an article in Sunday\u2019s Chicago Tribune<\/a> about the difficulties families of the disabled (specifically those with intellectual disabilities, a.k.a. mental retardation) have in finding housing for them \u2014 which was really nothing new. \u00a0This particular article profiled a woman with Down Syndrome who had lived for many years at Misericordia, a large residential facility in Chicago, and was very settled and happy there, but, at the age of 65, he had recently broken a hip and needed more assistance than her spot there could provide. \u00a0She spent quite some time in a nursing home as a result, until a spot recently opened up at a similar facility. \u00a0But the Tribune regularly reports on the situation of families where aging parents have taken care of a intellectually disabled* child and now look in vain for a place for that child as they grow too old to continue the task. <\/p>\n(* Look, I know we\u2019re supposed to say \u201cintellectually disabled\u201d instead of \u201cretarded.\u201d \u00a0And I try to respect that. \u00a0But \u201cintellectually disabled\u201d is awkward and cumbersome and doesn\u2019t communicate meaning as well as \u201cretarded\u201d \u2013 and as soon as it does feel natural and meaningful to the majority of Americans, people will start slinging it as an insult instead of \u201cretarded\u201d and we\u2019ll have to start all over again anyway. \u00a0It\u2019s like an old cartoon in which the cartoonist uses a befuddled grandpa to lampoon the changes in politically correct terminology, as the man is being educated by his grandchild on the fact that you don\u2019t use the term \u201ccolored people\u201d but rather \u201cpeople of color\u201d and can\u2019t make sense of it. \u00a0I suppose, in a way, though, \u201cintellectual disability\u201d is more accurate than \u201cretarded\u201d which, like \u201cdevelopmentally delayed\u201d seems to be saying, taken literally, that someone is just slow in learning but will eventually arrive.)<\/p>\n
Illinois is also a pretty lousy state when it comes to services for the disabled, and has a reputation for balancing its books by simply delaying payments to service providers by months or years. \u00a0And here\u2019s what you have to know about me: \u00a0I think there\u2019s a lot of room for disagreement on how much money the state should spend on social welfare benefits for the poor, and what the best way is of allocating those resources. \u00a0But I think that the disabled should never get the short end of the stick.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s no big surprise that there are waiting lists for spots at group homes\/facilities for the disabled. \u00a0The official statement from Misericordia says: \u201cProviders \u2026 are reluctant to expand services given the lack of appropriate funding for programs\u201d \u2014 that is, no one wants to build a new group home when reimbursement from the state is so uncertain even if its provision exists on paper.<\/p>\n
But this is what I didn\u2019t know: \u00a0it doesn\u2019t have to be this way. \u00a0Wisconsin does not have a waiting list for residential placement for the disabled! \u00a0Assuming Wisconsin manages this by adequately funding services rather than not providing such services at all, I say: \u00a0hooray for Wisconsin! <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So there was an article in Sunday\u2019s Chicago Tribune about the difficulties families of the disabled (specifically those with intellectual disabilities, a.k.a. mental retardation) have in finding housing for them \u2014 which was really nothing new. \u00a0This particular article profiled a woman with Down Syndrome who had lived for many years at Misericordia, a large […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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