Recognizing and Managing Discriminating Practices in Diagnosis and Services: a Webinar

[Julie McKinney] Recording. We will be recording this so that it can be on our website later. We can share it with more people. Welcome everyone. My name’s Julie McKinney and I’m with Exceptional Lives and I’m gonna be moderating this session with Corhonda Corley, who we’re really excited to have with us. Welcome Corhonda, We will get you started in just a minute. And so this is about recognizing and managing discriminating practices and diagnoses and services. And I’m gonna just really quickly go through some housekeeping and then we will let Corhonda do her thing. All right, so Corhonda, can you advance ’cause actually now, I can’t do it. I thought I could. Or actually I’ll stop remote control for now and just get that back to you in a minute. Okay, so we have live captions. We like to do everything as accessible as possible. So we have live captions. You can just click on the bottom of your screen and have the captions show up on the screen or have the transcript going. We also have the chat feature. If you wanna chat to the group, please change it to everyone, the default is host and panelists. But if you want everyone to see, check on everyone, if you have any technical problems, click on host and panelists and just tell us what your problem is. We have people standing by to help you. And if you have questions for Corhonda, she’s gonna take them at the end. And if possible, please use the Q and A button here to ask a question, ’cause that’s easier for us to sort of collect them and feed them to her at the end. But feel free to use the chat for comments and tell us who you are. If you wanna send anonymously your question, you can do that, that’s fine. Just quickly for accessibility purposes for people who might be visually impaired, we like to describe what’s on the screen. And so I just wanna tell you I’m Julie, I am a white woman in my fifties with short brownish hair and a dark teal sweater on, so that’s me. You’ll hear from Corhonda in a minute. So just quickly, I wanna tell you about Exceptional Lives. We are hosting these webinars and we are in the business of providing easy, compassionate information for parents and caregivers of children and adults with disability, we can help you find services. We have a resource directory that covers the whole state of Louisiana, Massachusetts also, that’s a separate one. So we help you find local providers and services. We have easy to read guides that go step by step. How to do certain processes like apply for benefits, special education, what to do if your child may have autism or is something different about your child? You’re not sure what, we try to have information for people with disabilities, from birth up through adulthood. We also have blogs and podcasts from parents, with facts and tips and just understanding, letting you know that you’re not alone. We have a big social media presence also, and there a poll up here, so if you could just click that, just tell us who you are. We’d like to know, who the people are in the webinar and I will get to Corhonda. Oh yeah, here we go. Also just quickly, we have a new podcast that’s over on the right. It’s called Just Needs, parenting children with disabilities. We’re putting up some new episodes every week or two. And we’d love you to check that out. And the website is there. We’re also having a section on families and stories where we interview families and their children, if that works, just to talk about parenting children with disabilities, different aspects of it. And then we share little clips from those videos. So if you’re interested in us interviewing your family, that would be great. Just put your name in the chat and we will follow up on it, and I think that is it. Let me just close this. So Corhonda, she is awesome. She has a great love for people with disabilities. She has a son with a disability and she also likes to talk about bringing minorities to the table. And you’ll hear a lot about that today. And so she advocates with parents and with organizations, she works with organizations around the country, including Step Up Louisiana, LA Fate, the Black Collective Network, Advocating For Kids. She’s been on the Good Morning Show. She’s an amazing advocate for parents of kids with disabilities and has done lots of work to help people get the services and the rights that they deserve. So Corhonda, welcome. We are so glad to have you and are looking forward to hearing what you have to say today. So I will give you the remote control and you can take it away.

Thank you, Miss Julie and thank you to Exceptional Lives for allowing me the opportunity to speak today, it’s not allowing me to, oh, there it is. So today we’re gonna talk about a topic that I think everybody in the disabilities community may have actually dealt with. The topic today is recognizing and managing discriminating practice in the diagnosis and services. First and foremost, my name Corhonda Corley. I’m an African American female. I go by the pronoun, she, her, hers, I am currently sitting in a room that has white walls with a Palm tree behind me, just for those that are visually impaired, and for everyone, I hope that you can see the table of contents and you will see that there is going to be quite a bit of information that we’re gonna cover in a very short timeframe. Hopefully everyone has taken the time to do the poll and we will have more polls. So first and foremost, I would like to start with the definitions. Okay, Miss Julie, if you could help me, it’s not allowing me to advance my slide.

