Disability Law Commons^™

Differences Among Family And Professional Guardians: A Statewide Survey Of Characteristics, Training, And Practices Related To Decision-Making, Kristin Hamre, Derek Nord

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

This cross-sectional study sought to examine the differences between family and professional guardians across personal and role characteristics, training received, and their inclusion of people they serve in decision making. A total of 237 subjects serving as guardian to adults in the state of Indiana completed an online survey. Results showed group differences across race, education, as well as diagnosis and age of those served. Overall, training was limited across both groups, and family guardians received significantly less training across several topics. Finally, family and professional guardians were found to significantly differ in their willingness to allow people they serve …

Special Education: Inclusion And Exclusion In The K-12 U.S. Educational System, Erik Brault

Dissertations

The U.S. Department of Education defines students with disabilities as those having a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more life activities. Previous research has found that students with disabilities placed in inclusive environments perform better academically and socially compared to students with disabilities who are placed in segregated environments. Yet, we know that inclusion in K-12 general education classrooms across the country is not consistently implemented.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the effects, if any, of general education high school teachers’ personal and professional experiences and knowledge on their attitudes toward educating …

An Interactive Training Model To Promote Cultural Humility For Early Childhood Professionals, Anjali G. Ferguson, Chimdindu Ohayagha, Jackie Robinson Brock

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

The disability population in the United States has grown, with an estimated 2.6 million households having at least one child with a disability in 2019 (Young, 2019). Racially minoritized children disproportionately represent disability categories with Black and Indigenous children being overdiagnosed with emotional disturbance disabilities (Oswald & Coutinho, 2001). Further, minoritized children often experience greater rates of complex trauma (Horowitz, Weine, & Jekel, 1995) and this exposure significantly impacts minoritized children’s mental health (Flannery, Wester, & Singer, 2004). Included in these social determinants of health are the impacts of racism and racial trauma. Racism has been associated with mental health …

Paths To Equity: Parents In Partnership With Ucedds Fostering Black Family Advocacy For Children On The Autism Spectrum, Elizabeth H. Morgan, Benita D. Shaw, Ida Winters, Chiffon King, Jazmin Burns, Aubyn Stahmer, Gail Chodron

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

Racism and ableism have doubly affected Black families of children with developmental disabilities in their interactions with disability systems of supports and services (e.g., early intervention, mental health, education, medical systems). On average, Black autistic children are diagnosed three years later and are up to three times more likely to be misdiagnosed than their non-Hispanic White peers. Qualitative research provides evidence that systemic oppression, often attributed to intersectionality, can cause circumstances where Black disabled youth are doubly marginalized by policy and practice that perpetuates inequality. School discipline policies that criminalize Black students and inadequate medical assessments that improperly support Black …

Loving My Skin: A Self-Advocate’S Perspective From Dayton, Ohio, Shari Cooper

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Flipping The Script As A Black Mother Living In My Community: A Self-Advocate's Perspective From Baltimore, Jessica Salmond

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Experiential Learning Through Participatory Action Research In An Interdisciplinary Leadership Training Program, Jessica L. Franks, Stephanie D. Baumann, Marvin So, Angela M. Miles, Jorge M. Verlenden, Teal Benevides, Mark Crenshaw, Stephen Truscott, Daniel Crimmins

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

Background: Experience in multidisciplinary collaboration among healthcare providers, leaders in public health, and educators is essential to effectively address the diverse needs of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and their families.

Purpose: We describe three participatory action research (PAR) projects from an interdisciplinary training program, which used experiential learning to enhance leadership competencies and promote inclusive services. Trainees report their leadership growth as providers and advocates for children with I/DD using experiential learning through PAR.

