Facilitators and Barriers in the Community Placement Process for Developmentally Disabled Individuals Facing Deinstitutionalization
Novak, Angela Ruth
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/68855
Description
Title
Facilitators and Barriers in the Community Placement Process for Developmentally Disabled Individuals Facing Deinstitutionalization
Author(s)
Novak, Angela Ruth
Issue Date
1983
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Special
Abstract
The process of placement of developmentally disabled individuals from Central Wisconsin Center (CWC), a Wisconsin state institution, into community residential alternatives over a recent three and one-half year period (December 1, 1977, to May 21, 1981) was examined. The purposes of the study were to determine: (1) the patterns in the placement process for the released individuals, if any; (2) the relationship between socioeconomic and political characteristics of individual Wisconsin counties and their use of local resources for developmentally disabled individuals; (3) the critical variables that facilitated and hindered release from the institution; (4) the critical variables that determined whether a released person was placed into a nursing, group, or foster home; (5) the way the placement process system was perceived as working by the "line worker," i.e., institution and county placement staff who had direct responsibility for cases.
Forty-two released individuals were matched with 42 individuals still residing at the institution. The study's three foci were: (1) the relationship of socioeconomic and political measures of the 24 Wisconsin counties who had responsibility for subjects to indices of county placement policies; (2) questionnaire responses of institution and county placement personnel about specific placement cases; (3) qualitative interviews of questionnaire respondents.
Results indicated that the number of different types of placement settings used by a county was predicted by that county's affluence, liberalism, size of county developmental disabilities staff, and county d.d. board structure.
No objective standards existed for determining whether a person belonged in the community, or into what type of residence they should be moved. Both county and institution respondents rated the institution placement staff as playing the most positive role in placement itself, and in continuing to urge placement for persons not placed. Institution workers applied an "in-out" dichotomy in considering certain individuals as belonging in the community or in the institution, and did not apply the principle of a residential continuum.
County personnel in general failed to claim deinstitutionalization as their responsibility. The placement process system was characterized as circularly frustrating for placement staff and as encouraging "blaming the victim" of institution residents themselves for their perceived "unplaceability."
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