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Federal government reviewing group home data in MA and two other states
The Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has spent the past two years conducting a review of data on abuse and neglect in privatized group homes in three states, including Massachusetts.
In an August 21, 2013 letter written to U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson said his office had begun to examine data on admissions of persons from group homes and “nursing facilities” to hospital emergency rooms in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.
We obtained Levinson’s letter from the IG’s Freedom of Information Act Division. The letter promised to share the results of the IG’s findings with Senator Murphy’s office and left open the possibility of expanding the review. But the letter provided no details on how the review might be expanded.
Senator Murphy, who requested in March 2013 that the IG investigate group homes for people with developmental disabilities, has not responded to numerous requests from us for comment on the IG’s review.
It is not clear when the IG’s examination will be completed.
Despite what appear to be significant limitations in the scope of the analysis, the IG’s review appears to constitute one of the few instances in which the federal government has investigated the privatized group home system of care in the U.S. In contrast to that relative free ride given to the group home system, the federal government has filed dozens of lawsuits in recent years alleging substandard care in state-run, congregate-care facilities around the country.
There has been mounting evidence that abuse and neglect has been a continuing and growing problem in community-based, group homes. The IG investigation was requested by Murphy in the wake of a series of articles in The Hartford Courant that documented dozens of deaths, injuries, and other problems stemming from inadequate care and supervision in group homes in Connecticut.
Murphy asked the HHS IG to “focus on the prevalence of preventable deaths at privately run group homes across this nation and the widespread privatization of our delivery system.”
In his August 2013 letter in response to Murphy’s request, Levinson stated that for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, “we are analyzing data to identify instances when Medicaid beneficiaries were transferred from group homes or nursing facilities to hospitals for emergency treatment. We are analyzing data by facility to determine whether certain facilities have excessive rates relative to those of their peers.”
Due to the way states collect the data, the IG’s analysis would include all Medicaid patients and not only those with developmental disabilities, Levinson said.
Given the vagueness of Levinson’s description of his office’s review, we have a number of questions about it. Levinson’s letter, for instance, didn’t specify what he meant by “nursing facilities,” and didn’t indicate which “peers” the emergency hospital treatment rates are being compared to. Are the group homes and nursing facilities being compared to developmental centers, for instance? It’s also not clear what the data will mean if it lumps together people with and without developmental disabilities.
Moreover, it is not clear whether the IG’s review has included data on actual deaths in group homes, which is what Murphy specifically asked the IG to examine, or whether the review has included differences in mortality rates of persons transferred from state-run to privately run care. A number of studies have shown increases in mortality rates among those transferred individuals.
The VOR, a national advocacy organization for the developmentally disabled, pointed out in recent testimony to a congressional subcommittee that higher mortality rates have been documented in Virginia, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Georgia in the wake of the DOJ’s deinstitutionalization settlements.
Based on Levinson’s letter, the IG’s review also doesn’t appear to have covered issues such as the quality of care in general in group homes, and it does not appear to be concerned with financial aspects of privatized care. All of those things are long overdue for investigations at both the federal and state levels of government. In the meantime, the federal IG’s investigation appears to be at least a step in the right direction.
The federal government’s cruel pursuit of deinstitutionalization
When is the federal government — particularly the Department of Justice — going to recognize or admit that deinstitutionalization of the developmentally disabled hasn’t worked as planned?
The DOJ seems to have closed its eyes to the realities on the ground in continuing to file lawsuits around the country to close state-run care facilities. This has caused “human harm, including death and financial and emotional hardship,” according to information compiled by the VOR, a national advocacy organization for the developmentally disabled and a COFAR affiliate.
While the DOJ has not filed such a suit against the State of Massachusetts, that may be because the state has closed, or is in the process of closing, four out of six developmental centers that were in operation as of 2008. But with two developmental centers remaining as well as other programs that the DOJ considers to be institutional, such as sheltered workshops, Massachusetts could well become a target for a lawsuit at any time.
The VOR filed testimony last month, urging a congressional subcommittee to adopt legislative language that would require the DOJ to do two very commonsense things before filing more lawsuits to close state-run facilities:
- First consult with the residents or their legal guardians “to determine residents’ needs and choices with regard to residential services and supports,” and,
- Second, do not “impose community-based treatment on patients who do not desire it.” This second requirement is consistent with the 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. L.C.
The DOJ’s continued pursuit of class-action litigation to close developmental centers and other facilities has led to the irony that those lawsuits are generally opposed by the families of the residents on whose behalf the suits are ostensibly filed. As U.S. District Court Judge J. Leon Holmes wrote in 2011 in dismissing a lawsuit brought by the DOJ against the State of Arkansas to close the Conway Human Development Center center there:
…the United States is in the odd position of asserting that certain persons’ rights have been and are being violated while those persons – through their parents and guardians – disagree. (U.S. v. Arkansas, June 8, 2011, dismissal order).
Judge Holmes’ decision noted that evidence in the case showed that the parents and guardians of residents of the Conway Center “are overwhelmingly satisfied with the services there and believe that the Center is the least restrictive, most integrated placement appropriate for their children and wards.” Moreover, the judge’s decision stated that the weight of the evidence in the case failed to support the DOJ’s contention that care at the Conway Center was substandard.
The VOR notes that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has filed more than 45 legal enforcement actions in 25 states since 2009 to limit or shut down state care. On a website listing all the litigation it has filed, the DOJ includes the heading “Olmstead: Community Integration for Everyone.”
It’s not true, though, that Olmstead requires community-based care for everyone. The Supreme Court decision established a right to community-based housing and care only when:
1. The state’s treatment professionals have determined that community placement is appropriate,
2. Transfer is not opposed by the affected individual, and
3. The placement can be reasonably accommodated, taking into account the resources available to the state and the needs of others with mental disabilities.
Despite those clear conditions, the DOJ has plowed ahead with its community-integration lawsuits under the explicit assumption that all institutional care should be ended and everyone should be sent into community-based care, whether they want to go or not.
This viewpoint by the DOJ is a misinterpretation of the Olmstead decision, and it has had tragic consequences, according to the VOR. The organization pointed out in its testimony that higher mortality rates have been documented in Virginia, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Georgia in the wake of the DOJ’s deinstitutionalization settlements.
Those problems have occurred because so many of the privatized group homes to which the people formerly in the state facilities have been transferred are poorly monitored and are afflicted by high turnover and poor training of staff. Yet, that reality does not appear to have been recognized by the DOJ.
