UPDATE: Group home cuts
We continue to receive extremely disturbing reports from families, staff, agencies and other community advocacy groups about what's being described as a "vicious" and "clandestine" cost-cutting push to close group homes and relocate current residents to less costly, informal living arrangements.
Three particularly disturbing aspects have emerged: 1) There appears to be great urgency on CLBC's part to accomplish as many moves and closures as possible over the summer months before families and the public even realize what's going on; 2) CLBC is ordering service reductions with far-reaching implications based on a draft policy that has not even been formally approved or announced, raising questions about potential legal challenges; and 3) MCFD has a similar cost-cutting process underway to close children's group homes and relocate youths with very complex needs to foster care.
See a report revealing the children's closures from the Victoria Times Colonist: Ministry closing children in care homes
The long history behind BC’s group home cuts
UPDATED - July 31: Please visit our new Group Home Cuts Web page for more news and information on this issue
Sign the petition urging the province to halt the group home cuts and forced relocations!
Background
There has been ongoing and often intense pressure to close professionally-staffed group homes for adults with developmental disabilities in the province since 2001, when the BC Liberals took office.
While MOMS strongly supports personalized choices and efficient spending, the government's current actions are clearly not driven by the best interests of adults with developmental disabilities. BC's latest push to reduce quality, close group homes and forcibly relocate residents against their wishes poses grave risks to their safety and wellbeing, prompting growing alarm among families and community living advocates.
There are good reasons to offer alternatives, as group homes are not right for everyone. But despite government's protestations to the contrary, it has always been clear that the desire to reduce costs supercedes concerns about the risks of abuse, safety and individual wellbeing, and that both Community Living BC and the Province have repeatedly failed to be forthright about a series of initiatives aimed at reducing group home capacity.
Disabled adults fighting back to save their homes
The Victoria Times Colonist has been covering a nasty fight taking shape as Community Living BC has been strongly pressuring agencies to close group homes in an effort to find more than $20 million in savings.
Agencies and group home residents are complaining about strong-arm bully tactics by CLBC, as developmentally disabled adults are forced out of their homes, and with officials then lying to the public to cover up what's happening.
Here is a link to a U-Tube video: Save Our Group Homes
And some recent news coverage:
Victoria Times Colonist: BC government agency accused of duping public about group homes
Youth hits black hole at 19, MCFD seizes siblings
This has to be one of the most heartbreaking stories I've heard. CBC News readers have reacted with an outpouring of outrage, but whether this has any power to move Ministers Coleman or Polak remains unclear:
Children taken because of mentally ill brother
Kamloops parents say lack of government help for son put other children at risk
April 27, 2010
A couple in Kamloops had their three youngest children removed by the B.C. government after they gave shelter to their violent, mentally ill adult son, who had been turned away from government care.
"We were backed into a corner," said the children's mother, Leah Flagg. "We had to choose between the well-being of one child or our other children."
Leah and Steve Flagg have four children, aged 11 to 20. Leah said her oldest son, Trevor, has brain damage and has been diagnosed with several types of mental illness. She said he can be paranoid, obsessive and violent.
When he was 13, he beat his mother badly, she said, so the parents placed him in the care of B.C.'s Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). He had also harmed his younger siblings.
"He does really well when he's on medication and the medication is working. When he's not stabilized, conflict can become a physically aggressive situation in seconds," said Leah.
Nowhere else to go
Trevor was living in a secure youth residence, with 24-hour supervision, when he turned 19. At that point, because he was an adult, the ministry was no longer responsible for him. His parents said they could find no other government agency or community agency to take him in. Read more