Running for a cause!!!

This year I did my first marathon and I ran for OAR, the Organization for Autism Research, and I will be running the half marathon this January for OAR again!!!

There have been 4 genetic tests that have been beneficial in identifying Autism and there is a new DNA sequencing test that has not been approved by insurance companies, yet due to cost.  However, it maps 80,000 genes to better identify genetic issues and possibly open up more study about Autism.  Miguel has been tested for the 4 Autism identifiers and he has come up negative.  My boy is still a mystery....no surprise there.  Nonetheless, he growing tall and he is healthy, so I won't complain.

Please feel free to support this ongoing cause and donate as you feel fit.  Thanks a bunch!

http://www.chevronhoustonmarathon.com/Donate/PersonalPage.cfm?MID=9007&CRID=35&CID=388

Love,

Kel and Migs

Walk for Autism in Houston!!!

http://www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=465563&lis=0&kntae465563=DA78BFEEFF4E48178D3400E1C72FA33D&supId=328344002

I'm always trying to find ways to continue to fight the good fight, despite our circumstances. Please feel free to support!! Thanks!!

I Pledge Allegiance

Disgusting. Abuse in Corpus Christi State School

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/031209dnmetstateschoolabuse.4ab86d9.html

Arrests under way in 'fight club' scandal at Corpus Christi State School

04:43 PM CDT on Thursday, March 12, 2009

By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News eramshaw@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Six employees of the Corpus Christi State School have been charged in connection with the facility’s “fight club” scandal, and warrants have been issued for their arrest, authorities say.

One has been arrested; three others have notified police they will surrender today.
Five of the suspects – Timothy Dixon, 30; Jesse Salazar, 25; Guadalupe Delarosa, 21; Vince Johnson, 21; and Dangelo Riley, 22 – are charged with injury to a disabled person, a third-degree felony. Their bail has been set at $30,000. A sixth suspect, 21-year-old Stephanie Garza, is charged with a state jail felony for allegedly failing to intervene in the fight clubs. Her bail is set at $15,000.

Arrest warrants obtained by The Dallas Morning News allege that the employees charged with injury to a disabled person participated in encouraging, filming or narrating the fights – which were documented in dozens of still images and 20 movies taken over six months in 2008. Riley is allegedly seen kicking a resident during a fight, while Delarosa and Dixon are accused of doing much of the filming and narration. Four of the videos show residents sustaining injuries.

Also Online
03/12/09: More allegations of provoked fights surface at Texas schools for mentally disabled
03/11/09: Texas officials make surprise visits to state schools after Corpus Christi fight videos surface
03/11/09: Corpus Christi State School investigated after 'fight club' videos of residents found
03/10/09: Texas Senate unanimously passes measure to protect state school residents
Link: Corpus Christi State School
Get Texas and Southwest regional news


All are Corpus Christi natives, but one is out of state, Lt. Isaac Valencia said.
The news comes the day after Texas’ federally mandated abuse watchdog group reported similar cases of provoked fights at two other institutions.

Beth Mitchell, senior managing attorney with Advocacy Inc., said employees at both the Mexia and San Angelo state schools have provoked physical altercations between residents in the last six months — “creating a climate where abuse is acceptable, and in these cases encouraged.”
While the cases are serious, Mitchell said, they do not appear to be as orchestrated as the late-night "fight club" ring uncovered at the Corpus Christi facility.

Also, a Dallas Morning News review of employee misconduct at Texas' 13 state institutions for people with disabilities shows that at least five state school employees have been fired, suspended or demoted for instigating or allowing fights between residents since 2006.
Officials with the Department of Aging and Disability Services, who on Tuesday made surprise overnight visits to every dorm in every state school, say they have no evidence of highly organized fighting rings at other facilities. Since news of the Corpus Christi fights surfaced, they have suspended admissions to that state school and have begun installing video cameras, hiring security guards and adding overnight supervisors at all facilities.

"We have a 24-7 duty to protect some of the most vulnerable citizens of this state, and I want staff to know that the expectations at 2 a.m. are no different from the expectations at 2 p.m.," said agency commissioner Addie Horn. "If a worker sees something happen, knows something happened or hears a rumor that something happened, they are expected to report that immediately."

Cellphone video

Corpus Christi police, who uncovered the fight club by pulling nearly 20 video clips off of a discarded cellphone, said that the abuse appears to have happened repeatedly during 2008 and once as recently as January. Of the 11 current and former employees they've identified in the images, Lt. Isaac Valencia said, roughly five will probably be arrested late this week or early next week.

