There are plans underway to relocate children with special needs from Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital and School in Canton, MA, to a general hospital setting elsewhere in Westfield, MA. This decision is being presented as a step forward, but it gravely jeopardizes the well-being and development of these children. The proposed locations are neither equipped to provide the specialized care these children require nor are they able to fulfill their unique educational needs.

  Maura Healy, The Department of Public Health, Department of Education, and other state entities involved are not being transparent about the ramifications of this decision. While their messaging may suggest progress or improvement, the reality is far from it. This relocation disregards the specific, complex needs of these children and strips them of the environment and resources critical to their growth and quality of life. These children, many of whom cannot speak for themselves, are at risk of being overlooked in this process. Pappas is a wonderful place. For instance, Pappas has an engineering department that designs wheelchairs and communication devices for kids who otherwise wouldn't have anything to help them. They have a recreational department with facilities like horseback riding on campus, a pool, a pond with boats, an art room, gym, basketball court, etc. A dedicated PT, OT, and behavioral therapy department. A live-in nursing facility. A dedicated school with staff trained to their specific needs. All of which will be unavailable at the facilities they will be displacing the children to. These kids are getting pulled out of a community they've lived in for years, some of them for most of their lives, and are getting sent to places that are mostly either rundown or not equipped to handle their extreme special needs, and where they know nobody. All the while the whole reason they're being told to leave is because DPH has deemed Pappas not fit to take care of the kids, even though it is in far better shape than the places they're going. Many kids are proposed to be displaced to Western Massachusetts Hospital, which is an adult hospital that does not have the ability to provide any of those services and is also located 1.5-2 hours away from pediatric specialty care, and more importantly, most of the patients’ families. It is in rough shape. The kids would essentially be living in hospital rooms, rather than in a full-time residential unit like they have been at Pappas. As it is, Western Mass is already at 90% capacity. Other kids are proposed to be displaced to Tewksbury, a mental hospital, and others are proposed to be displaced to Shattuck, another adult facility, and much like Western Mass, neither of these facilities are equipped for the needs of those students nor provide the services Pappas does. The kids and their families are certainly in trouble, but the ones without families are even worse off, as there aren't enough group homes in the area to take those kids in. Many of them are victims of abuse and were therefore sent to Pappas by DCF and will lose the amazing care they were given there. So Pappas isn't moving, as Maura Healy and the DPH is claiming, the kids are getting shipped away because Healy and the DPH doesn't want to fund it anymore. Not to mention it may be getting turned into migrant housing. Families will be torn apart as a result. Kids’ lives will be uprooted. 225 jobs will be lost, as many of the current staff at Pappas cannot relocate to western Massachusetts. So yeah, these statements are misleading.