[Narrator] Oh, okay. Wait a second, sorry. Okay, is that it? You’re in the right place, prejudice. It’s not.

[Narrator] I can advance them for you. Oh, I think you’re doing it now, right? Corhonda, is it working for you? I believe Corhonda has frozen. Give us just a moment please. Okay. Her opinion and.

[Narrator] Oh, I’m so sorry, folks. It seems like we have lost Corhonda for the moment. If you could bear with us a minute, I’m so sorry. We will get her back in just a small. What I’ll do folks while we’re waiting is I’ll advance the slide slowly. So you can at least read what she has here for the next few definitions. And then when she comes back, then we will catch her up, so I’ll move on to bias now, just let you read it. And then when she comes back, to her spot. While we’re waiting, also, we have another poll put up now, this is something that was interested in asking you all. Do you feel your child has been racially discriminated against in a diagnosis or services or have you witnessed this happening to other children? So if you all could fill out that poll and submit it while we’re waiting for her, then that would be great. We know this is a big problem and are curious in the people in our webinar here, how much you have seen this happen, Moved on to discrimination. And okay, I think we have Corhonda back. And so while you’re filling out the poll, this definition of discrimination here is something that you can look at to, you know, make sure that you’re answering this in the right way, Corhonda are you back in? Yes. [Narrator] Okay. I apologize, I don’t know what happened.

[Narrator] While you were gone, I advanced the slides a few, just so people could read the definitions, but I’ll give you a remote control back and you can go back to the beginning if you want, or however you wanna do it. Okay.

[Narrator] And just for anyone who hasn’t finished the poll, it’s oh, nope, I guess we closed it. Okay, thanks for answering that. Okay, and this is really interesting. Yeah, we have a lot of people who have seen this happen. Great, so Corhonda, I don’t know if you can see the poll results, but 76% of people who answered have had their child discriminated against or seen it happen to others, so pretty significant.

Okay. It is not allowing me to advance, oh, there we go. That’s you controlling it Miss Julie?

[Narrator] Nope, that was you. Okay.

[Narrator] Just let me know if you’d rather me take it back and do it when you tell me. But if it’s working for you, we’ll just keep going. I prefer for you to take it back ’cause it’s not allowing me to advance it.

[Narrator] Yeah, that’s fine. Is this the slide you wanna be on? We could go back to the beginning.

[Narrator] Yeah, okay. I apologize everyone for the technical difficulties. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, we experienced major storming this morning. So it may be affecting my internet capabilities today. Okay. So prejudice according to Merriam Webster is a noun and it is defined as the injury or damage resulting from some judgment. Or action of another in disregard of one’s rights, it’s a preconceived judgment or opinion. It’s an adverse opinion. Or a learning form that’s without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge and as an instance of such judgment or opinion. And it can also be defined as an irrational attitude of hostility, directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristic. If you can advance, thank you. Now bias, according to Britannica is a noun, and it is the tendency to believe that some people’s ideas, et cetera, are better than others. That usually results in treating some people unfairly. So if we were to use the word bias in a sentence, the word it would go, she showed no bias toward older clients. Another definition is a strong interest in something or the ability to do something. So another sentence would be a student with a strong bias towards the arts. Now, if you wanted to use the word bias as a verb, it would be stated, to have a strong and often unfair influence on some or something. So the statement would go, the circumstances could bias the results. Next slide, please. Now discrimination. According to Merriam Webster’s definition is noun, and it is described as the prejudice or prejudicial outlook action or treatment, racial discrimination would be a statement. It can also be defined as the act, the practice or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually, the quality or power of finally distinguishing and the act of making or perceiving a difference. The act of discriminating. Next slide, please. Now ableism, ableism is described as the discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities. Now disability is defined as the physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with or limited person’s ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typically daily activities and interactions. It can also be defined as an impairment, such as a chronic medical condition or injury that prevents someone from engaging gainful employment. It can also be defined as an impairment such as spina bifida.

