Services are being curtailed for severally ill children and adults while states slash budgets. Programs slated for downsizing or closing have been reported in:
- A one-of-a-kind 8-bed program serving about 600 people a year closed in Boise, Idaho . For local residents needing a couple of nights of shelter, the Franklin House helped them avoid using an emergency room and/or hospitalization.The Franklin House budget ran $325,000 but observers guess ER services will cost more.
- Eleven of 21 clinics in rural Nevada will be closed. Four senior medical positions will be also be eliminated at Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital where two instances alleging rape have recently occurred. The 234-bed, state run hospital opened in 2006 and staffing was about half of what it should have been.
Expected savings: $33 million. - Virginia apparently shortchanged children and adolescents in 2007 in the state mental health system. The Washington Post reported that they represented nearly one-quarter of the system's clients but only 15 percent of the funds were spent on them. Now officials plan to close a 16-bed facility in order to pump $7.6 million into a $3 billion budget gap while redirecting youngsters to private hospitals. The problem with that, however, is the Commonwealth Center is where the youth were sent because nobody else would treat them.
- In California at least $395 million will be delayed for services for substance use rehab and mental health until an agreement on how to close a $43 billion budget gap is in place. To compensate Tulare County, for example, will re-orient services to accommodate laying off 200 workers. Other communities will be cutting back or closing programs hoping that they might get reworked as "new" programs and picked up by Prop 63. Prop 63 funds community service programs administered by counties and has served more than 200,000 people since voters approved the tax on millionaires in 2004. But with unemployment just over 9 percent, and even millionaires losing ground, the revenue will fall short of previous years.
