3. The administration will have to find a total of 448 new beds for the residents of the four Intermediate Care Facilities (ICFs) slated for closure by 2013.
4. By my calculations, that leaves 37 beds available for everyone else who is seeking placements in the community system. In 2007, Commissioner Howe told us that there were thousands of people waiting for placements in the community-based system.
We've created a table that attempts to catalog the housing plans in the Community Services Expansion and Facilities Restructuring document. I tried unsuccessfully to import it into this blog post, but it's available on my website at http://www.accountablestrategies.com/page5.html. Suffice it to say there are as many question marks in the table as data entries.
The key question we have is where is the community expansion in the administration's Community Services Expansion and Facilities Restructuring Plan? Will the thousands of people still waiting for community placements be satisfied with the 37 new beds that the administration is projecting will be left when the former facility residents are relocated to the community-based system?
By the way, 84 of those 485 new beds projected in the Community Services Expansion and Facilities Restructuring plan will actually be located at the Wrentham Developmental Center and 16 are currently located at the Hogan Regional Center. So the community expansion plan appears to involve only 385 new community-based beds.
We fail to understand how the administration's Community First plan is in any way a community expansion plan. It is a facility closure plan, period. Unfortunately, this plan will only be “Community First” for those people who now live in the state facilities. For everyone else, who will have to wait for all the facility residents to be relocated, it appears to be “Community Last.”
Under the Rolland v. Cellucci settlement, DDS has agreed to move about 125 persons each year now in nursing homes to community or state operated group homes — “community beds” in the calculations you describe. A large sum is budgeted for this purpose in the language of the $700 million dollar community residential line item. The language also allows this item to grab money out of the state operated group homes line and the facilities line (woefully cut back as it is), so privatization of state ops, as is being protested in Connecticut, is a possibility.
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p>Previous transfers from Fernald have all been to another facility or a state-op since 2003.
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p>One thing Commissioner Howe did mention is that some people leaving facilities could go to a skilled nursing home (or perhaps an ordinary nursing home, since they would have no rights to active treatment as non-class members in Rolland vs. Cellucci.) Fernald used to dump people into nursing homes up to about ten years ago.
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p>That would be ironic, to have community-only advocates close a facility with comprehensive treatment for intellectual disability in order to move people into nursing homes without treatment — while clearing beds in such nursing homes by moving other people into group homes so they can get treatment. The Civil Rights merry-go-round?
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p>(Disclosure: I am employed currently by COFAR, an umbrella organization of which the Fernald League is a constituent member organization.)
at all in the Community Services Expansion and Facilities Restructuring Plan? I don’t see how it could be.
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p>Where is DDS going to find 125 beds a year in the community for current nursing home residents? I suppose they will have to start developing these additional beds with the money that you mention has been budgeted in the Community Residential Line item. But if that’s the case, shouldn’t it be part of their Community Services Expansion plan?
I have read the “Plan” and took a look at your table. What expansion? The only plans they have are to create beds, suitable or not, for people being displaced by facility closures. I see no planning for accommodations for the “thousands on the waiting list” as stated by Commissioner Howe. I agree, it is a Facility Closure Plan nothing more. Why don’t they just call it what it is?
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p>The administration has a single focus. Closing Developmental Centers and selling the valuable real estate PERIOD.
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p>Obviously, nothing else matters. Clearly, the impact on the residents doesn’t matter and the impact of this single focus that runs throughout the entire disabled community. The costs obviously don’t matter. They would rather spend $45+ million to close Fernald, a facility that exists and is providing excellent services to its residents, than using that $45 million to restore funding to other programs and expand services. Disabled people are becoming permanent residents of the waiting list…doesn’t matter. The 125 beds to accommodate individuals from nursing homes required by the “Cellucci vs Rolland” case must not matter since they are not specifically identified in the “plan”.
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p>The impact of the loss of professional long-term dedicated employees of DMR/DDS doesn’t matter. The economic impact of facility closure on their host community doesn’t matter.
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p>No other options will be considered since they do not contribute to their objective.
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p>Since they have only been able to create one new 8-bed home in a year, at that rate it should take about 40+ years to create the 348 beds needed. Since I don’t believe my brother (a Fernald resident) will live another 40 years, maybe he is safe for a while.
vendor-driven philosophy. It ignores that communities come in all shapes and sizes, environments, domiciles and can exist as long as people are willing to co-exist together. Fernald is a community like any other…people live, work, play and worship together. This isn’t enough for the vendor crowd, however. There’s no profit in it for them.
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p>The numbers will never add up, David, until there’s a new governor, and a new commissioner.
This should be called “Community Last”, not Community First! “Fernald First” is the true meaning of the words of DDS. Where are all the State operated homes we have heard about? At the present time the word “Choice” no longer means anything close to “equal or better”! How many beds are available today in the two ICF/MRs? The waiting list from DDS has miraculously disappeared. Evidently there is no one outside of the facilities in need of DDS’s residential service!
The word CHOICE has no meaning and it no longer exists. The administration/DDS have made the choice for us. A truly sad note to the guardians who fought battles in federal court so people had a choice.
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p>I agree, the disappearance of the “waiting list” is a miracle. The waiting list has long been part of the justification for closing the ICF/MRs. I guess that has been eliminated.
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p>At the pace at which they are creating new homes, creating the 348 new beds in 4 years will be a miracle.
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p>
Dave,
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p>The number of beds will never added up because God will not give the Department His mortality estimate for each year.
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p>If and when the Department is successfull in closing Fernald the number of relocated Fernald residents will be listed in four catagories. 1 – Deceased, 2 – Transfered to another intermediate care facility, 3 – Transfered to a state operated group house, 4 – Transfered to a provider operated group house. This is also the order of transfer catagories for the transfers that have occured since former Governor Romney proposed closing Fernald in 2003.
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p>Mav