[Narrator] Sorry. That results in serious functional limitations for a minor. Now diagnosis, diagnosis is defined as the art or act of identifying a disease from its sign and symptoms. The decision reached by a diagnosis, the investigation, or analysis of the cause or nature of a condition, situation or problem, and the statement or conclusion from such analysis or the biology, a concise technical description of. And services, services is defined as an organization, company or a system that provides something to the public. It can also be defined as work done by an organization or person that does not involve producing goods, work done for a business or organization or work done for your country, government, et cetera.

[Narrator] Okay, and Corhonda, we already did the poll that we are gonna do now. So we’re all set on that and here are the results again. Thank you, Jackie. So now that we’ve defined the words that we’re gonna be using today, let’s look at the ways of thinking about disability. So Colorado Trust, they actually did a 80 page documentation in regards to ways of thinking about disability and they broke it down into these categories. Inspiration, disability is a special barrier to overcome for benefits of others. Charity, the disability is tragic object of pity, moral disability is moral failure and laziness. A punishment for sin, medical, disability is a health problem requiring treatment and cure. Social, disability is a social construct. It doesn’t exist in nature and diversity, the disability is natural and normal. Now we’re gonna actually tell touch on three of these topics today, which would be medical, social and diversity. If you can advance please. Okay. So social versus the medical model of disability, which you can actually go to watchingthewheelsdad.net, they actually talked about the social model, which is accommodations and accessibility. So when you think about the social model, you’ll think about, when a person with a disability actually wanna go to a coffee shop, the tables are not handicapped accessible. The tables are too high. The bathrooms don’t have a bar. There’s no one there that can actually do American sign language or have braille for the individual with the disability that has a communication disorder. But when you look at the medical model, it talks about the disability and the actual disabled person. Now it’s important that we actually think about the two because they both go hand in hand and they actually coincide. So the medical model of Disability by Inclusion London actually shows where the center of the problem is the disabled person. And when you look at the dis disabled person, they have all of these arrows that go out that shows what this person actually cannot do. So this disabled person, the problem with this person is they’re sick. They’re looking for a cure. They can’t see or hear. They can’t go upstairs. They can’t walk, they can’t walk. They’re confined to a wheelchair. Are they house bound, do they need help and carriers? have they had anybody fit into regards for this actual individual in the medical arena? So the system of inequality by BMC Public Health. So let me give you a background on it. I think everyone, if just in case you’re not informed, many, many of our medical practices have come into existence from experimentation on minority populations. One, one individual that everybody probably know about is Henrietta. Who actually had a rare blood disorder in her body, provided many rare cells and they continued to experiment on her. So another area of medical practice that have been experimenting on individuals that are minorities is the obstetrician gynecology area. Many females were looked at just experiment tools and not individuals. So this create this system of the medical profession actually created a system of inequality because individuals that are minorities began to be looked as objects and as lower class versus upper class, nonwhite was racialized. White was looked at being superior. Able bodied was looked at being superior versus disabled, straight versus LGBTQIA. So male, and a lot of people don’t look at gender, but gender actually played a major theme as well. Men were looked at being superior to the female or any other transgender they wanted to be identified as, if you could please advance to the next. So discrimination. So we’ve had a lot of things come to the forefront, but due to COVID, COVID actually shined a much bigger light on it. And it made racism, a public health crisis per Douglas county. Now, if you actually wanna look at other states like Louisiana, Louisiana actually went a step further and they created a diversity, equity and inclusion task force to a address the racism as it to the medical arena as well. Lisa now the health stigma and discrimination framework by BMC actually talks about the health and social impacts. And if you notice the arrows go up, so first you look at the public policy, then the community, then the organization, then the interpersonal, and then you look at the individual and there’s many things that drive and facilitate how this individual would actually receive the real true health and social impacts that desired. But this all starts with a public policy. And as you know, one of the words that we did not divide, that we did not define is stigma. And these stigmas actually are very much attached to the biases that actually interferes with a person receiving the actual prop or medical services that they actually should. Now, as of right now, there’s an estimate of 3.5, three to five million LGBTQ plus individuals that have disabilities, and according to the statistics, two in five transgender individuals are adults. One in four is an LGB adult compared to 27.2% of the general population. So when you think about this number, that’s a large amount of people you could advance. Now, medical news today provided many, many stats regarding racial disparities, in the 2019 National Healthcare and Disparities Report, they found that white patients were more likely to receive better quality care than their black African American patients, the Native American patients, the Alaska native patients, the Hispanic patients, the native Hawaiian Pacific Islander patients. Now it was important that you know, that in this healthcare and disparities report, they did not talk about the other races or ethnicity groups, but they did not receive better healthcare either. They actually fell into the same group as these that I described to you a minute ago.

