Author: Kelly Fisher, RN

February 19, 2025

Just Do It! Unpack Accessibility One Strap At A Time

Nike has done it again. You may recall in 2015 Nike produced a tennis shoe that was made to meet the needs of those with disabilities. They featured a wrap around zipper and a larger opening to make it easier for people to slide their feet in and out. Now, they have produced an accessible backpack. This backpack was designed...

Categories General

February 5, 2025

Cancer is Rising Among People With IDD. Screenings Save Lives.

Breast cancer awareness is always thought about in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. However, we really need to be thinking about the risk of this and other cancers for the people we support all year long. Often this is a risk that can be overlooked. According to a study published in 2024 people with intellectual disabilities are more likely to...

Categories General

December 18, 2024

You’re an important piece in the puzzle. How Can You Help Foster Connections?

Modified from January 2019 Connection is such an important piece of our lives. I think of all the people I have in my life. My support system has helped me in many invaluable ways in my lifetime. But, what if they weren’t there? Where would I be right now? Through my years of working at the HCQU, this theme has...

Categories Community/Everyday Life

October 30, 2024

Face it. We All Need Friends.

“A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face.” Maya Angelou What gives your life meaning? While that may be a very existential question, the answer can have a lot of different themes. I would bet that for most of us it has a lot to do with connections. We have many different relationships in our lives. We have our...

Categories Community/Resources

October 9, 2024

Trauma and Direct Care Professionals: The Forgotten Sacrifice

Modified from August 2019. Having worked in our system for a number of years now, I have heard many horrible stories of what people have had to endure in their lifetime. We truly work with some of the strongest survivors I have had the privilege of knowing. According to a report completed by NPR in 2018, people with intellectual disabilities...

Categories Everyday Life/General

September 4, 2024

Why Should You Care About Psychiatric Polypharmacy?

Over the years I have had the pleasure to work with many people receiving services in our system. Our team typically gets called in, not when people are doing well, but when they are struggling. This can be from a medical standpoint, a behavioral standpoint, or often both. When reviewing their records, many people are noted to have a mental...

Categories Everyday Life/General

March 20, 2024

Support People in the Face of Trauma

You may be aware many people receiving support from our system have experienced trauma. As a supporter in the system, what does that mean for us? One thing it means is that we must humble ourselves to maybe look at the person’s response to their world a little differently. We may feel we know the reason a person is responding...

Categories General/Resources

January 24, 2024

It Starts with Special

How do you define special? Do you look at the word positively or negatively? Why is it that we use words to hurt and minimalize people? As you may know, Special Olympics campaigned against the “R” word several years ago as people with intellectual disabilities spoke out about how the word had been used to bully, abuse, and hurt people....

Categories General/Resources

January 10, 2024

Finding the Pathways to Justice Together

I have been on a journey to find ways in which we, as a system, can better support those who have been a victim of crimes or may have engaged in criminal behavior. This means I am always on the lookout for resources. I recently came across The Arc’s initiative is called Pathways to Justice. This initiative is through The...

Categories General/Resources

June 14, 2023

Know the Signs, Ask, Report, and Take Action

Most of the people employed or associated with the Intellectual Disability/Autism systems are here because they want to help provide care and service to people with disabilities. But we also know that sometimes people get hurt. That may be through abuse, neglect, abandonment, or exploitation. So, who can abuse, neglect, abandon, or exploit a person with a disability? It can...

Categories Community/Resources