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Catherine John speaks at a press conference in Hartford on April 10, 2025 about income limits for people with disabilities to qualify for Medicaid. Credit: Laura Tillman / CT Mirror

The House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday to create new safeguards for people receiving services from the Department of Developmental Services. The bill comes after a report issued in February that cited there were more than 4,000 allegations of abuse and neglect in 2024 alone, along with 15 deaths.

House Bill 5558 follows up on the legislation that produced that report in the first place. The new bill would require the Department of Developmental Services to send reports about alleged abuse and neglect to the parent or legal guardians, provided they are not the alleged abuser, and provide them with a guide to help them navigate such allegations. DDS would also be required to train staff about confidentiality regarding complaints. It creates new requirements for the department’s annual reporting of abuse and neglect, and requires an annual hearing on those reports.

During a hearing about the 2026 report, DDS Commissioner Jordan Scheff told lawmakers that he had been concerned about declining reports of abuse and neglect during COVID and that 2024’s high numbers reflect training and reporting systems that have empowered staff to file more reports.

“It means I have more eyes and ears from people who’ve been trained to see something and say something. And I think it’s important to note that, that’s an outcome of training,” he said. “Things that might not have otherwise been perceived as potential abuse and neglect are better perceived as potentially being that.”

Scheff said better understanding of mandated reporter rules has also raised expectations that people who are trained to report abuse and neglect do so.

Tom Cosker, of Disability Rights Connecticut, also spoke at that hearing and said that even one allegation is too many. He noted one client had filed more than eight complaints, most of them substantiated, in one year.

“It’s hard not to cry. It’s hard not to get emotional about that,” Cosker said. He called the report an important step, but called for additional legislation to stop the abuse.

The report found that 1,837 out of 4,246 allegations were substantiated, or 43%. Neglect reports comprised 65% of allegations, while 11% were of physical abuse.

Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, co-chair of the Human Services Committee, said she found that report to be “frankly horrifying. Gilchrest said she understood that better reporting mechanisms can sometimes yield more reports based on her anti-sexual violence work, an area in which it can be difficult to get victims to come forward.

“That said, based on that report there was so much left unknown — what types of neglect are we talking about, are there patterns in types of perpetrators? So I’m not sold yet on the notion that we’re seeing such high numbers because of a robust reporting system.”

Gilchrest brought the bill to the House floor on Tuesday evening, and thanked the families who brought the abuse to lawmakers’ attention.

“The bill we passed tonight will allow us to better understand the why and how of how abuse is taking place in our system, so we can make sure that this doesn’t happen to people,” she said.

Rep. Jay Case, R-Winchester, said that the bill is, “something that we need,” based on a personal experience.

“I lost my brother in a group home not knowing what took place, not knowing what happened, an abuse and neglect report came about,” Case said. He was able to get a copy and there was substantiated abuse and neglect in the case. A team that was supposed to check on him every 30 minutes failed to check on him for five hours, he said.

Case said his brother had previously been cared for by his parents and had been in the group home for less than six months when he died.

“Some of you haven’t been so lucky to have a special needs person in your life. I have” he said. “Let’s do the right thing and pass this bill.”

The measure passed by a unanimous vote and will now go to the Senate.

Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, who helped lead the February hearing as co-chair of the Human Services Committee, said that while the bill has not been caucused in the Senate yet, he assumes that every member of the General Assembly wants to ensure the safety of people in DDS care.

“I think we’re asking the hard questions, and the bill is a stab at addressing a number of the issues raised in the hearing, including making sure DDS is following up on abuse allegations,” Lesser said.

Laura Tillman is CT Mirror’s Human Services Reporter. She shares responsibility for covering housing, child protection, mental health and addiction, developmental disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. Laura began her career in journalism at the Brownsville Herald in 2007, covering the U.S.–Mexico border, and worked as a statehouse reporter for the Associated Press in Mississippi. She was most recently a producer of the national security podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen” and is the author of two nonfiction books: The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts (2016) and The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia (2023), which was just awarded the 2024 James Beard Award for literary writing. Her freelance work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Laura holds a degree in International Studies from Vassar College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Goucher College.