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* Our friends at BlueRoomStream are doing live coverage of today’s 10 o’clock hearing on the proposed closure of the Jacksonville Developmental Center...
* And here’s a ScribbleLive feed. I’ll post some background stories in a minute or two for those of you who need to get up to speed on the issue. Blackberry users click here…
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Feb 7, 12 @ 10:21 am
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Previous Post: Cullerton: Lower pension funding target to 80 percent
Next Post: One reason why cutting the budget ain’t easy
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The question remains. Why would community agencies agree to accept people from Jackson Developmental Center with all of their extensive and expensive needs when Illinois is paying for services six months after delivery?
Comment by Aldyth Tuesday, Feb 7, 12 @ 12:06 pm
‘The state is giving former residents of centers for people with developmental disabilities an average budget of $84,000 annually to find a community-care or home-care provider,’
That is true for the first year. No guarantee for any future year. DHS has a history of cutting add-ons after the first year.
Comment by zatoichi Tuesday, Feb 7, 12 @ 1:50 pm
Something smells rotten in Denmark. Nothing has changed except how quickly they want to close the places and what places they plan to close.
Guardians and the people they represent should have more say than Don Moss or Tony Palauski from ARC.
Comment by Wickedred Tuesday, Feb 7, 12 @ 7:28 pm
Aside from the labor and family issues covered here on this blog with regards to SODCs, there is a civil rights aspect here that I find very seldom mentioned by CapFax. Maybe you need to talk to more disability rights advocates, many of whom are attorneys themselves. That issue is the fact that Title II of the ADA states that programs serving people with disabilities must serve them in the least restrictive setting. That is the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court Olmstead decision, which states that people with disabilities may not be institutionalized against their will. (If I had a dollar for every time some ill-informed soul refers to the “Olmstead Act…”)
What was also not noted by CapFax is that Michael Gelder stated that there is a national movement towards deinstitutonalization and expanding home and community based services. Not to take Gelder as the ultimate word on all this, but what he stated is true, and the resistance to de-institutionalization is just a sign that people see the writing on the wall. Fourteen other states are institution free. Gosh, people with disabilities in Illinois aren’t somehow the most disabled of all, are they? The truth is that our institutional system disables their life choices way more than their actual disabilities.
There is also a rather unfortunate pattern of some state legislators with SODCs in their district not voting to fund payments to providers while fighting tooth and nail to keep the SODCs open. This is highly problematic for all the unions, and the communities affected, and the state. State legislators need to back up the community providers in their area, not just the state-run operations. That’s a real crying political shame, not just for providers, but for people with disabilities and their families.
A complex issue with many angles beyond AFSCME, VOR, the ARC, UCP and so forth. An issue with a lot of emotion, amplified by what many won’t saying out loud—that this is an abolition issue, ending a state run industrial complex that squanders millions of dollars while 30,000 people on the DD waiver waiting list suffer.
Comment by Quill Tuesday, Feb 7, 12 @ 9:30 pm