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Corbett's cuts could mean people "dying on the street"
We knew the budget cuts proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett would be painful - but it's even worse than you thought. Philly's Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity calls them cruel and disastrous.
Corbett's cuts could mean people "dying on the street"
We knew the budget cuts proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett would be painful — but it's even worse than you thought. Philly's Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity Donald Schwarz calls them both "cruel" and "disastrous." As Daniel Denvir laid out in his cover story on Corbett's deep cuts to welfare, public health and other social programs, the budget cuts affect people with intellectual disabilities, mental health problems, the homeless and other exceedingly vulnerable populations. Now that Philly has had time to crunch the numbers on a proposed 20 percent cut to a newly combined block grant that includes spending for four city departments (Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, Human Services, Public Health and Supportive Housing), Schwartz figures we'll lose out on $40,784,291 for fiscal 2012.
More than that, the budget would dismantle safety nets that have been 40 years in the making — and reverse decades-long efforts to move away from institutionalization — all while sending people who would have received mental health services, addiction services, HIV/AIDS hospice care, elderly care and intellectual disability services into homeless shelters or out onto the street.
The numbers projected in Philly are striking: Some 4,000 mentally ill people will lose outpatient services; 400 of them will lose case management services; and 500 to 600 people with chronic mental illness will lose out on housing support, according to Schwarz, meaning "We expect people will be discharged from hospitals and other places into homeless shelters." Thirty to 40 young people with intellectual disabilities who would have received bridge services between youth and adult support systems will not. Sixteen percent of hospice beds for patients with HIV/AIDS will be cut: "There are folks that will die on the streets in Philadelphia because there will not be hospice placements." One out of two daytime mental health emergency teams and six out of eight walk-in centers dealing with emergency mental health services will likely be cut. And 437 addiction treatment beds will be removed, meaning more people will stay in the already strained prison system due to lack of treatment options. As for those homeless shelters — which can be expected to absorb much of this new overflow — they'll be losing critical case management services.
One side effect of all this is that kids in foster care are likely to remain there longer than ever, because housing support services, job counseling and addiction treatment services — any or all of which may be necessary for parents looking to have their rights reinstated — will be limited.
Philly has had severe cuts over the years and has made do, but Schwarz says what's on the table now goes beyond anything the city is capable of dealing with: "All of those [past] cuts now are dwarfed by what the governor's doing... The worry right now is that the state is trying to pass on the responsibility to the counties." Budget talks are ongoing in Harrisburg, so whether the General Assembly will fulfill that threat remains to be seen.
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