Chicago Defender, Vol. LXXXVII [87] No. 7
Wednesday May 13, 1992
(40¢ outside Chicago and suburbs)

Editorial
Listen to disabled on in-home funds

A group of "disabled rights activists, who on Tuesday continued their protest against the federal government's failure to allocate more funds for handicapped individuals, should be taken seriously. They are protesting for the right to remain at home, rather than being warehoused in nursing homes.

“Six times the (amount of) money goes to nursing homes and other institutions,” compared to the sums going “to community-based services. We want 25 percent of that nursing home budget to go to home care,” said Diane Coleman, an organizer for the group. There are various reasons why authorities should lend an ear to the protesters’ demands. Some of them are:

* Disabled people would rather live at home than in an institutionalized environment, just like anyone else would. Many physically challenged individuals are wheelchair-bound but would have no trouble at home turning on a computer and working on it; going to the refrigerator to get their own food; operating their own TV, radio, or CD player; reading books, teaching younger members of the family, making their own bed and doing countless other constructive things to make them feel useful and relatively independent.

* Additional money for home-based and community-based assistance would permit thousands of disabled individuals to receive help from part-time home attendants or nurses. The tab to the taxpayers might, in many instances, be smaller than the current cost for such services.

* Many disabled protesters argue that being housed in a nursing home may actually prohibit some physically challenged people from developing into more productive citizens. These pundits stress that some of the disabled individuals being cared for in nursing homes could, if given home-based fund support, live a life with more quality to it and a few of them could even participate in home-based employment or other legal business.

The bottom line is that disabled individuals deserve to be treated with as much respect as any other group in society. Other protesters have been given serious consideration by the federal government on various causes. The current cause
espoused by many of America’s physically challenged individuals deserves equal attention from government authorities.

Created on

Friday 12 July 2013

Posted on

Thursday 29 November 2018

Tags

attendants, cheaper, Diane Coleman, economics, editorial, government, in-home services, nurses, nursing homes, physically challenged, quality of life, respect, warehousing

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