This is the article from the December COFAR VOICE. For a discussion on the "Blue Mass Group" blog of DMR's tactics in dealing with the cuts, see (and add your own two cents):
http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=14087#163643
FY09 Budget, Governor’s Veto, Layoffs, and now… More Cuts for DMR!
Severe and Profoundly Retarded Hardest Hit
Despite overall gains in the DMR FY09 budget now already in its fifth month, residential services for the most disabled people served by DMR took hard cuts in the FY09 budget. Then came mid-year cuts announced Oct. 15, which again axed facility funding.
The six developmental centers and the approximately 100 state-operated group homes were funded below DMR’s request throughout the state budget process, then forced to absorb 2008 fuel bills, slammed by Governor Patrick’s veto of $750,000 from facilities, and ended up about $5 million short, more if the price of oil and gasoline stay high.
As a result, up to 200 layoffs at five of the six developmental centers began in September, with voluntary retirement incentives. Facility directors were given a number, and were able to refuse resignations in vital areas, but inevitably program will suffer.
Then came the worse news: Another $3 million slashed out of the facilities line Oct. 15 as declining state revenues forced another round of cutbacks. As this issue goes to press, DMR has not described how it can accomplish another cut to the facilities line without falling below Medicaid staffing mandates, endangering the residents and risking a new round of scandals in the much-improved former “state schools.”
Although a federal appeals panel Oct. 1 reversed Judge Tauro’s 2007 order and appeared to clear the way for closing the Fernald Center (see “Tauro Reversed,” page 4), state officials had emphasized an orderly and legal process, which would have little impact in FY09. The governor's note on the October 15 9C cut mentioned savings to be realized by closing a facility, but as COFAR has repeatedly demonstrated, there are not savings to be realized by a unilateral closing at Fernald.
“In any case,” said COFAR Executive Director Colleen Lutkevich, “Other state cutbacks will make it very hard to move anyone in the DMR system. State-operated group homes have less money than last year, and the community residential budget is also slightly reduced. With the logjam in residential services, we felt we had to recommend deferring the governor’s ‘Community First Initiative’ – to get elderly and disabled people out of nursing homes and back home or into active treatment, even though we generally support that goal. And the Governor agreed, but that dries up another funding source to make a few more DMR residential beds.
“Meanwhile, there is another $7 million in new cuts across the DMR system, so it’s harder for people in all settings, harder to get help from DMR administrators to navigate the minefield, and we are even losing Medicaid matching funds in the Autism waiver.”
The forum at www.cofar.org is a good place to post observations on where the DMR cutbacks are most obvious to you.
The other large cuts made by the Governor are to DMR administration, where they may send the caseloads of service coordinators toward an impossible 60 people each; to the Autism department, which was increasing the number of families receiving early intervention; and to DOE-DMR, a joint program which attempts to coordinate community based services for young people with special needs and DMR eligibility to keep them at home and avoid expensive residential school placements. It can be argued that all of these cuts target the minority of the most disabled people served by DMR, but the flat-funded or slightly cut contracted community-residential system is also under great demographic pressure, and thus more people with mild and moderate MR/DD are waiting around longer without any or adaquate services, although provider capacity is at least being maintained.
--end--, but comments are enabled!