Cynthia Elliott reminds her daughter Zainab to stretch during a skating lesson at the Ice Den ,
Chandler , Arizona . ( Rick D ' Elia )
Why it ’ s hard to find safe homes for some people with disabilities
By Amy Silverman
To make this story more accessible to a wide range of readers , we are providing this plain language version , translated by Rebecca Monteleone . Plain language is a writing style that makes difficult concepts easier for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities to read . Learn more about this here .
Zainab Edwards is an ice skater .
Ice skating runs in Zainab ’ s family . Zainab ’ s mom is an ice skater too . Her name is Cynthia Elliot . Cynthia ’ s other daughter used to ice skate too .
Cynthia and Dave are Zainab ’ s foster parents . They have been fostering Zainab since she was 4 years old .
Zainab is 23 years old . She ice skated with an instructor in
Chandler , Arizona . She had a good day .
Zainab did not want to talk to a reporter .
Zainab has disabilities . She is deaf . She used to use American Sign Language and cochlear implants to communicate .
She does not have a colon . She wears an ileostomy bag . The bag holds her waste .
Zainab used to have a full life . She went to Disneyland . She had friends . She did the Special Olympics .
In 2014 , Zainab got very sick . She had trouble walking and picking things up . She had many seizures every day . She could not wear her cochlear implants . She got angry and tried to hurt her mom and caregivers . She could not feed herself .
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