Tag Archives: “Community Based Supports”

#TransformationTuesday: “Community Based Supports” = Out of Bathwater Services

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As part of adding justa little more time on this blog, to help layman people what people like me exist and why we are out, since I am interested in policy and understanding governance, I feel like I should be the one that can try to help out to extract the jargon to more understandable (or sometimes politically incorrect phrases).

I feel for my peers who can’t really speak for themselves with the force feeding of HCBS… ahem OBS

Since the 1990s, the state had supported adults with intellectual disabilities home & community based supports also known as HCBS in the so-called “advocates” and other related groups.

The services unlike in special education, where one was most likely secluded in an out of district program as the worse case, the individual in this situation would be in the community for a measurable 30 hours a week. The theory – that is by having an active person with a disability in the community would being inclusion and tolerance. The “Out of Bathwater Services” or OBS as I will rename this can be an emotional burden to the individual or support staff. The reason why I say “out of bathwater” is because it’s taking people into uncomfortable and often unforgiving places even in 2024; a lot of this force began ten years ago to be implemented right as COVID brought mass infections in 2020, the regulations put a deadline.

“feeling like I am walking on a four sided Plexiglass telephone booth where I can see things and not touch it.” ironically the plexiglass metaphor couldn’t be so literal after COVID just five years after I mentioned this

Part of these regulations also forced a “code of ethics” for the direct support professionals, known to the people as DSPs and the power structures that would change to make the DSP be extremely Swiss or have sudden strict boundaries. This can make or break an individuals mature experience in society.

From ASAN, the Autistic Self Absorbed Network, to our trio of activism, question the effectively of being out in the community literally for 6 hours a day assuming you’re going to have a job. What if you don’t? What if you don’t have money to shop or eat out food?

In fact the push of OBS was one of the reasons I fought against it, the creation of the Hopeless Autistic was my written accounts of what I had already seen in SPED a decade before. It was the most literal example of Read the F-cking Manual and interpret it yourself, and be sure you  understand it properly to avoid a non-compliance fine.

I went so far to explain my experience to several seasoned professionals at DHHS “feeling like I am walking on a four sided Plexiglass telephone booth where I can see things and not touch it.” ironically the plexiglass metaphor couldn’t be so literal after COVID just five years after I mentioned this. COVID delayed this forced feeding of OBS at least another two years because the pandemic, but since late 2022, things are “back to normal”.

And back to normal of walking around as if one is socially isolated with a group of people and getting conflicting messages whether to be part of it or stay isolated. I feel for my peers who can’t really speak for themselves with the force feeding of HCBS… ahem OBS

Why The Granite State IDD Adults Are Likely Suffering

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Their vision of community based supports, for some individuals feels like someone else’s delusion.

Submitted this to a Survey Monkey questionnaire the BDS was seeking answers. To steal the phrase from the fake Steve Balmer, the whole community based supports, is a bunch of “smoke and mirrors”!

 

Where the Hell am I on the Recovery Scale?

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Let me begin with a few things that drives me nuts online on places like YouTube with regards to human interactions.

I do not hate women (but I barely trust men) This is a result of a couple videos where I’ve heard people say that people “hate women” or women “hating men”. I do not want to say that I have “hated women” to the point I have checked out. This happens on both genders and probably both sides of the poli spectrum. I don’t like women who have a lot of power who are not accountable, and men who are so cocky in their egos, that it scares me. I am in an utter distrust with women, and I strongly dislike men as narcissism and masculinity often gets meshed together.

I never expected someone to “rescue” me – I have not expected someone to “save me” or “come and fix my broken self”. Let me go to that “broken” state, it maybe a phrase I use often to describe myself and even if the phrase was never said explicitly, it was very implicit. The underlying problem is to treat the person with an ASD type of condition to be extremely typical, and statically treat them typically even in a meltdown, if you failed in the meltdown episode, then you are deemed to not be good enough (I am saying that phrase loosely, very loosely. So I was “broken” by proxy, by the enablers that disabled me (ex teachers/paras case managers, DSPs, other managers and those case managers in adult ages.) When you are delegitimized in a small group, and if you can’t fit into a small community, let alone a larger community.

