Before telling you about our efforts to get this question answered, let me explain why we've asked it in the first place.
In the 1990s, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 2,000 people on a waiting list for group home placements in Massachusetts. Under the settlement of the case in 2000, the state agreed to spend tens of millions of dollars over a five-year period to develop housing for those people on the waiting list. In a separate lawsuit, the state agreed to find community housing for roughly 1,600 people with mental retardation who were found to be inappropriately confined to nursing homes.
But while these lawsuits helped develop community placements for those designated as class members in those cases, an undisclosed number of new people have continued to join the ranks of those seeking community placements every year. As we understand it, those new people are not class members in those two cases and are therefore not eligible for the new residential placements agreed to in those settlements.
So what is the situation today? How many people are still waiting for services and placements? In light of the fact that the administration plans to close four developmental centers over the next five years, one would think that even advocates of those facility closures might be a bit concerned about the impact the closures will have on those waiting for community-based homes and services.
In fact, they are concerned. In a letter sent just today (September 24) to Governor Patrick, the Massachusetts Arc and a number of other organizations that favor closing the facilities stated: “Simply put, the administration cannot close institutions while at the same time cutting support for the community infrastructure.”
In other words, while potentially thousands of people are waiting for placements and services in the community system, this administration is both cutting funding to that system and shutting state facilities. Even the Arc is starting to recognize a problem in this dual course of action. Maybe that's why the administration doesn't want to say publicly just how many people are waiting for community-based services.
In July, I first wrote to DDS Commissioner Elin Howe, asking, among other things, whether there was currently a waiting list of persons seeking state and vendor-operated group homes in the community system, and how many people might be on that list. Howe responded more than a month later that DDS “does not maintain a 'waiting list' for residential services.” Instead, she stated, individuals “are prioritized for residential services and provided services based upon urgency of need.”
Okay, so DDS doesn't call it a waiting list anymore apparently. But that didn't answer the question. I wrote back to Howe, trying to state the question as clearly as I could. This time I asked: “Are there people currently waiting for placement in state and vendor-operated group residences in Massachusetts? If so, approximately how many people are currently waiting for those placements?”
Howe responded about two weeks later, stating the following: “As of June 15, 2009, the Department was engaged in active planning with approximately 131 individuals and their family or guardians to identify appropriate residential supports.”
Was she saying that there are only 131 people waiting for residential placements in the DDS system? I don't think so. She said only that DDS was “engaged in active planning” with 131 people. Interestingly, that is exactly the number of residents who were still remaining at Fernald as of that June date.
We strongly believe there are more than 131 people waiting for residential placements in the DDS system and certainly more than that number waiting for services. Even Howe herself let it slip at one point that there may be thousands. Unfortunately, we may never know exactly how many because the Patrick administration doesn't appear to want to tell us.
By the way, one would think that one source of this information might be DDS's annual reports. But the latest annual report on the DDS website is from Fiscal Year 2002. (What are those people doing over there at DDS?)
It’s a duck. And a waiting list is still a waiting list. Someone should tell Elin Howe that.
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p>David, this crowd thinks lying and obfuscating will wear you down. They’ve had years of practice and I hope they’re wrong. No one with 2 eyes in their head really believes there’s only 131 people on a priority list. What about the all the placements from the nursing home lawsuits?
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p>Good luck. Maybe we just have to wait THEM out. We have at least another year.
Its amazing. The commissioners comments would be laughable if the situation wasn’t so serious. I agree we will never know the real number of people waiting….it doesn’t serve their purpose.
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p>I heard today the Governor sent a letter to the ownership of a hotel chain in news admonishing them for treating their employees in a sub-standard way. What do you call what he is doing to our disabled citizens? Throwing severly disabled people out of their life-long homes is beyond treating people in a sub-standard way.
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p>I have a different read on the hypocritical ARCs statement. “You can’t close institutions while cutting funding for community infrastructure”. In other words, we went along with your campaign to close our developmental centers, evicting the most disabled from their homes and compromising their reputation as an organization that ADVOCATES FOR ALL mentally retarded citizens, and got nothing in return and in fact got less than they had and are just figuring out that they were duped.
