I wasn't sure how Thursday night's meeting would go. Maybe there would be controversy. Maybe not.
Parents of grown, developmentally disabled children were meeting with Carl Littlefield, an official of the Tampa Bay district of the Department of Children and Families. DCF is closing the Suncoast Residential Center, a St. Petersburg group home where six people live.
The state has sent letters telling them to be out by the end of the month. Parents are frantic. They want more time before their children are moved.
You'd think DCF would be helpful. The parents say the agency has been anything but. That was why they invited me to the meeting.
I got a taste of what these people have endured. Littlefield, a former state representative who once ran developmental services statewide, threw me out of the meeting.
He offered his reasons, which sounded more like excuses. He contended that if I wrote about the patients, their confidentiality would be violated.
People at the meeting said they were willing to sign releases permitting their children's stories to be told. Littlefield wasn't interested.
He complained he had been blind-sided. He said this was his meeting and he hadn't given permission for anyone other than parents to attend.
"Since it's my meeting," he said, "we'll play by the rules I think we have to conduct ourselves by."
If I didn't leave, Littlefield said he would. So I left. I didn't want to stand in the way of parents trying to get what they needed from the state.
This dispute over the closing of one building might sound like little more than a bureaucratic scuffle to you. But it means everything to the parents of clients at the center.
They worry every day about children who cannot speak for themselves. The children, though grown, are easy targets for abuse. Their illnesses and behavioral problems make their care exceptionally difficult. More than anything, the parents want stable, permanent homes for their children.
The person who welcomed me into this world of living with the developmentally disabled, and the combat with the state, is Sherryl Mantell, whose son lives at Suncoast. She said she left Thursday night's meeting with nothing but vague promises.
Littlefield sees things differently, from top to bottom. After ordering me out the door, he apparently softened his approach.
"I really wanted to speak from my heart," he said Friday. "I wanted to let them know we were really on the same page."
He contended that he had been trying without success for more than a year to get the parents prepared to move their children, because the building was going to be closed. When they didn't act, he had to, he said.
He said he hopes to announce next week a short-term solution for the people at the center. After that, Littlefield said, he will start looking for a building and a social agency that can take over the permanent care of Mantell's son and the people who live with him.
It sounds so good. You have to wonder, though, why it's been hard to reach this point.
The parents became so frustrated and worried about what would happen that Mantell said they asked a circuit court judge for an injunction to keep their children from being moved. They are trying to raise money to buy a building for their children.
Would they be doing all this if DCF had been carrying out its obligations? And would Mantell have heard what she said she heard from Littlefield at the end of Thursday's meeting?
She said he warned that if he read in the newspaper that I had been thrown out of the meeting, "all offers" regarding the care of the clients at the center would be off the table.
Littlefield doesn't deny leaving the impression that bad press might make cause problems.
"Sometimes, you just never know what makes people change directions," he said Friday.
He went one better. He tried to rewrite history. He said he didn't kick me out of the meeting; I simply left on my own.
