Craddick: Improving state schools a priority Print E-mail
Written by Emily Ramshaw - Dallas Morning News   
Friday, 10 August 2007
Officials work to track, report abuse at facilities for mentally retarded

AUSTIN – House Speaker Tom Craddick said Thursday that improving conditions inside Texas' state schools for the mentally retarded will be a top priority over the next year and a half, so lawmakers can tackle policy changes inside the facilities in the next legislative session.
 
His comments follow a Dallas Morning News investigation late last month into hundreds of cases of abuse and neglect inside the state schools, most of them at the hands of those paid to watch over the state's neediest residents.
 
"I continue to monitor the Texas State School system," Mr. Craddick said in a written statement, "and I am in contact with the Department of Aging and Disability Services concerning their plan of improvement in our state schools."

Documents released last month by all but three of the 12 state schools showed everything from horrific physical violence and neglect to frightening verbal threats, derogatory slurs and pranks.
 
And they show problems throughout the state school system, not just at the Lubbock State School, which was the subject of a critical U.S. Justice Department report in December.
 
Lawmakers approved a bill this year that will add new state school employees – many of them medical and direct care staff – and increase options for residents to move out into community settings.

Mr. Craddick said that in the meantime, the House General Investigating and Ethics Committee will continue to hear from the Justice Department about what needs to be done inside the state schools, and it could consider "potential improvements to the system of reporting abuse and neglect."

In one 2006 case at the Brenham State School, a nurse assistant kicked and punched a mentally retarded resident on the bathroom floor, fracturing three ribs and puncturing the resident's liver. In a 2000 incident at the Abilene State School, an aide ignored a resident who was found hours later in a trash bin, naked.
 
Officials with the state agency that supervises the schools say that in any direct-care environment, there are going to be cases of abuse and neglect. But they say they take them incredibly seriously and are constantly trying to improve living conditions for the state's most fragile individuals.

The Justice Department, which sent investigators to the Lubbock State School in 2005, is still negotiating with state officials to resolve breaches at that facility.
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