Longtime children’s advocate Budd Bell dies
by Dara Kam | October 16th, 2009Tallahassee social services advocate Budd Bell, who spent nearly four decades lobbying the legislature for children and families, died this morning, the News Service of Florida reported.
She was 94.
For more than a generation, Bell was a familiar sight in the halls of the Capitol where she fiercely fought for services for poor children, the mentally ill and the disabled.
Bell pushed lawmakers to create the Baker Act, which allows mentally ill or suicidal individuals to be temporarily hospitalized instead of sent to jail.
Bell, a founding member of the National Association of Social Workers in 1955, was also instrumental in requiring child care centers to be licensed.
Tags: Baker Act, Budd Bell, legislature
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October 16th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
For more than a generation, Bell was a familiar sight in the halls of the Capitol where she fiercely fought for services for poor children, the mentally ill and the disabled.
And we she labeled “the” metnally ill and “the” “disabled” fought her for her abstraction. She did a great deal of good, and a commensuate amount of harm.
Harold A. Maio
khmaio@earthlink.net
October 16th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Bell pushed lawmakers to create the Baker Act, which allows mentally ill or suicidal individuals to be temporarily hospitalized instead of sent to jail.
You err, acommon error: It allows *anyone* to be held for examination to determine if they are ill. Anyone.
Harold A. Maio
khmaio@earthlink.net