Maine's Age Imbalance: Northern New England Has Nation's Oldest Population

The Portland Press Herald recently reported, in "Maine, neighboring states confront aging challenges," that Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have the nation's oldest populations. Median age in Maine is the highest in the country at 44 years old. Vermont and New Hampshire are next at 42.5 and 42.3, respectively.

Economists say that if this imbalance is not corrected, it will result in higher labor costs, lower-quality education, and a poor-functioning state government. The article also addressed concerns around housing and long-term care:

Steve Norton, executive director of the New Hampshire Center of Public Policy Studies, noted that a dearth of two- and three-bedroom homes in his state is forcing young, first-time buyers to compete with empty-nesters who are downsizing.

Read the article: https://www.centralmaine.com/2014/11/18/maine-neighboring-states-confront-aging-challenges/

Back in the Maine Stream: Taking Disabled Vets Fishing

Are you a disabled veteran in Maine who likes fishing? You have company!

In July, the Portland Press Herald ran an interview with Marc Bilodeau and Bob Pelletier, the leaders of Back in the Maine Stream, an outdoor support group for disabled veterans. Bilodeau and Pelletier are themselves disabled veterans who like to fish. The group provides peer support to veterans who have returned home to Maine:

Both men love to fish. This year alone, they have organized 12 donated fishing trips to their group of Maine veterans, which now numbers 50. The group’s mission statement promises they will “improve the participant’s physical, social and emotional well being through fishing activities and outings. We believe veterans helping veterans improves all of our abilities, physical and emotional.”

Studies show that any time outdoors improves mental health. The comments of the vets leading this initiative seem to show that this is the case with their fishing expeditions, too:

What’s most striking about the work you do with other disabled veterans?

MARC: It’s interesting the difference you see on these fishing trips. People come in and you see their attitude change. They will come in grumpy and leave happy. Something happens. 

BOB: You’ve got guys with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, with brain injuries, guys who are visually impaired. We get them fishing and none of that pertains.
We had one gal join us, I won’t use her name. She is one tough cookie. No one goes near her. She came up to me after one trip and said, ‘Get your camera ready.’ Then she came up and gave me a hug.

Back in the Maine Stream has a website with pictures of trips, upcoming activities, and other resources of interest to disabled veterans in Maine.

"Mental health worker" files federal suit against state of Maine for failing to protect her before stabbing

Multiple newspapers and TV news stations in Maine reported today that
Jamie Hill-Spotswood, who was injured on the job at Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta in March of 2013, has filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Maine for failing to protect her at work. Her lawyer contends that the Department of Health and Human Services was guilty of "inexcusable failure to protect employees from foreseeable and grave danger."

Hill-Spotswood, whose job description is given as "mental health worker" in the related articles, was assaulted by a male patient on a locked ward. He stabbed her with a pen repeatedly until other patients and staff intervened. Hill-Spotswood has needed to have surgery and occupational therapy for her hand, which she used to protect her face in the attack.

According to the Portland-Press Herald's story

Jamie Hill-Spotswood, had told Roland Pushard, the assistant director of nursing at Riverview, less than a week before the March 16, 2013, attack that she was 18 weeks pregnant and that she felt unsafe because there was no security on the hospital floor where she worked, she said in the suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Bangor.

Hill-Spotswood said in the suit, filed on her behalf by her attorney Michael Waxman against Department of Health and Human Services Director Mary Mayhew, that the floor was populated by patients known to be “very, very violent” and known to have threatened or attacked workers and patients on numerous occasions. 

She also contends that the state did nothing after she told the Riverview staff that she felt unsafe and that Riverview never disclosed to her that her accused attacker, Mark Murphy, had a “prolific history of violence,” Waxman wrote in a six-page complaint.

Many of the articles focus on the fact that Hill-Spotswood was pregnant at the time of the attack, but information about how the attack affected the pregnancy was not included. Most of the articles include a photo of Mark Murphy in prison orange.

