It took me a while to gather my thoughts re: the 26 pages of the 300 pages of the Malloy-Wyman report that concern the issues I care most about professionally and personally: mental health, health care generally, housing, and disability. I finally have. Stay tuned.
The first mention of mental health is in the context of gun safety reform. Too many people have written about the need to talk about mental health for the sake of mental health, and not simply within the context of preventing gun violence so this was disappointing.
It’s rather remarkable to see the words “recovery-oriented approach” and “severe and persistent mental illness” in the same sentence.
Mental Health First Aid training is not all it’s cracked up to be. People from opposite ends of the advocacy spectrum have criticized it - see madinamerica.com/2016/04/mental… and mentalillnesspolicy.org/samhsa/mental-…
I’ve spent more time than I really care to think about writing on guns. Ineligibility for people who voluntarily seek treatment for mental health - when specifically excluding treatment for drug and alcohol use (which actually have been linked to gun violence) never made sense.
This governor deserves every bit of the kudos he gets for his support of affordable housing and the efforts to end homelessness.
There are a lot of people who may wonder about the claim that Connecticut has effectively ended chronic homelessness. This fact sheet from the Partnership for Strong Communities and the CT Coalition to End Homelessness explains what that means: pschousing.org/files/RH_OD-CT…
Connecticut has done a phenomenal job of increasing the number of permanent supportive housing units during the last 8 years. That could not have been done without the support of the Malloy Administration and the Department of Housing.
However, there are not nearly enough units to meet the need of people ready to be discharged from state-operated psychiatric hospitals. impactfund.org/social-justice…
We have more work to do to ensure fair treatment of workers. That includes workers with disabilities, not just the workers who provide care, support, and services to people with disabilities.
Health care generally: very fortunate to live in a state that expanded Medicaid and put into state law the protection of essential health benefits under the ACA. Advocates fought hard for the restoration of funding for the Medicare Savings Program and HUSKY A parents.
Mental health parity in insurance coverage? It may exist in theory, but the industry has fought efforts for more robust data collection that would demonstrate whether true parity, in fact, exists.
Five pages of this 300 page report are dedicated to the topic of “Fairness for People With Disabilities” (pp. 212-216)
Two of the accomplishments cited are updating Connecticut statutes to include the use of “person-first, respectful” language and updating the International Symbol of Access to an “active, dynamic symbol.”
The disability community (communities, really, because we are not a monolith) was divided over both of these issues.
The report fails to acknowledge a huge issue that affected our D/deaf and hard of hearing neighbors - the elimination of the state Department’s sign language interpreting program
Learned something today: didn’t realize that the CT Council of Developmental Disabilities (DD Council) has only been in existence since 2012, and was established pursuant to an Executive Order by Gov. Malloy. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Co-sign 💯 EVERYTHING in the “More Work To Do” section: a focus on education, housing, transportation, and employment in order to increase opportunities for independence.
I would have liked to see the section of the report talking about diversifying state government include disability as one of the areas in which greater diversity is needed. One position created to “give a stronger voice to people with disabilities” is not sufficient.
If this report showed me anything it’s how glad I am to be able to focus on the specific issues that I care most about. I don’t have to deal with the breadth and depth of everything involved in state government.
This governor came into office facing a lot of problems that were not of his making. He had to make difficult choices and some of these issues really have no good solution.
I knocked on doors eight years ago. Had a number of bordering-on-heated discussions on people’s front porches about the choices facing our state. I miss those. But I dare the most vociferous critics of the policies of the last 8 years to say what they would have done differently.
Wish the best to the Governor in whatever comes next. I may not have agreed with him about everything, and have made my position on those issues abundantly clear. Connecticut is my home, and I’m not going anywhere. /end thread
@threadreaderapp please unroll
