Push for legislation to help keep disabled out of nursing homes

Long-term care centers have been in the spotlight ever since the first known COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. started in one, but local advocates say the threat of the coronavirus isn’t the only problem with these facilities.

"When people are pulled out of their community and placed in a box they just don’t do well," said Bob Kafka, an organizer with ADAPT of Texas, a grassroots disability rights group. 

Kafka said the problems with long-term care facilities have always existed – for those with disabilities and those without. COVID-19 just brought them to the surface.

"This has been a major problem, but the vast majority of it was hidden like an iceberg underneath the water," said Kafka. "COVID is like the iceberg."

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Kafka, who has a physical disability himself, along with other members of ADAPT of Texas gathered at the state capitol on Friday, asking for a change in this legislative session.

Along with better wages and benefits for in-home caregivers, or community attendants, they want federal funding to be used to allow those with disabilities to have the option to get in-home care - rather than move into a facility. 

"If there was ever a population that has been discriminated against it is people with disabilities," said Kafka. "Because the budget is so tight for home and community-based services, many fear they can't get enough service at home and that may be the only place they can go to get service at all would be a facility."

According to Kafka, that means not only are these people forced to leave their communities and receive less individualized care, they are generally at a greater risk of COVID-19 because of their disabilities.

"We really need to beef up our system, and we think this session is an opportunity to restructure the system so that in-home community-based services are the first priority and nursing facilities and other institutions are the last," said Kafka. "Right now, it's reversed."

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