Archive
Living wage in Massachusetts suffers a setback
In an apparently little-noticed setback to the effort to raise the minimum wage in Massachusetts, the legislative conference committee on the state budget rejected a living wage for direct-care workers in human services earlier this month.
The conference committee tossed out language that would have required corporate human services providers to boost the pay of their direct-care workers to $15 per hour.
That language had been proposed by Senator Jamie Eldridge and had been adopted in the Senate budget, but it wasn’t in the House budget, so it went to the conference committee. The conference committee chose not to include Eldridge’s language in its final budget even though the inclusion of the language would not have affected the budget’s bottom line.
In a press release issued in May when the Senate adopted his measure, Eldridge termed a $15-per-hour wage for direct-care workers “part of a growing movement to provide a living wage to every worker in Massachusetts.”
An aide to Eldridge said last week that the direct-care wage boost had been requested by SEIU Local 509, the state-employee union that represents human services workers. The aide said, however, that Eldridge had no immediate plans to file legislation to keep the momentum going for that living wage.
We have urged Senator Eldridge to keep the living wage movement going. In the human services arena, the lack of a living wage for direct-care workers appears to be closely related to the rapidly increasing privatization of care.
As state funding has been boosted to corporate providers serving the Department of Developmental Services and other human services departments, a large bureaucracy of executive-level personnel has arisen in those provider agencies. That executive bureaucracy is suppressing wages of front-line, direct-care workers and is at least partly responsible for the rapidly rising cost of the human services budget.
Ironically, a key reason for a continuing effort by the administration and Legislature to privatize human services has been to save money. However, we think that privatization is actually having the opposite effect.
In May, the SEIU released a report charging that major increases in state funding to corporate human services providers during the past six years had boosted the providers’ CEO pay to an average of $239,500, but that direct-care workers were not getting a proportionate share of that additional funding. As of Fiscal 2016, direct-care workers employed by the providers were paid an average of only $13.60 an hour.
Eldridge’s budget language stated that providers must spend up to 75 percent of their state funding each year in order to raise the wages of their direct-care workers to $15 per hour.
While the conference committee enacted deep cuts in DDS and other state-run programs as a result of a growing projected budget deficit, the Senate language on direct-care pay would have only required that providers direct more of the funding they were already getting from the state to their direct-care workers.
The SEIU’s report on the compensation disparity confirmed our own concerns in that regard. A survey we did in 2015 found that more than 600 executives employed by corporate human service providers in Massachusetts received some $100 million per year in salaries and other compensation.
Along those lines, we are concerned that the ongoing privatization of human services is having a devastating impact on state-run programs, particularly within DDS. As we recently reported, funding for critically important state-run programs, such as state-operated group homes and service coordinators, is being systematically cut while funding is rapidly boosted to corporate providers.
This additional disparity in human services funding is resulting in the elimination of choices to individuals and families in the system and perpetuating a race to the bottom in care.
There appear to be few if any people in the Legislature who are questioning the runaway privatization of human services much less who are willing to buck the trend. An effort to require providers to offer a living wage to their direct-care workers would be a start in that direction.
We hope Senator Eldridge will continue to push for the direct-care living wage, and that he and others will begin to examine the connections that exist between low wages for direct-care workers and the ongoing, unchecked privatization of human services.
DDS not commenting on future of state-operated group homes as FY ’18 funding is sharply cut
In the wake of a projected state budget deficit, Governor Baker and the Legislature have approved their deepest cuts yet in funding for state-operated group homes and other programs managed by the Department of Developmental Services.
Yet funding for privatized group homes will still increase by tens of millions of dollars under Baker’s final Fiscal Year 2018 budget, although that increase will be somewhat less than what Baker had originally proposed.
The cuts in Baker’s final budget for Fiscal 2018, which began July 1, include a $10.5 million reduction in funding for the state-operated group homes and a $2.2 million reduction in the DDS administrative account, which funds critically important service coordinators. The state-operated group homes are the hardest hit of any DDS funding account.
