Quick Action, Doubts Both Follow Times Series On `Throwaway People'

Last week's Seattle Times investigative series on "throwaway people" brought immediate and gratifying response.

Among those calling for quick action were the governor, the state Attorney General's Office and major organizations representing the disabled and elderly. For all of them, the series by Eric Nalder and Kim Barker sounded an urgent alarm.

Readers reacted with the same sense of urgency, but a mix of optimism and skepticism that any meaningful changes will occur.

The series revealed dozens of cases where public officials failed to investigate and prosecute crimes against disabled and elderly people living in long-term-care facilities, people particularly vulnerable to abuse and victimization.

On Thursday, the day the series concluded, Gov. Gary Locke ordered a review of all the facilities related to cases reported in the series. He also supported several of the action steps recommended in the series.

Among those items were passage of new laws to punish people for neglecting vulnerable adults and to make it easier to introduce evidence from disabled people in court. The governor also urged law-enforcement agencies around the state to better coordinate their investigations and prosecutions.

The Attorney General's Office said changes that may answer the governor's concerns are under way. In addition to the two changes in law the governor endorsed, the Attorney General's Office wants longer prison sentences for anyone who commits a crime against a vulnerable adult.

Three advocacy groups - the governor's council on Developmental Disabilities, ARC of Washington, and the Washington State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program - urged the state to stop placing developmentally disabled people in state-funded adult family homes and boarding homes until problems cited in the series are resolved.

Those reactions were as swift as the series was disturbing.

Reader reaction was often deeply personal. For many, the series spoke to their worst fears for vulnerable loved ones needing long-term care.

"The content was very disturbing but it all needed to be said. As a family member involved in a situation like this you think you are an isolated case when in fact there are hundreds," wrote one reader.

Another said she also has a 45-year-old brother with Down syndrome. He has lived "in a series of group homes of suspect quality over the years," she wrote. "His last placement has been the most successful for him in terms of quality of life.

"But there are always continual worries. Who watches him when the primary caregivers need time off? What does a responsible and loving sister do who lives about 80 miles away? What will I do when he needs nursing home care, and how will I finance it? And our mom is in assisted living and cannot drive to see him, much less deal with the state and the medical system."

A Seattle reader wrote, "The fact that the population of over 80-year-olds will have increased by 2.8 million people in the year 2006 requires that each and every American become aware of the unsettling issues associated with the care.

"The impact will be too great and the ramifications too far reaching for any of us to deny the importance of these articles."

Another wrote, "We, the able, need to help protect these people. I look forward to reading your articles regarding the forgotten people so we can identify and fire the people that have allowed people they should be protecting to be abused."

One skeptical caller said, "I would suggest you not hold out any hope that there is going to be any permanent real solution to what's going on. Maybe something temporary. There will be a bunch of new orders. Supervisors on top of supervisors, and it all ends up the same way in the end."

A more hopeful e-mail said, "I believe, with ongoing relentless pressure, change will come. It is within the power of the governor and the Legislature to revamp the system and place able people, capable of restructuring the way these homes are run, if they choose to do so. If they are unwilling or unable to govern constructively we need to know that."

The role of The Times is to serve that need to know. This series brought problems to your attention and posed what appear to be clear and fairly uncomplicated solutions.

So, what is the newspaper's role now? Some newspapers would take this forward as a crusade, using their news reporting and editorial voice jointly to push for action. The Times isn't that kind of newspaper.

We separate news and editorial operations completely. Whatever position the editorial staff takes on this problem will be decided by them, with no involvement by those of us on the news side.

The reason for the "church and state" separation is so that news coverage is not influenced by editorial positions. Readers often doubt that, but it's true.

Which leaves the question of how far a news staff can or should go to keep an issue alive. Do we just put the information on the record and leave it there? Or are there other journalistic steps that should be taken? If not, why not? If so, what would they be?

We'll ponder those questions as we follow this story. But, it's your need to know that we're serving, so tell us what you think.

Clarification

Last week I mentioned that the federal Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA) threatened to cut funds the state attorney general uses to fight medical fraud, unless the attorney general stopped giving us the documents we used to produce last week's "No Justice for Throwaway People" series. Actually, I left out one step. HCFA complained to the Inspector General for Health and Human Services, and the inspector general threatened to cut off the funds.

On its own, HCFA ordered the state Department of Social and Health Services to stop sending complaints to the state attorney general for investigation. DSHS has a hotline for citizens to report abuse in nursing-care facilities. For about a week, until officials thought better of it, the complaints were not being sent over to the attorney general for investigation.

Inside The Times appears each Sunday. If you have a comment about news coverage, write to Michael R. Fancher, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111, call 206-464-3310, or send e-mail to mfancher@seattletimes.com