Many years ago when he was an up and coming news reporter a very young Geraldo Rivera did a news story about these kind of “hospitals”. Geraldo’s news camera had caught some very disturbing images. It was because of this story that the state closed this hospital and others followed as well. It was decided that the mentally retarded (for which this was a warehouse for) would be better in homes even if with foster families.
I personally don’t know which is better but I do know that after seeing the news article that we should never go back to that. The staff either did not care or pardon the pun, were just retarded themselves and could not care for these people. Most animal shelters would not have gotten away with the crap they pulled.
I agree that there were bad places. And there were good places. There are always bad apples. But I can tell you that isolated usually rural foster homes were no picnic either for some people.
I postulate that more people are hurt by today’s system than ever were hurt by the previous system.
A custodial system with the safeguards that forty years of new experiences would be better IMHO than what we have now.