Showing posts with label learning disability. Show all posts

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio –- Local students with disabilities and learning difficulties will showcase their artistic talents during a public art exhibit.

The Exceptional Arts Exhibition will be on display May 22-31 at the Heights Libraries main branch, 2345 Lee Road

"A lot of the art is beautiful. It's awe-inspiring," said Lisa Hunt, of Reaching Heights, the nonprofit agency the organized the event. "It's about celebrating the beauty and the uniqueness of your child."
Glenn Odenbrett's daughter's work will be among the more than 40 pieces featured in the exhibit.
"She's very passionate about art and I'm very proud of her," Odenbrett said about his daughter, who is a high school senior. "It's great that Reaching Heights is partnering with the school district to feature students who may not have a chance to be featured in other ways."

"We need to change the negative narrative and stigma often surrounding learning differences and disabilities," Hunt said. "It is about tolerance and it is about understanding a different way of life."Hunt, who also is the parent of one of the approximately 18 percent of CH-UH students with special needs, said the exhibit was her idea.

She said a lot of resources and support groups for parents of children with disabilities focus on what the children can't do. But this exhibit highlights what they can.
"We're shining a light on these children and giving them the opportunity with their parents to celebrate a can-do spirit around the arts," Hunt said. "If we can learn to support our children and celebrate their uniqueness, I think they will have a lot more opportunities open to them. We have to support who we are, however different that may be."

Marilyn Hershman, who has a fourth-grade son with a learning disability, said the exhibit is great for the students.

"For a lot of these kids with learning differences and disabilities, art is their thing, because anybody can do art. You can take a wheelchair and drive it through some paint and that's art," she said. "This is about these kids just having their day and celebrating them."

The artists and their art teachers will co-host an opening reception from 4-7:30 pm. May 22. There will be refreshments and the Cleveland Heights High Lady Barber Shoppers will perform. The event is free and open to the public.

Read more at Cleveland

http://www.cleveland.com/cleveland-heights/index.ssf/2014/05/art_exhibit_highlights_work_by.html

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By SAM HANANEL

— Feb. 17, 2014 10:42 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans with intellectual or developmental disabilities remain shut out of the workforce, despite changing attitudes and billions spent on government programs to help them. Even when they find work, it's often part time, in a dead-end job or for pay well below the minimum wage.

Employment is seen as crucial for improving the quality of life for people with these disabilities and considered a benchmark for measuring the success of special education programs. Yet the jobs picture is as bleak now it was more than a decade ago.

Only 44 percent of intellectually disabled adults are currently in the labor force, either employed or looking for work, while just 34 percent are actually working, according to a survey by Special Olympics and conducted by Gallup and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. That compares with 83 percent of nondisabled, working-age adults who are in the workforce.

"The needle has not changed in more than four decades," said Gary Siperstein, professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of the authors of the study. "We just can't move the barometer. And we've invested a lot of resources with lots of good programs around the country."

Read the full article at Big Story

(http://bigstory.ap.org/article/intellectually-disabled-struggling-find-work)

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Practical and communist

“95% of orphans in China have special needs,” quotes James Palmer from one of his sources. They are disposed of by their parents who, in China, mostly are allowed only one child. Ideally that should be a boy –a healthy one. Most handicapped have little access to education, and, so Palmer's argument, there’s a pervasive lack of empathy for their struggle.

Famously, during the Beijing Para-Olympics 2008, China’s handicapped were briefly paraded and showcased to the world’s media. China eventually raked in 211 medals, including 89 gold. That was more than Great Britain and the United States combined (which ranked #2 and #3 in the medal count). Critics said it was largely due to a nationwide Soviet-style program to identify and domesticate an army of disabled athletes ready to win the crude metals for the glory of their motherland.

Read the full article at Big Think

(http://bigthink.com/dragons-and-pandas/how-chinas-60-million-disabled-are-left-behind)

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By Nadine Kalinauskas | Good News – Tue, 26 Nov, 2013

A man from Leeds has invented a dog-controlled washing machine.

The "Woof to Wash" machine has a bark-activated "on" switch. A special "paw" button allows the pooch to easily open and close the machine's door.

The inventor, John Middleton of U.K. laundry company JTM, intends for the "Woof to Wash" machine to make laundry an easier task for people living with disabilities by letting them delegate the trickier parts of the job to support dogs who have been trained to load and empty the machines.

