DISABILITY RIGHTS OHIO ?

Published August 1, 2016 by Nan Mykel

Kerstin Sjoberg-Witt, director of advocacy for Disability Rights Ohio, said changes proposed by the federal government are a “a good thing. Offering more options is the whole purpose behind the Americans with Disabilities Act. It’s important to remember that neither the state nor the county boards should use these rules as an excuse to terminate services.”

Many elements are fusing into a movement to undermine a system that has worked for decades. Championing minimum wage for sheltered workshops instead of piecework? Anyone with any sense can see the businesses offering sheltered workshops contracts for work will dry up so there’s no work for the truly handicapped. The statement that anyone can do it, just in a different way sounds good, but we the parents know how difficult it is for some to tie their shoe laces.

Devious Disability Ploys

Published August 1, 2016 by Nan Mykel

From Buzz Feed Vestar brought Mentor public last year, and the firm began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the name Civitas Solutions, Inc. It reported $1.2 billion in revenue last year.

In some jurisdictions, such as Illinois and some counties in Pennsylvania, for-profit companies can’t get contracts to run foster care operations directly. Mentor found a way around that, by partnering with nonprofit sister organizations Alliance Human Services and Alliance Children’s Services, both founded by Murphy.

Indeed, the corporate paper trail shows that Alliance group subsumed the original nonprofit Mentor Inc. that Hensley founded in 1980.

Those nonprofits have received contracts in states that bar for-profit foster care operations. And then those nonprofits turn around and hire Mentor’s for-profit arm as a subcontractor to run virtually the whole operation.

In Illinois, for example, Alliance gets paid over $200 per day per child to provide therapeutic foster care to children. But, according to contracts obtained by BuzzFeed News, it has hired Mentor to recruit the foster parents, check their backgrounds, train them, monitor them, and act as social workers for the children.

Mentor’s Robson said that when Alliance was layered into Mentor foster care contracts, it wasn’t a ruse but an effort to make sure federal dollars kept flowing during periods of confusion about whether for-profit operations could get reimbursed. He said state and federal officials knew of the arrangement between Alliance and Mentor. Reached briefly by phone, the president and CEO of Alliance, Mary McCarthy, also defended the contracting, and said, “The reason that we started any of these things were to help states that needed help in getting federal reimbursement.”

Robson said that Mentor does not control Alliance. Still, the two organizations are intertwined at many levels. In addition to Murphy, who founded Alliance and now heads Mentor, another former senior official at Mentor, Doris Davila, is now a vice president at Alliance. In Illinois, Mentor is headquartered in a large office building at 600 Holiday Plaza Drive in Matteson. It’s in Suite 400. Alliance is in Suite 410.

Alliance Children’s Services, which was the charity that subcontracted to Mentor in Texas for 16 years, even reported to the IRS in its nonprofit filings that its books and records were in the custody of the for-profit National Mentor

Carroll County DD looks to privatize workshop

Carroll County Development Disabilities Board will shift day-time adult care services for nonprofit service provider. privatize=nonprofit service???

THE SHARKS ARE CIRCLING

Published July 20, 2016 by Nan Mykel

Front of Athens Messenger, Ohio News: “Disabiities Board Eliminates Sub-minimal wage at ATCO”

“No matter who you are, you can do anything that anybody else can do. You just may have to do it a different way,” said ATCO worker Glenda Murray .” (Like tie your own shoelaces?)

“It is important that the Athens County Board of DD and ATCO make this step of paying all their workers minimum wage to show and support the philosophical shift that individuals with disabilities should receive the same value for the work they perform as anyone else would, said .” director of the board.

Remember when residents of “asylums” were taken from their jobs, which they loved and were part of the structure of their lives because they had to be paid so much for their time? How could the board itself do this to their charges? They are either misguided or hypocrites or fulfilling some hidden agenda which is NOT in the best interest of their charges. Can’t they envision that the workload contracted out to ATCO will dry up if they’re expected to pay equal for the simplest kind of small jobs that take much, much longer?

Didn’t anyone ever hear of “piecework?” The hypocrisy of it all! There’s a hungry shark infesting the waters of this movement, and the most innocent are the ones being sacrificed. By the bye, I’m not anti-disabled. My daughter is included.

Nan Mykel

Athens