In Virginia, a state sued by the DOJ to close its state-run developmental centers, the risk of mortality for those individuals who left those centers was double that of those who stayed.
In Tennessee, DOJ lawsuits resulted in the closure of one developmental center in 2010 and the downsizing of two others. In that state, deaths among people released from institutions nearly doubled between 2009 and 2013. In addition, according to The Tennessean, a 2013 State Comptroller’s audit reported a lack of access to adequate medical and dental care, incarcerations, and hundreds of reports of abuse, and neglect and exploitation among the transferred developmental center residents.
In Nebraska, a 2014 monitoring team report found that of 47 persons considered to be “medically fragile,” who were transferred from a developmental center in 2009 as a result of a DOJ settlement, 20 (or 43 percent of them) subsequently died.
In Georgia, a 2010 a DOJ settlement agreement required the closure of all state-operated developmental centers and the transfer of 1,000 persons with developmental disabilities as well as 9,000 persons with mental illness from facility-based care. In March, The Augusta Chronicle reported that of 499 individuals with profound developmental disabilities, who had been transferred from the state developmental centers under the DOJ settlement, 62 (or 12%) died unexpectedly.
The Augusta Chronicle article discussed the case of Christen Shermaine Hope Gordon, a 12-year-old girl who died in community-care after being transferred from the Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, GA. The article recounted a litany of poor decisions and poor care that appear to have led to Christen’s death.
In a letter to the DOJ in January of this year, Margaret Huss, president of Intellectual Disabilities Advocates of Nebraska, urged the DOJ to ask critical questions about the mortality figures and other data regarding the transfer to community-based care prior to filing further lawsuits to close state facilities. “An increased risk of death should not be the unintended consequences of the worthy goal of community integration,” Huss’s letter stated. As of May 1, the DOJ had not responded to her letter.
That an increased risk of abuse, neglect, and death exists in community-based care has long been recognized, but few policy makers or people elected to office have been willing to stem the tide of deinstitutionalization. In March 2013, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut did call for an investigation of abuse and neglect in privatized group homes around the country, in response to a series by The Hartford Courant detailing those problems in that state.
In a letter to the Office of the Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Murphy termed the level of abuse and neglect in group homes “alarming.” Murphy asked the IG “to focus on the prevalence of preventable deaths at privately run group homes across this nation and the widespread privatization of our delivery system.”
But more than two years after Murphy’s request, it is not clear that the HHS Inspector General ever did undertake such an investigation. The IG’s office has so far not released a report and did not respond to an email query from us on April 30, seeking information on whether an investigation has been undertaken and what its status might be.
Senator Murphy’s office also did not respond to repeated inquiries from us last week as to whether Murphy ever received a response from the IG to his call for an investigation or whether he ever followed up with the IG after his original request in 2013.
Unfortunately, lawmakers in the U.S. Senate, in particular, have also not been supportive of VOR’s proposed legislative language to require the DOJ to consult with families before filing further lawsuits against state care. While language was inserted in a House appropriations bill for the DOJ last year at VOR’s request that protections for institutional care be considered by the DOJ as appropriate for those who desire it, that language was later watered down.
We can only hope that folks begin to wake up in Washington and elsewhere to overwhelming evidence that deinstitutionalization accompanied by privatization is not working, and that someone finally steps forward to slow both of those trends.
The HW&M budget has great news for sheltered workshops, not so good news for state care in general
The great news is the House Ways and Means Committee re-inserted protective language last week in the proposed Fiscal Year 2016 state budget that would protect vital sheltered workshops from closure.
Representative Brian Dempsey, chair of the committee, who was instrumental last year in keeping the workshops open, has renewed his commitment to those facilities in this year’s budget go-round with the administration.
The bad news is that the House Ways and Means budget continues to squeeze state-run programs for the developmentally disabled and maintains the administration’s disproportionate increase in proposed funding for the corporate, provider-run group home system. But let’s look at the good news first.
Last spring, after a lobbying campaign by advocates of the workshops, Dempsey placed language in the House Ways and Means version of the current-year budget, stating that DDS “shall not reduce the availability or decrease funding for sheltered workshops serving persons with disabilities who voluntarily seek or wish to retain such employment services.” The protective language survived a House-Senate conference committee in June, largely due to Dempsey’s support.
While that protective language in the budget appeared to offer the workshops an indefinite reprieve, the proposed fiscal 2016 budget submitted by Governor Charlie Baker in March removed the language. As a result, the workshop supporters went to work once again in the past month, calling Dempsey’s office and urging their local legislators to reinstate his language.
Dempsey did reinstate the language; and in a conference call last week concerning the House Ways and Means budget plan, DDS Commissioner Elin Howe indicated that the administration did not intend to file any amendments to remove the language from the budget legislation. It also appears that organizations representing corporate DDS providers, such as the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers, have not filed amendments to close the workshops.
It is now up to the Senate and specifically to Senator Karen Spilka, the chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, to follow Rep. Dempsey’s lead and insert the same protective language in the Senate budget.
The workshops first came under attack from the administration of then Governor Deval Patrick, which targeted them for closure as of this coming June, arguing that they were “segregating” disabled persons from their peers in the mainstream workforce. But families of the workshop participants fought back. They maintain that the facilities are fully integrated into the surrounding communities and provide the participants with meaningful activities and valuable skills.
Sheltered workshops provide developmentally disabled persons with a range of assembly jobs and other types of work, usually for a small wage.
Meanwhile, the bad news we were talking about largely concerns funding for DDS group homes, remaining developmental centers, and service coordinators. The House Ways and Means budget proposal would cut the developmental center line item even deeper than Governor Baker has proposed and would reduce the service coordinator line item below the amount proposed by the governor. It would also fund the state-operated group homes at a level below what DDS considers a “maintenance level.”
While the state has closed three of six existing developmental centers since 2008 and is in the process of closing a fourth, funding appropriated to run the remaining three centers may have dropped too fast to maintain existing services in those facilities. As we recently noted, years of cuts in the developmental-center line item have lately resulted in the closing of several cottages at the Wrentham Developmental Center, requiring residents to be moved from long-time residential locations.
The Wrentham Center has become a major destination for persons transferred from the developmental centers that have been closed in recent years.
While Governor Baker’s fiscal 2016 budget would cut the developmental center line item by about $375,000 from projected spending, the House Ways and Means budget would cut it by $1 million beyond that.
