Shoreline, WA – Fircrest School, a state-run home for individuals with profound developmental and physical disabilities, has been named one of the country’s top nursing facilities for the second year in a row by the Consumers' Research Council of America – an award that supporters say highlights the facility's high quality of care and underscores the need to keep the school open.
"Fircrest's programs have long been recognized nationally, yet we must fight everyday just to keep Fircrest open and to protect our loved ones from being forced out of the school," said Maureen Durkan, a registered nurse whose sister has called Fircrest School home for 30 years.
The state Department of Social and Health Services, which has pushed to downsize the institution, is behind a bill introduced this legislative session that not only would close Fircrest School in Shoreline, but also lay the foundation for closure of all state-run homes for individuals with severe mental disabilities.
"Fircrest School is the only state residential center within the Puget Sound urban corridor; and its programs set the standard of care for this region,” Durkan added. “Fircrest must remain open. It is crucial that individuals with developmental disabilities have a choice in residential care. Individuals with developmental disabilities and their families and guardians need a full range of options. Not everyone can live at home or within a community setting – one size does not fit all."
The Consumers' Research Council award recognizes Fircrest's federally certified skilled nursing facility as one of the top in the nation. The nursing facility is the only one of its kind in the Puget Sound urban corridor where one-third of the state's developmentally disabled individuals live.
At the end of 2003, DSHS began an inhumane campaign to close Fircrest. On Christmas Eve of 2003, DSHS quietly stripped residents and their guardians of their rights to appeal forced transfers to other state-run homes. As a result, more than 40 residents have been moved -- many involuntarily -- from their home of many years.
"Despite Fircrest's nursing facility being rated one of the top of the nation," Durkan said, "DSHS is determined to push people into the community whether or not the community can take them. The fact is there are few, if any, nursing homes equipped to provide the same level of services offered today at Fircrest's skilled nursing facility. That's why DSHS often offers nursing homes extra money as an incentive to get them to take Fircrest residents, whose needs are complex and demand 24/7 care."
To create community "placement opportunities," DSHS sent out a letter in December 2003 to community-based nursing homes stating, "daily reimbursement rates DSHS will pay facilities per client will be higher for residents who are placed from Fircrest…as well, the downsizing budget includes up to $5,000 per resident leaving Fircrest…[for] renovations to the physical plant, staff training, and staff enhancement."
"DSHS is using taxpayer money to cause real harm to real people," Durkan said. "Two residents who were pressured to leave Fircrest's nursing facility subsequently have died and we must ask ourselves if these individuals would still be alive at Fircrest. Why are we gambling with these peoples' lives by closing down such a high quality institution? We should be expanding Fircrest – not downsizing it."
Through years of refinement and rigorous federal audits, Fircrest has come to offer the top-notch care that Washington State's most medically fragile individuals need not only to survive, but to thrive. In addition to its skilled nursing facility, Fircrest is a certified Intermediate Care Facility for the Mentally Retarded. It has teaching affiliations and research relationships with the University of Washington and other universities in the local area and nationally. Its services and facilities are used by individuals with developmental disabilities living in the surrounding community as well as statewide.
The state's other residential centers are Frances Haddon Morgan Center, Bremerton; Rainier School, Buckley; Yakima Valley School, Selah; and Lakeland Village, Medical Lake.