Lanterman Developmental Center

The patients who are housed here recieve the best possible care possible, but they only came here due to horrible accidents or genetic tragedies that shortchanged them of having a normal life. This is a sad and tragic place only because it become the home of many profoundly mentally disabled individuals. They have to be cared after by a staff of specially trained professional people because their needs are so high, it overwhelms their familes. Many of these patients were dumped here by tearful parents who were simpy worked to the bone looking after them. They had to leave their loved one here because of the staggering amount of work and care each client deserves, and the state promised the parents of these kids that they would care for the patients until the day they died a natural death.
Only now due to budget cuts, California wants to shut Lanterman down, which is a nightmare and a broken promise! Many mentally diabled people have lived a good life on the grounds of Lanterman. For decades, the naturally shielded hills have protected patients and their conditions from the prying eyes of a society that may not have understood thier needs.
Now they want to close the doors, but where will these dependants of the state go? No board and care home can care for them adequetly.
It just won’t work. These patients are so medically fragile that they require skilled nursing care ²⁴⁄₇.
No residential home can provide what is being provided now at Lanterman.
Some say the ghosts of the departed roam the open fields of Lanterman, looking for another swing on the abandoned swingsets, or another turn up at bat at the abandoned baseball field. Nurses sometimes see old familiar patients shuffling down the hallways at night, but when they look again that old patient vanishes into thin air! Then the nurses remember that the patient passed years ago. They may pass away, but their souls return to the only home they ever knew.
Patients who remain at Lanterman get the best social interaction and nursing care that they possibly could recieve. It is a shame and a nightmare to close the doors here because it breaks a solemn promise made to the anguished parents — who really were forced against their will to leave their handicapped kids here.
Why not just let these last sick patients just live here until God takes them in His loving arms and brings them up to Heaven?
That is what was promised in the originial agreements and anyone can open up those thick, ancient charts and read those old letters of agreement typed on actual typewriters on dusty, disintegrating paper which is left hanging by threads of hope in those old, dilalpidated charts.
God bless all the patients and workers and teachers at Lanterman Developmental Hospital!

What can I say about a former State hospital getting ready to close its doors? I liked the staff and think the residents here receive good care. The grounds are large and most buildings are unoccupied or closed now. The acute care unit is said to be haunted or filled with spirits (if you believe in that sort of stuff). I spent 6 weeks here doing a 6 week clinical rotation for my behavioral med. portion of nursing school. It was not what I expected at all. I guess I was expecting more say… Behavioral that mentally retarded. But I did learn some things that I did not know prior to this experience.