Waiting for a Crisis?: Cuts in funding for the disabled in FL

Nearly crashing your car when your child, who is autistic, takes off his seatbelt: This happened to Annemarie Prater of Spring Hill, FL, when her 9-year-old son Kevin did just that. 5-year-old Michael Bolen, who is also autistic, head-bangs and has made a hole in the kitchen floor. Robin Millan is 36 years old and has autism and her mother, Ann Millan, worries about her sitting “‘at home watching TV all day.’” The stories of Kevin, Michael, and Robin are among those of many Floridians—14,528, as reported in the May 17th Star News Online—who are disabled and who are on a six-year waiting list for funding for “therapy, job coaches, home nurses, even dental treatment”—-for services and assistance that can help them get out of the house and just better get through a day. Another 6,095 are on a waiting list for Medicaid. And with the waiting list higher than ever, legislators are putting forward a proposal to cut two-thirds of the services to some people and to put an annual cap of $14,000 on what can be received—-last year, the average waiver was $30,589. And hundreds of severely disabled people” receive more than $100,000 in services.”

Legislators note that the cost of services has been increasing; advocates for the disabled are understandably alarmed:

“It basically takes us back to the old days of institutions,” said Sue Buchholtz, chief executive officer of the Pinellas Association for Retarded Children, which operates group homes and provides other services to about 700 disabled people in the Tampa Bay area.

Families and advocates believe many disabled people will withdraw from the community because they’ll no longer be able to afford the aides who help them live and work independently.

“We’re going to put people in crisis,” said Debra Dowds, executive director of the Florida Developmental Disabilities Council. “We recognize there needs to be some changes. The problem is the level they’ve done is way too severe.”

Dowds also fears the cuts will pit families on the waiver and those on the wait list against each other. “We need to be funding people on the wait list,” Dowds said, “but not at the expense of people currently receiving services.”

The waiver program, which receives state and federal funding, was designed to keep the disabled out of costly institutions that isolate them from society.

But funding has always run short. So many wait.

Indeed: The anticipated cuts in services for disabled persons are clearly alarming; the anticipated conflict between those who have services via the waiver program and those who do not and are on the waiting list is also a concern, as these turn those who should be allies into potential rivals. Michael Bolen is on the waiting list for funds; Kevin Prater’s family received crisis funding. But why wait for a crisis to happen?