The woman, who has moderate mental retardation and several medical problems, lived at Fernald for over 50 years and had many friends and long-time caregivers there. Last month, she told Meagher herself that while she thought the house in Bedford was “very pretty,” she did not want to go to live there.
The move on Wednesday was actually made a day earlier than expected. We understand that two people from the Bedford group home arrived at Fernald that day, told the woman they were taking her out for coffee, and never brought her back.
The Waltham Daily News Tribune Tuesday quoted the head of the Arc of Greater Boston (GBARC), which serves as the woman's corporate guardian, as claiming that the woman had said she did want to move after viewing the newly constructed group home. As the woman's legal guardian, GBARC approved the move.
Terri Angelone, the CEO of GBARC, told the newspaper: “If she said absolutely not, and never changed her mind, we would not have considered it.”
We consider this statement curious. It appears to imply, at best, that the woman was ambivalent about moving. Even if she told someone at GBARC at one point that she did want to move, she clearly told many others that she didn't. We don't see how it could possibly be in her best interest to have moved her, after 50 years at Fernald, to a place where she must now live with people she has never met. Three other residents, who are also legally representated by GBARC and who were also moved to the Bedford group home from Fernald, are reportedly profoundly mentally retarded and do not speak. Had the woman really wanted to live there with them, a subterfuge about taking her out for coffee would not have been necessary.
Angelone also made another curious statement to the Waltham Tribune. She claimed that the woman would now receive an increased level of care because there was “a greater staff-to-consumer ratio” at the Bedford facility. This will simply not be the case. The administration wants to close Fernald for the very reason that it has a very high staff-to-client ratio, which costs money to maintain.
Fernald has a staff that includes nursing personnel, psychologists, clinical social workers, and occupational and physical therapists, in addition to direct-care workers. The woman will not get that level of care in the group home.
The administration is appealing a decision last year by U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro that Fernald remain open to its current residents. The appeal is before the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston.
Meagher asked Fernald League members and others who are angered by DMR's decision to move this woman to send letters to:
Commissioner Elin Howe
Department of Mental Retardation
500 Harrison Avenue
Boston, MA 02118
She also recommend that all the letters to DMR be copied to:
Joseph L. Tauro
United States District Judge
Courtroom 20
John J. Moakley Courthouse
1 Courthouse Way
Boston, MA 02210
So this is what the battle for Fernald has come to. Moving elderly people with no REAL guardian to protect them when no one is looking! Talk about underhanded. I have no doubt that the DMRs paperwork will be in total compliance with the courts ruling; however, it can’t possibly be in compliance with the spirit and intent of the ruling. How could it be?
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p>It sure seems that the DMR has just given us the initial push back down that slippery slope to 30+ years ago. When civil rights, the right to choose, and quality of life were foreign concepts where the care and treatment of the mentally retarded were concerned.
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p>Given the womens age I can only hope that her remaining days are not filled with the same fear and terror of her youth.
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This is an unbelievable disregard of the welfare of one of the State’s most fragile wards!
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p> My brother lives on the men’s side in they same cottage, and has been at Fernald since 3 years old – He just turned 61…
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p> They also mis-represented a trip to him with a re-location
attempt without his knowledge to the Templeton colony during his adolescence –
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p> It traumatized him so severely – he still to this day will not leave his residence willingly for fear he will not return to his home!
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p> Decades of psychiatric effort has been applied to “undo” his “phobic tendencies”.
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p> These mentally challenged, forever children, rely on familiar staff, familiar routine, familiar surroundings to stay balanced –
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p> Transfer trauma is real for this group of residents still at Fernald –
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p> For corporate guardians, linked to the organizations who will clearly benefit most from the privatization of service contracts if this facility is eliminated, as they continue to represent otherwise with their well financed mis-information campaigns – to insist that these “relocations” are in the resident’s “best” interest — is obscene!!!
in his report last year to Judge Tauro, in which he recommended that Fernald remain open. Sullivan wrote, in reference to plans to close the facility:
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear GBARC, this woman's guardian, read Sullivan's report.
This woman has been at Fernald for a long time — almost no one new has been admitted since the 1970s. And the Greater Boston ARC has been her guardian for a long time. Although ARC policy statements have always been that every person with MR/DD is better off in a community setting, in practice they have left this woman and others with rights to stay at Fernald where they wanted to be.
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p>All of a sudden, when she is so old, they find that she really wants to be in a different place, with nonverbal housemates and unfamiliar staff???
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p>This is poor guardianship. No one 97 at any mental status wants to move from their longtime home and away from familiar companions. While the Bedford home is new and probably very well equipped and accessable, and the staff are caring and good and well trained, this is not a move in the ward’s interest.
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p>This is politics, and the timing is revealing.
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p>Moe
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p>(Disclosure: I am a consultant to COFAR, a coalition which includes the Fernald League.)
Why can’t DMR give this resident what she wants? To live her life at Fernald! At 91 years old and having this her home for over fifty years…that is not to much to ask. I hope all the decission makers on this one get a good nights sleep!
that this woman stays healthy. The odds are not in her favor. The Strauss CA study indicates that deinstitutionalization isn’t in her best interests.
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p>The Governor better hope that there was no collusion between the “bought and paid for” guardian and his administration.
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p>The Governor should start answering questions as to why he cut the DMR line items, which serve the weakest and most diabled among us…while people are applauding the billion bucks for the bio-tech industry.
I couldn’t agree more with the comments posted to this blog.
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p>I guess anyone would be hard-pressed to come up with a plausible explanation for moving this person at this stage of her life.
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p>I might even consider the DMRs explanation had a shred of validity if it at least contained ONE NEW WORD rather that the standard answer to any question “….part of a national trend to move individuals…..blah, blah, blah.”
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p>To move this person, it was snowing and raining that day, under the guise of doing something enjoyable–going out for coffee–with no idea she would not be returning to home of 50 years–CRUEL and INHUMANE are the only words that come to my mind.
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p>I too would like to know how these people sleep at night.