[Narrator] Ronda quick clarifying question. One of the slides that said, BMC, what does that stand for?

BMC, it’s a medical group that actually put forth a lot of work as it relates to individuals, it is a public health entity and they actually provide many, many reports that can actually help individuals. If they wanna know some of the stats that are actually existing right now in our world today, they actually do a lot of the polls and collect data as well. [Narrator] Great, thanks. We can send information out to people after. Thank you. You’re welcome. So medical news today also spoke about the LGBTQ plus disparities. So the study from 2019 found that more than 80% of medical students had an implicit bias against lesbian and gay people. That’s huge because that’s more than half of our, of the people that will be entering into the workforce in the medical arena. Now in the same study, researchers noticed that there was avoidance of healthcare by the LGBTQ plus individuals, and that gave this population a much, much higher rate of anal cancer, cardiovascular disease, which is your hypertension or elevated blood pressure, stroke, heart attacks, asthma, substance abuse, or misuse, obesity and suicide. And now in a 2020 study, they found that 83.6% of the healthcare professionals included in this study, had implicitly preferred people without disabilities. Now people with disabilities as a result of this can experience a secondary condition. If they’re not able to receive accessible healthcare. And some of those secondary conditions is pain, fatigue, obesity, depression. Now, unfortunately I wasn’t able to find the statistics in relation to suicide, but we have actually been seeing an increase in suicide as well when it comes to individuals with disabilities. But I do want everybody to pay attention to that actual number, 83.6% of healthcare pro professionals prefer not to work with individuals with at disabilities. So how is some of these things issues being tackled well, UCLA have a health equity dashboard and with their health equity dashboard, they actually look at recruitment, diversity, retention, advancement, pay, climate, access, operation, and quality. Now, why is that important? It’s important that we have individuals in the healthcare arena that actually look like us because individuals that look like us understand our culture. So let me give you an example of that. In the Asian community and in the African community, it is frowned upon for women to show or exhibit that they’re in pain. That’s looked at as a form of weakness. So they end up not receiving the actual medical care that they should for pain, because they can tell the person that they’re in pain, but the person is gonna go off of the appearance of what that patient is exhibiting. This is why diversity is important. Retention, retention is important because you want a member in the medical profession that is familiar with your family member or with you. If that person stays, then your chances of receiving better care is high because you don’t have to actually educate this person again about your medical history, your family’s medical history, and update them on the accessibility or the access that you would need. Recruitment, the recruitment is important because we need individuals in the medical arena that are very well versed on how to work with our individuals with disabilities and understand the medical diagnosis in they are receiving. So you don’t want a doctor that does not understand what deaf or heart of hearing is, to actually work with a child that is deaf or heart of hearing. You do want someone that’s in the medical field that actually can speak your native life language. So if Arabic is your native language, you would hope that the medical facility that you’re using have someone that can speak, read and write Arabic so that they can actually provide it to you in your native language, which would actually make you feel comfortable and help you with actually understanding what it is the doctor or the medical team is trying to provide to you, advancement. So the advancement is important because you want individuals that are familiar with the disability community, as well as the minority population, to advance in much higher positions. Once they advance into higher positions, they will actually recruit and bring on more individuals that look like them. And that actually understand the scope of the practice in