As Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the state aim to balance a looming deficit of more than $500 million for the 2016-17 fiscal year, nonprofits such as the Kennedy Center in Trumbull, which has been serving intellectually and physically disabled people for more than 50 years, are buckling under budget cuts.
“When I first started 37 years ago, families moved here specifically because they recognized the quality of services that were being offered by the state of Connecticut and the private nonprofit service providers,” said Martin D. Schwartz, president of the Kennedy Center, at its annual legislative breakfast on March 11.
“I haven”™t seen that over the past six, seven years,” he said. “In fact, it is quite the opposite. Families are saying that they are leaving Connecticut because the service delivery system is not what it had been.”
Schwartz said services have already been impacted in lieu of past cuts to state funding, which has left the organization constantly fundraising, which is not a sustainable strategy for the future.
“For the past six years we have had funding cuts every year,” he said. “We are constantly going to the same well, the same people, and how many times can they give? The fact of the matter is at this point it is really impacting our services.”
“We are looking at a 5.75 percent cut next year and 3 percent cut this year, I don”™t think people could think this works and expect things to continue,” he said.
The breakfast at Chip”™s Family Restaurant in Trumbull was attended by several regional state legislators and featured tearful testimony from the parents of individuals who depend on the Kennedy Center and similar private disabled-service providers to care for their children and provide a quality of life for them and their families.
“These services enabled my family to live a normal functioning life,” said Jeanne Sinclair, director of cardiovascular services at St. Vincent”™s Medical Center in Bridgeport and the parent of an adult child with severe Tourette syndrome.
When faced with the choice of quitting her job to take care of her child, taking on unsustainably expensive private in-home care or relinquishing her daughter to the state, it was the Kennedy Center that provided her an avenue to provide the care her child needed without derailing her family”™s life, she said.
Radio personality Randye Kaye is the mother of an adult with mental and intellectual disabilities who has been able to lead a normal life due to the services provided by nonprofits like Kennedy Center, but not without severe disruption each time services are reduced, she said.
“Without services his life falls apart,” she said. “He has been hospitalized eight times, he has been homeless, he has been arrested and almost jailed twice because of confusion. What will happen to my son and what will happen to your budget when the money has to go to hospitalizing him or keeping him in jail or a nursing home for the rest of his life? Whereas right now with these less expensive supports he is working, he is paying taxes, he is driving his mother crazy like any young man should be able to do and he is costing the state a lot less money.”
Schwartz said staffing for successful services like the center”™s supported-living options and recreational programs have been severely impacted by budget cuts. Full-time employees have been replaced with on-call or part-time employees because full-time staff benefit packages are too costly for the center to support. With the loss of full-time staffers goes the day-in day-out relationships they build with the disabled individuals who rely on the center, he said.
“Probably what”™s going to happen is some of these people are going to end up back in group homes, if there are any openings, or end up on the state”™s doorstep,” he said.
At the heart of Schwartz”™s argument to legislators was money.
Citing data from the state Department of Developmental Services, Schwartz noted the disparities and wastefulness of the state”™s dual provider system, which allows for state services and private providers to duplicate services for the disabled.
According to Schwartz, private-service providers serve three times the amount of disabled people than the Department of Developmental Services, which does so at more than double the cost of services from private providers.
“If we did not have this dual system, which is very rare these days, we could save the state over 300 million (dollars) a year,” he said.
But this statistic has fallen on deaf ears, he said, as that state continues to allocate funding evenly between the Department of Developmental Services and private providers, who serve 5,000 and 15,000 disabled people, respectively.
And while private providers carry the larger burden, they are under significantly more stress, he said.
According to Schwartz, 73 percent of nonprofits with budgets of more than $1million ended with a deficit in 2009. And in a comparison of state services and private services for disabled individuals requiring 24-hour residential service, the annual cost for a private provider is $129,114 per year while the state provides the same services for $338,730 per year.
“The Kennedy Center does the same thing as the state agency does at literally 50 cents on the dollar,” said state Sen. Tony Hwang (R-Fairfield). “We can”™t operate this way as a state. We have to re-evaluate our priorities in state government and what our critical services and needs are. For me, the ability to give every individual with developmental disabilities or autism an opportunity to lead a fulfilled and engaged life ”“ as well as contributing to our community ”“ there is no dollar value on that, it”™s a win-win.”
Hwang noted that raising taxes is not a solution to the problem as it will only drive out residents and businesses, and like Schwartz, he sees the dual service system as an area ripe for change to fix the long-term structural patterns in the state that allow for the overlap and waste of resources.
Schwartz said the state needs to plan for the future and not make drastic cuts from essential services to provide short-term fixes for the current fiscal crisis.
“There are ways to still provide quality services and do it in a cost-effective way. We are not the problem ladies and gentlemen, we are the solution, but allow us to be the solution,” he said. “We are a society, and one of the major purposes of any society is to care for those people who are most vulnerable. I am feeling in Connecticut that is no longer a prime goal of this state.”
