AZJL_Mar13

Recommendations

Info

[UPFRONT] HONORING CHARLES ARNOLD PIONEER IN MENTAL HEALTH LAW By Elizabeth Schwartz “I think of myself as a mental health lawyer,” says Charles Arnold, when asked what kind of law he practices. “We dene our practice by the type of people we serve.” Arnold – “Chick” to his friends – is one of three recipients of the Arizona Region American Jewish Committee’s 2013 Judge Learned Hand Award for Community Service. e award, bestowed annually on three members of the Jewish legal community, recognizes exceptional emerging leaders, public service and community service. is year’s other recipients are Terry Goddard, former Arizona attorney general and former mayor of Phoenix (public service), and Phoenix lawyer Nicole Stanton (emerging leadership). According to an AJC news release, “AJC’s Judge Learned Hand award recognizes distinguished individuals within the legal profession. Established in 1964, it honors those who have contributed meaningfully to the legal community and whose work reects the integrity and broad humanitarian ideals exemplied by Judge Hand.” Arnold joined the rm of Frazer Ryan Goldberg & Arnold, LLP, in June of 2002; his area of specialization is mental health and elder law, and his clients are the developmentally disabled, the mentally ill and the elderly. Arnold also served as the Maricopa County Public Fiduciary from 1980 to 1981; in that role, he was the guardian and conservator of approximately 600 mentally ill adults in Maricopa County. Arnold is also the named plainti in a landmark class-action lawsuit to assert the rights of the mentally ill in Arizona. Beginning around 1979, social policies across America regarding the mentally ill shifted away from a pattern of institution- 12 MARCH 2013 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE alization to a gradual integration of people with mental health issues into the wider community. “When I became the public guardian, it was a time when the deinstitutionalization process was in full swing,” Arnold recalls. “e rst step in that process was development of community-based services for people who’d been in institutions; the second step involved releasing people from institutional care into an existing community support system. In Arizona we jumped to the second step without doing the rst. As public guardian, I became the legal caretaker of these kinds of people.” e need for laws addressing the rights of the mentally ill emerged at the same time as Arnold’s stint as public
guardian. “I grew up with this area of law; it coincided with my career trajectory,” he explains. “Because it was new and I was in a high-prole position as public guardian, I was able to have an impact on the way the law here has developed.” In his job with Maricopa County, Arnold supervised the legal needs of more than 600 people with serious mental illnesses. Arizona’s traditionally Republican leanings toward less governmental involvement in providing human services, coupled with the fact that many people relocate to Phoenix alone, without their families or established communal support networks, made Arnold’s work especially challenging. “I helped draft legislation that is unique in the country; it states that everybody who lives in our state with a serious mental illness is entitled to a full range of community-based support. At that time, even Republicans recognized there was a decit in this area, and I’ve always believed that it was collective communal guilt that passed this legislation,” says Arnold. When the law passed, in 1980, it merely established these rights for the mentally ill; enforcing them was another matter. “Part of our community existed in what I termed a mental health ghetto – a part of town with single-room-occupancy hotels and boarding homes, which were scary places.” One of the people under Arnold’s supervision was a man named John Gauss, who walked the streets of Phoenix every day because he was afraid to stay in his home. “John’s residence, S & W boarding home, was notorious; it “I was the kid who always looked out for the underdog.” – Charles Arnold had burned down two or three times,” said Arnold in an interview on the public television program Arizona Horizon in May 2012. “John was ill; he wasn’t stupid … each day he’d stop at our oce downtown and visit me. He’d heard about the statute that was passed that gave rights to people with serious mental illness, and he wondered why there were no services available for him. I was a lawyer; I was John’s guardian; my gosh, I simply connected the dots. ere was a critical need to hold our communities accountable for the statutes that we had passed.” Arnold joined with the Center for Law and the Public Interest to le a class-action suit, Arnold vs. Sarn, on