Developmentally disabled people and advocates take a trip to protest recent cuts in agency reimbursements.
By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published November 13, 2003
[Times photos: Stephen J. Coddington]
Key Training Center clients Chris Gore, left, and Angela Stevens, right, join hundreds of protesters chanting, "No more cuts, we've had enough" outside of the DCF District 13 office in Wildwood on Wednesday morning. The protesters were upset about recent budget cuts that they say could force some group homes and day training programs to close. The funding cuts were enacted Nov. 1.
Sunrise Arc of Lake County program manager Roger Leandro joins other protesters Wednesday outside of the DCF District 13 office.
WILDWOOD - About 30 Key Training Center clients from Citrus County piled into a yellow school bus Wednesday morning for an unusual field trip: a rally organized on their behalf.
They joined several hundred advocates, parents and other developmentally disabled individuals outside the Department of Children and Families' District 13 office in Wildwood. Together, they protested recent reductions in the reimbursement rates offered to agencies that provide residential and adult day training services for those with developmental disabilities.
The reductions, advocates said, are forcing group homes and other programs run by the Association for Retarded Citizens and their affiliates to close or be drastically scaled back. Similar rallies were held at DCF district offices statewide.
"If they are doing this to Florida's most vulnerable people, who's next in the state?" questioned John Askew, executive director of Sunrise ARC of Lake County and one of the local rally's organizers.
DCF Secretary Jerry Regier disputed the assertion that cuts had been made at his own press conference held simultaneously Wednesday in Tallahassee.
The secretary said the state remained committed to funding programs for those with developmental disabilities and had implemented a standardized reimbursement rate structure in July that resulted in an average increase of 11 percent over last year's costs for services.
Regier contended providers had been increasing their costs at levels much higher than officials had expected when they created the standardized payment rate. He said he asked the inspector general to investigate the recent price spikes among state-contracted service providers.
In order to stay within the department's appropriation and avoid a projected $27.5-million deficit, the rate had to be adjusted, Regier said. The residential habilitation and adult day-training programs are being targeted because they account for more than half of the state's Developmental Disabilities program budget.
The rate reductions - 14 percent for group homes and 9.5 percent for adult day training - were effective Nov. 1.
Some providers learned about the changes only about a week before; others didn't get their notification letters until a week after the adjustment went into effect. They all had the same reaction:
"We're shocked," said Deborah Linton, assistant director for ARC/Florida in Tallahassee. "When we start hearing about the deficit, we can't understand their data."
What critics of the rate reductions do understand is the immediate impact they believe the cuts will have on their clients. The Developmental Disabilities program is expected to serve an average of 6,100 people a month with a $246-million budget for residential habilitation this fiscal year, according to DCF data.
Rarely do advocates of the developmentally disabled employ these people to make a public statement. But they felt impelled to send a strong message to state officials, several said Wednesday.
The throngs of clients protesting in Wildwood included people like Ann Marie Jaman, a 44-year-old woman with developmental disabilities who lives with her boyfriend in a home in Brooksville with support from ARC Nature Coast. She attends the adult day-training program and uses transportation provided by ARC, both services that are threatened by the cuts.
"They take care of us just like their own children," said Jaman, holding a "Save Our Homes!" protest sign. "We don't want them to go under."
And there was Brad Swasey, who suffers from cerebral palsy, severe development delay, seizure disorder and an unknown mood disorder. A month away from his 23rd birthday, he lives with his parents in Inverness and attends one of the Key Centers' adult day-training programs daily.
In four months, he has progressed more at the Key Centers than he did with 22 years of schools, said his mother, Sheila Swasey. Her son is one of 27 clients the Key Centers provides services for without a cent of state funding.
Swasey came to the rally with her husband and son to protest cuts she fears could dry up some of the centers' generosity.
"He may be kicked out now because of these cuts," she said.
Key Centers spokeswoman Melissa Walker said Wednesday that the agency has no plans to drop any of its clients or current programs, despite the estimated $500,000 hit they will endure from the rate reductions.
Like other advocates statewide, Walker was befuddled by secretary Regier's rationalization that it was the service providers who had created the alleged DCF budget woes. She argued that Medicaid determines providers' billing rates, making it impossible for the providers to over-bill.
"How can we be gouging them?" she said. "We can only bill on what they tell us we can."
