Case seeks to make supported homes for disabled declared a right
A ground- breaking human rights case set to begin today could help hundreds of Nova Scotians with disabilities move out of institutions and into small group homes, says a lawyer who has led a three-year-long effort to bring the cases before a formal hearing.
Vince Calderhead will argue the Department of Community Services is breaking the Human Rights Act by housing 45-year-old Joseph Delaney and 46-year-old Beth Maclean in a hospital-like, institutional setting.
If their cases succeed, he says, it may open the door to others who want to make the shift to supported housing. It could also set a precedent that could assist in similar human rights actions on behalf of people with disabilities in other provinces, he says.
The province says there were about 504 people awaiting some form of support from the Department of Community Services as of last Thursday, and 1,024 people awaiting a transfer to a different housing option or location.
“It raises the profoundly important question for people with disabilities of whether they too are entitled to receive the supports they need to live in the community immediately and as a right,” Calderhead said in an interview.
The opening arguments of the Nova Scotia human rights board of inquiry begin at a local hotel in Halifax today and continue through the month and into March.
The hearing is expected to include testimony from Maclean and from Delaney’s advocate, his sister Tammy Delaney.
It will also hear from Olga Cain about the story of her sister, Sheila Livingstone, a woman with disabilities who died while the case wound its way through various delays. The Disability Rights Coalition is an intervenor in the process.
Maclean’s story is laid out in the complaint while Delaney – who cannot speak – had a complaint prepared by his mother.
Maclean described her life at the Emerald Hall unit of the Nova Scotia Hospital and her years at a facility in the Annapolis Valley as isolating.
“I can’t leave the hospital when I want to. I only leave when a staff member happens to be free to go with me and a vehicle is available for a trip to a mall or somewhere, maybe twice a week,” she said in the legal document.
Through the years she’s repeatedly asked the Department of Community Services for “a life in a home, on a street or in a neighbourhood,” stating she could live outside of the hospital if supports such were provided such as cooking and shopping, says the complaint.
“I have very little of my own money and so I cannot pay for supports that I need to live in the community,” she said.
She and Delaney say the institutions are settings where large groups of people were housed in circumstances that “bore little or no resemblance to normal life in a family home, in a community.”
Delaney’s complaint was prepared by his mother, Susan Lattie, and it says he’s a person with intellectual disabilities, epilepsy, hypothyroidism and other health conditions — but that he can live in the community if proper support is provided.
Lattie, who has died since the 2014 complaint was launched, wrote that Delaney was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2010, and as a result of having his classification changed hasn’t been able to find a spot back in the community in a small options home.
The board of inquiry chairperson is J. Walter Thompson.