We have previously reported that the administration and Legislature appeared to have placed a priority on funding privatized DDS services. The final Fiscal 2018 budget may provide the sharpest indication yet of that priority, which is reflected in the chart below. The chart shows final appropriations since Fiscal 2012 for key DDS privatized and state-run program line items.
In January, when Baker submitted his Fiscal 2018 budget to the Legislature, he proposed $59.9 million in additional funding for privatized DDS group homes, while at the same time proposing a $1.8 million cut in the state-operated group home account.
The House and Senate initially largely rubber-stamped Baker’s DDS budget plans. Then, in early July, a House-Senate conference committee, working behind closed doors, recommended a cut more than five times deeper for the state-operated group homes — $10.4 million.
The governor’s final budget went even further, cutting state-operated group home funding by $10.5 million for Fiscal 2018. That amounts to a $15.6 million cut when adjusted for inflation.
Meanwhile, the governor’s final budget only moderately reduced the increase Baker had initially proposed for the privatized group home system — lowering that proposed $59.9 million increase to $47.6 million.
Similarly, the governor had initially proposed a cut of $97,000 in the DDS administrative line item, which funds the service coordinators. However, while the House and Senate initially rubber-stamped that cut, the conference committee in July deepened the cut to more than $2.1 million. The governor then further cut the administrative line item in his final budget by an additional $50,000, deepening the total cut to nearly $2.2 million.
Service coordinators are DDS employees who help ensure that clients throughout the DDS system receive the services to which they are entitled under their care plans. As COFAR has reported, service coordinators could find their jobs threatened by privatized “service brokers.”
Also slated for deepened cuts are the state-run Wrentham and Hogan developmental centers — the two remaining facilities in Massachusetts that are required to meet stringent federal Intermediate Care Facility (ICF) standards.
In January, Baker proposed a $2.4 million cut in the developmental centers line item. The conference committee more than doubled the size of that cut, to $5.4 million, and the governor’s final budget adopted the conference committee’s number.
DDS not commenting on fate of state-operated group homes
Despite the fact that the state-run group homes have been targeted for the deepest cuts in the DDS budget, DDS is apparently not commenting on whether it has any plans to phase out the state-operated group homes entirely.
After reporting in March that there had been a drop in the number of people living in state-operated group homes, we asked then outgoing DDS Commissioner Elin Howe whether DDS had any policies or plans for the phase-down or closure of those facilities in Massachusetts. We never received a response to our email query. Howe retired from her position on July 14.
In March, an assistant general counsel at DDS said that the Department had no public records pertaining to any policies or plans to close the state-operated group homes.
Even if there are no written policies regarding the phase-down of state-operated group homes, the evidence seems to be mounting that state-run DDS services are under siege in Massachusetts.
We will continue to monitor the funding levels proposed and approved for state-run DDS programs. So far, the trends do not look good. Please call your state legislators and express your concern. You can find your legislators at: https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator
State’s system of paying guardians and attorneys for the developmentally disabled appears secretive and poorly overseen
State payments to attorneys and corporate providers to serve as guardians of developmentally disabled clients are rising rapidly, yet the payment system appears to be secretive and subject to spotty oversight.
An investigation by COFAR shows the system in Massachusetts and regulations that support it also appear to give professional guardians an incentive to do little work representing individual clients while taking on as many clients as possible.
In addition, the fact that professional guardians are paid by the Department of Developmental Services appears to interfere with their legal obligation to act in the best interest of their disabled clients. We have found in a number of cases that both professional guardians and attorneys appointed to provide legal representation to disabled clients have sided with DDS when family members have gotten into disputes with DDS over the care of those clients.
In one case on which we have reported, a developmentally disabled woman’s state-appointed attorney has sided with a DDS-paid guardian in not allowing any family visitation of the woman for an indefinite period of time. In that case, David Barr, the father of the woman, and Ashley Barr, the woman’s sister, have been banned from all contact with her, and even from knowing her whereabouts, for more than a year and a half.
