[Ohio-Talk] HB 188 Update

[info at onhconsulting.com]

That's good. My question is (and I know I mentioned this last year during our legislative call), that to our knowledge, none of the organizations representing social workers or workers for JFS, like the National Association of Social Workers Ohio Chapter, AFSCME, etc., have given any public statements for or against this bill. These are the workers that would be making the initial decisions to threaten to take a child away from a Blind parent based on erroneous information about the Blind person's competencies as a parent. 

As an MSW myself, I honestly find this very surprising. I think if this bill is past (or even while it is being considered) we as a Federation need to be working with these organizations (and schools of Social Work) to educate potential and current child welfare workers on the competencies of Blind parents.

At least when I was working on my degrees in Social Work, disability issues were hardly discussed at all in our curriculum--let alone Blindness issues. I was the only student in my Bachelor's level classes at Wright State who completed a field placement in a disability related agency. If you wanted to work with disability issues, you typically either study rehabilitation counseling or education, and those professionals have know concept of people with disabilities as a diverse class of individuals or consumer organizations like the Federation. I think that organizations of social workers (and faculty of social work Bachelor's and Master's programs), would be excellent to partner with in our efforts to pass this bill.

Thanks in advance for reading my rant, and Happy Holidays.

Chris 

-----Original Message-----
From: Ohio-Talk <ohio-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Eric Duffy via Ohio-Talk
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 11:32 AM
To: NFB of Ohio Announcement and Discussion List <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Eric Duffy <peduffy63 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Ohio-Talk] HB 188 Update

Chris,

We won’t have answer for that. I do know that inquiries were made, and there was some back and forth between a lot of parties, but to my knowledge an amendment was not actually drafted. In any case, we can begin the new year on solid ground with this Bill and knowing that we have a lot of work ahead of us in the Ohio legislature and in Congress.

Eric

> On Dec 20, 2019, at 11:24 AM, Christopher Sabine via Ohio-Talk <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Eric.
> 
> This is really good news! I'm really curious to know where the proposed amendment came from.
> 
> Chris
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ohio-Talk <ohio-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Eric Duffy via Ohio-Talk
> Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 10:38 AM
> To: NFB of Ohio Announcement and Discussion List <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Eric Duffy <peduffy63 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Ohio-Talk] HB 188 Update
> 
> For the last few weeks there was some consideration being given to an amendment to HB 188 that would have simply gutted our Bill. Richard and I have been communicating with members of the General Assembly, and we no longer have to worry about such an amendment. Here is the email we received from Kelsey Hopkins in representative Crawley’s office and my reply. This should all be pretty clear. 
> Good morning Richard and Eric, 
> 
> I have an update to the HB 188 amendment, Representative Crawley spoke with Representative Butler and he now agrees that the bill language should remain “clear and convincing evidence”. He also asked if Representative Crawley is open to expanding the bill to all disabilities and she is, so we are working with LSC to draft an amendment including all disabilities as defined by the ADA. I will keep you posted as I continue to receive information on hearings and votes. Please let me know if you have any questions.  
> 
> Thank you, 
> 
> Kelsey Hopkins
> 
> 
> 
> Good morning Kelsey, 
> Thank you so much. This is good news. Expanding the Bill to protect the rights of all parents with disabilities as defined under the ADA makes good sense and will certainly garner broader support.
> 
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