Disabled are ‘unfairly’ targeted by state budget cuts, advocates say
Friday, May 15, 2009 at 9:12 am
- 12 Comments
Nikki Villavicencio was born with a rare joint disorder known as arthrogryposis. It has rendered her hands largely dysfunctional and caused her to rely on an electric wheelchair to get around.
Despite these hurdles, Villavicencio (pictured) earned a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Wisconsin and is currently serving an internship at the Phalen Clinic on St. Paul’s East Side.
To remain as active as possible, Villavicencio relies on six hours of daily assistance from personal care attendants. They help her with basic daily tasks that most people take for granted — bathing, getting dressed, making meals.
Without this government-sponsored assistance, Villavicencio’s life would be radically constricted. “I would have to go live in an institution or a group home,” she says.
But Villavicencio fears that the state budget crisis could cut back the personal care she’s entitled to. Under proposals floated by both Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the DFL-controlled legislature, there would be significant cuts to the personal-care assistant program. The governor wants to slash $39 million from the program, while the legislature has proposed $25 million in cutbacks.
How significant the cuts ultimately turn out to be is difficult to say at this point. Yesterday Pawlenty ruled out a special session or a government shutdown, and threatened to unilaterally make $4.6 billion in cuts. He fired the first shot across the bow by signing off on the legislature’s funding bill for the Department of Human Services, but striking $381 million from the General Assistance Medical Care program for childless adults in 2011. Democrats continue to insist that they can work out a compromise budget with the governor.
But no matter who wins the battle at the Capitol, one fallout is clear: There will be significant cuts to services for people with mental and physical disabilities. Given that the Minnesota Department of Human Services consumes roughly 30 percent of the state’s general fund, few programs will come away unscathed. But disability advocates charge that their clients are taking a disproportionate hit.
“I think we can make a strong case that vulnerable adults and the programs that protect them are being treated unfairly,” says Steve Larson, public policy director for the Arc of Minnesota.
“There seems to be an overemphasis on cutting programs for people with disabilities,” adds Bruce Nelson, chief executive officer of the Association of Residential Resources in Minnesota.
“These are our most vulnerable people, along with the elderly. We seem to be moving away from the Minnesota tradition of taking care of those folks who are most in need through no fault of their own.”
Thomas Huntley (DFL-Duluth), chairman of the House’s Health Care and Human Services Finance Division, disputes that services for people with disabilities are taking a disproportionate hit, but he doesn’t doubt the significance of the cuts.
“Are they going to hurt a lot of people?” he asks. “You bet. And I think people will die because of this bill.”
It’s not surprising that the personal-care attendant (PCA) program was targeted for slashing. Its cost has been ballooning by an average of 20 percent annually, increasing from roughly $150 million in 2002 to just over $400 million in 2007. What’s more, a report by the Office of the Legislative Auditor released in January determined that the program is “unacceptably vulnerable to fraud and abuse.”
But disability advocates argue that such flaws should be fixed by policy changes and more stringent enforcement rather than through severe cuts. People suffering from mental illnesses in particular are likely to find it more difficult to get assistance under the pared-down program.
“Most of the people who are going to be cut off are children or adults with mental illness,” says Sue Abderholden, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “The PCA program might not be perfect for them, but because there wasn’t anything else that’s what they glommed onto.”
The personal-care attendant program is far from the only cut that would impact people with disabilities. Pawlenty’s proposed budget called for a three percent across-the-board cut on reimbursements for disability services. Similarly the legislature’s bill contains a 2.6 percent reduction, but mental health services are exempted.
While the cutbacks are modest, non-profit organizations that work with disabled people insist that they have very little budgetary fat to trim.
Bob Brick, executive director of Midway Training Services, which helps disabled people obtain employment, says the three percent reduction would cost his agency roughly $100,000.
“Most organizations have essentially cut where they can on the operational side,” says Brick. “Midway Training, like I suspect most organizations, is really down to cutting staff, either in wages or in number of positions. That has a direct impact on the types of services and the breadth of services we can provide to people with disabilities.”
Perhaps the most galling cut to disability advocates is the reduction in the amount of earned income that people who live in state-licensed group homes can keep.
