Use it or lose it: Allowing more community use of a facility for DD is less costly than closing it down

The argument being made to close Southbury Training School in Connecticut, an Intermediate Care Facility for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ICF/IID), is the same faulty argument being made in Michigan to justify closing programs that provide residential, employment, and day program options in congregate settings. It goes like this: When compared to the average cost of serving individuals in the community, congregate settings are far too expensive — close them down and there will be plenty of money left over to serve more people with disabilities!

Often overlooked in this calculation, is the fact that the people served in licensed congregate settings generally have more severe disabilities and need more specialized services than people living at home or in the so-called community. When people with highly specialized needs are served in community settings, it can be just as costly if not more costly than in group settings. In reality, costs savings often come as a price to people with disabilities and their families in the form of fewer services of lower quality.  

Comparing the average cost of supporting people who require less intensive supports in the community to the cost of supporting distinctly non-average individuals who need more intensive supports and services is not a fair or accurate comparison. While costs should not be the only consideration for where and how a person with DD is served, it is inevitably raised as a factor by disability advocates who try to justify eliminating programs that do not conform to their ideology of full inclusion for every person with a disability. 

The following are excerpts from an editorial that appeared in the Hartford Courant on 2/20/15: “Using Southbury Training School Is Only Real Solution” by Martha Dwyer and Tamie Hopp. Martha Dwyer is president of the nonprofit Home and School Association of the Southbury Training School. Tamie Hopp is director of government relations and advocacy for VOR, a national nonprofit that represents primarily individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families/guardians.

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There is a crisis in the care of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Connecticut. At least 2,000 individuals who are living with their families are on the waiting list for placement in a residence, many for more than 20 years and many in desperate situations. [emphasis added] 

Many people believe that closing Southbury Training School and the state regional centers and moving residents to four-person (or smaller) group homes will free up funds to enable individuals on the waiting list to be placed in residences. This is incorrect and will create more problems than it will solve...

The numbers don't add up. There are approximately 313 individuals at Southbury and 191 at regional centers. At least 125 new group homes would have to be renovated and staffed to provide highly specialized services for these individuals. Moving a resident of Southbury to the community generally takes one to two years, and this during periods when only a few residents are moved at a time. To move 500 people would take years and a huge amount of money. Residents at Southbury and regional centers have been given priority over people on the waiting list for years and that would have to continue indefinitely to close Southbury and the regional centers. That would help no one on the waiting list for many years.

…Seventy-eight percent of Southbury residents have severe or profound intellectual disabilities, the vast majority have significant functional disabilities (a majority need help walking, eating, toileting, or dressing), and 83 percent have additional disabilities such as cerebral palsy, blindness, deafness, epilepsy or mental illness...they do not live in a segregated environment but interact on a frequent basis, to the extent they physically and intellectually can, with people in the community. They will be moved from their familiar surroundings and they will be exposed to a smaller group of unfamiliar people...

There is a better, more comprehensive solution that no one is talking about: Open Southbury and the regional centers for future placements and use Southbury for outpatient services and skilled nursing care for aged members of this population and respite services for families. Repairing and reopening cottages on the Southbury campus and using available regional center beds would be less expensive and faster than seeking homes in the community for individuals on the waiting list.
 
… The state should expand the sophisticated medical, dental and psychiatric facilities already in use at Southbury and make them available to people on the waiting list and in the community. It would make more sense to use the facilities the state already owns, and thereby bring down individual costs, than to waste this beautiful resource. We believe this would save money and improve service throughout the state.

...Southbury is a ready, compassionate solution centered on meeting people's true needs, not a numbers game that simply does not add up.

Read the complete editorial here....