LAST TWO RESIDENTS LEAVE SPRAWLING SALEM
FACILITY
Fairview closes its doors
FINAL MOMENTS: One of the last two remaining
residents of the Fairview Training Center takes a final look at the view near
the water tower moments before boarding a van that would take him to a state-run
group home.
Treatment philosophy has changed
Small group homes have replaced large institutions like Fairview
The final two residents left Fairview Training
Center on Thursday, ending the Salem landmark's 92-year run as Oregon's central
home for people with mental retardation and developmental disabilities.
It was a quiet finish. The former
institutional giant, once home to 3,000 people, emptied without fanfare.
"It's a very weird place now," Superintendent
John Cooper said. "When I first came to Fairview, it was downright
crowded. Now, it really feels like a ghost town. You can walk clear across
campus without seeing another person."
Hundreds of former Fairview employees said
goodbye to the facility during recent years. Many laid-off employees
transferred to other state jobs. Cooper soon will shift into an
administrative post overseeing state-operated group homes.
 |
PARTING HUG:
Fairview employees
Annette Henry (left) and Karen Myrick hug as Star Thorson, also an
employee watches.
Henry was about to
board a van to accompany the last two Fairview residents to their group
home.
|
A skeleton crew will continue working at Fairview
through March, moving furniture and performing other shutdown tasks. After
that, 10 employees will remain to patrol the grounds and operate the facility's
boiler-fired heating system
Moving day for the last residents came earlier
than planned. "We're about four months ahead of the schedule we
projected four years ago," James Toews, assistant administrator of the
state Office Developmental Disability Services, told legislators in a report
Thursday.
State plans call for selling the 275-acre
campus.
No sale is expected in the near future, however,
because the city of Salem and the state must resolve zoning issues, figure out
who's going to pay for infrastructure improvements, and find developers.
That could take years.
Fairview's aging buildings will be maintained
until the property is sold. The projected cost for mothballing the empty
institution: $1.5 million a year.
Heating dozens of buildings to prevent
deterioration and keeping security watch on the property account for most of the
cost, officials said. "The sooner the process goes through, the
cheaper for the state," Cooper said.
Fairview was enormously expensive to
operate. Coasts soared during the past 15 years while the federal
government mandated staffing increases, expanded treatment programs and upgraded
facilities. The
annual cost of caring for each resident climbed in
1985-87 to $114 million in 1997-99, even though the resident population fell from
about 1,200 people to fewer than 200 during that same time period.
The federal government supplied 60 percent -of Fairview's funding.
'State-officials
decided to abandon Fairview for two fundamental reasons: sheltering people with
developmental disabilities in smaller
community homes is cheaper, and most mental health professionals believe it's
more humane.
Developmental
disability is a catchall term for a physical or mental
impairment often mental
retardation that becomes
apparent in childhood and
limits a person's ability to learn
or care for himself.
Living
in smaller group homes and apartments has become the norm for people with
developmental disabilities, even those unable to speak or care for themselves in
the simplest of ways.
"Just
as almost any of us would to live in a small home or apartment with a limited
number of
individual as opposed to large dormitory-style buildings, the for people
with same holds true for people with disabilities,"
Toews said.
During
the past three decades,
former Fairview residents have moved into government-subsidized group homes,
foster homes and apartments
throughout the state.
Today,
there are more than 500 community homes in Oregon for people with developmental
disabilities, including more than 90 in Marion County. In all, they
shelter more than 2,780 people.
Fairview's
population peaked during
the 1960's when more than 3,000 people were crammed into
dormitories. Many
residents received little or no treatment.
Reformers called for reducing the population.
Large
reductions in Fairview's population began in the
1970s, when state funding was provided for community based programs.
The exodus accelerated during the 1980s when Fairview came under file
from federal regulators. In 1987,
the Justice Department sued Fairview for alleged civil lights abuses arising
from unsafe conditions
and lack of treatment.
Fairview's
population fell from 1,200
in 1985 to 100 last summer to the last two residents Thursday. The systematic phaseout coincided with a national movement to shrink mental
institutions.
During
the past 30 years, the number of institutionalized Americans
with developmental disabilities
has dropped from almost 200,000 to fewer than 50,000.
The change came to be summed up in a single big word:
deinstitutionalization.
The
Eastern Oregon Training Center in Pendleton now operates as Oregon's lone
institution for people with developmental disabilities.
It houses about 80 people. State
mental health Officials said there are no immediate
plans to close EOTC.
Many
advocates for people with developmental disabilities supported the push to close
Fairview. Some considered Fairview a throwback to an era when mentally
retarded people were marooned in institutions for life.
Other advocates said the institution devoured mental health budgets
while thousands of Oregonians
with developmental abilities remained on waiting lists
for services
"We're
an very excited," said Paula
Blue, executive director Of The Are of Oregon, an advocacy group. "There's
nothing good to be said about institutional care.
There's nothing good to be said about living in an institution away
from your community. That's what we
do to prisoners."
But
other people, mainly parents whose children lived at Fairview for much of their
lives, contend that Oregon officials are g a big mistake in doing away with the
he residential center.
"We
don't have a safety net now, said Bud Breithaupt, whose daughter, Margaret, was
transferred from Fairview into a Portland group home nearly a year
ago.
"Everybody
is kind of out here in the community on their own now.
Save for the good graces of some
competent providers, and unfortunately they're at a minimum, you don't have much
latitude if you get into trouble."
Mental
health planners admit that serious problems plague the group home system,
including relatively low wages for caregivers and high rates of staff turnover.
Even so they contend that most former Fairview residents lead better lives
outside the
institution.
"Everyone
isn't better off; there certainly are exceptions," Toews said.
"By and large, though, they're better off because they live in much smaller
settings with less noise, less distractions,
and smaller numbers
of staff to deal with. They're better
off because they have more access to the community."
 |
LAST GOODBYE:
Fairview staff employee Star Thorson blows a kiss to
one of the last two residents of Fairview as he boards a van that will
take him to a state-rum group home. |
This article by Alan Gustafson was published
by the Salem Statesman Journal, February 26, 2000
