Advocates: Group home visits must resume
Restarting of visitations, day hab programs vital
As many aspects of society are reopening amid the COVID-19 pandemic, advocates are urging New York state leaders to address the needs of individuals with disabilities.
Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh (R,C,IBallston) joined with Assemblywoman Melissa Miller (R,C,I-Atlantic Beach) and Assemblyman Ed Ra (R-Franklin Square) on a Monday morning Zoom call press conference meant to encourage the resumption of visitation and home visits for those in group homes as well as the reopening of day habilitation programs.
“New York is gradually reopening, but this group, for some reason, has been forgotten about. These individuals have been locked in since March. No family contact, no outings,” Miller said at the start of the discussion. “Unlike the rest of us, they don’t understand fully why this is happening.
“They’re losing skills. They’re becoming depressed. They’re withdrawing. They deserve to be able to be with their families again. They deserve to go out into their programs. Their mental health directly affects their physical health,
and this is likely going to have long term detrimental effects.
“We need this to unpause for this population.”
Walsh agreed that agencies should be allowed to resume these practices for individuals with disabilities and their families.
“The longer that this goes on, I think the harder it’s going to be and the more problems we’re going to have long term,” she said. “As the governor has said many times ‘We need to be safe. We need to be smart.’ I think that there’s a way to do this with appropriate guidance and common sense and the cooperation of everyone, that we can get this started again.
“It’s time. It’s more than time to do it.”
Ra expressed the importance of reuniting families too.
“We have to give the opportunity for people to see their loved ones, in a safe way,” he said. “We can find ways to do this safely.”
While other activities are being permitted to take place again in the state’s phased reopening process, “This population is certainly, now, getting left behind a bit,” he said.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, who participated in Monday’s call as well, said it doesn’t seem that New York state is taking seriously it’s obligation to support its citizens with disabilities.
“For the last 100 days, sadly, the state of New York has treated the intellectual and developmental disability population - our community, our neighbors, our loved ones - as some monolithic afterthought,” he said.
The conversation also included New Yorkers who are directly affected by this situation, such as group home resident Robyn Lipschutz of Long Island.
“I feel like we’re in a jail cell,” Lipschutz said, explaining how she and her peers have not been allowed to experience the outside world in months.
“This is very unfair to the people who live in group homes,” she continued. “We want to be free and explore the world. This is not the life we want to live.”
Lipschutz concluded with the statement: “Please Governor Cuomo, let us out of this jail that you people have put me in.”
Additionally, some parents of group home residents spoke out during the press conference, including Mary Ann Allen, executive director of the Capital Regionbased Wildwood Programs.
Allen urges that the state government either develop a plan as it has for other sectors of society, or allow organizations like Wildwood to create the plan themselves.
On a personal level, Allen is concerned about her son, who resides in a group home. Regarding the no visitation policy, “He has no idea why I’m not coming anymore,” she said, sharing that her son has recently displayed signs of regression. “And he’s not an aberration.
“He is the story of everybody who is in these residences. They deserve to have a plan in place to enable them to return to their lives. They are human beings.”