A landmark settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and the Commonwealth of Virginia marks the beginning of the end of a shameful era of warehousing severely disabled persons. After a two-year federal investigation found multiple violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Virginia has agreed to phase out four of its five “training centers,” including one in Fairfax County, and spend $2.1 billion over the next decade to expand its system of community-based care with the goal of increasing options for independent living.
A February 2011 “findings” letter by DOJ outlined the damage done by Virginia’s “needless and prolonged institutionalization” of its disabled population. Assigned to “units” of eight to 12 people, training center residents are afforded “very limited privacy,” spending most of their waking hours in depressing, prison-like day rooms with “minimal decorations and little home-like furniture.” They are not even allowed to choose what they’d like to eat or which programs to watch on the group TV. The resulting “learned helplessness” inevitably leads to “regressive consequences” — such as repeated accidents and injuries, behavioral problems, and the use of “planned restraints … as an intervention of first, rather than last, resort.”
