Speaking out for People with
 Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

People as Pendulums: Deinstitutionalization and People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

By Tamie Hopp, VOR Director of Government Relations & Advocacy in Nonprofit Quarterly, July 16, 2014 (and reprinted in the Summer 2014 Nonprofit Quarterly Print edition)

Early reforms were quite properly motivated by the need for a system of care and supports that responded to the very individualized and diverse needs of the entire population of people with I/DD. These reforms, however, also set the stage for decades of ongoing deinstitutionalization, resulting in the elimination of specialized housing, employment and education options for people with I/DD, leaving some to question the price of “progress.”

The Pendulum Swings

Even though initial reforms were motivated by a lack of service options (an over-reliance on the ICF/IID program), it was not long before efforts to “rebalance” our system of care shifted from the expansion of options to the dramatic reduction of ICFs/IID and other specialized options.

In 1999, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark Olmstead v. L.C. decision, which should have settled the deinstitutionalization debate. 

Read full article