DON’T LEAVE US OUT!

DON’T LEAVE US OUT!

Take the Test. Take Control: National HIV Testing Day

Categories: Disability.Blog News
By Miguel Gomez, Director, AIDS.gov 
Take the Test. Take Control. That’s the theme of National HIV Testing Day (NHTD), observed every year on June 27. President Obama has said National HIV Testing Day “reminds each of us to do our part in fighting HIV/AIDS and get tested. After years of critical investments in research, prevention and care, we now have the tools to stem the spread of the disease and extend the lives of those Americans living with HIV.”
As reported in a 2009 “Disability and HIV Policy Brief” from the UN Office of the High Commission for Human Rights, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS, “the relationship between HIV and disability has not received due attention, although people with disabilities are found among all key populations at higher risk of exposure to HIV.”  The brief discusses why persons with disabilities may be at risk for HIV infection. Reasons include risk behaviors, sexual violence and access to HIV education, information and prevention services.
The disability community has long been a solid ally in the response to HIV/AIDS. As we approach NHTD, I appreciate the opportunity as a guest blogger to speak to this community about HIV testing.
Why Take the Test?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than one million Americans are living with HIV; and one in five do not know their HIV status. 
To quote Dr. Frieden of the CDC:
Research shows that once people get tested, those who are HIV positive take steps to protect their partners from HIV. Testing HIV negative is also beneficial – as it empowers individuals to take stock of – and modify – risky sexual behaviors so that they can remain HIV negative.
If you are HIV positive – what you don’t know CAN hurt you – and others. A third of those with HIV are tested very late and develop AIDS within a year of their HIV diagnosis, which may be too late to utilize the full benefits of treatment. Approximately 17,000 Americans with AIDS still die each year.
Find a Testing Site 
We at AIDS.gov believe it is essential that we link people to local HIV test sites. I encourage everyone to use and share the HIV/AIDS Prevention & Service Provider Locator –  a simple tool for anyone in the U.S. to find HIV testing, prevention, housing, mental health, substance abuse and treatment services.
In addition, people can locate local HIV testing sites by sending a text message with their ZIP code to “KNOWIT” (566948), visiting www.HIVtest.org, or calling 800-CDC-INFO.
Want to know more?  

• Learn more about HIV/AIDS and National HIV Testing Day.
• Register by June 22 for the “HIV Testing for an AIDS-Free Generation” webinar/conference call to be held June 26 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. 
• Learn about the U.S. Government presence at AIDS 2012.

Closed-Captions on the Web: An Unfinished Battle

Closed-Captions on the Web: An Unfinished Battle

June 5, 2012  |  Josh Benjamin

There are nearly 150,000 television shows on air in the United States.

Thanks to the Decoder Circuitry Act, which was passed in 1990, and Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed that same year, closed captions are available on our home television sets.  This technology means that deaf and hard of hearing Americans have access to 150,000 TV programs every day.

But times are changing.

Compare 150,000 television shows to 37 billion online videos. It takes just one month for YouTube to upload more video content than has been aired on the three major TV networks in over 60 years – and the vast majority of those videos are not closed-captioned.

Not only is it apparent that our computers are replacing our television sets, it is increasingly evident that television captions are not nearly as vital as captions on the internet.

Why?

First and foremost, captions make the web accessible. The internet is an indispensable tool of the 21st century – a tool of education, occupation, communication, and entertainment. It is near impossible to function in today’s society without at least occasional access to a wireless or broadband connection .With 84.5% of internet-users watching online videos each month, websites like YouTube, CNN, and Hulu have solidified their positions as staples of the internet. Without captioning, this content is completely inaccessible to millions of people.

