Families get cut off from special-ed servicesBy Sarina Trangle Posted 9/13/12
For the first time in three years, Casey Taggart isn’t receiving the therapy required for his cerebral palsy. Last week, the occupational, physical and speech therapists scheduled to serve the 3 1/2-year-old Riverdalian pulled their services because they were afraid they would not be paid for providing them. That’s how his mother Abby Lester learned that the DOE Committee on Preschool Special Education hadn’t sorted out the details related to its growing reliance on agencies to provide special education teachers, counselors, therapists and aides to students who need them. In the past, the DOE used a small group of agencies to provide special education services and supplement DOE staff. But when three-year agency contracts expired on Aug. 31, the DOE more than doubled the number of organizations it uses for that purpose. The DOE says doing this will allow the city to hold special education personnel more accountable and standardize coverage. By expanding the number of agencies that provide these services, the DOE said it hopes to minimize the number of families whose needs cannot be accommodated and are then entitled to vouchers or independent agreements to pay for outside providers. Starting Sept. 1, the DOE began pairing parents up with staff from 90 agencies tasked with accommodating their child’s Individual Educational Program, according to DOE CEO of Special Education Policy Elana Sigall. If three agencies fail to meet a child’s needs — as opposed to the previous two-agency limit — the DOE will give families the green light to hire independent therapists. But as of the second week of school, Ms. Lester and several Riverdale families who use independent providers continue to live without the services they rely on.
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While the DOE pays out upwards of $100,000.00 annually per developmentally disabled student (upwards of $300,000.00 for those with violent criminal backgrounds) the "hands on" workers might not meet NYC Contract Minimum Wage standards. The people actually working with the students in their residential settings for 16 hours of the day make $8.00 and $10.00 per hour. They administer drugs and hands on restraint DOE would not allow a $100,000.00 teacher to do here. What is wrong with this picture?
While we are closing mainstream schools and trimming teachers, New York City is outsourcing it's disabled instead of servicing them here where their homes and families are. Not to mention the best doctors and hospitals. Come on NYC, we can do better than this.
Now you are putting the spotlight on the other dirty little secret of the DD community. Parents of a developmentally disabled child are stressed beyond reason or more to the point beyond that which will withstand bureaucratic frustrations encountered in the delivery of services. Just a little extra frustration added here and there and poof:::: the child is no longer in the system.......REVENUE SAVED......But at what cost?
The alternatives to education and treatment are eventual hideous poverty and unimaginable crime by people unable to understand why it is wrong because we failed to educate and/or care for them. Not lazy, not sociopathic. This is a special population who with education and care can have a life similar to any other disabled person. Without it beckons the words cruel and unusual.
The profits and privileges our society enjoys are at the expense of the birth defects their byproducts cause. By Federal Mandate we owe them an appropriate education. Having the nerve to call ourselves New York City we should have the class to be doing it all within the five boroughs with the best people money can buy.
I hope City Councilman Oliver Koppell, State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, Congressman Eliot Engel, Senator Jeffrey Klein, Senator Gustavo Rivera and Bronx Boro President Rubin Diaz, Jr. will all shine a light in this direction and see that our developmentally disabled residents of The Bronx are brought home to NYC and find all the services they need, close to their families. The Bronx, in particular North Riverdale, has been denuded of services for the disabled. If they were trees or carp you could get something done about it!
Thursday, September 13, 2012|Report this