'Our Lives Turned Upside Down' When Daughter Entered RI Adult DD System, Mother Says

Louis DiPalma, Rebecca Boss, and Kerri Zanchi watch A. Anthony Antosh of Rhode Island College present consumer and family perspectives on the state’s services for adults with developmental disabilities Photo by Anne Peters

By Gina Macris

A Rhode Island Senate study commission spent nearly two hours Dec. 12 laying out a catalog of strengths and weaknesses in Rhode Island’s system for helping people with developmental disabilities.

But in the end, the personal stories of two mothers, Amy Kelly of Smithfield and Martha Costa of Portsmouth, focused the commission’s attention on the crises now unfolding for at least several families who are at their wits end.

In the catalogue, their experiences come under “residential services-need for specialized medical/behavioral residential models.”

For Amy Kelly, that means that every single service provider in Rhode Island – about three dozen - has turned away her 21 year-old daughter, who is autistic, has behavioral problems, and functions in many ways as a kindergartener.

“So now what do I do?” Kelly asked in a letter to the commission chairman, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown. Kelly is a widow, and works fulltime. Her daughter, Kayla, was asked to leave the Trudeau Center in Warwick because of injuries to staff.

For a month now, Kayla has been at home all the time and her problematic behaviors have intensified, Kelly wrote. “She is out of her routine, asking for “friends,” “yellow bus,” “trip,” and other favorite things and experiences that she misses..

Kelly has been forced to choose “self-directed” services, meaning that she must find her own workers,“which is pretty much impossible,” she wrote to DiPalma.

And the Home Based Therapeutic Services that helped Kayla outside of school hours while she was still in special education are no longer available.

“I cannot believe there are no programs in RI for families in this situation!” Kelly wrote. “When my daughter turned 21 in May everything in our lives turned upside down.”

Martha Costa * courtesy of Capitol TV

Martha Costa agreed. She attended the Commission hearing at the State House on behalf of her own family and five others in Portsmouth who have become friends as their children have faced behavioral challenges growing up and have aged out of the school system into purview of the state Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD).

As the mother of a 22 year-old man on the autism spectrum, she said her experience has been that once young people with complex needs turn 21, “there is really no place for them to go.”

The family might be told to go to a hospital, but with the exception of Butler Hospital in Providence, a mental health facility, “the hospital is horrible, because it’s just more trauma going there.”

The 21 year-old daughter of a friend of Costa’s had meltowns after her mother – her primary caregiver and the one who organized her services - died in September. The woman’s daughter, who has multiple disabilities, was hospitalized because there was “nowhere for her to go,” Costa said. The young woman was “restrained, medically and physically. It’s heartbreaking,” Costa said.

“It’s lucky you have good parents who are helping these kids, but you know, we’re all getting older and we’re not going to be able to,” she said. The aging of parents, who are often primary care givers, is a broad concern among families, according to survey results.

“There are some kids who don’t have that parent support and they’re on the street,” Costa said. “That’s sad, when they can be a very productive part of our community.”

Kerri Zanchi, the state’s Director of Developmental Disabilities, thanked Costa for coming forward.

One of the biggest challenges in residential services, Zanchi said, is a dearth of specialized homes for individuals with behavioral and other complex needs, as well as a lack of therapists and other clinicians to give them the proper attention.

“There’s a huge need coming” as teenagers with complex disabilities leave schools, she said. “We need to know what that need is and we need to start working on it lot earlier than when they turn 21 and come into our system.”

Zanchi referred to the division’s Eligibility by 17 policy, which aims to give families, schools, and the adult system plenty of time to plan a smooth transition.

In the catalogue, one of the “challenges” the state officials listed in implementing the Eligibility by 17 policy is “resource and service difference for transitioning youth vs adult services.” In the summary that family and consumer representatives submitted, they commented that “transition from high school is a ‘nightmare.“

Zanchi continued her response to Costa. “We certainly recognize every day the crises we have to manage” in order to support the individuals involved and to try to grow the system’s capacity, she said.

And there are committed providers who are willing to help the state, but who also want to do that with the right staffing that will keep all individuals safe, Zanchi said. “We are all hands on deck. I know it probably doesn’t feel like enough,” she said.

Costa agreed. “ I understand what you’ve been doing and I know that everyone has been working hard . Still, it’s not enough,” she said.

Gloria Quinn, executive director of West Bay Residential Services, said her agency works very well with the state as a partner in exceptional situations, but it is extremely difficult as long as there there is a paucity of established expertise in the community that is accessible to the developmental disabilities providers.

