Virginia advocates descend on Capitol to protest disability cuts

From The News & Advance in Lynchburg, Va.:

RICHMOND, Va. — Several Lynchburg-area residents urged lawmakers Feb. 15 to keep funding homes in communities for people with developmental disabilities.

Funding cuts that are looming across all state programs pose a threat to 15,000 families who are waiting for, or receiving, state Medicaid waivers that provide community housing, said Jamie Liban, executive director of the ARC of Virginia, an advocacy group for people with disabilities.

Some of those people might lose funding for the housing they enjoy in communities, while others could be forced to remain in institutions under $270 million in cuts that have been proposed, Liban said.

Three people who provide care in their homes for disabled residents — Vickie Frazier, of Rustburg, Robert Phipps, of Lynchburg, and Charles Johnson, of Appomattox — were among about 20 Lynchburg-area people who came to Richmond on Monday to fight for more freedom for disabled people.

“I can serve four people in my home for what it costs the state to care for one in Central Virginia Training Center,” Frazier said.

Phipps and Johnson said they care for one person each in their homes.

Johnson said he and his wife are caring for a 48-year-old woman who, when she came to them from institutional care three years ago, weighed just 96 pounds and couldn’t walk. Now she weighs 123 and walks everywhere, Johnson said.

“We’ve taken her to Disney World, to the Grand Canyon and many other places,” Johnson said.

Phipps said he and his wife are caring for a woman who was institutionalized for many years in Pennsylvania and suffered abuse there. Now she’s living a nearly normal life, Phipps said.

“She goes where we go,” he said. “I’d do it for nothing, just to see the happiness on their faces,” he said, meaning that the state-funded waivers are not the only reason for providing care to people.

Frazier said two of the residents in her home work in a pastry shop, and that three of them are members of a church, where they have a Sunday school class. “That was huge” for those residents, Frazier said.

Those residents also participate in a therapeutic horse-riding program, even though one of them cannot walk very well. “She rides a horse just fine,” Frazier said.

“In an institution she was told, ‘you can’t ride a horse; you can’t even walk,’” Frazier said.

Part of the ARC protest took aim at state funding that’s designated for rebuilding institutions — particularly Southeastern Virginia Training Center in Chesapeake.

The ARC lost a lawsuit last summer that was aimed at blocking the state’s plan for new housing for 75 disabled people in Chesapeake.

“The ARC of Virginia requests your immediate action to suspend the rebuilding of a 75-bed institution at the Southeastern Virginia Training Center,” the group said in a news release it left in legislators’ offices.

The ARC said the $23 million rebuild budget should instead be spent on community-based housing.