We believe this and similar cases raise questions whether DDS-paid guardians and state-paid attorneys consistently act in the best interests of their clients.
COFAR examined probate court documents and payment data involving attorneys and corporate entities paid by DDS to provide guardianship services to persons in which family members are not available or have been removed as guardians.
COFAR has also sought information on the payment of attorneys who are hired under the probate system to provide legal representation to incapacitated persons. In those cases, the court approves attorneys as counsel, and the attorneys are paid by a state agency called the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS). As noted below, the CPCS did not respond to COFAR’s request for that information.
The following chart shows the top-paid DDS guardians in Fiscal Years 2013 and 2016:
COFAR considers becoming a guardian to be a critically important step for family members when loved ones with intellectual and incapacitating developmental disabilities reach the age of 18. After an individual reaches that age, only that person or a guardian acting on their behalf has legal standing to make decisions about their care in the DDS system.
Anyone wishing to become a guardian of a developmentally disabled or otherwise incapacitated person must apply to the probate court to do so. When DDS wishes to pay an attorney to serve as a professional guardian of an individual, it recommends to the court that the attorney be appointed as the guardian.
Under probate law, there are no specific qualifications required of professional guardians such as expertise in mental health issues.
Information about professional guardians and attorneys difficult to obtain
Information about what professional guardians and attorneys do for the clients they are paid to represent in the probate system can be difficult or prohibitively expensive to obtain from DDS and particularly from the CPCS.
Because the CPCS is technically a part of the judicial branch of government, it is not subject to the state Public Records law, according to an attorney we consulted with the state’s Public Records Division. The CPCS would not provide COFAR with any information about the attorneys they employ or the amounts paid to them.
DDS did provide us with a list of guardians it employs and payments made to them, in response to a Public Records request (see chart above showing the top 10 highest paid guardians in Fiscal 2013 and 2016). However, the Department said it would have to pull records from “multiple offices” in order to determine what those guardians do for their payments and how many clients they represent. That information would cost us $3,000, a department attorney wrote.
The DDS payment data also raised a number of questions that the Department did not answer. For instance, there was no guardian listed as the recipient of payments totaling $30,295 on the DDS list in Fiscal 2016. DDS stated that it had no records indicating who those payments may have gone to. (See payment chart above with “???” notation.)
DDS’s response indicates that the department does not have a centralized accounting system to keep track of invoices submitted by guardians for payment. (It appears that this money comes from the clients’ individual Medicaid accounts, but is paid through DDS.)
Independent guardianship office proposed to address accountability issues
In one apparent effort to address at least some of the accountability issues with the current system, a bill in the Legislature (H. 3027) would establish an independent agency called a “Public Guardian,” which would have centralized authority over the hiring and payment of guardians in cases in which family members are not available to serve as guardians of incapacitated people. Under the bill, the Public Guardian would take over the responsibility from agencies such as DDS of recommending and paying guardians.
While COFAR supports the concept of an independent public guardian, we are concerned that H. 3027 specifies that the public guardian would not actually be a public agency, but rather would be a nonprofit agency. We believe the public guardian should be a public agency, which would be subject to the state Public Records Law and other legal requirements that apply to public agencies.
COFAR also strongly supports a second reform measure (H. 887), which would boost the rights of families in the DDS/probate system. The bill would require probate court judges to presume that the parents of incapacitated persons are the suitable guardians for those persons. The measure, however, has never gotten out of the Judiciary Committee.
Payments to guardians on the rise
The list provided by DDS of guardians it employs shows that the department’s total payments to guardians increased between Fiscal 2013 and 2016 from $602,474 to $800,476 – a 33% hike. The number of paid guardians rose from 68 to 80.
The highest-paid guardian was actually a corporate provider – The Arc of Bristol Country — whose total payments rose from $129,000 to $167,000 from Fiscal 2013 to 2016, a 29% increase. The payments to the Arc constituted more than 20%, or one fifth, of the total payments to all guardians in Fiscal 2016.
