SDC update

There is good news, bad news and no news concerning the fate of the Sonoma Developmental Center and the remaining 439 residents of the bucolic, 1,000-acre Glen Ellen campus now in the center of a policy debate over how, where and when to move the majority into small, mainstreamed community facilities.

The debate will heat up again soon, with news last week that the California Health and Human Services Agency will reconvene the Task Force on the Future of Developmental Centers, which delivered an inconclusive report on SDC’s fate in January.

The good news is that the moratorium on new admissions has been lifted, as of Jan. 1, 2015. The ban, imposed in 2012, helped speed the decline in developmental center populations. Two years ago, SDC had 531 residents; a year ago the number was down to 485. Twenty years ago, there were almost 1,200. The attrition has been, to some extent, natural. SDC has an aging population with unique medical issues.

But critics of mainstreaming as many residents as possible into small, community-based group homes, have been skeptical that adequate resources can be found to replace the unique variety and expertise of medical and behavioral services at SDC. And they have argued that the moratorium on new admissions excludes developmentally disabled clients with acute needs that can’t be met outside a developmental center.

The bad news is that only five beds will be opened up to new admissions. The criteria used to set that limit is unclear, but funding was provided in the May Revise budget signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, and is now official.

Most SDC supporters have greeted the news as a positive sign, and clearly it’s a step in the right direction. But it’s a very cautious step and it leads us to wonder if anyone fully understands and has planned for the real dimensions of future developmental disability needs.

Each year, according to the Department of Developmental Services (DDS), between 175 and 200 “consumers” are “transitioned” out of developmental centers and into community-based services. Some of those transitions are appropriate and successful, some of them aren’t. Simultaneously, a burgeoning population of people with autism spectrum disorders is flooding the regional centers established to care for developmental clients in local communities.

Between 1992 and 2007, the autism spectrum caseload at the North Bay Regional Center increased from 135 cases to 800. At the Alta California Regional Center, the autism caseload exploded from 210 to 1,771, at a time when the overall caseload was merely doubling. At the Golden Gate Regional Center, autism cases went from 270 to 823.

This leads us to the no news question.

If a realistic estimate of the future need for care and supervision of developmentally disabled California citizens is available, including those with autism spectrum disorders, we’d like to see it. If not, a key piece of the puzzle is missing.

And, while the medical and quality of life needs of SDC residents is an uppermost concern, that concern cannot be divorced from the needs of medical and care-giving staff, the larger community’s historic dependence on SDC revenue, and any future use of the priceless land in question.

Hopefully, the reconvened Task Force can address those issues.

– David Bolling