Some social service agencies in Illinois begin cutting services

From The News-Gazette:

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – State budget woes have forced two Champaign County social-service agencies to begin cutting their staffs and programs, and the losses stand to affect at least 2,000 local people and their already-stressed families.

Developmental Services Center, which serves children and adults with developmental disabilities, cut 18 jobs Monday and has started cutting services to make up about half of the $1.8 million it's losing in state grant money.

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Dale Morrissey, DSC's chief executive, said more jobs and services will likely go within a few weeks when the other half of the budget cuts are made.

Sheila Ferguson, chief executive of the Champaign County Mental Health Center, said 35 mental health jobs have been cut effective July 17, and 10 open positions that had been frozen pending resolution of the state budget crisis were also eliminated.

Morrissey said anxiety levels among the families depending on the services both local agencies provide have been high.

In fact, he added, in three decades on the job he's never seen a state budget mess have this severe an effect on social-service funding.

"I've never seen it this bad and I've never seen it go this far," he said.

Jobs and programs being cut by one or the other of the two local agencies allow parents of developmentally disabled clients to leave their homes and earn a living. They keep people with disabilities in homes and employed. They help the homeless and keep those with mental health issues out of emergency rooms and police squad cars.

"What we're really doing is supporting families," Morrissey said.

Ferguson said she has had to cut $2.7 million from her agency's $10.5 million budget, and the loss of that money is going to be felt deeply, starting with a 23 percent reduction in a staff already struggling to keep up with mental health needs in the community.

Some immediate effects of those cuts:

– Psychiatric Services – which provides psychiatric evaluations and medication management to children, adolescents and adults – will stop accepting new patients starting July 20. New patients will be directed to primary care providers and Frances Nelson Health Center.

– Counseling Services will give priority to patients in the state's Medicaid system or Medicaid-eligible clients, due to the loss of funding for non-Medicaid and low-income and no-income clients.

– The TIMES Center transitional living program serving homeless men will likely cut service hours come fall and winter.

– Prevention Services – which provides an array of services to teen parents and their children and mental health consultation to day care centers in six counties (Champaign, Douglas, Iroquois, Macon, Piatt and Vermilion) – is losing 75 percent to 100 percent of its funding.

– The Mental Health Juvenile Justice Initiative and Juvenile Justice Care Coordination programs are being eliminated.

– System of Care, which provides outreach to kids in foster care, will end without a state contract to continue it.

In all, Ferguson projects the cuts will affect about 1,500 mental health clients and their families and the pain may not end there.

"We believe it will be deeper and wider," she added.

Morrissey said the first phase of cuts being made by DSC will reduce or eliminate services for about 300 clients and their families, and a second phase of cuts in the works stand to affect 250 to 400 more people.

Among the positions eliminated were staff members who support developmentally disabled clients in the work place and help them live more independently in the community.

Still other cuts included the loss of the staff person in the family resource center, a director of vocational services, three part-time clerical positions and a production position filled by a nondisabled person who supplements work done by DSC clients and helps fulfill the agency's contracts with employers.

Morrissey said he is still making adjustments in the next phase of cuts – $850,000 worth – while he waits to see how the budget crisis shakes out.

Some client needs will continue to be met by working with local funding sources to shift money to what the agency believes to be the most-essential services, he said.

However, some program cuts also had to be made. Respite care that gives scheduled or emergency breaks to families caring for disabled people at home is gone, Morrissey said.

Developmental training for those in need of more support to work in the community is being discontinued in 30 days, and the open-door program that provide social-skills training was cut July 1.

The social-emotional learning program that provides consultation services for day care center teachers working with developmentally disabled children will be cut in 30 to 90 days.

Morrissey said about 45 percent of DSC's budget is funded by state money, with the rest coming from donations and local funding. That ratio will help the agency survive heavy state funding cuts, he said, but he fears agencies in other communities more heavily dependent on state money may collapse.

Meanwhile, Morrissey said, agencies like his are left to wonder about further reductions in another source of state money paid to them on a fee-for-service basis.

The current rates already cover only about 70 percent of the actual costs of providing the services, and a reduction in those rates of up to 30 percent has been threatened, he said.