Class action de-institutionalization law suits are lucrative. The Center for Public Representation was paid $2.8 million by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for its part in the Rolland Suit during the period from June, 2000 to November, 2003 alone. The Center’s attorneys are concurrently involved in several similar suits in Massachusetts as well as other states. Their reputations and earnings increase with the number of people moved from nursing homes and institutions by their suits.

3. Why did the Commonwealth of Massachusetts settle with the Rolland Plaintiffs’ Attorneys?

One theory is that the state’s actions result from the tragic meeting of a laudable commitment to de-institutionalization and mainstreaming with a dangerous degree of ignorance about the exceptional individuals whose lives are threatened by the actions in question. Others think the real causes are financial, ranging from a desire to free funds for other purposes to an alliance with real-estate developers and other business interests. According to court documents, the complaint that sparked the new Rolland settlement was of failure to provide a higher standard of care (called “Active Treatment”) in nursing homes. The state appears to have judged Active Treatment to be too expensive to provide in the short run and therefore offered to move most nursing home patients out of the homes in exchange for an agreement to delay implementation of the Active Treatment standard.

4. The plaintiffs say that Seven Hills at Groton failed to provide Active Treatment. Is this true?

Although the facility provided an extensive program of activities with which families of the patients were quite satisfied, these programs did not meet the Active Treatment standard at the time of the Settlement Agreement because (a) the facility’s staff was not informed by Department of Mental Retardation (DMR) that such a standard existed or what it entailed, and (b) the facility’s staff was not provided with tools to document the programs that it offered to its patients. The plaintiffs’ attorneys’ and Massachusetts Association of Retarded Citizens (ARC)’s claims that Rolland plaintiffs had limited programming in their nursing homes may be true of conventional nursing homes, but they have no truth as applied to Seven Hills Pediatric Center residents.

5. Why won’t the Commonwealth admit that it made a mistake by placing most Seven Hills at Groton residents above age 18 on its Community Placement List?

Perhaps the state fears that the Rolland Settlement Agreement would unravel if the 5% of the planned transferees whose families oppose it were recognized as not actually suitable for community placement. Possibly the Department of Mental Retardation (DMR) is simply incapable of recognizing who can and who cannot benefit from being placed in group homes. This despite the fact that ordinary individuals not employed by the Department find it “a no-brainer” (to quote State Senator Steven Panagiotakos of Lowell) that the Seven Hills patients require the kind of care that only a skilled nursing facility can provide.

6. Why does Massachusetts ARC support the plaintiffs’ attorneys?

The few individuals who are too cognitively impaired to benefit from group home transfers and too medically fragile to be safely moved are a much smaller group than are the overwhelmingly higher-functioning individuals with mental retardation who constitute the ARC’s main constituency. In its zeal to increase funding for programs serving that constituency, Massachusetts ARC has explicitly declared its goal as being “to fund community supports as the main priority for the DMR budget” which it says “corrects for a bias favoring funding for institutions.”

7. Are Seven Hills at Groton families against inclusion and living in the community?

The Pediatric Center’s family council says each family must be free to decide what is best for their family member/ward. All of the families wish that their family members could be cared for at home or in a more home-like environment, and are happy for anyone whose child can be so cared for.

8. What do the physicians at Seven Hills Pediatric Center say?

The physicians have had conversations with the family members in which they state that it should be the family’s choice how and where their loved one is cared for. When family members have asked the physicians whether their child would be likely to maintain the same level of health or longevity in a group home of the kind known to exist at present, the physicians have expressed the opinion that that is not likely.

9. Is there really evidence that group homes are dangerous to non-verbal, medically fragile individuals who cannot move their own bodies?

Yes. Please see Voice of the Retarded’s Neglect and Abuse Document which lists numerous instances of avoidable deaths and other forms of abuse occurring in group homes in the United States.

10. State officials have called the Rolland Community Placement List “preliminary” and say that careful evaluations and consultation with guardians and doctors will be done before moves take place. Why all the fuss by the families, then?

The term “preliminary” has no official standing because the Rolland Settlement Agreement says the list can be changed only with approval of a Court Monitor, meaning that the state has already ceded its control over the fates of the patients whose names were placed on it. The Settlement Agreement says that the criteria for moving individuals were taken into account when drawing up the list. Since the Agreement puts the final decisions in the hands of DMR and not the families or their doctors, and since DMR showed what kind of judgment it is capable of when placing most Seven Hills residents on its moving list, the families are living in fear and fighting for their children’s lives with every available day.

11. Don’t individuals have a right to opt out of a class action suit?

This is usually the case, even in suits dealing with small monetary awards. Why it is not the case for a suit involving life-and-death decisions is not clear to our families. Our request to withdraw our loved ones from the Rolland plaintiff class has been rejected by a federal judge.

12. Maybe Governor Patrick doesn’t know what is being done in his name. Have you tried to contact him?

Family members have tried to contact the Governor by numerous means such as telephone calls, filling out the e-mail form on his web site, and sending letters. A letter from family leaders was delivered to the Governor by the office of a state senator. The Governor has not responded to any of these messages.

13. What can I do to avert a tragic outcome for the Seven Hills Pediatric Center patients?

Please sign the petition on our home page. If you are a Massachusetts resident, please call or write your state senator and representative. Regardless of whether you live in Massachusetts, write to Governor Patrick. Please send the web site address www.AvertRollandTragedy.org to your friends and family members and urge them to write to their representatives and to Governor Patrick. Please share with us other ideas for helping to avert this tragedy, including any information you may have on outcomes of past forced de-institutionalizations, your contacts in the media, journalism, and politics, etc.