[homeles_ot-l] Fwd: [New post] Bridging housing, human rights and the law to a person’s everyday life

Mon Mar 13 12:01:59 EDT 2017

Bill Dare posted: " This video maybe a bunch of years ago, but fantastic
story of bridging human rights and engagement with the law to a person's
everyday life. Harvey Rosenthal of http://www.nyaprs.org explains - NYAPRS
Note: Despite prominent news coverage, legal s"
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New post on *Social & Health Practice Ottawa*
<https://socialhealthpracticeottawa.wordpress.com/author/socialhealthpracticeottawa/>
Bridging
housing, human rights and the law to a person’s everyday life
<https://socialhealthpracticeottawa.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/bridging-housing-human-rights-and-the-law-to-a-persons-everyday-life/>
by
Bill Dare
<https://socialhealthpracticeottawa.wordpress.com/author/socialhealthpracticeottawa/>

*This video maybe a bunch of years ago, but fantastic story of bridging
human rights and engagement with the law to a person's everyday life.*

Harvey Rosenthal of http://www.nyaprs.org explains -

NYAPRS Note: Despite prominent news coverage, legal settlements and
litigation and years of advocacy, thousands of adult home residents still
await the promise of realizing their right to live in the most integrated
settings in their home communities. See below for how this issue has
reverberated in court rooms and in Albany over the past few weeks.
Accordingly, self and system advocates for adult home residents are coming
to Albany this Wednesday to call on state officials to keep their promise
to support their peers to live in the community. One has only to experience
Coco’s story at https://youtu.be/T9o0sKUkI0A
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FT9o0sKUkI0A&h=ATPbnM0Rd72AmlCBNSKqIw-ShVIdi7_E9TWd1ZZ8GJxjYMzEAyH-hmeiJR660Z1E-8onwxucbwHjBuFsOo5goMzegeVePmv8_Lat7Z8uVWNHupdNLVMPY0M2rY6rIZx130Y&enc=AZO1dP2kEC0oiBqWCtTf056SdsSdhestyarjSKn77NPiQibPOLnhFc85S2GXW-lvgNfW-0CpmNDQ9KcXID-lnM_D9jnF8MjTLpOr4BUA1lfryvs3II8sHa1u8FcFIrnk60cIU4dxbqnur0vSTvZZwnb2yxwLgMbinkdlypLySDKmMRcecs4INRZ6jWGIOR7HUmTuuWeNLWoZPSMeRFozyh7o&s=1>
to appreciate what it’s like for a resident to assume the dignity and
independence of life in her own apartment in the City.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9o0sKUkI0A&feature=share>

NYS Adult Home Residents with Psychiatric Disabilities Still Wait for NYS
to Keep Its Commitment to Support Them to Live in Most Integrated Community
Settings
NYAPRS March 13, 2017

In 2002, the New York Times’ Cliff Levy wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning
investigative series exposing NYS policy failures regarding New Yorkers
with psychiatric disabilities, many of whom had been wrongly discharged
from state hospitals into inappropriate if not abusive adult home
institutional settings in NYC, in violation of their ADA rights to live in
the most integrated community settings. See for Cliff’s first article in
the series at http://www.nytimes.com/…/for-mentally-ill-death-and-misery.…
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/nyregion/for-mentally-ill-death-and-misery.html>

After years of unsuccessful legal action and legislative advocacy with
previous Governors, the Cuomo Administration took two very important
actions:
· It stepped forward and reached a legal settlement agreement to help move
about 4,500 residents to more independent and normalizing community
settings and
· It promulgated a regulation that would stop referrals of people with
psychiatric disabilities into adult homes with censuses of 25 or more adult
home residents, in contrast to the several hundred who currently live in
several of them.

Taken together, these actions essentially closed the front door of these
institutions to New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities and opened the
back door wide to afford them their rights to live out of institutions and
into the community apartments with supports.

Despite the terms of the state’s legal settlement, NYS state agencies have
helped only 475 of these residents transition to community based apartments
since 2014, despite allocations of state financial and staff resources and
new housing beds. That’s 475 or 10% of the now 5,000 residents who fit the
terms of the settlement.

While one reason given is that residents no longer express a desire to
leave, advocates believe that residents have become discouraged by years of
broken promises and a lack of sufficient ‘motivational interviewing’ skills
on the part of in reach teams.

And, to make matters worse, state agencies acceded a few weeks ago to a law
suit put forward by the adult home operators challenging the regulatory
limits of allowing no more than 25 residents per home and agreed to a
temporary restraining order.

In response, the judge in the original settlement, Nicholas Garaufis,
Senior United States District Judge serving on the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of New York, exploded and demanded that
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman personally appear to explain why the
state backed down on contesting the regulation while dragging their feet so
starkly on the settlement.

In response, the Attorney General withdrew from the case on the grounds
that his office was not “in a position to explain a decision that it did
not make”, nor in a position to explain the state agencies’ decision to
accede to the restraining order and because his office and the agencies
“had a fundamental disagreement about how this matter should be handled.”

So the front door remains open and very little is happening out of the back
door….and the residents continue to wait for the state to keep its
commitment to them and to the court.

Look tomorrow for a news advisory for the Wednesday news conference by
residents and advocates to press that thousands of residents are provided
the supports that Coco received to live in the community.

*Bill Dare
<https://socialhealthpracticeottawa.wordpress.com/author/socialhealthpracticeottawa/>*
| March 13, 2017 at 3:59 pm | Categories: Income Security & access to the
social determinants of health
<https://socialhealthpracticeottawa.wordpress.com/?cat=399736511>, The law,
rights and community practice
<https://socialhealthpracticeottawa.wordpress.com/?cat=452545406>,
Uncategorized <https://socialhealthpracticeottawa.wordpress.com/?cat=1> |
URL: http://wp.me/pI0h2-iQ

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