Providing closed captions not only ensures that content is accessible; it makes the internet better for all users by optimizing search engines like Google or Bing. Unlike articles, which are easily searchable because they consist of words on a page, videos can be difficult to comb through. Search results for videos are based solely on the titles and tags their creators give them, which are sometimes irrelevant to the video, and the short descriptions that follow. If all online videos had closed-captions, we would be able to search the dialogue, music, and other sounds that appear within them­­­­­­­, making the internet a more useful tool than it already is.

So how can we caption all online video content? What steps have webpages already taken to do so? What steps has the government taken? And what supplementary measures must be adopted to achieve complete online accessibility?

Thanks to the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA), signed by President Obama in October of that year, the entertainment industry has been steadily embedding closed-captions into their streaming videos. The law requires broadcasters, by September 2013, to caption all television programs they redistribute on the web. Not surprisingly, TV shows and movies on Hulu, Netflix, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox are almost all captioned.

But in the news media sector of the web, almost no videos are captioned. One of the major shortcomings of the CVAA is that it does not cover internet-only video content. The homepages of ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox’s news websites each feature uncaptioned video news reports, and web-based local news giant Patch.com provides no captioning requirements for its affiliates. Not only does the CVAA neglect internet-specific videos, it neglects user-generated content on sites like YouTube, which accounts for 46% of all videos on the web.

Notably, Youtube has taken several strides toward universal closed-captions. In 2008 it unveiled to users the option to embed closed captions into their own videos. The following year, it created a system which uses Google’s speech recognition technology to automatically transcribe audio into closed captions.

Still in beta, the technology is rarely accurate.

And even with the option to add captions to your own videos, users, for the most part, choose not to.

One of the most popular searches on YouTube, “funny video”, returns 13,300,000 results. If filtered to closed-captioned videos, the search yields a mere 138,000 results. Likewise, searching “Michael Jackson” returns 3,170,000 videos, and only 3,160 of those videos have captions.

So what more can be done?

In the spirit of video sharing, YouTube could unveil a system for users to add captions to videos that are not their own. Or even simpler, online news outlets like ABC could voluntarily add captions. World News Tonight did it in 1972, without prompt from the government.

While civil rights organizations including AAPD and our coalition allies worked hard to pass the CVAA and consider it a step forward for fully accessible online programming, experience shows that we need more.  The need for equal access to on line video content will only grow more urgent as this content area grows.

Perhaps what makes this issue most pertinent to the national discourse is the fact that complete online accessibility is essential to an economy that depends on the internet and workers who rely on its content. As we work to advance accessible technology through legislation, we also must convince individual YouTube users and online video outlets to accept the global necessity of closed-captions on the internet.
 
Source: http://www.aapd.com/resources/power-grid-blog/closed-captions-on-the-web.html

Effective Hurricane Preparedness Requires All of Us Working Together

Categories: Emergency Preparedness

Flemington, N.J., October 22, 2011 -- Tony Rebinbas and his son get mitigation information from Bill Praust, a Community Relations specialist, as Tyak, a service dog, looks on. FEMA provides outreach for many programs offered to disaster survivors.