Yet our media, our institutions or worse the community are saying nothing about ASD, and even if they, it’s just passive. The lifestyle is horrible, even for a higher functioning.

The only way to reverse the damage, is NOT self-love, I do not believe that at all. The only way to treat the hopelessness is someone with a big heart that with expectations yours truly would return the favor. I don’t know why I have not found that person yet. CPTSD or not, or trauma wounds or not. I felt my depression and sadness was state not just trait, but that if the state anx/depression went down, then things would’ve turned around for the better, but yet again fucking COVID19 just had to make my life a living hell.

If you can’t even cultivate your own community, hell if I can’t even find self employment because my social network is so brittle, and any attempts to go back to the job market, and hell if I can’t even feel confident to go into college, how can everyone with autism say it’s a blessing and an entirely a gift, that even a higher function guy can’t even function?

I don’t think even for a higher functioning autistic, there is no way to recover.

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Me Vs. The Town Of Merrimack, NH – Conclusion

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Several things occurred near the end of summer of 2015 in this holy war against an alleged intolerant Police Department in Merrimack, NH.

In August, the PD hosted a “Coffee with a Cop” program at the local Starbucks (this has occurred at other locations in the past, this time it was here. I met with a detective, whom I don’t remember the name. He explained the police reporting system, that a criminal report is filed on one computer, and incidents as mentioned in the complaints were filed on another system tied to the police’s IP network. Unless someone can do a backdoor hack, then could someone see my record. Typically most reports, according to this detective are filed with full name + date of birth (similar to full name + medical record numbers in healthcare.) He explained smiliary to what the DRCNH told me that higher ranking officers need to log things for accountability, but unlike Mr. Zigra, he told me “not to minimize your concerns, but please be assured” that such report wouldn’t be used in background checks, etc.

Chief Doyle was at Starbucks, and most of them left around 11:00 (if memory serves me.) I stayed low, I didn’t approach him, but he didn’t approach me (perhaps a court order demanded him of a gag order with me?)  What was kinda disturbing, about a minute or two after they left, I decided to go to the nearby mall, before you get there as a pedestrian, you need to get to some crosswalks.

Well, just as I hit my foot to the crosswalk, I saw that same Ford Five Hundred gold sedan with someone that looked like Chief Doyle.  I tried to make eye contact with him to cross, but he just kept on creeping past the crosswalk and didn’t even see me. The Chief of Police was distracted and didn’t pay attention. If I was a reckless walker, he probably would’ve ran me over.

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“It’s too like Laconia” – Is Community Based Supports a Reversed “Cookie Cuttered” System?

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I’m going to pop a question: Is “Community Based Supports” just a glorified word for a reversed cookie-cuttered system?

I’m not an advocate, but I am active in the special needs community more than I have before. Some families have opted to keep their children or individuals to be in what some will say it resembles of Laconia State School. It’s even scandalous to the point where the Bureau of Developmental Services will question families or agencies because the federal funds are supposed to be used in “community based supports.”

But why in the hell are we telling families what they can or cannot do? Isn’t just as bad if authorities tell every family to put their able bodied child into an institution because that’s a one sized fits all?

The problem with the group-think of the out of state special interest groups, is families can have a “choice” but that “choice” may differ to what the family feels living in their own closed-minded community.

It is very important to focus on the state I live in, and that Pittsburg is very diferent to Salem; just like how Claremont is very different to say Dover. The problem is all the “progressive”, “let’s take down Laconia like places for our own political capital!” doesn’t go well for the entire state.

The progressive movement will refuse to believe any “regressive” agendas (such as lack of training, tolerance or understanding) in actually the largest communities in the state, just an hour north of the Boston, Massachusetts city line.

And that’s the real problem. People can talk all day about forcing other adults to accept autistics, but the problem is you cannot, and will not change a vast majority of adults of how they view developmentally disabled people. 

Also many autistics, or Dev Disabled people, stick to their own group. If they feel comfortable being in their own groups (say a Special Olympics outing/event), then why are you insisting that’s “not good enough”?

Sadly a lot of this agenda comes from the many special interest groups, which I’ll leave nameless, but any of them on US302, NH Route 3 and the side streets of Downtown Concord, which I think you got the picture.