Sounds Orwellian in a politically-correct kind of way? It's happening right now to people with developmental disabilities and their families and guardians around the country.
Since the late 1970s, there have been at least 30 class-action lawsuits seeking to close state-run facilities for persons with developmental disabilities. Those suits have been filed ostensibly on behalf of the residents of those facilities by federally funded legal advocacy organizations. The residents, by and large, want to stay in their long-time homes, but they have no right to opt out of the lawsuits.
In other words, those lawyer groups, known as protection and advocacy organizations or P&As, have unilaterally named the residents of the developmental centers as class action plaintiffs in suits intended to close their own homes. As a result of those suits, at least 15 developmental centers in 9 states have been closed, resulting in the forced transfer of thousands of people from their homes, according to the national VOR.
In Massachusetts, no such class-action suits have yet been filed. But at least two federally funded P&A organizations — the Disability Law Center and the Center for Public Representation — have filed as parties in court litigation over the Fernald Developmental Center. In that litigation, the DLC and the CPR have repeatedly sided with the Patrick administration in seeking to close Fernald, and not with the residents or their families, who want to stay there.
Adding to the irony of the situation: the P&A's are funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which also provides funding for the developmental centers. In effect, HHS is suing itself to close down these facilities. At best, this is a waste of our tax dollars.
One person who has recognized the absurdity of the situation is U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who has filed legislation in the past couple of years to give facility residents and gardians the right to opt out of these lawsuits. Frank's bill (H.R. 1255) is currently in the Judiciary Committee, and has 73 co-sponsors, 32 of them Democrats and 41 Republicans.
For the first time, a similar bill has been filed in the Senate, co-sponsored by Senators Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat, and Lamar Alexander, a Tennesse Republican.
But the P&A's and their allies in the private provider industry are fighting hard on Capitol Hill to defeat the bill. They know that if people are given the right to opt out of these suits, most will exercise that right and the suits will come to an end.
I had the opportunity on behalf of the Fernald League to attend VOR's annual meeting in Washington this past weekend and to visit New England House and Senate offices to urge passage of the opt-out bill. We met with a variety of reactions from the legislative staff people we talked to. But nearly everyone I talked with seemed to recognize the outrageousness of being “represented” by an attorney they hadn't asked for and didn't want.
During the VOR meeting, Thomas York of the York Legal Group, a Pennsylvania-based law firm that has fought on behalf of developmental centers, noted that lawsuits against the centers have also frequently been filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Those suits, which come out of the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, don't specifically call for closing the developmental centers, but York insisted that closure of the centers is the DoJ's ultimate goal.
Like the P&A's, the DoJ believes the community system is always better, York noted, and that all developmental centers should be closed down. There is a complete disregard, he said, of the evidence of greater levels of abuse and neglect in the community system and of the vast improvement in care in the developmental centers over the past 40 years.
As I listened to York, a question popped into my head. Didn't our own governor here in Massachusetts come out of the DoJ's Civil Rights Division? Maybe that explains something about the administration's furious effort in this state to close four of six remaining developmental centers. It's political correctness run amok.
See
Perfect demonstration of why there is a budget problem and just how twisted this system is.
<
p>Thanks for the rundown on this meeting. It answered some questions I have had and never been able to figure out.
<
p>I now know why the severely disabled children at Seven Hills were included in a lawsuit without their knowledge and are being evicted from their homes. Another question, in regard to Fernald, was about the “entourage” of lawyers that show up in court. They literally have to rearrange the furniture to accommodate them. I have never known what gives them the right to sit at the opposing table. I still don’t know what give them the right to insert themselves into the legal action but I at least know where they come from now.
<
p>It is political correctness run amok or as I put it a crusade whose mission has been accomplished but the crusaders haven’t figured that out yet.
<
p>I don’t think anyone could argue with the need for the class action lawsuits, back in 70s, that put an end to deplorable conditions in the then institutions. The system has been transformed, the rights of these individuals have been recognized, those with the ability have moved on to lives in the community, those who require the supports and life available only in developmental centers have opted to stay there. Mission accomplished! Yet the battle continues only among the lawyers, vendors, advocate….not the people.