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Interfere with the dems plan of Social Darwinism. If they ignore the issue maybe they’ll all die and the problem will be solved.
What’s pathetic is that dogs get more attention than people.
I don’t know about dogs, but I do know zoo animals certainly get more attention and instant relief from budget cuts. It is pathetic.
Every year there is less available for struggling families. It once was that if DSS [now DCF] wanted to snatch your children because of suspicions that you drank too much or used drugs, they paid for the tests to rule the problem in or out. Now you pay or you lose your kids and have to fight to get them back in the courts even though DCF only has suspicions about your use of alcohol or drugs. The standard for seeking custody of children is “reasonable” suspicion, not proof.
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p>It used to be that parent aids [for a parent who had needed surgery, say] were available – now it is whisk – and away to the foster care industry.
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p>Not that foster care parents, some of them, aren’t noble and wonderful – but whether the issue is cost or ethics, frankly, family supports in many situations are all that is needed [such as in home therapy for a mentally ill child] and cost far less then foster care or group homes. Just saying.
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p>Frankly, there are medical situations where what is needed is residential care, often short term, to prevent tragedy and preserve families.
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p>Similarly, to scrap the institutions, to help favored developers grab land, and not have pre-existing beds and homes in the community is so immoral as to approach criminality. However, that is exactly what I am seeing in the trenches of child welfare law and indigent representation.
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p>The elimination of guardians-ad-litem for education for the most vulnerable families by a stroke of the pen by CJAM Robert Mulligan is but one example of abandonment of the indigent. I am pleased to say I am now seeing some courageous judges appoint attorneys and clinicians to this role when it is obvious that such appointments are needed to save a child.
The Fernald issue is one of the obscure/local that comes up here without ever giving any background information about what the issue, just that the writer is mad at someone about it. So thanks you for stating more than a sentence of background, as getting even that seems a problem for some people lately.
Fernald is a local issue. Those of us fighting to keep it open have been engaged in the battle for over six years and it is easy to forget that the average person is not aware of the facts.
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p>Unfortunately, it will become more than a local issues if the Governor proceeds with his plan to close Fernald and 3 more developmental centers located throughout the state.
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p>Thanks for your comment.
We’re talking about people all over the state waiting for housing and services from DDS. Whether one or more facilities is closed or not, the waiting list (or whatever you want to call it) is, and has been, a statewide problem. What we’re trying to say here is that closing the facilities over the next five years is likely to make that overall problem worse. It appears the Arc, the Assn. of Developmental Disabilities Providers, and other advocates of the facility closures are now starting to recognize that situation, based on the letter they sent to the governor.
It is a state-wide problem for sure. I think it is like a ripple effect. There is already a lack of residential housing in the community, people are and have been waiting, the closure of the facilities makes the problem worse because they will be placed in any new housing that is developed and the people who have been waiting just get bumped further down the non-list. The budget cuts to community programs just makes it even worse.
Tore down how many potential buildings?
The beds at these facilities once provided a real safety net; all too often these are gone, victims of near-collusion by the big so-called nonprofit teaching hospitals and a local desire for tax revenue. My own town of Arlington provides one sad story about this: Symmes If you google Symmes and development you can find more than you will probably have time to read.
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p>Back before it was torn down, when it was a functioning hospital, Symmes saved my father’s life and probably, my husband’s foot. Oh well. Profit before people seems to have become the American way.
and the attention this issue has gotten on BMG. Just by way of comparison, The Fernald League sent out a press release on Friday, reporting that several advocacy organizatons now believe the administration is making a mistake in closing DDS institutions at the same time that the administration is cutting funding to the community system. We noted the impact of the facility closures on the waiting list for community services.
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p>We emailed our press release to newspapers, radio, and TV stations all over the state, and to the AP and other outlets. As far as we can tell, not one of those organizations picked it up. I’m personally convinced that the editors at the Globe, in particular, have made a conscious decision not to run any further articles on any issue raised by the Fernald League–whether or not those issues have statewide implications, as I think the waiting list issue does.
All sincerity intended here.
Time press releases for Monday or Tuesday. Thursday and Friday press releases get lost in the weekend plans and the actual weekend.