VOR Submits Written Testimony Supporting Olmstead: U.S. Senate Hearing
On June 28, 2012, VOR submitted written testimony for the record for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Hearing, “Olmstead Enforcement Update: Using the ADA to Promote Community Integration,” held June 21, 2012.
Consistent with Olmstead and a myriad of federal laws, VOR strongly supports a continuum of quality care options to meet the wide range of needs, ranging from family home, own home and other community-based options to Medicaid-licensed facility-based homes (ICFs/MR).
Despite the clarity of the Supreme Court’s holding and its cautionary statement with regard to unjustified community placement, federal and state officials, including some HELP hearing witnesses, continue to mischaracterize Olmstead, treating it as a mandate to close facilities without any regard for how individuals will be served.
As recently as November 2011, the New York Times reported that “One in six of all deaths in state and privately run homes, or more than 1,200 in the past decade, have been attributed to either unnatural or unknown causes” (November 6, 2011). The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found “Deficiencies in care, living conditions and record-keeping have piled up in scores of Georgia personal care homes [35,000 violations], with the state rarely shutting down violators or levying heavy fines [in just 544 cases]” (May 22, 2012). A Miami Heraldinvestigation found a string of "deaths [that] highlight critical breakdowns in a state enforcement system that has left thousands of people to fend for themselves in dangerous and decrepit conditions” (May 1, 2011) (see also, "Widespread Abuse, Neglect and Death in Small Settings Serving People with Intellectual Disabilities").
