Children and Families Committee needs to show it’s serious about investigating the DDS group home system

We have been calling for years for a comprehensive legislative review of the system of care for persons with developmental disabilities in Massachusetts. The last such review was done in the late 1990s by the House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which found problems of abuse, neglect, and financial irregularities throughout the system.

When I first glanced through the latest federal IG report, I thought that agency had finally produced a report on the level of that Post Audit Committee report in Massachusetts.  The IG report looked comprehensive. But I was admittedly seduced by the color and graphics. After actually reading the report, my assessment of it changed.

First, it turns out the findings in the IG’s report about failures to report abuse and neglect incidents in Massachusetts were simply repeated from an earlier report issued by the IG in July 2016.

That previous report found that abuse and neglect incidents in Massachusetts were not being reported regularly to investigators. But that report was limited to that single issue about incident reporting. The IG had also previously issued a similar report about Connecticut.

Moreover, the new material in the latest IG’s report consists of a series of vague recommendations that don’t seem to fully address a request in 2013 by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut for a major investigation into abuse and neglect in privatized group homes throughout the country.

Sen. Murphy’s letter in 2013 to the IG concluded by stating:

Privatization of care may mean lower costs but without the proper oversight and requirements for well-trained staff. While individuals with developmental disabilities may not be able to speak for themselves, we are not absolved of the responsibility to care for them in a humane and fair manner. … Again, I respectfully request that you conduct an investigation into this issue. I believe that it would be able to shed light on the trend towards privatization and the impact that has on the care of the individuals. (my emphasis)

The IG’s report, however, doesn’t appear to address issues related to privatization such as low wages paid to direct-care staff, high turnover, denial of family rights to visitation, violations of federal law requiring that DDS provide state-run services and other care options to persons desiring them; or violations of federal law stating that families are the key decision-makers in the care of the intellectually disabled.

There is no reference anywhere in the IG’s report to problems accompanying the increasing privatization of services or to the resulting elimination of state-run programs, or the resulting lack of meaningful activities for participants in day programs, or the excess funding of salaries of nonprofit executives.  Murphy specifically stated in his letter to the IG that he hoped the IG’s investigation “would be able to shed light on the trend towards privatization and the impact that has had on the care of the individuals.”

One has to wonder if anyone from the IG’s office has read any of a number of media reports in recent years of the deeply troubling problems plaguing group home systems around the country.

Those reports include exposes in 2013 by The New York Times and The Hartford Courant,  (here and here)  and more recent exposes by papers such as The Chicago Tribune. That latter newspaper reported last year that while officials in Illinois continued to issue rosy accounts of the process of transferring clients from developmental centers being closed in that state to group homes, many of those group homes were “underfunded, understaffed and dangerously unprepared for new arrivals with complex needs.”

We reported that the HHS IG first produced a virtual joke of a report in 2015 on the group home system in New York State. That report had no critical findings and was a total of six pages long.

As noted, at least part of last week’s IG report was a rehash of those previous findings on incident reporting in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The latest report does purport to go further than the previous reports by including “suggestions for ensuring group-home beneficiary health and safety.”

For instance, the latest IG report includes recommendations on “quality assurance mechanisms” for community-based services.

But while those recommendations seem intended to get to the larger issues inherent in care in the provider system, they are still vague. The recommendations are presented in an appendix to the report, but little explanation and few specifics are provided even there.

Under a heading in the appendix on the “quality assurance mechanisms,” the report recommends “person-centered planning.” But there is no explanation provided of person-centered planning, which is an approach being promoted in Massachusetts by DDS. We’ve expressed concerns that person-centered planning has the potential to marginalize families and guardians in helping develop individual support plans or ISPs.

The same appendix in the HHS IG report also calls for audits done by providers that:

• Include assessments of staff training (There are no specifics provided about this.)

• Include assessments of performance evaluation (Again, no specifics.)

An additional category in the appendix is labeled “Assessment of the fiscal integrity of (provider) service billing and reimbursement.” This would appear to be a key recommendation regarding financial integrity, but it consists only of the following two statements, with no specifics or explanation:

• Includes ongoing State desk audits

• Includes periodic on site audits of select service providers and support coordination agencies

Finally, the report states that the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should form a “SWAT team” in order to address “serious health and safety findings involving group homes.” But while that sounds impressive and urgent, the report provides no details about what such a SWAT team would consist of or do.

We hope the Children and Families Committee develops an investigative scope that goes well beyond that of the HHS IG. We also think the committee can demonstrate its seriousness by scheduling another hearing in which families would be invited to provide verbal testimony.

Last week, Senator Joan Lovely, the Senate chair of the committee, told some family members that she would speak to Rep. Khan about scheduling that additional hearing. We hope that happens soon.