From the Philadelphia Inquirer, Delaware County [Pa.] Daily Times, AP, with historic photos from Philly.com:

Pennsylvania’s historic Pennhurst Center, once the focus of landmark litigation that sparked nationwide changes in treatment for people with intellectual disabilities, opened last night as a Halloween-themed haunted house attraction over the protests of disability rights advocates.

Advocates had unsuccessfully sought an injunction to prevent the opening of the “Pennhurst Asylum” show on the grounds of the property, once known as Eastern State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic.

Even before the injunction was denied on Friday afternoon advocates called for a boycott of the attraction, which references historic abuse and neglect of the institution’s patients and features a “registration nurse” who tells visitors what the asylum’s “doctor” has planned for them. (See video here.)

The crumbling facility was closed in 1987 in the wake of a federal lawsuit alleging years of abuse and neglect. The suit, which spawned years of appeals and three U.S. Supreme Court rulings, alleged that residents had been beaten by nurses, strapped to beds, left naked or alone and drugged into stupors. At the time, the closure of the 600-acre facility was hailed as a civil rights victory.

Pennhurst property owner Richard Chakejian said said he and his crew are “just trying to pull off a fun, orderly event and we’re excited about that.”

Institutions endure in Virginia, amid controversy

Virginians with disabilities are caught in a system with too many antiquated institutions and too little money for community care, Henri E. Cauvin writes in the Washington Post. The state is one of just 11 that have not closed any institutions.

Former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine stirred public controversy last year when he announced a plan to close  the Southeastern Virginia Training Center, a  97-acre facility in Chesapeake with 133 residents and 400 employees. Following vocal complaints and active lobbying by families to keep the place open, the state has instead commenced a $23.7 million rebuilding project. The decision is an indication that the state’s path to deinstitutionalization will continue to be slow, Cauvin writes.

Supporters of Southeastern say community care should not be the only option available for families. Advocates like The Arc of Virginia argue that the state could serve more people if it shifted its limited resources away from its five large institutions and toward community-based services that would allow people to live in their own homes.

“We should close them all,” said Charles Hall, a local mental health official in the Hampton Roads area. “But Virginia is very predictably conservative when it comes to things like this.”

As Massachusetts approaches a June 30 target for closing the Fernald Developmental Center in Waltham, families of its 89 residents are fighting to keep the 200-acre institution open.

Here’s a sampling of some recent coverage:

They fight for Fernald — Waltham, MA, Daily News Tribune. Nearly 50 people gathered to picket at the Fernald Developmental Center in a protest organized by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 402. As union members, guardians and family members of residents carried signs, a large balloon overhead bore a sign that read: “Save Fernald, stop evicting the disabled.”

“What they have done is intimidate old men and women, in the twilight of their life, into moving their very vulnerable loved ones. It’s so disgusting and reprehensible. The governor is sitting aside while his administration is evicting mentally retarded people from their homes. He should be ashamed of himself,” said a spokesman for the group.

Fernald closure saves money — Waltham, MA, Daily News Tribune. Guest columnist Gary Blumenthal writes that the state cannot afford to maintain a six-campus institutional system that was built to house over 10,000 people and now serves only 798.

States have worked hard to close these institutions in favor of community- based programs that offer equal or better care at substantially less cost. States have moved in this direction based on over 30 years of best practice recommendations from disabilities professionals; and non-partisan groups such as the National Conference of State Legislatures. NCSL advises its members that the cost of state institutions is often up to six times higher serving essentially the same people as those in community programs. Decades of research conducted by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities confirms that community-based care is of higher quality and satisfaction to families whose loved ones have made a transfer from institutional to community services.

Closure of state institutions is a sound programmatic and fiscal policy and is inevitable.

In the swim of things — Boston Globe. Columnist Yvonne Abraham says the swimming pool at the Fernald Center is a welcome spot for hundreds of area people with various disabilities because it allows them the respite of a place where “everybody is different, so nobody is.”

