By Gina Macris

                                                       This article has been updated .

Dianne Curran will step down Sept. 30 after seven months as Rhode Island’s consent decree coordinator, a post considered critical to success of the state’s 2014 agreement with the U.S Department Of Justice to reform Rhode Island’s programs for persons with developmental disabilities.

 “I am sad to leave such a competent and hard-working team that is committed to improving the lives of individuals with I/DD (intellectual and developmental disabilities),”  Curran said in a statement which cited "personal reasons" for her departure. She did not elaborate.

Curran is the third consent decree coordinator to serve since the agreement was signed in April, 2014. Curran was preceded by Mary Madden, who served from January, 2016, until the end of March of this year, overlapping Curran’s first month on the job. The first consent decree coordinator was Andrew McQuaide.

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) said there is an interim plan to cover the duties of the consent decree coordinator. The spokeswoman, Jenna Mackevich, confirmed Curran's upcoming departure on behalf of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), where Curran reports to Health and Human Services Secretary Eric J. Beane.

Until the state finds a qualified successor to Curran, an cross-agency Consent Decree Management Team will shoulder the coordinator's duties, according to an EOHHS spokeswoman, who elaborated on the interim plan. The inter-agency team includes various division leaders and legal staff, who meet regularly, said the spokeswoman, Ashley O'Shea.

The position of the consent decree coordinator is very important in ensuring cooperation among state agencies with responsibilities in implementing the agreement, according to an independent federal court monitor, Charles Moseley. Historically, the various agencies of state government have had the reputation of acting as bureaucratic “silos.”

In addition to BHDDH, the Rhode Island Department of Education and the Office of Rehabilitation Services in the Department of Human Services share responsibility for transforming a system of sheltered workshops and adult day care centers into a network of integrated, community-based services, with an emphasis on regular jobs and personal choice, to comply with the ADA.

With Madden’s arrival early in 2016, Moseley successfully pressed the state to move the position of consent decree coordinator out of BHDDH to the EOHHS, which has authority over both ORS and BHDDH.

Curran has a long and varied career as a disability rights lawyer dating back to 1980, both in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She is a former deputy director at Rhode Island Legal Services and former supervising attorney at what is now the RI Disability Law Center. Working much of the last 20 years in  Massachusetts,  she was deputy general counsel in the Department of Social Services and then held the same position at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

This article has been updated to include details of the interim plan for the state to keep up with the duties of the consent decree coordinator while the state searches for a replacement to Dianne Curran.