From the Washington Post, a feature about an effort in the District of Columbia to help residents with mental disabilities to live independently. Among those with new homes is Milton Askew (at left), who recently was honored as employee of the week at the Whole Foods where he works.

Because of a push by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and the retooled D.C. Department on Disability Services, more than 80 people have moved into supervised apartments and small homes since July 1.

Officials hope, with time, to move many more. About 550 residents still live in group homes and other institutional settings, officials said, and many of them, including the profoundly disabled, are eligible for the change.

Fenty’s plan, with its emphasis on jobs and more personal home settings, attempts to right a long, sad history of wrongs.

For years, the District’s most vulnerable citizens were housed at Forest Haven, the institution that became notorious for its filthy conditions and flagrant neglect. When the city closed the facility in 1991, many of the 1,100 residents were settled into privately operated group homes. Those facilities led to a new set of troubles, however, with many documented cases in the 1990s of abuse, neglect, molestation and theft.

[Note: The Washington Post's coverage of the District's neglect and abuse of people with intellectual disabilities won the newspaper the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.]

A decade ago, as other jurisdictions began to move toward independent living, the District remained stalled. “The reality is, in many ways, D.C. has lagged in the area of disabilities,” said Judith E. Heumann, a longtime activist who became the department’s new director in June.

“I think one of the biggest problems that disabled people address is how they see themselves and how others see them — see us,” said Heumann, who had polio as a child and uses a wheelchair. “And when you live in a community in a more integrated setting like other people, you begin to be seen less as the oddity and more like a member of the community.”

See also this story about the lack of housing for people with intellectual disabilities in the Washington suburbs: A painful choice over the mentally disabled; Dearth of group homes leads dozens of families in Northern Virginia to send their loved ones far away for care

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 8:19 am and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, abuse, employment, group homes, housing, human rights, independent living, institutionalization, intellectual/developmental disabilities, success stories. 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