pages: CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2018-04-11.pdf, 7
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities | 2018-04-11 | 7 | ITEM 2-A COMMISSION ON DISABILITY MEETING MINUTES OF Wednesday, April 11, 2018 6:30 p.m. Karen Nakamura: Yes. Thank you. That's an excellent question. I think that my answer would be that they are only in our domain once they cross a particular line and we'll draw a line in the sand. So, once it crosses the line in the sand of amputation then they're our people. I think when we think about diabetes and the larger effects of diabetes even if you're pre-diabetic, the effects on your body are already apparent. We don't do this on, with other disabilities saying "Well oh you're just a little bit blind so we won't count you until you can't see enough or we don't do it with deafness." We don't say, "Well if you only have some hearing loss, you're not disabled until you get to a certain stage.' I think in general in the disability community, we have tried to create a big tent, but the big tent has particular patchy areas and some of the patchy areas we have to think, why are some of the areas that we have patchy? Karen Nakamura: Is it because in some ways we have either internalized ableism or is sometimes our internalized racism or our fear that if we accept people who other people see as unworthy of the disability status then we shouldn't include them? I think that's what drives sometimes our decisions of when we consider something to be a disability or not. Jenny Linton: I have a question. I've been a member of the National Association of the Dually Diagnosed, which looks at the developmentally disabled community that also suffers from mental illnesses. And one of the most striking things I learned in the most recent conference I went to was that two of the new places, domiciles for this population are in the jail system, as well as homelessness. What are we doing to combat this? Karen Nakamura: Yes. That's a huge issue and in some ways it's bigger than the scope of a city. It's a national issue. Right now, the three largest psychiatric institutions in the US, in terms of the number of people who are housed in them, are the Chicago Jail System, New York Jail System, and the LA County Jail System. And that is an astonishing figure. We all talk about de- institutionalization. Well, it's really great, but in many ways we have re-institutionalized them in jail systems. And the question with the homeless population is harder because often, the situation of the homeless is so hard that folks who didn't have a mental illness before they became un-housed, developed one because the circumstances are just so hard right now. Karen Nakamura: But it's an incredibly difficult situation. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges for the cities in the Bay area, is how we think about the homeless crisis. And then also, what we think about how we can change the jailing system, how we can think about how to use the 5150 institutionalization, temporary institutionalization processes, hospitalization processes, and whether or not there are ways that we can nudge policing policies to either be more accommodating, to figure out better solutions, but, boy, it's an incredibly tough situation, and I feel like it's not one that we talk much about. Karen Nakamura: Early on in my career, I had wondered one thing which is one, you don't see a lot of adults with Down syndrome, and when we do see a lot of adults with Down syndrome, they all seem happy. And the kids generally seemed happy. In some regards, many people with Down syndrome, adults and children are happy, but I once spent some time volunteering around Down syndrome and there are a lot of unhappy Down syndrome children, who then become unhappy 04/11/18 Page 7 of 18 | CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2018-04-11.pdf |