Bad news start to new year for those with disabilities

Here are some recent headlines that kick 2015 off with some bad news. But the last item provides some light amongst the darkness.

• South Korean Sea Salt Harvested by Slaves with Disabilities
  From the report:

  Five times during the last decade, revelations of slavery involving the disabled have emerged. Kim’s case prompted a nationwide government probe of thousands of farms and disabled facilities that found more than 100 workers who’d received no, or scant, pay.

• Four men with disabilities removed from dilapidated bunkhouse exploited for labor
  In South Carolina, not South Korea:

  The bunkhouse’s owner, Paul Byrd, of Texas, told The Times that Mr. Jones had worked for years with no vacation and was given $50 a week to spend at Walmart. He said that neither Mr. Jones nor any of his colleagues had bank accounts because they had no identification, and that he kept Mr. Jones’s savings of about $6,000 in an envelope.

• Pelham, AL police audiotaped mocking students with intellectual and developmental disabilities
• An oasis of care for the disabled in Louisville, Kentucky
  A light amongst the darkness:

  For years, parents like Ms. Kramer have struggled to find compassionate health care for their adult children with profound disability, among the most medically underserved populations in the country. They are told their children are not welcome: too disruptive in the waiting room, too long in the examining room — beyond the abilities of doctors who have no experience with intellectual disability.

  * * *

  Now, though, Ms. Kramer has a place to go.

  * * *

  Off they go into the wintry Kentucky rain, bound for refuge on the other side of Louisville: the Lee Specialty Clinic, one of the very few free-standing facilities designed exclusively to provide medical and dental treatment — and a sense of welcome — to people with intellectual disability.

These items are from the News page, something that had a good run and then fell off for most of 2014. We’ll see if we can’t keep it more regularly posted in 2015. You can help with that by sending me any news of note to mleach@downsyndromeprenataltesting.com.