Tag: adults with disabilities

29
Mar
2019

Guardianship and Alternatives for Young Adults with Disabilities

categories: Education, Family

When people turn 18, they are legally adults.
They make their own medical, legal, and financial decisions.
This can be scary for families and young adults.
Parents want to stay involved with decision-making and meetings.
Guardianship is one way to address this.

Guardianship

A court decides if a person needs a guardian.
A Guardian will make decisions for them
Guardians are a good idea for people who may never be able to make their own decisions.
Guardians should get training to learn their role.

Alternatives to Guardianship

Power of Attorney:

A person can choose to have one and what areas they want them to help with.
A person can remove them when they are ready.
This is a good choice for people who need help now but will be able to make their own decisions one day.

Money Supports

Conservators, rep payees, and joint bank accounts can help manage money.

Health Care Proxy

The person chooses who will make medical decisions for them if they are unable to make them.

Supported Decision Making

Supported decision making is where a person says what they want support with and chooses a team to help them.

How to Decide What Supports are Needed

This is a good tool to help you know what support is right for you or your family member.

Abilities at work

categories: Employment

My name is Scott Janz. I am a Job Coach. I help adults find jobs.

Disabilities at Work

People with disabilities can work. Disability does not mean not able. I help many adults get hired. People with disabilities take pride in making a change. Jobs are important for all. I believe biases can be broken. Breaking barriers is vital. I help people reach fairness. Everyone deserves the same chance to get a job.

Strengths at work

Hard work ethic
Low turnover
Increased diversity
Inclusion
Loyal
Productive
Consistent
Structured

Bias at work

Bias exists at work for many adults. Bias can take many forms. Bullying and stigma are examples. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects against bias at work. I work with adults at their jobs. I support their skills. We need to make work fun.

17
May
2017

An Autistic Goes to Grad School – First Time Blog

categories: Autism

Hey, my name is Sara. I’m Autistic. I have other Disabilities too. I like to say a laundry list of them. I’m going to talk about Autism and grad school here. And why I’m going. And how long it took me to get a regular college degree, and why.

I’m scared. I feel like graduate school will be a next level to regular college. I have trouble with organization. I have trouble with time management. Depression makes me tired and low energy.

I have already been talked to about going off topic in class in the first week. It wasn’t really off topic. The rest of the class and the teacher can’t see the patterns I see and how all of it was connected. I think another Autistic would have. The teacher was nice about it.

A classmate talked to me too. I thought she was being nice, then I wasn’t sure. I took it as I heard it, and then I started to wonder. Was it about my ‘lack of social cues’ or about their lack of comfort? The thing about Autism is I can’t know which it is. If I asked, would people tell me the truth or not? Thinking about this kind of tiny little social lie makes me crazy. It feels like betrayal to tell them. But people do it all the time. I can’t tell them or know when to tell them or when not to. Wouldn’t it be better if we all just didn’t? How is it polite? Makes me feel even more apart.

When I get in to school early, I take time to separate off and play simple games on the iPad or iPod to relax my mind and be less affected by lights and sound. So I can have enough energy reserved for getting through classes.

The next week, I got things said to me I’ve heard before, but are never easy to hear and are never cool. I hate hearing them. They make me feel not.

Not Autistic enough.
Not Disabled enough.
I don’t need help.
I don’t need support.
I don’t
Not as much as others, so it doesn’t

Life isn’t a competition. It hurts even more because my mother always compared my and my brother’s levels and types of Disabilities. If you don’t ‘look Disabled’ or ‘act Disabled’ then you always seem to get doubted, and people get mad at you. Like there’s a pot of Disability to reach into and smear across your face.

I wish my child was able to do all you can.
You need to understand not everyone is like you.
My child is so much more
My child is much lower
If my children could just sit there, their lives would be amazing.

Way to suck the worth from my life. I am not here to be compared to. I am a person all on my own. This needs to be. I need to be. I am made less human if not. I wrote a poem about all this.

Here. This video will help. It’s called “Shit Ignorant People Say to Autistics.” Maybe you can relate. I love this video. It always makes me laugh and nod along.

16
Jun
2015

Veterans & Brain Injury: The Invisible Disability

categories: Brain Injury

Our nation’s greatest possession is our military; after all I might not be writing this if it wasn’t for the brave efforts of our country’s heroes. Unfortunately, a lot of our war veterans suffer from brain injuries. These are also known as the “silent injury”. These injuries can have major physical, emotional, mental, and behavioral effects. According to the Defense and Brain Injury Center, the risks and costs of brain injury for the military are:

In prior wars, TBI was present in at least 14-20% of surviving combat victims. Early information from the current conflict in the Middle East suggests that this number is now much higher.
In peacetime, over 7,000 Americans with TBI are admitted to military and veterans hospitals each year.
TBI is a major cause of life-long injury and death.
Certain military jobs carry above-average risk of TBI.
Blast injuries are a growing cause of TBI in combat.

According to Virginia Commonwealth University, researchers found that among brain injured veterans treated by the Veterans Health Administration between 2009 and 2011 most had a diagnosed mental health issue. Just about half had both post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and pain. This with mental health issues makes the brain injuries harder to treat. So, early recognition and treatment are important to the success and health of our veterans.

Most of the VA hospitals are not able to deal with the number of veterans with TBI, let alone both TBI and other mental health issues. These hospitals also usually have long waiting periods for treatment. Also, veterans detected with physical problems are more able to receive treatment over those who do not. This is due to the fact they tend not to live on their own and are awarded the benefits as others are not. Yet, as these veterans continue to be denied treatment they continue to suffer in silence. This suffering tends to worsen and goes unnoticed by most people. These silent injuries lead to the inability to keep relationships with loved ones, jobs, and other life activities. This then adds to the ever growing population of homeless veterans and those who commit suicide.

