Editorial: Fla. Failing IDD Community

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Names are stacked nearly 20,000 deep on a statewide list of people who have requested financial help to pay for special services ranging from job training to housing.

Many of these wait-listed Floridians have been on the list for years. And many of them may not be granted the help they need anytime soon.

Report: Florida Agency Evades State Regulators Amid Abuse Charges

A tough read - part 1 of 2-part series. Link to part 2 at the bottom.

Three years ago, it looked like the Florida agency that oversees care for children and adults with disabilities had finally had enough: It filed a legal complaint that outlined horrific abuse at Carlton Palms, a rambling campus of group homes and classrooms near the small town of Mount Dora.

A man called “R.G.” was punched in the stomach, kicked and told “shut your [expletive] mouth,” the complaint said. “R.T.” was left with a face full of bruises after a worker hit him with a belt wrapped around his fist. A child, “D.K.,” who refused to lie face down so he could be restrained, was kicked in the face and choked until, eyes bulging, he nearly passed out.

State officials wanted to bar Carlton Palms from accepting new residents for a year.

Autism Speaks Shifts Focus to Adults

After prioritizing the needs of children for years, the nation’s largest autism advocacy organization is turning its attention to expanding housing options and supports for adults.

Starting as a pilot project in three states — Florida, New Jersey and Illinois — Autism Speaks is working with locally-based disability advocacy groups and policymakers to identify legislative goals and mobilize its own network to push for expanded home and community-based services.

Justice Dept. Files Lawsuit Against Florida for Warehousing Children

Florida health care agencies have acted with "deliberate indifference to the suffering" of frail and disabled children by offering parents no "meaningful" choice but to warehouse their children in nursing homes along with elders, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a lawsuit against the state filed Monday.

Fla. Legislator Seek to Shrink Wait List

TALLAHASSEE – Backing a proposal by Gov. Rick Scott, House and Senate budget negotiators have agreed to spend $36.3 million next year to provide services to hundreds of people with developmental disabilities who have been stuck on a waiting list.

The waiting list has grown to about 22,000 people over the years, as the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities ran deficits in its main program for providing services. But APD officials say they expect to avoid a deficit this year, and Scott included money in his proposal 2013-14 budget to start chipping away at the waiting list.

Florida Agencies Unveil Plan to Improve Care

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida state agencies are taking new measures to help parents with medically fragile and disabled children.Officials on Thursday announced a plan to provide disabled children with care coordinators — 28 nurses who will help parents deal with the multiple agencies involved in their children’s care.

Florida Governor Presses Feds on Medicaid

TALLAHASSEE -- After emerging from a meeting with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Gov. Rick Scott said Monday he asked for the federal government to “expedite” approval of Florida’s controversial proposals to shift most Medicaid beneficiaries into managed-care plans.
But Scott offered few details about their discussion on another major issue — how, or if, the state will carry out key parts of the federal Affordable Care Act.

Florida Seeks to Overturn Autism Ruling

MIAMI, Fla. -- Already facing sharp criticism over policies that have resulted in the rationing of care to severely disabled children, Florida healthcare regulators are challenging a federal judge's order that the state provide a costly -- but potentially life-changing -- treatment to children with autism.
Last spring, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard struck down the state's refusal to pay for applied behavior analysis (ABA) for autistic children, calling the state's policy "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable."

Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2013/01/06/4341212/faced-with-a-judges-order-that.html#storylink=cpy

Editorial: Florida's Children Deserve Better

TAMPA, Fla. -- Call it official neglect. Florida is accused by the Obama administration and the parents of sick and disabled children of warehousing hundreds of those children in large nursing homes rather than helping them stay home with their families. Disabled children have a right to the support services that would allow them to live safely at home or in community settings. But the state has been fulfilling its duty for some children and not others, leaving it to the courts to set things right for the rest.

Special Ed Changes and the Impact on Children

Special education as you knew it 50 years ago — or even 15 years ago — is long gone.
Over the past few decades, schools in Florida and across the nation have gradually begun "mainstreaming" students with disabilities into regular classrooms.
And — with the ushering in of new state rules that put most disabled children in the general education curriculum — we're about to see more and more mainstreaming.

Florida Governor Drops Rate Cuts

Hopefully this will come to fruition, but just waiting for the next installment.

TALLAHASSEE -- After taking weeks of heat, Gov. Rick Scott said Thursday he’s withdrawing his order cutting payments to caregivers for Floridians with Down Syndrome, spinal bifida, autism and other developmental disabilities.
Scott confirmed what he hinted earlier this week — during a visit to the state’s Agency for Persons with Disabilities. The House and Senate have agreed to find dollars in their budget proposal to cover the $174 million deficit that prompted his 15 percent rate cut, which he said will be lifted by the beginning of next week.