“Very often we are creating something new, which takes an enormous amount of time,” Quinn said, and the funding is not enough. Most importantly, when the agency helps someone with increased needs it runs the risk of jeopardizing supports for other people, particularly in a residential setting, she said.

Peter Quattromani, President and CEO of United Cerebral Palsy Rhode Island, pointed to the low wages for direct care staff that frustrate all involved; those who love the work but can’t pay the bills, employers who can’t fill jobs, and consumers and families who can’t find suitable services.

“It’s an incredibly difficult job” , he said, and attracting staff is likewise very difficult, given the low wages.

Commission member Kelly Donovan, who herself receives services from DDD, had sparked the conversation by wondering aloud why those with serious behavioral problems have difficulty finding appropriate support.

She said she agreed with Quattromani and Costa, and she added another factor that she believes contributes to the problem: a societal stigma against those with a broad range of mental illnesses who exhibit aggressive behavior.

During the last month, commission members, representing the executive branch of government, private providers, and consumers and their families, were asked to complete a survey cataloging the strengths and weaknesses of the existing Medicaid fee-for-service system, called Project Sustainability.

The commission plans to use the results of the survey, named the “Current State Assessment,” to seek advice from outside experts and further the group’s deliberations in the future, according to a statement issued at DiPalma’s behest.

Directly or indirectly, a lack of adequate funding in various contexts permeated three summaries of the survey results, each one presented by a representative of each of the three segments of the commission. Transportation, for example, has become a bigger problem now that there is a greater emphasis on community-based services, which require more than the two daily trips usually allowed by individual funding authorizations. Families also cited difficulties of non-English speakers in getting information and services.

But Rebecca Boss, director of the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, also said the developmental disabilities budget has increased significantly since 2015, and listed advances made in the last two years, including:

• $6.8 million for supported employment

• two annual wage increases for direct care workers (The average hourly pay for front-line workers is $11.36 an hour)

• the acquisition of a modern data management system

• an increase in staff for quality management, implementation of a federal civil rights consent decree and for Medicaid-mandated Home and Community Based Services, as well as assistance in maximizing the existing budget.

She described the funding needs of the system as “dynamic.”

“We are engaging in discussions with our partners about what those needs are,” Boss said. “Governor (Gina) Raimondo has demonstrated a willingness to look at the system and make adjustments in the budget as we go along. So this is the process that we’re currently working on and engaging in those conversations on a regular basis.”

Raimondo is to present adjustments for the current budget, as well as her proposal for the next fiscal cycle, during the third week of January.

Christopher Semonelli, a commission member and the father of a teenager with complex needs, commented on the origins of Project Sustainability, which seemed to him like system “in a death spiral, and there was basically a feeding frenzy as to how to continue the system; how to go after the available funds.”

“I don’t think the legislative base should be blamed” for cutbacks that launched Project Sustainability in 2011, “because there was a lack of advocacy, “he said. “Strong advocacy could have prevented that from happening. That is huge and needs to be built going forward.”

DiPalma had the last word. Semonelli “made a great point about advocacy, but he shouldn’t let the General Assembly off the hook,” DiPalma said. “This is where the buck stops.”

Read the summaries presented at the meeting. For the state’s assessment, click here. For consumer and advocates’ comments, click here. For service providers’ comments, click here.

RI Gov Pledges To Support "Current Level" Of DD Services In FY 19; No Fiscal Details Yet

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo says her administration is committed to maintaining “the current level of services” for adults with developmental disabilities in order to meet the demands of a 2014 consent decree between the state and federal government.

But in a letter to a federal court monitor in the consent decree case, the governor did not spell out how much money the administration believes the state should spend.

The consent decree is a 2014 agreement between the state and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) which requires Rhode Island to correct violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act by enabling adults with intellectual or developmental challenges to seek competitive employment and enjoy community-based, integrated non-work activities.

In the letter to the monitor, Raimondo wrote: “I will continue to work collaboratively with the General Assembly on all funding recommendations, including those supporting efforts under the Consent Decree.”  

Following better-than-expected revenue projections issued May 10, both House and Senate leaders said that at a minimum, they support restoration of an $18.4 million reduction in reimbursements to private service providers that Raimondo has proposed for the budget cycle beginning July 1.

The consent decree monitor, Charles Moseley, had sought three specific assurances from Raimondo, in the form of a letter or statement to U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell Jr.

Moseley asked that the letter or statement say that the budget would:

•  “be re-set to reflect current FY 2018 expenditure and service levels”
•  “continue to be revised throughout FY 2019 as needed to fully fund the provision of services”           consistent with requirements of the consent decree
•  provide “sufficient personnel resources” to the Division of Developmental Disabilities to   “carry out  quality improvement activities consistent with Consent Decree requirements.”

Raimondo’s letter to Moseley, dated May 14, contains no details about any budget changes she may be planning. Nor does it mention quality improvement activities. 

On May 18, a spokeswoman for Raimondo said that “increasing funding for developmental disability support services is one shared priority for which she (the governor) continues to advocate as we further engage in discussions with the General Assembly about the final budget."

Asked whether the governor supports the employment of adults with disabilities as one of the state's workforce solutions, the governor's spokeswoman pointed out the new Real Pathways RI program. It is a workforce investment initiative that focuses on job-seekers who face various barriers to employment. Among the public, private, and non-profit organizations that participate in the program are four providers of developmental disability services, who are working with Home Depot and CVS to match their clients to jobs. 

Moseley had requested a statement from the governor on her position as he prepared to make recommendations to McConnell about what court action, if any, might be needed to ensure that compliance with the consent decree moves forward.

At the most recent court hearing April 10, the judge directed Moseley to find out if there was consensus among state officials and DOJ lawyers about a course of action the court might take to ensure enough funding. Failing such an agreement, McConnell said, he would hold an evidentiary hearing to lay the groundwork for a court order.

Moseley has concluded that Raimondo’s proposed budget, as it now stands, is insufficient to continue to support the modest salary increases to direct support workers put forward by Raimondo and approved by the General Assembly in the last two years. In addition, it would not allow the state to “continue services at current levels,” he said.

The monitor described his efforts to get a sense of the state’s position a  letter to Eric Beane, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, dated May 9. That was a day before the state’s revenue estimating conference concluded that revenues were projected to exceed previous estimates by $135 million through the end of Fiscal 2019.

A week earlier, on May 2, the director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) did not dispute the monitor’s conclusions about the inadequacy of the proposed budget for the next fiscal year, Moseley wrote to Beane.

But the director, Rebecca Boss, “affirmed governor’s commitment to fully fund Consent Decree activities during FY (Fiscal Year) 19 and said that no rate cuts in reimbursements or spending reductions were being proposed,” according to Moseley.

“She noted that the Governor had demonstrated a history of including supplemental funding to the DD (developmental disabilities) services budget when expenditures exceeded enacted amounts and would continue to do so if necessary,”  Moseley wrote.

On separate occasions, both Boss and Beane said assurances about the state’s support of the consent decree could be sought from the governor, Moseley recalled.

For some time, Moseley has said that the Division of Developmental Disabilities needs four fulltime inspectors to conduct onsite reviews of all three dozen private service providers every two years and to ensure their services meet the standards of the consent decree.

He said Kerri Zanchi, director of developmental disabilities, and Kevin Savage, the BHDDH licensing administrator, “argued strongly” during a meeting with Moseley May 2 that two inspectors, or “surveyors” as they will be called, “would be sufficient to meet the need and ensure compliance” along with an data analyst and “other measures.”  Zanchi was to provide a subsequent written analysis of the rationale for the BHDDH approach.

In an earlier report to the monitor, BHDDH officials explained their plan for a centralized, departmental quality assurance unit. In the first year, the two surveyors would be supervised by Anne LeClerc, Associate Director of Program Performance in the Division of Developmental Disabilities, which is also to have the benefit of its own data analyst and a divisional operations manager.

In this initial year, the new “surveyors” will enable the division to rigorously analyze the effectiveness of its existing day services to better plan for future improvements, according to the state’s report to the monitor April 30.

In the second year, however, the surveyors will be assigned to a centralized quality management unit to connect the BHDDH investigatory unit with licensing and certification of private service providers, according to the state’s quarterly report. 

Raimondo's spokeswoman said she supports the BHDDH quality improvement plan. 

To date, there have been no filings in the court record indicating what Moseley will recommend to the judge.

To read Governor Raimondo's letter to the consent decree monitor, click here.

To read the consent decree monitor's letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services click here.

RI DD Public Forum Highlights Personal Choice, Inclusive Initiatives For Redesigning Services

Deanne Gagne                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           all photos by anne peters

By Gina Macris

During a public forum on Rhode Island’s developmental disability services Aug. 8, Deanne Gagne talked about the importance of personal choice in improving quality of life, for herself and others. 

“It’s really about the person in the center who’s driving the vehicle,” not the service system defining the options, said Gagne, a spokeswoman for Advocates in Action, a non-profit educational organization which encourages adults with developmental disabilities to speak up for themselves.

For Gagne on that day, personal choice turned out to be about the spontaneity of doing somethingmost adults take for granted: making a lunch date.

After the meeting, Gagne connected with an old friend who also attended the forum at the Coventry Community Center.

Because Gagne controls the way she uses her service dollars, she did not need to discuss with anyone how she and her wheelchair would get to and from the chosen restaurant.  Gagne’s assistant simply pulled Gagne’s cell phone out of the bag that hangs across the back of her chair and handed it to Gagne, who marked the date, time and place in her calendar and handed back the phone. That was that.

As a speaker during the forum, Gagne summarized the message of recent public sessions hosted by  Advocates in Action, in collaboration with the state and the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College, on thinking “outside the system” or “outside the box” in planning for the future.

“It’s back to basics,” she said. “What do you want to do with your life, and what do you need to make that happen?”

Both a 2014 consent decree and a new Medicaid rule on Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) put personal choice at the heart of mandated changes in the approach to services. All developmental disability services in Rhode Island are funded by the federal-state Medicaid program.

One parent who has attended a recent Advocates In Action session on personal choice, or “person-centered thinking”, said there’s a long way to go before such a change becomes everyday reality.

“It seems like a giant step to get from where we are now to where we’re going,” said Greg Mroczek, who has two adult children with developmental disabilities.

None of the developmental disability officials who hosted the forum disagreed with him.

Zanchi           

But Kerri Zanchi, the director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities, and her administrative team made it clear that they want the public to participate in creating a new system of services in a much more active way than is the norm when bureaucracies adopt change.

Kevin Savage, director of licensing, who leads a continuing effort to rewrite developmental disability regulations, said, “We want to have regulations that are meaningful to participants and their families.” The committee rewriting the regulations, which began working in the spring, includes representation from consumers and family members. Savage said a draft of the proposed regulations should be completed in September and released for public comment later in the fall.

Also on Aug. 8, the Division put out a new call for individuals interested in serving on an external quality improvement advisory council.

The advisory council would complement an internal quality improvement committee as part of a broad effort intended to make sure services are faithful to the requirements of the consent decree and Medicaid’s Home and Community Based Rule. 

Anne LeClerc, Associate Director of Program Performance, said she would field inquiries about the quality improvement advisory council. She may be reached at 401-462-0192 or Anne.LeClerc@bhddh.ri.gov.

Zanchi, meanwhile, yielded the floor to representatives of a fledgling effort to revitalize family advocacy called Rhode Island FORCE (Families Organized for Reform, Change and Empowerment), an initiative of the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council.

Semonelli

Chris Semonelli of Middletown, a leader of the group, said it aims to become a springboard for legislative advocacy, starting with an exchange of ideas in the fall among those affected by the developmental disability service system. A date for the event, entitled “Coffee and Cafe Conversation,” has yet to be announced.

The Developmental Disabilities Council plans to support the family advocacy group for up to five years, until it can spin off on its own, according to Kevin Nerney, a council spokesman. Anyone seeking more information may contact him at kevinnerney@riddcouncil.org or 401-737-1238.

Francoise Porch, who has a daughter with developmental disabilities, touched on a long-standing problem affecting both the quality and quantity of available services: depressed wages.

“Direct care staff can’t make a living working with our children,” she said.

The General Assembly allocated $6.1 million for wage increases in the budget for the current fiscal year, which Governor Gina Raimondo signed into law Aug. 3 after the House and the Senate resolved an impasse over Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s car tax relief plan, which emerged intact.

Although the language of the budget says the raises are effective July 1, the fiscal analyst for developmental disabilities, Adam Brusseau, could not say during the forum exactly when workers might see retroactive checks.

The extra funding is expected to add an average of about 56 cents an hour to paychecks – before taxes – but the precise amount will vary, depending on the employee benefits offered by private agencies under contract with the state to provide direct services.

The latest raise marks the second consecutive budget increase for direct care workers and the first in a five-year drive to hike salaries to $15 an hour.

For high school special education students anticipating a shift to adult services, “there seems to be a logjam” when it comes to families trying to figure out how many service dollars they will have and how far the money will go, according to Claire Rosenbaum, Adult Services Coordinator at the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College.

Rosenbaum

Zanchi said the Division of Developmental Disabilities aims to administer assessments that are used in determining individual budgets a year before an applicant leaves high school and needs adult services.  But Rosenbaum said that based on her contact with families of young adults, a year does not appear to be long enough. 

She elaborated: after the assessment, called the Supports Intensity Scale, families must wait a month or more for the results. Only then can parents explore the offerings of various agencies.  They may settle on one agency, only to be told that the agency is not accepting new clients with their son or daughter’s particular need. Then, when families decide to design an individualized program themselves, they must begin planning all over again.

“A year is not enough,” Rosenbaum said.

Zanchi said she will look into the problem.

RI DD Officials "Trying To Do The Right Thing," Says Judge In Review of 2014 Olmstead Consent Decree

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island’s efforts to implement a 2014 consent decree to help adults with developmental disabilities become part of their communities won plaudits from a federal judge July 28, althougth some officials indicated there’s still a long way before the changes permeate the system of state services. 

Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. said he is heartened “when a state entity is trying to do the right thing. It’s not the case where the state is acting in any way in bad faith.”

“Compared to about a year ago we are in a very different place,” he said.

In May, 2016, McConnell issued a 8-page order warning the state he would entertain contempt proceedings unless it moved forward with implementation of the consent decree, which at that time had been stalled for two years.

At the latest hearing, July 28, McConnell said there had been “positive movement” in the state’s efforts to carry out the requirements of the consent decree and urged state officials to “keep it up.” 

The judge acknowledged that sweeping changes in the leadership of state agencies responsible for the disabilities programs in recent months had left him feeling “quite nervous” about the state’s ability to comply with his orders, but he said “now it doesn’t feel that way at all.”

McConnell chose a relatively informal setting for the hearing, convening his review not in his courtroom but in the richly paneled library of the Beaux Arts federal building on Kennedy Plaza in Providence, and inviting participants around a conference table to remove their jackets.

A lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice, Nicole Kovite Zeitler, and an independent court monitor, Charles Moseley, cited advances in the handling of bureaucratic issues that are pre-requisites for a turn-around in the system that will take years to accomplish. The areas they covered included:

• The realignment of social work staff to better oversee changes in the way services are delivered
• Additional steps intended to lay the foundation for an active, multi-faceted quality improvement effort involving the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) and the Office of Rehabilitation Services (ORS)
• Improved communication with service providers, and with the publicThe expanded availability of training and information on the principles of individualized planning and personal choice that are at the heart of the consent decree – and the federal law behind it.

There were, however, signs that, for some individuals who depend on developmental disability services, change has not yet arrived.

For example, Zeitler said that of 22 private agencies participating in a pilot program to encourage job-placements, 42 percent –nearly half - say they can’t take new clients.

Moseley said he “regularly” gets reports from families who say that they have been turned down by service providers they sought out.

Although the pilot project in supported employment is billed as an “incentive” program, participating agencies report privately they operate at a loss for each client they place in a job.

The legislature allocated $6.8 million for supported employment in the fiscal year which ended June 30, but the pilot program did not begin operations until January, and in the first six months it paid out a total of about $122,000 to participating agencies, according to BHDDH calculations obtained by Developmental Disability News.

Rebecca Boss, the BHDDH director, acknowledged there are “challenges” to delivering those supported employment services but did not elaborate. A report from Moseley to the judge submitted the day before the hearing said there have been multiple meetings between state officials and the providers to discuss various factors affecting the supported employment program, including “operational issues that are reported to be impeding the ability of the organizations to meet their placement goals.”

McConnelland the consent decree officials at the table spent considerable time discussing a relatively low employment rate of young adults – the very group most likely to have had the broadest experiences in high school, including school-to work internships. 

The participants acknowledged that the employment rate for that group, 32 percent, was artificially depressed, because the number of individuals in the young adult category has grown dramatically, from 151 to 497, in the last nine months.  It takes time to find the right job, Zeitler said. 

But the monitor said in his latest report to the judge that progress in finding jobs for young adults “has been slow.”  Even if one analyzes only the original 151 young adults and discounts 60 of them who are not receiving BHDDH services, the employment rate is 51 percent, Moseley said in the report.

He recommended that the state contact each of the 60 not receiving services to make sure they know that supports are available if they need them.

