State investigates more facilities related to man’s death in van
Friday, August 6th, 2010
The facility where an autistic man died after being left in a van on a hot day is just one of many residences on the same campus in Langhorne Pennsylvania operated by Woods Services. Officials want to know whether the problems that led to this man's death are pervasive throughout the campus.
Woods Services cares for hundreds of residents with disabilities. The license for the home that served Bryan Nevins and eight others was revoked after state officials found "gross incompetence" related to Nevins' death. Michael Race, a spokesman for the Department of Public Welfare, says the eight remaining residents will be relocated.
Race: The decision to revoke the license for this facility is related to this death, but on a broader level there are serious concerns about the policies and protocols on the Woods Services campus as a whole, which is why we froze admissions on their other licenses.
Race says there are protocols in place — such as checking on residents frequently — that could have saved Nevins' life. The Department is concerned that the lapse in following these procedures may extend beyond this tragic incident, and it is investigating whether the same lapses in protocols that could have saved Nevins' life are endemic to all of Woods' facilities in Langhorne.
Celia Feinstein, the associate director of the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, is pleased the department has taken swift action.
Feinstein: This is one campus, so I can say from an advocacy perspective there's a lot of concern that what happens in one facility on one campus may not be isolated and it may be generalizable to the whole campus.
Public Welfare has prohibited Woods Services from admitting new residents at any facility while the investigation is ongoing. Woods will appeal the Department's actions.
There are other agencies like Woods who continue to get away with murdering people with disabilities. Its only when residents die and it gets publicized that there is an outcy, which is very sad. People with disabilities don't have the protection that is claimed by the law. The state of Pennsylvania, especially the Human Services Division and all other departments involving people with special needs, should be examined as well as investigated as to the agencies they get complaints from whether it be employees, neighbors and families that they tend to turn a deaf ear. After a special person dies, only then do they want to investigate, which comes far too late. Shame on you-State of Pennsylania. It really makes you wonder whose pockets they're in because they're surely not doing their job to protect the disabled.
As a life long resident of Langhorne Boro, I have watched many of the employees interact with Woods Service residents. While I have never witnessed anything significant enought to consider reporting, I have often wondered when something tragic was going result from the lack of attention being paid to a resident of Woods Services. The majority of employees that I have seen over the past 25 years do not appear to engage with or even pay attention to the person they paid to supervise. The overall sense that I get from the Woods employees is that the Woods residents are just along for the ride while the employees go about their business in town, as if the residents are not even there. This has seemed unsafe to me considering the wide range of disabilities that the residents of Woods Services display. It is a horrible tragedy that a life was lost due to negligence and from what I have witnessed from a distance, the care giving staff at Woods Services needs to be restructured with an emphesis on hiring skilled people with compassion for the people they are expected to provide with a safe environment.
A man is arrested for selling cocaine at Woods and gets $200,000 bail, yet the person who killed a resident gets $50,000 bail. This is dangerous environment where is so easy for paid staff to do whate ever they want, because it is all out of sight out of mind. Join "Out of the Woods" on Facebook if you want to support shifting funding from isolated insitutions like Woods to community and home based supports and services that are less costly and more beneficial!