<
p>It seems these P&As didn’t get the memo. Or perhaps they fail to recognize it because they might have to leave their “taxpayer funded jobs” and move into the real world. Whatever the reason, these “holier-than-thou do gooders” have evolved into the monster they were created to eliminate. They now fight to ensure that these individual’s have no civil rights. In the case of Fernald, they show up in court “en mass” to oppose the exercise of the resident’s individual civil rights to live in a setting that was fashioned for them and granted to them as a result of a class action lawsuit!!! Anytime lawyers and groups sit at the same table in court as the “state” an alarm bell goes off.
<
p>What lawyer would represent anyone without their knowledge or a retainer, or a contingency agreement? You usually have trouble getting a free consultation. Simple answer a lawyer who is paid ultimately by the taxpayers. Who is that person representing, the civil rights of a disabled person OR those that are paying him.
<
p>When did any American citizen not have the right to “opt out” of some kind of legal action. Simple, answer those who are powerless to prevent it.
as to why Governor Patrick is pushing to close down the facilities, it comes from his time with the DOJ. He used to be one of “those lawyers.” The thing that sticks in my craw is that these lawsuits aren’t based on abuse or neglect, no, no – it’s based on a philosophy that all people, regardless of disability or medical condition, should live in the “community.” I tend to distrust zealots and this is why; they are so hide-bound to their own world view that there’s no room for the possibility that they may be wrong. And in this case, people are at risk and dying due to their ideology.
<
p>In just the last few months, “the community” has had a number of instances where it’s clear the system isn’t working….and it begs the question: Where the hell are all these high-priced lawyers from the protection and advocacy group on these very real issues?
<
p>A Danvers Vinfen home that was condemned. Condemned!
<
p>http://www.wickedlocal.com/dan…
<
p>Abuse and neglect allegations at a Waltham group home:
<
p>http://www.city.waltham.ma.us/…
<
p>Group home employee leaves clients in a hot car while he mows his lawn:
<
p>http://www.dailynewstribune.co…
<
p>And the state auditor finds that a service agency in Marshfield collects more than $600K in unnecessary compensation.
<
p>http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
<
p>Rape of a disabled young man…included because the local police didn’t quite believe him, and in doing so, allowed the abuse to go on.
<
p>http://www.heraldnews.com/news…
<
p>http://www.heraldnews.com/news…
<
p>The protection and advocacy and DOJ lawyers won’t touch these issues because they upset the ideological applecart. The narrative that “the community is always better no matter what” becomes a pale, unfounded reason upon which to based a lawsuit to close facilities if they start looking at the systemic and pervasive problems in the community.
<
p>And this is the system the DDS wants to place our fragile loved ones in. God have mercy.
You’re right, the DoJ won’t investigate these cases of abuse and neglect in the community-based, private-provider system. We’re told over and over by the DoJ, the federal P&A agencies, the Arc, and its affiliate in Massachusetts, the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers, that the community system is uniformly excellent. It’s only in the developmental centers that any problems exist.
<
p>Here’s ADDP president Gary Blumenthal’s response on the ADDP website to concerns raised by developmental-center advocates about problems in the community system. It sounds quite convincing until you read it a couple of times and realize that Blumenthal has cited nothing specific here:
<
p>
<
p>The AIDD publishes two major academic journals on mental retardation. Which studies is Blumenthal referring to?
<
p>Instead of relying on unnamed “studies” in order to support his rhetoric, Blumenthal should be visiting the community-based group homes and agencies identified by Justice4All as having major problems, based on objective news accounts. As head of the ADDP, Blumenthal should be out front in condemning the providers in Massachusetts that are responsible for those obvious problems. Then, he might garner some credibility as far as the developmental-center families and guardians are concerned.
