Complaint Review: Health Care And Rehabilitation Services

On December 18, 2006, my husband walked into a room at Brattleboro Union High School to discuss with credentialed community workers how to best help his disabled son. He was welcomed with daggering glares and hateful voice tones. The "helpful" meeting soon revealed itself as a quasi-criminal interrogation session, with spiteful professionals determined to intimidate a (well known to be) cognitively handicapped man who was completely unequipped to handle the terrorizing setup; he has the kind of disabilities that an uneducated thug would exult in preying upon. These licensed practitioners offered him no warning, no chance for an attorney, no accomodations, no advocacy at all. But even worse, they flagrantly humiliated and degraded him in front of his teenaged son.

This meeting was called an Act 264, initiated by HCRS (Health Care and Rehabilitation Services), conducted by Bill Metcalfe, designed to help parents receive assistance and resources for their challenged child. In reality it betrayed itself to be harsh, accusatory, and adversarial.

Why did HCRS (and school personnel, and other agencies) have so much interest in breaking down a friendly, cooperative person with known disabilities in a room packed with hostile people vested in having a vulnerable father slip up his words, duressing him for a confession of maltreatment based on RAISING ONE'S VOICE OCCASIONALLY AT A LOUD AND REBELLIOUS TEENAGER? A criminal suspect would have received a Miranda Rights warning, but a loving, law abiding, handicapped person cannot even get a warning of interrogation so that he can arrange for an advocate or at least a tape recorder?

Afterward, in a state of shock, my husband staggered to work only to be harassed on the phone by HCRS and other agencies, the main theme being: "you don't raise your voice at a teenager." Not surprisingly, he could not function to do his job -- not in the days to come either, as trauma had entrenched itself. I do not have to explain that he was fired.

Fiona
Brattleboro, Vermont
U.S.A.