Approach: Trainees discuss their engagement with organizations serving children with I/DD and ways that experiential learning supported leadership skill development, …

Facultas Marginem: Assessing Disability Data And Public Aau Universities’ Affirmative Action Plans For Systemic Barriers Facing Faculty With Disabilities, Joseph Carlton Barry

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation contributes to education equity scholarship produced by academics seeking to develop understandings of disability, Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and how both are situated amongst faculty in institutions of higher education. As such, this dissertation centers on a study of public US universities belonging to the Association of American Universities (AAU). This study looks for institutional level associations between respective rates by which college and university faculty with disabilities (FWD) are employed, certain aspects of disability policy drawn from each institution’s 2020 Affirmative Action Plans (AAP), and various other instances of empirical disability data (EDD).

While this study contributes …

Examining The Social Security Tribunal’S Navigator Service: Access To Administrative Justice For Marginalized Communities, Laverne Jacobs, Sule Tomkinson

Law Publications

An accessible MS Word version of this document is available for download at the bottom of this screen under "Additional files."

This report provides the findings, analysis and recommendations of a research study conducted on the federal Social Security Tribunal’s Navigator Service (SST Navigator Service). The SST Navigator Service was established in 2019 for tribunal users without a professional representative. The study examines the use of the Navigator Service for Canada Pension Plan–Disability (CPP–Disability) appeals heard by the Income Security - General Division of the Social Security Tribunal.

This research study focuses on access to administrative justice on the …

Exploring Tactile Art-Making With Deafblind Students And Their Families: An Opportunity For Creative Play, Alice Rodgers

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The impact of a deafblind diagnosis on an individual’s mental health and the well-being of the family involved can be profound. However, current research and available literature for the mental health treatment and therapy practices of deafblind persons and their families is limited (Kyzar et al., 2016; “WFDB Global Report 2018,” n.d.). This thesis used the Leeds Family Psychology and Therapy Service principles (Leeds FPTS) and the Expressive Therapies Continuum with established deafblind teaching strategies to facilitate an original arts-based community project entitled: “Things We Like.” This project provided an opportunity for deafblind students (ages three to 22) and their …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Disability Services And Systems: Perspectives From The Field, Ronda Jenson, John Tschida

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Perspectives Of Immigrant Families And Persons With Disabilities During Covid-19, Diana Rodriguez Lmsw, Kathleen Mcgrath Msw

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

Background: The health, economic, social, political, and psychological consequences of COVID-19 have been deeply felt on a global level. Persons with disabilities, including those from Hispanic/Latino immigrant communities, have faced unique challenges during both the peak and fallout of the pandemic. Throughout both the United States and New York City, COVID-19 has disproportionately affected communities of color. However, the impact of COVID-19 on persons with disabilities among immigrant and communities of color is still unfolding.

Aims: In this paper, we aim to better understand the compounded stress of the COVID-19 pandemic experienced by immigrant families who have a child with …

Prisons, Nursing Homes, And Medicaid: A Covid-19 Case Study In Health Injustice, Mary Crossley

Articles

The unevenly distributed pain and suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic present a remarkable case study. Considering why the coronavirus has devastated some groups more than others offers a concrete example of abstract concepts like “structural discrimination” and “institutional racism,” an example measured in lives lost, families shattered, and unremitting anxiety. This essay highlights the experiences of Black people and disabled people, and how societal choices have caused them to experience the brunt of the pandemic. It focuses on prisons and nursing homes—institutions that emerged as COVID-19 hotspots –and on the Medicaid program.

Black and disabled people are disproportionately represented in …

Reckoning With Race And Disability, Jasmine E. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

Our national reckoning with race and inequality must include disability. Race and disability have a complicated but interconnected history. Yet discussions of our most salient socio-political issues such as police violence, prison abolition, healthcare, poverty, and education continue to treat race and disability as distinct, largely biologically based distinctions justifying differential treatment in law and policy. This approach has ignored the ways in which states have relied on disability as a tool of subordination, leading to the invisibility of disabled people of color in civil rights movements and an incomplete theoretical and remedial framework for contemporary justice initiatives. Legal scholars …

Compensation, Commodification, And Disablement: How Law Has Dehumanized Laboring Bodies And Excluded Nonlaboring Humans, Karen M. Tani

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Nate Holdren's Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which explores the changes in legal imagination that accompanied the rise of workers' compensation programs. The essay foregrounds Holdren’s insights about disability. Injury Impoverished illustrates the meaning and material consequences that the law has given to work-related impairments over time and documents the naturalization of disability-based exclusion from the formal labor market. In the present day, with so many social benefits tied to employment, this exclusion is particularly troubling.