"When you can attack the weakest link in your community – it's just disturbing," he said. "Rest assured, we're very effective in our efforts to apprehend people."

In the Corpus Christi case, employees are thought to have orchestrated the fights, bringing residents into the common areas of dorms, provoking them physically and verbally, then raising the hands of the "winner" in victory. All residents have been evaluated by caseworkers, and none were seriously injured.

In the cases uncovered by Advocacy Inc., the independent organization that the federal government pays to monitor abuse and neglect in state facilities, staff generally encouraged one resident to beat another up, or refused to intervene when several residents ganged up on another.

"This is not an isolated problem," Mitchell said. "This type of scenario – with staff egging on client-to-client abuse – is occurring at other state schools."

The Corpus Christi news, first reported by The News, comes as lawmakers debate how to reform the state schools, which have been criticized by the U.S. Department of Justice for systemic abuse, neglect and other civil rights violations.

'Human cockfights'

"The state schools have been systematically starved of resources," said Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso. "What we have now is so little supervision that staff are pitting residents against one another like human cockfights."

The House Human Services Committee will tackle a bill today to protect state school residents from mistreatment. It calls an ombudsman to oversee abuse and neglect investigations and would require surveillance cameras, employee fingerprinting and random drug tests. The Senate approved a version of the bill Monday.

Advocates for the disabled, who support separate legislation to start closing some state schools, will be at the Capitol today and say they won't endorse the safety bill unless it includes a minimum six-month moratorium on admissions to all Texas state schools. The groups want the schools to prove they can go that long without an abuse or neglect case before they can add new residents.

Meanwhile, the Corpus Christi allegations prompted Gov. Rick Perry's office to implement elements of the safety bill before its passage.

Perry chief of staff Jay Kimbrough, who traveled to Corpus Christi immediately after the news broke, said that he was sickened by the fight club video and that there was no time to waste securing the state schools. He said the big hole appears to be "in the wee hours of the night," where devious employees can organize fights in dimly lighted common areas.

Conditions "are not yet to the level the people of Texas demand," Kimbrough said. "It's been disgusting, aggravating, sad. ... We're going to get cameras in. And we're going to throw the book at these people."

Houston Chronicle, 2/10/09

Miguel made the front page of the Houston Chronicle. Apparently, this newspaper is disseminated to a more educated population than that of the San Antonio Express....

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/moms/6255177.html

A young boy’s brush with death
Ordeal at state school may resonate with lawmakers' debate
By JANET ELLIOTT Austin Bureau
Feb. 9, 2009, 10:38PM

CLOSER LOOK AT STATE SCHOOLS
• 4,700: Number of state school residents
• 159: Number of children under age 18
• 574: Confirmed abuse/neglect cases in a one-year period
• 800: Employees fired or suspended since 2004
• $125,507: State cost per resident

AUSTIN — Less than a week after entering the Lufkin State School for the mentally disabled, 10-year-old Miguel Favela was in an ambulance speeding toward Houston, near death from an overdose of insulin given to him by the medical staff.

Miguel survived. But his life-threatening ordeal — like others — will resonate in the Legislature as lawmakers contend with fixing, or even closing state schools, home to thousands of developmentally disabled adults and children.

Most critical is putting a stop to the abuse and neglect pervasive in some schools. The Department of Family and Protective Services, which investigates complaints, confirmed 574 instances of abuse and neglect in just one 12-month period between September 2007 and August of last year, records show.

Gov. Rick Perry has declared improving the schools a state emergency. The possibilities range from shutting schools to improving employee pay to installing more surveillance cameras.
In Miguel’s case, an internal investigation in June by the Department of Aging and Disability Services, which runs the Lufkin school, found neglect on the part of the medical staff that ordered and administered the insulin.

A doctor was cited for ordering insulin without reviewing Miguel’s admission records or checking with his mother. And a nurse misunderstood the doctor’s verbal order and gave Miguel an insulin dose that was more than three times what had been intended.

Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, whose office also investigated Miguel’s case, said he found a disturbing lack of oversight by DADS officials over the facilities they run in far-flung corners of the state. The doctor, he noted, was cleared to come back to work after his peers concluded the physician had made an honest mistake. “That’s insane,” said Hochberg. “To the extent that the state operates facilities, I think the state absolutely has an obligation to make sure that the care is up to standard.”

In December, a U.S. Justice Department investigation found deadly lapses in health care and systemic civil rights abuses of the roughly 4,700 residents who lived in the state-school system. That, combined with the fact that 800 state school employees have been suspended or fired for abusing residents in Texas state schools since 2004, has forced state officials and lawmakers to make improvements a priority.