The second highest-paid guardian in both years was Victor Sloan, an attorney in Uxbridge. His payments from DDS rose from $43,150 in Fiscal 2013 to $53,288 in Fiscal 2016. Sloan’s website lists him a practicing attorney who does criminal defense cases and estate planning in addition to guardianships.
In email messages to Sloan and Michael Andrade, the CEO of the Arc of Bristol County, COFAR asked how many developmentally disabled clients they represented as guardians and how often they were able to visit those clients. In the case of the Arc, we asked how large their staff of guardians was and whether there was a maximum number of persons for whom each member of their staff was allowed to provide services.
Neither Sloan nor Andrade responded to our email or to a follow-up message left with each of them.
The DDS records show that payments to some guardians actually dropped between Fiscal 2013 and 2016, implying that they had lost wards. However, other guardians saw large increases in their payments, which sometimes doubled or even tripled or more in that period. For instance, payments to a Patrick Murray rose from $3,025 to $15,860 from 2013 to 2016 – a 424% increase.
In the Barr case (noted above), payments to the guardian, Dorothy Wallace, rose from $13,000 in Fiscal 2013 to $20,100 in Fiscal 2016 — a 55% increase.
The system appears to reward professional guardians with multiple clients
State regulations governing payments to guardians cap payments per client at $50 per hour, and cap the number of hours that guardians can spend serving individual clients at 24 hours per client per year [130 CMR 520.026 (E)(3)(d)]. Yet, the regulations do not appear to limit the number of clients an individual guardian can represent.
While the regulatory caps would appear to be intended to limit the amount of funding that professional guardians can receive per client, they also appear to provide an incentive to guardians to increase the number of clients they provide services to.
Based on those regulatory caps, we have calculated that Sloan was paid for providing guardianship services to at least 44 clients in Fiscal 2016. The Arc of Bristol County would have had at least 139 clients in that year. When guardians represent large numbers of clients, the ability of those guardians to act in their clients’ interest would appear to decline.
Moreover, the guardianships for which DDS has paid Sloan appear to be only a portion of the probate-court-related work that Sloan does.
Court records show that Sloan has been involved as a guardian, guardian ad litem, attorney, or as a “Rogers Monitor” for incapacitated persons in 118 cases in four separate counties between a seven-year period from Fiscal 2009 to 2015. That includes 14 persons for whom he was appointed as a Rogers Monitor, 75 persons for whom he was appointed as an attorney, 19 cases in which he was appointed as a guardian ad litem, and six cases in which he was appointed as a guardian.
Those six cases in which Sloan was appointed as a guardian appear to be in addition to our estimated 44 cases in which Sloan has been paid by DDS to be a guardian.
An annual client care plan filed in Worcester Probate and Family Court by Sloan does appear to raise questions about the amount of time Sloan spent representing a DDS client from May 2016 to May 2017.
Sloan described the client in the care plan as mildly developmentally disabled and as residing in a group home. Asked on the form to describe the “nature and frequency” of his visits with the client and his caregivers, Sloan stated only that he visited the client and his care givers “at least regularly, and have regular phone and email contact with his residential and day program staff.”
However, stating that he had visited his client “at least regularly” does not either specify the frequency of the visits nor describe their nature.
Sloan’s care plan report contained no critical remarks about the client’s care. He stated that the man’s needs “are being met in his current residential placement,” and that he was attending “an appropriate day program.”
DDS appears to have no centralized accounting system for paid guardians
In a May 10 Public Records law request, we asked DDS for information on the number of clients each paid guardian in its system had and the number of hours the guardians spent with their clients. In a response later that month, a DDS assistant general counsel stated that providing information on the number of clients and hours spent by guardians would require DDS to collect invoices from “multiple DDS offices,” which would take at least 30 hours of “search and collection time” for each of four regional offices. At a cost of $25 per hour, that would cost us at least $3,000, the assistant general counsel’s letter said.
In a subsequent letter sent to us in June, the assistant general counsel stated that it would take an estimated 14 hours of staff time to identify the invoices submitted in Fiscal 2016 from just one guardianship entity — the Arc of Bristol County.