which they are doing. The pay is important because individuals leave when they’re not being paid a level wage. That is something that we have seen recently in the medical arena. If you pay attention to the nurses that are being at the hospital, a lot of nurses are leaving the positions of staying at that actual hospital and going to travel nursing because they’re at actually being offered a much higher pay. So the pay is extremely important and climate, climate is important because you want a person that will be loyal to the company, but also loyal to you as a patient. And that is gonna advocate for you to actually receive the best medical care available, but also making sure that equity is included in that climate or that arena. If you could please advance to the next slide. So now, how do we address these biases and discriminatory practices? Well, if you look at the picture to the left, or that may be your right, my left, you wanna take the approach of actually educating your actual medical team. So let’s say hypothetically, you have a medical team that is not familiar with working with a patient that is nonverbal. You can actually educate this team about the AT device about actually providing a pen and paper if the person is able to write, if the person know American Sign Language, you can educate them on actually having a ASL interpreter present at all times, so that that person can actually receive the proper for communication. You can also help them by requesting braille. If the person with a disability is blind or visually impaired. Training, you can actually, if you, as the individual with a disability or the family member know of other trainings that the medical team could benefit from, you can tell them nicely like, hey, there’s training coming up in, as an example, there’s training coming up in Texas, that’s going to educate people on a different, rare tracheostomies. That would be important, ’cause if your child, or if you as an individual have a trait and you have a unique circumstance, this allows your team to actually know about more seminars that’s available, that they can actually attend and actually learn how to better work with you and provide you an unbiased approach, which means that they will speak to you slowly. They would be extremely rational. They will actually be accountable for everything as it relates to you. And they will not try to minimize your concern. Now, if you look at the picture in the right, you will notice that the individual is speaking with the healthcare provider and the individual is a woman. And she’s sitting directly in front of her doctor, making eye contact and she have oxygen on her that she’s receiving via a nasal cannular. And she’s saying, her doctor is telling her, let’s discuss the next steps to help manage your disease. It’s important to keep track of medications on your own. How do you think you can do that? The patient is telling her, I haven’t thought about that. I can keep a journal, so I think writing would work well for me. This is making, receiving the proper medical care teamwork. And it’s important that we look at it as teamwork, if you could advance to the next slide. So let’s talk about the laws that help us in the medical arena. The section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, entitled two of the American with Disabilities Act of 1990. Now both section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and title two pro inhibit covered healthcare and human service providers and institutions from discriminating against persons with disabilities in the provision of benefits or services or the conduct of programs or activities on the basis of their disability. That’s important because these entities receive federal financial assistance. And because they’re receiving federal financial assistance under title two, that cover all of the services, programs, and activities that are conducted by these public entities, such as state and local governments, your departments, your agencies, including if you could please advance to the next slide, including their licensing. So section 504 and ADA actually protect qualified individuals with disabilities. And again, an individual with a disability is a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially it’s one or more major life activity, has a record of such an impairment, or is regarded as having such an impairment. If you can advance to the next slide please.

