Inclusion Daily Express -- Former Residents: Close Rosewood Center

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Former Residents: Close Rosewood Center
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
March 9, 2007

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND--Advocates for and against closing Rosewood Center, Maryland's largest state-run institution housing about 200 people with developmental disabilities, packed a hearing room Thursday.

The groups testified in the Maryland House of Delegates' Health and Government Operations on a bill that would close the troubled facility. The measure was introduced last month, after the Maryland Disability Law Center released a scathing report about the treatment of Rosewood residents, and after the state's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a ban on all new admissions to the facility and threatened to pull $17 million in federal funding. State investigators found that conditions at Rosewood violated the rights of residents, and that officials failed to protect them from harm, and to fully investigate and properly report injuries and allegations of abuse and neglect.

According to the Baltimore Sun, former Rosewood residents testified at Thursday's hearing, calling on lawmakers to shut down the institution so current residents could experience the freedom of living in the community.

"People don't need to be living there," said Michael Taylor, who spent 30 years in Rosewood and now lives in an apartment in Towson. "They need to live in the community, because it's a good setting to be free. Institutions are not a good place to have freedom."

Related:
"Former Rosewood residents speak out" (Baltimore Sun)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/07/red/0308c.htm
"Lawmaker, Advocates, And Newspaper Call For Closing Institution" February 2, 2007 (Inclusion Daily Express)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/archives/07/02/02/020207mdrosewood.htm

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