Schumer Pushes Civil Rights Bill

State Senator Charles Schumer was in Utica today pushing for a new piece of legislation that would give individuals with disabilities the option to live at home so they can live more independently.  Eyewitness News reporter Nicole Todd visited Schumer at Upstate Cerebral Palsy and has more

Senator Schumer was in town today. He's proposed legislation that he says would help put an end to civil rights problems for with people with long-term disabilities.

Out of Options, Parents Decide to Build Home for Son with Autism

OGDEN, N.Y. -- Anthony Battisti's parents have known for a long time that when their son turns 21 in December, he will join a growing population of young adults with very few options.Anthony has severe autism, and has spent years in a day program for young people who have intellectual developmental disabilities. But when his birthday rolls around this year, he'll age out of that program and have no place else to go, his family said.So Sherry and Michael Battisti of Ogden decided to take matters — and hammers and nails — into their own hands.

Autism Speaks Launches National Housing and Support Survey

Within the next decade, a minimum of 500,000 individuals with autism will enter adulthood. Many of these individuals will require access to the adult services system — a system that can have exceedingly long waiting lists and few autism-specific supports for adults on the autism spectrum.

Autism Speaks is responding to this dilemma with a first-of-its-kind national survey to identify the current and future housing and residential support needs of the autism community. The survey will poll individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) ages 14 and older and their families/caregivers to identify the type of home and support services that they may need both now and in the future.

Warehoused: Nova Scotians with Disabilities Face a Housing Crisis

From Huffington Post Canada - an in-depth look at Nova Scotia’s system to provide housing for persons with intellectual disabilities which is overburdened and bureaucratic as governments keep promising to fix it. As journalism students in the investigative workshop at the University of King’s College discovered, our most vulnerable citizens are essentially warehoused.

Penny Kitchen

A SYSTEM IN CRISIS

Nancy Walker’s partner had never seen her so upset. She had cried through the entire meeting with her son’s social worker, and would continue to cry “pretty much for the whole year. Every single day.”

This isn’t what she’d wanted. This isn’t what she’d wanted at all.

Ben James, her 19-year-old boy-becoming-man, had severe autism. He

Paul Gilllis

was in public school and had improved his communication by using picture-and-words systems and new technologies available for autistic people on iPods. He loved swimming, went bowling once a week and thrived at his recycling centre job.Walker had dreams for him.

But James could be violent. The six-foot-two, 230-pound teenager’s kicks, scratches, bites and head butts were nearly always aimed at his mother. Despite the stronghold that was his bedroom – reinforced walls, double studding, a Plexiglas window and a steel door – Walker still had to find ways of avoiding her son’s demands, and physical outbursts when they weren’t met.