Mr. Robert Stack, head of a community placement company in New Jersey, must still be living in the dark ages. Has he bothered to visit a state habilitation center to see the improvements that have been made over the past 20 or so years.I am so tired of private providers damning the state schoola so rhey can fill their own beds. They make outrageous claims about them but never mention the poor care and conditions in many of the private homes which have been documented by a state audit. .

There are so many untruths in Stack’s letter that I won’t even try to rebut them. I will say that if he would visit the Bellefontaine Habilitation center he would find four bedroom cottages on a lovely well kept campus. There is a workshop. a multipurpose building with a large gym, O/T P/T rooms, program areas and a heated olympic size swimming pool with equipment to lift the severely disabled in and out of the pool. I would not call this a warehouse.
The residents are taken off campus to restaurants, movies, the zoo, ball games, Shriners Circus and many other activities. There is a senior center to meet the needs of the older residents.

Stack calls the state hab centers many derogatory names and says they are shameful.

The families with sons/daughters or siblings at Bellefontaine strongly disagree. My daughter has been well taken care of and while things have not always been perfect where could she go that is. I am grateful for the good care she has received and the dedicated staff who have provided it.

Mickey Slawson
Florissant