Olmstead AMA Video 2

Speaker: Talley Wells

Talley Wells: Hi everybody, this is Talley Wells, I am the Executive Director of the North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities and it is June of 2022, which means we are at the anniversary of the Olmstead Decision. Olmstead Decision was given by the court Justice Ginsburg in June of 1999. So we are 23 years later and Olmstead is the most important United States Supreme Court decision for people with disabilities. So today's question is how does the Olmstead Decision influence funding and how and when will changes be implemented? So, first, let's talk about what the Olmstead Decision is and then let's talk about funding. So, the Olmstead Decision is the Brown v Board of Education Decision for people with disabilities and Brown V Board of Education. The Supreme Court said that it was discrimination and segregation for African American children be forced to go to separate schools. It was segregation because everyone there obviously were sent to these schools based on their race. The Olmstead Decision said that individuals who were required in the past and up to the present to go into institutions to receive services because they had a mental health disability or developmental disability or a physical disability that maybe or a cognitive disability that maybe they receive services in the nursing home. But that's segregation because you're requiring everyone with the same characteristic like you were requiring black children to go to schools that were just for black children, you're requiring individuals with disabilities to go to these institutions where everybody there who is getting services are people with disabilities. So the Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg said that's segregation. She also said it was discrimination because people have a tendency to think that someone who's in an institution is lesser, human being, lesser than themselves and because we are separating them, we're discriminating against them by having them not be part of the typical society, not being part of the typical workforce, not being part of going to school, not being part of the religious communities that exist in the community, the town halls et cetera by separating them from society. That's discrimination. So the U.S. Supreme Court said under the Americans With Disabilities Act, states needed to move from providing services and institutions to providing services to individuals with disabilities in the community when the state is funding the services. And essentially, the court said that the states could come up with an effective working plan with reasonably paced moving waiting list, but that was 23 years ago. Now, we are in 2022 and so yes, funding decisions need to follow at Olmstead requires that we are providing services for people with disabilities more and more and more in the community State of North Carolina is committed to developing an Olmstead plan. It's committed to providing more and more services in the community, but of course, we in the advocacy and disability community, believe 23 years is a long time and now is when those services need to exist in the community and less and less in institutions. One of the things that's really exciting that's happening right now is that this state is going through Medicaid transformation Tailored Plans and there's going to be a lot of pain and upheaval through this transition, but it also means that the state is committed to something called 1915(i) In 1915(i) means that the state is going to have an entitlement, It's basically a box that they're checking in 1915(i) that will say that if you have a developmental disability and you have Medicaid, that you will be entitled to certain services, including community living, supports employment. And we're hoping that and expecting that this will provide a lot more services for people with developmental disabilities, but we still have a 15,000 person waiting list. We still have a direct support professional workforce shortage. We still have situations where direct support professionals actually get paid more when they're providing services and institutions and intermediate care facilities than when they're providing services for our Innovations Waiver. So we still have a long way to go to make sure that that funding is right sized and that we really are concentrated on living out the vision of Olmstead because we know Olmstead is really carrying out that promise that Thomas Jefferson and our Founding Fathers made when they said that all of us would have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and that means with the Olmstead case that people have the right to live full and meaningful lives in the community. Thank you!