DMH had its funding cut – and laid off 100 case managers, stripping them from 3000 cases and adding those cases to the 350 remaining case managers. Once again, that is “throw the kids and the mentally ill under the bus.” There was already a huge wait for case management, and great difficulty getting DMH to commit to involvement with any of the legal orphans aging out of foster care I have represented. Where do these kids go when they turn 18 and are no longer entitled to the ‘loving care’ of children in child welfare custody [it used to be called DSS, now is called DCF, but nothing has changed].
If a foster child is mentally ill, then a DMH case manager was one of the few supports left when that child became 18. It takes a long time – months – feels like forever to get one assigned… already.
But wait! Now the remaining DMH case managers will all average 45 cases each. Optimal is less then 18 cases – and before this layoff, the norm was around 30 cases. See: http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
Mental illness is quite common in the population of children removed from families and placed into foster care – but never adopted. Some 59% of these young adults, our children, are depressed. The outcomes for these kids in the “loving care of the Commonwealth” currently is:
37% homeless
59% feel sad or hopeless almost every day
43% are pregnant at age 18,or have gotten someone else pregnant
30% had been threatened or injured with a weapon the previous 12 months
11 % reported sexual contact against their will within the last 12 months
54 % left state care and housing and were unemployed when told they were on their own
Of those who are employed, 47% were employed 20 hours or less, and only 10% received health insurance via employment
90% of those located and surveyed receive MassHealth
25% had been arrested within the prior 12 months
See Preparing Our Kids for education, Work and Life: A Report of the Task Force on Youth Aging Out of DSS Care, page 11. The full report can be downloaded at http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFil…
Myself, I would entitle this report “The Scandalous Failure to Prepare Wards of the Commonwealth for Safe, Effective Independent Living”.
Removing case managers from the mentally ill portion of this aging out foster care population, and generally making case management that accesses services for kids/young adults who cannot do so themselves almost impossible to get is not just wrong, but is one more factor turning a dire situation into a catastrophe for the most vulnerable of all citizens who depend solely on the State. Poor them.
In addition to the “school to prison” pipeline, I expect to see an expanded, ever faster, hospital and foster care to prison pipeline.
We can do better. We must do better. Choosing to cut case managers looks like maximizing harm from the 9C budget cuts to DMH.
You’ve been a bluemasser for a long time, you must know that everybody here has an interest who is getting thrown under the bus. Why are foster kids better?
THESE kids have no family because either their families abandoned them – or the state terminated their parent’s rights.
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p>THESE kids are “wards of the State” which makes them OUR collective responsibility.
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p>It may be that, consciously or not, YOU buy in to the concept, a very puritan concept, of the “deserving poor” vs. the “undeserving poor.”
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p>I do not know. In my ethical system, the one I ascribe to, it is the responsibility of the strong to take care of the weak.
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p>It is the responsibility of adults to take care of children.
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p>And it is the responsibility of “the sovereign” to take care of the dependent wards of that soveriegn.
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p>And we are failing to do this duty.
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p>One cannot expect fortitude of these kids – though maybe you do expect fortitude. HELLO! Fortitude is not a matter of just good blood, and the right ancestors.
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p>Qualities and personal concepts like “honor”, “fortitude”, “duty”, “honesty”, “self-discipline” have to be taught…and we are failing to teach these kids and for these foster kids – May God save them – the Commonwealth of Massachusetts happens to be the only legal parents they have.
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p>Ultimately, it is my belief WE will not be judged by how well the strong do in life, but by how we care for the vulnerable among us.
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p>No group of Massachusetts residents is more vulnerable than a mentally ill legal orphan in foster care turning 18 with no where to go.
there’s instantly competition for “who’s the most deserving” among deserving programs.
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p>Are the elderly expendable in tough times? The developmentally disabled or delayed? The sick? The poor? School children in general?
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p>In such cases, we must turn the idea of “sacrifice” onto those who can MOST afford it.
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p>Is “taxes” still a dirty word? “Progressive taxes?”
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p>I’m just not sure that in-fighting and “my cause is more deserving than yours” helps.
but there’s a lot of BS in the budget. We all know it. Pensions and healthcare costs are out of control. We just don’t talk about this stuff because it pisses off public sector unions.
would that solve all our problems and begin the orchestra playing “Happy Days Are Here Again?”
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p>Or would there still be cuts and layoffs and the topic of this thread would still be germane?
According to the CC Times TODAY , our DMH office isn’t being decimated, it’s being halved. Now for me, the money factoid (pun only partially intended) is that these workers are paid $35-$60 thousand per year. Let’s call it six at $40 thousand. If Deval got rid of his newly created Real Estate Exploitation agent at $120,000 per year, put out an RFP to bid, making some realtor pay to keep 5% of any lease enhancements or new sales made, well, the state would still be ahead 95%, and the $120,000 could cut our layoffs in half. But there seems to be no political will in this administration to think creatively.
