Impact, Volume 7, Number 4, November/December 1977 Page: 2
48 p. : col. ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Challenge?
In the face of changing times, complex rules, conflicting
standards, court decisions and interpretations, the challenge
this year was to keep the facility in one piece and keep it
running.
Challenge? Did you ever try to take a million square feet of
open floor space and renovate it into four-bed bedroom units
without transferring a resident or missing a meal, program,
training session or activity?
Challenge? Miraculously convert the tired timbers of a
30-year-old facility into a structure meeting Life Safety Codes
without significantly affecting the routine of operation.
Challenge? Try to unravel the 1977-73 Medicaid standards
developed originally for nursing homes, written to apply to
geriatrics, force-fed into the retarded mold, amended regularly
and confused and complicated by broad and conflicting
interpretation from review teams and surveyors alike.
Challenge? Take note of the audit teams, review teams,
survey teams, inspection teams, investigative teams, citizen
groups, media groups, legislative groups and parent groups who
chose this year to take the institution's pulse. This was the
year there was nearly one audit, survey or investigation for
every week in the year! And the school had to pass them all.
Challenge? This was the year that the transition away from
isolationism was complete. No longer alone in the backwater
of anonymity, the facility was open to the full scrutiny and
active involvement of parents, public, courts and news media.
Many of the challeng'
described above by Mexi
State School staff member
are familiar to the 28,00,
employees of'department
facilities and community
MHMR centers represented
here. Throughout thi
report, which detail.
how employees coped witi
those challenges, clients
full names are used wheii
possible. Use ofa firs!
name only indicates thc
need fur a fictitious
identity to preserve
confidentialitY.Challenge? Six hundred persons were newly employed in
one year, adequately trained and melded into an employee
population of 2,000, but accomplished with federal
requirements and restrictions so tight that virtually any action
(or lack thereof) could and did bring down the wrath of
complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commis-
sion, grievance hearings, U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and
Welfare investigations and adverse workers' compensation
rulings.
Challenge? The advent and clarification of resident's rights,
employee's rights, applicant's rights and parent's rights have by
definition eroded the previous concept of management
authority. Hence, a greater and more complex assignment
results, with fewer management latitudes and tools available to
perform the job.
Challenge? Try, if you will, to accept a sizable part of your
total budget in the form of federal dollars (with accompanying
restrictions) and dare to resist becoming a bureaucracy.
Operations reached $12,000 cost per resident per year with
more employees than residents by 25 per cent. We sometimes
felt there were as many people keeping records as were
providing a service to the residents.
Challenge? The challenge of not forgetting that every
resident is special, that every one represented a degree of
success during the year and that through our response to
challenges, we caused the school to experience some of the
greatest improvement in its 30-year history---a challenge
throughout a tough year, but a challenge well met.2
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Texas. Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Impact, Volume 7, Number 4, November/December 1977, periodical, November 1977; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1588488/m1/4/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.