The Fenty administration has failed in its promises to protect and improve the lives of the city’s mentally retarded and disabled, two federal court monitors determined in a new report.
The District has been the defendant in a massive class-action lawsuit alleging that it was indifferent to the mistreatment of its mentally retarded and disabled wards since 1976. Two years into the Fenty regime, court-appointed monitors Clarence Sundram and Margaret G. Farrell found that “the end result is substantially the same as it has been in the past.”
The report was the latest in a series of scathing reviews of Fenty’s reforms this summer. Two weeks ago, a separate court monitor, Amy Totenberg, condemned Fenty and his school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, for losing focus and allowing special education services to continue to slide into chaos. And plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit aimed at D.C.’s foster care system filed papers to have the city held in contempt.
Sundran and Farrell’s report criticized the Fenty administration for not monitoring care and conditions appropriately, for missing deadlines, for attempting to shirk responsibilities under a consent decree and failing to keep promises to reform the city’s health care system for its mentally retarded and disabled wards.
“It bespeaks a lack of care and attention,” according to the report, which was filed late last month.
Fenty and his attorney general-designee, Peter Nickles, have promised to get the city out of its numerous class-action consent decrees stemming from decades of neglect of D.C.’s most vulnerable citizens.
Nickles did not respond to requests for comment.
But D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, chairman of the Human Services Committee, said that the Sundram-Farrell report might not be as damaging at it seems.
“A lot of what they reported on was procedural — like whether the records had the appropriate dates on them,” Wells said. “I’m actually concerned about the actual conditions of the homes.”
Still, Wells acknowledged that he was alarmed to read that Sundram and Farrell found a sample of 25 wards who weren’t getting adequate health care.
“There’s a history and culture of not serving our wards well,” Wells said. “I don’t know how they can turn it around with the current staff.”
Got a tip on the Fenty administration? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or send him an e-mail at [email protected].
