When a Houlton group home resident became a danger to himself, his housemate and the staff members assigned to care for him late last fall, he ended up in the emergency room of Houlton Regional Hospital.
The man, who has an intellectual disability, remained there the next 39 days, until Jan. 18. Staff from the Community Living Association, the nonprofit that runs the group home where he lived, stayed with him at the hospital 24 hours a day.
“We don’t want housemates getting hurt and staff getting hurt,” said Rob Moran, executive director of the Community Living Association, which runs six group homes and two other facilities in Houlton that house adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “Both of those are the most important things to us.”
In the past, the Community Living Association could have relied on a state network of crisis beds for adults with developmental disabilities, instead of the local emergency room, Moran said.
But that network has largely fallen apart.