* Re-posted from the FEMA Blog 
By Guest Blogger Marcie Roth, Director, Office of Disability Integration and Coordination, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Department of Homeland Security
People often ask me why FEMA no longer calls people with disabilities and other people with access and functional needs “vulnerable” or “special needs”?
The answer is straightforward: it’s the people who fail to prepare who are the ones who are most vulnerable in disasters. When people with disabilities have a plan for disasters and are prepared, they are in a much better position to ensure that they have the best possible outcomes during and after a disaster such as a hurricane. With approximately 50 percent of the population having access and functional needs, those needs are not special, they are simply what the whole community needs to address when planning for disasters.
FEMA’s Office of Disability Integration and Coordination has been working closely with our partners and stakeholders in the disability community during this Hurricane Preparedness Week to spread the word about preparing for hurricanes, severe weather and other disasters. Last week, we held a call with representatives from the disability community and you can listen to the podcast and see the transcript from that call by visiting http://www.fema.gov/medialibrary/media_records/8726.
Unfortunately, people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs aren’t always included in their community’s emergency preparedness efforts. Whether you have access and functional needs yourself or know of others who do, we ask that you Be A Force of Nature and help your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to make sure they’re prepared for the next hurricane or severe weather event. Consider becoming more involved in local, regional, and state emergency management efforts. In this respect, full inclusion in community preparedness efforts ensures that no one is “special” or has “special needs”. Rather, everyone is working together towards a fully prepared community.
In the “Conversations with FEMA” video,  Neil McDevitt, our Disability Integration Communications Specialist, joins me in talking about how the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination is working with our internal and external partners to enhance awareness of preparedness for the whole community and we’re also talking about steps we’re taking personally to prepare for hurricanes this year.
FEMA encourages all individuals in hurricane-prone areas to know your risk and make a pledge to prepare at www.ready.gov/hurricanes. You can complete your emergency preparedness plan, update your emergency kit and Be a Force of Nature and share your preparedness efforts with family, friends and Community partners.
For More Information:

• Watch the YouTube video “Preparing for Disasters for People with Disabilities“
• Visit FEMA’s Office of Disability Integration and Coordination web page
• Explore Disability.gov’s Emergency Preparedness Section

 Marcie Roth is the director of the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In this role, she leads the agency’s commitment to meet the access and functional needs of children and adults with disabilities in emergency and disaster preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. Before coming to FEMA, Ms. Roth was President and CEO of Global Disability Solutions Group, a leading national organization promoting diverse workforce initiatives with a focus on disability issues. She also served as a senior member of the Obama for America Disability Policy Committee and served on President Obama’s Justice and Civil Rights Transition Team.

AODA Alliance Presses Two Cabinet Ministers on Plans to Finalize the Overdue Built Environment Accessibility Standard That the McGuinty Government Last August Promised to Enact “Promptly”