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p>For another suggestion to work on a wider scale, check this comment on another thread HERE
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p>BTW – other news today? The Audible Local Ledger, the news reading service for the blind on Cape that Deval cut 100%? It’s being saved for 18 months with local donations. Of course, it helps that we expect to be treated like crap by Boston, and when we get cuts they’re deeper, and when times are good, we get taxed more. Makes you less reliant on that ‘local aid’.
A red wine grape? A guava? Our “Democratic” governor, who bet his first year on ignoring the legislature that had actually run the state for 12 years, then bet his second year on the most regressive tax in America — casino gambling — and lost our shirts.
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p>Now the economy is going bad, and the governor is uprooting the quality of life in Massachusetts.
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p>One could say, with Amber Paw, that he is attacking supports for the weakest and most vulnerable (I would personally nominate the profoundly retarded at Fernald, who cannot speak or walk — but certainly depressed teens coming out of foster care into “transition age” the weakest point in every human services agency, are easy targets, too).
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p>Or one could say that he is demolishing the social pyramid from the bottom up. Which is sort of like sawing off the limb you are sitting on.
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p>Or one could say that this “outsider” has a new idea which turns out to be a very old idea, a Herbert Hoover kind of idea: when the ship is foundering, women and children last. Throw the weak out of the lifeboats.
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p>Someone wise once said that to know a country you must visit the prisons and the asylums. Our governor has shortened the travelogue. Skip the asylums, because there is to be no asylum — go straight to the prisons. Why his beancounters think prison beds are cheaper than hospital beds or community treatment is a mystery. Perhaps after they finish on the DMH case managers (and the DSS caseworkers, and the DMR service coordinators), there will be no beans left to count, and we can ask them for an explanation as we all together wait in endless unemployment lines.
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p>The only “blue” part of the picture in our “blue state” is the depressed teens coming out of foster care into the increasingly dangerous streets.
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p>So, while various groups are thrown under the bus, who is getting on the bus, and where is it going?
A bed in DYS – which is the juvenile correction system, also known as Department of Youth Services – costs under $24,000.00 a year and a bed in intensive treatment at a residential school like Germaine Laurenced, Riverside, Longview Farms, Dr. Perkins school costs about $150,000 a year.
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p>Similarly, a “bed” in MCI Framingham costs about $43,000 a year while a mental health ward costs $160,000 a year and up.
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p>On the other hand, is anyone monitoring…outcomes?
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p>Further, the Blue Cross/Blue Shield private policy my family has covers MY kids till age 25 if they are in school or unemancipated while becoming educationed. A reality is recognized by BC/BS. Most young adults in our society are NOT launched at 18. I sure was not on my own at that age.
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p>Tell me, how many of you were self-supporting, living on your own, and fully functioning adults…at 18???
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p>Also, I don’t think Gov. Patrick is telling DCF [was DSS] or DMH which employees to lay off – or what to cut – just requiring each agency to cut a total sum – and the agencies themselves are choosing whether to layoff staff, buy cheaper paper, do without a deputy commissioner here and there, etc.
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p>Tell me if I am wrong, oh gentle readers!
Well if you count being in the service as on your own: ME!
Did your stint in the service at 17 make you find your own shelter? Did you have find your own food? I’m not saying being in the military is the easy life, but they do make sure you have your basics taken care of. Which is not the case with these DSS kids.
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p>Unless you’re seriously suggesting that all the foster kids that age out of DSS should go sign up for the armed forces….
In the democratic party. Go for the votes. The mentally disabled can’t vote, cut them The elderly? Can’t cut them, they’re the biggest voting demographic there is, with memory like elephants.
The elderly need their state funded parties and trips. Ever see the spending spree they go on in June? It’s to spend the remainder of their budgets. Their offices don’t need annual makeovers. They don’t need state sponsored trips and parties.
DCF: new name, same old problems. How many fathers are still getting screwed by them.
With an apology to Miss Amber, you social Darwinists are sickening!
They have a proven track record of giving a damn about the disabled!
Classic instance of programs for the poor becoming poor programs. Clearly the powers that be think it’s more important for the state to continue costly and anachronistic defined benefit pensions (calculated in the top three years and including auto benefits!) and pay state troopers over 150 large to sit in their cars and drink coffee.
and did I mention legislative per diems and committee stipends? Those are also sacrosanct…
In central MA we have reps carpooling, but both are claiming pre diem. WTF?
Have you seen how much the T costs these days??
And the house of cards is coming down. Gov Patrick is YOUR guy. He was talking rag time then–and he’s talking rag time now. Patrick is laying off social service folks and putting everyone of his hacks ( who essentially have make believe–non productive–do nothing jobs)at 120K a year on the payroll. Isn’t that nice. AND—what is most egregious, Patrick is laying waste to folks who work with people who are essentially defenseless. What were you thinking when you elected this guy? if you think that Romney or Healey would have done this kind of crap—you are are wrong.
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p>Wait until the cracks in the walls of the White House appear. Then—we will all be in serious trouble. Not if—–but when.