[Narrator] Corhonda and everyone, just a quick announcement here. We’re gonna take a couple more minutes and then I just want to at least give people the option of closing out. We have just a quick end poll that we’ll put out, but then we can keep going. Corhonda will be here until the top of the hour. So we wanna let people know if you don’t have to leave, we will have time for questions, but Corhonda has so much to say, we wanna give her as much time as possible. So just in a couple minutes, maybe three, I’ll just pause and do our end poll and then we’ll keep going. And we’ll turn the recording off for the question part of the discussion, but just know the recording will be on our website in a couple weeks, if you miss part of it and have to see it again. So just having said that, go on. Corhonda sorry. Okay, so specific requirements. Covered entities must not establish a eligibility criteria for a receipt of services or participation in programs or activities that screen out or tend to screen out individuals with disabilities. Unless that criteria is of the program, they should provide separate or different benefits, services, or programs to individuals with disabilities, unless it is necessary to ensure that the benefits and services are equally effective, please advance, the covered entities must provide services and programs in the most integrated setting approach appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities. They make reasonable modifications in their policies, practices, and procedures to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability, unless it would result in a fundamental alteration in their program or activity, they have to ensure that buildings are accessible and they are to provide auxiliary aids to individuals with individuals, with disabilities at no additional cost, where necessary to ensure effective communication with individuals with hearing, vision or speech impairments. Now it’s important that everybody think about that. And the reason why I’m saying that is whenever you go to your medical doctor, or whenever you go to the Metro counter office, or you go to the hospital, if you have a visual impairment, according to these two laws, the actual hospital is to provide you with braille or with a system that allow you to actually be able to access this information. Even if it’s a device that actually allow it to read aloud, if you’re non-verbal, you’re deaf or hearted hearing, they can allow the video text displays. They can put in closed captioning there to provide a ASL interpreter. If the person have a cochlear implant, there to provide the antenna, the FM antenna, to ensure that you have an actual everything that you need, and it’s not at any additional cost now, please understand that even when they say the individuals, we hearing vision or speech impairments, this also mean those that are not English speaking individuals or that are language learners. So let’s not get that misconstrued because a lot of people do not understand that when you go into the medical arena or into a hospital, they are legally required to have someone to translate for you. So please make sure that you are aware of these two laws, because we are seeing this violated on a high number, and this is impacting and affecting individuals with disabilities in a minority world that are minorities, from actually receiving the proper medical care that they actually should. [Narrator] Okay, I’m just taking a quick pause. We have an evaluation poll up. We will continue. I hope that people can stay on for a little bit longer so we can hear the rest. We will hear the rest of Corhonda’s presentation and we’ll have some time for questions, but we’ll have to go a little longer. So I apologize for those of you who have to go now, but we will send you the slides if you want. And we will have the recording up on our website soon. So if you could please fill out the evaluation poll, that would be great. Thank you for coming for those of you who have to leave, but for those of you who can stay, we will continue and hear the rest of what Corhonda has to say. So thanks everyone and Corhonda, you can go ahead. So now it’s important that you do a understand that section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, as well as American disabilities act actually applies to the school arena also. It applies to any entity or any system that is receiving federal funding. Now section 508 of the rehabilitation act is one that you don’t actually hear about often. And the reason why is because they hope that you don’t know. Section 508 requires that any electronic or information technology used, maintained, developed are procured by the federal government, allow persons with disabilities comparable access to information and technology. So this applies to person with disabilities who use assistive technology to read and navigate electronic materials. Please advance to the next slide. So another law that everybody is familiar with is affordable care act, affordable care act allowed everyone to actually be able to access medical, even at lower prices. If you went through the actual shopping network that they actually had. But the section that I want you to look at, is two sections, section 4203 of the Affordable Care Act, which directs the access board to develop standards for accessible medical equipment used in healthcare settings, including the examination tables, the examination chairs, the weight scales, the mamography equipment, the x-ray machines, any radiological equipment commonly used for diagnostic purposes