SACRAMENTO -- The Schwarzenegger administration plans to close one of California's last large institutional care centers for people with profound developmental disabilities.
The 82-year old Lanterman Developmental Center in Pomona, which houses 398 people with severe autism, cerebral palsy and other lifelong disabilities, could shut its doors within two years, said Terri Delgadillo, director of the state Department of Developmental Services.
The population of the 302-acre campus has dwindled from a peak of nearly 3,000 in the late 1960s, when a change in state law discouraged housing the developmentally disabled in large institutions. Since then the trend has been for the state to offer home-based services or to place people in group homes in their own communities.
The news came as a shock to residents' families.
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