[NYAPRS Enews] MHW: NYS Adult Home Plan Has Advocates Up in Arms

[Harvey Rosenthal]

N.Y. State Plan For Adult Home Residents With SMI Has Advocates Up In
Arms

Mental Health Weekly  November 23, 2009

 

A court-ordered remedial plan released this month by New York state
officials to ensure that residents of adult homes in New York City have
opportunities to live in integrated community settings in response to a
recent landmark decision has mental health and disability advocates and
consumers, who call the plan a "fraction" of what's needed, up in arms.

 

The plan, filed with the court on November 6, comes on the heels of a
landmark federal court ruling. On Sept. 8, U.S. District Judge Nicholas
G. Garaufis ruled in Disability Advocates, Inc. v. Paterson that New
York had violated the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) and the U.S.
Supreme Court's Olmstead decision by unnecessarily segregating 4,300
adult home residents in New York City with mental illness (see MHW,
Sept. 14).

 

While advocates applauded the court's decision, they are taking issue
with the state's plan, which calls for the New York Office of Mental
Health (OMH) to fund 200 new units of supported housing each year for
five years beginning in fiscal year 2011-2012 for a total of 1,000 new
units.

 

The plan also calls for OMH to provide for and arrange for the education
of all current home residents who reside in one of the 28 adult homes
named in the court's memorandum about housing opportunities and assess
the residents to determine whether they are clinically appropriate for
supported housing.

 

Advocates had long called on the state to create alternative housing for
residents with mental illness. In 2003, Disability Advocates Inc. filed
a federal lawsuit on behalf of individuals with disabilities living in
adult home residents (see MHW, July 14, 2003). The move followed a
series of scathing reports in the New York Times calling attention to
abuse and neglect in the homes (see MHW, May 20, 2002).

 

NYS Position

"We believe that the proposed remedial plan complies with and is
responsive to the court's decision," Jill Daniels, OMH spokesperson,
told MHW. "If implemented, the plan would not require an adult home
resident to move to supported housing if he or she does not want to
move, and a resident would not be offered supported housing if he or she
is not clinically appropriate for supported housing, in the judgment of
a qualified clinician."

 

Daniels said the plan is flexible in that it allows for adjustment if
the appropriate number of individuals is greater or lesser than the
plan's projection. "It also recognizes the fiscal challenges New York
State is currently facing, and recognizes that there are many
populations that must also receive services from OMH," she said.

 

Daniels added that the state still has the option to appeal the case.
Meanwhile, the judge, state officials, lawyers and Disability Advocates
will convene this week to review the plan.

 

Plan "Falls Short"

Advocates view the plan as not living up to the judge's decision to
address the housing needs of 4,300 consumers with psychiatric
disabilities living in 28 impacted homes across the city. "We're very
disappointed," Geoff Lieberman, executive director of the Coalition of
Institutionalized Aged and Disabled, told MHW. "It's not a real plan.
Adult home residents have long faced barriers to more independent
living. The plan reinforces those barriers."

 

On one level, it appears as if the state is just providing notice to
residents of their right to more independent housing, Lieberman said.
The eligibility requirements are also unfair, Lieberman noted. "They're
limiting the kinds of people eligible to move as having serious mental
illness and not to anyone with a diagnosis of mental illness."

 

Lieberman said advocates had been invited to add input to the plan at an
Adult Home Future Group meeting. "We asked the state to do what they
could to [ensure] that the governor would not decide to appeal the case.
We offered our services to educate the residents." The plan also fails
"to address the remediation of the effects of institutionalization, and
the learned helplessness of the resident," he added.

 

Prior Recommendations

In 2002, then New York health commissioner Antonia C. Novello convened a
workgroup of advocates, adult home operators, medical personnel and
other stakeholders who recommended financing for new services and the
creation of 6,000 units of housing for persons with mental illness (See
MHW, Dec. 16, 2002).

 

The state's plan does not reflect the recommendations from the workgroup
in 2002, Karen Schimke, president and chief executive of the Schuyler
Center for Analysis and Advocacy, told MHW. The state's plan of funding
1,000 housing units represents one-sixth of what the workgroup wanted,
said Schimke.

 

"Long before 2002, the state failed to take a leadership role in
responding to the needs of its residents with psychiatric illness," she
said. Consumers with mental illness residing in the state's adult homes
grew out of the deinstitutionalization during the 1970s and 1980s, noted
Schimke. Advocates had hoped that the state's response to more
appropriate housing for all of the plaintiffs in the class action suit
would eventually extend to other people across the state, she said.

 

Statewide, there are about 12,000 adult home residents with psychiatric
illness, she said. "We have a bigger job to do," she added.

 

The state's problems with money are significantly greater now than it
was in 2002, she said, citing New York state's current budget woes. "We
can appreciate that," Schimke noted. If state leaders followed the
recommendations of the workgroup, about 6,000 residents would be in
supportive housing," she said.

 

The executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric
Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS), told MHW that this issue is more than
about a lack of resources. "This is about having the will to redirect
resources to bring justice to this group," said Harvey Rosenthal,
referring to monies that are currently spent by the state on (adult)
homes.

 

"The state appears unwilling to reduce its commitment to adult homes
beds and redirect that money to the adult home group," said Rosenthal.
"Even during bad fiscal times you don't need 'new' money to bring
justice," he said. That money should be redirected to fund supportive
housing beds, Rosenthal said.

 

Potential sources of funding could include for example, funding from the
settlement six years ago of a prior lawsuit for violations and poor care
against the Ocean House Center, an adult home in Queens. A good portion
of the settlement could be used to hire peers who could work with
residents and support their move into the community, said Rosenthal.
Medicaid and other adult home specific-state funding streams could be
used to create a number of OMH housing beds, he added.

 

Mental health and disability advocates are planning a demonstration and
news conference in Albany in addition to a rally this week in New York
City, Rosenthal said.





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kilakwa.net/pipermail/nyaprs_kilakwa.net/attachments/20091124/a2de3cf4/attachment.html>