ADAPT in Atlanta for Action
On the tenth anniversary of the landmark Olmstead decision ADAPT, the nation's leading direct action disability rights organization, gathers in Atlanta Georgia to end the institutional bias by passing the Community Choice Act S683 and HR1670.
"We're here in Atlanta to demand freedom from nursing homes and institutions for people with disabilities and who are older," said Randy Alexander, Organizer for Tennessee ADAPT. "Currently, Medicaid law is biased in favor of forcing people into expensive nursing facilities and other institutions, rather than mandating that people can choose to stay at home with the assistance they need. As a result, hundreds of thousands of older and disabled Americans have lost their homes and their freedom, and have been virtually locked up for the crime of disability or age. It's a violation of our civil rights!"
ADAPT was successful using direct action to make busses accessible. In the 1980s the group targeted the American Public Transit Authority and the federal government to ensure a national policy of accessible public transit. The focus of ADAPT has always been equality, following transit accessibility, ADAPT has, worked for responsible healthcare policy.
In 2005, Money Follows the Person legislation was adopted as another step in ADAPT's campaign to end the bias in US Medicaid policy. Institutions and Nursing homes have a preference built into the program; they have assured funding while alternatives to expensive facilities are optional Medicaid programs. Home And Community - Based Services (HCBS) allow people with disabilities to remain in their own homes. HCBS programs often suffer because states cannot make cuts to institutional care, but they can cut the optional Medicaid services.
The logical next step to the "Money Follows the Person" legislation is the Community Choice Act. "Money Follows the Person" allows states to redirect long-term care funding from institutions to alternatives in the community. This will allow many Americans to choose to live at home rather than an expensive institution. The Community Choice Act is necessary to continue the trend away from institutions and get people with disabilities the services and supports to live at home. Choice is what every American expects, but far too often people with disabilities do not have the option of living at home, and can only get the long-term Medicaid services they need in a costly and intolerable facility.
"Georgia is the poster-child state for why we need a federal law like the Community Choice Act," said Becky Ramage-Tuttle, Executive Director of Disability Link and a member of Georgia ADAPT. "Ten years ago the U.S. Supreme Court told Georgia it was engaging in unlawful segregation of and discrimination against people with disabilities by inappropriately institutionalizing them. The court mandated that Georgia provide services in the community to the people who can live in their own homes. Ten years later Georgia continues to not comply with the Supreme Court's decision and has no completed plan to do so. This is an outrageous flaunting of the law!"
Follow what ADAPT is doing in Atlanta at the ADAPT Action Report.
The ADAPT Action Report is organized to let you follow the ADAPT Action in Atlanta. The idea is to bring the hard-work and exciting in-your-face advocacy of ADAPT to your computer. There is nothing like the experience of an ADAPT Action, but if you cannot be in Atlanta, the ADAPT Action Report will try to capture some of the feel of being there.
Follow the Action on Twitter: http://twitter.com/NationalADAPT.
Look for Twitter photos: http://twitpic.com/photos/NationalADAPT.
The Action Reports are news of the day with photos of the ADAPT activists in action. The ADAPT Action Blog is so you may have first-hand accounts from people involved in the ADAPT Action. News releases are indexed in the news section and there is a direct link to the photos by Tom Olin of the Action.
There's no place like home; and we mean real homes, not nursing homes. We are fighting so people with disabilities can live in the community with real supports instead of being locked away in nursing homes and other institutions.
There's no place like home; and we mean real homes, not nursing homes. We are fighting so people with disabilities can live in the community with real supports instead of being locked away in nursing homes and other institutions.