Currently such residents are allowed to keep either $101 or $121 per month for personal needs such as haircuts and transportation. Under proposals by both the governor and the legislature, however, that would be trimmed to just $89. The change would impact more than 16,000 Minnesota residents and save the state roughly $7 million.
Larson notes that Pawlenty recently vetoed a minor increase in the state income tax for households earning more than $250,000, but is apparently okay with reducing incomes for disabled people by roughly 25 percent in some instances. “I find a lot of irony in that,” Larson says.
Disability advocates have now resigned themselves to the fact that cuts to programs that assist their clients are inevitable. They just hope to minimize the damage.
“The lobbying strategy at this point is to make sure things don’t get worse for persons with disabilities,” Larson says. “We’re just trying to hold our own for the rest of the legislative session.”
Despite the doom-and-gloom outlook for disability services funding, Villavicencio has ambitious plans. She wants to move out of the house that she shares with her aunt and uncle and live independently. She also wants to return to school for a graduate degree in paralegal studies.
“The job market isn’t very good for broadcasters right now,” she notes. “All of my classmates are unemployed right now.”
12 Comments
Comment posted May 15, 2009 @ 11:36 am
Explain to me how anyone can be surprised that Pawlenty would favor cutting the poor(25%) over taxing the rich! Do the truly needy contribute to his foreign travel or exploratory committees?
Remeber this is a “starve the beast” evangelical in the mold of Bush…he is the kind of guy people would like to have a beer with…a “nice” guy with a photogenic wife…got the picture yet?
Comment posted May 15, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
The road to the Republican nomination always is over the bodies of the underclass, the disabled, homeless, and the disenfranchised poor. The smiling guy young Timmy that my developmentally disabled daughter met once and shook hands with and was thrilled about …..little does she know that his world is the Hobbesian world of Grover Norquist and the Cato Institute and the Club for Growth.
Comment posted May 16, 2009 @ 11:51 am
Pawlenty doesn’t care. It’s the “they’re poor, let them die” mentality.
But hey, nearly a billion dollars for a baseball stadium. Isn’t that awesome?
Comment posted May 16, 2009 @ 6:53 pm
That’s the Repiglican way..screw the poor (and the middle class too)..
Comment posted June 27, 2009 @ 9:14 am
i have a son who was in a car accident leaving him with no movement from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury… as his mother and care giver i fight for every thing he recives. the home health company There were many have turned down comeing to give him physical therepy because they don’t get paid enough. so i do it. he is 24 hour care and needs to be cathed every 3 to 4 hours. we get 14 hours of pca . so i have to be here the other 10 hours a day (with no Pay) or someone else. there is no such thing as sleep time. when the person needs care he needs it there is no time set. when my son gets bladder infection as a person getting cath does often nights are spent on his bed room floor so i am sure to hear his call.. if you think i am takeing advanage of the system. your so wrong i ask you to walk in our shoes for a day.. my day begins with moving a 190 lb man in his bed it takes two people to move him boost him and roll him from side to side as he can not help him self. it take two people to get him into a wheel chair. in a nurseing home i would of got fired for useing the manual hoyer by myself to get someone in a wheel chair. but at home i guess thats what is exspected. we use two again he can’t hold his own arms in or the unstediness of the equepiment is not safe for one person to try and move the hoyer with a person in the air and get him over his wheel chair in the right way and lower that person in the correcct posistion..it takes two people to give him a shower he goes into a high back shower chair that painful for him due to neck and sholder pain so we need to be as quick as we can but safe. it takes two for the bowl progrem he can’t hold him self to the side for this and one person needs to be pushing on his frount side while one is digging out the back side. again two people… our van is hard to get him in and out of his head is so close to the roof if we hit a pot hole he would hit his head so we have to tilt him back in his chair. his chair is so big its hard to get him into public bath rooms and doctor offices are a jokel. his chair takes most of the room and we are to transfur him onto there little table witha sliding board. your not going to use a hoyer for that there is no way…yet were not allowed a sencond manul chair for doctor visits or if his chair brakes down..lif he chair brakes down he is stuck in bed for days to get service for wheel chairs is a joke they never have the parts and have to order every thing and days and weeks pass while you wait. yet they want to take more from people like my son. we can not double up the pca hours when we need two so there always has to be a family member here to help out
i fight for every thing he gets yet the lady down stairs gets a aide to do her laundry and georcerys yet she works as a greeter at wal mart and volinteers at the hosp
another one gets a aide because she had surgery months ago yet drives and plants flowers and digs in the dirt and walks the neighbor hood cleaning up trash
and there friend also gets one for what reason i don’t know
they are always going out to lunch travels and to the maul always on the go yet they have someone to do laundry…
the one has her georcey shopping done and laundy yet does her 21 year old grand daughters laundry cleaning and cooking what is wrong with this
its the ones who take advanage not the ones who really need it.
