Resources on Voting with a Disability (Maine & US)

by Sharon Wachsler

Support Voting Rights of Disabled People!

"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

In honor of Election Day, here are links of interest on disability and voting. I hope everyone will vote today, unless you have already voted by absentee ballot.

Disability Justice has a "right to vote" page that is chock full of terrific information! I highly recommend this site. It has several youtubes explaining different voting- and disability-related issues, as well as short blocks of text on these topics, lots of resource links and citations for further reading. A lot of it was surprising and informative to me (and I thought I already knew a lot about this topic, but there is a lot I didn't know!)

Topics of interest include "ADA to Today," about segregation and how people with developmental disabilities are denied the right to vote, "Constitutional Law & Voting Rights," "Complexities of Voting Law" references the Maine constitution specifically, "Voting is a Fundamental Liberty Right," "Stereotypes & Voter's Rights," and a section on "Recent Challenges to State Restrictions on the Voting Rights of People with Developmental Disabilities," including the Maine decision of Doe v. Rowe, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 See http://disabilityjustice.tpt.org/right-to-vote/

PDF Absentee Voting by People with Disabilities: Promoting Access and Integrity by the American Bar Association.

Nonprofit Vote: National and state-by-state resources for "voting with a disability"

Disability Rights Center of Maine's PDF guide, "People with Disabilities VOTE! How to Vote and Your Rights in the Voting Process." (Here's the DRC Facebook page, too.)

The Rights of Maine Citizens with Intellectual Disabilities (at the Maine Health and Human Services site)

A Guide to the Voting Rights of People with Mental Disabilities ("Vote. It's Your Right," by Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law)

The Americans with Disabilities Act and Other Federal Laws Protecting the Rights of Voters with Disabilities by the Department of Justice

Disability Rights Center facing criticism for not protecting abused Riverview patient

Riverview Psychiatric Center is in the news again. This time the woman assaulted there was a patient, not a staffer.

An October 8, Portland Press Herald story blames Maine's Disability Rights Center for not taking faster and more decisive action when a Riverview patient was abused by staff:

The Disability Rights Center’s failure to immediately notify Adult Protective Services let down the abuse victim, critics said. 

“To just not report it because they could not urge others to do so is unacceptable,” said Rep. Richard Farnsworth, D-Portland, chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee. “This report should have been made within 48 hours.” 

On Dec. 2, a corrections officer pepper-sprayed a nude patient who was in her room and not threatening employees, and then restrained her for hours afterward. The incident was kept secret until a former Riverview nurse reported the abuse to Adult Protective Services in late February. The state immediately investigated and concluded that abuse had occurred. One Riverview employee was fired as a result of the incident, and a contract worker was no longer allowed on Riverview grounds.

The article quotes Helen Bailey, a lawyer at DRC, saying they were working to try to get the hospital to take action on the patient's behalf so that hospital administrators would learn better how to handle such issues. 

Bailey said it is counterproductive for her group to report abuse when it is the hospital’s legal duty to do so. 

“If we do it for (Riverview), then they don’t learn how to do it themselves,” Bailey said. “They don’t get the point that these events are abuse if we do it for them.”

Read the complete article:  Patient advocacy group slow to report abuse case at Maine’s Riverview Hospital

Editorial urges Maine doctors to provide interpreters for Deaf patients

The April 3, "Maine Voices" editorial in the Portland Press Herald, "Deaf Mainers shortchanged when health professionals don't provide interpreters," gives the case for hiring qualified American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters for Deaf Mainers. This is a thorough, articulate, and important piece for all health-care professionals in Maine (and elsewhere) to read and understand.

Meryl Troop of the Maine Center for Deafness and Kim Moody of the Disability Rights Center of Maine start by describing the arguments and excuses a wide variety of health care providers in Maine use to explain why they do not provide interpreters for patients who request them. The most common reason seems to be that health providers are accustomed to "writing back and forth" with hearing-impaired patients and believe that, since they believe this works well for some or many patients, it should be good enough for all. Troop and Moody explain why this is not the case:

Deaf people who use American Sign Language to communicate ... just want to understand their health care, their vision changes, why their glasses aren’t quite right, why their child needs a specific procedure and what they’ll have to do to provide home care for their partners, spouses and children. Just like people who can hear. They request an interpreter because they know that will be the best communication accommodation that works for them....
“You can’t say working through an interpreter orally is as effective as one-to-one written communication.”
Actually, we can ... Fewer than 1 percent of Maine’s population have been Deaf from early childhood, before they learned to understand and speak a language, and they may never have learned to read and write well enough to carry on a complex conversation about health care and medical issues....
In any event, do health care providers have the time to write out, in the same level of detail, what they say on a routine basis to patients who can hear and speak English? Is their handwriting legible when writing under the time constraints of today’s shortened appointments?

This article does a great job of explaining that -- even though over forty years have passed since most health care settings were mandated to provide equal access -- many health providers still don't realize that access is not a cookie cutter situation. In the cases Moody and Troop are discussing, this means that what works to communicate with a late-deafened person whose native language is English may not necessarily be what works best for a prelingually Deaf person whose native language is ASL.

The article also references recent legal cases in Maine where judgments have consistently gone to the Deaf patient's right for communication access in medical settings. The legal and ethical burden is on the health care professional to provide real, two-way communication access, which is best determined by who needs the access. Patients' rights and Deaf or disability rights are may be the same thing when the patient is Deaf or disabled!

Read the complete article.

Harper Named Acting Superintendent of Riverview psychiatric Center

An Associated Press story picked up by numerous news outlets throughout New England, including the Portland Press Herald and WABI, reported yesterday that Robert "Jay" Harper has been appointed acting superintendent of Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta. Harper has served as a patient advocate for the Disability Rights Center and as a professor in the Human Services department at the University of Maine.

