Disability Law Commons^™

The Intersection Of Agency Doctrine And Elder Law: Attorney-In-Fact Authority To Arbitrate Nursing Home Claims, 49 J. Marshall L. Rev. 39 (2015), Thomas Simmons

UIC Law Review

With the popularity of durable powers of attorney to manage the estates and personal affairs of individuals with diminished capacity, construction of the scope of powers with which agents are acting is of increasing importance. Some acts should be seen as so inherently personal or so dramatically inconsistent with the expected role of an agent as to be simply outside the scope of agency altogether. Others, such as those involving gifts, self-dealing transactions, or constitutional rights, should be never implied but honored when located within the express terms of an agent’s authority. The remaining powers should be construed and mapped …

Medicaid Spend Down, Estate Recovery And Divorce: Doctrine, Planning, And Policy, John A. Miller

Articles

Medicaid is the need-based government program that pays for much of the health care for the poor in the United States. Medicaid often ends up paying the costs of nursing home care for middle-class seniors who have descended into poverty as a result of the high costs of such care. For married couples, Medicaid requires a “spend down” of both spouses’ assets before one spouse can qualify for Medicaid support. This Article posits that, unless the law is changed, divorce may well become standard Medicaid planning practice in many circumstances. This will be especially true for middle and upper-middle-class married …

Laissez Fair:The Case For Alternative Litigation Funding And Assignment Of Lawsuit Proceeds In Georgia, David T. Adams

Georgia Law Review

This Note discusses the value of alternative litigation funding (ALF) and the legal challenges affecting the ALF industry in Georgia. More specifically, it identifies a way to maximize ALF's benefits for plaintiffs with personal tort and employment discrimination claims. Tort victims who are rendered incapable of working, and employees who have lost jobs because of workplace discrimination or retaliation,face immediate financial burdens-they may be unable to afford food, housing, health care, transportation, and other necessities. This economic pressure often forces plaintiffs to settle quickly for less than the value of the harm inflicted. But ALF companies offer a workable solution …

Social Security Disability Insurance And Supplemental Security Income, Jennifer L. Erkulwater

Political Science Faculty Publications

Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are the foundation of the social safety net for Americans with disabilities. Both provide cash benefits, and because neither program is limited to specific impairments or to workers in particular occupations, as is the case with many public and private disability plans, they are broadly accessible to the American people and the most expensive of the nation's disability benefit programs. Excluding expenditures for health care, DI and SSI combined account for almost three-quarters of annual federal spending on the disabled (U.S. GAO 1999).

Disability benefits policy, though, has long been …

Malingerer Or Maligned: A Comparative Study Of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Case Law, Odelia R. Bay

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

People with invisible illnesses are challenged both by their impairments and the additional hurdles they face when it comes to being believed by others. This presents particular difficulties when seeking to convince those with the authority to make legal findings of discrimination or entitlement to accommodation. By focusing on the historically contested diagnosis of multiple chemical sensitivities (“MCS”), this paper examines the outer limits of how disability is defined and the legal rights given to people whose claims are viewed as suspect. Specifically, comparison is made between MCS employment cases in the United States and Canada.

In both jurisdictions, plaintiffs …

An Americans With Disabilities Act Critique Of Advance Directive Override Provisions, Judy Ann Clausen

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues many mental health advance directive statutes violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Advance directives empower people to determine care to be administered when they lack capacity to provide informed consent. General advance directives typically address end-of-life care. Mental health directives govern treatment administered during periods of incapacity caused by acute episodes. Because end-of-life decision-making is different than planning for episodic mental illness, half of the states have enacted separate mental health directive statutes. These specialized statutes often provide doctors more leeway to force treatment on a patient in contravention of a directive than do generic directive …

Bring Ulysses To Florida: Proposed Legislative Relief For Mental Health Patients, Judy Ann Clausen

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article urges the Florida legislature to give patients the right to form Ulysses arrangements, which are a special type of mental health advance directive authorizing a doctor to administer treatment during a future episode even if the episode causes the patient to refuse treatment. Acute mental illness episodes may disrupt a patient’s capacity to provide informed consent and cause the patient to refuse necessary intervention. In Florida, a physician cannot involuntarily examine, hospitalize, or treat a person unless she meets strict criteria, essentially requiring the person’s behavior to reveal that she is dangerous to herself or others. Even a …

Identity And Narrative: Turning Oppression Into Client Empowerment In Social Security Disability Cases, Jonel Newman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Still Kickin’ After All These Years: Sutton And Toyota As Shadow Precedents, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Congress’s ability to override judicial opinions that interpret statutes is generally understood as an important aspect of maintaining legislative supremacy. In a series of articles, I have challenged the validity of this assumption by showing that courts often continue to rely on overridden precedents—what I have called shadow precedents. My earlier work explores instances in which it was unclear or debatable whether the override or the prior precedent should control. This article further documents such ambiguities, but its primary objective is to highlight examples of ongoing reliance on shadow precedents where it is unquestionably improper. It suggests, however, that citation …

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.

