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Should we require video cameras in DDS group homes?
A bill filed in the state Legislature would require residential programs across the state for persons with developmental disabilities or mental illness to install video surveillance cameras in common areas in their facilities in order to deter and potentially prosecute abuse.
We support the bill (H.158) in concept although we’re not sure how effective the measure, as currently drafted, would be because it would not require security cameras in bedrooms. The bill is in the Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities Committee. We’ve posed a number of questions to the committee about it.
H.158 states that video cameras must be installed at all entrances, exits, and common areas of facilities licensed by the Departments of Developmental Services and Mental Health, including community-based group homes and inpatient facilities. The bill, however, would not require the installation of cameras in bedrooms, where it could be argued that most abuse occurs.
If properly drafted, this bill could serve as an additional safeguard to abuse and neglect, and supplement a separate bill (S. 2367), which would establish a registry in the state of caregivers found to have abused persons in DDS-funded facilities. S.2367, known as Nicky’s Law, was approved unanimously by the Massachusetts Senate last week.
Massachusetts currently appears to have no laws that specifically restrict videotaping in group homes, but there are statutes and regulations that restrict audio-taping without consent. A guardian can apparently install a video and audio camera in the bedroom of a developmentally disabled individual with the permission of the facility provider.
On October 15, I emailed a number of questions relating to H.158 to the Legislature’s Children and Families Committee. Among my questions were:
1. Do you know whether similar legislation has been enacted elsewhere or what its effectiveness has been?
3. Do you have any information or estimates on the cost of installing and maintaining cameras and monitoring units in all DDS and DMH residential facilities?
4. Do you have any information on the number of abuse incidents that occur in common areas or in entrances or exits of group homes?
To date, I have not yet heard back from the Committee.
Literature on video surveillance in group homes and other long-term care settings
There is some academic literature that is critical of the idea of video surveillance in long-term care facilities. But there are experts who vouch for the effectiveness of video surveillance, at least in helping prosecute caregivers for abuse. There seems to be some agreement that the cameras are not necessarily as effective in deterring abuse as in helping prosecutions after abuse has occurred.
Judge Rotenberg Center case
An article by The New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) implied that cameras were effective in bringing criminal charges in at least one case at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, MA. The October 29, 2018, article stated that a 22-year-old man was repeatedly whipped by a belt-wielding caretaker in a Rotenberg Center group home. The caretaker was criminally charged after his actions were caught on video.
Apparently, the Rotenberg Center and its 45 group homes are equipped with surveillance cameras. At the same time, however, it appears the cameras have apparently not stopped the relatively high number of abuse cases that the Rotenberg Center is cited for each year.
The Rotenberg Center has long been a focus of controversy because of its practice of administering electric skin shocks to program clients as a behavior modification technique.
The NECIR found that the Rotenberg Center was cited for abuse of adult residents more than any other special needs school by the Disabled Persons Protection Commission between 2011 and 2016. Our own analysis of DPPC data showed that the Rotenberg Center led other providers in two separate regions in the state in total complaints or highest percentage of abuse complaints referred for criminal investigation between Fiscal 2010 and 2019.
Rape case spurs camera legislation in Arizona
A Palm Beach Post article in February discussed the debate over surveillance cameras in noting that a rape in an an Arizona Intermediate Care Facility was spurring legislation in that state to allow cameras in long-term care facilities.
The article stated that Arizona was considering whether to join 10 other states — Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington — with laws or regulations allowing surveillance equipment inside nursing homes, assisted living centers and other group residential settings.
The Palm Beach Post article noted that most of those laws place the option and cost of electronic monitoring on residents and their guardians. According to the article, a majority of the laws allow residents or their surrogates to put cameras or monitoring devices in their rooms but require them to notify the facility, among other conditions.
Carole Herman, founder of the advocacy group Foundation Aiding the Elderly, was quoted in the article as saying, “The (healthcare) industry doesn’t want it obviously. But if they care about these people, what’s the resistance to these cameras?”
The article also quoted one expert who said a properly designed closed-circuit TV system with “multiple monitoring points” could be a good deterrent. However, in many cases, nobody is watching the video monitors, the expert said.
We think it might make sense to add a requirement to H.158 that DDS-funded facilities install surveillance cameras in bedrooms or other areas where abuse is known to take place, provided that the DDS clients involved or their guardians or family members agree to those placements. As noted, it does not appear to us that current law would prevent those installations.
Ultimately, we think the solution to the abuse problem lies in changing the culture in provider organizations, which is currently lax regarding training and supervision of group home staff. Without first taking that step, relying on surveillance technology and the registry may lead to a false sense of security.
