Disabled Children

Re “House of Healing,” Aug. 21:

Your article about the work of Ann Belles in Huntington Beach was rich with inspiring stories, and anyone involved with a person who is severely challenged can relate to it. However, when your writer excuses most of the natural parents as persons “who want nothing to do with [the children],” she is doing our society a great disservice. The fact is that the support Belles is receiving to care for her children is far greater than most parents receive when they keep their children at home.

The article states the amount of care and time that are required. And the average cost to society to maintain a person at a state developmental center is approximately $8,500 a month. Yet when a family wants just a fraction of that support they are treated like they are draining and using the system. Belles maintains her family at a fraction of the cost of a state developmental center, but with much more support than a biological family would normally receive.

Birth families have the stigma of society toward disability to deal with and a system that financially rewards and encourages segregating children into separate classrooms and separate recreational, working and living environments. If there is a lesson to be learned from all this it is to support families and their choices.

BEN ADAMS, Parent and Chairman

Special Education Commission

Los Angeles Unified School District