Imagine that pain grew so intense that you ended up in a hospital, but because of a disability you couldn’t tell anyone whether your feet or your chest or your whole body ached.
Imagine you had a doctor who wanted to get you healthy and home but wasn’t quite sure what healthy looked like for you and whether your home was equipped to handle your needs.
Right now, as the result of a long-standing partnership between the D.C. government and Georgetown University, a physician who understands intellectual and developmental disabilities would show up and speak on your behalf. A nurse, trained in those same areas, would then work to get you home as soon as you were well enough. Once home, you would receive another visit to make sure that you were okay and that your caretaker understood your needs.
These are some of the services Georgetown University provides through its DDA Health Initiative. These are also some of the services that — unless something is done soon — will disappear on Aug. 31, because the D.C. Department on Disability Services (DDS) has decided not to renew Georgetown’s contract.
The decision was made quietly and has unnerved those who work closest with the city’s most vulnerable residents.
They fear that it will hurt men and women who have intellectual and developmental disabilities and set the city agency in charge of serving that population back on all the progress it made under 40 years of court supervision.
[After 40 years, U.S. court ends supervision of D.C.’s care for mentally disabled citizens]
“We are worried,” said Precious Myers-Brown, the local director of St. John’s Community Services, one of the oldest organizations to serve people with disabilities in the District. “My concern is for the people we support and how easily they can get lost in the system.”
To read more on this story, click here: ‘We Are Worried’: Those Who Work With Disabled D.C. Residents Fear A City Cut Will Hurt Those Who Need Help Most
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