Agencies serving individuals with disabilities are trying to insulate clients from the effects of statewide budget cuts.
Their ability to do so is limited, agency leaders said, as it would be unfair to make their clients live with fewer services, and their employees are already underpaid.
Gatesway, which provides residential and employment opportunities for nearly 400 individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities, saw a 3.5 percent cut in state aid, which equals about $525,000.
“That’s drastic to us,” said Jim Pacula, Gatesway CEO. “We will maintain the level of care somehow. We just have to figure out how. ... It’s tough when you’re cut so thin already.”
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Gatesway’s caregivers start at $8.25 an hour.
“It’s hard enough for them to be surviving out there in today’s economy. It puts a lot of pressure on them,” Pacula said.
Further cuts could mean lowering salaries at the management level and offering retirement packages while shifting those responsibilities to others.
“It’s going to be rough,” Pacula said. “The last thing we’re going to do is cut services.”
What the agency will have to do is take a look at some of the extra, unbilled services it provides to clients, such as providing extra transportation for clients. Clients are provided a certain number of billable miles each month, but Gatesway would often provide transportation beyond that allotment.
“One client might get 1,000 miles a month and we’re providing them 1,500 to 1,800 because we want to get them out in the community and to their jobs and back. We take all that on,” Pacula said. “We’re probably going to have to trim those extra miles back.”
A New Leaf, another agency that provides residential and employment services for people with disabilities, saw a 3 percent cut in its state aid. The cut will mean about $160,000 less a year.
“Our clients are people who need to be fed, taken to the bathroom, dressed. On average they get 14 medications a day. We have to provide that same service,” said Mary Ogle, executive director. “This is our most vulnerable population. These aren’t people who committed a crime. They were born with a disability, yet our government can’t care for them.”
Ogle said that she, too, is having to look at efficiencies while still maintaining the same level of service.
“Unlike oil companies, who am I going to lay off? I have to provide 24-hour care seven days a week,” she said.
The agency is also looking for increased financial support from the community.
“I hate to ask the private community to support us when the government should be doing it, but it’s the only way we are going to be able to keep providing our services,” Ogle said.
A New Leaf provides services to 239 clients.
Ogle said she can’t absorb the cuts by cutting pay to the caregivers, because they make only $9 a hour.
“We can’t strike. What are we going to do, wheel our clients to the Capitol doors and walk away? I don’t even know how to fight this,” she said. “We have no recourse.”
John Gajda, executive director of the advocacy group TARC, said labor is the biggest expense for agencies serving people with disabilities.
“Yet for people with disabilities who are dependent on the people who are paid to be a part of their lives, the quality of staff is critical,” he said. “Disability providers have already been struggling to hire and retain quality staff.”
Gajda said that reductions in funding will make staffing even harder for agencies, leading to a possible decrease in the quality of life for those with disabilities.
“Concurrently, oversight and safeguards are being cut back,” he said. “I am worried about the demised quality of care for people with disabilities that the cycle of budget cuts is bringing to disability services and the capabilities we have developed in the system that will be lost when direct-care professionals and therapy providers move on like educators to other jobs or to other states.”