The apparent difficulty that DDS has in locating invoices for payment from guardians in its system raises questions about the adequacy of its internal financial controls, in our view. The DDS central office does not even keep a record of the number of clients each of its guardians represents, according to the assistant general counsel’s May letter.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers notes the importance of centralized, or at least standardized internal controls in large nonprofit institutions such as colleges and universities. We believe a large public agency such as DDS should also have a centralized internal control system, and DDS may lack that with regard to the guardians it employs.
No response from the CPCS
On May 10, we also filed a request with the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) for a list of attorneys who are selected for appointment to represent clients of the DDS who are subject to guardianship, from Fiscal Year 2013 to the present.
As part of our information request, we asked for a list of the total annual payments made the attorneys from Fiscal 2013 to the present, and the total hours spent each year by those attorneys representing and visiting their clients.
We did not receive a response from the CPCS to our information request. We contacted the state Supervisor of Public Records with regard to the matter and were told that the CPCS is considered to be a part of the judicial branch of state government, which is not subject to the Public Records law.
DDS/Probate system needs reform
As noted, we see a potential conflict of interest in allowing DDS to recommend and pay guardians to represent people in the agency’s care. Along those lines, we are concerned that DDS has in a number of cases recommended attorneys, corporate providers, and other unrelated parties as guardians of individuals over the objections of family members of the individuals.
Also, in light of the increasing amounts paid to guardians by DDS, we are concerned that there is a potential for inadequate representation when paid guardians have large numbers of clients. Yet the payment system for guardians, in particular, appears to encourage those professional guardians to take on more and more clients.
We are also concerned that the system encourages DDS-paid guardians and CPCS attorneys to side together against the interests and wishes of families and individuals caught up in that system.
We think reform of the DDS/probate system is sorely needed, particularly with regard to payment of guardians and other financial practices. Those reforms should make the system more responsive to families, more transparent, and more accountable.
A public guardian may be the answer to many of these issues and problems, but, as noted, we think the public guardian should be just that — public. In the meantime, we urge the Judiciary Committee to finally vote to approve H. 887, which would boost the rights of families in the system by requiring probate judges to presume parents to be suitable guardians.
We will look further into these issues as we advocate for reform of the DDS/probate system.
Isolation of developmentally disabled woman continues after more than a year and a half
It has been a year and seven months since David Barr and his daughter, Ashley, were last informed by the Department of Developmental Services of the whereabouts of David’s other daughter, a young woman with a developmental disability and mental illness.
The 29-year-old woman, whose name is being withheld for privacy reasons, is being kept in an undisclosed residence. All contact with her by her father and sister was cut off for unclear reasons by a DDS-paid guardian in November of 2015.
Although Dorothy Wallace, the DDS guardian, said in August 2015 that her goal was to allow the woman to have family contact, it still hasn’t happened for reasons that have never been revealed to David or Ashley. For unknown reasons, the only family member who has been allowed to visit the woman is an aunt who has apparently agreed not to reveal the woman’s location to the woman’s father or sister.
In an email last week, Ashley Barr told COFAR that her father has personally filed in the Essex County Probate and Family Court to intervene in the case and to seek permission to visit his daughter. But to date, he has not heard from the court.
The probate court has not issued any orders barring visitation with the woman. The denial of virtually all family contact appears to be a decision of the woman’s guardian and possibly DDS.
The Barrs have been unable to afford the cost of hiring a lawyer to pursue their case in probate court. As we have reported in another case, it is extremely difficult to prevail in any probate court proceeding in Massachusetts if you are not a legal guardian or appear without a lawyer.
David and Ashley have contacted their local state legislators, but have gotten little or no help from them. COFAR has attempted to intervene with mainstream media outlets and the legislators in support of visitation for David and Ashley, also to no avail.
David and Ashley Barr
As we reported in January, the Boston-based Disability Law Center temporarily intervened in the case that month to ask a state-appointed attorney who is representing the woman to support family visits if the woman wished that. However, nothing apparently resulted from that effort.
