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Have We Been Abandoned?

Posted on by Kerrie Mason

Post by Mike Hyland, Venture President &CEO

Today marks 72 days since the COVID-19 virus was officially declared a pandemic.  We have seen stories of great compassion and great tragedy as well as a glimpse at what some call the emerging new normal.  What we have not seen is our leaders in Washington D.C. providing a single dime for people with disabilities and the skilled professionals who support them.  Trillions of dollars have been appropriated and not one red cent of it has been designated for Medicaid-funded providers of community-based disability services.  Unfathomable?  No, it is disgraceful.

The risk that the virus poses to people with developmental disabilities is enormous, even more so than the risk posed to the general public given the high incidence of medical conditions that people with disabilities often have.  Yet, inexplicably, the federal government has designated $0 of the Public Health & Social Services Emergency Fund to Medicaid-funded providers of group homes and community supports. To date, only about $87 billion of the $175 billion appropriated to this fund has been committed or distributed and the vast majority of those commitments have been made to Medicare programs.  It is crucial that Congress direct the Department of Health and Human Services to immediately address Medicaid-funded providers’ critical financial needs by allocating these funds to agencies that comprise the safety net that supports people with developmental disabilities.  It has already been far too long a wait for this relief.

There is a glimmer of hope, however. Last Friday, the House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act. The legislation includes, for the first time, critical resources for disability service providers.  These provisions have a long way to go before becoming law of course, and must survive Senate negotiations ahead of a final vote.  This vote is unlikely to happen before mid-June but it is essential that the Senate also include meaningful financial relief for provider agencies so that we can all continue to ensure that the people we support have the staff and resources needed to remain safe.  It is well beyond time that people with developmental disabilities and the agencies that support them are prioritized in the same way as the many other sectors that have been given billions of dollars in financial relief.  To do anything less would amount to complete abandonment by the leaders in our nation’s capital and a sad dismissal of a population that has been inappropriately marginalized for many, many decades.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

Posted on by Kerrie Mason

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed just about every facet of our lives from how we work to where we can go and even how we celebrate holidays.  Social distancing is new terminology that we are unlikely to ever forget and wearing facemasks in public has become commonplace now.  Something that hasn’t changed however is the remarkable dedication of people who have chosen careers that help others even in the darkest times.  Each day we see stories of overwhelmed doctors and nurses who work grueling hours under brutal conditions and EMTs who bravely assist people who are both sick and terrified.  Let us also remember an extraordinary group of professionals doing heroic things on behalf of others around the clock: those working in group homes.

Under normal circumstances, working in a group home presents many challenges, often without warning.  Coupling those challenges now with a virus that has stricken tens of thousands of people in Massachusetts creates a situation unlike any we have seen before.  Still, these exceptional people keep showing up every day to care for and help the individuals who need them now more than ever.  The folks who live in Venture group homes have seen their lives totally disrupted by COVID-19 and have essentially been isolated for more than 30 days now in an effort to protect them as much as possible.  That is more than a month of not being able to go to day programs, work, community activities, or other social gatherings with friends.  Most importantly, the people we support cannot even visit in person with their families right now.  The job of a direct support professional is hard enough without a national health crisis.  Now, the staff are also asked to fill the void left by the pandemic while somehow letting the people in our homes know they are safe.  That is asking an awful lot of people who have their own lives and families and yet it is a challenge our employees have taken on with the amazing skill, compassion, and professionalism they have always shown.  It is genuinely inspiring.

Every crisis brings an element of fear and a public health emergency increases that fear exponentially.  People working in essential jobs have always found ways to rise above that fear and help those in need.  We remember first responders in blizzards and hurricanes and we remember firefighters who race into buildings from which others are fleeing. We also remember medical professionals volunteering to go to war ravaged countries to treat strangers.  It would be more than sad if people don’t remember what our direct support professionals are doing around the clock during this crisis; it would be shameful.  Let’s all make it a point to recognize them and thank them whenever we get the chance.

~ Mike Hyland, President and CEO

Direct Support Professionals Week 2017

Posted on by Paige Mador

This week has been designated as National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week, and we would like to take a moment to recognize the dedication of our agency’s Direct Support Professionals.  DSPs are highly-trained, compassionate professionals who provide a vital contribution to their communities – supporting those who need assistance with essential daily needs.  The work they do allows our society’s most vulnerable members to live safe, fulfilling lives while being part of a community of their choice.

Direct Service Professionals support individuals with some of their most basic daily needs, such as preparation of meals, helping with medications, bathing, dressing, and transportation.  DSPs encourage meaningful community integration, help individuals maintain relationships with family and friends, and help identify recreational interests.  These staff members are not only daily caregivers – they assist with communication, medical care, and more.  At Venture, Direct Support Professionals are the lifeline of our agency, and we honor the work they do every day.

For more information about Direct Support Professionals Week nationwide, please visit ANCOR’s National Advocacy Campaign website.   For more information about local celebrations of Direct Support Professionals, check out The Caring Force.

