Broadcast Coverage
ABC News recently broadcast three reports in conjunction with the USA Today series. Summaries appear below. Expanded ABC News coverage is available online.
A week after his first birthday, Bobby Hartwell's parents dropped him off at the Colorado State Home and Training School for Mental Defectives northwest of Denver.
He never saw them again.
For the next 30 years, Hartwell, who has cerebral palsy and mental retardation, lived at the school and at a nursing home. In 1980, Wade Blank, a preacher and activist for the disabled, got Hartwell out, helped him get public assistance and a home, and taught him to live on his own.
Now, at 57, Hartwell may lose it all, starting with his apartment - because he can't prove he's a U.S. citizen.
Hartwell's dilemma is the result of new rules - a 2006 Colorado law, federal requirements in the 2006 Deficit Reduction Act, and 2004 homeland security legislation - aimed at thwarting terrorists and barring public benefits for undocumented residents.
from Kathryn Wyeth
Three years ago, a 6-year-old Seattle girl called Ashley, who had severe disabilities, was, at her parents' request, given a medical treatment called "growth attenuation" to prevent her growing. She had her uterus removed, had surgery on her breasts so they would not develop and was given hormone treatment. She is now known by the nickname her parents gave her -- Pillow Angel.
The case of Ashley hit the media in January after publication of an article in a medical journal about her treatment. It reappeared in the news recently because of the admission by Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center that the procedures its doctors had performed to stop Ashley from growing and reaching sexual maturity violated state law. In Canada (as in Australia), a child can be sterilized only with the consent of a court.
At the time of the initial publicity about growth attenuation, Ashley's parents wrote on their blog: "In our opinion only parents of special needs children are in a position to fully relate to this topic. Unless you are living the experience, you are speculating and you have no clue what it is like to be the bedridden child or their caregivers."
I did live the experience. I lived it not as a parent or caregiver but as a bed-ridden growth-attenuated child. My life story is the reverse of Ashley's.
NEW YORK -- As the huge baby boomer generation surges toward retirement age, an unsettling issue grows ever more pressing: finding the work force to tend to the millions of boomers who will someday need ongoing care because of physical and mental frailties.
Alarm is spreading across the health care sector in the face of stark demographics.
By 2030, almost one in five Michigan residents will be age 65 or older. That may seem like a long way off, but if you can remember the last time the Tigers won the World Series, a) you'd have to agree that 23 years can go by pretty quickly and b) chances are pretty good that, come 2030, you are going to be in or approaching the over-65 crowd.
If that's still not you, consider the likelihood that you may have to take responsibility for an older person who is no longer capable of independent living. Through no fault of their own, many elderly people who were dependably there for others most of their lives will become dependent -- on their adult children, other relatives, in-home helpers and nursing homes. Thousands of such situations now exist in Michigan, and the numbers will grow dramatically, according to a report in Sunday's Free Press, straining families, finances and the health care system.
It was 2 a.m., the room was dark and Doris Wackerle, rising from the haze of sleep, didn't notice the bedside chair as she headed for the bathroom.
The 85-year-old stumbled, fell over the chair and onto the floor.Wackerle crawled to the phone and roused her daughter, Peggy Trabalka, who lived nearby. Trabalka arrived to find her mother shaken, not hurt. But she realized that her mother's time in an independent-living center in Highland Township was nearing its end.
millerj@publicityworkspr.com. WHERE: The Skyline Club 2000 Town Center, Suite 2800 Southfield, Michigan, 48075 248.350.9898 www.theskylineclub.com DIRECTIONS: I-75: 1-75 south to westbound 1-696. Exit Evergreen Road and turn left (south) on Evergreen, and right at first light past Civic Center Drive (Southfield Town Center entrance). Enter 2000 parking structure and go up and around for visitor parking on the third level.
