For D.C. residents with developmental disabilities, it’s
been a decades-long fight to be treated like everyone else.
Forest Haven. The name conjures up images of a bucolic
getaway hidden from view by tree-covered hills. But the reality is much
different.
The “haven” is actually a campus of close to two dozen
buildings on 200 acres outside Laurel, Maryland. At the peak of its 66-year
history, it held some 1,300 D.C. residents with intellectual and developmental
disabilities. In 1976, a group of parents sued the city over conditions there.
Two years later, a federal judge ordered it closed. In 1991, it finally did.
Today it stands abandoned and overgrown.
But even though D.C. was one of the first places in the
country to completely abandon the use of institutions for people with
developmental disabilities, the broader process of integration has been much
slower. D.C. residents with disabilities may no longer live in segregated and
isolated facilities like Forest Haven, but they also don’t enjoy some of the
same chances and choices — especially in employment — as everyone else.
To read more on this story, click here: From Institution To Inclusion
My brother, Robert Whiteing was living here before coming to RCM.
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