NCIL’s Mental Health Civil Rights Task Force continues to follow two significant pieces of federal mental health legislation. As you may recall, Representative Tim Murphy introduced H.R. 3717, the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013” last December. This bill would reauthorize SAMHSA programs without the reforms NCIL supports. It also singles out people who are “disabled” (but not dangerous) for involuntary treatment. The bill also cuts support for advocacy and mental health peer support. NCIL opposes H.R. 3717 and other bills that single out people for reduced rights based on disability.

Recently, Representative Ron Barber introduced H.R. 4574, the “Strengthening Mental Health in Our Communities Act of 2014”. This bill also reauthorizes SAMHSA programs without the reforms NCIL supports.

NCIL supports H.R. 4574. We urge Representatives to support amendment of the bill with the following reforms:

• A majority of consumers should be established on state mental health planning and advisory councils (which are required to review and comment on state community mental health block grant – MHBG plans)
• Each state should provide for consumer peer support organizations and / or consumer-run community mental health services in its MHBG plan; and
• State mental health planning and advisory councils should coordinate activities with Statewide Independent Living Councils under section 705 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Please contact your members of Congress regarding these bills. If you’ll be attending NCIL’s Annual Conference next month, updates on this topic will be provided as we prepare for Congressional Visits.

The NCIL Mental Health Civil Rights Task Force meets the first Thursday of every month at 3:00 Eastern. The next meeting will be on Thursday, August 7, 2014.

Special thanks to Mike Bachhuber for contributing to this report.

• Tuesday, June 17, 1:00-2:00 pm Eastern
• Call in number: 1-213-342-3000
• Code: 193134#

Join the Organizer’s Forum for a stimulating discussion on disability and bioethics. The first ever Disability Rights Leadership Institute on Bioethics was held on April 25-26, 2014 in Arlington, VA. Four of the Institute’s presenters will share highlights from their talks on assisted suicide, withholding of life-sustaining treatment, reproductive technologies and wrongful birth / wrongful life litigation. Discuss how the disability rights community can make our voices heard in the public discourse on these issues. Nothing about us without us!

Speakers:

• Diane Coleman is the founder, president and CEO of Not Dead Yet
• Marilyn Golden is Senior Policy Analyst at the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund
• Marcy Darnovsky, Ph.D., is Executive Director at the Center for Genetics and Society
• Samantha Crane is Director of Public Policy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network

If you are interested in joining on Tuesday, please fill out this quick form to give the organizers an idea of who joins the calls.

CART: The call will have real-time captioning (CART). [Read more…]

Check out Double Booked: Parenting with a Disability, a guest column for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism by NCIL Executive Director Kelly Buckland.

This blog is part of a special RACBlog series, “Double Booked: A Conversation about Working Families in the 21st Century,” dealing with the many issues that affect working families, and featuring everything from personal stories to policy analysis. Visit the Double Booked portal to read more posts, or join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #doublebooked.

An Update from the NCIL Task Force on Violence and Abuse

When you hear the term “human trafficking”, what is the first thing that comes into your mind? Prostitution? Domestic servitude? Child pornography? Your first mental picture likely does not involve people with disabilities, yet according to the 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report by the Department of State, “persons with disabilities remain one of the groups most at risk of being trafficked”.

So what is human trafficking? It is the illegal trading of human beings for commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. It is modern day slavery, where people profit from the control and exploitation of others. Human trafficking is an abuse of human rights.

In 2009, 21 men with disabilities were emancipated from an old school house in Atalissa, Iowa where they lived and worked nearby at a turkey processing plant for $2.00 a day.

In 2011, four individuals with disabilities were found locked in a Tacony, Pennsylvania basement.

In 2013, a woman with a disability and her child were found after being held in Ashland, Ohio for two years.

Also in 2013, a Columbus, Georgia senior home is shutdown after an FBI investigation found the residents (elders and people with disabilities) were victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation at the hands of the owner and staff.

While these stories made national news, there are many more that never do. Due to the very nature of human trafficking activities, it is very difficult to come up with accurate statistics on trafficking.

The US Department of State estimates that 800,000 women, children and men are internationally trafficked every year. Over 14,000 victims are trafficked into the United States annually, and according to the United States Department of Justice, more than half are children. An estimated 200,000 American children are potentially trafficked each year into the sex trade.

The stigma and marginalization of persons with disabilities makes them particularly vulnerable to human trafficking.

What Can Centers for Independent Living Do?

According to the Department of State, while the victims may sometimes be kept behind locked doors, they are often hidden right in front of us. For example, construction sites, restaurants, elder care centers; nail salons, agricultural fields, and hotels. The traffickers’ use of coercion is so powerful that even if you reach out to victims, they may be too fearful to accept your help. Knowing indicators of human trafficking and some follow up questions will help you act on your gut feeling that something is wrong and report it.

Some of these indicators include:

• Individuals who have no contact with friends or family and no access to identification documents, bank accounts, or cash;
• Workplaces where psychological manipulation and control are used;
• Homes or apartments with inhumane living conditions;
• People whose communications and movements are always monitored or who have moved or rotated through multiple locations in a short amount of time;
• Places where locks and fences are positioned to confine occupants; and
• Workers who have excessively long and unusual hours, are unpaid or paid very little, are unable take breaks or days off and have unusual work restrictions, and/or have unexplained work injuries or signs of untreated illness or disease;
• People who are living with their employer;
• People who are living in poor conditions or where multiple people are living in a cramped space;
• Individuals who you are unable to speak to alone, or whose answers appear to be scripted and rehearsed; and
• Individuals, who display signs of physical abuse, are submissive or fearful  [Read more…]

Under immense national pressure from advocates to include disability rights as part of the Civil Rights Summit celebrating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Mark Updegrove, Director of the LBJ Library and main summit organizer, personally reached out to Lex Frieden and invited him to participate on the social justice panel as a civil and disability rights activist.