Thinking Outside The Checkbox: Examining The Benefits Of Depression In The Workplace, Tyler L. Jensen

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

No abstract provided.

Threats To Medicaid And Health Equity Intersections, Mary Crossley

Articles

2017 was a tumultuous year politically in the United States on many fronts, but perhaps none more so than health care. For enrollees in the Medicaid program, it was a “year of living precariously.” Long-promised Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act also took aim at Medicaid, with proposals to fundamentally restructure the program and drastically cut its federal funding. These proposals provoked pushback from multiple fronts, including formal opposition from groups representing people with disabilities and people of color and individual protesters. Opposition by these groups should not have surprised the proponents of “reforming” Medicaid. Both people of …

The Interplay Between Human Rights And Accessibility Laws: Lessons Learned And Considerations For The Planned Federal Accessibility Legislation, Laverne Jacobs

Law Publications

In this study, the author analyzes, comparatively, the administrative governance functions of legislation that provides accessibility standards in six jurisdictions that also offer legal protection from discrimination to people with disabilities: Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. The following governance functions were examined: a) creating accessibility standards, b) enforcing accessibility standards, c) enforcing decisions,d) encouraging compliance, e) raising public awareness (and promoting systemic culture change) and f) public education. The study was conducted with a view to understanding how human rights laws, principles and values can be used to …

An Assessment Of Disability Access At The University Of Kentucky, Megan S. Coffinbargar

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

This study assesses the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) compliance at the University of Kentucky. Twenty buildings frequently used by undergraduates at the University of Kentucky were evaluated using the ADA Checklist for Existing Facilities focusing on Title III, Public Accommodations, and Priority Two, Access to Goods and Services. Data was collected over two weeks (July 20, 2017-August 3, 2017) and then evaluated using descriptive analysis. Data was analyzed looking across checklist items, buildings, checklist categories, and construction dates. Looking across checklist items, compliance ranged from 12-20 buildings out of 20 possible with 18.485 buildings as the average. …

Finding Autonomy: The Impact Of Judicial Discretion For Disabled Individuals In The American Guardianship System, Katherine Davis

Political Science Honors Projects

This study examines the conflict between guardianship and the American disability rights movement, specifically the shift from a medical to a capability model of disability. Legal guardianship presents judges with a dilemma of favoring individual autonomy or societal protection. This dichotomy manifests in the construction of state statutes where legislators can influence judicial discretion and sway decisions. Through analysis of state statutes, case law, and interviews with judges in Connecticut and Minnesota, this study found that higher levels of discretion do not necessarily translate to increased protection of individual autonomy or the use of alternatives to guardianship. The research points …

Community Integration Of People With Disabilities: Can Olmstead Protect Against Retrenchment?, Mary Crossley

Articles

Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, states have made significant progress in enabling Americans with disabilities to live in their communities, rather than institutions. That progress reflects the combined effect of the Supreme Court’s holding in Olmstead v. L.C. ex rel. Zimring, that states’ failure to provide services to disabled persons in the community may violate the ADA, and amendments to Medicaid that permit states to devote funding to home and community-based services (HCBS). This article considers whether Olmstead and its progeny could act as a check on a potential retrenchment of states’ …

Increasing Organizational Accountability And Performance: Activity Tracking For Employment Consultants, Alberto Migliore, Kelly Nye-Lengerman, Jeanine Pavlak, Steve Aalto, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

ThinkWork! Publications

No abstract provided.