Earlier stories about the assault discussed whether Murphy was criminally responsible for his actions at the time -- whether the assault resulted from a paranoid state or whether it resulted from his anger and frustration when staff canceled his planned visit to his parents' home.

Maine activists seek labeling for hormone-dysrupting chemicals in consumer products

Paige Holmes of Lisbon started a recent blog post by explaining how careful she is, as a consumer, about her family's health:

Every trip to the store involves a careful assessment of what’s coming into my home and into the hands (and mouths) of my two young sons.  I am probably more aware of chemical safety than the average consumer, as I have spent the last several years and transitioning away from goods that are likely to contain harmful chemicals to safer alternatives.  I use glass instead of plastic food containers.  I’ve swapped out the vinyl shower curtain for cloth.  And I am thrilled every time I can see clear evidence that I’m avoiding the dangerous chemicals known to me, like the now common “BPA Free” labels on reusable water bottles.... 

I was one of 25 Mainers who volunteered to be part of a bio-monitoring study of phthalates, a group of hormone-disrupting chemicals that are widely used in consumer products.  We each provided urine samples which were tested for the presence of seven different phthalates.  This week the results were released by the Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine in a report titled, “Hormones Disrupted: Toxic Phthalates in Maine People”. 

I had the highest total level of phthalates in my body out of anyone in the group. My levels were higher than levels found in 90% of all Americans tested by the US Centers for Disease Control.

(Read Holmes's blog post, "Careful shopper or not, your body may still be polluted with toxic chemicals.")

Paige Holmes with her two sons

Holmes continues with what this might mean for her family, and what she's trying to do about it:

As a mom with two young sons, the implications of my phthalate levels are really frightening.  I know that these chemicals have adverse health effects on baby boys, including birth defects in male sex organs as well as reduced fertility and increased risk of prostate and testicular cancer later in life.  I also know that phthalate exposure is linked to many of the issues that teachers like my mom and sister are seeing more and more of every day: learning disabilities, behavioral and attention issues, and asthma.... 

Here in Maine, citizens are using the state’s Kid Safe Products Act (2008) to take matters into their own hands. We are now circulating a citizen-led petition that will initiate a rulemaking before the Maine Department of Environmental Protection on the reporting of phthalates in consumer products.The rule would elevate four phthalates to “Priority Chemical” status under Maine’s Kid-Safe Products Act and require manufacturers to report on which of their products sold in Maine contains the priority phthalates. In other words, Mainers are taking action to find out which products contain phthalates.

The Environmental Health Strategy Center of Portland blames Governor LePage for failing to act on this issue. Their recent newsletter states:

While the LePage Administration has stubbornly refused to take meaningful steps to protect families from toxic chemicals under the Kid Safe Products Act, Mainers are taking matters into their own hands. This spring, dozens of activists across the state helped gather signatures to force the LePage Administration to look at the science, and listen to citizens. 

How? Our citizen-initiated rule-making petition will effectively jump-start the regulatory process, calling on the Department of Environmental Protection to use it’s authority under the Kid Safe Products Act to require large manufacturers to disclose their use of toxic phthalates. The Portland Press Herald put it this way in their editorial, "Labeling would help keep toxins away from Maine kids": 

“Mandating the disclosure of phthalates in consumer goods is a minor technical action that could have a major impact.”... 

With our partners in the Alliance for a Clean & Healthy Maine, we’ve collectively gathered a grand-total of 1,693 signatures from 146 towns, representing every county across the state. That’s more than 10 times the minimum number required by the Department of Environmental Protection to initiate a rule-making! But we’ve only just begun. Next month, we’ll gather to at the State House to deliver the petitions in person."

EHSC asks other concerned Mainers to join them at the State House (for details, email EHSC) and to sign on to ask the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to act swiftly to a schedule a public hearing and adopt this common-sense proposal. (Want to help? Sign the petition to the Maine DEP to label phthalates in consumer products.)

