Legislators, resident advocates demand answers to Vineland Developmental Center closure questions
Published: Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 11:30 PM
The state's proposal to close the Vineland Developmental Center is meeting opposition from resident advocates, employees, legislators and others.With this crucial consideration firmly in place, legislators such as Senator Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic) and resident advocates like Robin Sims, president of the Coalition of Families and president of VOR (Voice of the Retarded), refuse to let Vineland’s “intermediate care facility for persons with mental retardation” (ICF/MR) close without demanding answers to their remaining questions.
“If we are going to transition individuals from developmental centers, we must come up with a comprehensive, humane, fiscally-responsible plan for doing so that it includes all seven of the state’s facilities,” Van Drew said after a Senate Budget and Appropriations hearing on Monday.
Van Drew repeatedly affirmed his support of the Supreme Court Olmstead decision, which promotes community-based resources for the developmentally disabled when appropriate, but requested written response from Department of Human Services (DHS) Commissioner Jennifer Velez on at least 10 unresolved issues surrounding the VDC closure.
These questions included focus on specific, long-term details regarding the proposed alternate arrangements, assurances of appropriate quality of care and the economic impact to Cumberland County, as Van Drew speculated the unemployment rate in the Vineland area could surpass 15 percent should the VDC close.
“What we did learn today is that no analysis has been conducted as to how Cumberland County residents will fare once the Vineland Developmental Center is closed,” said Van Drew on Monday.
“That is deeply troubling, considering that we are the poorest county in the state.”
Velez acknowledged the VDC closure as a controversial issue with significant economic repercussions for the Vineland region but cited a reduction of 1,200 residents in ICF/MRs since 1998 and of 11 percent since 2009 as justification to “reconfigure the system of care,” although Van Drew questioned whether these figures were “artificially produced,” in part through state direction to treatment professionals regarding Individual Habilitation Plans (IHPs).
The commissioner said bridge funding will expand resources in the community and steadfastly asserted “the single most important consideration must be the individuals who we serve.”
For Sims, who has a daughter at Hunterdon Developmental Center and a disabled son who lives at home, “one size has never fit all” and closing the VDC in the manner proposed is not the way to best serve its residents or improve quality of services for the developmentally disabled.
Sims heads the Coalition of Families, a group formed in the late ‘90s to unite parent associations from all seven ICF/MRs, or developmental centers, in the state. The Coalition of Families worked with a similar but more narrowly focused group, Advocates for Developmental Center Residents, to produce a Report on Residential Choice Survey on guardian preference of their loved ones’ placement in December 2010.
“Sixty-one percent of the families and families and guardians of the more than 2,400 residents cared for at New Jersey’s seven (ICF/MRs) responded, and of that 61 percent, 96 percent said they wanted their family member to remain at the developmental center in which they are living, findings which are starkly different than figures reported by the state,” Sims explained, noting Woodbine Developmental Center declined to facilitate guardian participation.
Of the 1,417 total responses, the report shows 158 from VDC residents’ families in favor of retaining their established ICF/MR services at the facility and 10 responses in favor of HCBW, or Home and Community Based Waiver, living arrangements outside of developmental centers.
Sims credited her daughter’s ICF/MR placement with saving her life due to the destructive behavior related to her disability, and she compared the availability of on-site services at the VDC to that of a hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
“Just like an ICU unit in a hospital cares for the sickest patients, it is costly, but to move those patients to various floors to save money would not work. Instead of a trained team in one place to serve many, you would need many teams to serve individually. Money not spent to do so will cost lives.”
A study of the community transfer of more than 2,000 persons with developmental disabilities from California institutional settings was published in a 2005 issue of the “Journal of Data Science” and speaks to Sims’ claim. “Deinstitutionalization in California: Mortality of Persons with Developmental Disabilities after Transfer into Community Care, 1997-1999” asserts that, for the sample data analyzed by Robert Shavelle, David Strauss and Steven Day, “the community death rate was 47 percent higher than expected for comparable persons living in institutions.”
The study indicates the institutional settings in these residents’ cases may have maintained lower mortality rates than other residence types due to “continuity of care, centralized record keeping, and immediate access to medical care.” However, the authors stop short of advocating “institutional living,” and Strauss and Shavelle clarified in a publication on policy implications their “concern was with the quality of health care and supervision currently available in the community.”
“Indeed a careful analysis of potential outcomes, costs and benefits, while given appropriate mention in the planning and ‘public hearing’ stages of policy boards, is often the first casualty of partisanship, budget cuts, and expediency,” the 2005 study states. “...The cost savings of deinstitutionalization and social value of integration must be balanced against this increased risk.”
Despite Gov. Christie’s budget summary claim that the VDC closure will save the state $2.1 million in one fiscal year, at Monday’s budget hearing, Velez said, “This isn’t a fiscal decision; it isn’t a budget saver,” and referenced the “Path to Progress” issued by the state in 2007, calling for a reduction in the population receiving treatment at ICF/MRs.
Trenton will come to Vineland to discuss the many issues surrounding the VDC closure on May 17, when the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee will hold a hearing beginning at 1:00 p.m. Van Drew, who has collected an estimated 8,000 petition signatures against the proposed closure, will sit on the panel with Senator Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), chairwoman of the committee, and their fellow legislators at the hearing.
“Again, I don’t disagree with Olmstead. And I don’t disagree with moving individuals into the community who are willing and able to live there,” said Van Drew.
“I just wholeheartedly disagree with the way the state is proposing to do it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment