Thursday, 4:30 PM
State appeals judge's decision to close Fernald
(Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff/file)
JudyAnn Bigby, secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, said that the state has successfully moved many residents out of institutions in recent years to community settings where their quality of life has improved.
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff
Governor Deval Patrick's administration announced today that it is appealing a federal judge's decision that halted the state's plan to close the Fernald Development Center in Waltham, saying it unfairly intrudes on the state's ability to decide how to best care for its mentally retarded residents.
The state notified Judge Joseph L. Tauro today that it was appealing his ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
"Our decision to appeal Judge Tauro’s ruling is about making sure the state has the latitude to provide the care people need in settings -- whether they be institutional or community placements -- that also make fiscal sense. Fernald is not such a setting," Governor Deval Patrick said in a statement.
In an Aug. 14 ruling hailed as a victory by families of those who remain at Fernald, Tauro ordered the state to allow the 180 profoundly mentally retarded residents who have lived at the facility for decades the opportunity to stay.
Tauro, who monitored Fernald for decades while presiding over a landmark class-action lawsuit filed in 1972 over abuse of residents there and at four other state facilities, found in August that there has been a "systemic failure'' by the state to consider the individual needs of longtime Fernald residents while pushing its plan to close the facility.
The judge maintained that his ruling didn’t mean the state could never close Fernald. JudyAnn Bigby, secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, said that's exactly what the decision does by forcing the state to provide Fernald as an option.
"It's the most expensive institution that we're operating,'' said Bigby, adding that it costs $239,000 per person annually to care for residents at Fernald, compared to about $102,000 per person in a community setting.
If the state wins on appeal, Bigby said, officials would like to continue the plan started under the Romney administration and close Fernald over the next three or four years by gradually transferring residents to community residences or smaller state facilities where they would receive equal or better care.
Senate minority leader Richard R. Tisei, a Wakefield Republican, fired off a letter to the governor today urging him not to appeal, saying that families of the severely mentally retarded should be offered a range of care options, in both institutional and community-based settings.
"For many, it is the only home they have ever known,'' Tisei wrote. "Transferring these residents to unfamiliar surroundings at this stage in their lives, and in defiance of their families' wishes, would be detrimental to their personal well-being.''
Bigby said she was sympathetic to family members who are concerned about moving Fernald residents from the only home they've known for decades. But she said the state has successfully moved many residents out of institutions in recent years to community settings where their quality of life has improved.
"The level of comfort people feel there now is a level of comfort based on not having any other experience,'' Bigby said. "People are surprised when they leave the institution at how their qualify of life can be improved.''
