#de-institutionalization

By RACHEL L. SWARNS The New York Times Originally published September 29, 2012 Here are some excerpts: Once viewed as outcasts to be shunned and isolated in institutions, hundreds of Georgia’s most disabled citizens are taking their first tentative steps back into society. Their fledgling journeys, marked by uncertainty, jubilation and some setbacks, are unfolding as officials embark on an ambitious plan to profoundly reshape the lives of the cognitively and physically impaired. It is a new strategy for Georgia, one of several states responding to mounting pressure from the Justice Department, which in recent years has threatened legal action against states accused of violating the civil rights of thousands of developmentally disabled people by needlessly segregating them in public hospitals, nursing homes and day programs. Mississippi, which has nearly 2,000 developmentally disabled people living in its institutions, began moving dozens of them out this spring. Virginia, which reached a settlement with the Justice Department this year, expects to move more than 400 people out by the end of the 2016 fiscal year. Here in Georgia, about 360 developmentally disabled patients have left state hospitals over the past two years, health officials say, moving mostly into small group homes that house four people each. About 400 more will leave over the next three years, nearly emptying the state’s institutions of people with severe mental disabilities, autism and dementia. Advocates for the disabled are hailing the move as akin to the demise of racial segregation. For the first time, people who have spent decades in hospital wards will live in the community, have some say in their day-to-day activities and get the opportunity to meet and mingle with their neighbors. “Everybody has a right to live in the world,” said Pat Nobbie, deputy director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, who supports the shift. The entire story is here.