COFAR blog

A group of advocates of the Wrentham and Hogan Intermediate Care Facilities (ICFs) is planning to meet with staff members of several state lawmakers at the State House in Boston tomorrow (Friday) in order to protect the facilities from eventual closure.

Many of the advocates are COFAR members. We also expect participation by members of the AFSCME Council 93 state employee union and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA).

For anyone interested in joining us, we will first gather at 10 a.m. outside the cafe on the fourth floor of the State House.

As we have reported many times, Wrentham and Hogan are critically important to the fabric of care for people throughout the state with intellectual and developmental disabilities. But like many administrations before it, the Healey administration appears to be allowing ICF-level care in Massachusetts to die by attrition.

The Friday State House event, which is being organized by COFAR member Irene Tanzman, will involve meetings with the staffs of several legislators whose districts include or are near to the two facilities. (Irene, by the way, has set up a Facebook group devoted to saving Wrentham and Hogan. You can find and join the group here.)

The legislators whose staffs we will meet with include State Senator Paul Feeney, whom we have asked to draft legislation that would open the doors at Wrentham and Hogan to new admissions and establish housing on the campuses of the facilities for elderly family members of the residents.

FY ’26 state budget would provide some increase in ICF funding

Meanwhile, the Legislature’s Senate Ways and Means Committee released its Fiscal Year 2026 state budget plan on Tuesday of this week, which would provide for moderate increases in funding for the ICFs and state-operated group homes in Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, the SWM budget doesn’t include the language we are suggesting, which we hope would would open the doors to Wrentham and Hogan. Our proposed language to ICF line item in the budget states that persons eligible for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) have a right to care in an ICF in Massachusetts.

We plan to ask Senator Feeney’s staff tomorrow about the status of that proposed legislative language, and to convey the importance to all of the legislators of saving Wrentham and Hogan as part of the continuum of care in this state.

The SWM budget adopts the governor’s proposed FY ’26 funding levels for Wrentham and Hogan and state-operated group home line items.

For the ICF line item (5930-1000), the SWM budget proposes an increase from $124,809,632 to $132,086,287. That’s a 5.8% increase from the current fiscal year, which is above the rate of inflation.

For the state-operated group home line item (5920-2010), the SWM budget proposes an increase from $330,698,351 to $362,028,812, which is a 9.5% increase. We are not sure why those line items are getting those increases, but they are welcome.

The SWM Committee has also adopted the governor’s proposed increase to the corporate provider group home line item to over $2 billion — a 19% hike in funding. That is about the twice the percentage increase that the state-operated group home line item would get.

As Irene has noted, tomorrow’s State House event is just a start in what we hope will be a long-term advocacy effort in support of state-run care for some of our most vulnerable citizens.

As with the embattled Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital, which the Healey administration has also targeted for closure, we hope the preservation of the Wrentham and Hogan Centers will garner critical public support. Without that support, those two essential centers of care will eventually die.