‘Legislators should feel shame’

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Laura Repke says state budget cuts threaten “severe, concrete and immediate” consequences for Californians with developmental disabilities.

Repke says California moved away from large institutions to community care decades ago to “enable people with developmental disabilities to live healthier and more fulfilling lives” and also to save the state money. But state budget cuts threaten to “curtail or eliminate” community support services, leaving no safety net.

People with developmental disabilities without family support will have no one to take them to a doctor if they get sick and no one to make sure their rent is paid on time. Instead, they’ll end up on the street, and show up in hospital emergency rooms for health problems that could have been prevented. The social and financial costs will be enormous.

These are our children, our neighbors and our co-workers. They deserve better.

The consequences of breaking this social compact should weigh heavily upon our collective conscience. Our legislators should feel shame. We, as voters, should feel outrage.

Laura Repke is the director of development and community relations for the Arc of San Francisco and the mother of a 30-year-old with multiple disabilities.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 9:53 am and is filed under budget, community services, institutionalization, intellectual/developmental disabilities, NOT2BEMISSED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.