[Cinci-NFB] Opinion: Raising children with disabilities is a community responsibility - from The Enquirer

Mon Oct 31 13:44:32 UTC 2022

informative article Chris, hope a lot of people read it, keep up your good
work

On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 1:01 PM csabine2010--- via Cinci-NFB <
cinci-nfb at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hello. Just wanted to share an opinion piece I wrote that was published
> this weekend in the Cincinnati Enquirer. It focuses more on children with
> Autism and other disabilities as opposed to Blindness, but they do mention
> the Federation.
>
>
>
> Very Best,
>
>
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> Opinion: Raising children with disabilities is a community responsibility
>
> Children with and without disabilities have the best outcomes when they
> have close connections to their communities.
>
> Check out this story on cincinnati.com:
> https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2022/10/21/opinion-raising-children-with-disabilities-is-a-community-responsibility/69571939007/
>
>
>
> [image: Heather Adkins]
>
> The evening of Feb. 17 was dark, cold and rainy in the western suburbs of
> Cincinnati. At an isolated intersection, motorists spotted a 5-year-old boy
> wandering alone in the rain. According to media reports, the boy, who was
> nonverbal, was soaking wet and attempting to flag down cars in a desperate
> plea for help.
>
> The boy's mother, Heather Nicole Adkins, later located 75 miles away, was
> arrested and charged with felony child endangerment and kidnapping. After
> pleading guilty to a lesser charge, Adkins was sentenced to six months in
> an alternative treatment facility and three years probation.
>
> Media reports revealed that the boy is autistic and lived with his mother
> and two other boys, neither of whom have disabilities. According to
> accounts from a childhood friend, Adkins was high when she dropped the two
> other boys off at her friend’s home in Tennessee that afternoon, asking her
> friend to care for them. The boy with autism was not with them.
>
> Adkins story is not unique. Raising and caring for a child with special
> needs and disabilities can be overwhelming for even the most resilient and
> resourceful families.
>
> Many children and adults with disabilities require myriad services for
> their basic physical and emotional needs and to function at school and in
> the community. These include physical and occupational therapy, behavior
> management and curriculum modifications.
>
> Professionals from a wide variety of disciplines generally provide these
> services through an often-disjointed patchwork of private and public
> agencies. Coordination among these providers is often limited to
> nonexistent. Many critical services are not covered by private insurance,
> requiring families to incur thousands in out-of-pocket expenses. In some
> extreme cases, insurance carriers have encouraged families to relinquish
> custody of their children to child welfare agencies to allow their children
> to meet their most basic needs.
>
> According to a 2020 investigative report, 58% of children placed in the
> custody of child welfare agencies in Georgia had severe mental health or
> behavioral disorders, 40% have developmental disabilities, and a third have
> both. The report cited a lack of coordination among the various state and
> private agencies in charge of caring for children with complex needs and a
> lack of consequences for state agencies failing to provide legally mandated
> services as reasons for placement in the custody of the state’s child
> welfare agency.
>
> Worse is the stigma that family members of many children with disabilities
> often face, particularly mothers.
>
> In the 1940s, child development experts like Bruno Bettelheim and Leo
> Kanner, who first identified autism in a cluster of pediatric patients
> while a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University in 1943, attributed the
> condition to the mother's lack of parental warmth and attachment, likening
> the behaviors of the autistic children he observed to inmates of
> concentration camps during World War II. Bettelheim, a University of
> Chicago professor and child development expert, coined the term
> "Refrigerator Mother" to describe these so-called detached, uncaring
> mothers.
>
> To this day, elements of the "Refrigerator Mother Theory" persist among
> mental health professionals and in popular culture, adding to the stigma
> and isolation faced by mothers of children with significant disabilities,
> particularly autism.
>
> It is no wonder that some mothers are compelled to abandon or give up
> custody of their children, especially those already at risk. Those who do
> so often face the harshest consequences. In Ohio, for example, child
> abandonment is considered ground for termination of parental rights. Unless
> the child is an infant, a parent like Adkins who abandons a child can face
> criminal charges. In fact, Adkins represents the basic stereotype of the
> drug-addicted, irresponsible mother who would have no reservations about
> abandoning their child by the side of an isolated stretch of road.
>
> As a culture, we place an outsized emphasis on the role of the child's
> immediate, nuclear family to raise, nurture and educate their children.
> Many children with and without disabilities are born to families facing
> social, environmental, emotional and economic challenges. Add the stress of
> caring for a child with multiple and complex needs, and the situation
> becomes untenable for some families.
>
> The system for caring for children with special needs and disabilities is
> typically reactive, rather than proactive − with responsibility for
> coordinating services left to overwhelmed case managers in underfunded
> agencies. While highly specialized services for children with significant
> disabilities exist, these services are only available to a handful of
> children already identified as the most complex in the child welfare
> system. These children have, metaphorically speaking, been left by the side
> of the road in the pouring rain.
>
> Raising children with special needs and disabilities is a community
> responsibility.
>
> Children with and without disabilities have the best outcomes when they
> have close connections to their communities. Children without disabilities
> are typically involved in a variety of activities, such as sports, church,
> vacations with friends and family, and community service organizations such
> as Boy and Girl Scouts.
>
> Many children with significant disabilities, however, do not have the
> opportunity to take part in such activities. Their lives, and those of
> their families, revolve around specialized therapies, doctors, and
> interventions from specialized agencies.
>
> If someone in the life of Adkins had been able to intervene, might her
> autistic son not have been abandoned? If the full range of supports had
> been available to her family, would her autistic son have been left to
> wander the streets alone in the rain?
>
> The isolated street on which Adkins' son was left to fend for himself on a
> dark and rainy Thursday night is emblematic of the plight of many children
> with significant disabilities. In his case, however, someone did intervene.
>
> A man, identified as Ron Reese in a local news report, took the boy into
> his vehicle, shared a meal with him, called 911, and comforted the boy
> until police arrived on the scene.
>
> "He placed me and a little guy in each other's paths − to let him know
> and show him that it's a brighter day," Reese said.
>
> *Christopher Sabine lives in North College Hill and operates ONH
> Consulting, LLC, a business that provides family services to children and
> adults with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia, one of the leading causes of childhood
> blindness in the U.S. He is also active with the Cincinnati Chapter of the
> National Federation of the Blind of Ohio and chairs the statewide committee
> on diversity, equity and inclusion.*
>
>
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-- 
Dave Bertsch
330-472-4084
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