The attorney, Melissa Coury Cote, told COFAR in March that she would not support court permission for visits to the woman by David or Ashley Barr, despite the DLC’s request. She provided no reason to us for opposing family visits other than to say that the woman had not specifically asked her to allow visits from her father and sister.
However, Ashley Barr said that her sister recently called her father on two occasions and said she missed her family and wanted to see them. The calls were apparently unauthorized. Ashley and David don’t know whose phone the woman used to contact them. They are concerned the woman may have gotten in trouble for making the calls.
Coury Cote had previously been appointed by the state Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) to represent the woman on guardianship matters. Under state probate law, incapacitated adults are entitled to free legal representation although their family members are not entitled to that.
COFAR has reported on a number of cases in which DDS-paid guardians have imposed severe restrictions on family contact with persons in the DDS/probate court system; but the Barr case may be the most extreme of those cases in that in none of the other cases has a DDS client been kept in isolation for such a long period of time, and in no other case has their family not been informed of their whereabouts.
COFAR first appealed to DDS Commissioner Elin Howe last October to seek permission for the Barrs to visit their family member, but Howe declined to do so. In early April, COFAR sent an email to Howe, asking whether a timetable existed for ever reuniting Ashley and David with the woman. Howe did not respond to the query.
According to a transcript of an August 2015 court hearing on the case, Wallace and other DDS officials complained that David Barr was excessively combative in dealing with them and that David and Ashley became overly emotional when they had been allowed to visit the woman prior to the cutoff of all contact with her.
While being combative with DDS over the care provided to a loved one can occasionally result in restrictions placed on family contact, we know of no other case in which all such contact was removed for this long a period of time.
CPCS attorney was reportedly told to keep the family informed
John Byron, a friend of David Barr’s, who attended a probate court hearing on the case with David in March, said the probate court judge seemed to be moved when David said he had been prevented from any contact with the young woman and that no one was providing him with any information about her. According to Byron, the judge then told Attorney Coury Cote that she should communicate with the family and that she (the judge) didn’t want the family “kept in the dark” about the case.
Coury Cote told COFAR the judge had asked her during the hearing only to “take a few minutes to speak with father.” She denied that the judge had ordered her to keep David Barr informed about the case. At one point, Coury Cote also said that the Barrs were “not entitled to information” about their family member’s whereabouts.
We believe, however, that in light of a Supreme Judicial Court ruling last year involving the guardianship of a woman known as B.V.G. , David and Ashley Barr should be considered by the probate court to be “interested persons” in the welfare of their family member. As such, they are entitled to information about her whereabouts and to be afforded visitation and other rights.
CPCS declines to review the attorney’s conduct
In March, we appealed to Mark Larsen, director of mental health litigation with the CPCS, asking for an investigation of Coury Cote’s conduct in the case. Larsen responded within two days of our appeal to state that the attorney had no obligation “to follow your directions, those of your client (apparently Ashley and David Barr) or of the DLC. Her only obligation is to her client and her client’s wishes.” He stated that “if the family wants a change in visitation, they should consult counsel of their choosing.”
For the record, neither David nor Ashley Barr are clients of COFAR. COFAR is advocating on behalf of them, but our organization does not charge for such advocacy. Our funding comes strictly from donations made by affiliated organizations and from families.
Larsen also stated that it “appears” that Coury Cote “consulted with her client” in the case.
I wrote back to Larsen to clarify that I had not suggested, or meant to suggest, that Coury Cote should follow our or the DLC’s directions, but that it appeared to us that she “may not have fully ascertained the wishes of her client.” I also stated that Larsen’s comments implied that he did not know for a fact that the Coury Cote had consulted with her client, and that he was only assuming that to be the case.
I noted further that while the CPCS’s Assigned Counsel Manual states that an attorney should “act as a zealous advocate for the client,” the manual also states the attorney should insure “that proper procedures are followed and that the client’s interests are well represented” (my emphasis).