New Webpage of Stats on Disability, Work, and Maine

If you enjoy statistics, pie charts, graphs, and other representations of data about disability, demographics, and work in the state of Maine, then hurry over to the Center for Workforce Research and Information's "Maine Workers with Disabilities" page.

Information is broken down by age, county, disability type, gender, and more.

Counties in Maine show lowest disability rates  (dark blue) to highest disability rates (red/brown)

There's a short AP article in the Portland Press Herald about how this page was developed because of "concerns that there is not enough state-specific information" about unemployment and disability in Maine.

Four Articles on Barriers to Navigating Portland for Disabled Mainers

On April 13, the Portland Press Herald ran "Living with disabilities in Portland, Maine, where every step's a challenge," on the physical and attitudinal barriers that face people with diverse disabilities in Portland, or in Maine, generally. The story, which ran in print and as well as video, follows three Mainers with disabilities and the challenges they face when navigating around the New England city.

The Portland Press Herald also wrote profile pieces on each of the three Mainers interviewed for the larger story of being disabled in Portland -- a blind college student, an activist who has MS, and an office worker with Down syndrome. Each of these companion pieces are also well worth the read.

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a student at the University of Southern Maine, is subject of the first companion piece, "Losing his vision, USM student calls for 'common-sense accommodations and adaptations'":

Almost every day, Hedtler-Gaudette walks nearly a mile to the USM campus, a route he knows well. Along the way, he finds the best and the worst about life in the city.... 

Each strike with the cane is a chance for Hedtler-Gaudette to feel the terrain ahead of him, to detect where he is in relation to the sidewalk’s edge, and most importantly, to avoid obstacles and dangers. 

“The constant imposition of bricks and cobblestone is like the bane of my existence when it comes to my cane,” he said. 

At the corner of Park and Deering avenues, Hedtler-Gaudette presses a button to cross. “Wait,” a computerized voice intones. The traffic light changes, and a new, chirping tone guides him across the busy intersection. There are far too few of these audio crossing aids in the city, he said.... 

As a home for a blind person, Portland has its strengths and weaknesses, he said. Because of its compact size, the city is largely accessible on foot. Hedtler-Gaudette walks everywhere he can, including to the school’s gym, where he works out almost daily.... 

But there are still impediments that remain out of his control. Snow and ice are constant risks. 

Even more basic, and unfortunately unchangeable, is the configuration and naming of city streets. In cities such as New York or Philadelphia, blocks are arranged on a grid and adhere to predictable numbering systems. 

No so in Portland and Boston, Hedtler-Gaudette said. “As charming and quaint as the old Colonial-era port cities are, they make no sense in terms of their layout,” he said.

 Read the rest of the story about Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette.

The second article profile piece, "For wheelchair users, navigating Portland's streets requires patience," features activist and powerchair user, Reneee Berry-Huffman. The article focuses mostly on the frustrations and uncertainties of transportation for people with mobility impairments in Portland, especially its paratransit and Mainecare ride system:

Berry-Huffman, a human rights activist, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 18 years ago and has been using a power wheelchair since 2009. She is now active with the Portland Disability Advisory Committee and encourages others with disabilities to advocate for themselves. 

While she waited for the Regional Transportation Program bus to pick her up, she called a committee member to ask him to get the meeting started without her.... 

She was a half-hour late to the meeting, getting to the table just in time to join a conversation with city employees about public transportation, a common source of frustration for many people with disabilities in Portland. The Metro buses can be unreliable and riders with disabilities say they often encounter people who taunt them. 

After the meeting, Renee Berry-Huffman sat in the sun outside of Portland City Hall.... Just a few blocks away, the city’s Old Port is more or less inaccessible to her, she said. The cobblestones are a nightmare for her wheelchair and many businesses are hard, or impossible, to get into. 

