningful engagement in early intervention programs. Equity issues and the points of advocacy at the individual and systems levels are also explored through examples, discussion, and a review of available resources.
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Filed: September 22, 2022
Court: U.S. Supreme Court
Overview: Amicus brief explaining the importance of individuals having the ability to sue state and local governments when their civil rights are violated under Medicaid and other public programs.
Excerpt: The linkage between the RA’s and the ADA’s antidiscrimination mandate and Medicaid provisions implementing that mandate is evidence that Congress intended both aspects of its disability-rights scheme to be privately enforceable. That conclusion is bolstered by the fact that Congress, when enacting the ACA, broadened Medicaid’s “entitlement” provisions by expanding the definition of “medical assistance.” Congress did so in direct response to judicial decisions narrowly construing that term in § 1983 suits brought by people with disabilities. Petitioners’ request that this Court abandon its longstanding holding that Spending Clause legislation can give rise to a private right of action under § 1983 would undermine Congress’s scheme for enforcing disability rights. People with disabilities, including children, regularly bring private lawsuits to enforce each of their independent, mutually reinforcing entitlements under the RA, the ADA, and Medicaid. Those lawsuits have vindicated important rights, providing access to life-saving therapies and everyday living support services close to one’s family and community. Absent a private right of action to enforce their Medicaid guarantees, enforcement of Medicaid would be left to the federal government, which may have few enforcement options other than reduction of States’ Medicaid funding. That may exacerbate rather than remedy States’ failure to comply with Medicaid’s requirements.
Amicus Brief Filed in U.S. Supreme Court Case Emphasizes Harms to People with Disabilities
A Major Win for Disability Rights From SCOTUS
Indy Star: Op/Ed: Treatment of patient at Indiana nursing home at center of U.S. Supreme Court case
Indy Star: Marion County agency wants SCOTUS to strip protections for millions of vulnerable Americans
Indy Star: Supreme Court denies Health & Hospital Corp.’s effort to block civil rights lawsuits
Yahoo News: Here’s why Nancy Pelosi, Todd Rokita, Biden administration care about Indiana nursing home
Disability Scoop: Supreme Court Case Could Sharply Limit Disability Rights
Disability Scoop: Supreme Court To Hear Case That Could Have Major Consequences For People With Disabilities
Vox: The nightmarish Supreme Court case that could gut Medicaid, explained
Vox: Medicaid appears likely to survive its latest encounter with the Supreme Court
MarketWatch: Supreme Court weighs 83 million Medicaid enrollees’ access to the courts
BU Today: The Most Consequential Supreme Court Case You Haven’t Heard Of
The 19th: Disability and aging advocates celebrate Supreme Court’s Talevski decision
Mother Jones: SCOTUS Just Upheld the Civil Rights of Millions of Disabled and Aging People
Wyfi: Supreme Court reinforces that Medicaid beneficiaries can sue states if their rights are violated
Axios: How nursing homes could face more patient lawsuits
During this webinar, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) discusses the pros and cons of using tracking devices in wandering situations, emphasizing some effective alternatives.
The speakers are two parents and police officers, Laurie Reyes and Stefan Bjes, and Board Member, poet, and self-advocate Russell Lehmann.
Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) do not lose their right to public education, including all rights to special education, when they are adjudicated delinquent. Once in the juvenile justice system, young people with IDD may be placed in a variety of settings, ranging from home confinement to foster homes to group residential settings and so on, all the way down the continuum to secure detention and solitary confinement. Wherever they are, they have the same rights to access the coursework the state requires for all students, as well as the services and supports provided by their IEP and/or Section 504 plan. In a secure setting, the way in which some services are provided may be altered, but the services cannot be denied.
Speaker Bio: A litigator with more than 26 years of experience in juvenile and education law, Diane Smith Howard’s work at NDRN focuses on conditions for children, youth and adults with disabilities in institutional systems. Specifically, youth in the juvenile justice, child welfare, education, and refugee resettlement systems, and adults with disabilities in the criminal justice and mental health systems.
Diane holds a B.A. with honors from Colby College, Waterville, ME, and a J. D. from Wayne State University Law School, Detroit, MI. Diane’s passion for this work is rooted in a family connection to foster and adopted children with disabilities, and to adults who are at risk of institutionalization due to a lack of community supports.
Download the presentation here.
For further questions, please email school@thearc.org.
Filed: March 3, 2022
Court: Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
Overview: The District Court denied D.R., a student with a disability, a more inclusive placement because he failed to demonstrate “appropriate educational benefit” from inclusion in general education. The amicus brief argues that, by placing the onus on students to prove that they can benefit from general education, the District Court would overturn fifty years of Congressional and judicial consensus that students with disabilities should be educated in inclusive settings “whenever possible.”
Excerpt: “The IDEA’s language, legislative history, and judicial interpretation speak with one voice: ‘To the maximum extent appropriate,’ students with disabilities must be educated ‘with children who are not disabled.’ This robust presumption of inclusion is reflected in the IDEA’s procedural requirements, which require Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) to account affirmatively for ‘the extent, if any, to which the child will not participate with nondisabled children in the regular class.’ The IDEA codified an emerging consensus from landmark special education cases that schools must educate students with disabilities in integrated settings wherever possible. Congress later amended the IDEA to further strengthen the LRE requirement in light of new education research, describing it as ‘a presumption that children with disabilities are to be educated in regular classes.’…The presumption of inclusion is so robust that it may even justify placement in general education in the rare case where the more restrictive setting may be educationally superior.”
This eight-minute video provides health care professionals with a basic understanding of plain language and how to use it so that patients with IDD can better understand information and more fully participate in health care decisions.
This eight-minute video highlights key findings from focus groups held with medical professionals who were asked about how they address or talk about sexual violence with their patients with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Filed: February 14, 2022
Court: Supreme Court of Massachusetts
Overview: The brief argues that whether a constitutional right to assisted suicide exists must be addressed from the perspective of people with disabilities, the class of people who will be most adversely impacted if such a right is found. Amici discuss how assisted suicide is part of a long history of discrimination and bias against people with disabilities in medical settings. Amici also discuss how legalized assisted suicide amplifies ableist beliefs about the quality and value of disabled lives and how supposed safeguards are inadequate to protect people with disabilities.
Excerpt: “Legalizing assisted suicide in Massachusetts would add to the…history of discrimination and bias against people with disabilities. It would establish a discriminatory double standard for how health care providers, government authorities, and others treat disabled individuals versus others. Only disabled people would be removed from the protections of generally applicable laws on abuse, neglect, and homicide. And only disabled people would face an offer of assisted suicide, as opposed to an offer of services and supports, in response to suicidal ideations.”
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