![]() ![]() In the fiscal year 2021-22, 5,786 people were under guardianship in North Carolina, according to a March presentation to legislators. It’s really core to personhood.” ‘It doesn’t get revisited’ “It affects where you live, who you’re with, what you do, how your money is spent. The reforms actually are “… the essence of what the disability rights movement is all about, which is choice and self-determination,” said Linda Kendall Fields, a longtime developer of these reforms and incoming director of UNC Cares, or the Center for Aging Research and Educational Services, at the UNC Chapel Hill. It happens when the court finds that a person, called a respondent, or a “ward” in outdated terminology, does not have the capacity to make and communicate decisions about his or her welfare or money. Under legal guardianship in North Carolina, a person can have near-total control of their life - over daily living and/or financial matters - turned over to another person, agency or business by order of a county clerk of court. Its passage would mark the first substantive changes in decades in this area of law, with language aimed at improving rights of the person under guardianship, making sure they are fully informed about the process, and improving oversight by the offices of county clerks. “Then I come and I’m like, ‘What do you mean? What am I supposed to do?’”Ī bill containing proposed reforms to several aspects of adult guardianship passed the state Senate unanimously on April 20 and headed to a House committee April 25. “They did not think that I was making good decisions,” Freeman said about the process to place him under the care of a guardian. ![]() He recounted being 18 and just transitioning from living with his mother. When Tylor Freeman was 18, he remembers, a Buncombe County court ruled that he needed a legal guardian to help him make life decisions, because that’s what a psychologist recommended after a 10-minute interview.įreeman, 28, of Asheville, who has cerebral palsy, told his story during an April 25 event in downtown Raleigh for professionals and advocates involved with proposed reforms of guardianship law that are moving through the General Assembly. Lessons from Abroad: How Europeans have tackled opioid addiction and what the U.S.Storm stories – NC Health News works with teens from SE North Carolina to tell their hurricane experiences.Unequal Treatment: Mental health parity in North Carolina.Youth climate stories: Outer Banks edition.When kids’ cries for help become crimes.COVID-19 updates: What’s happening in North Carolina?. ![]()
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