Every Parent of a child with a disability needs to read this

PLEASE READ THIS

What’s a Parent to Do? Micah’s College Dream by Janice Fialka

My father proudly graduated from the University of Michigan in 1948, the first in his family of 11 children. Little did he know he established a generational pattern for the important men in my life......

Read more: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150408095670531&id=38508765

Campaign Launched To ‘Disable Bullying’

With school bullying now a hotly debated national issue, a San Francisco-based organization is launching a nationwide campaign to address what it says is an epidemic of abuse in schools targeting children with disabilities.

Titled “Disable Bullying,” the campaign plans to involve parents, educators, activists and policymakers in combating behavior that organizers say is widespread but, until recently, has not been well documented in the United States. “Bullying is every parent’s fear,” said Cheryl Young of Community Gatepath, a nonprofit organization serving kids with disabilities and their families. Young said the campaign is needed to “raise the level of awareness about bullying and the devastating effects it can have.”

A report, Walk a Mile in Their Shoes, released in February by AbilityPath.org — an online community and resource created by Community Gatepath — documented widespread instance of bullying of children with disabilities, including social isolation, verbal abuse, cyberbullying and physical violence, in some cases leading to suicide.

For more information, go to www.abilitypath.org. Public service announcements and other information can also be found at the campaign’s YouTube channel.

ABC Show ‘What Would You Do?’ Tackles Disability

The ABC television show, What Would You Do? is designed to make viewers uncomfortable. Using actors, the show stages awkward situations in public places to see how bystanders react — to see if they try to help, or try to ignore. Scenarios in the show’s Feb. 22 episode included bullies tormenting a little person and a young man humiliating his girlfriend when she tells him that she’s pregnant.

Thanks to Amy Saffell of Franklin, Tenn., the episode also showed viewers how not to treat a wheelchair user.

“The show has featured very few disability-related scenarios in the past,” says Saffell, who has spina bifida. When the show announced that it was soliciting ideas from viewers, Saffell wrote in. To her surprise, the producers selected her proposed scenario — in which a young woman in a wheelchair is subjected to patronizing comments and overly aggressive “help” by a woman in a supermarket. “It focuses on disability awareness and attitudinal barriers,” says Saffell, who the producers flew to New York with her mother to see the episode filmed. “They were wonderful at making sure that the scene was filmed in an authentic and true-to-life way.”

Thank you ABC for doing this