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EDITORIAL: CVTC Residents Deserve a Safe and Modern Facility
Dec 07, 2008 (The News & Advance - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Last week, about 200 supporters of the Virginia Alliance for Community rallied in Richmond, seeking to build support for their call for Virginia to abandon the Central Virginia Training Center.
It's a call we hope policymakers in state government and leaders in the General Assembly don't heed.
The Assembly approved $43 million for CVTC to pay for such things as safety upgrades and modernization at the Madison Heights facility. About 460 severely disabled individuals live at the center, cared for by more than 1,400 employees.
The Alliance for Community is vehemently opposed to a training center-type setting for the disabled. Their approach is to get everyone in a community-based group. Hence, their lusting after the $43 million pot of cash that's got CVTC's name on it. In their eyes, that money could be put to better use by greatly increasing the number of group homes in Virginia.
That is simply unfeasible and unrealistic.
CVTC is home to some of the most severely disabled individuals in Virginia, people who need specialized medical care and training around the clock. To think that all of them could safely live in a group home is just naive.
Don't take our word for it; take the word of a parent of two CVTC residents.
Amherst resident Martha Bryant has two severely disabled twin boys living at the center's hospital care wing; she's also the vice president of CVTC Families and Friends, a group that advocates on behalf of the center and its residents.
She correctly points out that a training center is head and shoulders above what a group home can offer in the way of specialized medical care. CVTC, in fact, provides four levels of care for the disabled ranging from hospital care, to skilled nursing, intermediate care and regional community support. Not everyone, she stresses, can survive outside of a specialized care setting.
That's what the Alliance for Community can't seem to accept. Residential care for the severely disabled must be an option that the state provides to its most vulnerable citizens.
The goals of the Alliance for Community -- specifically, to get the disabled into the greater community -- are admirable.
It is unreasonable and unrealistic, however, to claim that every single resident of CVTC would be better off in a community-based group home. The reality is that many would not.
The Alliance for Community's very public attempt to grab the entire $43 million set aside by the state for CVTC will not help anyone. It may well harm many of the very people its members purport to be working for.
To see more of The News & Advance, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.newsadvance.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The News & Advance, Lynchburg,
Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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