Under legal pressure from the Justice Department to move its patients into more mainstream living quarters, Central State Hospital in Georgia finished discharging all of its developmentally disabled patients this year. The experiences of the patients, and their caretakers, range widely, as the portraits of these three patients show.  Andrew Lawson, 4533 years at Central State HospitalMoved out in December  In his new group home, Andrew Lawson left his mark almost immediately, scarring the white walls with imprints of his forehead as he pounded his head against them, over and over again.  At Central State Hospital, Mr. Lawson, who is blind, autistic and mostly nonverbal, had known the voices of the people who worked with him and the layout of his room and ward.  He tried to learn his new home, too, touching the walls, the doorknobs, the couch, the chairs and the tables when he moved there in December. His bed and television were similar to those at the hospital.  But the house and voices were unfamiliar. Mr. Lawson began expressing his confusion and anxiety the only way he knew. He threw houseplants at his attendants. He smeared his feces on the walls. He banged his head repeatedly.  Soon, some staff members were worrying that they would not be able to handle him.  “We were so afraid,” said Charles McKinney, 71, who is Mr. Lawson’s uncle. Mr. McKinney, and his sister, worried that the group home’s directors would decide that they could no longer care for his nephew.  Instead, the staff at the Arc of Macon, which runs the group home, rearranged the furniture so that it would feel more like Central State. And with the help of a behavioral specialist, they began to make some additional changes.  They noticed that Mr. Lawson liked the showers they gave him after he had dirtied himself and that he often opened his mouth to drink the water. They wondered: was he acting out, in part, to get into the shower? So they let him shower several times a day and gave him a buzzer to press whenever he was thirsty.  The changes have made a difference: The head banging and other troubling incidents have declined, his family and Arc staff members said. By last spring, his caregivers were taking him on outings to a store, a Special Olympics baseball game and a community picnic, a remarkable change of pace for Mr. Lawson, who had rarely ventured from the hospital grounds.  Some problems remain. Mr. McKinney said it took months for the staff to find a dentist willing to treat his nephew after he broke a tooth this summer.  And Mr. Lawson has yet to be enrolled in a program that would get him out of the house regularly and allow him to interact with more people. Arc staff members say he is not ready yet for that, but they are moving toward that goal.  Nicky Barron, 37Nearly 18 years at Central StateMoved out in May 2011  Nicky Barron ended up with the Arc of Macon when his placement with another agency fell through. His new caretakers did not know exactly what to expect.  Hospital officials said that Mr. Barron would hit himself in the head when he felt pain or wanted attention. Mr. Barron, who uses a wheelchair, needed help to move around and bathe.  But he was also friendly and social, loved visits from his mother and was interested in the people around him. So the Arc officials decided to enroll him in a day program where staff members try to expand the functional and social skills of their clients.  Hospital officials had described him as incapacitated, but the Arc staff noticed that he was using his feet to push his wheelchair. So caretakers began helping him to stand and take small steps.  One day, several months after he arrived, he started walking on his own. “We couldn’t believe it,” said Beverly Sullivan, who runs the program.  Mr. Barron still uses his wheelchair because he can walk only short distances. But these days, after arriving home from Ms. Sullivan’s program, Mr. Barron steps out of the group home’s van and walks right through the front door and into the dining room where his dinner is waiting.  “Hey!” he calls out cheerfully to anyone who will listen. “Hey!”  Rosa Ates, 49Nearly 31 years at Central StateDischarged in April  Rosa Ates did not say a word when her caretakers rolled her out of Central State on a rainy April afternoon. But her distress, staff members said, was as clear as day.  As her wheelchair was loaded into the van that would carry her to her new home, she repeatedly bit the back of her hand.  Ms. Ates, who has cerebral palsy and is severely mentally disabled, cannot speak. When she was upset, she would not only bite her hand but also hit herself in the face.  Rita B. Davis, the supervisor who welcomed Ms. Ates to her new group home, knew all about that. She knew that Ms. Ates required complete physical care and that she could not walk, bathe or get in and out of bed on her own. Hospital officials also reported that she loved meat, going to church and watching television.  But Ms. Davis would learn more as Ms. Ates adjusted to her new home. The disabled woman’s eyes wandered, each one seemingly keeping its own counsel. But she loved holding hands with visitors, her caretakers and her housemates. And it was not long before her anxiety seemed to disappear. “She has just bloomed,” Ms. Davis said.  Her transition, however, has not been without its challenges.  Ms. Ates used to feed herself at the hospital, but she regressed a bit in the group home when the staff replaced her old wheelchair, which had an attachable table. She is served meals at the dining room table now, with her housemates.  “She will feed herself sometimes,” Ms. Davis said. “Sometimes she won’t.”  But she is much more engaged with the outside world than she was at Central State. She paints, with some help, at her day program. She also attends movies and concerts with the three other women at her group home.  Ms. Ates’s day program is in Cochran, closer to where her family lives, making it much easier for her relatives to visit. They see her regularly.  “That was what we hoped for,” Ms. Davis said.
A look at the experiences of three people moved over the last year from Central State Hospital in Georgia to group homes.