DDS-operated group homes would get the same amount in fiscal 2016 under the House Ways and Means budget as under the governor’s version of the budget, which amounts to a $2 million reduction from what DDS considers a “maintenance budget.”
Also, the House Ways and Means budget would fund the DDS line item that pays service coordinators at a level $538,000 less than what Baker has proposed. In March, DDS Commissioner Howe had said Baker’s budget would fund the service coordinator line item at $1.8 million below what DDS had requested. So the House Ways and Means budget further reduces that proposed funding for the service coordinators next year by more than half a million dollars.
The service coordinators, whom Howe has referred to as “the heart and soul” of DDS, are responsible for ensuring that clients throughout the system are receiving services to which they are entitled. The service coordinators have seen their caseloads rise dramatically in recent years.
In last week’s conference call, Howe noted the shortfalls in funding under the House Ways and Means budget for the developmental centers, DDS-operated group homes, and service coordinators. But in what may be a sign of the priority that this administration places on these services, Howe said the Department did not plan to seek amendments to the House budget to increase that funding.
At the same time, the House Ways and Means budget preserves a major funding increase to the corporate providers in the coming fiscal year. The Ways and Means plan provides for the same $35 million increase from the current year for the DDS corporate residential line item that Baker has proposed. As of July, this line item will have been increased by more than 28 percent since the filing of a lawsuit by the corporate providers in June 2014 against the then Patrick administration.
While we understand that direct-care workers in corporate, provider-operated group homes are woefully underpaid, it’s not clear how much of the additional funding being sent to the providers is, or will be, going to those workers. As we have noted, the hundreds of executives working for those provider agencies in Massachusetts have been making out quite well.
The Baker administration is apparently fine with that state of affairs. Terming the House Ways and Means plan “a very reasonable budget,” Howe pointed out that it would add $17 million to the DDS bottom line compared to the governor’s budget. Under the House Ways and Means budget, the Community Day and Work line item would be almost $10 million higher than what the governor proposed.
The House Ways and Means budget also would provide $12.4 million under a new DDS line item to implement the expansion of DDS eligibility to people with autism, Prader-Willi, and Smith-Magenis Syndrome.
While that expansion of eligibility funding is certainly needed, the Senate has a lot of other work in store for it as well. We hope that in addition to protecting the sheltered workshops, the Senate begins to address the imbalance in the budget between corporate and state-run DDS care.
Human service providers’ lawsuit boosts their state funding despite deficit
While programs and services are being cut throughout state government as a result of projected budget shortfalls, corporate human services providers have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state funding due, at least in part, to a lawsuit they filed against the state.
The irony is that the U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled in a separate case that providers cannot sue to raise Medicaid service rates. So, it’s not clear to us that the Massachusetts providers were on solid legal ground in filing their lawsuit.
In June 2014, the providers sued the then Patrick administration, arguing that the administration was not boosting state funding to them fast enough to satisfy a timetable set in a 2008 law known as Chapter 257. Chapter 257 established formulas and timetables for increasing provider funding rates.
As a result of the lawsuit, both the Patrick administration and the incoming Baker administration approved major funding increases to the provider-run group-home line item in the Department of Developmental Services budget, even as it was becoming clear the state was facing major budget shortfalls in the current and coming fiscal years.
In a press release issued on March 4, the day he submitted his Fiscal Year 2016 budget to the Legislature, Governor Baker stated that his administration had allocated $30 million “to resolve litigation and adjust Chapter 257 rates for human service providers.”
The $30 million referred to in the governor’s press release may have understated the impact of the lawsuit. Baker’s proposed funding for the provider group-home line item in the DDS budget for fiscal 2016 is more than $230 million higher than the amount appropriated for that line item in fiscal 2014 when the provider lawsuit was filed. That is a 28 percent increase.
In contrast, the line item for the state developmental centers would be cut in that same period by almost 9 percent, and state-operated group homes would get an increase of about 13 percent in that time period.
In what sounds like a similar lawsuit to the the litigation in Massachusetts, service providers in Idaho had argued in federal court that Idaho had failed to raise Medicaid payments to them as outlined in a federally approved formula. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on March 31 that private providers cannot sue for higher Medicaid reimbursement rates.
In the suit filed by the Massachusetts providers, state Superior Court Judge Mitchell Kaplan ruled in January that the state had violated Chapter 257 by not setting higher rates for providers. In response to the suit, the then Patrick administration had initially argued that Chapter 257 could be fulfilled only if the state itself had adequate revenues to do so.
But Judge Kaplan ruled that the state had to comply with the higher rates required under Chapter 257 regardless of whether the funding was available or not. That would mean that in order to fulfill the requirements of Chapter 257, funding would have to be cut in other areas, which is what has happened.
Like the Idaho providers, the Massachusetts providers had argued that the inadequacy of the state funding was causing them to fail to keep up with rising costs and was resulting in lower paid staff and high staff turnover as well as poorer quality services. We have maintained, though, that the funding has been adequate to support high salaries for executives running the provider corporations. Close to $100 million a year is spent on those executive salaries in Massachusetts.
As we’ve noted before, the major funding increases in the provider line item in the past year have increased an already existing imbalance in funding between that line item and accounts for state-run services.
One example of that imbalance is the state-run developmental center line item, which will be some $10.6 million less under Baker’s fiscal 2016 budget than it was in fiscal 2014. This has led to the necessity of closing several cottages at the Wrentham Developmental Center in the past several months, requiring residents to be moved from long-time residential locations.
An April 2 memo sent to Wrentham Center staff referred to an “immense challenge” in meeting budget constraints facing the Center in the current fiscal year, and a “yet another difficult budget forecast for Fiscal Year 2016.”
At the time the Massachusetts providers filed their suit, a spokesman for the providers explained that they had rejected an offer from the then Patrick administration to meet them more than part-way by providing 90 percent of the full funding increase specified under Chapter 257 as of January 2015.
“…in the end, it wasn’t enough,” the spokesman for the providers said. “At this point, we’ve been as patient as we can be and the law is the law and we want the Commonwealth to abide by the law. Every day that full implementation is delayed, the imbalance and the unfairness grows.”
The providers and the Baker administration, however, do not seem to be as concerned about the continuing and growing imbalance in funding between provider and state-run services.
Following the money on three new DDS-related laws
More than five months ago, three important pieces of legislation affecting people with developmental disabilities were ceremonially signed into law with a lot of fanfare by then Governor Patrick; but there has been little information since about the status of these new laws.
