There's a push right now in my state to close institutions for people with developmental disabilities and mainstream them into the community. Lots of talk about how people with disabilities deserve the same right of self-determination and participation as everybody else. Also lots of talk about how much money it will save the state.
That's what worries me.
'Cause you know what? I've seen how school inclusion is going here, and I have a strong feeling that the "save money" part is higher on the interest level of the powers that be than the "save people with disabilities" part. There may be some legitimate savings in eliminating special programs, but a significant amount of money and personnel and planning and creativity and enthusiasm and attention has to move from those programs to that mainstream setting for it to really work.
In our district's inclusion program, I see kids left without promised supports, paraprofessionals doing work teachers are supposed to do, kids with special needs being taught in hallways and closets. I see administrators roll their eyes when I ask them to plan for a good inclusion experience. What happens when it's not a classroom but a living situation that's getting that benign neglect?
Which isn't to say that institutions are a better solution. Just that solutions need to be thought through, and not celebrated because they balance the budget. Is your state on the deinstitutionalization bandwagon? How's it going?
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“Raymond’s Room” by Dale Dileo is a great book for people interested in de-institutionalization and desegregation in general. While I definitely agree that the money “saved” from closing institutions needs to be channelled into community supports, I feel very strongly that closing institutions is absolutely necessary. I’ve worked in several, visited several more, and worked in the community with many people who spent years or decades in them, and no one deserves that kind of life. Many of the reasons people give for not closing them could be addressed with the right community supports. For example, some of my guys who were de-institutionalized live in their own apartments with 24 hour supervision, and 24 hour medical staff on call nearby. Many people need the funding for one-to-one support every day in order to live in the community, and there is no reason that each of these people shouldn’t get that funding with the money that would be freed up by closing institutions. I’m not always for mainstreaming in all situations- my daughter is in a private out of district day school and I hope she always will be until she graduates, for a variety of reasons. But her school takes the kids into the community, and I take her into the community, and she has a job at school and gets a paycheck, so she is being prepared for adulthood. In adult life, people have the right to live and work in the community. Even the best institutions just have too many human rights violations.