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St. Lawrence NYSARC facing closure of work centers

Posted 2/22/15

By CRAIG FREILICH Local NYSARC officials say continuing decreases in public funding and political support will force group homes and work centers for mentally and physically disabled St. Lawrence …

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St. Lawrence NYSARC facing closure of work centers

Posted

By CRAIG FREILICH

Local NYSARC officials say continuing decreases in public funding and political support will force group homes and work centers for mentally and physically disabled St. Lawrence County residents to close.

NYSARC, which currently serves about 750 clients, closed one workshop in Hermon last year, consolidated some services, and has cut its workforce from about 620 to about 580 through attrition over the last few years.

At the same time, “if anything, we’re helping more people than ever before,” said Daphne Pickert, executive director of the St. Lawrence County chapter of NYSARC.

“There is a growing number of people in our child and youth programs,” Pickert said, foretelling increasing need for NYSARC programs.

Those programs help parents who care for children with disabilities and have trouble taking care of themselves, find supervised places for groups of the disabled to live, and locate jobs for those who can work even if not at the pace usually expected of other workers.

But three trends are threatening NYSARC:

• due to a court decision, work centers are being phased out, putting disabled people in competitive work environments, if they can measure up;

• a drop and now a freeze in how many new certified residences are allowed for groups of the disabled;

• a consistent drop in financial aid supplied by the state, totaling about $1.5 million since 2010.

The work centers, also known as sheltered workshops, have been a particular achievement of NYSARC chapters around the state. People who can work, but maybe not at what is considered full capacity, can get and hold jobs once their ability has been evaluated and a fractional rate of pay is determined.

“At one point, we had 300-plus in sheltered workshops” working at NYSARC’s Seaway Industries, Pickert said.

No Place To Go?

Due to a Supreme Court decision, the state has mandated closure of all sheltered workshops in five or six years, which puts the remaining St. Lawrence County work centers in Massena and Ogdensburg on the chopping block, Pickert said.

The work centers do contracted work such as small assembly jobs for New York Air Brake, shredding and destroying documents for the county, work for ACCO and Time-Warner, “numerous contracts like that,” Pickert said.

In what is known as the Olmstead decision, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999 ruled that work centers represent unjustified segregation of people with disabilities and constitutes discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Pickert is deeply concerned because the court ruling has been interpreted to mean that people now in special work settings should be moved to regular workplaces.

“The elimination of sheltered workshops as an option for employment for people with developmental disabilities is causing major concerns,” she said.

“The intent certainly is to create full integration, which is laudable, however not realistic, at least in our county.”

Pickert said 83 individuals with disabilities are now employed at the two NYSARC Seaway Industries work centers in Massena and Ogdensburg and are earning less than minimum wage in accordance with state Department of Labor regulations.

Alternatives to Work Centers

Through “supported employment” now being encouraged with the closing of work centers, NYSARC representatives meet with employers in combination with a coach and an assistant to help clients get hired. The NYSARC Career Opportunities Program has secured “supported employment” jobs for 147 people in various businesses.

“We’ve been quite successful in finding work options. We still have a need and a purpose for those sheltered workshops,” said Pickert.

She said NYSARC continues to develop alternative business models through its mobile janitorial and groundskeeping crews, storefronts, and micro businesses, which now employ 58.

“But that won’t work for everyone,” said Pickert. “Ideally, everyone should have a job, but that can’t happen.”

Pickert says the local economy doesn’t present “many options for the employees of the remaining two work centers unless the agency can successfully reverse the integration process, and this seems doubtful.”

She added, “But the reality is, the work centers are still needed as an option for employment.”

The closure plan is “not necessarily a cost-cutting measure, but is well intended,” she said.

“If these workshops close, people who are taking pride in what they do will not be able to work anymore.”

Group Homes At Risk

Meanwhile, the 19 existing group homes SLNYSARC runs are also at risk, Pickert says. “There is also a freeze on residential options. There is no more development of residential placements.”

Before supervised group homes were established, the only alternative to care at home or expensive private care arrangements was the huge state mental hospital system. But when conditions in many of those hospitals were exposed in the 1970s, a movement for de-institutionalization soon had hospitals releasing patients into other settings, such as back with their families or into programs such as those that NYSARC had been devising.

In recent years, the agency has sustained significant cuts in aid from the state. State support is “down consistently for the last three years,” Pickert said. The state has denied NYSARC cost-of-living adjustments “and we’re still struggling,” she said.

In 2010 and 2011, the cumulative cuts to Medicaid and other state funds was $1.3 million. In 2014 the state Office of Mental Health cut $160,000 that would have gone toward the work program. And the OPWDD is proposing to cut another $300,000, Pickert said.

Today’s funding for residential programs is focused on deinstitutionalization – moving people out of hospitals and specialized homes – “while the needs of people living at home with aging caregivers is largely forgotten,” according to a statement from NYSARC.

“Families are wondering, without new placements, what are we going to do?” Pickert said.

“What are the alternatives for parents with a son or a daughter who needs maximum support? There might no longer be anyplace to go.”

One of NYSARC’s slogans as it lobbies state legislators is “Families cannot be caregivers forever.”

NYSARC officials say the state’s “transformational agenda is creating chaos while giving New York’s neediest families caring for family members with developmental disabilities empty rhetoric about nonexistent person centered choices.” The state agenda “has promised more choice and person centered services; instead there is less choice and less person centered services.”

With the closure of workshops, more people “are languishing at home with nothing to do. They and their caregivers are trapped in their own homes,” said Pickert.