<
p>
I can think of one other incident in the news recently at a group home located in Dracut. The story was in the Lowell Sun. This wheelchair bound individual required long-term hospitalization to recover from serious injuries that were alleged to be only possible by abusive treatment. I keep waiting for a follow-up story. I doubt I will ever learn who was responsible and what type of action, if any, was taken against the individual. Strange how these stories seem to just fade away.
<
p>You pose a great question Justice4All…..where are all the P&A and lawyers when these incidents occur?
<
p>When you have some time take a look at the annual filings on the Attorney General’s website, specifically audited financial statements of these vendors.
<
p>You come across all kinds of interesting information like pending litigation for allegations of neglect, discrimination, traffic accidents, contingencies to repay overcharges by vendors, unlicensed psychologists. I’m sure there are a lot more I just have finished reading them all yet.
I rarely post on threads about this because I don’t know enough about the issue to comment intelligently. However, I asked the Governor about this recently and he cited a “philosophical difference” on how to care for these people. I’ve also had a couple other conversations recently with people who essentially claim that Fernald is esesntially a human warehouse and made it sound like a throwback to the 19th century. Could someone who does know about this issue PLEASE join us to give the other side of this story?
I’d be curious who the people are who told you Fernald is a “human warehouse.” In my experience, those people have either never been there or they are associated in some way with the private provider community that has a financial stake in closing Fernald.
<
p>Of course, we welcome opposing points of view on this issue. But I hope you might keep in mind that Intermediate Care Facilities, such as Fernald, exist all over the country and provide state-of-the-art care today. If Fernald was a human warehouse, the families who have been fighting to keep their loved ones there would have to be either crazy or pathologically uncaring. That’s the absurd logic that the purveyors of the ‘warehouse’ myth are forced to promote.
<
p>It’s interesting that Governor Patrick talked about a “philosophical difference” in caring for people with developmental disabilities. If the governor is indeed against institutional care for them, then why is he expanding the Wrentham Developmental Center to accomodate most of the residents from Fernald?
<
p>In fact, the governor knows that closing down all remaining ICFs in Massachusetts would create a firestorm of protest that he would rather not have to deal with. So he has provided a “safety-valve” in expanding Wrentham and keeping one other ICF open, at least temporarily. No doubt, the governor hopes that Wrentham will one day be closed. But if he indeed believes that ICFs are warehouses and he is philosophically against them, it’s surprising that he is spending $2.5 million to expand one of them.
…the people who are less than enthused about Fernald would like to see more resources put into making home care and living a viable option. The conversation I most remember was with a BMGer so I’m not going to out him here, but I believe he said he had seen it or knew someone who had. I’m in turn curious about something. Your facility is called “Fernald League for the Retarded” which seems to be a bit of an outdated term – care to comment? Again, I don’t know enough to go further with this discussion, but I do want to hear the other side because I for one trust the Governor has the best of intentions.
people who think that community-based programs will get more money once Fernald and other developmental centers are closed are forgetting a key point. The money follows the resident. In other words, the cost of caring for former Fernald residents will remain after Fernald is closed. That cost of that care is high not because Fernald has a big campus with lots of closed buildings, but because its residents have more profound mental retardation and more complex medical issues than the average person in receiving community or home-based care. Most of that cost is direct-care and clinical staffing.
<
p>As for our name, that may well change. We are discussing the future of the Fernald League right now, given the likelihood that Fernald will close. But I would note that there is an ongoing debate over the term “retarded,” and not everyone agrees it is pejorative or wrong to use. You might want to read this article on the subject: http://www.vor.net/about-vor/g…
would certainly smell as sweet, Christopher. No one is ashamed of their loved ones simply because an elderly term is still used. You should also note that ARC (the vendor advocacy group) stands for Association for Retarded Citizens. As with the Fernald League, these organizations are decades old.
I for one am actually not personally offended by the term, but someone used it here a while back and all heck broke loose. The “offender” eventually apologized.
and in doing so, (intentionally or unintentionally) hurts people with the condition or their families, I can see it as a problem. Personally, I am far more offended by the willful blindness to the draconian cuts in services and closure of facilities than I am by an elderly term; that’s where the rubber meets the road for me.