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Posted on 12/28/2022 6:18:48 AM PST by karpov
When Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services announced in 2019 that Polk and White Haven Centers, two large state-operated institutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, would close by November 2022—claiming that moving residents to “community-based settings” would better honor their “inherent worth and dignity”—it spelled the end of two campuses that had housed the intellectually and developmentally disabled for more than 50 years. It also sparked a political fight between disability-rights activists, who hailed the closures as a step toward full inclusion for people with disabilities, and many residents and their families, who feared losing what they considered their and their loved ones’ homes.
Residents like Alma were caught in the middle. Alma has mild to moderate intellectual disabilities and had lived at Polk Center for nearly 50 years. She was a favorite of facility staff—talkative, kind, joyful—and one of the facility’s most senior residents, who saw the century-old campus transform from what critics called an overcrowded, understaffed warehouse into a federally licensed care facility for people with disabilities.
Alma loved the people at Polk. She made crafts for staff and her fellow residents, most of whom were more significantly disabled. When nonverbal residents tried and failed to signal their needs, Alma knew them well enough to translate their requests to staff. She also loved the place: the grounds, the campus, the community that had grown up around the maze of Chateauesque brick buildings in rural Venango County. She sorted letters in the facility’s mailroom, tended plants in its greenhouse, and hung around the Polk canteen in her wheelchair, greeting staff and residents as they passed through to grab coffee or candy.
When staff told Alma in 2019 that Polk Center would close, she wept.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
California is full of mentally ill homeless.
But they will be on the streets with dignity.
Prayers for Alma. Her name means "the soul". Heartbreaking story, something Scrooge would do. I despise the government. It seems this is a scheme to employ more liberals as "social workers" and pad out the union rolls.
This will work about as well as closing of long term facilities for the chronically mentally ill.
This was the last bill JFK signed into law, 1963.
The Community Mental Health Act.
I wonder how many of these “disability rights” people have ever actually gone to places like this, or if they are capable of putting themselves into other people’s shoes?
Instead, the “disability rights” people seem to have a one-size-fits-all mentality—that if being in the community is good for a person in a wheelchair, then it will be good for each and every disabled person no matter what their disability or circumstance.
Maybe instead of constantly trying to change the circumstances of people they do not know, the “disability rights” people should focus on helping individuals in need of help.
Thw closings of these facilities mean more disabled people homeless, living under bridges or up to the families to figure it out, just as it has been with all our mentally ill. The mentally ill were turned out of their facilities in name of “civil rights” and are now privileged enough to live under bridges, where they have their freedom, but no clean bed or shower or hot food or treatment, or their families struggle to put them up as in my case, at some risk because the mentally ill do not see their own illness and will not seek treatment, and act aggressively to those who want to help them.
Good work, progressives, you f8ck up everything.
My daughter works part time at a Christian community based group home for several developmentally disabled adult women.
Hers is a very good situation but I would think that a larger, well run facility could be very beneficial for their clients.
There’s a group home a few doors down from me. I have no idea how many men are there because they never come outside.
As a judge, my father held hearings in the 70s when Florida broadly deinstitutionalized care for its disabled. Although the purpose of the hearings was to offer but not require deinstitutionalization, many of the disabled were utterly terrified and in tears at any prospect of losing their accustomed home and the people who cared for them.
Nancy Pelosi and the other white liberal 'elites' in San Francisco have the solution. Dump the disabled and mentally challenged onto the streets - then use them as cheap sex toys - just remember to keep hammers away from them...
I lived in a town where the pa state hospital is located. That facility has consistently downsized and released the patients to the local community. The community pays for this through multiple group homes, increased nuisance crimes and generalized fear when the crazy people walk around threatening and acting strange. Many have died of exposure, some live in the woods. The families don’t want them back this they stay in the small (4000 population) town. These folks are not developmental lacking, they are nuts. So closing state facilities may save the overall budget but the cost to the community is far greater than remote budget weenies could ever imagine. Same with putting these disabled folks on the street. The cost locally will be much higher than anyone could imagine.
I recall that in the early 1970s there was a movement to end institutionalizing the mentally disabled. The argument was that the institutions were akin to snake pits and that the residents were mistreated and abused. The movement gained traction and over time many state run facilities closed. While those supporting the move promised that the newly released would be cared for in the community, my observation (living in Philadelphia) was that the community consisted of public parks in the summer and steaming manhole covers for wintertime comfort. I suspect that newly liberated mentally challenged Pennsylvanians will end up in similar circumstances.
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
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The SAME state voted for FETTERMAN-—
GO figure
Look up what JFK’s Dad did to his sister.
Former FReeper’s sister wrote a book on it. It was very personal for JFK
It was just the usual liberal politics and had nothing to do with the sister the Kennedys removed to advance their family power.
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