Data Note Plus: Federal Data Snapshot Of Puerto Rico On Individuals With Disabilities, Daria Domin, Jean Winsor, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Prior to 2012, four data projects funded by the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD)—Access to Integrated Employment, Family and Individual Information Systems Project, Residential Information Systems Project, and the State of the States in Developmental Disabilities—only collected data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. However, a 2012 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) from AIDD requested that applicable AIDD data projects include the five U.S. Territories (American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands) in their data collection and analysis efforts. This Data Note represents an expansion of our …

Introduction To Community Life Engagement (Engage: A Brief Look At Community Engagement, Issue No. 1, 2015), Jennifer Sullivan Sulewski, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

As national disability policy prioritizes greater support for community-based integrated employment for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), the level of participation in services for other daytime activities continues to grow (Winsor & Butterworth, 2012). The role of services related to engagement and participation in community life has to date been largely undefined. The purpose of this brief is to offer a definition of Community Life Engagement, share reasons for its relevance and timeliness, and present results from a Community of Practice with administrators and personnel from seven state IDD agencies hosted by the Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI) …

The Truth Comes From Us: Supporting Workers With Developmental Disabilities, Max Barrows, Jason Billehus, John Britton, Allison Cohen Hall, Juliana Huereña, Nicole Leblanc, Eric Mcvay, Karen Topper, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

Employment professionals play a powerful role in the pursuit of true inclusion. This paper by self-advocates outlines key steps on how allies can move people with developmental disabilities out of poverty and into the heart of our communities.

Community Life Engagement: Data Sources, Definitions, And Measurement (Engage: A Brief Look At Community Engagement, Issue No. 2, 2015), Oliver Lyons, Allison Hall, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

As state and federal policy makers and Community Service Providers work to refine the concept of Community Life Engagement, they are able to draw upon multiple, public, national data sources. These include: Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI)’s National Survey on Day and Employment Outcomes, National Core Indicators (NCI), ICI’s National Survey of Community Rehabilitation Providers.

This brief provides an introduction to these data sources. It examines emerging Community Life Engagement trends shown in each source, as well as the implications for developing a better understanding of Community Life Engagement based on how it is currently being classified and measured.

Crp Organizational Change (Bringing Employment First To Scale, Issue No. 2), Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

Federal and state policy shifts have opened the doors to meaningful community employment for individuals with intellectual/developmental disabilities (IDD). Progress is apparent across the country: creative outcomes for individuals with significant support needs through customized jobs and self-employment, innovative practices at the provider level, and state investment in an Employment First philosophy. Despite these achievements, the number of individuals supported in integrated employment by state agencies that serve individuals with IDD has remained the same since 2000. While some community rehabilitation providers (CRPs) across the country have transformed their services to focus on integrated employment, including closing facility-based programs, most …

Delphi Panel Findings, Brief #1: Introduction, Values, And Major Themes, Cindy Thomas, Jennifer Sulewski, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

The Employment Learning Community has been developed to assist states in improving employment systems and services that will increase inclusive, competitive employment for individuals with IDD. To gain insights on the most cogent policies and priorities to promote such systems change, the project convened a panel of national subject matter experts to participate in a Delphi process. Nineteen Delphi panel members, including employment researchers, service providers, state vocational rehabilitation directors, developmental disability agency directors, educators, self-advocates, family members and representatives from related programs and initiatives, participated in four rounds of data collection. The values, policies, and practices that emerged from …

Integrating Research, Training, And Knowledge Translation (Bringing Employment First To Scale, Issue No. 1), Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

What our new center is about: People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) can work and want to work--yet the majority don’t have jobs. State and national policies exist to increase employment, but systems have not aligned to make integrated employment a priority. To meet this need, the Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI) at UMass Boston is hosting a new rehabilitation research and training center, or RRTC. It’s called the RRTC on Advancing Employment for Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Because change is critical at multiple levels, the RRTC integrates four focus areas:

1. individual and family knowledge and engagement, …

Delphi Panel Findings, Brief #4: Education And Training For Job Seekers, Cindy Thomas, Jennifer Sulewski, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This is the fourth in a series of briefs on the findings from a Delphi process conducted by the Employment Learning Community in 2013–2014. More information on the Employment Learning Community and the Delphi process can be found in Brief #1 (Introduction, Values, and Overall Themes). This brief focuses on the role of education and training for job seekers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), which was the third-ranked overarching priority among the Delphi panel members.

Delphi Panel Findings, Brief #6: Generation And Use Of Data And Evidence, Cindy Thomas, Jennifer Sulewski, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This is the sixth in a series of briefs on the findings from a Delphi process conducted by the Employment Learning Community in 2013–2014. More information on the Employment Learning Community and the Delphi process can be found in Brief #1 (Introduction, Values, and Overall Themes). This brief focuses on how data and evidence can support integrated employment outcomes for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). This was the fifth overarching theme among the Delphi panel’s recommendations.

Delphi Panel Findings, Brief #3: Collaboration Across Agencies, Cindy Thomas, Jennifer Sulewski, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This is the third in a series of briefs on the findings from a Delphi process conducted by the Employment Learning Community in 2013–2014. More information on the Employment Learning Community and the Delphi process can be found in Brief #1 (Introduction, Values, and Overall Themes). This brief focuses on the panel’s recommendations related to collaboration across state systems, which was the second-highest overarching priority identified by the Delphi panel for improving employment outcomes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).