by health professionals. Now this access board has issued those standards and called for a public comment in June of in June 8th. And those standards are not law in themselves, but the department of of justice has actually issued advanced notice of preliminary rule making relating to accessible medical equipment on the anniversary of 88 in 2010. If you can advance to the next slide. Now in section 4302, Affordable Care Act concerns the data collection as well. It calls for the collection of additional information related to specific or known barriers to healthcare that affect individuals with disabilities. And that contribute to the health and healthcare disparities that such individuals experience. Now a data collection standards include a requirement to survey healthcare providers and establish other procedures in order to assess and access to the care and treatment for individuals with disabilities, and to identify the number of providers with accessible facilities and equipment, to meet the need of the individuals with disabilities, including the medical diagnostic equipment that meets the minimum technical criteria. Now, I want everybody to think about that. How many times are you asked to do a survey? As of right now in this presentation, we’ve actually asked you to provide, we’ve done a survey twice, but in a medical arena, when you go to the hospital, when you go to your medical doctor’s office, after you leave that appointment, you should receive a survey. And that is all because of this section, because they wanna know if this individual with disability, if their needs were met, if the provider was able to actually give them the necessary accommodations that they need, because what they’re seeing is, if they’re not providing that like they need to, thank you to the affordable care act. They can actually be financially penalized. So this is why I’m pointing these laws out, because I think that the disabilities community is not very well informed about why certain laws exist and your rights under these laws. But as a individual with a disability, you do have the right to actually receive proper healthcare where you are at your level. Next slide, please. Now, in event that you do not receive the proper healthcare that you’re supposed to receive, or that the hospital, or the medical clinic fails to provide you with an American sign language interpreter, also known as a ASL interpreter, or they fail to provide you with a diagnostic table, that allow you in a wheelchair to actually be able to get on. Are they trying to make you get out of a wheelchair to actually get on a scale instead of having a scale where you can actually be weighed in your wheelchair, you have the right to actually file a complaint. So who do your complaints go to? your complaint goes to the Office of Civil Rights and the us department of health and human services within the office of civil rights. And if you notice, I provided the actual address for you, because I didn’t want anybody to actually have to go and look it up. I wanted to make sure that you know exactly what your rights, but also know, if you wanna file a complaint, where your complaint should go. Because whenever, as a person in a disabilities community, you are federally protected under the Office for Civil Rights. And so that give you a lot more to stand on if you will, than the a person that is non-disabled. If you can advance. So what should you include in this complaint? Your complaint must be filed within 180 days from the date of the alleged discrimination. Now that’s important that you know, 180 days, you actually wait till day 179 and file that OCR complaint, but don’t let 181 days pass, and then you try to file because they’re not gonna accept it. And the OCR can extend your 180 day deadline if you can show a good cause. So let me give you an off showing a good cause. Let’s say that little Tommy, I’m just coming up with the name everyone. Let’s say little Tommy actually went to the doctor and little Tommy did not receive the proper care. And it wasn’t until after little Tommy did his third appointment that the doctor said, oh, I didn’t wanna pay attention to little Tommy because little Tommy has this particular disability that I just I’m not familiar with. And I just wasn’t really trying to make it my business to learn about it. If that shows a good cause for why you as an individual in the disabilities community or a person with a disability could actually write that OCR complaint after 180 days. And they would actually take it into consideration and they would actually look and investigate into the situation. Other things that you need to include in your written complaint is that your complaint must be signed. And if you, as a person with a disability can’t sign it. Then you can have your authorized representative sign it, but your complaint must include your name, your address, your telephone number, the name, and address of the entity that you believe discriminated against you. How, why, and when you believe you were discriminated against and any other relevant information. So when they say any other relevant information, if you’re a person with a disability, but you’re an African American and you were in the hospital for a surgery, but they continue to deny you your pain medication, you would include that, they included that they refused to give you your pain medication as the other relevant information, because that’s important. That’s important that they know every single piece of the puzzle so that they can have a real true picture. Next slide please.

