Family members of about 60 remaining residents at the state-run Rosewood Center said they will resist Gov. Martin O?Malley?s plan to close the facility for people who are developmentally disabled next year.
Opposition to the plan to shutter the center by July 2009 is gaining momentum, said family members who met Sunday afternoon on the Owings Mills campus in Baltimore County, which has been the subject of reports of abuse and neglect. O?Malley announced in January his plan to transfer most of the center?s remaining 156 residents to group homes in the community, alarming some family members who said the move would be a “death warrant.”
“My brother is never going to survive in the community,” said Joan Druso, whose brother Michael functions at a 3-year-old level. “It?s like a death sentence.”
The meeting was the third since O?Malley?s announcement ? one, a week later, included state officials who told reluctant family members their loved ones could be moved to a similar state-run institution. The closest to Rosewood is about 73 miles away.
State officials, who were not invited to Sunday?s gathering, said closure is the only solution to a series of alarming reports ranging from razor blades on the lawn to residents receiving incorrect medications to violent assaults.
“Moving these people to the community is a necessary but not sufficient condition to improving their quality of life,” facility director Michael Day previously told The Examiner. “We?re trying to move these people to a better life.”
But plan critics say group homes are no safer than Rosewood.
The state last year received 3,000 complaints concerning safety in group homes and inspected only 56 percent of Maryland?s 2,700 licensed facilities, according to the Office of Health Care Quality.
Rosalind Gregory, whose son Damian lives at Rosewood, said she fears many residents who are moved to the community will wind up homeless.
“They can get lost in the system,” Gregory said. “It?s an overwhelmed system across the board.”