June 4, 2012
SUMMARY
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires Ontario’s buildings to become accessible to persons with disabilities by or before 2025. To achieve this, for several years the McGuinty Government has been developing a Built Environment Accessibility Standard to enact under the AODA.
On August 19, 2011, during last year’s Ontario election campaign, Premier Dalton McGuinty wrote us to promise that the Built Environment Accessibility Standard that his Government had under development would be enacted “promptly.” To see Premier McGuinty’s 2011 disability accessibility election pledges, which were set out in his August 19, 2011 letter to us, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/090220111.asp
We continue in our efforts to get the McGuinty Government to keep this election pledge. On Friday, June 1, 2012, the AODA Alliance wrote the two Ontario Government cabinet Ministers responsible to finalize the overdue Built Environment Accessibility Standard, to press for its enactment. This letter to Community and Social Services Minister John Milloy and Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Kathleen Wynne, set out below, raises five key issues:
1. We asked when the Government will be publicly posting a draft of the proposed Built Environment Accessibility Standard for public comment.
2. We asked the Government as soon as possible to release a summary of the intended contents of the proposed Built Environment Accessibility Standard, in advance of finalizing its precise legal language.
3. The Government plans to enact part of the new Built Environment Accessibility Standard in the form of amendments to the Ontario Building code. We asked the Government to commit that any new accessibility requirements to be added to the Ontario Building Code also be enacted as part of the enforceable Built Environment Accessibility Standard enacted under the AODA.
4. We asked the Government to include in the Built Environment Accessibility Standard, a requirement that when public sector organizations engage in downsizing of their buildings holdings, they give priority to closing inaccessible properties in favour of retaining more accessible properties.
5. The forthcoming Built Environment Accessibility Standard will not require retrofitting of any existing buildings that are not undergoing major renovations. We asked for a clear commitment now that as soon as the part of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard that addresses the sphere of the Ontario Building Code is enacted, the Government will immediately launch a prompt standards development process to develop a part of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard to deal with retrofitting of existing buildings that are not slated for major renovations.
We last wrote the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing for her plans for finalizing the Built Environment Accessibility Standard back on December 2, 2011. To see the AODA Alliance’s December 2, 2011 letter to the Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/12052011.asp
The minister’s response to that letter gave little detail. To read the Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister’s January 17, 2012 letter to the AODA Alliance, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/05042012.asp
For a chronology and summary of key events in the Government’s efforts at developing the Built Environment Accessibility Standard, and its earlier commitments on completing that project, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/07082011.asp
Send us your feedback. Write us at aodafeedback@gmail.com
*****
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
1929 Bayview Avenue
Toronto, Ontario M4G 3E8
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com Twitter: @aodaalliance
Visit: www.aodalliance.org
June 1, 2012
via email: john.milloy@ontario.ca; kathleen.wynne@ontario.ca
Hon. John Milloy, Minister
Community and Social Services
6th Floor, Hepburn Block
80 Grosvenor Street
Toronto, Ontario M7A 1E9
and
Hon. Kathleen Wynne, Minister
Municipal Affairs & Housing
17th Floor, College Park
777 Bay Street
Toronto, Ontario M5G 2E5
Re: Built Environment Accessibility Standard
We write to ask important questions concerning your Government’s work on developing the promised Build Environment Accessibility Standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. Both of you as ministers, and both of your ministries, are involved in the development of this important accessibility standard.
Minister Wynne’s January 17, 2012 letter to us gave very little in the way of specifics on the Government’s plans. Each of the issues we raise here appears to require policy directions from you as ministers.
We have been told that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing has responsibility for developing the part of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard that falls within the scope of the Ontario Building Code. We were also told that the Ministry of Community and Social Services has responsibility for developing the part of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard that deals with areas that the Building Code doesn’t cover, such as outdoor spaces. We understand that your Government is considering bringing forward two separate standards, one to address each of these parts, rather than one single standard.
We would welcome answers to the following issues:
1. We want to know when the Government will be publicly posting a draft of either or both of these two parts of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard, for public comment. The AODA requires that the Government post a proposed accessibility standard for public comment before it can enact it.
The Built Environment Accessibility Standard is long overdue. On June 1, 2010, the previous Community and Social Services Minister committed that the Built Environment Accessibility Standard and the other accessibility standards then under development would be enacted by the end of 2010. The Built Environment Accessibility Standard still remains to be enacted.
In the 2011 Ontario general election campaign, Premier McGuinty promised that this standard would be enacted “promptly.” That election took place nine months ago. We believe that “promptly” has already come and gone.
2. We ask the Government as soon as possible to release a summary of the intended contents of the two parts of the proposed Built Environment Accessibility Standard, in advance of finalizing its precise legal language. The Government commendably took a similar step in 2010 as it was finalizing the Integrated Accessibility Regulation. In making this request, we don’t want this to delay in any way the finalization of this standard. We are concerned that the Built Environment Accessibility Standard will be highly technical. It would therefore be very helpful for the Government to let the public know as soon as possible in non-technical language about the policy direction that the Government is considering heading.
3. We understand that the Government is planning to enact the part of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard that falls within the scope of the Ontario Building Code, by amending the Building Code itself. We have no objection to this, so long as the Government also enacts the very same requirements as an accessibility standard, passed under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. We urge this for four reasons:
First, we want to have access to the full enforcement/compliance regime that we won in the AODA. Unless these accessibility requirements for buildings are set out in an accessibility standard enacted under the AODA, we will have no access to those enforcement/compliance provisions.
Second, we want to have all the AODA’s protections of a review of these accessibility requirements every five years by a Standards Development Committee whose membership includes 50% representation of persons with disabilities. Third, we want the effectiveness of the entire Built Environment Accessibility Standard to be subject to the periodic Independent Review process that section 41 of the AODA requires. Fourth, we want the AODA’s protection that the accessibility standard cannot be altered without the rights of participation by the disability community that the AODA enshrines.