The bus was supposed to pick her up at 12:15 p.m.... She now has five minutes to get home to meet her next ride, an ambulance paid for by MaineCare that will bring her back into Portland for a doctor’s appointment at 1 p.m. The MaineCare ride is only authorized to pick her up at home, even though her meeting was only a few blocks from the medical building.... 

By the time Berry-Huffman gets back into Portland, out of the ambulance, over a bumpy sidewalk and into the lobby, she’s 40 minutes late for her medical appointment and is told she has to reschedule.... This would have been Berry-Huffman’s first visit with a new doctor after being dropped as a patient by a previous provider because of late rides and missed appointments.

 Read the article featuring Renee Berry-Huffman.

The third profile, "Woman with Down syndrome faces hostility on Portland streets," features Christina Mailhot, an office worker in an architecture firm, who often stays home to avoid cruel comments from strangers:

“I wish people would just leave me alone.” 

Sometimes they ask for money. Other times they follow her, she said. Often, walking around Portland, she hears the same thing she has since elementary school. 

“People start calling me names, like ‘retard,’” she said. 

Mailhot, 35, has Down syndrome. She also has two part-time jobs and a one-bedroom downtown apartment. But, despite her independence, she feels trapped. 

“You can’t go out of your own apartment without getting teased,” she said. 

Mailhot spends most of her free time inside, reading gossip magazines and watching videos on YouTube. Sometimes, she thinks about moving back home to Lewiston with her mother, but she knows it isn’t worth it. 

“I worked so hard to get here,” she said. “I don’t want to go back.” 

Read the profile of Christina Mailhot.

Each of the three profiles also include photo galleries of each of the people who were interviewed. Please tweet or email the paper to let them know what you think of on people with disabilities in Maine!

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.

Recent Coverage of Veterans' Benefits Bills in House and Senate; Maine Veteran in Spotlight; Maine Senators Divided

Several similar bills pertaining to veterans benefits have been debated recently in the US House and Senate. These are of particular significance to Maine because Maine has a higher than average proportion of citizens who are veterans and because one component of the bill — sometimes a separate bill, sometimes a provision in a larger bill — is named for Maine veteran Ruth Moore who has put a face on the pervasive problem of sexual assault in the military.

A February 26 article in the Portland Press Herald gives a good overview of the bills, what's at stake, and who supports and opposes them:

The Senate on Tuesday began debating a broad veterans’ benefits bill that would expand health care and education services for former military personnel but that some Republicans warned could overburden programs already struggling to meet demand.
A provision in proposed legislation – named for Moore – would make it easier for veterans who were sexually assaulted while serving in the military to qualify for disability benefits.
The Democrat-sponsored bill would allow more uninsured veterans to receive health coverage through the Department of Veterans Affairs and would expand dental coverage. It would also allow veterans to qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges in whichever state they are living and cover the costs of fertility treatment for veterans made infertile because of service-related injuries.
The legislation also includes a provision – named for Maine veteran Ruth Moore – that would make it easier for veterans who were sexually assaulted while serving in the military to qualify for disability benefits.

Read the complete article, "Broad veterans' benefits debated in U.S. Senate."

A short March 7 article in the Portland press Herald by the same reporter as the previously mentioned article provides an update on the bills named after Ruth Moore, focused on Maine's two senators' different takes on the best way to curb sexual assault in the military.

Maine's senators split on military sex assault measure
Susan Collins was a co-sponsor of the bill, while Angus King supported a competing but less-sweeping measure.Maine's senators split their votes Thursday on a bill to transfer the decision over whether to prosecute rape and other serious crimes from military commanders to military trial lawyers.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins supported Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s bill while Sen. Angus King opposed it.
Both supported moving forward with consideration of a competing but less-sweeping bill written by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

Read the complete article, "Maine's senators split on military sex assault measure."