Comment posted June 27, 2009 @ 9:29 am
i am so grateful i can have my son home and able to take care of him… the care he would recive in a nurseing home would be …. i wont go there… home is the best place for a young man he has his family and friends. he still has as normal of life as he can. and the love only a mother can give.
with the progrems we are able to keep our loved ones home. and out of skilled nurseing. for the amount of care needed for spinal cord injurys like my son honestly i am saveing the state thousands of dollars every month.. between the adls feeding and nurseing hours my son would require. i have to say thumbs up to all the family members who are takeing care of there love ones
Comment posted December 7, 2009 @ 6:19 am
Make no mistake about it, whether a politician is a bona-fide member of the trilateralists or not they ARE hopelessly owned or at least out-muscled by them. People like Pawlenty, while worthless politically, will continue to wreak havoc on the middle and lower class residents until our country is brought down to levels resembling a third world country. The trillions of dollars our taxpayers are forced to allow our government to send overseas are used strictly for the purpose of raising their standard of living. ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT? You bet. We will NEVER be allowed to affect the FED, Wall Street or the Mega Rich. Get used to it, it’s only going to get worse.
I have been caring for my terminally ill wife for 12 years now, thrown my life and business away because of it with few regrets. The dedication that us GOOD people have for our loved ones should be an example for the politicians rather than a target to destroy. Good luck to us all, see you at the food shelf!
Canned goods and bullets. Buy them both. We’re going to need them.
Comment posted June 4, 2010 @ 4:58 pm
I am the legal Guardian of my Brother Paul Fish. He resides in his own home in Roseau county, MN. Paul had an injury he incurred while volunteering during the northern Minnesota 2002 flood. Paul was helping an elderly man by removing mold filled insulation from his crawl space. Paul had a micro tear in a cerebral artery which emitted blood into his brain, causing him a double sided stroke. His brain suffered catastrophic damage leaving him a legally blind and quadriplegic. After much hospitalization he was released into the under staffed nursing home system, where he was forced to defecate and urinate himself. At a high cost to the State of Minnesota, Paul also was hospitalizes several times for aspired pneumonia due to lack of care he received. Paul’s brother Patrick Fish fought to bring his brother home and now Paul LIVES in his own home. Paul needs 24 hour supervision and care, he is not able to feed, dress or toilet himself. He receives help writing letters and doing various computer activities. Paul has only enough mobility to slightly move a joystick. He is not able to verbalize clearly and cannot scratch his own nose or swat a mosquito.
Regardless of these facts, Paul is having the best life he can given his circumstances, He is happy. Paul is very intelligent and communicates his needs well. I as his Guardian am responsible to legally oversee his PCA program and medical wellbeing. Paul also has a conservator to oversee his financial affairs.
Paul was receiving 14.5 PCA hour paid by the state on Minnesota . This allows him to be cared for from 7:30 am to 10:00 pm with the remainder of the 24 hour covered by us. We have needed more PCA hours to help when two people are required for certain cares such as bath time. Due to the resent budget cuts of the PCA program Paul‘s hours have been reduced to 11 hour per day. This cut is putting Paul in danger of having to be institutionalized where he will lose his will to live. We will do everything we can to prevent this from happening.
I wonder if the State of Minnesota realizes that it will be more costly to put him in the nursing home that it will be to leave his hours in place?
I thought it is the goal of Minnesota to keep people out of institutions ?