If these key building accessibility requirements are only enacted in the Building Code, but not in a parallel AODA accessibility standard, we will be unfairly denied all these entitlements and safeguards. We fought long and hard for those safeguards in the AODA. We do not want the Government through this process to, in effect, exempt from that future review the vital area of building accessibility that falls within the Building Code’s scope.
We see no downside to our proposal. Builders will not face conflicting requirements. This is because the same accessibility requirements will be enshrined both in the Building Code and the Built Environment Accessibility Standard.
The fact that the Building Code has its own compliance/enforcement regime doesn’t take away from the benefit of also having access to the AODA accessibility standard enforcement/compliance regime.
During the 2004-2005 debates in the Legislature over Bill 118, the proposed AODA, many Government statements about what would be achieved under that legislation focused on making buildings physically accessible. It is vital that the Government not now carve a large part of that field right out of the AODA.
The Building Code has historically lagged behind in the area of disability accessibility. Those responsible for keeping the Building Code up to date chronically did not do so in the disability context. That is what produced the pressing need for a Built Environment Accessibility Standard under the AODA. We don’t want to revert back to sole reliance on the failed regulatory regime that produced that longstanding and systemic deficiency in this area.
We therefore ask your Government to commit that any new accessibility requirements to be added to the Ontario Building Code also be enacted in an enforceable Built Environment Accessibility Standard enacted under the AODA.
4. We ask your Government to include in the Built Environment Accessibility Standard, a requirement that when public sector organizations engage in downsizing of their buildings holdings, they give priority to closing inaccessible properties in favour of retaining more accessible properties. For example, some school boards are closing some of their school buildings due to declining numbers of students. If a school board is considering closing some of its school buildings, the Built Environment Accessibility Standard should require wherever possible that the school board close schools that are more inaccessible, and keep open more accessible schools. It would be wrong, and a huge waste of public money, to close a school that has an elevator, and leave open a school that is only accessible via flights of stairs. The public sector should show this kind of leadership by not managing public infrastructure in a way that makes Ontario more inaccessible.
5. We seek a clear commitment now that as soon as the part of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard that addresses the sphere of the Ontario Building Code is enacted, the Government will immediately launch a prompt standards development process to develop a part of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard to deal with retrofitting of existing buildings that are not slated for major renovations.
When the Government first established the Built Environment Standards Development Committee, we understand that it only gave that Committee a mandate to develop accessibility proposals for new buildings or for major renovations of existing buildings. This raised serious concerns for persons with disabilities. Many if not most barriers in the built environment are in existing buildings which are not undergoing major renovations. The Built Environment Accessibility Standard provisions that are now under development will leave those barriers entirely intact. It will not require the removal of such barriers even if this can be readily achieved at little cost. That impedes the achievement of accessibility for many Ontarians with disabilities.
The AODA requires the Government to enact accessibility standards that will achieve a fully accessible Ontario by 2025. This includes achieving full accessibility of the built environment. The provisions of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard that are now under development will not be able to come close to achieving this, no matter how strong and effective they are, because they won’t require retrofit of any existing buildings that are not undergoing major renovations.
During 2004-2005 debates in the Legislature over the proposed AODA, the Government justified setting a long twenty-year deadline for achieving full accessibility in no small part because it would take that long to address the many current barriers in existing buildings. Yet, fully seven years into that twenty-year period, we have no requirements for retrofitting those buildings, if not undergoing a major renovation, and no such requirements under development.
It was clear during Second Reading debates in the Legislature on Bill 118, the proposed AODA, that your Government intended to address retrofitting of existing buildings to achieve accessibility. For example, on November 18, 2004, during Second Reading debates on bill 118, Khalil Ramal, Parliamentary Assistant to Citizenship Minister Marie Bountrogianni (the minister who was sponsoring that bill), described tangible results that we should expect:
“If passed, this legislation would make a real difference in the lives of people with disabilities….a parent who uses a wheelchair and attends a school play could sit in the main seating area to watch his or her children perform; a teenager who uses an ambulatory device could take a regular bus with a friend to go to a movie at the local mall; or an elderly patient who has diminished vision and uses a scooter could make his way into a medical building through a ramp and an automatic door that are clearly marked with large print signs and then take an elevator with voice commands and a lowered button panel as he goes to have an X ray.”
Similarly, on that same day, Ms. Wynne, you said: “So we need to make sure that there’s access for children in every part of this province to the schools that they need to go to, to the colleges, to the universities. That’s a critical piece of this because we have got to educate the whole province, and in order to do that, we’ve got to make sure that students can get to those institutions of learning.”
Your Government committed in July 2009 to address barriers in existing buildings through the standards development process after it completes the first round of development of the Built Environment Accessibility Standard. The McGuinty Government commitment on the future development of accessibility standards to address retrofits of existing buildings is available at http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/07242009.asp
We want the Government to let us know what specific concrete steps it will undertake to that end, and when they will be taken.
As always, we are eager to do whatever we can to assist. We are pleased to discuss them at any time. These steps are important if Ontario is to get back on schedule for achieving full accessibility by 2025.
Sincerely,
David Lepofsky, CM, O. Ont.
Chair, AODA Alliance
cc: Premier Dalton McGuinty, fax (416) 325-3745, dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org
Marguerite Rappolt, Deputy Minister, Community & Social Services, fax (416) 325-5240, marg.rappolt@ontario.ca
Ellen Waxman, Assistant Deputy Minister for the Accessibility Directorate, Ministry of Community and Social Services, fax (416) 325-9620, ellen.waxman@ontario.ca
William Forward, Deputy Minister, Municipal Affairs & Housing, william.forward@ontario.ca
Elizabeth Harding, Assistant Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Municipal Services Division, liz.harding@ontario.ca
Brenda Lewis, Director, Building and Development Branch, Municipal Services Division, Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Brenda.Lewis@ontario.ca
To sign up for or unsubscribe from AODA Alliance e-mail updates write to aodafeedback@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter and get others to! Twitter.com/aodaalliance
Learn more at: www.aodaalliance.org
UNITED FOR A BARRIER-FREE ONTARIO

