John's usual--
March is DD Awareness Month. It's an important time to recognize both the individual successes that people with DD have achieved and also how far Ohio's developmental disabilities field has come. Ohio has been a leader supporting people with developmental disabilities--enacting the 169 Legislation in the late 1960s that created/funded local County Boards of Developmental Disabilities through local property tax levies. This provided money to build services for people with disabilities where they lived with their families-- without having to be removed from that family home. Prior to this, services to people with DD were a "take it or leave it," "all or nothing" proposition.
There are 88 Counties in Ohio and today, the collective amount of money raised through property taxes is significant. There's an old old quote attributed to former Senator Everett Dirksen about federal government spending, “a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money." Ohio leverages these local dollars to pull down federal Medicaid dollars and today Ohio spends more than $5 billion dollars to support roughly 100,000 people with DD. Also, significant is that Ohio is a state where the State Director of DD services has a seat on the Governor's cabinet. This money and this positioning is important because Ohio needs to figure out how to reallocate some of the money that we already control to support direct services for people with DD-- especially for the generation of young people graduating from high school. If we don't figure out a robust, comprehensive way of supporting people in the communities that they live in-- we're just going to perpetuate a world in which people with disabilities are limited to institutions and/or isolated group homes.
As we recognize DD Awareness month, it's important to recognize that it's more than just celebrating diversity, inclusion, and individual achievements. It's also a lot about what was built by previous generations-- parents of kids with DD in the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's worked for decades to both provide 100% of the supports that their kids needed (since they didn't want to give those kids to the state institutions to raise) AND did all the political heavy lifting to create Ohio's system of County Boards of DD from nothing. It must have been frustrating and exhausting. But they did it. Our generation too can do hard things, but we have to step up to build the next level. The good news is that we already have the tools-- including money and public support. The bad news is that it's going to take some reconstruction, some reallocation, some hard choices. Nothing changes until something changes.
Off my soapbox, we're looking for another great week at CLI. The mild temperatures will mostly stick around for at least one more week and then we're half way to April and another Ohio winter will be in the books. Hang in there!
That's all I have Have a great week!
John
|