According to a report in Friday's Santa Rosa Press Democrat, "The state’s four remaining developmental centers, which collectively serve 1,383 residents, would no longer operate as around-the-clock care facilities under the recommendations. Instead, the state would focus its attention and resources on smaller, crisis-intervention facilities, with longer-term care provided in partnership with regional centers and other community-based programs
"The Sonoma Developmental Center, which provides housing and medical care for nearly 500 severely disabled clients and is Sonoma Valley’s largest employer, would be downsized dramatically under a state task force’s recommendations unveiled Friday in Sacramento."
You can read the entire PD report here: Major Changes Eyed for Sonoma Developmental Center (The Press Democrat, 12/13/2013).
Read the next Gazette for more information on ideas put forth by the Task Force -- and stayed tuned to the PHA blog, website and Facebook page in the new year for the latest developments.
What are your thoughts? PHA would love to hear what you think about how the essential services to California's developmentally disabled citizens can best be provided. Leave your comments here -- or write to Parent Hospital Association at P.O. Box 237, Eldridge, CA 95431
I placed my severely medically fragile daughter at Sonoma Development Center (SDC) 12 years ago. This was after she had just spent 3 months in an acute care hospital and after an exhaustive search by myself and the Regional Center for a residential health care facility for her. With the exception of SDC, we found no resource that would not result in her suffering and probable death.
ReplyDeleteSince my daughter has been at SDC, options in the competitive health care market have gotten WORSE. I come to this opinion not just as a parent and consumer, but as a professional working in health care for the last 35 years. Adequate resources have not been developed. This precipitous action seems like "sink or swim" rather that responsible planning.
If the State closes SDC, the residents would be thrown out onto the competitive health/residential market already increasingly flooded with seniors, deinstitutionalized mental health and corrections patients, returning wounded veterans, ...and so on. Not only will this cause suffering for the displaced SDC residence but will also negatively impact these other vulnerable groups competing for care resources.
Is this the kind of State we want? Is this the way we want to live...the people we want to be?
So true and we do need to ask ourselves these critical questions because this is what is happening, not only to our developmentally disabled loved ones, but to so many others who are suffering due to lack of care. Do we want to make this mess worse by closing the only place that as of now has professional, compassionate care available for this vulnerable population. The health care trend is all wrong and we are making it worse. Please everyone write to the Governor and remind him again of the plight of mentally ill people when all the state facilities were shut down. As someone recently stated - the mentally ill people ended up on the streets and in the prisons, the developmentally disabled are ending up in the prisons and in the cemeteries. Let's listen before it gets worse.
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