Bensonhurst dad fights to keep son’s developmental center open
State to close facility in 2015
A move by the Cuomo Administration to shut down four large facilities housing the severely developmentally disabled is having a devastating effect on a Bensonhurst couple whose grown son has been living in a Brooklyn center for 35 years.
Anthony and Mary Ann Cosentino said their son John, 49, desperately needs the services he receives at the Brooklyn Developmental Center (BDC), the state-run facility where he lives in Spring Creek.
“I’m worried about my son’s safety if we have to move him. BDC is a good setting for him. They do a good job of taking care of him there. BDC has nursing 24/7. He gets one-to-one coverage. It’s a nice atmosphere, too. It looks like a college campus,” Cosentino told the Brooklyn Eagle.
The New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) announced last September that BDC and three other large-scale, lockdown facilities would be closed over the next three years under a new initiative by Cuomo to shutter large-scale, Willowbrook-type centers for the developmentally disabled in favor of placing the residents in small, intimate, group home settings in residential communities.