[Narrator] Yeah and Corhonda just quickly, that address that you gave for the office of OCR, is that where you go in person and also where you would mail a written complaint? You would mail it right now, they have not said whether or not they’re allowing individuals to come in person.

[Narrator] Okay. But everything that OCR does is normally in writing. And that relates even in the school arena because the Office of Civil Rights actually deal with the education arena as well for individuals with disabilities. And they have them provide that information in writing too.

[Narrator] Thank you. Now, if y’all notice, I have many, many pages of work cited and that’s because I actually took out the time to go through quite a few publications, as well as the laws that I wanted everybody to actually be able to receive access to, and actually be able to go back and read. You will find a lot of the information extremely helpful, as well as informative. I myself being a minority in the disabilities community and a parent of a child with a disability. I was very shocked, very, very shocked by the actual numbers in the surveys. So I just thought that it would be extremely prudent of me to actually allow you the opportunity to actually look at that as well. And so now I’m done with my presentation, any questions and answers you have, I am more than happy to answer.

[Narrator] Thank you so much Corhonda. And just for all of you out there listening, all of those slides, we will send you the slides. If you want, we can email them to you because all of that is really valuable information. I know that this is a slideshow that you might wanna come back to and look at now and then, and then look at all those resources. So we will send that out. Couple questions and we’ll have to do them pretty quickly. But one participant says a hospital’s doctors are constantly asking me to interpret for my deaf child. I know it’s not legal, but sometimes I either have to do it or cancel an appointment. So how can I approach that with them just briefly? Okay, so if you know that you’re scheduling appointment for your child and two weeks, call your doctor’s office today and tell them that you need accommodations and that accommodation that you need is your child is deaf or hard of hearing, and you actually need an American sign language interpreter to be present. And that is their obligation to fulfill it. You can also, in addition to that phone call, before you hang up the phone with them, find out what person you talk to their name and their title, ask them for an email address, send an email to them restating everything that you said on the telephone, including the time that you called, how long the call lasted all the way to the second. So that way you have an actual paper trail showing that you’ve actually requested this. And if the doctor’s office failed to provide you with that American Sign Language interpreter, then you actually have something that you could provide to the Office of Civil Rights when you file a formal complaint. And that’s important because the Office of Civil Rights always asks for information and the more supporting documentation you have, the better off it is for the Office of Civil Rights to actually not only do the investigation, but do it in a more timely fashion so that they can actually provide the of results and the recommendations that they’re gonna provide. So if they ch choose to actually find that doctor’s office, then the Office of Civil Rights will provide that to you in writing as well as to that doctor’s office. But that’s how you would actually go about doing that so that you can get that ASL interpreter in a timely fashion. [Narrator] Great. And I imagine it’s the same story and the same process for making sure you have interpretation at IEP meetings or other school related meetings, right. And that is correct, and that goes for if you’re an English language learner as well. So if you’re an English language learner in a medical arena, they have to provide you with that information in your native language. But also they have to do that in the education arena as well. So if the school system is failing, if the school system or the medical arena both are failing to provide you with the information in your native language, then you again, send an email, call them and make the request. This also goes for braille, call and make your request, ask them for that email address, send it back to them. An email restating everything that you’re requesting when it doesn’t happen, send an email, restating that at that actual appointment, that the interpreter was not provided, or the accommodations were not provided and somebody will, and you can then find out if you want, you can find out who the manager is. You can actually forward that to them. Or you can just go ahead and file with the Office of Civil Rights. Now, please don’t get it misconstrued. You can file with the Office of Civil Rights, but you also can file with the American Disabilities Act. You can file with both entities and both entities will look at them because both offer different funding sources, Office of Civil Rights, give funding through section 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, but American Disabilities Act under title two, actually provide funding too. So you can actually choose to go through both or one and actually have them investigated, and your request will be acknowledged, but also the recommendations will be followed up and American Disabilities Act, they will actually go into legal action and they actually provide attorneys when they see that there’s non-compliance as it relates to the disabilities arena.

[Narrator] Thank you, Corhonda. Thank you so much, for everyone, if the poll is still up and you haven’t answered it, please do, we appreciate that, that will help us to continue doing more webinars like this one. And, and I know there’s a couple other questions. We will get you the answers to those, but right now we’re at time. And I just wanna take a moment to thank all of you for coming here and to thank Corhonda for your detailed, excellent, relevant talk. It was really great. I hope we can hear or more from you. And we also wanna thank The Wilson Foundation for their dedication to the Baton Rouge Capital area community, and for supporting this webinar series. So thank you so much, everyone. I hope you can come to some of our future webinars. We have a few more coming up, just go to our site, exceptionallives.org, and click on webinars, but we also have lots of other stuff there. So thank you so much. And thank you particularly to Corhonda. Thank you everyone. And please look at HIPAA also as another law. Thank you. Bye everyone.

Real Talk About Disabilities:
Issues faced by families of color

These free webinars are for parents and providers caring for children with disabilities. Hear from professionals in the Greater Baton Rouge Area addressing topics that concern their community, such as mental health, racial disparities, life skills, and youth services.