Developmental disability services in Indiana face budget cuts

Services for people with developmental disabilities across the state of Indiana will soon be affected by budget cuts.

Three local agencies serving people with developmental disabilities, Options, Stone Belt and Christole, Inc., have announced that steep budget cuts are affecting about 905 staff members and 2,500 consumers in Monroe County, said Susan Rinne, chief executive officer and executive director of Options.

These changes go into effect June 1, 45 days after the Family and Social Services Administration first notified these agencies. This is the minimum amount of time they are required by law to give forewarning.

“It’s pretty much going to touch everybody, because it’s touched every service we provide,” Rinne said.

All in all, these rate changes add up to a $40 million decrease in services statewide and a $1.3 million gap in Monroe County alone.

Leslie Green, the chief executive officer of Stone Belt, said this will lead to a $700,000 budget decrease for Stone Belt. The organization is a major employer in Monroe County, with about 500 workers.

For now, the cuts are primarily affecting the organization’s infrastructure and staff base. No services have been eliminated outright, but the services offered will be scaled back and costs will be minimized. But if budget cuts continue, consumers will directly feel its effects.

“We haven’t had to cut any services yet, but continued cuts would lead to a cut in services,” Green said. “There isn’t any more room for cost-changing structures outside of program cuts. The services we are providing aren’t as enriched as they have been. They are much more streamlined.”

In an effort to mitigate the effects of these rate cuts, Options and Stone Belt have worked to handle the budget decrease internally. A few of the staff members have been laid off, and many more have seen salary decreases.

“It’s meant that we’ve had to look at how we can trim back everything,” Rinne said.

Options expects a $500,000 budget decrease, Rinne said, which means the organization is going to be operating on the same budget it had about five years ago.

“We can’t do some of the things we have been able to do before,” Rinne said. “We can’t subsidize services. Sometimes their plans won’t totally pay for all of the services they need. In the past, we’ve been able to add that in, but now we just can’t do that.”

Danielle Smith, the deputy director of communications at the FSSA, said she is hopeful that by operating more efficiently the organizations can avoid directly affecting the consumers.

“We are having to look at the entire budget as a whole, and with the economy as it is, we had to look at the big picture of all of our services,” Smith said.

However, not all services will be affected. There are certain programs — such as First Steps, which provides early intervention for young children identified as having developmental disabilities or delays — that FSSA is mandated to provide.

Programs that focus on health and safety are less likely to be cut.

For now, the cuts are only expected to be in effect for the next year. But even so, some wonder if these cuts could have been avoided altogether.

“It’s just frustrating when you see these cuts and you know that the state spent a lot of money on a resource allocation system that hasn’t been implemented but that they’ve been working on for the past two years,” Rinne said. “There have been some frustrations with how things have been handled over the last several years, and I’m not sure that this couldn’t have been handled in a better way.”

Green said she is questioning where some of the allocated federal funds have gone, which she said were supposed to be used to make up the difference in budget gaps.
 
“The cut was much larger than we expected, and information about how and why that cut was made would be helpful,” Green said.