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For Immediate Release:
September 9, 2006
For
Information Contact:
Bob Kafka 512-431-4085
Marsha Katz 406-544-9504
Money Follows The Person is Now Law
Washington, D.C. - Recently passed federal legislation
provides states with extra funds to move people with disabilities and older
persons out of nursing homes, and back into their own homes in the community.
Any states left wondering whether or not to take advantage of this federal
initiative, known as "Money Follows the Person," (MFP), need only review
testimony from the just-released transcript of the National Hearing on Ending
Institutional Bias in Long-Term Services and Supports.
States have until November 1, 2006 to submit applications
for the additional federal funds to help them rebalance their long-term
services and supports funding away from institutions and toward community-based
alternatives. The full transcript from the
National
Hearing on Ending Institutional Bias in Long-Term Services and Supports,
held in Nashville, Tennessee, March 19, 2006.
I don't know how anyone can read story after story of the
70 people who testified, and not be moved to do whatever it takes to give
people a choice in where they live and receive their long-term services and
supports," said National ADAPT Organizer Stephanie Thomas. "Michael Taylor,
from Memphis, desperately wanted out of the nursing home he'd been forced into,
but had to have someone else read his statement because the nursing home
refused to let him come to the hearing to speak for himself."
In March 2006, in a virtually unprecedented national forum
sponsored by ADAPT, officials from the US Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), the National Council on Disability (NCD), the National Council
on Independent Living (NCIL), the American Association of People with
Disabilities (AAPD), ADAWatch and the Social Security Ticket to Work Advisory
Committee heard the testimony of people from all over the country who have
lived through the indignities, and even horrors, of institutionalization.
Samuel Mitchell, an ordained minister and former truck
driver who became disabled, testified, "I had a ministry to nursing homes. I
went in nursing homes and preached. I thought I knew a little bit about them.
After becoming disabled, a year later I suffered a stroke. That's when I
entered a nursing home, and I found out just how much I didn't know about
nursing homes. The prevailing atmosphere in nursing homes is that we now own
you. You become a non-person. Your rights, human rights and civil rights are
routinely violated. Dignity, there was no dignity. I can remember sitting using
the rest room and having a CNA come in the door and start washing something
out, and I told her 'you can't be in here.' She said, 'I'm going to only be a
minute, don't worry, Mr. Mitchell.'" Mitchell eventually left the nursing home,
and is now an ADAPT Organizer in Georgia, married and living in his own home.
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