We are attempting to find out via Public Records law requests to the Department of Developmental Services what is being done to implement these laws, how much it all will cost, and where the money is going. The Department does not seem eager to part with that information voluntarily.
1. National Background Check law: This new law authorizes national criminal background checks for persons hired to work in an unsupervised capacity with persons with developmental disabilities. It will ultimately require that both current and prospective caregivers in the DDS system submit their fingerprints to a federal database maintained by the FBI.
We previously reported that the requirements under this law have been delayed by up to four years.
On March 2, we sent in information request to DDS, asking what steps the Department had taken to implement the law and whether the Department has finally applied for grant funds available since 2010 from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Affordable Care Act to design a national background check program.
To date, despite a follow-up email on March 30, we have received no response from the Department to our questions. As a result, we submitted a Public Records request to the Department on March 31, asking for all reports, memoranda, and other records that concern those issues. Legally, state agencies do not have to respond to information requests, but they do have to respond within 10 days to requests for public records.
More than a year and a half ago, a DDS administrator said the Department had not applied for an ACA grant, which can be as high as $3 million per state, because the legislation authorizing national background checks in Massachusetts had not yet been passed.
2. The ‘Real Lives’ law: This law introduces what is called “person-centered planning” in providing care and services to persons with developmental disabilities.
On March 3, we submitted a Public Records request to DDS, seeking records pertaining to all payments made by the Department in Fiscal Years 2014 and 2015 to a company called Public Partnerships, LLC. According to a DDS website PowerPoint document, Public Partnerships has begun contracting with DDS to provide “individualized fiscal intermediary” or financial management services to participants in the Real Lives program.
While the Real Lives law is touted as providing individuals with more choice and “self determination” in the services they receive from DDS, we are concerned the law will transfer decision-making authority from guardians and family members of disabled individuals to private financial management companies.
Thus far, it is unclear exactly what services Public Partnerships has or will provide under the law and how much it has or will be paid to do so. The DDS PowerPoint states that the financial management services “may include” fiscal accounting, tax withholding, criminal background checks, and other services. The PowerPoint provides no specifics, however.
As of early March, it did not appear that DDS had yet developed policies or regulations regarding the Real Lives law, and more specifically concerning the nature of the financial management services that will be used under the law. The most recent policy statement from DDS concerning “self-determination” is dated January 2010.
Public Partnerships is not new to contracting with DDS. The firm received $14 million in funding from DDS in Fiscal Year 2014, according to an online state site that tracks spending on human services contractors. It was not clear what services Public Partnerships provided to DDS in fiscal 2014.
The state’s Open Checkbook website listed a total of $10.9 million in DDS payments to Public Partnerships so far in the current fiscal year. The website, however, also does not specify the services provided for that funding.
Public Partnerships bills itself on its website as “a full-service financial management services firm dedicated solely to providing fiscal/employer agent, third party administrator, and related support services to public agencies.” The site adds that the firm helps state, county, and local public agencies “implement a participant-directed service model.”
Audited financial statements for the company and a Colorado affiliate, available on the state contractor site, disclose that Public Partnerships and its Colorado affiliate received more than $1 billion in total revenues in fiscal 2014. Public Partnerships is a subsidiary of Public Consulting Group, a Boston-based consulting firm, which has received $3.3 million so far in the current fiscal year from several agencies in the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
3. The DDS eligibility law: In September 2014, we first asked DDS for information on the funding available to carry out this new law, which requires that the Department expand services to include persons with autism and conditions known as Prader-Willi and Smith-Magenis Syndrome. We received no response to that request for information.
Then on March 2 of this year, we sent an email to the DDS commissioner, asking whether the Department has developed a cost estimate for expanding services under the new law and what that estimate might be. Having received no response to that question, we have asked in a Public Records request for reports, memoranda, and other documents that concern the potential cost of the new law.
You may wonder why we have even bothered to send information queries to DDS, given that they don’t seem to respond to them. The answer is they have, at times, responded to those queries. In the past year or so, it seems, they’ve stopped responding. It’s hard to say why. Maybe they they’ve adopted a new policy of circling the wagons and cutting off information.
Guardian rights bill would help families caught in the DDS-probate system
As we have chronicled a number of times, family members can get shut out of the process when their loved ones with developmental disabilities enter the state’s system of residential care.
This is particularly the case when family members lose their legal status as guardians of disabled persons. That, as we have seen, can happen for reasons that are not always fair or just.
That’s why we strongly support a bill (H. 1459) now before the state Legislature that would require probate court judges to give more consideration than they now do to the appointment of family members as guardians of incapacitated persons.
The bill, which has been filed for years by Representative David Linsky, has never made it out of committee. We understand, though, that the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, which advises the state on issues of concern to the developmentally disabled, has put this bill on their priority list for passage this year.
The bill states that the spouse, parent or parents or their designees of an incapacitated individual should be presumed to be suitable guardians unless competent evidence is introduced to the contrary.
Obtaining guardianship when a developmentally disabled person reaches the age of 18 is essential in participating in the care of that person. Guardians have legal rights to participate in individual support planning, a key element in the care of developmentally disabled persons, and to make other decisions that affect their wards’ services and well-being. Even the parents of a developmentally disabled person over 18 will find they have virtually no say in that person’s care if someone else is appointed as his or her guardian.
But the appointment by probate court judges of guardians of developmentally disabled persons is often haphazard. In many of those cases, judges appoint either attorneys or corporate human services provider organizations as guardians, and those attorneys or providers may have no connection to the persons who need their representation.
Attorneys, corporate providers, and others who are appointed to guardianships of developmentally disabled persons are generally paid for those services by DDS. According to DDS records, eleven of the 20 highest-paid guardians by the Department in Fiscal Year 2014 were either corporate providers or attorneys.
There seems to be a view among at least some judges and within DDS that corporate providers or attorneys make more suitable guardians than do family members, particularly if those family members are seen as aggressive or contentious in their relationships with DDS. We think this dismissal of families is wrong and has caused a lot of needless suffering among families, not to mention hindering adequate care.
Moreover, the view that the so-called experts and not family members know what is best for disabled persons appears to be at odds with the federal Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, which states that family members of developmentally disabled individuals shall be the “primary decision-makers” in the care of such persons.
It would seem that too few people in DDS or the probate court system in Massachusetts are familiar with the DD Assistance and Bill of Rights Act.
