Technically a "Colony" of the Fernald Center, the Templeton Development Center in Baldwinville, Mass. has specialized in residents with MR/DD who also have challenging behavioral issues. The residents therefore are on the average younger and less physically disabled than at other Developmental Centers. It is also the most isolated, and the center that is still a working farm. Many states while closing or downsizing other developmental centers have expanded their capacity for residents with challenging behaviors who might otherwise be imprisoned. (Since there are no medicaid reimbursements for prison beds, it is more costly to imprison people with MR/DD than to support them at the Templeton Center.)
Commissioner Howe has told Templeton families that DDS would like to keep the working farm and a network of group homes to maintain a downsized function at the Templeton property, but would not keep the federal ICF designation with its requirements of 24-hour nursing availability and staff therapists and physicians. Nor would there be room for many residents to stay even in the downgraded campus.
At the same meeting, a guardian explained to the Commissioner that "I don't know what is meant by the terms 'institution' and 'community.' My brother cannot cross a street by himself because he doesn't look. He cannot make himself understood to anyone who doesn't know him very well. He would be more institutionalized at a group home than he is at Templeton. Here he is in a neighborhood of people like himself and can decide each day where he will go and who he will visit. This is his community. In a group home, he would be unable to go out without a staff member to be with him, which he hates. He would be parked in front of a television set all day."
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