Funding brings back 300 Pioneer Center clients
By KEVIN P. CRAVER - kcraver@nwherald.com
The state has restored some of Pioneer Center for Human Services’ funding, allowing the agency for the mentally disabled to bring back the 300 clients it had to let go last month.
But for some of them, their return could be short-lived.
Pioneer Center was forced to let go 300 of its 1,800 clients when social service funding evaporated as a result of the ongoing state budget crisis. The McHenry-based agency brought them back last week when the Illinois Department of Human Services restored half of its funding for developmental disabilities.
What that means, however, is that Pioneer Center has enough funding to keep them for six months from the July 1 start of the state fiscal year. In short, some of them could face the prospect of termination again in December, President and CEO Lorraine Kopczynski said. The agency will spend the next few months working to get as many of them as possible on Medicaid rather than state grant funding.
“Probably about 25 percent of our clients may not fit into that Medicaid model, so I don’t know how I’m going to fund them,” Kopczynski said.
Island Lake resident Eve Brodin hopes her 44-year-old daughter, Gerry, gets to stay. Gerry was let go from her work program last month, and Brodin said that once was enough. Gerry’s younger sister Kathy, also a Pioneer Center client, was under a different program and got to stay.
“I spent two weeks with horrible breakdowns, crying and screaming and hitting herself in the head, until she finally, slowly, settled down,” Brodin said. “[Gerry] was waiting for Kathy to get home. It was a real bad time.”
The state restored Pioneer Center’s mental health funding through the full state fiscal year ending June 30. The $1.55 million it received, $350,000 less than what it got last year, allowed it to re-open the two group homes it had to shut down last month. Pioneer Center maintains 13 group homes, eight for the developmentally disabled and five for the mentally disabled, with more than 90 residents total.
But Pioneer Center only brought back a few of the 25 employees it laid off, and 30 more employees still have reduced work hours.
“We’re still trying to be lean and mean, because we don’t know what the future is going to hold,” Kopczynski said.
This summer was the third consecutive that the General Assembly missed the May 31 deadline to have a budget in place. But social service agencies found themselves in the crosshairs as the new fiscal year began without a spending plan in place. Gov. Pat Quinn warned that their funding would be gutted to trim a record deficit unless legislators approved a 50 percent income tax increase. The House rejected the idea and did not vote on a Senate plan to raise the tax 67 percent and impose the state sales tax on a wide range of services.
“We’re being told that next year’s budget could be even tougher, and of course it’s an emotional roller coaster for clients’ families and staff members,” said Danial Haligas, Pioneer Center’s vice president of programs.
Parents such as Oakwood Hills resident Melanie Sharratt are preparing for a repeat performance. She and other parents have banded together into a monthly support group to keep abreast of what is going on in Springfield and to help Pioneer Center.
Her son, Auggie Gresko, was happy when he returned to Pioneer and saw friends “back from vacation.” Sharratt does not relish the idea of having to tell him a second time that he cannot go back.
“We’re worried, and mainly because it will be very difficult again for these special-needs people to have the doors shut on them again,” Sharratt said.
The ongoing budget drama likely will set the stage for another attempt at an income tax increase in the General Assembly. Quinn said he would like to see a proposed increase taken up when the General Assembly meets later this year for its fall veto session. Or it could be pushed back to the spring 2010 session in January, when supporters need a simple majority rather than 60 percent for a tax hike.
