Home invasion: The Arizona Training Program at Coolidge is the only home some developmentally disabled people have known

Miller, Abraham, Arrington — none felt they had a choice. To someone like Arrington, who tried to care for her children in the home without any help, a place like the Arizona Children's Colony was a relief.

And over the years, the children grew up. Throughout the '50s, older Coolidge residents were sent to the state hospital or sent, with no place to go, into the community. By 1962, the colony shifted its focus, and the Legislature changed the law to allow residents to stay at the colony after they'd grown up.

Conditions weren't perfect — far from it. In 1977, a class-action suit forced the center to reduce the number of people living there and dramatically improve living conditions.

For a long time, ATPC wasn't a place you'd want a loved one to live. At one time, about 1,200 people were crammed into a facility built for around 300. People slept on cots and sometimes went hours without attention. Faye Arrington remembers it "smelling like an institution." Even the assistant superintendent admits that the only windows that existed were slits placed so high on the wall that residents couldn't possibly see out of them. If the facility were like this today, there would be no question about the need to shut it down.

To help ease overcrowding, two other Arizona Training Program centers opened. One in Tucson could hold 200 people. Another in Phoenix, which came to be known as the McDowell facility, accommodated 145.

Though the new facilities went up in the early '70s, an anti-institution sentiment had been brewing since the '60s. Thanks in part to the civil rights movement, a shift toward community integration began. It's an idea still alive today, though it's not always fully realized in some communities. Even when it is, it isn't always properly implemented (see "Arrested Development," February 18).

In the '70s, the President's Committee on Mental Retardation worked to end institutionalization and, as the conditions at many facilities came to light, people started to keep loved ones out of them.

In 1979, the Arizona Legislature followed the trend and decreed that no one could be newly admitted to ATPC. The push toward community integration in Arizona had begun.

Those were optimistic times for the disabled-rights community. John Hinz, a former director of the Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities, a well-known activist, and proud father of Missy, a 30-year-old with Down syndrome, remembers those years well.

Hinz now runs a recycling business that employs developmentally disabled adults. He pays them minimum wage — sometimes more — which is much more than they'd make in an adaptive workshop. Since his daughter was born, he's worked tirelessly to learn everything about Down syndrome, everything about the rights of disabled people.

"I've been in it for 30 years. I was a total optimistic idealist 30 years ago with my daughter. She was going to have every opportunity, and she did. She's my pride and joy," he says. "But all the promises [about supports and community integration] made have not happened."

For one thing, though there's been a push to move people out of institutions, group homes haven't always been better. Brian Abery is a community-integration specialist at the University of Minnesota. He is strongly against keeping places like Coolidge open, but acknowledges that an institution can come in any size — including a small group home.

Abery has worked to close down state-run Intermediate Care Facilities for the Mentally Retarded in his home state, but he's done so via a person-based planning method that is uncommon elsewhere in the country.

"You can't think about just closing it down," he says. "You have to think about working with individuals to find a place that meets their needs and goals."

An essential part of meeting those needs is having enough staff to handle individualized plans for each person and the resources to make sure people go the best possible place, not just the first open bed.

Hinz doesn't think we're there yet.

"In a perfect world, we wouldn't need Coolidge," he says. "There would be enough money to [care for a disabled person] one-on-one."

But there isn't. And that's why, even though he was instrumental in closing down the McDowell facility, Hinz has changed is mind and is now fighting to keep ATPC open.