Quote from yesterday’s rally at the State House on behalf of the disabled:
COFAR President David J. Hart presided, pointing to two budget cuts under $200,000 each that affected hundreds or thousands of disabled people, one to the Disabled Persons Protection Commission, the other to the Tufts Dental Facilities program. Hart showed pictures of a Jamaica Plain mansion recently purchased for $900,000 by a non-profit provider as a likely example of a “bailout” and “sweetheart deal” for providers in the new state spending to open group home capacity for people to be transferred out of Fernald and the other three developmental centers slated for closure. “If governor Patrick steered favorable financing and a guaranteed state lease to a private for-profit company with $395,587 per year CEO — the newspapers and TV stations would be all over it. He might be impeached. Instead, the same basic insider deal minus the campaign contributions is presented to us as ‘an investment.'”
For more info, go to: http://www.cofar.org/
As “JohnD” said, some are making a lot of money out of tough times. But the closing of Fernald, rather than saving money, is all about ideology – and profit to some.
The Disabled Persons Protection Commission is all that there is to oversee the care of adult cognitively limited citizens in group homes, or the frail elderly. If you suspect abuse, they are who must be called. See: http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=dp… cuts that mean that investigations don’t happen because there are only two investigators for the whole state are going to cost lives, should this indeed occur.
My thanks to Senator Eldridge for the legislation he filed as a representative, to strengthen the DPPC: http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=dp…
Can someone clarify the status of this legislation, whether ongoing, refilled, or “dead” at the end of the last legislative session?
Also, the residents of Fernald and their families were promised a group home on the grounds of the Glavin Center. That promise turns out to be an illusion, even though there are no “cost savings”:
Today your battle is about whether the families and individuals retain the right to remain in the homes that were theirs when the battles were won in the 1970s. The Department and myself, as recently as six months ago, made promises to people coming out of Fernald Center that they could live in state-operated homes on the grounds of the Glavin regional center, and the Glavin Regional Center would be there to support them, as an ICF. The people made that choice from Fernald in good faith; I believe they made a great choice. And now they are going to take that away some few months later, and I in all good conscience tell you: That is not right. That is a promise broken. Help me out, and make this promise great.”
Dr. Bacotti also disputed the claims of cost savings, but also their importance, “On the question of savings, I was talking to a budget aide to [leading Senator], I heard that it has been revised down to a ‘budget neutral’ No savings, probably a euphemism for ‘likely to cost money.’ The numbers are not important. Because it should not be about saving a few dollars. It should not be about saving $41 million dollars. Stay focused. Yours are families with individuals that need you to advocate, and without you that advocacy just disappears, and so they will be moved by some bureaucracy without your input or theirs. You must advocate. It is not a choice; that is a moral obligation.”
Will we collectively stand with Cain, over his brother’s body, and deny that we are our brother’s keepers?
In that Biblical Story, Cain murdered his brother and then took his brother’s crops and so forth, and denied any wrong doing, stating that he was not his “brother’s keeper”.
Morally, it is the duty of adults to take care of children, and of the able to take care of those who cannot care for themselves. Without that axiom being upheld, the social compact falls apart, and there will not only be lives destroyed, but a return to the law of the jungle where in a socially Darwinian way, the predatory flourish, and those who need supports or act out of charity, are left to shoulder impossible burdens – and potentially founder.
To look away is to become an accomplice in the destruction of lives – and of the social compact itself. “Natural Law” as the Founding Fathers used the term relied on morality on the part of those in governance.
You’ve tied a lot together here, particularly the issue of cuts to DPPC and DMR and the administration’s broken promises concerning faciity-based care.
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p>As I’ve noted in another post I just filed today (‘Our next legal step’), the Fernald League for the Retarded is asking for a federal investigation of the dramatic decline in conditions at the Fernald Developmental Center in recent months. We need to stop the Patrick administration in its race to the bottom in care for persons with mental retardation in Massachusetts.
To clarify Dr. Bacotti’s concern about broken promises, the four state-operated group homes next to the Irving Glavin Regional Center have been under the facility administration. Dr. Bacotti was involved in building them, and they are very well-designed and equipped homes. The two most recent ones are where he refers to broken promises. The homes will remain there, but if the Glavin Center is closed, residents, like hundreds more in the surrounding communities, will be deprived of the safety net of facility based 24-hour nursing availability, special needs dental care, employment, clinical and therapeutic specialists. Some things at the Glavin Center simply cannot be purchased in the community at any price: extended psychiatric hospitalization, the Tufts Dental Facilities Program, and physicians and psychiatrists trained in working with people with developmental disability.
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p>The recent ARC study and Globe reports on young adults with DD still seeing pediatricians is very revealing on this kind of problem. Pediatricians have some training in communicating with patients who lack adult comprehension. But they aren’t at all accustomed to working with adult bodies, people who are sexually mature, the variable mix of strengths and weaknesses of an adult with a disabling condition, or the psychotropic and anti-seizure medications taken by some people with DD. There are trained specialists in these areas, and federal law requires the state to have them at developmental centers as part of the licensing process. There are some employeed by the state in the state-operated group home system, and some by the larger and more progressive provider organizations, but it isn’t required under law, and in this economy, what isn’t required is going to stop happening.
Amber Paw your comments are spot on.
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p>Caring for our mentally disabled citizens is our moral obligation.
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p>Three plus decades ago the battle for the proper and humane care of the mentally disabled began. Fortunately a Federal Judge had the MORAL COURAGE (something that is obviously lacking today) to do what was right and took on the task of totally reforming the system of caring for these individuals. As this judge stated, a group with no political constituency. In doing so he created the greatest comprehensive care facilities for the mentally retarded and physically disabled. These centralized facilities are staffed with “experts” in caring for these unique people. Now the administration whats to dismantle what took years to build.
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p>As the ARC points out in their article, private medical care for these individuals is inadequate. Ironic since they are one of the greatest supporters of closing these institutions and throwing these fragile people out into an already overloaded community system that is also facing budget cuts and where competent medical care is scarce.
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p>Their imaginary savings numbers give the impression that once these facilities are closed these people just disappear. Maybe thats what they are counting on. Its not a secret they use mortality rates in their projections.
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p>As Dr. Bacotti points out, the state makes promises and casually disregards them. Must be part of that whole “trivial” thing. But we are suppose to trust that they are only interested in what is best for our family members. Right.
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p>This administration doesn’t know the meaning of the word morality.
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