Trig's Promise

In her speech at the Republican National Convention yesterday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin delivered a special message for families of kids with special needs: "I pledge to you that, if we're elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House." When she finished speaking, she stood on stage with her infant son, Trig, who has Down syndrome, cradled in her arms. For advocates of mentally disabled citizens, Palin's pledge marked a rare moment in the spotlight for a set of issues too often hidden in the wings. Donna Martinez, the mother of a 22-year-old with Down syndrome, watched the speech online later that night, because she was on the phone with a mother in the midst of a battle with her son's school to keep him in mainstream classes during Palin's speech in prime time. Martinez says part of her was saying "'Finally! Hooray! I think about how many times, when we hear politicians, that we mumble under our breath, 'You'd understand if you had a child with a disability too.' Well it is her child."

But that enthusiasm is tempered with the skepticism born of years of broken promises. "God love her for saying she's a friend for families, but I want to know what that means," Martinez says. "There are a lot of 'friends' that insist that they're the voice of the retarded. They're not my friends, and they're not my son's voice, so I want to know whose voice she's supporting."
David Braddock, the executive director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado, questions how Palin will follow through on her promise. "These are words that are easy to say, but apparently more challenging for some presidents to implement," he says. "We've had an individual who identified himself as an advocate for people with disabilities in the White House for eight years. But he has not been a great advocate for eight years."

As a result, many in the disability rights community are eager to hear more about the GOP vice-presidential nominee's plans to follow up. Kathie Snow, the mother of a 21-year-old with cerebral palsy, says she was surprised to see an eruption of support for Palin today on message boards for parents of children with disabilities. "There are some parents who are automatically saying, 'I'm voting for Sarah Palin because she has a child with Down syndrome,'" Snow says. But for Snow, being a parent is not enough. She wants to know what Palin thinks about the issues that matter most to this community. Would the GOP ticket support educating special-needs students in "mainstream" classrooms, as Snow's son was--or provide them separate instruction? "Yes she's a parent," Snow says, "but what is her stand?"

Another major question: whether a McCain-Palin administration would put up the money to fund services for mentally challenged citizens--something that has been a problem in recent years, according to Peter V. Berns, the executive director of The Arc of the United States, a nonprofit advocacy group for people with disabilities.

Both Democratic and Republican party platforms endorse full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). But if they were to follow through, it would be a first. Under IDEA, enacted in 1975, the federal government pledged to pay 40 percent of the cost of educating a disabled child. But federal funding has never risen above 20 percent. That leaves state and local governments to fill in the gap for the estimated 6 million public-school kids with a variety of disabling conditions, mental and physical.

Progress has been made; there has been a philosophical shift away from institutionalizing large swaths of the disabled population, toward integrating them into their communities. From 1955 to 2004, the amount of public financial support for people with intellectual disabilities grew from $2.3 billion to $82.6 billion, according to a study by Braddock--much of it coming from the Feds. Braddock traces the origins of this shift to President John F. Kennedy, who appointed a panel in 1961 to address mental retardation and mental health, and subsequently implemented the vast majority of that panel's 97 recommendations.  (Kennedy's sister, Rosemary Kennedy, had severe learning disabilities and was the inspiration for the Special Olympics, whose creation was spearheaded by the Kennedy Foundation in 1968.)