vody/> RCM - Revitalizing Community Membership: Empowering Independence: Longest Serving Director Of DC Disability Agency Departs

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Longest Serving Director Of DC Disability Agency Departs



Applause is rarely allowed in a courtroom, much less a full standing ovation — for a defendant.

But that's what happened on Wednesday afternoon, when U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle led an ovation for Laura Nuss, the departing director of the D.C. Department on Disability Services, the city agency charged with serving residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The moment of celebration came as Nuss prepares to leave the agency she has led since 2010, making her the agency's longest-serving director.

In that time, she has led what many say is a dramatic turnaround in an agency that for decades had been dysfunctional — and unable to escape from the Evans class action lawsuit filed in 1976 over conditions at Forest Haven, the institution where people with disabilities were sent until it was closed in 1991.

Huvelle, who has presided over the Evans case for 16 years — and often lambasted Nuss for her agency's performance in earlier court hearings — said Wednesday that Nuss's longevity at DDS contributed both to the turnaround and the possibility that the Evans suit will be dismissed later this year.

"We wouldn't have done it without you," said Huvelle to Nuss at Wednesday afternoon's hearing. "Until we got consistent management, we weren't able to move the ball."

As we reported in our four-part series "From Institution to Inclusion" in March, while the Evans lawsuit succeeded in closing Forest Haven and moving its 1,000 residents into other living arrangements in D.C., the city has long failed to meet the broader requirements of the suit: that residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities be offered the opportunity to be more closely integrated into their community.

To read more on this story, click here: Longest-Serving Director Of D.C. Disability Agency Departs 


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