Aren’t you proud of them? Mentally disabled people don’t vote, toss them away first! Social Darwinism at it’s finest! At least some BMG’ers are noticing the empire is losing it’s wheels. Maybe some of you aren’t so bad.
Further, the cuts to staff were NOT ordered by Governor Patrick. What the Governor’s staff did is determine that each executive agency had to cut a fixed percentage, then left it to EACH AGENCY to decide to what to cut! The agency management and deputies in place are mostly Romney holdovers, by the way – middle managers and deputies are pretty much still the same.
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p>Agencies subject to the 9C power are solely executive agencies, and it appears most are cutting their “discretionary” accounts – like housing for legal orphans, not upper level management…and line workers, not upper level or management. No one “connected” is going to be collecting unemployment.
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p>But, again:
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p>Romney also cut core services to the poor.
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p>The decision makers who are executing the agency-wide 8% cuts mostly date back to Romney, Swift and Celluci – and a few even date back to Weld.
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p>It is NOT Gov. Patrick who is micromanaging these cuts, or determining WHERE the 9% will be cut.
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p>You are way off base – but the cuts as they ARE being executed remain outrageous – and even shameful in terms of who has been chosen to do the suffering.
Deborah,
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p>Thank you for the most detailed reporting one can find on these tragic and scandalous cuts to some of the most vulnerable wards of the Commonwealth at DMH.
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p>I have one question for you, and one for any remaining fellow Progressives on BMG:
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p>What can be done to restore these cuts? Is an appeal to the Legislature possible at this time (fully demonstrating my ignorance of 9C cuts and their underlying law)?
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p>BMGers: How do we begin to find a Progressive alternative to the fraud of a governor we worked so hard to elect?
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p>Deval Patrick is no longer worthy of our hard work, political support, contributions, or fondest hopes.
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p>His tax and fiscal policy, which was to rescue cities and towns and halt regressive property tax increases? That, of course, would be casino gaming, the most regressive means possible to raise public revenues. His health care reform? That would be reading the Globe Spotlight series and convening a meeting to study its revelations. His first response to predatory lending practices that wreck havoc in our cities, and helped to crater the national economy? Use the powers of public office to shill for Ameriquest. His economic development policy? Toss public monies at Big Pharma, and trash consumer protection guidelines when Big Pharma says so. Rid us of the Big Dig Culture? Install as Transportation Secretary the legal handmaiden of the Big Dig’s worst excesses. His policy toward the core constituency of our Party, organized labor? Ignore collective bargaining.
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p>The list goes on and on.
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p>And now, in a clear and heartless statement of his total inability to understand the most basic role of government in a just society: cuts to some of the most vulnerable citizens of the Commonwealth.
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p>Let us begin now to find a Progressive Democrat to replace this fraud, who fooled many of us in 2006. He won’t do it again.
His wife will brand you RACIST! Is she having another “breakdown”.
…but I think you are.
Warhorse – your heart is in the right place, but it sounds like you are blaming Governor Patrick, whatever your issues are with him, for acts that he does not control and did not order.
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p>What “9C” describes is a law that Massachusetts must have a balanced budget at all times. Unlike the Federal Government, Massachusetts is NOT allowed deficit spending.
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p>Thus, whatever our state government spends, or plans to spend, payment must be in place for that spending, whether through bonds, tax revenue, or a fund such as “the rainy day fund.”
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p>When the actual revenue from personal taxes, capital gains taxes, sales taxes [etc.] turns out to be less than the estimated revenue on which a year’s budget was based, section “9C” requires the current governor, like all governors since the 9C law was enacted, to balance the budget by either raising revenue, or cutting line items.
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p>No one has had the intestinal fortitude to look at how regressive our state system of taxation is in Massachusetts, so when the actual revenue is less than the revenue estimates upon which a budget was based, what happens is the executive [Governor] orders the executive agencies [about 2/3 of our government structure] to cut their budgets by a percentage – in this case I believe it was about 9%.
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p>The executive does not micromanage WHAT each agency cuts. The Commissioners and Deputies who run executive agencies actually decide what to cut to make their quota of cuts.
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p>I don’t feel like Governor Patrick “fooled” me – I do feel like the economy he got as opposed to the economy he thought he was about to manage are very different – and personally, I support restructuring how revenue is raised and spent not shrinking government servides. I assure you, no one asked me nor have I been consulted or received a written response to any letters or columns I have written.
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p>The word “tax” is apparently cursed in this state; too bad.
Your democratic Governor:
Tried to hire a hack to be his wife’s appointment secretary. At $72,000. Mrs. Patrick works full time on her own.
Based this year’s budget on anticipated casino gambling revenues. We don’t have casinos in MA.
Is slashing DMR budgets, while seeing fit to hire his neighbor at $120,000 annually.
Is Mrs. Patrick scheduled for another “breakdown” so we’ll lay off the governor. It worked before.
I must say, this absolute democratic power thing isn’t working out too well.