Columnist questions wisdom of closing Maryland institution
January 20th, 2008
Writing about the planned closing of the Rosewood Center, Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks worries about how the center’s 150 residents will look in two years’ time.
Deinstitutionalization is a wonderful concept of noble intention, endorsed by the Supreme Court, and it has been liberating for many, but it has also left a trail of homeless and neglected adults across the fruited plain.
The problem, Rodricks says, is that the state has only a “flimsy safety net” for those who are disabled and poor. The Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council reports more than 16,000 people in Maryland with developmental disabilities stuck on the state’s waiting list for services, and more than half in a “crisis category.”
So here we are, on the path of good intentions through a maze of contradictions. Instead of fixing the institutions - hiring better staff and paying salaries that match the enormous challenges of caring for the severely disabled — we close the institutions down, even as places of last resort, even without adequate funding of community resources. We’ve been doing this for four decades now, and the intent was noble but the follow-up by our society, through our government, pretty lousy.
Earlier posts here.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 7:19 am and is filed under institutionalization, intellectual disabilities, mental health, waiting list.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Email This Post
Our RSS Feed