Cuts Threaten Illinois Autism Services

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Hundreds of families in the Springfield area and thousands across the state face the possibility of abruptly losing services for their autistic children after an immediate $1 million budget cut by Gov. Bruce Rauner.

“It was totally unexpected,” Russell Bonanno, director of The Autism Program’s statewide network, said Monday at a news conference at TAP’s Springfield headquarters.

Autism Speaks Shifts Focus to Adults

After prioritizing the needs of children for years, the nation’s largest autism advocacy organization is turning its attention to expanding housing options and supports for adults.

Starting as a pilot project in three states — Florida, New Jersey and Illinois — Autism Speaks is working with locally-based disability advocacy groups and policymakers to identify legislative goals and mobilize its own network to push for expanded home and community-based services.

Editorial: Community Care First

CHICAGO -- Three months ago, Gov. Pat Quinn unveiled a budget that made the tough choice to shut down a handful of government-run facilities around the state. He did it for good reason.
The facilities, including prisons and centers for the developmentally disabled, are unneeded and hugely expensive. The services they provide can be done much more efficiently, and their high cost puts a squeeze on funding available for other social services.
Now we're coming down to the final decisions in Springfield on state spending for the next fiscal year. The closing of the facilities are a bargaining chip.

Editorial: Placing People Ahead of Finances

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- We are firmly on record advocating that Illinois move away from its reliance on large institutions to house the developmentally disabled.
Housing people with developmental disabilities in large facilities is an antiquated, expensive and, most importantly, ineffective way of allowing the disabled to live the fullest and most productive lives possible. By and large, advocates for the developmentally disabled favor providing residential care in residential settings — group homes with six or fewer residents supervised by a properly trained staff.

Illinois Settlement Opens Residential Choices for People with Disabilities

CHICAGO -- A federal judge on Wednesday approved a settlement to a long-running civil case that will force Illinois to begin moving hundreds of people with developmental and intellectual disabilities into more community-based homes and apartments of their choice.
"I firmly believe that the state of Illinois, the citizens, have been well-served by these efforts," said U.S. District Judge James Holderman, who congratulated lawyers who have spent months negotiating terms of controversial case.
"I will issue an order promptly," he said, noting that he had received only two objections out of 21Ö responses filed with the court. "I will announce informally today that my position is that the consent decree should be approved and this should be the law that is followed."

Editorial: Finally, Having a Say

Just a brilliant editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times today, regarding the expected ruling by a Federal judge in the settlement of a lawsuit. Hopefully other states will see the light.

Most states recognized a long time ago that people with developmental disabilities are just like the rest of us.
They want to work. They want to choose where they live and with whom. And they don’t want to be cut off from the rest of society.
States that have seen the light have moved away from warehousing people with disabilities in large, residential facilities in favor of placing them in smaller, community-based settings.
Illinois, though, continues to rely heavily on institutional care for the disabled and the mentally ill, spending less per capita on community-based services than just about any other state.

Illinois Families Relocating for Services

Chrisa Hickey, a northwest suburban mom whose 16-year-old son hears voices, has bought property in Wisconsin with an eye to the future.
She wouldn't leave Barrington for career, retirement or the more languid pace of small-town living. Her relocation plans are strictly a way to keep Tim in his $85,000-a-year residential treatment center, currently funded by the state of Illinois.
"People ask, 'Why spend that kind of money on one kid?' And I tell them that he's 6-foot-2, 200 pounds and could pick up a desk when he was 4. If he gets angry in class, do you want him sitting next to your kid?"
Although no one tracks why people leave one state for another, anecdotal evidence suggests Hickey is one of several who are planning to leave Illinois — or has already left — because of diminishing human services here.

Opinion: Illinois Cuts Will Prove Costly

Guest column by Tony Paulauski, executive director of The Arc of Illinois, in the Rockford Register Star.

Illinois is planning devastating cuts in services for individuals with physical, developmental and intellectual disabilities. These cuts target our most vulnerable citizens and are being sold as a way to balance Illinois' estimated $13 billion deficit. The truth is, these cuts are shortsighted and will send us on a path of destruction.
Illinois ranks last in the nation for supporting citizens with disabilities in their home communities. Disability services that are the lifeline to more than 220,000 people with disabilities, and their families have already experienced deep cuts and are hanging by a thread. In addition to funding reductions several critical programs are being eliminated, and it’s estimated that 3,052 direct care staff will be laid off as a result. At the same time the budget calls for the hiring of 950 state employees and grants union employees an 8.25 percent wage increase.

Providing Structure and a Paycheck

ELGIN, Ill. — It’s a Friday morning, and Robert Larios and Leonard "Tucker" Banks are trying hard to concentrate on their work. The task: match up 10 large nails on a sheet of paper to outlines of the nails, then place the nails in plastic containers.
Their duties come with a purpose beyond packaging hardware. The young men, both in their 20s, are among a dozen or so participants in a new program for adults with autism spectrum disorders that the Association for Individual Development began this year at the organization’s Elgin and Aurora facilities.
Such duties give participants a sense of structure that helps builds their life skills, AID staff said. They also are being paid for their labor.