Clients recently interviewed by Zeitler and DOJ colleagues said they were sometimes “bored” with their daytime non-work activities, Zeitler reported. The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) says persons who receive public supports must have personal choice in deciding what they do with their time, both for work and leisure.

But the way resources are currently invested does not necessarily promote “inclusivity,” noted Boss, saying the department is hoping to do some “rebalancing” of the way money is spent.

The individual choice mandated in the consent decree implies one-to-one or small group staffing, assuming that a few friends want to do something together in the community. But a fairly rigid regulatory structure currently in place doesn’t allow for such staffing unless clients are deemed to have extensive disabilities.  

The Division of Developmental l Disabilities is in the process of rewriting all its regulations to change from a system that assigns funding based on the severity of a disability to one that stresses individualization and personal choice, or“person-centered planning,” in accordance with the ADA and the consent decree.

As Moseley noted, the state must make these changes anyway to comply with the broader federal Medicaid Home and Community Based Rule (HCBS). The federal-state Medicaid program pays for all developmental disability services in Rhode Island.

Like the consent decree, HCBS derives its authority from the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Olmstead decision re-affirmed Title II of the ADA, which emphasizes its primary purpose to integrate those with disabilities into the mainstream of society and respects their individual choices on the degree to which they wish to participate. 

The last time BHDDH attempted regulatory reform along similar lines, in 2015, an internal BHDDH work group came up with recommendations that would have cost tens of millions of dollars. The proposed changes did not move forward.  

In his most recent report to the judge,  Moseley said that the effort to gain greater flexibility over existing funding “is a positive move, but additional steps need to be taken to map out a process for ensuring that funding supports integrated person-centered day services” that meet the standards of the consent decree.

Zeitler said management officials of direct service agencies seem to understand the principles of individualized, or “person-centered” activity plans, but some direct care workers “don’t speak the language.” 

Zeitler suggested that more training is in order.  Although the training is available, tuition-free, Kerri Zanchi, developmental disabilities chief at BHDDH,  indicated there was no “quick fix” to this problem, given the high turnover in the workforce.

Zeitler, meanwhile, praised the way Zanchi has moved around staff to make the most of available personnel, calling the reorganization “very creative.”  

Zanchi has added four workers to the case management unit, reducing caseloads from 205 to 152 per person. Two of the workers came from the unit that determines eligibility for services and two came from a separate group that assesses the support needs of clients once they are found eligible for services. 

Another worker has been tapped to serve in the newly created position of transition coordinator, to serve teenagers and young adults moving from high school to adult services. The Division of Developmental Disabilities has hired a new residential coordinator to address housing options for those who do not live with their families.

An outside quality improvement expert enlisted by Moseley has said in a report that "there is a significant commitment to change" at BHDDH and ORS to ensure high program standards are implemented across the board. 

"But the staff available to implement change are stretched very thin," wrote Gail Grossman in a report that is part of Moseley's latest filing with the court. Grossman continued: "Serious consideration needs to be given to the need for additional staff resources if DDD (the Division of Developmental Disabilities) and BHDDH are going to develop, manage and oversee a strong QMIS (Quality Management and Improvement System) structure."

BHDDH has a unit entitled quality improvement, but its scope is limited to investigations of neglect or abuse of vulnerable individuals.

Click here for the monitor's latest report to the judge.

Related articles: Judge Willing To Intervene In RI Budget Impasse

Supported Employment Program Falls Short Of Initial Goals in RI

Four Years After Settlement, Former Workshop Still Segregates Adults With DD - Monitor

photo by gina macris

Former Training Through Placement building at 20 Marblehead Ave., North Providence RI

By Gina Macris

A federal judge has taken the state of Rhode Island to task for failing to keep track of a former sheltered workshop that has continued to segregate adults with developmental disabilities, despite a landmark integration agreement four years ago that seeks to transform daytime services for those with intellectual challenges.

An order by Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court sets strict deadlines between the end of June and the end of July for specific steps the state must take to ensure that all clients of the former sheltered workshop lacking jobs or meaningful activities begin to realize the promise of the 2013 agreement.

The so-called Interim Settlement Agreement of 2013 focused primarily on special education students at the Birch Academy at Mount Pleasant High School and adult workers at Training Through Placement (TTP), which has become Community Work Services (CWS.)

The former sheltered workshop used Birch as a feeder program for employees, who often were stuck for decades performing repetitive tasks at sub-minimum wages – even when they asked for other kinds of jobs. Involved are a total of 126 individuals, according to McConnell’s count.

