Introduction
In her ruling on the Messier Lawsuit on June 4, 2008, Judge Burns was concerned primarily with two main issues. The first was the need for Interdisciplinary Teams to make a professional judgement as to whether residents of the Training School could be served in the community. The second was the requirement that the guardians of residents at the school make an ‘informed choice’ as to whether they remain at Southbury Training School or receive services elsewhere. To ensure that an informed choice was made, the Department committed itself to put processes in place to make sure guardians, family members, advocates and class members have sufficient information about community options to make an informed choice about team members recommendations for the most integrated setting to meet the class members’ needs.