Institution workers raise specter of Newtown shooting to try and save their jobs

[KamaAina]

You stay classy, PEF Division 259...

http://www.cdrnys.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=723

On Friday, March 8, 2013 there will be a press conference to alert the community to the dangers of closing facilities which house the clinically mentally disabled. “These people need specialized supports for their behavioral issues,” said Randi DiAntonio, council leader of PEF Division 259 at Monroe. “Our members, who are doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists, social workers and other professionals, are increasingly concerned about the safety and wellbeing of these individuals, their families and the communities where they are being sent."

NYS has announced that on December 31st of this year, the Monroe Developmental Center in the Town of Brighton will close its doors, which means the approximately 90 individuals in residence will move into the community at large, despite assessments by courts and/or the state that they have been determined as being a danger to themselves and/or others and require the highest levels of security. Many of these individuals have committed crimes, including sexual offenses and other behavioral and psychiatric histories.

(False. -Ed.)

In the wake of the horrific incidents in Newtown and in West Webster on Christmas Eve, the professionals whose lives are affected day to day have a message to the Governor and to the community at large. The process by which the Governor intends to “deinstitutionalize” under his Olmstead Implementation Plan is not a working plan. It is a dangerous one that needs further exploration into alternative solutions to budget cutbacks.

First, Monroe is a developmental, not a psychiatric institution. Second, there are reports that what set the Newtown shooter off was his mom's attempt to send him to an institution. (Why she still kept guns in the house after that is one of those unanswered questions of the universe.)

An Olmstead Implementation Plan is a plan to comply with the Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which established the civil right of people with disabilities to live in community rather than insitutional settings under the Americans With Disabilities Act. PEF is fighting this solely to save their jobs, at the expense of 90 people who are in effect incarcerated although they have committed no crime.