In 2012, DDS petitioned a probate judge to remove Patricia Feeley as her son’s guardian because Feeley would not agree to a Department plan to place her son in a residential care setting without 24-hour nursing. DDS agreed to dismiss its petition a year later, but only after the Department had proposed to appoint a Woburn-based attorney, who had never met Feeley’s son, as his guardian.
In 2010, Norfolk County Probate Court Judge George Phelan dismissed the entire Duzan family as unsuitable to continue as guardians for Sara Duzan, a young woman with a developmental disability who had been repeatedly abused with unnecessary restraints in a series of provider-operated residential care settings.
In his order, Phelan discounted the family’s claims that Sara was being abused, and contended the family itself had “demonstrated through a variety of encounters their vacillation, indecisiveness, and inability to work with others.” In the place of Sara’s family, Phelan appointed the executive director of the Arc of Greater Fall River, a DDS corporate provider, as her guardian.
Phelan’s order set the stage for the eventual cutoff of all contact between the family and Sara for months, and forced them into an expensive and still ongoing legal battle over her custody. But vacillation, indecisiveness, and even the inability to work with others, even if that were the case, do not seem to us to be sufficient reasons to deny an entire family the right to guardianship of a loved one.
In a third case, Stan McDonald voluntarily relinquished his guardianship nearly 30 years ago of his intellectually disabled son, Andy, as part of a custody battle with his former wife. What followed were years, with few exceptions, of poor decision-making regarding Andy’s care by a number of court-appointed guardians.
The idea for H. 1459 came from Stan McDonald, who has still been unable to regain his guardianship of Andy, and has had to watch helplessly as Andy’s emotional needs have been ignored or neglected. Andy McDonald’s current court-appointed guardian has had as many as 100 wards at one time. The provider executive director appointed as guardian of Sara Duzan had 24 other wards at the time, according to court records.
The current probate law does state that in appointing guardians, the court should consider, in order of priority, a spouse, then a parent, and then “anyone else the court deems appropriate.” But a judge is not obligated to give more weight to a parent than to anyone else he or she deems appropriate.
In fact, the current probate law goes on to state that: “The court, acting in the best interest of the incapacitated person, may pass over a person having priority and appoint a person having a lower priority or no priority.” That provision gives probate judges carte blanche to bypass the express wishes of parents and other family members. H. 1459 would remove that provision.
There are a number of additional reasons to support of H. 1459:
- It would lower caseloads for attorneys who are not able to advocate effectively for the often large numbers of incapacitated persons for whom they are responsible. It would also reduce the cost to taxpayers in paying these attorneys.
- H. 1459 would also reduce the use of scarce court resources expended on families disputing the appointments of non-family members to be guardians of their loved ones.
By itself, H. 1459 is just one of a number of measures that are needed to reform the dysfunctional DDS/probate court system of care for people with developmental disabilities. Other measures are needed as well. For instance, there should be a mediation process available in guardianship disputes so that families are not forced to impoverish themselves in court litigation when they do lose their guardianship rights.
In the absence of a mediation process, the state should be required to appoint an attorney to represent an individual who gets involved in a dispute with the state over guardianship and can’t afford an attorney on their own.
Also, in light of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, family members and other caring individuals should have standing to advocate for an individual even if they are not the person’s guardian. And limits are needed on the number of persons that individual attorneys, corporate guardians, and others should be allowed to represent as guardians.
Baker administration continues Gov. Patrick’s misguided effort to close sheltered workshops
As the Legislature takes up Governor Baker’s budget for the coming fiscal year, it looks as though the battle over sheltered workshops for the developmentally disabled in Massachusetts is set to begin once again.
Supporters of these vital programs won a reprieve last year when the Legislature inserted protective language for the workshops in the current-year budget. The language prohibits the Department of Developmental Services from closing or cutting off funding for sheltered workshops as long as there are people who seek them or wish to remain in them.
The budget language temporarily thwarted the efforts of then Governor Patrick to close all remaining sheltered workshops in the state as of this coming June. But the protective language has been removed from Governor Baker’s proposed budget for fiscal 2016.
It appears that despite the fact that we have a new governor, it is the same DDS with the same administrators running it; and they will never back away from their ideological opposition to any program that serves more than a handful of disabled individuals in one location.
Sheltered workshops provide settings in which developmentally disabled people can do assembly jobs and other types of work. In the view of the now Baker administration, such settings of care “segregate” developmentally disabled people from their non-disabled peers, and supposedly prevent them from reaching their potential in the mainstream workforce.
Many families and guardians of workshop participants, however, want these programs to continue and depend on them to provide valuable skills and meaningful activities to the participants.
Last spring, after a lobbying campaign by advocates of the workshops, language was inserted into the current-year budget, stating that DDS “shall not reduce the availability or decrease funding for sheltered workshops serving persons with disabilities who voluntarily seek or wish to retain such employment services.” The protective language survived a House-Senate conference committee in June, largely due to the support of House Ways and Means Chair Brian Dempsey.
But Governor Baker’s budget has not only removed that language protecting the workshops, the budget proposes a $4 million increase in a separate DDS account to move people from sheltered workshops into DDS day programs, many of which do not provide work-related activities.
We support the continued operation of sheltered workshops for reasons given in an email sent to Dempsey last May by Richard Urban, who is a guardian of his brother Tom. In December 2013, DDS closed Tom’s sheltered workshop where he had been employed for most of his adult life. Richard noted that Tom’s “work ethic and paycheck (from his sheltered workshop program) were two constants that allowed him a place on a playing field of equality with his peers, family and friends.”
Since his “forced exit from his workshop,” Richard said, Tom “has grown distant, is very confused, and expresses continued sadness over his job loss. His identity, and work community, have been lost, through no fault of his own but by virtue of a policy shift for which I am at a complete loss to understand.”
We’re at a loss to understand it as well.
Two lawmakers support an independent evaluation of Andy McDonald
More than a year ago, we asked for an independent clinical evaluation of a now 47-year-old intellectually disabled man, who has not been permitted to visit his parents in their Sherborn home for the past 19 years because he has been deemed to be a danger to the community.
Finally, two state legislators are asking for the same independent evaluation of Andy McDonald. In a letter sent to the Department of Developmental Services on February 25, both Senator Richard Ross and Representative David Linsky further asked that the evaluation take into account the views of Andy’s father, Stan, and his step-mother, Ellen, who have been fighting for years for supervised visits home for him.
