Disabled Adults

Beginning today, about 50 disabled adults in Carroll County who were receiving monthly cash from a state program that ended Friday can apply for financial help from local social service providers.The county's Department of Social Services and the nonprofit Human Services Programs Inc. are working together to assist county residents who won't receive $157 monthly payments through the Disability Assistance Loan Program.During this year's General Assembly session, Gov. Parris N. Glendening eliminated the $35 million DALP program, which provided cash payments to 21,000 disabled Marylanders.

The holidays are a time to share, remember and reminisce. So, I would like to share with you the story of Marge Burba, to reminisce with friends about her remarkable career serving older and disabled adults and to highlight the legacy, Winter Growth, she leaves upon her retirement as CEO as of Jan. 1. Winter Growth Inc., founded by Marge in April 1979 in Brookeville, is a nonprofit organization, which provides community-based assisted living and...

Beginning today, about 50 disabled adults in Carroll who were receiving monthly cash from a state program that ended Friday can apply for financial help from local social service providers.The county's Department of Social Services and the nonprofit Human Services Programs Inc. are working together to assist county residents who won't receive $157 monthly payments through the Disability Assistance Loan Program.During this year's General Assembly session, Gov. Parris N. Glendening eliminated the $35 million DALP program, which provided cash payments to 21,000 disabled Marylanders.

The lively young woman and a fragile older man walked hand-in-hand on a nature walk, slowly trailing a long line of fellow participants in a residential summer camp for adults with disabilities. Ronnie Meusel, the 23-year-old counselor, and Eugene Harvey, 58, are longtime attendees at Camp Glow, begun nearly 40 years ago by a Catholic nun and funded annually by the Archdiocese of Baltimore and its parishes. "I won at bingo last night," said Harvey, who lives in Gambrills and prefers "Dude" to his given name.

Early on a Saturday morning, while most people are still sleeping, Ada Jackson bends over a 30-year-old man, getting him ready for the day. She brushes his teeth, runs a wet washcloth over his body, dresses him, hoists him into a wheelchair, changes his sheets and feeds him breakfast. That is just the beginning of Jackson's 15-hour workday at Old Court, a nonprofit community home for disabled adults in Randallstown. Although she has been doing this for nearly 10 years, she still makes less than $9 an hour and has to work two jobs - 70 hours a week total - to support herself.

After 18 months of furious activity, the sounds of construction havebegun to lessen at Providence Activity Center North. And now the clients are back.The activity center, under the umbrella of the Providence Center, has undergone a $600,000 renovation.Fifty-six mentally and physically disabled adults have returned to their workshop from Our Shepherd Lutheran Church in Severna Park, where they had a temporary facility.Michelle Zinck, program administrator, is very pleased to be back."We're now able to offer so much more.

During the recession of the early 1990s, Maryland slashed benefits to more than 20,000 disabled adults, taking away medical coverage from most of them and cutting their monthly checks to $157 a month. Now, when the state has a $1 billion surplus, few are talking about restoring those benefits. "We often hear it said, particularly during this time of a strong economy and a record stock market, that a rising tide lifts all boats," said Kevin Lindamood, an advocate for the homeless in Baltimore.

Lon Sober is developmentally disabled and doesn't hold a job. Aside from making trips to his parents' place a few minutes away, he rarely goes out alone. But last month, Sober was working in a plastics factory on an Israeli kibbutz, contributing to communal life in a village designed for people with disabilities. He was dancing the night away in a Jerusalem club. His parents, without whom he had never traveled before, were thousands of miles away in Maryland. And Sober, on the whole, loved it. "The supervisor said I was one of the best producers there," he says proudly of his work in the factory.

A suspended state program that provides temporary cash assistance to disabled adults could be restored if lawmakers approve a $13 million supplement the governor proposed yesterday for the 2005 budget. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. earmarked $2.95 million of the supplemental budget to be distributed in small monthly payments through the Transitional Emergency Medical and Housing Assistance Program through July. The program - which gives $185 stipends to single, unemployable, disabled Marylanders who are ineligible for any other cash assistance programs - has been forced to turn away about 1,000 new applicants since January.

