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Broken Promises: The Granite State’S Return To The Institutionalization Of Children With Disabilities, Elizabeth Trautz

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

In 1975, the New Hampshire legislature enacted a progressive statute which mandated the Department of Health and Human Services “to establish, maintain, implement and coordinate a comprehensive service delivery system for developmentally disabled persons.” This law was innovative for its time; it decreed that individual service plans (ISPs) be developed for every client in the state’s service delivery system, guaranteed “a right to adequate and humane habilitation and treatment[,]” and contemplated the state’s area agency system as we know it today. The statute was a steppingstone for the 1981 class action lawsuit of Garrity v. Gallen. This was one of …