Florida Governor Offers Option to Cuts

Not sure Gov. Scott's request is reasonable, but perhaps some sort of compromise can be reached. Don't think he realizes how devastating his cuts will be to some of Florida's most vulnerable citizens and the people who have dedicated their careers to serving them and their families.


TALLAHASSEE -- Florida Gov. Rick Scott said Tuesday he will cancel massive cuts in the Agency for Persons with Disabilities if legislators come up with a $174-million budget patch.
Since Scott's across-the-board cuts March 31, hundreds of Floridians with disabilities have been searching for new caregivers while companies that serve them are reducing staff and services.
"Hopefully, we'll see if the Legislature will give us some emergency funding. But we have to live within our means," Scott told about 100 APD employees after a tour of their agency.

Scorned Bureaucrat Gets New Job in Florida

I worked in Florida in the early-mid '80s because for a reporter, there was no better place for the unusual story. But things have gotten way out of hand. Seems like Gov. Scott just doesn't get it.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Almost a month ago, Gov. Rick Scott gave an unadvertised $78,000-a-year job to Carl Littlefield, a career bureaucrat who quit his latest job 17 days after he was appointed rather than face questions about his handling of a controversial group home.
The revelation of Littlefield’s new job has become a nuisance for Scott, who has demanded the elimination of 1,849 full-time jobs at the same state agency.
The governor maintains he is only trying to bridge gaping holes such as the estimated $174-million deficit at the Agency for Persons with Disabilities.

Florida Cuts Put Group Homes in Jeopardy

PALMETTO, Fla. -- Near her bed, 55-year-old Susan Rex has books and puzzles and pictures of trucks she likes.
She also has a best friend, Angie Cianfaglione, that she hangs with.
But the neatly landscaped, five-bedroom group home on 36th Avenue East in Palmetto -- where Rex has lived for 24 years and shares with nine other developmentally disabled adults -- is in danger of closing.

Fla. Governor Orders 15 Percent Cuts

Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered deep cuts Thursday to programs that serve tens of thousands of residents with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and other developmental disabilities.
Though a range of state services face cuts from this year's Legislature, the governor invoked his emergency powers to order the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities to immediately roll back payments to group homes and social workers by 15 percent — an amount providers say could put them out of business and threaten their clients’ safety.
"lt's not like, 'Gee, does this mean I have to skip a vacation this year?'" said Amy Van Bergen, executive director of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Florida. "Potentially, these cuts have life and death implications for these people."

Father Sues Doctors Over Autism Treatment

CHICAGO -- The father of a 7-year-old Chicago boy who was diagnosed as a toddler with autism has sued the Naperville and Florida doctors who treated his son, alleging they harmed the child with "dangerous and unnecessary experimental treatments."
James Coman and his son were featured last year in "Dubious Medicine," a Tribune series that examined risky, unproven treatments for autism based on questionable science.
The defendants — family-practice physicians Dr. Anjum Usman of Naperville and Dr. Daniel Rossignol of Melbourne, Fla. — are prominent in the Defeat Autism Now! movement, which promotes many of the alternative treatments the Tribune scrutinized. Both have spoken to groups of parents at autism conferences and trained other physicians in their methods.

Vaccine Consent Measure Revives Autism Debate

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Earlier this month, the British medical journal The Lancet retracted a famous study that linked vaccines with autism.
Public health experts, worried over an uptick in diseases like mumps and measles in children who weren't vaccinated, breathed a sigh of relief. Numerous studies over several years have found no link between vaccines and autism.
But now, an echo of that controversy is back in the Florida Legislature, and pediatricians are moving quickly to silence it.
Sen. Jeremy Ring, a member of a governor's task force on autism spectrum disorders, and Rep. Kevin Ambler, R-Tampa, are sponsoring legislation that would require parents to give signed consent before their children get vaccines that are needed to enter school.
But opponents say signed consent -- generally reserved for surgery and other major treatments -- will only create needless anxiety. Under federal law, parents must be given written information about vaccines.

Florida Court Questions Cuts in Services

DAYTONA BEACH -- A state appellate court has raised concerns about a system put into place last year that cut services to thousands of people statewide with developmental disabilities, including about 230 locally.
The 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee issued an opinion last week that the state failed to develop proper rules when it implemented the so-called tier system last October.
One concern dealt with how the state assesses some clients.
The state serves about 31,000 people statewide with developmental disabilities, including about 1,000 adults and children in Volusia and Flagler counties. About 7,500 statewide saw cuts in services under the new system, including about 230 locally.