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On Sept. 8, the
Rappahannock-Rapidan Community Services Board opened its sixth group home in Planning District 9 for mentally retarded adults. Three residents from the community are now in the home. They were joined this month by three adults who had resided at Central Virginia Training Center.
The new group home is located in Remington. It began 10 years ago as the hope and dream of a Fauquier County group of parents of mentally retarded children, who though then aged 25-39, had no prospect of normal adult independent living. Ten long years later, three of these adults are now in their own, rather than in their parents’, home. Approximately 70 others in the community and 35 in Central Virginia Training Center are not so fortunate. They continue to live with aging parents or in a state facility slated for down sizing. They too need community group home facilities, but languish on waiting lists, due to the snail’s pace at which such facilities move from initial planning to final reality.
How did Virginia move from among the very best in the nation in the early ‘70s to its current position among the five states least able or willing to provide mental health services to its most seriously handicapped citizens? I really do not know. As a Madison County appointee to RRCSB, however, I feel compelled to speak out against this current situation.
The Community Services Board system began in 1971,
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