Demanding NO Reduction in Services

by Dora Raymaker

Published April 23, 2009 @ 10:12AM PT

Even as some things from my state government seem hopeful, other things are, well, deeply [expletive deleted]. The Ways and Means Committee of Oregon is considering a number of horrific budget cuts to developmental disabilities programs in the state, including several programs I use. A full list of the horror can be found in this document (DOC).

So when I should have been writing a blog post I was instead writing a testimony, specifically on behalf of the brokerages (there were other self-advocates covering other items). As everything about this is relevant to this blogspace, here's a recording of my testimony (if the plugin doesn't work here's a direct link).

I haven't seen any press on the hearing yet, but so many people showed up that the fire marshal had to open an overflow room. Over 200 people signed up to testify, and only about a quarter actually got called on (I was one who did not get called on). While it's bad not everyone was heard, the sheer numbers perhaps communicated the message just as well: a lot of people will be severely effected by these cuts.

If you live in Oregon and wish to attend the Ways and Means hearings to make sure that critical funding for DD programs remains intact, there are still more hearings to come. Full information can be found from the Oregon DD Coalition.

Transcript of my speech behind the more cut.

My name is Dora Raymaker. I am on the board of directors of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and a member of Self Advocates as Leaders. I am an autistic adult, and a brokerage customer, although the latter only recently. I have spent most of my life in a vicious cycle of crash and crisis, working myself into catatonia, then recovering just enough to start again. I have been in this cycle because I have not had good support. I am getting old and am unlikely to survive the next crash. At that point the state will need to pay 100% for me to live, or I will become homeless and probably not survive. I would like to avoid this happening.

Crash and crisis cycles from lack of adequate support are enormously costly physically and emotionally to the people who experience them, and also financially as crisis services are exponentially more expensive than non-crisis services. As opposed to spending a small amount of money to avoid the crisis in the first place. Which is, happily, what services like the brokerage system do.

Cutting non-crisis services like the brokerages not only deprives people with developmental disabilities of hope for a reasonable quality of life and staying out of crisis, it deprives the people who provide those services of their means of making a living. For every brokerage client, there is also an entire brokerage staff, as well as the people who brokerage clients hire with their money. In Multnomah county alone, non-crisis services provide 68 million dollars per year to the local economy through jobs, wages, and the purchase of services and supplies.

Freezing brokerage services will put the over 1400 transition age people and their families slated to receive services in the next two years at immediate risk of crisis. Reducing brokerage services will put the 5000 plus young adults and adults who currently receive brokerage services at immediate risk of crisis.

Will the brokerage supports I now receive finally break the crash and crisis cycle, and enable me to contribute meaningfully to my community?

That depends on whether the state chooses to fund the programs that will help keep me out of a crisis.

Will the 1400 developmentally disabled Oregon children who will receive brokerage services in the next two years be given a chance at a real quality of life, a better chance than I have gotten?

That depends on whether the state chooses to fund the brokerage services for those children.
Will. you. the Ways and Means Committee of Oregon, be able to make wise budget cut decisions?
That depends on whether the big picture, and the full consequences of cuts in both health and finance, is considered, seriously, first.