Comments

This is a view in the actual Kirkbride Building, the most center building that Avalon Bay agreed not to tear down. The bat-wing buildings all had metal railings / staircases, but the Kirkbride is the only one made of wood. We used to run up these stairs all the time, because the elevator was always busy.

When I worked at Danvers State, was on this room many times. A security guard gave me a master key so I could go anyplace we wanted. Also, Session 9 filmed one of their scenes on this roof . .

Well, actually I was writing to isabeats, but if you want to hop in, feel free. :-)

The answer to your question Motts is..the national guard performes drills in this place...

lol...I agree Janice...

The point is Lynne...we are all reading your posts and we know that the staff isnt all to blame in some buildings. Ok? We get it...enough with the rants. We know about how you said the places are bad....and some places are good...thats what we are all saying. Every one of us is arguing over the same thing... We are all saying that this place was bad, and some places today are bad, But there are still wonderful people working in these places. We all agree with both sides...So therefore...Why are we fighting? It doesnt make sense. I think that we're wasting time, and fighting for no reason. So then, lets stop.

Sam, you are cuter than a speckle-eyed puppy. I really like you. I know you think that people automatically write off younger people, but when they show such uncommon good sense and compassion as you show, it's always a delight.

isabeats, the irony here is that I am actually very pro-community. I don't believe that the vast majority of people should ever have been in an institutional setting in the first place because the research (and my personal observation, which is obviously much smaller in scope and much more biased) tells me that in most cases they aren't the best places to help people develop to their fullest potential. That has to do with funding and the fact that you have to blindly rely on the fact that there will be someone to care about you as much as a member of your family might have.

However, the truth is that there were (and still are) a number of families who don't have the resources and/or the willingness to take care of family members with these types of severe disabilities. Therefore, we end up with a system where human care is brokeraged and some people actually expect that we can pay people to care about other people and keep them as safe as they would take care of a member of their own family.

There are some families with children with disabilities who keep their children at home who abuse their children because they are also short on resources, and I don't see as much concern over those folks harming their own children as I do the upset that I am hearing about total strangers who were ill-trained and paid poorly who hurt people. I think that is kind of weird, myself. If it happens in a person's own natural home, are we shocked it would happen where there are no blood ties?

But is it the families' fault here? Am I tossing bricks at Jodi's family for sending her uncle away and not taking care of him at home or not visiting him and asking whether he was doing well or whether he needed anything or observing how he interacted with staff? No, that wasn't done then. No one seems to catch that side of it either.

Everyone threw the problem in the air and expected the state to take care of everything, but few people ever got involved or helped support the places, either by visiting often, by getting involved, or by insisting that money came the way of these places.

So when that ended up causing a nightmare situation and we now see what we caused in our folly and we pick out the individual staff who were caught up in this nightmarish system and who failed and we poke them in the eye with a sharp stick, I am always a little surprised and saddened.

What do I think about people who harm people who have severe disabilities? I hate to admit it, but I never automatically condemn them without first trying to figure out why it happened. I make DAMN sure they are immediately away from the person they injured, but if it turns out there was a systems error, then it is my job to fix it to make sure it doesn't happen again. I work at the systems level because I am concerned about more than just Jodi's uncle. It was bad what happened to him, but I want to make sure there are no more people who are treated like Jodi's uncle, and I can't accomplish that if I get mired down in one case because there are a myriad of reasons why things like this occur. I am not simplistic enough to believe that there is only one factor at work here and that this factor is human evil.

Get rid of bad people. Yes. Do that immediately (IF the state allows you that luxury by the staff protection laws that are sometimes damned tricky to negotiate). Any time I see or suspect abuse or neglect I work and work and work until the situation is resolved. That has not always won me friends or helped me influence people positively, as I am sure you can personally attest. But don't for a minute believe that the evil was just in one person because then you are leaving all the other folks open to abuse because the system will be just as bad if you don't get to the ROOT of the problem.

