A Disabled Boy’s Death, and a System in Disarray
by Danny Hakim
...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...
In the front seat of the van, the driver, another state worker at Oswald D. Heck Developmental Center, 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...
How can recorded accounts of these institutions' mistreatment of residents and irresponsible management of funding be used to advocate for quality living situations for people with developmental disabilities? Please share your thoughts in comments below.
This comes on the heels of a New York Times report a few months ago about the similar failings of group homes and other smaller settings. How can the state have failed to provide any quality living situations? Has Governor Cuomo taken any steps beyond firing the OPWDD commissioner?
Posted by: Rachel Patterson | June 06, 2011 at 04:06 PM
I am surprised New York State does not have, or enforce, Laws requiring employees in residential settings for children to pass a criminal background check and clearance under the child abuse registry!
New York voters this senseless death is a wake up call!
Posted by: Elisabeth Ellenbogen | June 07, 2011 at 05:51 PM
Good Lord O God Almighty!!!! The lack of value placed on the lives of people with developmental disabilities, in what seems to be ALL STATES is astounding! All these abusers being "reassigned" rather than fired just proves that careers of nondisabled people regularly trump the welfare of those they are hired to protect. I pray...
Posted by: David McDonald | June 07, 2011 at 06:00 PM