CVTC report echoes across Virginia

Text of letter from Charles L. Fallis, president, Families and Friends United for Central Virginia Training Center

Dear Families and Friends:

A complete and thorough reading of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) February 10, 2011 report to Governor McDonnell with the results of its two-year investigation of conditions at the Central Virginia Training Center (CVTC) reveals that we as parents, relatives, friends, guardians and representatives of the 400+ severely and profoundly disabled residents at CVTC have our work cut out for us.

It is obvious to me that the DOJ report was written by persons who don’t have even a rudimentary understanding of real world conditions at CVTC in terms of the levels of residents’ intellectual and physical disabilities or of the special care and treatments they require. DOJ’s optimistic outlook on CVTC residents’ independence on matters such as independent living, compensated employment, short term and long term goals and life planning, self-determined recreational activities, independent activities of daily living including what foods they will eat (they don’t mention those on feeding tubes), personal involvement in their own treatment plans, self-determination regarding whether they will live in the training center or in a group home and a host of other equally bizarre assertions are enough to boggle the mind of anyone who has experience in these matters. Makes one wonder what they were smoking during this “investigation.”

It is my own considered opinion that most if not all of those involved in this so-called “investigation” are living in fantasyland. There are few, if any, remaining residents at CVTC who have the potential to fulfill the fantasies of these DOJ “investigators” and their “consultants.” But more disturbing are their repeated statements that the managers and staff at CVTC and officials at the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS), who know better, agree with them!

DOJ states that CVTC residents are subjected to and harmed by undue and needless restraints that should be used only after a need for their use is established; not as a preventive measure. In other words let them suffer injuries before restraints are used – foolish to the extreme. Moreover, the Local Human Rights Committee which has responsibility for oversight of CVTC’s use of restraints was neither contacted nor consulted in connection with this finding. If that committee, of which I am a member, had been consulted it surely would have given them a refresher course on “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” If the DOJ doesn’t like helmets for head bangers or padded bedrails I wonder what they’d make of fractured skulls and broken bones. I guess these would be okay as long as the concerned residents made the free choice to bang their heads or roll out of bed onto a linoleum floor.

For the last two years officials of the department and CVTC have been telling Families and Friends that there are approximately 50 CVTC residents who are on what is called a “community waiting and ready list.” Families and Friends United has expressed no objection to those residents leaving CVTC for the community if they, or their guardians who speak for them, truly want to leave. The DOJ report, allegedly with departmental and CVTC agreement, has inflated this figure to 170! I find this totally unbelievable. And one key official at DBHDS is quoted as saying that every one of the current residents at CVTC could be served in the community. Ah! But could they be served sufficiently well to protect their lives? That answer is a resounding “No!”

The report places heavy emphasis on comparative per capita costs at CVTC versus the community. DOJ alleges that cost at CVTC ($194,000 per annum)” Virginia could serve nearly three people in the community.” This is madness and goes well beyond comparing apples and oranges; it makes no allowance whatever for differences in levels of disability with CVTC bearing, by far, the heavier cost burden associated with its severely and profoundly disabled population. To make such a cost comparison is obscenely unfair and unbalanced.

DOJ quotes liberally and selectively from the U. S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead V L. C. Every such quote contained in their report is designed to support their predetermined position that all intellectually disabled persons should be served in community settings. DOJ conveniently omits numerous sections of the Olmstead decision which state very clearly the Court’s position that nothing in Olmstead should be construed to require states to deinstitutionalize; that states should maintain a wide array of services and; that, “ Each disabled person is entitled to treatment in the most integrated setting possible for that person-recognizing that, on a case by case basis, that setting may be an institution.” By their omission of the Court’s statements in support of institutions, DOJ is deliberately misleading the public into believing their false representations that community settings are superior to facility settings.

DOJ laments that the resident population at CVTC has remained stable for the last several years. This is patently untrue. Over the course of the past 30 years CVTC’s resident population has been reduced from over 3,000 to today’s 400+ severely and profoundly disabled residents. During the last 10 years the resident population at CVTC has dropped from approximately 700 to 400. So much for DOJ’s math skills.

Nowhere in the DOJ report is there any mention of the many CVTC residents who have tried community living, but have been returned – usually by the group home – for the reason that the group home could not handle them or their behaviors. And nowhere in this report is there any mention of the nationwide survey by Medicare that found CVTC to be the topmost skilled nursing entity in the commonwealth in terms of the outstanding five-star quality of service provided to its patients. Nothing was said about the fact that CVTC has on hand doctors and skilled nursing staff on a 24/7 basis; benefits that I’m sure are not to be found in community group homes.

Families and Friends, if you have not read the DOJ report you should do so ASAP! The comments I have made cover only a small part of the “findings” contained in the report. You don’t need to, and you shouldn’t, take just my word alone for what’s in the report. Read it for yourselves! Again, the report can be found on the Virginia Governor’s website under “News.” Click on “DOJ Report.” And once you’ve had an opportunity to read and digest the details of the “investigation,” the “findings” and the “recommended remedial measures” you might want to contact DOJ, the governor, the secretary of health and human services and DHBDS and let them know what you think of their handiwork.

Finally, this DOJ report, in my opinion, is nothing more than a feeble and shallow attempt to glorify community group homes at the expense of training centers. Frankly, I’ve determined to my own personal satisfaction that the report is both contrived and dishonest with its main purpose being to serve as a vehicle to provide cover for both DOJ and the current state administration to ultimately close the commonwealth’s five training centers. No knowledgeable, reasonable and understanding person would advocate the measures DOJ is trying to enforce on CVTC’s severely and profoundly intellectually disabled residents who are “confined” (their word – not mine) at this facility. It occurred to me as I read the report that DOJ, the governor, the secretary of health and human resources and DBHDS are all walking together down the nefarious pathway toward a “final solution” to the severely and profoundly intellectually disabled “problem.” Hitler would be proud of his legacy at the DOJ!

Sincerely,

Charles L. Fallis, President

Families and Friends United for Central Virginia Training Center.