Texas advocates rally against cuts to community-based disability services there

Fromm The Dallas Morning News:

AUSTIN – Proposed cuts in community-based care for the elderly, the disabled and the mentally ill would increase wait times for services and eventually impose higher costs on the state and many counties, protesters warned Sept. 1.

Speakers at a Capitol rally said more Texans could stay in their homes if they received services for physical frailty, mental illness and intellectual disabilities. Recently proposed cuts, however, threaten programs that promote independent living – and endanger people's lives, several people said.

"A lot of us are going to end up dead," Bastrop County resident Laura Myers-Doughty said, referring to 20,000 people who would lose community-based mental health treatment and hundreds who would no longer be cared for in state mental hospitals.

The state, which is facing a shortfall of as much as $18 billion in the next two-year budget, is a long way from deciding on cuts. But leaders have asked agencies to outline how they would cut 10 percent from their current spending in 2012-13.

The health department said that, among other things, it would save $124 million by closing 12 percent of beds at five mental hospitals, including Terrell State, and reducing by about 10 percent those served in community programs – currently, about 191,000.

"That's not the way to go," said Myers-Doughty, 37, a mother of two.

She said she suffered abuse as a child and has been hospitalized repeatedly for major depression and post-traumatic stress. Community services and after-care provided by Austin State Hospital have helped stabilize her and her son Zach, 13, who also has depression, she said.

Robin Peyson of NAMI Texas, the state chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said the cuts would drive mentally ill Texans into jails and public hospital emergency rooms.

"This just results in cost shifting to county budgets and it sets people up for crisis, where it just costs more money to serve them," Peyson said.

At the "Invest in Community" rally, others warned that proposed cuts would undermine last year's landmark agreement to fix dangerous conditions inside Texas' institutions for the mentally disabled and provide community-based care for nearly 8,000 people stuck on long waiting lists.

The Department of Aging and Disability Services recently submitted a budget request saying that unless it gets money to replace federal stimulus funds and maintain the 8,000 new slots for community services, it will have to suspend supports for 13,400 people.