Care is also expensive: The state pays for each resident at a cost of $125,507 a year
Other legislation under consideration includes conducting random drug testing on staff members, moving many residents to community homes and creating an ombudsman to deal with family members worried about care.

Miguel’s case also will revive the discussion over whether children should be housed in large facilities. Advocates say state schools are not appropriate settings for children, but a rising number have been placed there due to lack of community programs for behavior therapy.
More than 300 state school residents are age 21 or under, and 159 are younger than 18.
Now 11, Miguel lives at the Brenham State School.

For his mother, Kelly Favela, her son’s ordeal at Lufkin was consuming — it was tough enough to decide to place her son in one of 13 large state-run residential facilities that mainly serve adults.
Favela, a 31-year-old Houston resident and divorced mom, had fought, with the help of Hochberg, to get Miguel into the school because his violent outbursts became too much to handle.

A hospital social worker, she faults the doctor for not attending a treatment meeting when Miguel was admitted.

DADS declined to comment on the case.
janet.elliott@chron.com

Miguel on the front page of the San Antonio Express

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/Boys_story_puts_focus_on_state_school_woes.html


Web Posted: 02/09/2009 12:00 CST

Boy's story puts focus on school woes

By Janet Elliot- Houston Chronicle
AUSTIN — Less than a week after entering the Lufkin State School for those having mental disabilities, 10-year-old Miguel Favela was in an ambulance speeding toward Houston, near death from an overdose of insulin given to him by the medical staff.
Miguel survived. But the boy's harrowing story — like many others — will resonate in the Legislature as lawmakers try to decide what to do about Texas' state schools, including whether to keep them open at all.
An internal investigation by the Department of Aging and Disability Services, which runs the Lufkin school, found neglect on the part of the medical staff that ordered and administered the insulin. A doctor was cited for ordering insulin without reviewing Miguel's admission records or checking with his mother.
And a nurse misunderstood the doctor's oral order and gave Miguel an insulin dose that was more than three times what had been intended.
Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, whose office has investigated Miguel's case, said he found a disturbing lack of oversight by DADS officials in Austin over the facilities they run in far-flung corners of the state. For example, he said, the doctor was cleared to come back to work after his peers at the state school concluded he had made an honest mistake.
“That's insane,” Hochberg said. “To the extent that the state operates facilities, I think the state absolutely has an obligation to make sure that the care is up to standard.”
A Justice Department investigation in December found deadly lapses in health care and systemic civil rights abuses of the nearly 5,000 residents who live in the state-school system.
Eight hundred state school employees have been suspended or fired for abusing residents in Texas state schools since 2004, and there were 450 confirmed incidents of abuse or neglect in one 12-month period.
Gov. Rick Perry last week declared improving the state schools an emergency; options range from closing one or more of the facilities to improving employee pay and hiring an independent ombudsman for residents and their families.
After a week in the hospital, Miguel recovered. Now 11, he lives at the Brenham State School.
For his mother, Kelly Favela, the ordeal was consuming: Like thousands of other parents faced with having to work and to care for their mentally disabled children, Favela, a divorced mom, made the difficult decision to place her son in one of the 13 large state-run residential facilities that mainly serve adults.
Favela, a 31-year-old Houston resident, had fought, with the help of her state representative, to get Miguel into a residential facility after his violent outbursts became too much, even for a former Marine such as herself, to handle.
“It became so intense at home. No one could understand how bad it was,” she said.
But the place where she hoped her visually impaired and autistic son would get the intensive supervision and behavior therapy he needed almost killed him.
The doctor who ordered the insulin injections mistakenly believed that Miguel had diabetes mellitus, or “sugar” diabetes. But he suffers from diabetes insipidus, an inability to process fluids that is unrelated to the more common type of diabetes that involves a person's inability to process food.
Favela, a hospital social worker, faults the doctor for not attending a treatment meeting when Miguel was admitted. She said she described in detail the health issues and medication needs for her son, who was born with a genetically deficient pituitary.
Miguel also wears a bracelet that gives information about his diabetes insipidus.
DADS declined to comment on the case.
Miguel's case will revive the discussion over whether children should be housed in large facilities. Advocates say state schools are not appropriate settings for children, but a rising number have been placed there because of a lack of community programs for behavior therapy.
Favela says Miguel can go from being happy and playful to screaming and throwing chairs.
“It's a tragedy to see him so good and happy at times and not be able to bring him home,” she said. “I'm in such a torn position.”



Find this article at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/Boys_story_puts_focus_on_state_school_woes.html

Handsome guy....