Georgians with disabilities are still being institutionalized, despite federal oversight

ATLANTA — Lloyd Mills was tired of being stuck in a small, drab hospital room. “Anytime somebody has to live in a segregated setting when they don’t want to, it’s terrible.” The Americans with Disabilities Act, as clarified in a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision, says Mills and other people with disabilities have been legally entitled to receive care at home and in other community settings instead of being unnecessarily confined to places like hospitals and nursing homes. “You have to have a place to live in order to get your services and to stay out of institutions.” But people with developmental disabilities and mental illness regularly can’t find appropriate community placements, so they cycle in and out of hospitals and nursing homes, Goico and other observers noted. “It’s stressful.” Kevin Tanner, head of Georgia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, noted that the number of people stuck in hospitals had been as high as 30 a day. It’s “down to the teens now,” he said, due in part to the recent opening of two homes for people with developmental disabilities in crisis, with eight beds to serve people statewide.