SchaferAutismReport: Parents of Special-Needs Children Divided Over Palin's Promise to Help

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Monday, September 8, 2008

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Vol. 12 No. 131p

In This Issue:

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POLITICS

Parents of Special-Needs Children Divided Over Palin's Promise to Help

Autism Dad In Convention Spotlight

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PEOPLE

Father and Son Rescued After Being Swept Out To Sea in Florida

Missing Autistic Teen Found

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ADVOCACY

Legislature Approves 90% of Blue Ribbon Commission Bills

As Autism Cases Grow In Ore., New Laws May Arise

FINANCE

Having A Problem Getting The Care You Need From your Health Plan in

Calif?

RESEARCH

Gender-Selective Toxicity of Thimerosal: Abstract

COMMENTARY

Autism and Vaccines: Why Bad Logic Trumps Science

More On the New Study Refuting Wakefield Findings of Measles Virus In Gut

of Autistic Children

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POLITICS

Parents of Special-Needs Children Divided Over Palin's Promise to Help

By Steinhauer and Amy Harmon tinyurl.com/5n8dmq

Amid the barbs and hockey banter Wednesday

night, Gov. Palin directed an emotional appeal to the hearts of

millions of parents with children who have special needs, promising they

would " have a friend and advocate in the White House " in a

McCain-Palin administration. As she spoke, the camera panned to her baby,

Trig, who has Down syndrome.

Ms. Palin's offer of friendship sparked hope

in many parents, advocates and lawyers as the often-marginalized subject of

disabilities rights took center stage. " We need one, that's for

sure, " wrote one blogger, Rhymerchick, a Phoenix mother with an

autistic child, adding, " I am tempted to vote for them just because of

that promise. "

In animated debates in blogs, chat rooms and

classrooms across America, others wondered what such advocacy would entail.

But the governor offered no details, and Comella, her spokeswoman,

would not elaborate on what Ms. Palin would seek to accomplish for disabled

children as vice president. " She is going to be an advocate in the

White House on multiple levels, " Ms. Comella said in an e-mail message

Friday, " because she understands the issue, what's needed and what

works. "

To those in Alaska who work with children

with special needs, Ms.

Palin's pronouncement was surprising; the

disabled have not been a centerpiece of Ms. Palin's 20-months in office or

any of her campaigns for office.

She signed legislation that would increase

financing for children in Alaska with special needs — though she was not

involved in its development — yet that state is the subject of two lawsuits

that allege inadequate services and financing for those children,

particularly those with autism.

" I never heard Governor Palin say as

governor, `You have an advocate in Juneau,' " said Sonja Kerr, a

lawyer specializing in disability law in Anchorage.

What lawyers, advocates and parents are

seeking now, Ms. Kerr said, is to learn. " What is behind the

announcement? " she said. " An advocate is someone who pleads

another's cause, so what is her plea going to be? To get rid of Medicaid

wait lists so we can get kids services? To quickly pass the American with

Disabilities restoration act? That is what I haven't heard. "

Alaska, both by dint of its sparse

population and lack of resources, has often struggled to provide care and

educational services for its roughly 18,000 children with physical and

emotional disabilities.

For years the state shipped thousands of

children out of state for mental health services, a problem so acute that

Ms. Palin's predecessor created a program intended solely to get enough

services in the state to bring the children back; from 2004 to 2007 the

number of children sent out of state fell to 300 from about 600.

While the state made a decision to close

down mental health institutions in the 1990s, it has been unable to provide

alternative services for children with mental health issues.

The rural makeup of the state outside

Anchorage (where half the population resides) makes services all the more

difficult.

" The reason they have so many problems

is lack of resources, " said Mayerson, a lawyer who represents

children with autism in 30 states. " We once went to Kodiak Island,

where there are probably more bears than people, to see a kid with autism

who needed a behavioral consultant. They literally have to fly these people

in on float planes. So I can't exactly fault a school system for not having

a speech therapist, but I do fault the district for not bringing them in or

sending children out of the district for those resources. "

Ms. Palin recently signed legislation that

rewrote the state's school financing formulas, in the process dramatically

increasing the budget for school districts that serve children with extreme

special needs.

" She had no role whatsoever " in

the development of the legislation, said its author, Representative Mike

Hawker, a Republican. " Her role was signing. She recognized the

importance of what we did and endorsed it. "

Democrats have pointed, sometimes correctly,

sometimes erroneously, to items in the state budget for the disabled that

Ms. Palin cut.

According to state documents, she cut the

state's Special Olympics budget in half.

The central concern of many parents with

children who have special needs is the financing to fulfill the decades-old

federal mandate requiring public schools to offer educational services to

their children — or pay for them in nonpublic school settings.

The law, the Individuals with Disabilities

Education Act, passed in 1975 with bipartisan support, called for the

federal government to pick up 40 percent of the state cost of teaching

children with special needs. The federal government pays less than half

that, though more under the Bush administration than under President Clinton.

Mr. McCain voted to reauthorize the law, but

voted against a measure, with nearly every other member of his party, to

increase financing through a reduction in tax cuts for the wealthy. Mr.

McCain has been a proponent of school vouchers, denounced by many advocates

for children with special needs as draining public money away from special

education programs; Ms. Palin is a school-choice advocate, her spokeswoman

said.

Mr. McCain also opposes proposed federal

legislation that would help pay for states to move people with special

needs from state institutions into other living arrangements, but he has

said he supports updating the Americans with Disabilities Act to offer more

protections.

Ms. Comella, Ms. Palin's spokeswoman, would

not elaborate on Ms. Palin's decision to make special needs children a

centerpiece of her acceptance speech. But Ms. Palin's personal appeal held

enormous emotional pull for parents who rarely see a public official who

can personally identify with the same parental challenges as they do.

Ms. Palin's effort to rally parents of

children with disabilities has also prompted reaction among those who fear

that her idea of advocacy might really mean preventing abortions of fetuses

with Down syndrome, rather than lobbying for the early medical and

developmental assistance that is so crucial to their children's well-being.

New technology is enabling more women to

learn in earlier stages of pregnancy whether their fetus is affected by

Down syndrome. About 90 percent choose to terminate pregnancies. Parents of

children with disabilities have sought to educate prospective parents on

the emotional rewards of having children like their own. But many say they

know better than anyone else how crucial it is that they be given a choice.

" Surely she understands that it can be

dark and difficult sometimes, " lynn Lester, whose daughter has

Down syndrome, wrote on her blog this week about Ms. Palin. " Having

been in the same position, I simply do not understand the desire to

legislate (rather than educate) women into making better choices. "

Iannone, a Democrat and mother of

le, 3, who has Down syndrome, said that she was so thrilled to see

Trig on stage that she had to remind herself: " I am a liberal. I am a

liberal. I am a liberal. " Ms. Palin, she said, " has a child with

a disability, but that doesn't mean her party is disability friendly. "

The last time a candidate explicitly

appealed to families of the disabled at a national convention, advocates

said, was 20 years ago, when the presidential nominee, H. W. Bush,

endorsed the Americans with Disabilities Act — and got a 10 percentage

point bump among voters who identified themselves as having disabilities,

according to Imparato, president of the American Association of

People with Disabilities, a lobbying group.

On Thursday, Mr. Imparato said he and other

advocates received an e-mail message from Senator Barack Obama's campaign

outlining the disabilities issues that the Democrats had addressed at their

convention.

" They certainly must be aware of the

effect Palin is having on this community, " Mr. Imparato said.

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