How to Get Quick Approval for Certain Disability Claims

The Social Security Administration provides long-term disability benefits to U.S. workers who are unable to work for more than 12 months due to a physical, mental or emotional medical condition.
Although evaluating each case might take several months or even years, Social Security can fast-track the process for some cases if they fall under its Compassionate Allowances Program.
This is an initiative designed to streamline the process so that applicants can quickly receive benefits for conditions that are known to cause severe or life-threatening disabilities.

How it Works

The Social Security Administration (SSA) introduced the Compassionate Allowances Program in 2008 with about 50 diseases and conditions, including certain cancers, adult brain disorders and immune system conditions. Today, the list includes a little more than 100 conditions, and by the summer of 2012 it is expected to grow to 165.
“These are diseases that are so severe that we do not need to obtain the applicant’s complete work history in order to make a decision, and therefore the process is quicker,” said Diana Varela, a spokesperson for the agency in Washington DC.
SSA is constantly evaluating new conditions to add to the list. You can see most updated version of the diseases and conditions in the Compassionate Allowances Program on the SSA website.

How to Apply

The process to apply for the Compassionate Allowances Program is the same as applying for general disability benefits. However, if the SSA determines that a condition qualifies for the Compassionate Allowances Program, the approval process is much quicker.
You can apply for disability benefits online without having to go to a Social Security office. Generally, you will need to provide the following information:

• General information such as your name, date of birth, and Social Security number, as well as those of your spouse and underage children. Also, you need to provide your bank account information and an additional contact in case you cannot be reached.
• Medical information such as name, address and telephone numbers of doctors, clinics and hospitals where you receive treatment, as well as your employer’s information. Also, the name of the medicines you have taken and medical history, among other things.

