Parents help keep Bellefontaine center open
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In this 2004 picture, resident Patrick Coll shows his bedroom where he had lived at the Bellefontaine Habilitation Center since 1965.
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(Robert Cohen/P-D)
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/06/2009
ST. LOUIS -- Patrick Coll, a severely mentally disabled man, will stay put at the only home he's known for 45 years -- the Bellefontaine Habilitation Center.
For years, the state of Missouri has been trying to shut down the center for the state's most severely mentally and physically disabled residents located just southwest of the intersection of Interstate 270 and Highway 367.
But, when Gov. Jay Nixon was elected last year, he made good on his vow to keep open the 100-year-old center that once housed up to 400 residents. It has dozens of group homes on a rambling tract of land where residents have a gym, an Olympic-sized pool and even a therapy room to occupy their time there.
Nixon and the Missouri legislature has earmarked $18 million to build four new group homes for those now living in the center's Elliott Building where a leaky roof has caused severe damage. The money will also go to rehab several other homes on the center grounds that were allowed to deteriorate under former Gov. Matt Blunt's administration.
The administration under Blunt had been trying to shut the center down and disperse all of the residents to private homes or to houses in neighborhoods living with other mentally disabled Missourians. He said the place was dangerous after at least one resident died hours after phoning a relative to say he was being beaten by a staff member at the center.
Blunt's plan met great resistance and, while he pushed the Missouri Department of Mental Health, which oversees the center, to shut it down, the buildings continued to decline. The administration had urged the families to remove the residents. Many did, only to see their conditions deteriorate after leaving the center.
Worried about the shutdown, many of the center's staff members quit to get other, more-stable work. And, the remaining center employees were forced to work overtimes that sometimes included double shifts.
"A lot of the good staff were laid off and a lot of them quit their jobs because of the threats that the center would be closing," said Betty Coll, Patrick's mother and a long-time advocate of the center. "The administrators for the Mental Health department have been trying for years to push my son and all of the others out. They were wrong. They knew they were wrong, but they went ahead anyway."
Coll said that many of the residents forced out to other privately run homes had to return because the private caretakers could not handle their sometimes bizarre behaviors.
Betty Coll is the vice-president of the Bellefontaine parent's association. She was just one of a contingency of parents who conducted a sit-in in Blunt's office in Jefferson City. He spoke to them once and told them he would not change his mind. Bellefontaine had to go, he told them.
"He did not have a clue about people like my son who are very, very vulnerable," Coll said Thursday. "People like him think anyone can tie their shoes and stand up tall. My son could never do those things."
Coll said that while Nixon was serving as Missouri Attorney General, and before he ever ran for governor, he visited the center and listened to what the workers and parents had to say about saving it. "He was one man who really understood," Coll said. "We had a governor in all these years who really understood the residents and their families and how they felt. He actually stood by his promise to help Bellefontaine." Last year, the state had begun laying off workers and the parents fought back, accusing the cuts in staff for contributing to residents being harmed. Just before the parents' allegations, several residents got hurt. Among them:
- A resident had to get three stitches to his ear after being attacked by another resident.
- A resident was rushed to the hospital after he shoved a paper clip into his penis. Doctors removed the paper clip.
- A resident had cracked her head on the floor when the seat of a mechanical lift broke. She received nine staples to close the wound.
- A resident of one of the center's apartments was found to have swelling and bruising to his right hand. The injury occurred when a staff member held the arm of the resident, who was fighting a phlebotomist trying to take his blood.
The Post-Dispatch investigated the Department of Mental Health in 2006. The investigation showed that abuse and neglect of mentally retarded and mentally ill residents in state centers, including Bellefontaine, and in private facilities the state supervises. The report chronicled more than 2,000 confirmed cases of abuse and neglect with 665 injuries and 21 deaths in those homes that are overseen by the Mental Health department.
Coll just hopes that her son Patrick, now 53, will always have Bellefontaine to call home.
"This is the best place for them," Coll said of the Bellefontaine center. "They have a park-like center buffered from the hustle and bustle of living in a regular neighborhood where people don't understand what is wrong with them."
Surburban Journals article State approves money for new Bellefontaine facility
$18 million to come from stimulus funds
By Scott Bandle
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:43 AM CDT
The Missouri General Assembly has approved funding to build a new, 52-bed facility at the Bellefontaine Habilitation Center.
The state approved $18 million for the facility from $381 million in federal stimulus funds for state projects.
The plans had been in place for a long time, but backers of the center - a residential center for the developmentally disabled - still were holding their breath Thursday when the money was approved, said State Rep. Gina Walsh, a Democrat from Bellefontaine Neighbors.
"It was a matter of philosophy," Walsh said. "Many of the Republicans wanted to give the (stimulus) money back as a rebate to the people. However, we were able to talk with them to make a deal and leave it in."
No time line has been set for the facility's construction. Parents of the center's patients want to have some input into its design and use, she said.
"I can understand that," Walsh said. "They spend so much time up there, they know what the center and their relatives need."
The parents and guardians are "ecstatic," said Mary Vitale, president of the Bellefontaine Habilitation Center Parents Association. The association has struggled to keep the campus open in recent years.
"We're looking forward to this as a time for a new building and refurbishing the campus," Vitale said. "(The facility) will provide a good, nourishing atmosphere."
The parents want some input into the project, she said.
"Hopefully, we'll be able to work with the (Missouri) Department of Health on this," Vitale said.
Post 'Letters to the Editor
Nice
letter by Micky
Mr. Robert Stack, head of a community placement company in New Jersey, must still be living in the dark ages. Has he bothered to visit a state habilitation center to see the improvements that have been made over the past 20 or so years.I am so tired of private providers damning the state schoola so rhey can fill their own beds. They make outrageous claims about them but never mention the poor care and conditions in many of the private homes which have been documented by a state audit. .
There are so many untruths in Stack’s letter that I won’t even try to rebut them. I will say that if he would visit the Bellefontaine Habilitation center he would find four bedroom cottages on a lovely well kept campus. There is a workshop. a multipurpose building with a large gym, O/T P/T rooms, program areas and a heated olympic size swimming pool with equipment to lift the severely disabled in and out of the pool. I would not call this a warehouse.
The residents are taken off campus to restaurants, movies, the zoo, ball games, Shriners Circus and many other activities. There is a senior center to meet the needs of the older residents.
Stack calls the state hab centers many derogatory names and says they are shameful.
The families with sons/daughters or siblings at Bellefontaine strongly disagree. My daughter has been well taken care of and while things have not always been perfect where could she go that is. I am grateful for the good care she has received and the dedicated staff who have provided it.
Mickey Slawson
Florissant
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