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NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2012
Stop service cuts! Keep our home care!
Chicago--About 35 people participated in a lively rally beginning at SEIU headquarters on March 28. We then marched through downtown Chicago to the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange, where we chanted to protest proposed drastic cuts in the Home Services Program. The rally and march were organized by The Taskforce for Attendant Services and Chicago ADAPT, a direct action
disability rights group.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was targeted because
they are one of several corporations who received very large tax break packages from Illinois, while Governor
Patrick Quinn has introduced a budget that will block thousands of people from receiving home care. Also at stake are service cuts to 14,000 people in the home care program, stopping services to families with youth under the age of 18 and blocking the Home Services
Program for people with psychiatric or developmental
disabilities.
The State of Illinois also wants to make it impossible
for family members to become personal
assistants for their disabled family member. My worker at the Department of Rehabilitation Services (DRS), told me that we cause too much trouble and too many misunderstandings. In other
words, because we are more likely to advocate for our family members and challenge the small amount of hours that DRS allows us to care for them, the state wants to keep us from becoming their personal assistants!
The home care program was started to pay personal
assistants to care for disabled people in their homes to keep them out of more costly nursing homes and institutions.
Adequate home care services are what I and others count on to keep our disabled family members at home, in the community where they belong, and not to have to institutionalize them, which would be heartbreaking
and detrimental to everyone.
"If I lose some of my hours, that means that my personal assistant can't work as long and will lose his health insurance, which is based on working a certain amount of hours per month," said one participant. Another
marcher stated, "These cuts are disgusting and inhuman. If I lose even an hour a day, I can't complete my daily routine. I am unable to even do the basic things for myself and will have to go into a nursing home. That would be unbearable and cost the state even more!
"We fought long and hard to get these services, we cannot allow them to be cut. Our lives are at stake here. We are literally fighting for our lives."
--Suzanne Rose
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