I say, kill all the cockroaches you see. That is a good thing. But if you don't get to the heart of the problem and kill them where they are hiding and breeding, all you've gotten rid of is one cockroach. I would rather see the whole nest taken out. A proactive stance is ALWAYS more effective than a reactive stance.

As regards peoples' personal experiences who lived at the different facilities, I have worked at 5 different facilities and I have seen and heard all manner of opinions from people after they have left. Some folks loved it, some hated it, some were neutral. I have found that if the group gets together and someone starts to speak up pro or con, the group tends to go along with whichever view is stated because the truth is that there was both good and bad at these places. I think, however, that if you get a group of people who did not live in large facilities and get them all together to talk about their childhood and their lives and the towns and families they grew up in, you'll also find a lot of positive and negative. That's part and parcel of being human. Some homes and families were great and some really sucked.

I do think everyone should grow up in their own home and with their own family, assuming the resources are there and they are treated well. But I don't get to make that choice. I just try to deal with it after the families and state and systems have made that choice, and I try to make a difference in the systems and the state so that more people can live at home and so that the families have the resources they need and so the people who live in the facility where I work are safe and get everything they need as long as they live there. I also come to sites like this and try to provide information about what these places were like and are like, both the good side and the bad side. That may be a very small piece of the universe, but at this point it's as far as I can stretch myself.

I used to work with a "mentally ill" man who did art similar to this. But my favorite piece by him was a sort of paper sculpture on a table in the window. It was an Aunt Jemima box with various folds and attached objects, and what looked like antennae. Every morning he would turn it in a certain direction and every night he'd turn it around again. I asked him why and he explained how turning it one way or another caused the sun to rise or set. He was a very nice and gentle old man who had become responsible for the daily rising and setting of the sun. Good old Alex...

Since there seem to be a lot of references to "people screaming" on this site, I'll just say that, yes, some people do scream and you can hear them from outside, and naturally you'll think the worst and think someone must be getting beaten or something worse, but usually, almost always, it's much more mundane. In crowded, noisy wards it can be a way to get some attention. Or perhaps another client stole someone's snack and the person screams. Some people used to scream any time you directed them to use the bathroom. Very rarely is what is happening inside as bad as it can sound from the outside.

I've visited here every so often, and posted a few times. Just let me say that I truly appreciate your artistic ability and the fortitude to keep this site up and running.

There are always people who care, and there are always people who do not. There is always at least two sides to an interaction.

I'm on no one's side, but I see both. some institutes would be worse than others. Some would start off great, but go down hill.

One factor was probably funding, which resultied in staffing, care, and a million other problems.

Plus, back then (and even now) sometimes 'retarded' people are disreguarded, and disliked.

Personally, I like this photo. Perhaps the artist wanted to give the children something to dream about, or imagine. Perhaps a caring staff emember paid the artist out of their own miniscule wages to have something happy in what they knew were bad conditions.

Maybe it showed there is good, happy things.

Or maybe it was installed to make the children yearn.

I doubt the latter, but still.

It is amazing what a simple photograph can instill in us.

oh, and was there any criminally insane here? Because abuse (intentional or unintentional) cna go two ways occasionally.

No one is perfect. And no one should expect anyone to be.

Accidents happen, even now, in hospitals. not that staff means to do it, but it happens. I should know. My dad got injected the wrong thing and almost died, but the crash team or whatever saved him.

It was no one's fault, the nurse immediatly got help, so no harm was done. I cannot remember if she was punished or not.

But there have been others who go out of their way to help patients.

So no one should be bad mouthing anyone. There is always bad apples, and maybe we should all concentrate on the good and not the bad.

At least that is from my opinion.

I wasn't even alive when this thing was open, I don't think anyway.

....