Partners in Care offers help to elderly, disabledPartners in Care Inc., a service exchange program, provides occasional volunteer assistance such as transportation to medical appointments or grocery shopping for elderly people and disabled adults.The volunteers get credit for their hours and may exchange them for services they need or donate them to others.Partners in Care operates a satellite office at Brooklyn Park Health Center in the 300 block of Hammonds Lane.Information: 553-8054.Pub Date: 7/29/96

A 56-year-old Parkville man accused of abusing a developmentally disabled adult in his care has been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography, Baltimore County police said Wednesday. Officers served a search-and-seizure warrant on the home of Tony Chestnut, 56, in the 1200 block of Halstead Road after receiving a tip that he had child pornography, according to police. Detectives found pornographic movies, as well as a video of Chestnut sexually abusing a developmentally disabled adult, police said.

A state home for developmentally disabled adults improperly kept nearly $80,000 that it should have returned to the state general fund at the end of fiscal year 2009, the Office of Legislative Audits reported Friday. The state Department of Mental Health and Mental Hygiene, which operates the Potomac Center in Hagerstown, has agreed to return the $79,800 to the general fund, according to a letter signed by Secretary John M. Colmers and included in the OLA report. Auditors for OLA, an agency of the Department of Legislative Services, found that the Potomac Center did not have adequate records to substantiate expenditures it had accrued June 30, 2009, the last day of the fiscal year.

For the parents of developmentally disabled adults, Opportunity Builders Inc. has been a place for their children to make friends, learn life skills and be productive. The parents of children with mental retardation, autism and other disabilities, volunteered and donated money to keep the nonprofit going for the past 47 years, even rescuing it from closure in 1986 when the doors were padlocked because of unpaid bills. Tomorrow, they get to celebrate a hard-fought milestone for OBI - the grand opening of its own 41,000-square-foot headquarters on 14.5 acres.

She occupies a folding chair in the center of the auditorium, right where the orchestra pit would be if this were the Hippodrome or Carnegie Hall. On the stage 10 feet away, 24 actors - squat and round, slender and intent, smiling and sniffling and dour - engage Barb Thomas with their eyes, reflecting as deftly as they can every movement she makes. She lifts her arms; they lift theirs. She leans left; mirror-like, they tilt right. As the melody of a show tune rattles through a boom box on a table in the auditorium at Riderwood Elementary School in Towson, she bends to the floor snapping her fingers, and they do the same, in time.

We could not humanely care for even the last 150 residents at Rosewood Center - so say various reports of neglect, abuse and patient-on-patient violence - so the governor of Maryland, after one year in office, decided he should close it. This was "after a lot of consideration," Martin O'Malley said from the steps of the center's administration building, deferring to experts who believe Rosewood's severely disabled adults, some of whom were sent there by...

Several disabled adults and a driver were injured about 4 p.m. yesterday when a Carroll Area Transit System bus in which they were riding collided with another vehicle on Route 27 near Taylorsville, state police in Westminster said. The small bus, run by the nonprofit group and carrying eight passengers, was southbound on Route 27 when it was struck by a pickup pulling out of Marston Road, Trooper Daxton Bury said.

Erika Otilie Scobel, a caregiver for children and mentally disabled adults, died Tuesday at Morningside House of Friendship in Hanover. She was 92 and had suffered from dementia. She was born Erika Franke in Breslau, Germany. In 1941, she married Enrich Dittmer, and the couple had two children, a son and a daughter. During World War II, the family fled from the Russians, and Ms. Scobel twice temporarily lost her children, then ages 1 and 3, on a train to the northern part of the country.

Several disabled adults and a driver were injured about 4 p.m. yesterday when a Carroll Area Transit System bus in which they were riding collided with another vehicle on Route 27 near Taylorsville, state police in Westminster said. The small bus, run by the nonprofit group and carrying eight passengers, was southbound on Route 27 when it was struck by a pickup pulling out of Marston Road, Trooper Daxton Bury said.

When mortgage lenders refuse to write loans on central city rowhouses, does that violate federal fair housing rules? What about refusing to write mortgages on houses in entire communities dominated by specific ethnic groups, such as Native Americans? Or not offering mortgages for houses that may be used in part to accommodate disabled adults in a "foster care" setting? Just how much protection do fair lending and other civil rights laws provide to mortgage applicants who are rejected not because of their credit scores or financial capacities, but because of the location, type or possible use of their homes?

Erika Otilie Scobel, a caregiver for children and mentally disabled adults, died Tuesday at Morningside House of Friendship in Hanover. She was 92 and had suffered from dementia. She was born Erika Franke in Breslau, Germany. In 1941, she married Enrich Dittmer, and the couple had two children, a son and a daughter. During World War II, the family fled from the Russians, and Ms. Scobel twice temporarily lost her children, then ages 1 and 3, on a train to the northern part of the country.