Minnesota has always prided itself on providing generous, progressive care to people with disabilities and mental illnesses. Three decades ago, it helped lead a national movement to close large state mental hospitals, transferring thousands of patients to small private group homes that were regarded as a more humane alternative. Then, however, time stopped. While a disability rights revolution swept much of the nation, inspired by a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1999, Minnesota remained wedded to an obsolete and demeaning model of care.
By the time reporters Chris Serres and Glenn Howatt began investigating the topic last year, Minnesota’s network of group homes and sheltered workshops for people with disabilities had grown into a $1 billion industry that left some 20,000 adults stuck in isolated settings, deprived of therapy, and subject to neglect and abuse. Minnesota had become the most segregated state in the nation for working adults with disabilities and faced sanctions by a federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice. This series documented that:
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Hundreds of Minnesotans with cognitive disabilities have been sent against their will to group homes clustered in remote rural locations, hundreds of miles from their families in settings that promote neglect and aggravate their illnesses.
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Minnesota relies more than any other state on sheltered workshops – segregated settings that consign thousands of disabled employees to work that is often demeaning and deadening.
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Disabled Minnesotans who seek state aid for therapy and other tools of independence wait years – sometimes more than a decade – even though hundreds of millions of dollars in state disability funds go unspent each year. Although the series is not about health care in the narrow sense, Serres and Howatt found scores of patients with mental illnesses and physical disabilities who were denied the psychiatric counseling and physical therapy that could have given them healthier, more rewarding lives.
Although the series is not about health care in the narrow sense, Serres and Howatt found scores of patients with mental illnesses and physical disabilities who were denied the psychiatric counseling and physical therapy that could have given them healthier, more rewarding lives.
To produce the series Serres, Howatt and photographer David Joles spent hundreds of hours interviewing people with disabilities, examining sheltered workshops, analyzing financial statements, mapping the zip codes of group homes, and tagging along with their subjects on work assignments, family trips, job interviews, dates and church outings. On several occasions they had to read Minnesota statutes to group home managers, and even local police, just to gain access to supervised residences. On one occasion, Serres was nearly arrested.
A crucial element of their reporting was to interview their subjects on videotape, which enabled us to build an engaging website with narrative videos that allowed people with disabilities and mental illnesses to speak directly to readers and tell their own stories. While exposing what had been a hidden pattern of segregation across Minnesota, A Matter of Dignity also, in effect, struck a blow against it. It allowed people with disabilities to speak for themselves and articulate their worries, in print and in video, while introducing thousands of readers to a population that has been consigned to inferior care and hidden from view for decades.