Finding Care for a Child with Special Needs Is a Time-Consuming Process

MOUNTVILLE, Pa. -- When friends ask Michelle and Jeff Janidlo to get together for dinner or come to a party the Mountville couple turns them down. It's not that they don't want to socialize it's because the Janidlos can't leave their son at home by himself or with a sitter. Connor Janidlo 13 has severe intellectual and development delays autism and seizure and movement disorders

Families Face Loss of Respite Centers

Every few months, Jim Schmitt and his wife take their 14-year-old twin sons to a state-run respite center in Putnam for the weekend. He calls it a saving grace: It's the only time he and his wife spend together without their boys, who have autism and do not speak.
"You love your kids to death, but you wait for those weekends to be able to get away," Schmitt said.
Schmitt's sons were scheduled to go to the respite center Sept. 8, and he and his wife were thinking about taking a trip to Maine. But officials are planning to shut down the state's 10 respite centers by Sept. 5, part of a plan to cut $1.6 billion from the state budget. Closing the respite centers, which serve 1,100 families a year, is projected to save the state just under $8 million over two years.

Deeper Cuts, Deeper Pain

ELGIN, Ill. — For the next four years, Elizabeth and Chris Frederick know they will have services for Thomas, their 17-year-old developmentally disabled son.
However, after he turns 21, the South Elgin resident no longer will be eligible to get schooling, his parents said. It is during those school hours that they have at least some respite from caring for Thomas 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Cuts proposed in Gov. Pat Quinn’s 2012 budget could mean the respite care they now have — and other services for those with developmental delays — could be cut not only for them but for the 5,400 people served by the Association for Individual Development in Kane and Kendall counties.

California Families Fear Proposed Cuts

BRAWLEY, Calif. -- Seventy-one-year-old mother of five Maria Elena Miranda doesn’t know what will her happen to her youngest daughter, Cynthia, if the state cuts deeper into funding for programs that help her family.
Cynthia, a 31-year-old Brawley resident, is developmentally disabled, blind, has epileptic seizures, osteoporosis and is immobile due to cerebral palsy contracted at just 3 months old. She was born barely alive, her mother said.
Miranda said the free services her daughter receives from Imperial Valley Respite and other in-home services has helped her daughter live longer.
"I'm 71 years old. What am I going to do if they take these services away from us?" the concerned parent said in Spanish.
The Miranda family is just one of many Valley residents who are concerned with the proposed $750 million cuts by Gov. Jerry Brown to the general fund of the state Department of Developmental Disabilities.