behalf of Gauss and four other named plaintis. Despite legal victories in Arizona’s courts, including the Arizona Supreme Court, the demands of the lawsuit, which focus on the mandatory duty of the state to provide services enumerated in Arnold’s 1980 legislation, have still not been fully met. In 2000 Jane Hull, then serving as governor of Arizona, was added to the lawsuit as a defendant. “e terms of the legal statute aren’t being addressed, more than 30 years after we led our suit,” Arnold explains. “It’s still going on.” Like many people who came of age in the 1960s, Arnold was determined to make the world a better place, and viewed law school as a means to that end, rather than an end in itself. “I had no intention of becoming a lawyer when I enrolled in law school at the University of Arizona,” Arnold explains. “I just thought a law school education would be invaluable for doing something to serve the greater good.” Arnold could not have predicted the convergence of mental health law with his own career path when he began practicing law in the early 1970s. However, his clear anity for the legal specialization he helped pioneer has another, more personal, component. “I had a profoundly disabled sister. So much of my cultural upbringing had to do with being responsible for others; I was the kid who always looked out for the underdog, and I tutored disabled kids when I was just a kid myself.” For Arnold, the social justice aspects of his Jewish upbringing in Queens and later at Temple Beth Israel in Phoenix, where his family relocated when Arnold was 14, are a central part of his world-view. “Helping make life better for those less fortunate is a critical aspect of our faith. e experiences I had with my sister made me a better advocate in my work, and my work fuels a wonderful way of being a nice person while still being a lawyer.” Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer and musician. Spring is more wonderful with friends, at Pueblo Norte. Lawn mowing or garden-growing? Feeling the heat or cool by the pool? Staying at home or staying social? Instead of worrying about home maintenance, what’s for dinner, or getting to appointments, our residents enjoy Five Star living with friends, exceptional care, and a calendar of opportunities to experience spring in full bloom. CALL FOR OUR SPRING MOVE-IN SPECIALS! RSVP FOR OUR THIRD NIGHT PASSOVER SEDER HELD ON MARCH 27TH PUEBLO NORTE SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 7090 East Mescal Street Scottsdale, AZ 85254 480-948-3990 www.PuebloNorteRetirement.com Pet Friendly ©2013 Five Star Quality Care, Inc. INDEPENDENT LIVING ASSISTED LIVING LONG-TERM NURSING ORTHOPEDIC/MEDICAL REHAB ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | MARCH 2013 13
Page 1 and 2: THE JEWISH LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE FOR A
Page 4 and 5: Unlike most investors, none of Stra
Page 6 and 7: Table of Contents MARCH 2013/Adar-N
Page 8 and 9: Editor’s Letter How can we decide
Page 10 and 11: ISRAEL BONDS THIS PASSOVER From Exo
Page 14 and 15: 14 MARCH 2013 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE
Page 16 and 17: [PASSOVER] HOME HOLIDAY Observed at
Page 18 and 19: [PASSOVER] Carlos Galindo-Elvira bl
Page 20 and 21: [PASSOVER] CHEF’ S By Lisa Glickm
Page 22 and 23: [PASSOVER] Clean Up,Cash In Use Pas
Page 24 and 25: [COVER STORY] horsing around By Deb
Page 26 and 27: [COVER STORY] Kevin Rosenbaum and J
Page 28 and 29: [COVER STORY] e Rosenbaums are stil
Page 30 and 31: Shoshanna black-and-white shift dre
Page 32 and 33: [CAMPS] Letters from Camp An attemp
Page 34 and 35: [CAMPS] BB Camp cultivates confiden
Page 36 and 37: [CAMPS] CAMP STEIN WELCOMES NEW DIR
Page 38 and 39: [CAMPS] 38 MARCH 2013 | ARIZONA JEW
Page 40 and 41: [FOOD] By A. Noshman Remember when
Page 42 and 43: [FOOD] Demystifying the Grape By Ma
Page 44 and 45: [ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT] The Storyt
Page 46 and 47: [ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT] By Janet A
Page 48 and 49: [FITNESS] By Debra Rich Gettleman E
Page 50 and 51: [SENIORS] LA SIENA RESIDENTS enjoy
Page 52 and 53: [SENIORS] Helping Aging Parents Tac
Page 54 and 55: [ISRAEL/AN ISRAELI IN AMERICA] The
Page 56 and 57: [ISRAEL/AN AMERICAN IN ISRAEL] Isra
Page 58 and 59: [SINGLES] ROCKING the single life:
Page 60 and 61: [SINGLES] Searching for Love in All
Page 62 and 63:
[TRAVEL] Great Choral Synagogue The
Page 64 and 65:
[TRAVEL] While two armed policemen
Page 66 and 67:
[VOLUNTEER] Volunteering: 66 MARCH
Page 68 and 69:
[HAPPENINGS/FACES] Centennial Celeb
Page 70 and 71:
March 9-10 Devoured Culinary Classi
Page 72:
What does well-being look like? Car
show all

AZJL_Mar13

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?