Larsen emailed back a two-sentence reply, badly misspelling my name and saying he had nothing to add to his prior response.
It is frustrating to us, although perhaps not surprising, that the DDS/probate court system seems so often to function against the interests of individuals and families caught up in it. One key reason for this appears to be that there is little or no accountability when professionals in the system act contrary to the interests of people who are powerless and vulnerable.
We always thought the role of legislators and the press was to represent the powerless in society. I think we’re all learning that is no longer the case.
We can only hope that when the Barrs finally do get their day in court, the judge will acknowledge the rights they have been denied and will consider the apparent wish of the young woman involved to see her family again.
In the meantime, we would urge people to call either the governor’s office (617-725-4005) or the DDS commissioner’s office (617-727-5608), and ask them to re-establish family contact in this case. If you do so, please let us know about it.
John Sullivan, founder of COFAR, dead at 97
John L. Sullivan, a founding member of COFAR and a tireless advocate for persons with developmental and intellectual disabilities, died peacefully on Thursday.
Sullivan was also a founding member of the Arc of Massachusetts and was a central figure in class action litigation in the 1970s in Massachusetts that led to improvements in the care of what is now the Department of Developmental Services. Those improvements resulted in upgrades in care and conditions in developmental centers and in the creation of a community-based system of group homes that now serves the vast majority of persons in DDS care.
In March 2012, Sullivan was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the
Department of Developmental Services.
One of Sullivan’s daughters, Jean Sullivan, is intellectually disabled and has been a resident of the Wrentham Developmental Center since 1959. Another daughter, Colleen Lutkevich, has carried on Sullivan’s work on behalf of the developmentally disabled, and has served for many years as the volunteer executive director of COFAR.
John Sullivan
“My dad worked and fought his whole life to make the system work for the least fortunate among us,” Colleen Lutkevich said. “His advice was always, ‘never be afraid.'”
When Sullivan’s daughter, Jean, was a toddler, he and his wife, Gladys, helped found a preschool for disabled children. Gladys died last year after a 71-year marriage to John.
Sullivan later fought for the passage of Chapter 766, the state’s special education funding law, and petitioned local school committees for special education services within area towns.
In the 1970s, while Jean was living in the Wrentham center, Sullivan became a plaintiff in the landmark Ricci v. Okin lawsuit, which was brought to challenge conditions in large institutions in Massachusetts that then housed thousands of individuals.
During that time, Sullivan became a member and then president of the Wrentham Parents Association. He also helped found the Charles River Arc, the Charles River Workshop, and later, three group homes.
Sullivan was a founding and executive board member of the Arc of Massachusetts, and organized one of the organization’s first state conventions. However, he opposed the Arc’s decision to advocate for closure of the developmental centers, contending those facilities should remain as a residential option to individuals and their families needing care.
Sullivan’s disagreement with the Arc’s direction led him to drop his membership in that organization and to found COFAR in 1983.
As he accepted his lifetime achievement award in 2012, Sullivan said he wanted to “pay tribute to the wonderful people that work day in and day out (on behalf of the intellectually disabled). They are the saints on earth.”
He was a veteran of the US Navy, and served for four years in the Pacific during World War II on a minesweeper, the USS Searle, and on a minelayer, the USS Monadnock.
Sullivan grew up in Dorchester and West Roxbury, and spent several years in school at Miramar Seminary in Duxbury, before graduating from Roslindale High School. After the war, Jack and Gladys were married, and moved to Jamaica Plain, then Dedham.
In addition to Jean Sullivan and Colleen Lutkevich, John Sullivan is survived by two other daughters, Joyce Wise and Laura Bradley.
A funeral Mass will be held on Wednesday morning, July 5 at 9:30 a.m. at St. Mary’s Church in Mansfield, with a reception to follow at the Parish Center. Donations in John’s memory can be sent to either the Wrentham Family Association or to COFAR, both c/o Colleen Lutkevich, 3 Hodges St., Mansfield, MA 02048. Donations can also be made online on COFAR’s website at www.cofar.org.
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