Efforts To Integrate People With Disabilities

NYAPRS urges NYS to step up efforts to intergrate people with disabilities.

Ten years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the Olmstead case that said that state policies that commonly segregated people with disabilities amounted to discrimination, and required states to provide services for people with disabilities "in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities."

Olmstead v. L.C. & E.W. reached the Supreme Court when the Georgia Department of Human Resources appealed a decision that it had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by segregating Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson in the hospital long after treatment professionals had recommended their transfer to community care. The Supreme Court found such confinement discriminatory both because it "perpetuates unwarranted assumptions" that people with disabilities "are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life" and because "confinement in an institution severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals, including family relations, social contacts, work options, economic independence, educational advancement, and cultural enrichment."

As disability advocates celebrate the anniversary of that landmark ruling, there is growing frustration from many of New York's disability advocates at the state's slow progress in complying with federal and state legislation extending the promise of community integration to our disability community.

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities are still unnecessarily institutionalized or separated from non-disabled individuals in the community and tens of thousands more are at risk of institutionalization. Institutional service systems continue to cost New York State millions of dollars that could be spent more cost-effectively by providing services and supports in the community. This segregation furthers dependence, inhibits autonomy and operates in opposition to what New Yorkers with disabilities want and need - the ability to work and live in the community.

New York's Most Integrated Setting Coordinating Council is the legislatively created body that is responsible for developing a statewide plan to ensure that New York complies with Olmstead. Yet, while states like Virginia have long issued detailed Olmstead plans containing specific legislative, regulatory, programmatic and funding changes that have set specific timelines to move specific numbers of individuals into the community, New York has yet to release a true Olmstead plan of its own with that level of specificity.

Far too many New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities are still segregated away from the rest of society in sheltered workshops rather than supported employment, in adult homes rather than supported housing, and in state hospitals rather than in their own homes. Instead, our Governors continue to veto legislation that would create transparent waiting lists for people with psychiatric disabilities in need of integrated housing, our state continues to fight a law suit aimed at substantively assuring that adult home residents with psychiatric disabilities seeking the chance to live independently in court and new institutional settings for children with disabilities are being created as we speak.

After years of stalemate under the Pataki Administration, New York's Olmstead Council (the MISCC) has shown more resolve in recent years under the leadership of OMRDD Commissioner Diana Ritter: state agencies and advocates are working together to examine progress made and needed in specific areas of housing, employment and transportation and there has been a willingness to collect data to reveal how many New Yorkers with disabilities await more independent settings and life roles. But the progress has been very slow and the state has yet to issue a detailed Virginia-styled plan.

And this is one area where money does not have to be the barrier: advocates have long demonstrated how the state can redirect hundreds of millions of dollars from segregated housing and day settings to support New Yorkers with disabilities to take their rightful place integrated in their home communities.

Here on the 10th Anniversary of Olmstead, we all need to remember the urgency of the task before us. Each and every day, as people with disabilities remain institutionalized, money is wasted on more costly settings, people's dependence on the system(s) grows, and New York fails in its moral and legal obligation to those of us who need the hope of a life in the community the most.

As we look back on the 10 years since the Olmstead ruling, New Yorkers must think of the thousands of people who will remain in segregated settings in New York as we go about our daily work, and ask ourselves this one question: How far have we really come?