Read the whole article at Yahoo News

(http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/good-news/woof-wash-laundry-machine-lets-dogs-help-people-173054560.html)

Population Distribution

56.7 million

Number of people with a disability living in the United States in 2010. They represented 19 percent of the civilian noninstitutionalized population. Disabilities include, for instance, having difficulty seeing, hearing, having speech understood, walking, bathing, dressing, eating, preparing meals, going outside the home, or doing housework, having Alzheimer's, dementia, autism, cerebral palsy, or dyslexia, and being frequently depressed or anxious.

By age —

8 percent of children under 15 had disabilities.
21 percent of people 15 and older had disabilities.
17 percent of people 21 to 64 had disabilities.
50 percent of adults 65 and older had disabilities.

Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010 <www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

20%

Percentage of females with a disability, compared with 17 percent of males.
Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010 <www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

Where They Live

19%

Percent of the civilian noninstitutionalized population in West Virginia with a disability ─ the highest rate of any state in the nation. Utah, at 9 percent, had the lowest rate.
Source: 2011 American Community Survey, Table R1810 <http://factfinder2.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/11_1YR/R1810.US01PRF>

Specific Disabilities

7.6 million

Number of people 15 and older who had a hearing difficulty. Among people 65 and older, 4 million had difficulty hearing.
Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010 <www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

8.1 million

Number of people 15 and older with a vision difficulty.
Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010 <www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

30.6 million

Number of people 15 and older who had difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010 <www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

3.6 million

Number of people 15 and older who used a wheelchair to assist with mobility. This compares with 11.6 million people who used a cane, crutches or walker.
Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010 <www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

2.4 million

Number of people 15 and older who had Alzheimer's disease, senility or dementia.
Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010
<www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

12.0 million

Number of people 15 and older who required the assistance of others in order to perform one or more activities of daily living or instrumental activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing, doing housework, and preparing meals.
Source: Americans with Disabilities: 2010 <www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf>

Read the full article at Census

No review board into early deaths of patients with learning disabilities

Ministers refuse to implement inquiry recommendation for a national body to investigate 1,200 premature deaths in the NHS

Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor / guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 July 201

Ministers have refused to create a national body to investigate the 1,200 premature deaths a year of patients with learning disabilities in the NHS – a key recommendation of a three-year confidential inquiry – drawing fire from campaigners and the government's own researchers.

The confidential inquiry, set up at the end of the last Labour government, found that patients with a learning disability experience delays in diagnosis, delays in treatment, lack of basic care and poor communication by doctors and nurses.

Carried out by Bristol University academics and funded by the Department of Health, the inquiry "highlighted the unacceptable situation in which people with learning disabilities die, on average, 16 years sooner than people without learning disabilities". Almost two-fifths – 37% – of deaths of people with a learning disability were due to them not getting the right care.

Read more at the Guardian

By: Michael Buchanan

Published March 19, 2013

People with learning disabilities die on average 16 years earlier than they should, due to NHS failings, according to official research.

The Department of Health, which commissioned the work, says this is unacceptable.

The deaths occur due to delays or problems investigating, diagnosing and treating illnesses.

The charity Mencap estimates 1,200 people with learning disabilities under NHS care die needlessly each year.

Avoidable deaths

The Bristol University researchers who carried out the work looked at all deaths over a two-year period at five primary care trust areas in the south-west of England.

This included the deaths of 233 adults and 14 children with learning disabilities and 58 adults without learning disabilities.

And it revealed that people with learning disabilities were more likely to have a premature death than those in the general population.

“Start Quote

A scandal of avoidable deaths on the scale of Mid-Staffs takes place every year for people with a learning disability in the NHS”

Jan TregellesMencap's acting chief executive

Women with learning disabilities died on average 20 years earlier than other women. Men with learning disabilities died 13 years sooner.

One of the researchers, Dr Pauline Heslop, said: "These are shocking findings and must serve as a wake-up call to all of us that action is urgently required.

"This report highlights the unacceptable situation in which people with learning disabilities are dying, on average, more than 16 years sooner than anyone else.

"The cause of their premature deaths appears to be because the NHS is not being provided equitably to everyone based on need."

Art exhibit highlights work by students with disabilities, learning difficulties (video, photo gallery)