Comment posted June 10, 2010 @ 5:51 pm
I was just hired as a Direct Care Worker for $8.00 an hour. The starting wage used to be $9.50 until Pawlenty made his cuts. We get NO benefits either. I am responsible for giving many medications to young adults with a range of emotional/mental problems and helping to make them more able to function in the world to some who that will be possible. But to be responsible for giving medications, some of which are narcotics to several patients and dealing with their behaviors on my own in a house of four “clients” seems totally ridiculous. Even if the doctor, pharmacist or nurse makes a mistake I am the one who has to catch it or it will be my butt on the line they said. I was unemployed for 8 months and thought I’d better get off the unemployment and back to any type of work. Well I am regretting that decision as I see just how much I am responsible for at a measly $8 hour. I was getting as much in unemployment as I am making because I had a great job before. Pawlenty, I’ll be glad when you are gone.
Comment posted July 8, 2010 @ 11:49 pm
I don’t understand this kind of mentality that cutting hours for high risk vunerable adults is going to save money for the state when most ALL of these people rely on the little bit of PCA help they get to remain in thier homes. I am a monther to a 17 yr old Autisic child. He has severe behavioral issues and is basicaly non-verbal. He is over 200lbs and is close to 6 feet tall. recently they decided to say that a step parent cannot be a PCA so we had to go on a different program to be a paid parent. We lost 30 hours a week! We noe have to do the care he requires mostly for free. I cannot even care for him because he is too big and gets violent so when my husbands at his main job there is not enough hours to hire someone to come in, let alone most anyone would not work for minimum pay having to deal with such a stressful job, having to phsically restrain an adult and risk injury. Anyway when he turns 18, I wil switch back to the regular PCA program and was told that I would not get any more hours because of budget cuts. I have to rely on my husband 100% of the time when he is not on his 1st job, leaving our family no rest or break or respite! No vacations because we cannot take him with because of the fear of a violent outbreak. If he would have to go in a group home that would cost the county a whole lot more than they are giving us to try to manage him at home. The system is failing us, The church needs come togather and see the needs we have and HELP out, Its so much a burden on families that care for disabled children and adults it such a strain even when you have a good amount of services! But I am sure they are counting on families to take the hit, atking advantage of the fact we love our family and would break our backs to keep them at home instead of a group home where they would be neglected!
Comment posted January 13, 2011 @ 12:25 pm
It would be so nice if we could walk over and knock on our neighbors door…tell them that we need their new snowmobile more than they do so that we can pay for more care for our disabled child. Funds have to come from somewhere…. perhaps from the transportation budget… so that our roads are even more dangerous. I can’t imagine having to go through what many of these families are describing, but I don’t think the $8 per hour is really the problem. I believe the cuts are due to administrative costs out of balance, fraud, etc. that will only be solved if money doesn’t flow so freely. We can’t just “take from Peter to pay Paul” …we can’t tax small business to the point of shutting it down, including it’s employees, so that we can pay more elsewhere. As a society we need to relearn the concept of caring for others. No family should have to go through something like this alone…. but I believe that “teaching” a community to give (as in volunteering) is way more valuable than teaching us to take (as in taxing).
Comment posted January 17, 2011 @ 4:07 pm
If the state wants to save money, the Group homes should no longer be able to charge the state for care of a client when the client is at another place such as DAC for 8 hours a day…I feel like this is double billing . If the group home has a client that needs activities, they should plan for them. The pay for the client’s absence should be adjusted.
I have been working for free taking care of my brother 10.5 hours a day, not getting extra pay for time at dr’s appts and hospital stays and milage is reinbursed at .29 cents a mile….is this a joke? Motel 40.00 night? Gee, maybe a motel 6 but still hard to come by as they have limited handicap rooms.
I have spent all my savings to care for him, and now am taking loans. When if they would just pay me, it would save thousands of dollars. It is impossible for me to work when I never know if PCA’s are gonna show up, then when I do work, I come home to the 10.5 hours that is mine so when do I sleep?
I heard a group home gets paid about 5,000.00 a month for a client….gee, I’d be happy with 2,000.00 a month and hire my own help when I want a day off.
Sometimes, I think they just wanna blow money.
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