Accessing the right to vote

by Patricia Wright

The first presidential debate is tonight, and believe me, I’ll be listening. I moved from Illinois to a swing state, Pennsylvania, in 2010. I have always believed voting is important but living in a swing state brings the need to vote to a whole new level.

The first time I really started thinking about individuals with disabilities voting was when my friend Gail shared her strong preferences for particular candidates. Gail has an intellectual disability. She has difficulty reading and struggles to be understood when she speaks. She has no problem, however, stating her opinion about which candidate she prefers. When I asked Gail how she voted one year, she responded, “Sister.” I believe she meant that her sister assisted her when it came to casting a vote.

Gail has an incredibly supportive sister, but her situation left me wondering: how do people with disabilities who don’t have great support networks exercise their right to vote? I visited Google to do a quick search about voting and disability and found a couple of good resources:

• The Center for an Accessible Society, and
• American Association for People with Disabilities and the Disability Vote Project.

Both of these sites shared the challenges that some individuals with disabilities experience in trying to vote and the barriers that need to be addressed. The Google search also provided resources about the potential power of the disability vote. This year there is a perception that the large numbers of individuals living with disabilities could be a powerful force in the political arena. Unfortunately, as shared by the Center for an Accessible Society, “the disability vote is not often examined. As a group, or special interest constituency, people with disabilities are invisible, not included or even identified in exit polling or post-election analyses.”

Voting is one of the wonderful rights we are afforded here in the United States of America. I hope that we can overcome the accessibility barriers to ensure that those with and without disabilities can access their right to vote.

CVS is helping us make sure kids are school-ready

by Rachel Talen

As a follow-up to the post I wrote last week about the Easter Seals internet public service announcement (iPSA),I want to assure blog readers that I understand that every child develops at his or her own pace. Still, parents and caretakers can benefit by regularly monitoring their child’s progress. That way, they can address anything that might set their child back before they start kindergarten.

In the iPSA, moms Theresa and Beth share real stories about how early detection and early intervention services made all the difference in their kids’ lives. Easter Seals is thankful for wonderful partners like CVS Caremark and its Charitable Trust for making the iPSA about free access to the Ages & Stages Questionnaire possible.

For the seventh straight year, CVS Caremark is the National Premier Sponsor of Walk With Me, Easter Seals’ signature fundraising event. This year CVS Caremark associates expect to raise more than $1 million through local community engagement and fundraising at nearly 70 Walk events nationwide so that all young kids at risk of disabilities or delays get the early identification and services they need to be school-ready.

Help us spread the word: take the developmental milestone screening to receive feedback about your child’s development, and then share the iPSA link (with your friends via Facebook and Twitter. Help us to reach our goal of using the Ages & Stages Questionnaire to screen every child under 5 for developmental delays — your share or tweet could make all the difference!

Senior writers, senior riders

by Beth Finke

In addition to moderating the Easter Seals blog, I also lead a memoir-writing class for senior citizens — it’s sponsored by the City of Chicago’s Family and Support Services and it meets right downtown. The youngest writer in class is 63, the oldest is 94. Many are widows, and most of them live alone.

Each week I assign these writers a topic, they go home, write 500-word essays, and bring them back the next week to read aloud. After weeks, months, years of hearing each other’s stories, these writers have come to know each other very well. “It’s not a therapy session,” one of them told me with a laugh. “But it sure is therapeutic.” Very few of the writers in my class own cars, and none of them drive to class. They live on Chicago’s south side, the Gold Coast, in Hyde Park, in west Rogers Park. How do they get downtown? Public transportation, of course!

An article in Metro Magazine earlier this month quotes Karen Wolf-Branigin, co-director of the National Center on Senior Transportation (NCST) on why transportation is so important to senior citizens: “Transportation is integral for older adults to be able to age in place and remain in their communities,” she said. “Since its inception, NCST has helped communities become more livable and increase their transportation options for older adults and all residents.”

The article explains that the Federal Transit Administration recently selected Easter Seals and the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging to administer the National Center on Senior Transportation. NCST works to increase transportation options for older adults and enhance their ability to live more independently within communities throughout the United States. How reassuring to know my senior writers are in good hands!

