California’s nonpartisan legislative analyst is again raising some red flags about plans to close the Sonoma Developmental Center.
In its review of Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal for 2017-18, the legislative analyst points out that the center’s population isn’t shrinking as quickly as state officials projected.
One possible reason: They may not be eager to leave.
Unfortunately, the state has given developmental center residents and their families no choice in the matter.
The residents are some of the most vulnerable people in the state. They suffer from traumatic brain injuries, autism, cerebral palsy and other intellectual disabilities. Many of them have lived in one of the state’s developmental centers for decades, and some who tried living in group homes or other community settings opted to return.
Under a 1969 law known as the Lanterman Act, the state assists about 300,000 people with developmental disabilities, most of them through a network of 21 regional centers that coordinate housing, health care, transportation, employment and other services. The developmental centers provide round-the-clock licensed care for the most profoundly disabled people, but the state is shifting away from institutional settings for the disabled, just as it once did for the mentally ill.
There once were 11 developmental centers. Only three remain — Fairview in Orange County, Porterville in Tulare County and Sonoma near Glen Ellen. All, except for a locked unit at Porterville for developmentally disabled prison inmates, are to close by 2021.
The Sonoma Developmental Center is being shut down on an accelerated schedule, with a state mandate to close by the end of 2018.
The three-year timeframe is unusually short for closing a developmental center. Past closures have taken as long as five years, and it could take six years to close Fairview and Porterville.
Sonoma’s closure apparently is being expedited because of licensing problems that have become a drain on the state budget. The center lost federal certification in 2013 for four units in the intermediate care facility, at a cost of $13 million annually in federal funding. Sonoma lost another $26 million in federal money last year after a disabled patient was found hooked to an empty oxygen tank. As a result, the state is picking up a larger share of operating costs.
But state officials must balance short-term budget considerations against the responsibility for ensuring that residents ordered to leave the developmental center have access to safe housing and proper services. It’s not clear that those are available.
That may explain why the population at the Sonoma Developmental Center isn’t declining as quickly as expected. The state Department of Developmental Services revised its estimate that half of the approximately 300 residents would be gone by the end of the current budget year and now says just 16 percent are likely to move out by June 30, leaving about 250 residents needing placement.
The state’s mishandling of mental hospital closures in the 1960s and ’70s contributed to the rising problem of homelessness in California and placed a burden on local law enforcement agencies. The same mistakes must not be repeated with the developmental centers. State legislators need to give the closure process careful scrutiny and, if necessary, alter the timetable to protect developmental center residents.
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