Not only is Andy prohibited from visiting the home he grew up in; Stan and Ellen are not even permitted to discuss the topic with him. Under the rules imposed by his DDS-funded group home, Andy, who has frequently expressed a longing to see his home again, is forbidden from mentioning his desire to do so. It seems like a violation of free speech; but then again, when you are under the control of both the DDS and probate court system, your right to self-determination becomes very limited.
That loss of self-determination may be appropriate in some cases; but the McDonald case shows how dysfunctional the system can get. The case is replete with questions about the validity of previous clinical evaluations of Andy and about a 2006 probate court ruling, which concluded that Andy was sexually dangerous and should never be allowed to return home.
In the 2006 ruling in which he denied Stan’s bid for guardianship of Andy, Middlesex County Probate Court Judge Edward Rockett stated that Andy had been arrested in 1990 for sexual assaults of three young girls who lived across the street in Sherborn. That was not true, however.
Andy was arrested in May 1990 for threatening an unidentified person during a telephone call, according to the district court record. The nature of the threats was not disclosed. In July of that year, he was arrested for disturbing the peace in downtown Sherborn and with assault for punching his stepmother, according to a police report. Both Stan and Ellen say the punch was accidental and occurred while Ellen was driving Andy to the police station after he was accused of disturbing the peace. “He was flailing his arms, not threatening me,” Ellen said in an email this week, “and his fist landed on me. It didn’t hurt me. It made a red mark that faded shortly after.”
There is no indication in the police reports that Andy ever sexually assaulted anyone.
In his ruling, Rockett also cited a statement by the clinical director of Andy’s group home that Andy had told him he had had sexual fantasies about children. But Rockett acknowledged in his ruling that there was testimony in the court case that Andy “will always say what he thinks other people want to hear. This causes his statements to be very inconsistent.”
As we noted in a previous post about this case, Andy was committed to McLean Hospital in Belmont immediately after the July 1990 threatening and disturbing-the-peace incidents. In the years following, he was subjected to a series of inappropriate residential placements and treatment, in many cases because a series of court-appointed guardians, state agencies, and providers made the wrong decisions regarding his care.
Most of the decisions about placement and treatment of Andy were made without the consent of Stan, who had agreed to the appointment of a guardian for Andy in 1986 as part of the settlement of a longstanding custody battle over him with his former wife. Andy has had a series of court-appointed guardians since, and Stan has never been able to regain that guardianship. His attempts in probate court to do so have been opposed by DDS.
Andy has not exhibited any significant behavioral problems in a decade and has been taken on community outings to many places other than his home without any behavioral incidents, according to Stan and to notations in Andy’s clinical care plan. But that record of good behavior does not appear to have changed the position of either the probate court, DDS, or Andy’s current court-appointed guardian that he must never be allowed to go back to his hometown.
That ban on visits to Andy’s boyhood home combined with his group home’s policy that he must not even discuss his desire to visit his parents there amounts to psychological abuse, Stan maintains. Moreover, the situation raises concerns in Stan’s and Ellen’s minds about Andy’s future and what will happen when they are no longer able to travel from Sherborn to visit him in his group home in Northborough. Stan is 79 years old.
In 2000, Ronald Ebert, a psychologist, recommended that the staff of Andy’s group home try a “trial visit” to the Sherborn Inn to hear Stan, an acclaimed jazz musician, play in his band if it could be demonstrated that the persons Andy was accused in 1990 of threatening no longer lived in town. In fact, Stan says, those persons had moved away as of that time. “If such visits can be managed successfully, there is no reason why they could not be built into his visit schedule…,” Ebert wrote. But Ebert’s recommendation was never heeded.
As is the case with he parents of Sara Duzan, who were denied all contact with their daughter for several months, Stan and Ellen McDonald have found themselves trapped in a Twilight-Zone-like situation imposed on them by the state’s dysfunctional human services and probate court system. It’s long past time to bring in someone with a truly independent view to take a new look at this case.
Budget reductions falling heavily on state-run services for the disabled
During a conference call on Wednesday with advocates for the developmentally disabled, Department of Developmental Services Commissioner Elin Howe didn’t have much good news about the potential impact of Governor Baker’s proposed Fiscal Year 2016 budget.
The budget is bad news for DDS accounts, particularly state-operated services.
“These are huge and difficult reductions,” Howe said.
Baker is dealing, of course, with a projected budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year, and it looks as though people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are among those who will pay a price for that shortfall. Howe said DDS is assuming departmental layoffs will not be necessary if the Legislature accepts Baker’s early retirement proposal for state workers. If that doesn’t happen, measures such as layoffs may be needed, she said.
Just about every DDS account is being funded lower than what DDS had asked for. Howe said the governor’s budget required a total of $27 million in reductions from DDS funding requests, but DDS has been able to reduce the hit by $8 million by using some federal revenues as an offset to the total reductions.
As usual, state-operated services may be taking the brunt of the reductions. Howe noted that Baker was proposing a $2.6 million reduction from the DDS request in the state-operated group homes line item. Under Baker’s budget, the line item would be increased by $5.1 million, from current-year spending (from $209.6 million to $214.7 million). But that amount is below what DDS considers necessary to maintain current services.
Exactly what the state-run group home line item reduction means is unclear. Howe said DDS is not projecting “reductions in services to people,” but rather there will be “changes in staffing.” Among other things, DDS has been working to reduce the use of overtime in state-operated group homes, she said.
In January, we sent a letter to Kristen Lepore, Baker’s new secretary of administration and finance, asking that the new administration consider making the funding of state-operated care for the developmentally disabled a priority. For too long, as we noted, state government has been divesting itself of its responsibility to provide care for the most vulnerable of its citizens, and has failed to adequately monitor and control the handover of human services to state-funded corporate providers.
Baker’s first budget does not appear to address that situation.
In addition to the shortfall in funding for state-operated care, Howe said the state-run developmental centers line item would be funded under the governor’s budget at $2 million less than what DDS was requesting. This account would be cut from the level of spending in the current fiscal year as well, under Baker’s budget.
In addition, DDS service coordinators, Howe said, were being funded at a level $1.8 million below what DDS had requested. The DDS administrative line item, which funds the service coordinators, would be increased under Baker’s budget, but not by enough to maintain current services.
Corporate provider-run care does not come through unscathed in the governor’s budget, but the overall imbalance in funding between state and provider-operated care will remain.
