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HARRISBURG — A lengthy, often heated state Senate committee hearing Tuesday on plans to close the White Haven and Polk state centers represented only “the beginning of the conversation,” the Western Pennsylvania lawmaker chairing the panel vowed.
“We heard today a lot about real life and real people,” said state Sen. Michele Brooks, R-Greenville, chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee (HHS).
“We’ve heard from real families that they don’t want this decision,” Brooks said, adding that discussions of the move’s legal and moral aspects will continue.
The centers, in Luzerne and Venango counties, respectively serve individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities — 111 in the case of White Haven, many of whom have lived there for decades.
Brooks and other state lawmakers — including four from Luzerne County — heard polarized testimony from more than a dozen witnesses ranging from a physician, disability rights groups, family members, center employees, and Department of Human Services Secretary Teresa Miller about DHS’ decision to close the two facilities within three years, as announced suddenly last month.
The hearing was followed by a rally on the State Capitol steps at which employees from both facilities, together with union representatives and state Sen. John Yudichak, D-Plymouth Township, criticized the decision and expressed hope that Tuesday’s hearing could slow or alter the course of DHS’ plans.
“If we’re going to close these facilities it will have such a dramatic personal impact on those that are the most vulnerable in our society, in addition to the devastating economic impact, it should be thoughtful, it should be thorough, and it should be transparent,” Yudichak told the Times Leader following the rally and hearing.
“It should go through the budgetary process, and that means appropriations hearings,” Yudichak added. “It should go through the oversight committees, which means the Health and Human Services Committee.”
Rather, Yudichak said, the move represented a unilateral decision by DHS and the Wolf administration, something he grilled Miller about during the hearing.
The senator asked Miller specifically whether the decision to close the centers was reviewed before the appropriations and HHS committees.
Miller replied that DHS policy sought to avoid premature discussions of closure plans to avert creating distress for residents, families and employees “before we were ready to pull the trigger.”
“The process still failed them,” Yudichak responded, faulting DHS for a lack of community and legislative input prior to the decision.
State Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Lehman Township, agreed.
“We all believe the process is backward,” Baker said, calling that lack of consultation “troubling.”
Yudichak also took aim at what he called a “philosophical” decision by DHS — citing statements by Miller and others at the agency that they believe people with intellectual disabilities should live in the community rather than in institutional settings — adding that he believed that was the agency’s driving factor rather than Miller’s argument that it was a budgetary decision.
Miller told lawmakers that the state center system, which evolved at the turn of the 20th century, served more than 23,000 people in 1960, but with revisions in standards of care and other social changes has declined to just about 700 residents in four centers.
“Institutionalization is now a temporary or last resort means of care,” Miller said.
With admission to the remaining centers governed not by DHS but by a combination of statute and case law, she added that the number of new admissions is likely to remain low.
“Four centers are no longer necessary to meet this population’s needs,” Miller said.
The secretary said caring for each resident “hovers in the $400,000 to $450,000 range,” and that as the number of residents in the centers declines, that cost per resident goes up. Deputy DHS Secretary Kristin Ahrens told the panel that both White Haven and Polk are roughly half vacant.
“We need to consider the sustainability of this system as it stands,” Miller said. “If we don’t make this decision now, when do we make it? When there are 50 residents? When there are 20? 10? One? With every drop in the census, the cost of care gets higher.”
Advocates of the centers argued that access to their services should remain a right for families who opt for them over group homes or other community settings, as the families of White Haven and Polk residents have done.
If White Haven and Polk closed, that would leave just two state centers: Ebensburg, in Cambria County, and Selinsgrove, in Snyder County, for those families and residents who opted to remain in state centers.
Brooks pointed out that this would result in a drive of two hours or more for many families whose loved ones are at Polk, for example, adding that the move did not consider the needs of rural Pennsylvanians.
Others took exception to the notion that residents of state centers live less than full lives or are denied access to community participation.
Maria Ferrey, a caseworker who has been at White Haven for 15 years, said residents there vote, attend religious services, participate in Special Olympics, go on day trips, and some hold down jobs outside the center.
Like many speakers, she also noted that several residents have been at White Haven for decades —the average length of stay is 47 years — and warned that the transition could be hazardous for some through transfer trauma.
That was a heated topic.
When the state announced closure Hamburg State Center in Berks County in 2017, there were 80 residents, Miller said. Six died before closure in 2018, and 11 have died since. She told the panel she did not believe there had been an “accelerated incidence” of deaths.
Gregory Smith, president of the White Haven Center Board of Trustees, former center director and a 35-year veteran of the state health system, cited research in California and other states regarding transfer trauma and post-closure deaths.
He predicted that residents at White Haven, “who have some of the most complex physical health conditions,” would be especially vulnerable to transfer trauma.
“I’m here to tell you there is a significant body of evidence,” Smith said, “and none of it is good.”