Hundreds of Maine Students Physically Restrained or Secluded, Report Finds

by Sharon Wachsler

Thanks to a new law requiring schools to report data on instances of physical restraint or isolation/seclusion of Maine students, there are now numbers on how many Maine students are being dealt with in these ways. The Kennebec Journal reports that out of 92 public school districts, there were 3,752 instances of physical restraint and 1,405 instances of seclusion.

According to the article, restraint "is defined as using physical force to move a student or keep the student somewhere against their will," and seclusion "is  defined as a student involuntarily being alone in a specific space".

Perhaps more telling for Ability Maine readers, a much smaller number of special education programs reported data, but the numbers were twice as high: 7,923 instances of restraint and 1,477 of seclusion. This means that disabled students are much more likely to be restrained or secluded. Indeed, this point is made in the article by disability rights advocates:

"These are potentially dangerous interventions and they're not effective in reducing behaviors," said Atlee Reilly, staff attorney for the Maine Disability Rights Center, which has advocated for parents and students. "I think people should be asking some questions about these numbers." Reilly said the new data is not specific enough to allow conclusions. He said a large number of incidents in a district might be concentrated at a particular school, and within a particular program.
That is the case in Lewiston, which had the highest numbers for a school district. The district has a day treatment center for special-needs students in one of its schools, which skewed the numbers because they are reported "by building."
Superintendent Bill Webster said that of the 449 instances of physical restraint reported in the district, 359 were at the day treatment center.

It is also noteworthy that the number of students being restrained or secluded is small in comparison to the number of instances. In other words, of those students who are secluded or restrained, it seems to happen to them repeatedly. For example, in the day treatment programs (which have the higher numbers of instances of restraint and seclusion), between 105 and 145 students were secluded a total of 1,477 times. This puts the average number of seclusions around nine or ten times per student. For restraints in the same population, 7,923 instances of restraint occurred among 523 and 571 students, bringing the average number per student to between 13 and 14 times. These numbers support Reilly's argument that these methods are not effective in modifying future instances of behavior that staff find "out of control."

To read more on this topic, including parent advocates speaking out and the Department of Education's take on it, please visit http://www.kjonline.com/news/maine-student-school-restraint-seclusion-classroom-policy.html

Panel on Maine's Mental Health System Focuses on "Public Safety"

by Sharon Wachsler

Last night a panel was held at the University of Maine, Augusta, on the state's mental health system. According to an October 31, Sentinel article by Susan McMillan, the scheduled facilitator was Senator Roger Katz of Augusta, and the event was spurred by an incident at Riverview Psychiatric Center:

...where a patient seriously injured an employee in the spring. The hospital, which is the state’s only mental health facility for patients who commit crimes, stands to lose an estimated $20 million in federal funding because of problems with governance, overcrowding and safety.

Panelists include various government and agency representatives and administrators, along with Helen Bailey of the Maine Disability Rights Center. Conspicuously lacking in the lineup were panelists who are consumers of the mental health system, themselves.

Overall, the article -- and seemingly the panel -- focuses on mental illness as a public safety concern. This fearmongering that people with mental illness are dangerous is in direct conflict with the data which show that people with mental health issues are no more likely to commit violent crimes than those with no diagnosed mental illness, and that people with psychiatric diagnoses are, in fact, much more likely to be victims of violence.

I could not find any articles about the panel after the fact. It is to be hoped that stereotyping and fearmongering did not carry the day. (If you attended or participated in the panel or have a link to an article reporting on the panel, please comment or drop us a line.)

Maine Human Rights Commission Sides with Guide Dog Partner

The Portland Press Herald reported on February 25 that a Presque Isle diner accompanied by his guide dog was discriminated against at an Augusta restaurant. According to the article, "Ruling Backs Humiliated Blind Diner":

Bruce Archer . . . was seated apart from the rest of the diners . . . and "each time I went up to the buffet and everywhere I walked, there was a woman with a bucket on wheels following right behind me, mopping." . . .

Read more about the case and see a picture of Archer, along with his attorney and his Golden Retriever Seeing Eye dog, Flash, in the Portland Press Herald article.

Web Resources for Mainers with Disabilities

Here are two websites on applying for disability that provide some of the same basic info, but with other little extras: How to File for Disability in Maine is a WikiHow that takes you step-by-step through the process of applying for Social Security disability. Filing for Disability in Maine seems to be part of a law company's site and includes some interesting and relevant statistics and dollar amounts, such as this one:

Maine's CareerCenter System provides information on several topics related to disability and employment. These include a Disability Resource Library, information on Maine's Disability Employment Initiative (DEI), the Ticket to Work program, the Flexible Employment Fund, information on reasonable accommodations and access, and more.

Maine.gov has a page on Disability Resources for Residents. Topics include accessible recreation opportunities, benefits programs, employment and education resources, state programs, behavioral health, independent living, rights and advocacy, and technology and communication.

Last, but certainly not least, is the Disability Rights Center of Maine. DRC always has a lot going on, and now is no exception. At the DRC website you can learn about Homeward Bound, Maine's "Money follows the person" demonstration project, Disability Awareness Day, self-advocacy partnerships and more.

Disability Rights Center to Honor Outstanding Mainers

According to the Bangor Daily News, on Friday, October 12, the Disability Rights Center will hold its twelfth annual dinner to honor "outstanding members of the Maine community who have worked to enhance and promote equality, self-determination, independence and inclusion of people with disabilities."

The dinner is at 5:30 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn in Freeport.

Awardees include high-school student Christina Kouros, a world-class athlete in Nordic Skiing and track and Chris Hastedt, public policy director for Maine Equal Justice Partners.

For more information on the event or to find out what else the Disability Rights Center does, visit http://www.drcme.org/.