We have questions for a legislative subcommittee reviewing employment of the developmentally disabled
A special legislative subcommittee’s review of barriers to employment of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) is long overdue, but it is unclear what direction the subcommittee will take on this important issue.
The “Workability Subcommittee” of the Massachusetts Legislature’s Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities Committee has scheduled a public hearing on October 22 at 10:30 a.m. at the State House in Room B-1.
The hearing notice states that the Subcommittee is seeking to identify “solutions to promote opportunities for individuals with disabilities to participate and succeed in the workforce.”
Patty Garrity and her brother Mark. After Mark’s sheltered workshop closed in 2016, meaningful work activities came to an end for him. Mark is not capable of participating in a mainstream work environment, Patty says.
COFAR and our members plan to testify at the hearing. We haven’t been consulted by the Subcommittee as part of its review, which began last spring and involved meetings with “disability advocates, employers, employees, and other stakeholders,” according to the hearing notice.
So on October 4, when we heard about the hearing, we posed questions in an email to the office of Representative Josh Cutler, chair of the Subcommittee and vice chair of the Children and Families Committee. Those questions were the following:
- Does the Subcommittee recognize that there are some persons who do not have the capability to succeed in the mainstream workforce, or does the Subcommittee take the position that all persons, no matter how profoundly intellectually disabled, can handle jobs in the mainstream workforce?
- Is the Subcommittee also looking to promote work opportunities for individuals in their community-based day programs funded by the Department of Developmental Services?
- Does the Subcommittee have data on the availability of mainstream workforce jobs for persons with I/DD? We have long been concerned that not nearly enough of those jobs exist even for those who are capable of doing them.
- Is the Subcommittee aware that the Legislature has apparently never appropriated the level of funding sought by the Baker administration for training and other services to help prepare former sheltered workshop participants for mainstream work settings? If so, has the funding for that transition so far been adequate?
- Does the Subcommittee support the continued payment of subminimum wages to persons with I/DD in order to enable them to get work opportunities either in mainstream or DDS settings?
In an email in response to us, Rep. Cutler declined to respond to our questions; but he did say they were “great questions” and that he would be interested in meeting with us. We are in the midst of scheduling a date for that meeting.
We have discussed employment issues involving people with I/DD in numerous blog posts and in legislative testimony since 2014 when the administration of then Governor Deval Patrick began closing sheltered workshops for persons with I/DD throughout the state.
The sheltered workshops were settings in which DDS clients did small assembly jobs and other piecework activities provided by area businesses. The participants usually received a nominal wage.
Many family members and guardians strongly supported the workshops; but the Patrick and then Baker administrations held to an ideology that the workshops “segregated” the participants from non-disabled workers, and that the participants would all be better off in mainstream, “integrated” job settings.
Here are some of our findings from our involvement with these issues over the past five years:
- Starting in 2013, the Patrick administration worked closely with corporate DDS providers to close the sheltered workshops over the objections of the families of many of the participants. In doing so, the providers falsely claimed that the workshops did not allow for “community inclusion.” The providers also falsely claimed that the federal government was forcing all sheltered workshops to close in the state.
- The Legislature rejected the Baker administration’s proposed funding increase in Fiscal Year 2017 to fund the transition from sheltered workshops to mainstream employment for former sheltered workshop participants.
- As of 2014, DDS was placing fewer and fewer clients in mainstream, integrated employment even as the sheltered workshops were closing.
- As of 2018, it was clear that the promise of the replacement of sheltered workshops in Massachusetts with mainstream integrated employment was not being realized. An unknown number of former sheltered workshop participants were being left without work of any kind in their DDS-funded day programs.
- The position of Senator Elizabeth Warren and many others against the payment of subminimum wages to people with I/DD has made it even harder for those persons to find the kind of work they had previously enjoyed doing.
Patty Garrity is the sister of one of those former workshop participants who has been left without work opportunities. Her brother Mark is not able to work in a competitive, mainstream setting.
Garrity said she plans to testify at the October 22 Subcommittee hearing. “I want to explain that there are individuals like my brother Mark and his peers who are not minimum wage candidates,” she wrote in an email. “There is still a huge void in Mark’s day and it is not going well…..going on 4 years now that I have been waiting for them to improve upon this and it is not happening. Mark is happy to be with his peers, but all he is doing is shredding paper and he is bored.”
We hope the Subcommittee will pay close attention to the experience of Mark Garrity and others who have been left behind in the wake of the sheltered workshop closures.
Moreover we hope the Subcommittee does or will recognize that, as with so many other issues involving persons with I/DD, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to employment.
There are many people for whom the mainstream, competitive workforce is not suitable. Their choices and the choices of their families and guardians should be respected.
COFAR blog 