In 2014, after a broader investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, the state signed a more extensive consent decree covering more than 3,000 adults and teenagers with developmental disabilities. The state promised to end an over-reliance on sheltered workshops throughout Rhode Island and instead agreed to transform its system over ten years to offer individualized supports intended to integrate adults facing intellectual challenges in their communities.

Together, the companion agreements made national headlines as the first in the nation that called for integration of daytime supports for individuals with disabilities, in accordance with the Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Olmstead decision re-affirmed Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which says services must be provided in the least restrictive setting which is therapeutically appropriate, and that setting is presumed to be the community.

McConnell’s order is the latest and most forceful development in a story that highlights not only the failings of the former sheltered workshop, Training Through Placement (TTP), but the state’s lack of a comprehensive quality assurance program for developmental disability services system-wide.

The former sheltered workshop run by CWS at 20 Marblehead Ave., North Providence, was closed by the state on March 16 on an emergency basis because of an inspection that showed deteriorating physical conditions. Individuals with developmental disabilities were “exposed to wires, walkways obstructed by buckets collecting leaking water, and lighting outages due to water damage,” according to a report to the judge. At that point, CWS had been working under state BHDDH oversight for about a year, because of programmatic deficiencies, according to documents filed with the federal court.

CWS is a program of Fedcap Rehabilitation Services of New York, which had been hired by then-BHDDH director Craig Stenning to lead the way on integrated services for adults with developmental disabilities at TTP in the wake of the 2013 Interim Settlement Agreement. Stenning now works for Fedcap.

With the CWS facility closed by the state, the program resumed operations on March 21 in space provided by the John E. Fogarty Center in North Providence under terms of a  probationary, or conditional, license with state oversight, according to a report of an independent federal court monitor overseeing implementation of  the 2013 and 2014 civil rights agreements in Rhode Island that affect adults with developmental disabilities.

The monitor said the state licensing administrator for private developmental disability agencies also notified the CWS Board of Directors and the Fedcap CEO of the situation, making these points:  

• the state was concerned about unhealthy conditions of the CWS facility
• ·the agency failed to notify the state of the problems with the building
• CWS failed to implement a disaster plan
• ·The CWS executive director had an “inadequate response” to the state’s findings.

The letter to the Fedcap CEO also said that CWS had been providing “segregated, center-based day services” rather than the community-based programming for which the agency had been licensed.

Summarizing the status of the 2013 Interim Settlement Agreement, the monitor, Charles Moseley, concluded in part that the Providence School Department and the Rhode Island Department of Education have continued to improve compliance through added funding, an emphasis on supported employment, staff training and data gathering and reporting.

Overall, the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, (BHDDH) the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, (EOHHS) and the state Office of Rehabilitation Services (ORS) also have made progress, Moseley said, citing budget increases, new management positions, and programmatic changes he has mentioned in various status reports on the statewide consent decree.

However, progress for clients of the former TTP workshop “appears to have plateaued and possibly regressed,” Moseley wrote, and for that he faulted the successor agency, CWS, and the lack of sustained oversight on the part of BHDDH. 

While some former sheltered workshop employees at TTP did find work after the Interim Settlement Agreement was signed in 2013, “the number and percentage of integrated supported employment placements has remained essentially flat for the last four years,” he said.

Efforts to reach CWS and Fedcap officials were unsuccessful.

In mid-March, CWS  reported that 30 of 71 clients on its roster had jobs. Of the 30 who were employed, 13 with part-time jobs also attended non-work activities sponsored by the agency. In addition, 41 clients attended only the non-work activities.

In early April, Moseley and lawyers from the DOJ interviewed the leadership and staff of CWS and some of the agency’s clients in their temporary base of operations at the Fogarty Center. Serena Powell, the CWS executive director, was among those who attended, Moseley said.

The leadership “revealed a lack of understanding of the basic goals and provisions of the state’s Employment First policy and related practices,” Moseley said in his report.

Rhode Island has adopted a policy of the U.S. Department of Labor which presumes that everyone, even those with significant disabilities, is capable of working along non-disabled peers and enjoying life in the community, as long as each person has the proper supports.

“This lack of knowledge and understanding appeared to extend to the basic concepts of person-centered planning (individualization) and program operation,” Moseley said, citing the names of specific protocols used by state developmental disability systems and provider agencies “across the country.”

Moseley said some CWS staff do not have the required training to do their jobs.