Funding to DDS corporate residential providers rose past the $1 billion mark for the first time in the current fiscal year. In fiscal 2014, then Governor Patrick and the Legislature increased the provider line item by more than $140 million –or more than 16 percent—in FY 2015 dollars. At the same time, both the former governor’s and the legislative budgets either cut or provided much more meager increases for most other DDS line items.
The provider residential account subsequently received a supplemental budget increase in the current fiscal year of $44.7 million, even as both Baker and his predecessor, Patrick, were cutting spending across the board to deal with a projected current-year budget deficit.
Baker has proposed another $33.6 million increase in the provider residential line item for fiscal 2016, but DDS and the providers apparently wanted $4 million more than that.
Among the other DDS line items:
- Baker has proposed an increase in funding for the day program line item that is $9.7 million lower than what DDS wanted. The line item would be increased by $2.8 million under Baker’s budget proposal.
- Respite and Family Supports would be funded at a level $5 million below DDS’s request. Under Baker’s budget, the line item would be increased by $7.4 million, but this line item has been continually underfunded in recent years. It was cut in the current year by $2.5 million in light of the projected budget deficit.
- The transportation line item would receive a $3.5 million increase under Baker’s budget, but that increase was $3 million below what DDS wanted.
- The Autism and Turning 22 accounts would be level-funded, which amounts to a cut when adjusted for inflation.
- A long-time revenue account of $150,000 from sales from the dairy barn at the Templeton Developmental Center would be eliminated. The money has been used for program needs at the Center.
The fiscal 2016 budget is now before the Legislature, specifically the House Ways and Means Committee. We understand that this is a fiscally difficult time for all state programs. When it comes to the DDS budget, though, this may be a good time to rethink some longtime funding priorities. We hope key legislators will do just that in coming months.
Abuse investigation agency faces ‘shameful’ shortfall in funding
A COFAR Special Report
Due to a chronic lack of funding and a maze of legal constraints, the state’s only independent agency charged with investigating abuse and neglect of disabled individuals is able to undertake less than 2 percent of such probes, according to data reviewed by COFAR.
The Disabled Persons Protection Commission’s data show that between fiscal years 2004 and 2014, the agency investigated an average of 101 cases each year, or 1.5 percent of the average number of abuse and neglect complaints investigated.
An average of 6,836 cases per year – or more than 98.5 percent of them – were assigned or referred to other agencies to investigate, with the Department of Developmental Services chief among them.
Source: DPPC
“The DPPC may have one of the most important missions of any agency in state government,” said COFAR Executive Director Colleen Lutkevich. “Yet, it is barely permitted to operate. It’s a shameful situation.”
The impact of the agency’s lack of adequate funding appears to have changed little since The COFAR Voice published an in-depth look at the agency in 2004. At that time, the newsletter noted that between 1999 and 2003, the number of agency personnel investigating abuse and neglect complaints had dropped, due to budget cuts, from seven investigators to three.
A follow-up review by COFAR this year of DPPC reports and budget documents shows that in the decade between fiscal 2004 and 2014, neither the governors involved nor the Legislature demonstrated a consistent commitment to the DPPC or its mission. In a number of years, the agency’s budget was cut, resulting in the need for layoffs of investigators and other personnel, despite rising caseloads.
Among the results of the lack of funding is that the DPPC has been able only to increase its investigative staff from three in 2004 to six currently; and some of those investigators have other duties and are not available to work on investigations full time, according to Emil DeRiggi, deputy executive director of the agency. The investigative staff actually appears to be smaller than it was in 1999, which seven investigators were employed.
The DPPC is the only state agency in Massachusetts whose mission is devoted exclusively to preventing and investigating abuse and neglect of disabled persons. Other agencies that undertake those investigations also employ or fund caregivers who provide a wide range of services to the same individuals. This appears to cause potential conflicts for those agencies by requiring them to investigate their own services.
According to DeRiggi, the DPPC maintains an oversight responsibility over investigations it assigns to other agencies. However, the DPPC’s lack of funding appears to limit its oversight capacity.
The DPPC’s oversight officers, whose job includes monitoring cases assigned to other agencies, have seen their caseloads rise steadily. As of fiscal 2004, there were seven oversight officers at the agency, according to the annual report for that year. As of fiscal 2014 – a decade later – the number of oversight officers had grown only by one, to eight. Yet the total number of abuse and neglect complaints called in to the DPPC in fiscal 2014 was more than 3,000 higher –or more than 50 percent greater – than the number in fiscal 2004.
Lack of statutory authority
The DPPC’s enabling statute (Massachusetts General Laws chapter 19C) permits the agency only to investigate cases involving victims between the ages of 18 and 59. As the DPPC’s website describes it, the agency “fills the gap” between the Department of Children and Families (which investigates abuse of children through the age of 17) and the Executive Office of Elder Affairs (which investigates abuse of persons over the age of 60).
This situation involving individuals with developmental disabilities is further complicated because the Elderly Affairs agency is prohibited by statute from investigating abuse cases involving elderly persons in long-term care facilities such as developmental centers and group homes. The result is that the Department of Developmental Services has become, by default, the only agency with authority to investigate complaints of abuse or neglect of individuals over the age of 60 with developmental disabilities living in those residential facilities. DDS, however, faces a conflict of interest because it is frequently in the position of investigating charges of abuse and neglect in facilities either run by its own staff or by contractors it funds.
Perry case illustrates need for an independent investigatory agency
The case of the 2013 death of Dennis Perry, an intellectually disabled man, at the Templeton Developmental Center, illustrates the need for abuse investigations to be conducted by independent agencies such as the DPPC.
Perry, who was 64, died in September 2013 after having been allegedly shoved into the side of a boiler at the developmental center’s dairy barn by Anthony Remillard, a resident of the center, who had a history of violent behavior. As COFAR noted in a blog post, the DPPC was prevented by statute from investigating Perry’s death because he was over 60. The Executive Office of Elder Affairs was similarly prevented from investigating the matter because it occurred in a long-term DDS care facility. The investigation, as a result, fell by default to DDS.
The DDS investigation report raised a number of questions about its thoroughness. The report and related correspondence, dated in August 2014, concluded that there was no evidence that the staff at the Templeton Center could have prevented Remillard’s alleged “spontaneous and unpredictable assault” on Perry.
