Policies
In 1957, a bill was passed that allowed municipalities to raise funds for “the education of teachers to meet the education needs of mentally retarded children”, and pledging matching funds from the State. While this bill continued the policy of “special education siloes” that kept such children separate from their peers, it was an important step towards normalizing the understanding that children with developmental disabilities deserved an education too.
Money
From the beginning of the institutional period, the cost of providing care for people with developmental disabilities was both the reason for building larger and larger congregate settings and an excuse for any evidence of neglect or poor treatment that came to light.
Throughout the history of Pineland you can see the frequent requests for more funding. When Pineland was closed a new pool of money was flooded into the community. This followed a series of cuts and the same types of pleas for additional funds that can be seen through the institutional period.
To this day, disagreements over the amount of funding put towards services plague this system. Reimbursement rates and workers’ paychecks, infrastructure and innovative care – the question of “how do we pay for this?” hangs over all the decisions made.