Lynne- I agree with everything you say here (and if you've said it a million times before, I haven't read those posts yet- I've read very few so far). All I was trying to say is that there is individual responsibility too: some slimy, hateful people were/are drawn to human services and act nastily all on their own, without "the State" having any responsibility about that... though it does have responsibility for much else. I know there are good staff (whom I did acknowledge in my previous opinion). By the way, after Belchertown closed down and the people who lived there had moved into the community, there were annual gatherings to celebrate the closing of BSS. Client after client after client would speak up (into microphones) telling their stories, none of which were very happy. And none of these people who had lived there ever spoke well of BSS. It's too bad that voices like theirs weren't heard more often on this site (or are they?)- they lived the experience that we, even if we worked there, can never truly comprehend, try as we might.

i am done talking here because you poeple have no idea

Did I forget to write the part where I said there was abuse at these places? Did I forget to say that there were some awful things going on here? I must have forgotten to say that there was abuse at these places and some downright unattractive things going on here.

Hello, everyone. Guess what? I am going to clue you in on a little secret that I apparently have forgotten to mention here and everywhere else on this site where I have written. There was abuse at these places. Documented abuse. Photographed abuse. Tape recorded abuse. At this place and every other place out there. Including places in your neighborhood. Including this very week. No gasps of horror or outrage please, I can even prove it. I have even seen it.

Now, where were we?

Oh yes:

1. If society doesn't value certain people;
2. And they are sent away where no one can see them because they are of "less value";
3. And society doesn't pay much money for their care;
4. And they pay staff minimum wages to work with them;
5. And they make these staff work long hours and lots of mandatory overtime;
6. And if they don't have the technology to provide habilitative care (which wasn't even developed until the last 50 years);
7. And people treat the caretakers poorly because society doesn't value their charges (who were sent away due to their low value to society, mind you);
8. And the administration, being horribly overwhelmed with hideous amounts of overtime pay to keep the place running because no one wants to work there in the first place because of all the above factors, sometimes retains staff who are known to be abusive because otherwise there will be even fewer staff there (and they then end up between a rock and a hard place deciding whether to keep the abusive staff because otherwise, by firing the bad staff, the staffing ratios will then drop to 1 staff to 100 individuals);
9. And residing there are a large number of people with poor to minimal social skills who are at the developmental level where the highest rate of abuse occurs in the "normal" community;
10. And abuse occurs;
11. And you are shocked and blame it on the people who worked here with all this going on;
12. Then you are a knucklehead.

There were plenty of staff who worked here who did a lovely job under these circumstances. I don't hear anyone commending them, ironically. Everyone would rather poke at the staff who failed under such bad situations. But if you want to blame the people who were put in this situation and failed because they were human, you are missing the thing that will keep this from happening again.

And that is the real tragedy.

Not your individual story about the uncle. That is sad. That shouldn't have happened. It is a very bad thing that occurred.

But it will occur again and again and again until someone who votes starts to understand WHY it occurred. It occurred because we, the people, set up the horrible, terrible conditions under which many good people failed.

If you have a large facility that has adequate funding, a supportive administration, excellent technology, involved professionals, and well paid staff, the amount of abuse goes down to where it is significantly less than seen in the community. So that tells me that abuse is not inherent in people, it is inherent in bad conditions.

Did you know that when people are poor and hungry and have sick children and have few options they are more likely to steal? That's not a shocker, is it? So why is it a shocker to anyone that under bad situations staff are more prone to do bad things? Why chuck stones at the people who worked under these conditions and not the system and culture that engendered these situations?

I don't know. Maybe getting old enables people to see the wider side of life and circumstances. I was young once and things were a lot more black and white. But they were never so black and white that I didn't try to look at everything before I chucked a rock at it.

Staff who hurt people should not continue to work with them. Situations that engender abuse need to be fixed. But if you continue to insist that the evil lies only within the PERSON and not within the SYSTEM, you have condemned everyone else to the same fate as the uncle.

And that is a shame for the rest of the people out there that everyone claims to care about.