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As California continues to battle the Covid-19 pandemic and our state’s budget outlook looks bleaker by the week, several members of the Legislature are stepping forward to make sure services and supports for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are protected. Last week members of the Assembly Select Committee on Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities, led by the Chair of that committee, Assemblyman Jim Frazier (D – Contra Costa), sent a letter to the Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, Assemblyman Phil Ting (D – San Francisco) requesting that the Budget Committee “hold harmless” services and supports and protect people with I/DD and their families during this extraordinary budget process. Specifically, the letter stated:
“Historically, services and support for people with I/DD have been overlooked, with high direct support staff turnover due to low wages, long waitlists for early intervention and other services, essential programs closing across the state, and unmanageable regional center caseload ratios. The state’s own rate study concluded that DDS services and supports were underfunded by $1.8 billion. That critical need and continued lack of funding is compounded by the current pandemic, resulting in greater need for direct service providers and a much greater need for family supports at home.
Earlier this year I proposed a plan to continue to close the massive underfunding to developmental services and implement the rate study over three years. The recent changes in our budget and your subsequent April 6 memo makes that plan currently untenable. However, reductions to the investments made last year to this community – a community that is still recovering from budget cuts made in the last recession – should not be included in this budget.
During this COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen direct support professionals answer the call, risking their own health to continue to support Californians with I/DD. Families and caregivers too face new challenges while sheltering in place with their loved ones with I/DD.
If ever there was a time to honor our commitment and obligation to the entire I/DD community and those who are helping to keep them safe and healthy, it is now. We have made modest gains to promote and provide necessary services to this vulnerable population, and any further attempt to erode or eliminate services should not be considered in the cuts that will surely take place in this current budget.”
The full letter can be read here.