OKPOLICY.ORG
By Melissa Howell
A brightly colored parachute billows up and down as attendees at a Daily Living Center adult day facility in Oklahoma City bat a balloon back and forth over the parachute.
Peppy ‘60s-era music plays over speakers while others at the center read newspapers or chat. It’s noisy and cheerful.
But this center and others like it are bracing for devastating cuts to their operating budgets in the wake of the Department of Human Service’s $27 million shortfall. Program cuts, which have not yet been announced, are expected to go into effect for fiscal year 2018, which begins July 1.
The Adult Day Services program serves about 1,000 Oklahomans in a given year, according to DHS records.
In a March 22 letter to employees, DHS Director Ed Lake said “the reduction scenarios at almost every level … can be accurately described as ranging from the terrible to the unthinkable.”
While Daily Living Centers is Oklahoma’s largest and oldest adult day care provider for the elderly and developmentally disabled adults, CEO Brian Rush says his organization is looking at possibly closing centers or starting to turn people away. Smaller facilities have fewer options.
“If the state cuts its funding, we have an ability to survive for six to seven months. Then we’ll have to start turning people away,” he said. As for smaller providers, “the ones I’ve talked to, they have no other options. They’ll have to close their doors. It’s a real situation for all of us.”
Rush said that should projected cuts go into effect, families who have a loved one on DHS Adult Day program will be left with either quitting their jobs to provide full-time care or putting their elderly or developmentally disabled family member in a nursing home.
“A lot of our participants live with sons and daughters who actually have to work. So now they would have to take care of them 24 hours a day. If they can’t afford to go to the nursing home or don’t need to go to the nursing home, they’re going to have to quit their jobs,” Rush said. “So you can see the reciprocal of what’s going to happen to the economy. Not only is it going to affect the individuals we have here, it’s going to affect my staff. If I have to close centers down, I have a staff of over 40 people who are going to lose their jobs. If they’re going to lose their jobs, that (affects) their family and the tax dollars they are paying into the state.
“So ultimately, the $3 million investment that the state makes into adult daycare will save the state $11 million in additional long-term care. To us, it seems to make sense to invest a smaller amount to take care of a program that is so beneficial,” he said.
In addition to the financial benefit the Adult Day Services provides, Lance Robertson, director of Aging Services for DHS, says there are other benefits to this program and others like it.
“So often in our society, people just default to a nursing home. So many people think when it comes to long-term needs, that is the (only) option. But, candidly, research shows once a person is admitted (to a nursing home), they’re not coming out,” Robertson said. “This is about recognizing where citizens want to be served, how much more affordably they can be served, and how the quality of care is often better and customized (than in institutional settings). Those are the facts and it’s a winnable argument for why (these programs) continue to do well. Community-based care is where we’re trying to go as a state and as a country.”
Carly Putnam, a policy analyst focusing on health care and food insecurity for Tulsa-based Oklahoma Policy Institute, agrees.
“This is yet another symptom of the state’s failure to adequately invest in basic services,” Putnam said. “The individuals affected by these closures generally don’t have other options, and when we fail them, the effects ripple through families, businesses and entire communities. We can and must do better.”
Although some legislators have been reluctant to say that Oklahoma’s revenue situation is dire, House Budget Chairwoman Leslie Osborn, R-Mustang, has a different opinion.
“These are horrible funding levels. We are massively underfunded in state government,” she said in a May interview.
Meanwhile, Rush and the Daily Living Centers are building a strategy for its continued existence.
“Hopefully we can survive this. … How it’s going to work out, I don’t know. Are there going to be hard conversations? Yes. These are going to be tremendously hard conversations. I don’t know that any adult day service can make it through this,” Rush said.
http://newsok.com/article/5553106
