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WILKES-BARRE — Today’s hearing before the Senate Health and Human Services Committee in Harrisburg promises to be filled with information and emotion as advocates take their case to lawmakers to try to convince the Wolf Administration to not close the White Haven and Polk state centers.
In August, Gov. Tom Wolf and the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the two centers would be closing over a three-year period. That set off a wave of reaction with families of residents, employees and state legislators.
Sen. John Yudichak, D-Plymouth Township, and Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Lehman Township, intend to continue their efforts to keep the centers open.
Baker said the hearing is an opportunity for the arguments against closure that were made locally to now be heard statewide. She said at the mandated hearing held recently, state officials made several assertions about how they intend to treat residents, families, and workers.
“The Senate committee with jurisdiction over DHS is one of the places where oversight is exercised to make sure those promises become commitments,” Baker said. “That by no means indicates we are resigned to closure. We remain highly dissatisfied with a state process where a closure decision is secretly arrived at, and only then does the process of sharing justifications and details begin.”
Baker also said that there has been no apparent consideration of operating other services out of the facility to extend its useful life and transition to another purpose, in consultation with the community.
Yudichak said the Senate hearing will allow advocates to reiterate that the proposal to close White Haven and Polk State Centers is a misguided one that will have devastating impacts on the people that live there, their families, the employees that care for the people who reside at the centers, and the regional economies surrounding the two centers.
“I plan to join family members and employees of White Haven Center at the hearing and at a rally in the afternoon to voice our opposition with the hope that the Department of Human Services will hear our calls and keep these centers open,” Yudichak said.
Tuesday’s hearing will be held in the East Wing of the Capitol, Hearing Room 8E-B, at 11 a.m.
A family struggles
Margaretta E. Bemisderfer of Louisville, Ky., is concerned about her brother, Wendell Resseguie, 69, who has been a resident at White Haven Center for nearly 50 years.
”He is totally unable to care for himself, being blind, deaf, non-verbal and wheelchair bound,” Bemisderfer said of her brother. “Our mother, who is 99, recently entered a nursing home in Susquehanna and I live in Louisville. You can see that this closing of White Haven Center is not only devastating to us, but we now live with a feeling of desperation as we try to deal with transitioning our loved one into an unknown community.”
Bemisderfer said she has written to Gov. Wolf and emailed U.S. Sen. Bob Casey without receiving a response from either. She has even written President Trump regarding not only her brother’s situation, but the need to keep such institutions open as the mental health needs of our society expand and families are forced to continue flailing in the wind with failing “community options.”
Bemisderfer said she participated in an Aug. 19 teleconference call announcing the closure, and she attended the recent Sept. 19 meeting at the center that dealt with the transition process and proposed community options.
“Nothing of what I have heard is reassuring,” she said. “In spite of the flowery, lofty, sentimental language expressed by Secretary Teresa Miller of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services that the goal is that ‘every Pennsylvanian can live an everyday life,’ there has been little transparency about these closures.”
Miller said during remarks in Luzerne County last week that if it takes longer than three years to place all the residents in group homes, the closure would be delayed.
Bemisderfer said she has been told:
• That any care that was needed by a transitioned resident would be provided through a community option.
• That if new sites needed to be built for a community provider in order to meet the specific needs of a transitioned resident, they would be built — or sites would be renovated or rented.
• If 24-hour, 7-days a week in-home nursing care is needed, it will be provided.
• Out-of-state family members/advocates could view a potential provider’s home via a virtual visit.
“My point is this — if the transitioning into the community, including the maintenance of each placement, is so complete, so exhaustive (a resident will even be placed in a site near an airport so a family member/advocate will have easier access for visitation), then why not spend the money to keep the residents at a place where all those vital services are consolidated and where a known and familiar community already exists and where a known, reliable accounting of cost is in place?” Bemisderfer asked. “Someone must address the value aspect of this — its effects on the residents, the families, the staff at WHC and the community at-large are too huge to be overlooked by the state.”
Bemisderfer said she doesn’t believe that the well-being of the residents at White Haven Center would be enhanced by taking them out of “the only home they have known.”
“We should be talking care of those who can not care for themselves,” she said. “People like my brother need people around who can help them — they need to be protected. “My brother cannot experience the life they want by placing him in a group home.”