COFAR blog

We’ve long maintained that the Patrick administration’s agenda of phasing down and closing state developmental centers would ultimately fail to free up additional funding for the community based system.

It’s been nearly three years since the administration announced its plan to close the Fernald, Templeton, Monson, and Glavin Centers and reportedly plow back as much as $45 million a year in the “savings” into beefing up the largely privatized community-based system of care.  That $45 million savings projection was a cornerstone of the administration’s “Community First” initiative.

So far, the administration has succeeded in moving hundreds of residents out of developmental centers, starting with Fernald, which is now emptied of all but 14 of  its residents, who have filed appeals of their transfers.  But nothing remotely close to the $45 million in savings has materialized.  In fact, the opposite has been the case — the administration has continued to cut community-based line items in the Department of Developmental Services budget.

In a November 20 email to members and other advocates, the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers, which has wholeheartedly supported the closures of the developmental centers, stated the following :

For the last four fiscal years, in order to cope with the effects of the economic collapse of 2008, the Commonwealth’s budget has:

• deeply cut Family Support programs, leaving 10,000 families without service,  
• inadequately addressed Chapter 257 rate reform by not introducing sufficient funding to rate making but instead forcing existing programs to redistribute already inadequate funding
• failed to address historically low salary needs of the community workforce (though the Legislature has recently added the first salary reserve dollars in four years)
• continued to require community programs to implement state mandates without sufficient funding, including closing sheltered workshops without funding to replace this model in favor of a more inclusive and empowering model.
• not backed it’s professed interest in Community First and Employment First with funding to make these efforts successful. (my emphasis)

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the success of the administration’s community-based care delivery model and its promised use of of the savings from the developmental center closures.  We hope the ADDP and the Arc of Massachusetts will reach the next logical step in their argument and urge the administration to cease and desist from closing the centers.

Unfortunately, the ADDP and the Arc of Massachusetts are supporting H.984, known as “The Real Lives Bill,” which appears to continue to rely on the premise that DDS clients should not be given the choice of living in developmental centers.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Sannicandro,  is intended to provide for more choice for persons with intellectual disabilities.   But it appears to specifically deny consumers the choice of “congregate services.”  In other words, everyone should have a choice, as long as they choose only small, community-based settings.  We believe, however, that the congregate services provided by developmental centers are appropriate for certain people who are unable to benefit from community based care.  And now we’re seeing that closing the congregate care centers is not freeing up community-based funding.

Sannicandro’s bill does appear to recognize that the community-based system has not thus far benefitted from the developmental center phase-downs.  The bill’s text reads:

Too many people are not receiving the assistance they need. The public Medicaid system is reeling from cost pressures. The time has come for individuals with disabilities, families, advocates and providers to work together with policy makers in the administration and legislature in crafting a support system that both increases quality and on average reduces costs whenever possible.

We agree with the language in Sannicandro’s bill on that last point.  We just disagree that closing the developmental centers is the right way to go about it.