National & International Disability Inclusion In Employment, Debrittany Mitchell, Heike Boeltzig-Brown, Quinn Barbour

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Through research, technical assistance, training and collaboration the Institute for Community Inclusion strives to improve employment outcomes for individuals both nationally and internationally. The following highlights some of the work currently in progress in the United States and Japan.

Processing Disability, Jasmine E. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the practice of holding so many adjudicative proceedings related to disability in private settings (e.g., guardianship, special education due process, civil commitment, and social security) relative to our strong normative presumption of public access to adjudication may cultivate and perpetuate stigma in contravention of the goals of inclusion and enhanced agency set forth in antidiscrimination laws. Descriptively, the law has a complicated history with disability — initially rendering disability invisible, later, legitimizing particular narratives of disability synonymous with incapacity, and, in recent history, advancing full socio-economic visibility of people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act, …

Data Note: State Intellectual And Developmental Disability Agencies' Service Trends, Jean Winsor, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

In FY2013, an estimated 607,959 individuals received day or employment supports from state IDD program agencies. This number grew from 457,405 in FY1999. The estimated number of individuals in integrated employment services increased from 108,680 in FY1999 to 113,271 in FY2013. State investment continues to emphasize facility-based and non-work services, rather than integrated employment services. Figure 1 shows the trends in the percentage of people served in integrated employment and facility-based and non-work settings between FY2004 and FY2013.

The Americans With Disabilities Act At 25: The Highest Expression Of American Values, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Enacted in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a watershed piece of legislation which enshrines in law a social promise of equality and inclusion into all facets of life, while offering an inspiring model that much of the world has come to embrace. This editorial launches JAMA’s theme issue on the 25th anniversary of the ADA by detailing the Act’s history, main provisions, and far-reaching impacts on health, providing a context for the three Original Investigations and six scholarly Viewpoints that make up the theme issue. The editorial begins with a discussion of the ADA’s history, highlighting …

A Critical Research Agenda For Wills, Trusts And Estates, Bridget J. Crawford, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

The law of wills, trusts, and estates could benefit from consideration of its development and impact on people of color; women of all colors; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals; low-income and poor individuals; the disabled; and nontraditional families. One can measure the law’s commitment to justice and equality by understanding the impact on these historically disempowered groups of the laws of intestacy, spousal rights, child protection, will formalities, will contests, and will construction; the creation, operation and construction of trusts; fiduciary administration; creditors’ rights; asset protection; nonprobate transfers; planning for incapacity and death; and wealth transfer taxation. This essay …

Unprotected Sex: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act At 35, Deborah L. Brake, Joanna L. Grossman

Articles

Thirty-five years ago, Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to overturn a Supreme Court decision refusing to recognize pregnancy discrimination as a form of discrimination based on sex. Now, three and a half decades later, women whose work lives are impacted by pregnancy are again finding themselves unprotected from discrimination. Lower court rulings have eviscerated the Act’s protections at the same time that an expansion of worker rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act should redound to the benefit of pregnant women by expanding the pool of comparators who receive accommodations. By following trends in discrimination law generally - equating …

Data Note: State Intellectual And Developmental Disability Agencies’ Service Trends, Jean Winsor

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

In FY2011, an estimated 570,406 individuals received day or employment supports from state IDD program agencies. This number grew from 458,650 in FY1999. The estimated number of individuals in integrated employment services increased from 108,296 in FY1999 to 110,295 in FY2011. State investment continues to emphasize facility-based and non-work services, rather than integrated employment services. Figure 1 shows the trends in the percentage of people served in integrated employment and facilitybased and non-work settings between FY2004 and FY2011.

Data Note: State Intellectual And Developmental Disability Agencies’ Service Trends, Jean E. Winsor

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

In FY2010, an estimated 566,188 individuals received day or employment supports from state intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) agencies. This number grew from 458,650 in FY1999, a 23.4 percent increase. The estimated number of individuals supported in integrated employment services increased from 108,296 in FY1999 to 113,937 in FY2010, a 5.2% increase. State investment in supports continues to emphasize facility-based and non-work services rather than integrated employment services.