It is our duty as a nation to care for those service members who return from war. Especially those who have been hurt physically and mentally. No military member should go without treatment. Without them, we would not be living in the greatest nation on Earth. We owe it to our veterans to care for those who answered the call to duty in order to keep our way of life. “I went to a foreign country and when I came back, this was the foreign country. I am lost, scared, and don’t know what to do to make it better” – Wounded Warrior Project Survey Participant. These statements have become a reality instead of a myth. It is our duty as a nation to change this around as “The greatest casualty is being forgotten®”- WWP .

For further information on veterans and brain injuries please visit Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center & U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

19
Dec
2012

“Living my Childhood Dream”, by Tracy Thresher

categories: Advocacy

Tracy Thresher lives and works in Vermont as an advocate for people with disabilities. He has written:

“As a child, I struggled with no reliable way to communicate. I now live out my dream of traveling to other states to educate others on movement and communication differences. Primarily, I advocate to promote the Presumption of Competence. “ (Blog Post, October 30, 2012)

This week we are pleased to share the transcript of an interview with Tracy that was recently published in Autism Around the Globe .

I am Tracy Thresher from Barre, Vermont. I now live part of my childhood dream thanks to the support of facilitated communication. Master trainer, Harvey Lavoy, has been my primo facilitator since the early 90s. Harvey, master trainer Pascal Cheng and my pal, Larry Bissonnette, and I have presented to educate others for many moons. Since the release of “Wretches & Jabberers”, Gerry Wurzburg’s documentary about our lives and work, our travel calendar has been wonderfully and fantastically full of opportunities to promote the presumption of competence. Please read
my blog to follow along on my journey.

Below is a transcript from my interview with the NLM Family Foundation featured in a video montage created by the Foundation titled, “In Their Own Words: Living with Autism in Adulthood.” I have had mind blowing professional growth thanks to communication. Communication opens the door to opportunity.

What are your hopes and aspirations for creating the adult life you desire?

My hopes are like a beautiful tapestry which I need to find the perfect combination of support to make into my own magic carpet. My wish is to create the life I see in my head on the mountaintop of my Green Mountains. To be true to the Tracy on the inside, I need to have people in the mindset of peaceful open-mindedness.

It is my desire to be independent to the best of my ability. I communicate more slowly than I wish to in this high-paced world but my thoughts are very quick. The touch of my facilitator must be one of peaceful calm. To build my dream of becoming an educator I pushed through many barriers of built up walls of enclosing people in institutions or encasing them in the trap of no outlet for their inner thoughts. It is more harmful to my soul to be in this stubborn body than I can type. To hope is to have faith in a future that includes professional growth and not the antiquated roles of paper shredding or stocking shelves but being respected for the knowledge this life has taught me.

My priority is to own or rent my own home or place with a good supportive roommate who is willing to be open to going through intensive training to get to see how my spirit relaxes with communication. I am not the person I appear to be upon a passing glance. To get to be the man I aspire to be is a lifelong journey. It is my vision quest to find more peace in my life. I think having my own home is the next step on my ladder of communication, as it is what I must have to be free of the encumbrances of others.

What are the specific challenges that you believe you face or will face in your adult life (housing, companions who assist you, living in communities, relationships, employment, education, etc.)?

As I mentioned, my priority is housing or more difficult to find is a companion to be my assistant in the life of becoming more independent. The hardest part is envisioning what I need but being unable to find the perfect combination of nice and firm communication partner. The world moves quickly and I need open-minded people who slow down to listen to my typing.

To live in the friendly Central Vermont community is a blessing. We have educated many people in our community by joining forces in schools. We have also spoken to legislators to let them see our intelligence. Our social fabric is beautifully sprinkled with an eclectic mix of abilities. There is more to be done and my fellow self-advocates and our supporters are tirelessly trudging up the trail to higher thinking. Through my work I have met many wonderful people who enrich my life and feed my soul to the point I dreamt of as a lonely boy.

My family loved me to the max; however, life in school absolutely traumatized me. It became unbearable to be thought of as a child who could not be educated. Now I mentor students. It is my mission to inspire children and show neurotypical kids how to slow down to listen to typing. More importantly, how to be a friend is what kids need to learn. I am thinking friendship is the way to open pathways to learning. On the mountaintop of success people need to have a hand to pull each other up.

On the top of my bucket list is to continue to learn and teach. I graduated from the school of hard knocks; now I try to prevent other children from living through the pain of a life of misunderstanding. I have friends who have made me proud by pursuing higher formal education. I would say my education continues through my work on the circuit of presenting to schools and communities. My employment is one of typing to educate. Working on presentations is on my mind constantly. I write it on my brain, and then I need my facilitator to be at my side to push the words out. To come from a menial job to a professional career is my proudest moment.

What types of programs or services would enable you to achieve the adult life that you envision and/or desire?

It is my desire to, of course, be as independent as my abilities allow. I want the same for all people. The Vermont legislature is better at listening to my typing than most other states. I understand politics and the need to divide services as fairly as possible. Ideally, I would like my services to include funding that is more reflective of the housing costs necessary to put me on the path to independence. The primary obstacle in my experience though is training of facilitators.

Harvey Lavoy, Pascal Cheng, Larry Bissonnette and I work hard to cover the state of Vermont on our shoestring budget but it is tough to get to everyone we would like to. For Harvey, it is a juggling of priorities that need to be addressed. My mission in life is to have the home of peaceful independence to communicate in daily life across environments. More than anything, I want to create a world of communication for all, to have our voices heard loudly from the hills.

Tracy Thresher
Self-Advocate, Activist, and Documentary Film Star

2012