Reprieve for the Disabled

Massachusette Governor Patrick Withdraws Cuts to MassHealth

By Christine Legere
Globe Corresondent
Boston Globe
December 10, 2009

In an 11th-hour turnaround, Governor Deval Patrick announced last week he no longer plans to make $100 million in cuts aimed at addressing a deficit in the MassHealth budget - reductions that would have left some of the state’s most vulnrabl residents without services they had been receiving.

To agencies south of Boston that provide day habilitation and other services to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the change of plans was welcome. But many say they worry the reprieve is only temporary. Budget deliberation for fiscal 2011, set to start in January, may once again bring discussion of deep cuts to programs for the developmentally disabled adults.

“I’m sort of waiting for the other shoe to fall,’’ said Christopher White, president of Marshfield’s Road to Responsibility program. “Fiscal 2011 has all of us very anxious because so much of this year’s budget was propped up by one-time stimulus money.’’

In an announcement late Friday, Patrick’s office said revenue from an $82 million one-time tax settlement and $37 million in above year-to-date benchmark revenue collections would allow the state to avoid the previously announced round of emergency budget cuts.

“It gives us some breathing room,’’ Patrick said in a statement. Two weeks earlier, the governor had laid out a list of reductions that would have hit hard at agencies providing services.

Lee Damore, an Abington resident who took over the care of her sister a year ago when their mother died, is closely watching decisions on Beacon Hill that will affect her family.

Her sister, Tess Lamarre, was born with cerebral palsy and severe mental disabilities. The challenges have been many for the 52-year-old, who can speak just a few words and must undergo daily physical therapy so that she can continue to slowly move about with the aid of a walker.

“Personality-wise, Tess is extremely easy, but you have to have someone with her 24-7,’’ said Damore. She, husband Tom, and teenage daughters Marina and Emily all pitch in.

Lamarre attends a day habilitation program at the Arc of the South Shore in Weymouth on weekdays, along with 47 other developmentally disabled adults in the area. She has been going there for six hours a day since she turned 22, in 1979. And while she is in the day habilitation program, Damore is able to work full time at Stonehill College.

Damore said her sister enjoys the day program. “They have their activities, and they have their friends, and it gives them a purpose to get up in the morning and go,’’ she said.

Lamarre receives physical, occupational, and speech therapy in the program. Without those services, her physical abilities would quickly decline. “Walking is a struggle for her, but she is determined to keep going,’’ said Mary Jo Campbell, habilitation coordinator at the Arc of the South Shore. “If she just sat and did nothing, it would be a week and she wouldn’t be able to walk.’’

First page: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/12/10/despite_reprieve_providers_families_of_disabled_fear_for_masshealth_budget/

To read second page go to: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/12/10/despite_reprieve_providers_families_of_disabled_fear_for_masshealth_budget/?page=2

© 2009 NY Times Co.