Pennsylvania MR services worry about how state budget cuts will affect services

From Pittsburgh Business Times:

A proposed $17.3 million budget cut to agencies statewide that serve severely mentally retarded people may force service cutbacks and increase consolidation among providers while delaying care for clients and their families, advocates say.

Gov. Ed Rendell’s planned 1 percent budget cut will result in a 4 percent cut for agencies that serve the mentally retarded with respite care, vocational training and other services when the increasing cost of providing those services is considered, said Gabrielle Sedor, spokeswoman for Harrisburg-based Pennsylvania Association of Resources/Autism Intellectual Disabilities, a nonprofit agency that represents providers. Providers are almost entirely supported by state funding, and between 70 percent and 80 percent of the funding pays wages and related labor expenses.

“Our work force is really the core of mental retardation services,” Sedor said. “It’s not something you can outsource. We’re terribly troubled.”

The Department of Welfare this week briefed county officials and others on Rendell’s $1.7 billion budget for community adult mental retardation programs for fiscal 2011. Advocates say they will try to have funding restored before budget adoption.