Transition often hard for disabled

By Adam Thompson - Morris News Service
Augusta Chronicle
Tuesday, January 08, 2008


ATHENS, Ga. -- Brittany Fleming's job doesn't thrill her. The 20-year-old Athens woman, who loves to take pictures, prefers the click of a camera shutter to the clack of a keyboard entering data at a Clarke County school.

But, she likes her co-workers, and after all, it's a job.

In that, she's like many Americans - except Brittany also has a mild intellectual disability that prevents her from living on her own, taking public transit by herself or doing unsupervised work.

She graduated in May from Cedar Shoals High School and immediately began working a few days a week in the nurse's office at the Clarke County School District's H.T. Edwards Teaching and Learning Center.

But that smooth transition wasn't easy to come by, say her parents, Renee Fleming, a Clarke County math teacher, and Stacy Fleming, an electrician employed by the county government.

The Flemings faced what some experts say is a road filled with obstacles, the path disabled students take from the all-day stable environment of high school to whatever comes after.

Each year, nearly 700 people with developmental disabilities - autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and others - graduate from the state's high schools needing to transition into the community, said Dave Blanchard, a public policy director for the advocacy group Atlanta Alliance on Developmental Disabilities.

Those who can work are up against a work community wary of hiring people with disabilities; those who can't need care somehow, because their parents usually aren't able to stay with them all day, Mr. Blanchard said. So, they need help.

And help usually means turning to the government or other service providers, who are taxed beyond their means right now, Mr. Blanchard said.

Many quickly go on a waiting list for Medicaid waivers that's thousands of names long, and many wait for years, he said.

The waivers let people with significant disabilities get services above what Medicaid provides. They're designed to allow people to stay in their homes and interact with their communities, rather than becoming institutionalized.

"Historically, we have not as a state put enough help in place for these students," he said.

The nonprofit AADD and the Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities are holding a series of open forums around the state for parents of disabled students.