Some job exploration activities have consisted of “little more than walking through various business establishments at a local mall,” Moseley said, explaining that they were not purposeful activities tailored to individual interests and needs.

Moseley said he interviewed three clients of CWS and they were “unanimous in their desire to have a ‘real job’ in the community and to be engaged in productive community activities that didn’t involve hanging out with staff at the mall.

“All three persons reported that they were pleased to be out of the CWS/TTP facility and to have opportunities to go into the community more often. Two of the three expressed an interest in receiving services from a different service provider,” Moseley said.

The state has had four years to work on compliance with the Interim Settlement Agreement and the Consent Decree. During that time, BHDDH has seen three directors and its Division of Developmental Disabilites (DDD) has had four directors, including an outside consultant who served on an interim basis part of the time officials conducted a search that led to the appointment of Kerri Zanchi in January.

Between mid-February and early May, there was a separate upheaval in the leadership of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, which had taken charge of the state’s compliance efforts in connection with the 2013 and 2014 civil rights agreements.

In a statement to the court, Zanchi alluded to all the turnover, saying that “progress has been challenged due to changes in internal and external leadership impacting stability, communication, resources, accountability, and vision.” 

Zanchi suggested that budget increases and considerable effort among BHDDH and ORS staff during the last year to improve compliance nevertheless have not been enough to make up for the previous three years of inaction.

Among other things, there is no consensus across the network of private service providers – some three dozen in all – “regarding the definition and expectation of integration,” Zanchi said.

DDD is responding by establishing “clear standards, training and monitoring,” she said. McConnell’s order required DDD to complete “guidance and standards for integrated day service” by June 30 and allowed another month for the document to be reviewed and disseminated to providers.

Zanchi said the state now has an “extensive quality management oversight plan” with CWS that involves DDD social workers, who are actively supporting CWS clients and their families. These same social workers also have average caseloads of 205 clients per person, according to the most recent DDD statistics.

Zanchi agreed with Moseley, the court monitor, that “current review and monitoring does not constitute a fully functioning quality improvement program.”

Moseley said that DDD’s quality improvement efforts “are seriously hampered by the lack of sufficient staff.” He called for “additional staffing resources” to ensure quality, provide system oversight and improve and ensure that providers get the required training.

Zanchi said an outside expert in interagency quality improvement is working with the state to develop and implement such a fully functioning plan. McConnell gave the state until July 30 to have a “fully-developed interim and long-term quality improvement plan” ready to go.

Of the 126 teenagers and adults McConnell said are protected by the 2013 Interim Settlement Agreement, 46 need individualized follow-up. Of the 46, 34 have never been employed, including 24 former TTP workers and 10 current Birch students or graduates.

The judge reinforced the monitor’s repeated emphasis over the last two years on proper planning as the foundation for producing a schedule of short-term activities and long-term goals that are purposeful for each person, whether they pertain to jobs, non-work activities, or both.  

These planning exercises, led by specially trained facilitators, can take on a festive air, with friends and family invited to share their reminiscences and thoughts for the future as they support the individual at the center of the event.

McConnell’s order said the state must ensure that “quality” planning for careers and non-work activities is in place by July 30 for active members of the protected class who want to continue receiving services.

Among CWS clients, the agency reported that 10 have indicated a reluctance to go into the community, perhaps because they feel challenged by the circumstances.

Moseley cited a variance to the Employment First policy developed by the state to cover those who can’t or don’t want to work, for medical or other reasons. Moseley’s report said he approved the variance in 2015, but it hasn’t been implemented. He acknowledged that it was difficult to understand.

McConnell’s highly technical and detailed order requires the state to implement a “variance and retirement policy” by June 30 “to discern specifically those who do not identify with either current or long-term employment goals.” 

McConnell also ordered the state to fund an additional $50,000 worth of training from the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College so that those who work with adults with developmental disabilities can give them individualized counseling about how work would affect their government benefits.

The monitor has repeatedly cited a dearth of individualized benefits counseling. In his latest report, he wrote that in interviews May 11 and May 12, high school students at Birch, their parents, staff, and others expressed the false conviction that students could work no more than 20 to 25 hours a week without compromising their benefits.

"This finding underscores the importance of individualized benefits planning for this population to ensure that students are able to take full advantage of Social Security Act work incentives that may enable them to work more than 25 hours per week while maintaining their public and employer benefits," Moseley said.

The monitor is expected to evaluate compliance with the deadlines in McConnell's latest order in a future status report.