How to Get More Information

To find out more information about Social Security benefits visit SocialSecurity.gov or call (800) 772-1213.
Source: http://blog.usa.gov/post/24194295514/how-to-get-quick-approval-for-certain-disability-claims

HHS announces availability of funding to help older adults, people with disabilities access long-term services and supports and thrive in their communities

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 31, 2012

Contact: HHS Press Office 202-690-6343

HHS announces availability of funding to help older adults, people with disabilities access long-term services and supports and thrive in their communities

Veterans’ Health Administration to partner in this effort, offer $27 million in additional funding for similar services to veterans

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced a new $25 million funding opportunity made possible by the Affordable Care Act to help states strengthen and expand their ability to help seniors and people with disabilities access home and community-based long-term services and supports.  Over the next one to three years, funding will support Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRCs) in nearly every state.
Each year, more seniors, people with disabilities and their families are confronted with often challenging decisions about how to obtain the long-term services and supports they need.  Choices range from care in their home to care in a nursing home; social supports for daily living to home health care; transportation to physical therapy to name a few.  ADRCs will make it easier for people to learn about and access the services that are available in their communities and best meet their needs.
“We are pleased to make it easier for Americans to get the care and support they need where they need it,” said Secretary Sebelius. “This opportunity, supported by the new health care law, will help states continue to improve their long-term service and support systems.”
The initiative, known as the Aging and Disability Resource Center Program, is established through a partnership between the Administration for Community Living (ACL), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
The VHA will make an additional $27 million available over 3 years in ADRC-funded states through the VA Medical Centers. This funding will increase access to home and community-based services for veterans through ADRC programs.
"Veterans with disabilities are increasingly looking for services that help them remain in their own homes with their loved ones," said VA Under Secretary for Health Robert A. Petzel.  "Today's announcement offers one more opportunity for VA to continue to thank our Veterans by providing them support in a setting of their choice, in this case their own home."
The ADRC Program will help state agencies administer and better coordinate state and federal long-term service and support programs for older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans with disabilities.  Approximately eight states will be competitively selected to accelerate the development over a three-year period of the creation of single entry point models, which provides one-on-one options counseling to streamline the intake and eligibility determination processes for consumers accessing long-term service and support programs.
Kathy Greenlee, ACL’s administrator and assistant secretary for aging, said, “Options counseling is an important tool that can provide custom-tailored advice about all the services available in a person’s community, reducing unnecessary time and energy spent searching for answers in a variety of places.”
“We want these programs to serve as high-performing ‘one-stop shop’ models across the country,” said CMS’ Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.
In addition to accelerating activities in the eight states selected, funding will be provided by ACL to up to 40 states next year to support their current ADRC programs.  This will help them develop a sustainable infrastructure that is critical to ensuring ongoing coordinated access to services.
The announcement made today is part of the Obama administration’s long-standing commitment to ensure that seniors, people with disabilities, and those living with chronic illness have the necessary services and supports to stay in their own homes when they wish to do so.  Last month, Secretary Sebelius announced the creation of the new ACL, bringing together key HHS offices dedicated to improving the lives of Americans with functional needs into one coordinated, stronger entity. This new agency, which acts as a key partner in today’s announcement, will work on increasing access to community supports and achieving full community participation for seniors and people with disabilities.  For more information on the Administration for Community Living visit: http://www.hhs.gov/acl/.
More information about Funding Opportunity Numbers HHS-2012-ACL-RO-1210 and HHS-2012-ACL-DR-1213may be found on:
ACL - http://www.hhs.gov/acl/
CMS - http://www.medicaid.gov/Medicaid-CHIP-Program-Information/By-Topics/Long-Term-Services-and-Support/Balancing/Balancing-Incentive-Program.html