Deal Reaffirms Commitment to Georgia’s Disability Community
The following is the GCDD Viewpoint article from the Spring 2013 Making a Difference.
Deal Reaffirms Commitment to Georgia’s Disability Community
The following is a transcript of Governor Deal's Disability Day speech from February 21, 2013.
Welcome to everybody here at the State Capitol, and we are glad to have you. I want to thank the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities for hosting this event again this year and thanks to all of you for what you do to help and assist those who have disabilities.
I know your theme is being connected and that is of course an appropriate theme. I think all of us would like to see those with disabilities connected to better living conditions, better educational and training opportunities and then of course better integration into society as a whole. We are working on that.
I want to thank all of you who are providing the kind of assistance in your local communities that is necessary to make programs and efforts of this type successful. I want to thank our Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities for their leadership, especially Frank Barry for his leadership.
We are moving in a very positive direction to implementing what we have agreed upon in our settlement with the Department of Justice in regard to moving as many of those as we can from our hospital and institutional settings back into community-based settings.
It takes everybody working in the same direction to achieve that, and it requires that your local communities step up and work with state agencies and other agencies as we attempt to find the appropriate facilities for individuals with disabilities. It also requires those in the housing community in various parts of this great State to cooperate in that undertaking.
I think we are making great progress, and it is all together appropriate that whenever possible, we move individuals who are in nursing homes into private and community-based settings. Thank you for your efforts to do that.
But there is another important linkage in all of this, and that is employability. As much as possible, we should attempt to do everything we can to provide employment opportunities to those with disabilities.
I want to commend Kennesaw State University for a program that they have initiated. They are allowing students with disabilities to participate in classes and in educational opportunities along with students who don't have disabilities. They are a forerunner of this in our higher educational institutions, and I believe it is a program that we can replicate throughout our entire university system. I commend them for taking that role.
As you know we have goals that we have classified as our Olmstead goals, and I have enumerated some of those here today, but I want to thank you for your support, for your efforts both here at the Capitol on this occasion and more importantly for your efforts every day back in the communities in which you work and live. Those with disabilities have great abilities and we need to capitalize on it. Thank you very much for letting me be with you.
To listen to a podcast of Governor Deal's speech at Disability Day, click here.