Those who favor the Fernald closing believe the time for separating those with profound disabilities from the rest of society passed long ago. It’s a noble view. But as [family members of people with disabilities] see it, the rest of society isn’t always quite ready for them. Now there will be one less place where they can forget that.

Time to listen to the voice of despair — Boston Herald. Columnist Joe Fitzgerald interviews Mary Galvin, the sister of a Fernald resident. She says she fears her brother Eddie will be sent to an institution “comparable to what you saw in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” unless some politician steps in to halt the planned Fernald closure.

“I’m still looking for someone with a conscience,” she said. “But I also know that time’s running out.”

UPDATE: ‘Disabled can find opportunities in the community’ — letter from Gary Blumenthal in the Boston Globe. Blumenthal, a recent appointee to the National Council on Disability, refutes Yvonne Abraham’s column (above). An excerpt:

When Abraham writes about the pool at the Fernald Developmental Center – the state’s largest institution, which is slated for closure this year – she is writing about a segregated facility. Our society proved generations ago that separate but equal is a bad idea that does not work.

My brother has autism and swims three times a week at the pool at his local Jewish community center. The others who go to that pool have accepted him and welcome him warmly every time. He is a part of that community.

Massachusetts and all of its residents deserve no less.

From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (registration required), Google/AP:

The federal Department of Justice has filed suit against the state of Arkansas for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, alleging that the state illegally segregates hundreds of people with developmental disabilities.

The lawsuit accused Arkansas of a “systemic failure” that places people with disabilities in large institutions instead of pursuing less restrictive options for their care in community-based settings.

“The state gives individuals with developmental disabilities the draconian choice of receiving services in segregated institutions or receiving no services at all,” the lawsuit reads.

“Arkansas illegally segregates hundreds of individuals in institutions across the state and places hundreds more at risk of needless institutionalization,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We are acting now to remedy discrimination against these individuals.”

Arkansas officials said the state is complying with the ADA, and pledged to fight the federal lawsuit. “We will defend the right of our families to choose where they will have their loved ones served,” said a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

From the Boston Globe:

Advocates in Massachusetts say the state’s decision to close the Fernald Development Center will trigger a loss of dental care for some 2,100 people with disabilities who have long been ignored by private dentists.

“Where will they go?” said Marilyn Meagher, who heads the advocacy group Fernald League for the Retarded Inc. “These are extremely handicapped people. It is going to be very devastating for them.”

The Waltham dental clinic is located on the Fernald campus, which is set to close June 30. Officials for the state and for Tufts University, which runs the clinic, said they are working to make sure that people will still be able to access dental care at other Tufts clinics.

From ABC News:

A former Texas state employee has pleaded guilty for his role in organizing brawls between residents of an institution for people with intellectual disabilities. Guadalupe De Larosa accepted a plea agreement, admitting to three counts of injuring a person with an intellectual disability, and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Another former employee, who has been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony, said she had seen De Larosa videotaping the fights with a cellphone.

Two other former state employees have received jail sentences for their role in the fights, and another has received a two-year suspended sentence. A sixth is awaiting trial.

In the wake of the widely publicized incident, and following a highly critical report from the U.S. Department of Justice, Texas legislators last year declined to close the state’s 13 institutions. They voted to spend $112 million to improve the institutions and tighten management practices.

Earlier posts here.

From the New York Times:

A federal judge has ordered the state of New York to move some 4,300 people with mental illness out of warehouse-like institutions that keep them segregated from society.

The order by Judge Nicholas Garaufis follows his decision last fall that the state was illegally discriminating against people with mental illness by holding them in privately-run “adult homes” that were just as restrictive as the state-run institutions they were intended to replace.

Judge Garaufis ordered the state to develop at least 1,500 units of supportive housing a year for the next three years. The state had argued that supportive housing would be unacceptably expensive. Commenting on the proposal submitted by the state, the judge wrote, “The court is disappointed and, frankly, incredulous that defendants sincerely believed this proposal would suffice.”

Earlier posts here and here and here.

See also: The 2002 series of articles by Clifford J. Levy of the New York Times that described scenes of misery, squalor and exploitation in the adult homes.