Lex Frieden, who played an integral role in the development, passage, and implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, has been invited to speak on a panel discussion on social justice at 2:05 p.m. Central (3:05 p.m. Eastern), Thursday April 10th – immediately following the keynote speech by President Barack Obama.

Lex will join former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin; humanitarian Maria Shriver; athlete and philanthropist David Robinson; and businessman Steve Stoute on the panel. Lex will talk about the linkage of the ADA with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, why disability rights are civil rights, and how the discrimination faced by people with disabilities is similar to that faced by other minorities.

• Watch the livestream
• Watch other panels at the summit

See also:

• Civil Rights Group Literally Fights for Their Rights at Austin Summit
• Disability rights advocates celebrate inclusion of ADA in Civil Rights Summit

Source: US DOJ

The Justice Department announced today that it has entered into the nation’s first statewide settlement agreement vindicating the civil rights of individuals with disabilities who are unnecessarily segregated in sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs. The agreement with the State of Rhode Island will resolve violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for approximately 3,250 Rhode Islanders with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This first-of-its-kind statewide agreement addresses the rights of people with disabilities to receive state-funded employment and daytime services in integrated settings, such as supported employment and integrated day services, rather than in segregated sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs with only other people with disabilities. The agreement also provides relief to transition-age youth at risk of segregation in facility-based programs. Under the agreement, transition-age youth will have access to a wide array of transition, vocational rehabilitation, and supported employment services intended to lead to integrated employment outcomes after they leave secondary school. The parties have jointly filed the settlement in federal district court and have requested that it be entered as a court-enforceable Consent Decree.

For more general information about the Justice Department’s ADA Olmstead enforcement efforts, visit the Civil Rights Division’s Olmstead: Community Integration for Everyone website. To find out more about the ADA, visit Division’s ADA.gov website or call the toll-free ADA Information Line at 800-514-0301 or 800-514-0383 (TDD).

NPR has released “Playgrounds For Everyone”, a community-edited guide to accessible playgrounds. Check it out.

A hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee began at 10:30 a.m. on H.R. 3717, the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013”. If passed, this bill would strip people with psychiatric disabilities of their rights and voice. Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA), the bill sponsor, is using yesterday’s tragic shooting in Fort Hood, Texas, as political fodder to ram this bill through. People with psychiatric disabilities have important contributions to make towards a sustainable mental health system, and entities that protect their rights, such as Protection & Advocacy Agencies, must not be stripped of federal funding that supports mental health rights legal advocacy.

Take Action

We urge you to contact your U.S. Representative by phone or email today. The Murphy bill is picking up steam fast:

• More Representatives are signing on, especially Democrats.
• Yesterday’s tragic shooting at Fort Hood could cause more Representatives to sign on for the wrong reasons.
• Today’s hearing is promoting H.R. 3717 and vilifying people in recovery.

You may also use the online form created for this issue to contact your Representative.

The Message

“I am [Name], from [City, State]. Tell my Representative not to cosponsor H.R. 3717, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. It would hurt people like me, not help us. This Bill discriminates against people with mental illness. It strips our rights and protection against abuse. It increases forced psychiatric treatment that is traumatizing, criminalizing and scares people from seeking help. It ends grants that help the most vulnerable people in our district. It will not make our community safer.”

Leave your phone number if you want a return call. Please share this message widely.

Sources: Access Living and National Coalition on Mental Health Recovery

NCIL stands consistently in support of consumer choice and for a Medicare program that meets the needs of consumers. Unfortunately, the House of Representatives has inserted a provision in H.R. 4302 that provides funding for states with outpatient forced treatment programs.

H.R. 4302 is considered by many to be a must pass bill. It modifies a SGR (Sustainable Growth Rate) provision that would substantially limit payments to doctors. The SGR provision was delayed until April 1 by prior legislation, thus creating this crisis.

Unfortunately, the bill includes $15 Million in annual funding for the Orwellian “Assisted Outpatient Treatment” program. Sec. 224 would require the Department of Health and Human Services to provide these funds for at least five years. This provision would be likely to increase people forced to take medication with dangerous side effects.

You Can Make a Difference

Please call today. The vote is scheduled for 2:00pm Eastern Time!

Ask both of your Senators to vote against H.R. 4302 unless it is amended to exclude Sec. 224. Consumers need access to treatment of their choice, not expensive forced treatment. Make sure your Senators know that forced treatment is traumatizing. It takes away the rights of people in crisis, as if they are criminals. It scares people away from seeking help. It is costly but not effective. Then get your family, friends, co-workers and other community members to call in as well!

Contacting Your Legislators

Online: find the Senators from your state and click on their contact form to submit your letter. In your letter, identify yourself as a constituent and urge your Senators to vote against forced treatment. Ask them to vote against H.R. 4302 unless it is amended to exclude Sec. 224.

Phone: call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senators’ offices or contact their offices directly using the link above. Once connected, ask to speak with an office aide who handles Health and Human Services. Make sure you give them your name and identify yourself as a constituent. Tell the aide to “Please tell Senator [NAME] that I DO NOT want [him / her] to vote for forced treatment. [He / She] should vote against H.R. 4302 unless amended to exclude Sec. 224.”