State Revokes Group Homes’ License

Nearly three dozen disabled children and adults may be forced from their longtime group homes in Costa Mesa and San Diego County as early as this week because the state has revoked the homes’ licenses to operate.

Robert Gomez, district manager of the community care licensing division of the Department of Social Services, said Monday licenses for the eight Unissa Group Homes were lifted July 14 after an administrative law judge found that repeated orders to control hot water temperatures had been ignored.

A 52-year-old disabled man scalded himself to death in April 1996 at one of the homes in San Diego, according to Gomez.

Gomez said “numerous major deficiencies” had been found and the clients would be moved “to ensure their health and safety.”

The state’s decision affects 10 children and five adults--all of them autistic or mentally retarded or with other developmental disabilities--in the San Carlos, Mendoza and Nevada homes in Costa Mesa, and an additional 17 clients in five San Diego group homes.

Inayat Bergum, the operator of all eight homes, said of the scalding death, “it was a horrible error . . . but there is no compassion for the other good work of the organization, or acknowledgment of the enormity of the propensity for risk in any of these homes. [The state’s] solution is to annihilate the whole organization.”

She said “several brilliant doctors underneath their knives have had patients die, but you do not close down the whole hospital.”

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A dozen parents said in interviews Monday they thought the care at Bergum’s facilities was excellent and they are worried about the trauma that moving will cause their children.

“I do not want my son moved; he’s been in that home for 4 1/2 years, and he’s happy,” said Donna Smith, whose 15-year-old son, David, is in a Costa Mesa home. “This is my only son. It’s a heartbreaking thing to have to leave your child somewhere. And then to move him again? These people up in Sacramento might as well be living on the moon.”

Attorney David Rosenberg, representing Bergum, has asked a Superior Court in Sacramento for an emergency stay against revoking the homes’ licenses.

He said a staff member had left the man who was scalded alone for only a few seconds, and that shut off valves to keep the water from getting too hot had been installed in every home since then.

“Clearly [the scalding] was a terrible incident, but to revoke all eight licenses because of that is not right. . . . You cannot watch somebody every second 24 hours a day. It can’t be done.”

Other deficiencies cited by the state were minor matters, such as having four days rather than seven days of food on hand, according to Rosenberg.

A report released by Gomez indicated problems ranging from a client ingesting feces and/or dead cockroaches, the administering of non-prescribed drugs, clients leaving the homes without permission and other alleged problems. Most of the violations were from 1993 through 1995.

A meeting is scheduled tonight at the Regional Center of Orange County with parents to discuss their concerns and options for moving patients.