Spreading the word to the UN: let’s give kids with disabilities more choices

by Katy Beh Neas

I often feel my life is a perpetual out-of-body experience. Friday, September 14, 2012 was one of those days — on steroids. Nine hours after arriving by train in New York City, there I was, standing before advocates from around the globe to talk about Easter Seals Make the First Five Count campaign at a meeting at the United Nations!

The United Nations is a humbling place. Established as a means to ensure world peace after World War II, the UN provides a forum for world leaders to explore ways for “maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights.”

My remarks focused on the major goals of the Make the First Five Count campaign:

• increase public awareness of developmental milestones
• increase funding for early intervention services
• increase the number of young children who have developmental disabilities identified and addressed

In 2011, more than 40,000 citizens signed our petition to Congress asking for more funding for early intervention. We need to send this same message in 2012 and we are asking people to sign the petition this year.

It was also great to report that in just 6 months, some 2,000 families have completed the Ages and Stages Questionnaire to determine if their child is on track to meet his or her developmental milestones. So far, 55 percent of questionnaires submitted have identified a delay. We are so grateful to CVS/Caremark Charitable Trust for their support of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire so that we can help these families begin their journey to help their children gain the skills to make them ready for school.

Advocates from South Africa, India and the Caribbean asked to use the materials from the Make the First Five Count Web site for advocacy within their countries. They also shared that many of the issues that we face in our country — like low expectations for kids with disabilities and their families — are very much part of their communities as well.

Hopefully, our continuing dialogue will help all our kids have more choices in their lives because they were able to get the assistance they need at the earliest possible time.

Stories from China

by Beth Finke

I am fascinated by the stories my colleague Patricia Wright (national director of Autism Services here at Easter Seals) comes back with every time she goes to China.

Patricia travels there about once a year to work with the non-governmental organization The Five Project to provide consultation and training to individuals with autism, healthcare providers, educators and parents. The Five Project runs intensive training sessions for parents and teachers of individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities and develops and distributes autism training videos.

Patricia’s visits get a lot of coverage in the news in China, and last month she was mentioned in FIVE News, The Five Project newsletter! Editors thanked Easter Seals for its support and Patricia for her leadership during autism trainings in several Chinese cities, including Nanjing, Anshan, and Suide, Sha’anxi. During the training, Patricia leads lectures, hands-on group activities and demonstrates a variety of teaching techniques. The long flight alone would be enough to deter me from a trip to China, but Patricia never seems tired. She is stimulated by these trips, and every time I thank her for sharing her China stories, she says, “I hope I’ll be going back for more!” You know what? I do, too!

Nothing brings people together like a crisis

by Jennifer Dexter

Last week the White House issued a report (PDF) outlining the effect of potential across-the-board cuts coming to many federal programs on January 2, 2013. These cuts are part of the Budget Control Act passed in a bipartisan manner last year.

According to the report, the cuts would result in an 8.2 percent reduction for most federal services such as special education, early intervention, vocational rehabilitation, and housing and transportation programs. It would also likely result in a 2-percent reduction in Medicare spending, but Medicaid is exempt from the cuts.

Much of the focus in Washington right now is on avoiding these cuts. In order to do so, Congress would likely still have to come up with over $1 trillion in deficit reduction. Easter Seals’ efforts are focused on assuring that people with disabilities are not harmed in whatever final form deficit reduction efforts will take. This will be true in both the short and long-term as this debate is expected to go on into 2013 regardless of the outcome of the elections in November.

While we need to get our nation’s fiscal house in order, there is real danger if we don’t do it in a thoughtful, considered and balanced way. It has been very gratifying to see the communities here in Washington come together to try to find solutions in these tough times. As a colleague said the other day with a big smile, “nothing brings people together like a crisis.”

Check out our iPSA – it’s a hub of information on child development

by Rachel Talen

In June, WGN-TV spent the day at Easter Seals DuPage and the Fox Valley Region shooting interviews and gathering footage to use for the station’s Living Healthy segment about our Make the First Five Count campaign. We had a blast on the shoot and know the WGN crew did too.

Later on we worked with WGN to produce a public service announcement around the importance of early intervention. The PSA aired that month, and then Easter Seals used The footage from that WGN shoot to create an internet public service announcement (iPSA) that you can see online.

Our iPSA is a hub of information on child development and encourages parents and caregivers to take an online developmental screening of children under age five.

