Reports from the Front in Blunt's War on the Disabled

Yesterday, Matt Blunt's Department of Mental Health announced to the parents and caretakers of disabled individuals at Bellefontaine Habilitation Center that 140 residents would be forced into the care of private care providers and out of the facility they call home.  Also announced was that nearly 400 of the employees who care for Bellefontaine residents would be terminated at the beginning of 2008.  The Post-Dispatch explained:

The plan, revealed Thursday to Bellefontaine employees and some parents
of residents, did not receive a warm welcome from representatives of
those groups.

Betty Coll, vice president of the Bellefontaine Habilitation Center
Parents Association and president of the Mental Retardation Association
of Missouri, called the state's plan incomplete and said it does not
assure residents' safety.

One attendee at the event relayed to Fired Up! a telling vignette from the scene of yesterday's announcement. 

When DMH hatchet man Bernie Simons completed his presentation, a habilitation center employee, Rafael Sowler, mentioned to Simons the experiences of other states with moving severely developmentally disabled individuals out of their long-term living situation.  Sowler explained that when individuals like the ones at Bellefontaine are moved, the attendant rate of death --due to the drastic change and upheaval introduced into an already delicate life-- is alarmingly high. 

Simons' response to the comment was quick and terse:

"We are aware of that."

They know people will die, needlessly, but they will sally forth with the plan anyway.  

What a fine, compassionate bunch.  Apparently, carrying out Matt Blunt's arbitrary agenda for closure and privatization of Bellefontaine is so critically important that it must be completed even if the lives of dozens of developmentally disabled Missourians are put in immediate and identifiable risk as a result.  The Blunt regime, as demonstrated by Simons, is astounding in its monstrosity.