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Federal Judge rules institutionalized children in Florida MUST be allowed to go home


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WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM

The ruling could have sweeping implications for thousands of disabled people across the country who rely on state-provided home health care services.

 

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In court records and interviews with The Washington Post, parents of disabled children described a broken system in which they often felt forced to send their children to nursing homes because they couldn’t get reliable state-provided home care. Once institutionalized, the children were neglected; frequently hospitalized with infections; and left in soiled diapers for hours, crying and depressed, their families told The Post.

 

 

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The state of Florida argued at the trial that many of the children living in institutions were too fragile to live at home or in their communities. One of the state’s expert witnesses, Allan Greissman, a critical care pediatrician at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, described many children as being in a “persistent vegetative state” or “neurologically devastated,” and suggested that they would derive no benefit from being at home.

 

Ehlenbach’s report, however, found that all of the children could be considered medically appropriate to receive care at home. It also found that they had a wide range of functional states and even those with severe neurological disabilities would benefit from living in a home setting.

“Their medical and care needs can be met (and may be better met) outside of a skilled nursing facility with appropriate home- and community-based services,” the report stated.


In reviewing medical records of about 140 institutionalized children, physicians found evidence of a number of medical complications such as pressure wounds and infections — some of which led children to become dependent on ventilators.

 

When Ehlenbach visited one facility, she met a child with Down syndrome who was able to walk but was kept in a large crib enclosure that he couldn’t escape. He asked to be let out, but then immediately tried to run away and was returned to the crib, she said in an interview.

 

The lawyers representing the State are fucking evil. 

  • Guillotine 3
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16 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

Fucking evil is the right word here. So they privatized these facilities AND left those same facilities in charge of clearing children to return to their homes with zero oversight? I couldn't come up with a system more rife for abuse if I tried.

 

And privatized Medicaid with "Managed Care Organizations". 

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