A federal investigation determined South Carolina violates the rights of mentally ill adults by placing them in overly restrictive group homes.
Some 2,000 people with serious mental illness were institutionalized in community residential care facilities, or what a report Thursday from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice calls adult care homes.
The facilities have violated the rights of people with disabilities by limiting their choice and independence while offering few opportunities to engage in the community, the report states.
South Carolina failed to provide community-based services to all residents to divert them from adult care homes, investigators determined. Once a resident is placed in a facility, the state has denied them the resources they need to return to the community.
Some mentally ill residents have remained in the facilities for up to 35 years, the report states. The average resident spends five years in an adult care home.
Kimberly Tissot, president and CEO for Able SC, applauded the Justice Department for investigating what has been a longtime problem.
“We are hopeful this will bring true changes to people with psychiatric disabilities and other disabilities in South Carolina,” Tissot said in an email. “The unjustified segregation the disability community continues to experience in South Carolina must end today.”
Of the more than 400 adult care homes in the state that Tissot said she has evaluated, she found fewer than 15 were “somewhat decent and didn’t violate any rights.”
“CRCF’s conditions are appalling and make things more difficult for someone’s well-being,” Tissot added, using an abbreviation for community residential care facilities.
A spokesman for Governor Henry McMaster did not respond to a request for comment.
The Department of Justice said it launched the probe over a year ago after receiving a complaint. Investigators reviewed documents and conducted dozens of interviews with staff, state officials and residents.
In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. L.C. that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that people with disabilities be provided community-based services in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Unnecessary segregation created the assumption that disabled people were “incapable or unworthy of participating in community life,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.
By housing residents in adult care homes rather than less restrictive settings, investigators determined, South Carolina violated the ADA’s requirements.
Hellbound and Down 