A March 8 article in the Washington newspaper, The Hill, discussing the frustration of Democrats in the House in getting bills passed through the Senate put some of the veterans bills in this category" Maine's Representative Pingree on the subject:

Three of the stalled Democratic bills deal with veterans and the military.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) has two House-passed bills awaiting action in the Senate. The Ruth Moore Act aims to improve the disability claims process for veterans with mental health problems due to sexual trauma experienced in the military.

Pingree spokesman Willy Ritch said he doesn't know when, or if, the bill will come up on the other side of the Capitol.

“Absolutely, it is frustrating to [Pingree] that this bill passed House and hasn’t passed the Senate,” Ritch said.
If it doesn’t move in the Senate, Ritch said Pingree might seek an administrative remedy.

“She's been pushing this issue for a few years now. The end result may be legislation, but it may also be putting pressure on [the Department of Veterans Affairs] to act on their own,” Ritch said.

Read the complete article in The Hill.

Maine News Stories Supporting Disability Employment

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and there were a flurry of news stories in Maine at the end of the month focused on the positives of employing people with disabilities. 

On October 21, WCSH, Channel 6, the NBC affiliate in Portland, ran  [Note: Link autoplays video] "Businesses Urged to Hire Qualified Workers with Disabilities," a TV news segment focusing on Proctor & Gamble's decision to stop outsourcing some of its work to New Jersey and to keep it in Maine, instead, by hiring workers with disabilities. The program highlighted Maine's declining birth rate and increasingly aging population as an important reason to tap into the resource of the disabled workforce.

Three days later, Jeanne Paquette, the commissioner of the Maine Department of Labor, wrote a guest article for the Portland Press Herald's "Maine Voices" column on the benefits of hiring disabled people. "Employers have much to gain by hiring people with disabilities" also referenced Maine being "the oldest state in the nation," but went on to focus on the success of the state's vocational rehabilitation program in placing people with disabilities in a wide range of jobs, from retail chains to information technology. After Commissioner Paquette tooted her Department's horn, she appealed to employers directly to hire people with disabilities, pointing out the benefits to employers of doing so:

More businesses need to educate themselves about the benefits of hiring a worker with a disability and then do it. Many employers hold a mistaken impression that hiring a person with a disability is expensive or that resources are not available to support the person once they begin working. Let me dispel these stereotypes.
Hiring or retaining workers with disabilities is an excellent investment in a company’s human assets. Research shows that people with disabilities are both loyal employees and loyal customers. These workers value the relationship and the investment a business makes in them. For the minority of workers with disabilities who need special equipment or an accommodation, 56 percent of these adaptations cost less than $600, with many costing nothing. Available tax incentives help businesses cover accessibility costs, and businesses can qualify for work opportunity tax credits for hiring people with disabilities.

 Paquette ended her post with this call to action:

Turn “I can’t hire someone with a disability” into “I’m so glad I did!” by calling 1-855-ALL-HIRE or visiting www.employmentforme.org. Make a great investment in your workforce.

Disability Lawyer Debunks SSDI/SSI Myths in Portland Press Herald Editorial

By Sharon Wachsler

In an op-ed piece in yestserday's Portland Press Herald, Yarmouth lawyer Daniel Emery debunks many of the popular myths about getting or staying on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

The title and subhead of the editorial points to one of the biggest falsehoods about living on disability: "Maine Voices: Disability benefits don’t allow recipients to lead lives of leisure. As elected officials focus on entitlement spending, it’s important to separate perception from reality."

Emery quotes eight former Social Security commissioners who explained in public statements that only severely disabled people who apply for disability are approved and that the applications process is long and rigorous. The Maine lawyer also describes the poverty, struggles, and terrible living conditions of many of his clients in their long, grueling battles to get on Social Security disability.

The next time you hear someone talking about how easy it is to get on disability, what a cushy lifestyle it is, or how most of the people on disability aren't really disabled, why not show them a copy of Emery's editorial.