The DDS report, however, appeared to have failed to address a number of key questions about the Perry case, including whether it was appropriate for Remillard to have been admitted to the Templeton Center in the first place, and whether the overall level of supervision at the Center or of Remillard himself was adequate. The report merely examined the actions of staff caring for Remillard in the moments prior to, and during, the alleged assault.
Recognizing the need for independence in investigating the abuse of all persons in DDS facilities, the DPPC proposed legislation as long ago as 1992 that would have allowed it to investigate reports of abuse of elderly persons living in facilities operated or contracted by DDS. However, neither that bill nor similar bills filed in the following two years were enacted. The DPPC tried again in 2000, but that bill failed as well, and the agency hasn’t tried again since, according to DeRiggi.
Lutkevich does not believe legislation to give the DPPC more statutory authority to investigate a wider range of cases would have failed to gain passage in the Legislature had there not been behind-the-scenes opposition to it. That opposition, she maintains, has most likely come from DDS, the agency with the most political turf to protect in matters regarding abuse and neglect investigations.
“If DDS had wanted those bills to go forward (to give the DPPC more investigative authority), they would have,” Lutkevich contended.
A critical mission thwarted by underfunding
COFAR President Thomas Frain similarly said he believes DDS is largely responsible for keeping the DPPC in a state of perpetual underfunding in order to prevent it from having the fiscal resources to investigate more cases in the DDS system.
“DDS has enormous influence and sway over the Legislature,” Frain maintained. “Historically, the Legislature has not gone against DDS. If DDS was in favor of adequate funding for the DPPC, its funding situation would improve overnight.”
As the DPPC’s website notes, the agency’s mission is “[t]o protect adults with disabilities from the abusive acts or omissions of their caregivers through investigation oversight, public awareness and prevention.” The DPPC also arranges for protective services when abuse has been substantiated and provides training and education for service providers, law enforcement agencies and others.
As noted, however, the DPPC’s funding level leaves it unable to carry out its mission fully or effectively fill the gap between the Children and Families and Elder Affairs agencies.
Budget woes have affected staffing
As of fiscal 2014, the staff of the DPPC included four individuals in its administration and finance office, five in its hotline intake unit (with a contracted provider operating the hotline after hours), five in its investigations unit, eight in an oversight unit, two in outreach and prevention, one in information and technology, four in document retention, and two in a legal unit. As noted previously, not all of those staff positions are full-time. That total number of staff was lower in fiscal 2014 than it had been in fiscal 2010.
The DPPC’s budget does not include a five-member Sate Police Detective Unit assigned to the DPPC, which reviews every report to the hotline to determine if a criminal investigation is necessary.
The DPPC’s total funding rose from $2 million to $2.8 million in inflation-adjusted (fiscal 2015) dollars between fiscal 2004 and 2014 – a 37 percent increase over that period. But budget cuts between fiscal 2009 and 2012 necessitated overall staffing reductions, according to agency annual reports and other records. It’s not clear that the agency ever recovered from those reductions.
The agency’s funding level has risen and fallen in the past decade, reflecting the state’s fiscal outlook. In fiscal 2009, funding had actually been increased from the previous year by $204,000, the largest increase the agency was to receive until the current fiscal year. DPPC Executive Director Nancy Alterio stated in the agency’s fiscal 2009 annual report that as a result, DPPC was able to increase its investigation staff by 50 percent, from four to six investigators, “in addition to addressing other caseload challenges in the oversight unit.”
In addition, the number of “overdue” investigations in fiscal 2009 decreased from over 900 to 578, Alterio said. Overdue investigations are those taking more than 30 days to complete. But in the annual report, Alterio also warned that those gains in staffing might be reversed in fiscal 2010.
That warning came true. The DPPC budget was subsequently cut each year from fiscal 2009 through 2012, dropping from $2.6 million to $2.3 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. It was only in the current and past two fiscal years that some of that lost ground was made up in the form of increased funding, bringing the budget to $2.8 million in fiscal 2014.
While fiscal 2009 did mark the beginning of three years straight of budget cuts, the number of overdue investigations did continue to drop to a low of 465 in fiscal 2012, according to DPPC data. But after that, the number of overdue investigations began to rise again, back to more than 600 in fiscal 2014. In fiscal 2010, Alternio noted that about 85 percent of investigations were not completed in 30 days.
In fiscal 2010, the DPPC was forced to reduce its total workforce from 32 to 28 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff. Yet at the time, the agency was facing an average annual increase in abuse reports of 4 percent, stretching over the previous 10 years, according to Alterio. Between fiscal 2004 and 2014, an average of 2,100 abuse and neglect complaints a year have been “screened in” by DPPC for investigation.
The DPPC received a relatively small increase in funding in fiscal 2013 of about $86,000, but it was not enough to prevent an additional layoff and reduction in the total staff to 27.4 FTEs.
“Each fiscal year, operating expenses increase and therefore additional funds are necessary just to maintain operations at the same level from year to year,” DeRiggi wrote in response to an emailed question.
A ray of hope in the current fiscal year
The current fiscal year opened last July on a slightly more positive note for the DPPC. For the first time, the agency received a funding increase of more than 10 percent. The Legislature approved a $362,000 increase in agency funding, bringing the DPPC’s budget to $2.8 million.
According to DeRiggi, the budget increase was projected, among other things, to allow a seventh investigator to be hired in the current fiscal year. That 13 percent increase in funding in inflation-adjusted dollars had not been in the budget submitted in January 2014 to the Legislature by former Governor Deval Patrick. Patrick had proposed only a $48,000 increase for the DPPC, which would have been less than two tenths of a percent if adjusted for inflation. It was apparently in the Senate that the larger increase was approved.
Asked if there was a particular legislator who had sought the 13 percent increase for the DPPC, DeRiggi said he and agency staff were not aware of who that might have been. “Hopefully this year’s proposed allocation is a reflection of an understanding of the seriousness of the issues DPPC investigates, but we are not certain of why it came about,” he said.
But given that the outgoing Patrick administration and incoming Baker administration have projected a budget deficit in the current fiscal year that could run higher than $700 million, it is once again possible that the DPPC’s budget will be cut, requiring another cycle of staffing reductions.
And despite the funding increases that the agency received starting in fiscal 2013, it has not been able to restore all of its functions and services that were cut in preceding years. For instance, in April 2009, the DPPC was forced to eliminate a service to human services providers under which it would search its database to see whether prospective employees had been charged with abuse. That service has not since been restored.
(Upcoming post: A case in which the DPPC got sidetracked from its mission)
COFAR blog 