SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (NEXSTAR) — The Department of Human Services is planning to make cuts to the amount of hours it covers for care of the developmentally disabled.
Service providers across the state are bracing for an 8.7 percent reduction in hours covered by the state. The money the state allocates to pay for those hours goes towards employee salaries, and without state funding, providers will have to find new ways to cover those costs, or reduce care hours.
According to an IDHS presentation from October laying out the impact of the reductions, 90 percent of residents in these homes would see a reduction in care, while the other 10 percent would see an increase.
Service Providers were first made aware of the cuts to reimbursed hours at the beginning of 2023, but since then, DHS has delayed the cut on several occasions.
Now, the nearly nine percent cut to the number of hours the state will reimburse will take effect on April 1st, 2024. Agencies are expecting the cuts to have massive impacts on their operations. Sparc is a service provider for the developmentally disabled in Springfield. Sparc’s CEO Doug McDonald said this significant of a cut will be hard to cover for many providers across Illinois.
"By cutting out the kind of money that they’re talking about now, it puts people at a tremendous deficit and it puts agencies at a tremendous deficit," McDonald said. "And it could mean people losing services."
Paul Blobaum’s brother Norman currently lives in a group home in Clinton for people with developmental disabilities. At that facility, he receives care from direct support professionals (DSP). Blobaum is worried about how that will effect his brother’s care
"To think that what supports that he and his housemates do have could be cut," Blobaum said. "What does that look like? I don’t know."
His brother does not require the full wrap around services that many who live in these group homes get, and that makes Paul Blobaum even more anxious at the potential impact of these cuts. The care that is provided at these homes can range from day-to-day chores around the house, to complete 24-hour care in extreme cases.
"It’s all across the board," McDonald said. "It’s residential services, homes for people. It’s vocational training for people, it’s receiving mental health counseling, behavioral counseling, supports for anything that goes on in the community, by cutting funding, we’re talking about doing away with or reducing those types of services for people that are desperately in need."
IDHS said the decision to reduce the hours was not made in a vacuum. The agency said the reductions were part of the implementation of findings from a 2020 study into how the state could improve the entire system of care for people with developmental disabilities in Illinois. The study was commissioned in order to help the state meet the standards required from a federal court ruling, also known as the Ligas Consent Decree.
The study, conducted by the independent company Guidehouse, was the product of "of years-long collaboration with stakeholders, reviewing existing rates and rate methodologies for individuals served," according to DHS.
The Guidehouse study laid out a financial ramp for the state to follow, which included escalating investments of hundreds of millions of dollars into the system. The increased investments were welcomed by industry experts, but at no point since the Guidehouse study was published were those same experts under the impression that implementing the findings of the study meant to improve services for the developmentally disabled in Illinois also meant reducing the amount of care provided.
"I can say they’re not as as big of a priority as they should be," McDonald said. "There are things that definitely raises race questions, in my mind, the mind of any provider is, you know, is the state giving us the attention that that we deserve that the people we serve need."
The Governor’s office cited an increase in investments in previous years budgets when asked about the upcoming cuts.
"Governor Pritzker’s administration has ensured almost half a billion dollars has been invested into recommendations laid out by the court-ordered Guidehouse Developmental Disability Services Rate Study, with $270 million still in the pipeline to be implemented," a spokesperson for Governor Pritzker said in a statement. "These investments aim to increase equity and adequacy across the I/DD service system and implement the mandatory changes required under the Ligas consent decree."
The Governor’s office has made those investments, but industry experts say they still don’t meet the benchmarks that the Guidehouse study set.
Senate Republican Chapin Rose wrote a letter to Governor Pritzker calling on his office to change their plan for the cuts. The entire Senate Republican caucus signed on to the letter.
"This is just unconscionable," Rose said. "I mean, it’s just flat out wrong. There’s no other way to say it, to pull back direct care hours from the development disabled. I mean, this is literally in some cases, potentially life or death consequences."
Rose was upset about the timing of the cut, as well. Last Spring, the legislature passed the first significant raise for DSP’s in over a decade. The $2.50 per hour raise was lower than the $4 per hour raise advocates were calling for, but it was still welcomed.
Rose says the money the state would be pulling back through the reduction in hours would amount to more money than the legislature spent on the compromise raise.
"What a cynical thing for Governor Pritzker to do," Rose (R-Mahomet) said. "To one hand, say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna give you a pay raise,’ but then another hand, cut the total number of hours you’re allowed to work. That doesn’t help them. In fact, he’s cutting back, when you look at the net effect of this, he erased the entire value of the wage increase."
Senate Democrat Julie Morrison (D-Deerfield) was also shocked when she learned of the upcoming reduction to hours.
"I think this caught everybody, by surprise," Morrison said. "I think both the workforce, and the people who rely upon the workforce, were surprised that while there was an increase in the hourly pay, there was a decrease in the number of hours that people were going to be eligible for."
She said she does not think this plan was brought forward with any ill intent, but she said she will be having conversations going forward with both chambers in the legislature and the Governor’s office to truly understand the impact a decision like this could have.
"I don’t believe the administration wants to hurt or put in peril anybody with a disability," Morrison said. "I think we need to really talk turkey now and prioritize the dollars that we do have. We need to see what it’s going to actually do to an actual person in his or her home, how we are jeopardizing their safety and their independence."
Governor Pritzker is scheduled to give his budget address next month. He will be making his proposal for how much money the state should invest in these services.
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January 19, 2024 at 10:49PM
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