Medical Motherhood’s news round up
Snippets of news and opinion from outlets around the world. Click the links for the full story.
• From Oregon Public Broadcasting: “‘Could we have done something more?’ Bend school shooting spotlights pressures on families of children with special needs”
[…]The shooting has rattled the city’s sense of safety and resurfaced a long-simmering debate on how to prevent gun tragedies. But those working in the special needs community say it also underscores broader failures, and many wonder if the tragedy could have been prevented.
“Could we have done something different?” said Jenny Widder. She is the mother of a girl with autism who attended Silver Rail in the past, and works offering peer support to families. “And what did we miss?”
[…]Parents in Central Oregon and across the state have long advocated for more money for students with disabilities. In a state that struggles to adequately fund its schools, special education often gets further short-changed.
A number of states cap spending on special education, but Oregon has the lowest cap in the nation. Districts can only receive additional special education funding for up to 11% of students, even though about 15% of students have disabilities that qualify for that extra funding.[…]
• From The Oregonian: “An Oregon parent has never been prosecuted for a child’s mass shooting. Will Bend mom be first?”
[…]A dozen Oregon prosecutors, former prosecutors and defense attorneys, as well as a retired judge, told The Oregonian/OregonLive the same thing: That even in the absence of a specific state law holding parents criminally liable for the gun crimes of their children, the mother of the Bend teen shooter could be prosecuted under the state’s existing laws for homicide — if she glaringly ignored red flags.
[…]Legal experts interviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive say they’re confident that the Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office will take into account whether the gun used in the Silver Rail Elementary shooting was properly stored, as well as what — if any — gun-safety education the teen’s mother ensured her son had.[…]
• From Disability Scoop: “Nearly 1 In 5 Public School Students Have IEPs Or 504 Plans”
A growing number of students in the nation’s schools have disabilities, new data shows, and they are more likely to experience restraint, seclusion and other discipline.
Students with disabilities account for 19% of the nearly 50 million children in public schools across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s most recent civil rights data collection. […]
• From St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri): “Parents ask state to investigate De Soto school district for special ed violations”
The parents of two Jefferson County students are calling on Missouri education officials to investigate the De Soto School District, saying it failed to provide their disabled children with the support they needed to stay in school.
[…]"We're hearing time and time again of families not trusting this district, going so far as to withdraw their children and sometimes homeschool children with disabilities who are not appropriately being served," [attorney Hopey] Fink said [of the complaint that could become a class action…].
• From NJ Spotlight News: “Ex-justice details how NJ courts fail disabled kids and their families”
New Jersey is still trapping families in special education court battles “well beyond” the legal time limit, according to a new judicial report, leaving scores of disabled children without timely services.
The preliminary findings from former state Supreme Court Justice Jaynee LaVecchia are in response to a 2019 federal class-action lawsuit against the state Department of Education.
[…]This is a long-running complaint in the special education community, where parents say their kids are denied reading help, language support or specialized aids for months or even years as their cases wind through the administrative court system. More than 800 legal complaints are filed annually in New Jersey, according to lawyers and state records.[…]
• From Disability News Service (United Kingdom): “Relationship and sex education failures put disabled pupils at risk of abuse, says new report”
Disabled children and young people are being placed at risk of abuse because they are missing out on “vital” relationship and sex education at school, according to a new report.
The research found “patchy” provision of relationship and sex education (RSE) for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), which has been compulsory in schools in England and Wales since 2020 for those up to the age of 16.[…]
• From NBC Washington: “Kyle Kennedy, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, dies at 42
Kyle Francis Kennedy, an educator and granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, died last month after suffering a severe spinal cord injury that resulted in long term paralysis and years of medical issues, a Massachusetts funeral home said.
She was 42.
[…]“Blessed with a formidable intellect, dry wit, and beauty, she will be remembered for her devotion to her children Conor, Josephine, and Declan, and her support for educational reform for disadvantaged children and for people living with disabilities.”[…]
• From USA Today: “Could Trump Accounts hurt benefits for children with disabilities?”
Trump Accounts, touted by the White House as a game-changer to get children on the path to building savings, can hurt their access to disability benefits as adults if parents aren't vigilant, financial and legal experts say.
Editor’s note: In case you missed it, I also wrote about this in the Oct. 11 edition of Medical Motherhood:
Trump accounts could cost disabled kids more than they save
From crisis to crisis! Some days feel like that. So very frustrating!
• From SageJournals: “‘A mother has to be strong!’: Narrating “strong motherhood” in China's online autism community”
[…]It was not until 2019 that a collaborative team of scholars from the United Kingdom and China reported a prevalence rate among the Chinese population comparable to Western countries, at 108 per 10,000 (Sun et al., 2019). With this new understanding, one can estimate that China's child population with ASD is close to 3 million, whose needs for policy and scholarly attention are urgent.
[…]children with ASD in China are not guaranteed equal rights to basic services such as education.
[…]Second, there is a notable scarcity of targeted services and support for autistic children, with an acute shortage of well-trained professionals and experts in diagnosis, intervention, and support
[…]Last, social stigma associated with ASD remains deeply rooted.
[…]In this context of limited availability of specialized services and social and public support systems, families constitute the primary—and often the sole—source of support for children with ASD, with mothers often taking the lion's share not only of daily management of the child's needs but also of navigating complex emotional, social, and institutional challenges. […]
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