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 [Minneapolis-St. Paul] Star Tribune:

Vicky Solomonson, a young woman whose family rejected doctors’ recommendations that she be institutionalized following a diagnosis of Down syndrome, has died. She was credited with advancing disability rights through the work of her grandfather, Minnesota senator and then Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

Solomonson, 49, had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in recent years. Her parents, Bruce and Nancy Solomonson, raised her at home with the help of her grandparents.

“We refused to hide Vicky out of sight in the attic,” grandmother Muriel Humphrey told “This Week” magazine in 1968.

(Star Tribune photo)

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is calling on President Obama to name a Supreme Court nominee who will uphold the rights of people with disabilities.

From the center’s website:

Despite Congress’s bipartisan passage in 2008 of the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) to restore the law’s broad reach after years of hostile court rulings, judges are still getting the ADA wrong -– still shutting the courthouse door on people with disabilities. We need a leader every bit as strong as Justice Stevens to ensure full enforcement of the ADA and other important disability rights laws. Justice Stevens’ replacement must be committed to the protection of disability rights.

The full text of the center’s action alert is here.

From the New York Times:

A parliamentary hold has been placed on the nomination of autism self-advocate Ari Ne’eman to the National Council on Disability amid a growing controversy about his views. President Obama’s seven other nominees to the council were confirmed by the Senate this month.

Ne’eman, 22, has a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome and is the founder of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. He has said that autism is a naturally occurring form of “neurodiversity” that should be embraced and accommodated, not cured. Critics, including the co-founder of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, say Ne’eman’s view fails to represent individuals on the autism spectrum who lack basic communication and self-care skills.

Historically, the kind of genetic research supported by many parents of children with autism, Mr. Ne’eman has said, has been used to create prenatal tests that give parents the ability to detect a fetus affected by a particular condition, like Down syndrome, so that they can choose whether to terminate the pregnancy.

“We just think it makes more sense to orient research to addressing health problems or helping people communicate rather than creating a mouse model of autism or finding a new gene,” Mr. Ne’eman has said.

Earlier posts here.

(Photo from “No Myths” PSA)

In a Washington Post profile of Tim Shriver, writer Manuel Roig-Franzia examines the Special Olympics chairman’s campaign to discourage language that makes fun at the expense of people with intellectual disabilities.

Shriver has received apologies from President Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Bill O’Reilly (sort of) for “colloquial jabs about ‘retards’ or quips that equate Special Olympians with ineptitude or remarks that equate “retarded” with stupidity.”

To Shriver, the discussion is more than a mere linguistic fight, writes Roig-Franzia; it’s a welcome opportunity to have a public conversation about what Shriver terms the “humiliation” faced by this population.

The crusade has brought both admiration and derision for Shriver, who will soon be the only member of the Kennedy family serving in a high-profile position in Washington. An excerpt:

… Shriver — who wants to be a catalyst for social change — would like to further expand the mission [of Special Olympics], addressing unemployment (90 percent of people with intellectual disabilities do not work, he says, but half of Special Olympians have jobs) and taking on elite private schools in Washington, such as his alma mater, St. Albans, and Sidwell Friends because they don’t routinely admit students with intellectual disabilities, as many public schools do.

But there are only so many fights to pick at once. In Bethesda, Shriver helps organize “unified” sports contests that place young people with disabilities on the same teams as those who don’t. At the same time, he has sent his own kids to top private schools, such as Maret, that he says are not “inclusive” and guesses he “could be accused of being hypocritical. But this is a 100-front war.”

(Photo from the Washington Post; More photos here.)

By Lisa de Moraes in the Washington Post:

Actor Patrick Warburton, who voices a character in “Family Guy,” told TV critics Wednesday that he objected to the show’s recent gag about Sarah Palin.

“I know it’s satire but, personally, that [joke] bothered me too,” Warburton said on a conference call to promote his other primetime show, CBS’s sitcom “Rules of Engagement,” which returns for a fourth season on March 1. (On “Family Guy” Warburton does the voice of the wheelchair-bound police officer, Joe.)

“I know that you have to be an equal-opportunity offender, but there are some things that I just don’t think are funny.”

Earlier posts here.

By Dana Goldstein at thedailybeast.com:

As Sarah Palin attempts to position herself as a national spokesperson on issues related to disability, disability rights leaders say they view her with skepticism. Palin, they say, is out of step or silent on most of their policy priorities. But some still hold out hope that she may yet approach their issues in a serious fashion.

“Since the end of the presidential election, we haven’t heard Sarah Palin articulate any specific policy proposals [on disability],” said Peter Berns, CEO of The Arc, a Beltway lobbying group representing people with intellectual disabilities. Like nine other national disability-rights leaders The Daily Beast spoke to, Berns pointed to Palin’s excusing of Rush Limbaugh’s use of the word “retarded”—even as she hammered Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, for the same sin—as evidence of her lack of seriousness. “It has unfortunately politicized the issue in ways that are not productive, and it has converted what really are bipartisan issues into partisan ones,” Berns said.

See also: Palin, really a special needs advocate? — MSNBC

(Photo from thedailybeast.com)