NY Times investigation: Disabled care homes ignore abuse

[alp227]

The front page of today's Times (the New York edition not the national one) has this story: "A Disabled Boy’s Death, and a System in Disarray":

Jonathan Carey did not die for lack of money.

New York State and the federal government provided $1.4 million annually per person to care for Jonathan and the other residents of the Oswald D. Heck Developmental Center, a warren of low-rise concrete and brick buildings near Albany.

Yet on a February afternoon in 2007, Jonathan, a skinny, autistic 13-year-old, was asphyxiated, slowly crushed to death in the back seat of a van by a state employee who had worked nearly 200 hours without a day off over 15 days. The employee, a ninth-grade dropout with a criminal conviction for selling marijuana, had been on duty during at least one previous episode of alleged abuse involving Jonathan.

“I could be a good king or a bad king,” he told the dying boy beneath him, according to court documents.

In the front seat of the van, the driver, another state worker at O. D. Heck, watched through the rear-view mirror but said little. He had been fired from four different private providers of services to the developmentally disabled before the state hired him to care for the same vulnerable population.

O. D. Heck is one of nine large institutions in New York that house the developmentally disabled, those with cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome and other conditions.

These institutions spend two and a half times as much money, per resident, as the thousands of smaller group homes that care for far more of the 135,000 developmentally disabled New Yorkers receiving services.

But the institutions are hardly a model: Those who run them have tolerated physical and psychological abuse, knowingly hired unqualified workers, ignored complaints by whistle-blowers and failed to credibly investigate cases of abuse and neglect, according to a review by The New York Times of thousands of state records and court documents, along with interviews of current and former employees.

Since 2005, seven of the institutions have failed inspections by the State Health Department, which oversees the safety and living conditions of the residents. One was shut down altogether this year.

[Wilms]

1. ^

[jillan]

2. My friends and family wonder why my 23 year old disabled daughter still lives at home with me.

They say to me, Jill, isn't it time that you had freedom to do what you want and when you want?

I can't do it. It's every special parent's nightmare knowing that one day they will have to let go :cry: :cry: :cry:

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Institutionalized rape is condoned in Texas.

A friend of mine said her friends had a disabled daughter. They went to visit a state home for the disabled and male patients came up and swarmed around the car.

They went to talk to the administrator, who told them that if she was in that institution, their daughter would be put on birth control pills, and the male inmates would be allowed to rape her anytime they wanted to.

The parents walked out, outraged.

[jillan]

4. Omg! It's probably not any better here in Arizona.

[Odin2005]

6. Here in MN group home MUST be single-sex exactly for that reason.

Friends of the opposite sex are not lot allowed to be alone with the person unless there is permission from the guardian.

Jesus Christ, WTF is wrong with texas? :cry:

[Odin2005]

5. OMG!!!!!!!!!

:cry:

[Cerridwen]

7. K & R n/t