Justice Department: Virginia Ignored Court order on Funding for the Disabled

It has been over eleven months since my late father-in-law died leaving behind an adopted son who was a  fetal alcohol syndrome child with intellectual disabilities.   To say that it has been a nightmare to secure a long term housing placement for him - my husband is the executor and trustee of his father's estate - would be a huge understatement.   While a solution finally appears at hand after countless meetings, letters to the Lt. Governor and Attorney General, one of the big problems is that in keeping with the Virginia GOP's (and national GOP's agenda) of kicking the less fortunate to the gutter, Virginia simply doesn't fund programs for the disabled.  Only Mississippi provides less funding even though Virginia is a far wealthier state.  Indeed, the situation is so bad that Virginia is under a federal court order to address the shocking problem.  As the Washington Post is reporting, the Department of Justice is now charging the Virginia has ignored the federal mandate to address the travesty.  Here are story highlights:

The Justice Department says Virginia is not being serious enough about efforts to comply with court-ordered reforms to its program for people with disabilities.

A letter to the federal judge overseeing a 2012 federal settlement, sent by the Justice Department last month, points as evidence to the way the state has used proceeds from the sale of state-run institutions that treated people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Under a 2014 Virginia code adopted as part of the state’s efforts to help people being moved out of those institutions to adapt to life inside private group homes or regular community settings, money from the property sales is meant to go toward providing more services for that population.

But the state gained zero dollars for disabled residents from the $5.4 million sale of a shuttered institutional site in Chesapeake, Va., this year, the Justice Department said.

Instead, the money was used to cover a reduction of that same amount in the budget of the Department of Behavioral Health and Development Services, the agency in charge of disabilities programs in Virginia.

Relatives and advocates for the disabled say they fear the state might do the same if it finds a buyer for the site of another institution — the 78-acre Northern Virginia Training Center near George Mason University that has been assessed at $24 million.

“If there’s not any assurance that the funds will go back into expanding services, that’s obviously a big concern,” said Rikki Epstein, head of the Northern Virginia chapter of the Arc, a national nonprofit group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “That is the whole purpose of the DOJ settlement agreement: to expand community services for people with disabilities.”

State budget instructions from the General Assembly, she said, ordered the department to use the proceeds from the Chesapeake sale to make up what the department had lost in its general fund appropriations for fiscal 2015. 

Virginia is among the last states in the country to initiate reforms under a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that requires people with disabilities to be moved out of government institutions and into community settings. 

Another 17,000 disabled Virginians who did not live in the training centers are also affected by the court settlement, which calls for making it easier for all people who are either receiving state aid or on the wait list for that assistance to integrate into community settings.

The monitor said the state has dragged its heels in implementing a redesign of its Medicaid waiver system that would increase the reimbursement rates. He also said that the state isn’t providing enough new Medicaid waivers to meet the needs of a growing population of people with disabilities in Virginia. There are nearly 10,000 people on a wait list for those vouchers.

The situation in Virginia is a disgrace.  What is most maddening is that the Virginia GOP (and national GOP) seeks to end all abortions, yet once individuals are born, any concern for them immediately disappears.  They oppose any and all funding for children, have blocked Medicaid expansion, and blame the less fortunate for their own difficulties.  While we have seemingly found a solution for my adopted brother-in-law, over 10,000 remain waiting.  It's time the Virginia GOP cease its fetus worship and start worrying about living children and individuals with disabilities through no fault of their own.

 

Jeb Bush the Clueless and Single Mothers

Jeb Bush may be trying hard to distance himself from his idiot brother, but he is quickly reminding us that he is just as out of touch with the reality of the lives of most Americans as was/is the Chimperator.  Moreover, he is out of touch with just how poorly America stacks up compared to other developed countries when it comes to child welfare and well being.  Bush brought all of this into focus while traveling in Europe where he condemned single mothers and said that children needed fathers and mothers to thrive where child welfare exceeds that of the America.  Perhaps Bush was pandering to the Christofascists, but the statement was as obtuse as when Mitt Romney praised Israel's health care system without grasping that it was a nationalized health system - something Romney was campaigning against.   Here are highlights from a New York Times column on the issue:

Last week, Jeb Bush was asked to answer for a passage from his book from two decades ago, “Profiles in Character,” in a chapter titled “The Restoration of Shame,” in which he blamed the “irresponsible conduct” of births to unmarried women on a flagging sense of community ridicule and shaming.

Bush responded, according to MSNBC: “My views have evolved over time, but my views about the importance of dads being involved in the lives of children hasn’t changed at all. In fact, since 1995 … this book was a book about cultural indicators [and] the country has moved in the wrong direction. We have a 40-plus percent out-of-wedlock birth rate.”

He continued: “It’s a huge challenge for single moms to raise children in the world that we’re in today and it hurts the prospects, it limits the possibilities of young people being able to live lives of purpose and meaning.”

But, as a 2014 Pew Research Center report points out:

“It’s important to keep in mind that just because a woman has a nonmarital birth, that does not necessarily mean that the mother is ‘going it alone.’ For instance, in the U.S., more than half of births that occur outside of marriage are to women who are cohabiting.”

That same Pew report reported that 17 European countries (Iceland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, France, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Finland and yes, Estonia) have higher birthrates to unmarried women than does the United States.

And according to a 2013 Unicef report, “Child Well-Being in Rich Countries,” all those countries except Latvia (Bulgaria was not included) had higher ratings of overall children’s material well-being (a measure of things like child poverty rates; child deprivation of things like three meals, including some with protein and fresh fruit and vegetables; books; regular leisure activities; some new clothes and properly fitting shoes; and whether the family owned an automobile, traveled for vacations, had a computer and had a separate bedroom for the child).

In addition to material well-being, almost all of them outranked the United States in children’s health and safety, education, behaviors and risks, and housing and environment.

We spend quite a bit of energy blaming births to unmarried women for our woes, but that is only part of the picture. The other part is the way we as a society treat those women and the fathers of their children. Instead of endless efforts to sanctify marriage, the emphasis should be on finding ways to support children and encourage more parental engagement from both parents, regardless of marital status. This includes removing all barriers and penalties for people, especially the poor, to cohabitate.

First, we should seek to reduce the level of unintended pregnancies in this country. As the Guttmacher Institute pointed out in February, about half of pregnancies here are unintended, and “unintended pregnancy rates are highest among poor and low-income women, women aged 18–24, cohabiting women and minority women.”

Second, we have to examine how we have used the law as an instrument to push unwed fathers out of homes, particularly poor ones, rather than encourage them to stay.

Maybe a deficit of shame is not our problem, but rather a deficit of common sense in advancing policy and promoting co-parenting.

Sadly, once a child is born and is no longer a fetus, the concern of the Christofascists and the Republican Party disappears and programs that would aid child well being are slashed, insurance programs cut, and children, especially those of the poor are treated as disposable garbage.  The callousness and hypocrisy is truly breath  taking.  Jeb Bush is another clueless, out of touch plutocrat.  We do not need him holding any public office.