More than one million kids enter school with unidentified disabilities every year, and the Ages & Stages Questionnaire online survey gives parents an easy and free way to make sure their kids are reaching important developmental milestones. Produced by Brookes Publishing, the Ages & Stages Questionnaire is widely used by pediatricians and health care experts and is recognized as the industry standard for developmental screenings for kids under age five.

Parents and caregivers might know right away if a child has a physical disability, but other social and language delays can be more difficult to recognize. For example, if a parent knows what their child is saying, but others have trouble understanding him or her, it could indicate a communication delay.

The Ages & Stages Questionnaire invites parents and caregivers to answer age-specific questions. The results will help you see if your child’s developmental progress is on schedule and alert you to concerns that you can discuss with your health care provider.

I’ll be writing more next week about the Ages and Stages Questionnaire and our fun and informational Make the First Five Count internet public service announcement, and I hope you’ll give it a look before then. I have a feeling you’ll learn as much out of watching it as we learned putting it together.

Talk about it, and ask for help!

by Beth Finke

My friend Sue Martin can’t see, but her blindness is not the result of some eye disease or genetic condition. It’s the result of a suicide attempt.

This week is National Suicide Prevention Week. Sue works for The United States Department of Veterans Affairs as a management analyst, and the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Health Information asked her to write a guest post outlining ways Veterans Affairs is helping make people more aware of suicide warning signs and risk. She opens her guest post explaining that when she was 26 years old, she was so depressed that she thought she had no other option than a loaded gun. “There was an explosion and, in an instant, my world went dark,” she writes. “I didn’t die, but the failed attempt left me blind.”

Thirty years of rehab, therapy, and support from friends and family have brought Sue to a point where she is willing to share her story in hopes it might help others who believe life is not worth living. In her guest blog post, she describes how the Veterans Crisis Line is helping:

Veterans or anyone concerned about a veteran may call 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1, chat online at www.VeteransCrisisLine.net or text 838255 to receive support.

Since its launch in 2007, the Veterans Crisis Line has answered more than 650,000 calls and made more than 23,000 life-saving rescues. In 2009, the Veterans Crisis Line added the anonymous chat service, which has helped more than 65,000 people.

Today my friend Sue is happily married and describes her work at Veteran’s Affairs as “fast-paced and exciting.” Instead of facing each day with dread the way she did all those years ago, she says she greets each day in anticipation of what she might discover. She is deservedly proud of what she’s made of her life, and extremely grateful to the people who helped her along the way. “I didn’t do it in a vacuum,” she says. “The important thing, if you feel your life is not worth living, is to talk about it and get help.”

You ready for some football?

by Bob Glowacki

Early September is a special time in Wisconsin. Our beloved Green Bay Packers are the only community-owned franchise in professional sports, and with over 20,000 shareholders, this state lives for football. Here at Easter Seals Southeast Wisconsin, we are totally dialed into our 13-Time World Champion Green Bay Packers!

And as if the Packers aren’t enough, this Sunday a unique clinic will kick off with one of our more storied local football teams: my alma mater, Marquette University High School, will host over 50 children with autism, their siblings and parents for a Football Clinic.

Simply put, it is just a great afternoon where kids can be kids practicing their running back moves, tossing the pigskin for touchdown and practicing their touchdown dances. The environment is warm and welcoming, allowing families to just enjoy a day together. Here are some pictures from last year’s event.

Want to join us this year? We’d love to have you! Just link to the Easter Seals Southeast Wisconsin calendar for more details. Thanks to the mighty Hilltoppers for making a special day for some special families in Southeast Wisconsin.

P.S. GO, Pack, go!

Bridging communities together

by Jennifer Dexter

Last week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services held a forum at the White House on access to long-term services and supports. The event — featuring speakers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the new Administration on Community Living, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the White House — was designed to highlight new federal initiatives that will benefit both people with disabilities and older adults and was designed to bring these communities closer together.

Kathy Greenlee, Administrator and Assistant Secretary for Aging at the Administration for Community Living, hosted the event and specifically called out Easter Seals as the group leading the way, helping to make sure the long-term services and support needs of all people, no matter their age, are being addressed.

One of my great joys and favorite things about working for Easter Seals is that we are so often able to play a role in bridging different communities together. Just in my own work I get to see how we are able to bring all sorts of different groups — like people with disabilities, older adults, transportation providers and other service providers — together to solve tough issues. I was so proud and honored at the White House event to know that the work we do to bring people together was recognized by experts at the highest level of government.