Assistive Technology Partnership

Posted on by Paige Mador

Assistive Technology can best be described as a variety of items which can help an individual work around functional limitations imposed by a disability.  Some of these items include wheelchairs with adaptive trays to hold a person’s iPad, a brace for a person to be able to hold an eating utensil, a built-up handle of a spoon, or a communication device.  These items are essential to improving the quality of life and level of independence for people with disabilities.  Other examples of such equipment might be lifts, swings, tricycles, tablets, computer software, shower chairs, specialty writing utensils and so much more. These items can help individuals with mobility, communication, sensory, recreational, or social needs.

With the increasing specialized needs of the individuals we support, Venture has developed an Assistive Technology Committee to help effectively meet these needs.  Key employees have been attending conferences and trainings to learn how to develop a program that will help assist individuals access the resources available.  Currently, the committee is in the process of conducting assessments to determine what equipment would be most helpful to the individuals in our programs.

In keeping with our mission to enrich the lives of those we serve, we are very proud to announce our partnership with Tantasqua Regional Vocational High School in their commitment to assist people in their community by creating individualized and innovative assistive technology.  This fall, we will be working with Ray Rousseau from the Manufacturing Department and Bruce Tranter from the Computer Technology Department to assist us in developing creative approaches.  We are looking forward to teaming up to expand our services and we are thankful to the many students who will be dedicated to helping with these projects.  Stay tuned for updates!

Is this the Final Assault on Medicaid?

Posted on by Paige Mador

By Mike Hyland, President and CEO

With the year half over already, the U.S. Senate is working furiously to pass a bill that overhauls the Affordable Care Act before Congress recesses for the July 4th holiday.  A bill written in complete secrecy by just 13 members of the 100-member Senate is finally making its way to all of the people who will ultimately vote on it next week and, like the bill passed by the House of Representatives last month, the details are alarming.

Of paramount concern is the Senate’s plan to mirror the bill passed by the House that significantly cut Medicaid over a ten-year period, while also converting it to a block grant.  It is not just an assault on Medicaid, but an unequivocal betrayal of people with developmental disabilities and the hard-working men and women who support them in the community.  With Governor Baker already asserting that this legislation will cost Massachusetts billions if enacted, the Commonwealth will find itself in a position where draconian cuts to basic supports will be inevitable.  The human service industry already struggles to hire people, and will now be gutted even further.  The funds available to increase wages will disappear.  There have been months of advocacy that have taken place to educate the White House and Congress about what these cuts will do to people with disabilities, as well as the professionals dedicated to helping them.  Both the proposed Senate and House bills represent that the people who wrote them and voted for them just don’t care.  They know that services for people with disabilities will be cut and that pay for direct care professionals will freeze. Their actions prove they truly don’t give a damn.  How did we allow our society to get here?  If there is one thing that elected officials should be able to agree upon, it is the duty to protect people with disabilities and the too-long-taken-for-granted workforce that helps them.  Instead, President Trump and leadership in the House and Senate have chosen to abandon them and dedicate dollars that currently support these groups to the most affluent in our country via a tax cut.  Perhaps worst of all, these actions come following a promise from candidates that, if elected, they would protect Medicaid and the disabled.  Obviously, it was a lie from the start.

There is still a process that these bills must go through before becoming law.  Essentially, the House and the Senate must find a way to reconcile the two bills into one and send it to the White House to be signed.  It is my hope that people will flood lawmakers like never before with phone calls and emails that decry this horrific dismissal of people in need.  We should inundate our lawmakers with the notion that people with disabilities have the right to live safely in local communities.  We must also remember the professionals who are dedicated to supporting them.  So many people have worked way too hard, for far too long, under grueling circumstances to be so blithely abandoned in favor of millionaires and stubborn ideology.  Gandhi once said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”.  If one believes this, it would seem that we are dangerously close to failing the test.

Forum with Congressman Joe Kennedy

Posted on by Paige Mador

On Monday, Venture representatives attended a Disability and Health Care Forum with Congressman Joe Kennedy hosted by the Association of Developmental Disability Providers at the Boston Marriott in Newton.  The event was attended by staff members and leadership from human service agencies, self-advocates, and family members of people with disabilities.  Kennedy shared his commitment to “recognizing the potential in every person”, regardless of their physical or intellectual disability.

Congressman Kennedy expressed his concern about the American Health Care Act and how it will affect the rights of people with intellectual disabilities, with $1.4 trillion in cuts to health care.  He shared his concerns regarding threats to social security, affordable housing, food stamps, and even Special Olympics.  He pledged his commitment to the disability community, saying that we cannot support “cuts to services that we will all likely use someday, or be used by someone we love”.  In addition to thanking attendees for their activism, he encouraged the group to continue advocating and raising their voices.  He asked advocates to contact friends and family in other states and encourage them to find one more Republican Senator to oppose the AHCA.

Recently, Congressman Kennedy addressed Congress, rebuking The American Health Care Act.  Watch the video here.

Congressman Joseph Kennedy III represents the 4th District of Massachusetts and is a member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee.  For more information, visit his web site.

Why Medicaid Has to Survive

Posted on by Paige Mador

By Mike Hyland, President and CEO

The inexplicable assault on Medicaid continues in the Trump administration and there is good reason for people to worry about it.  The President’s stated plan to gut Medicaid by almost a trillion dollars over a ten year period, while cutting taxes for millionaires, will eviscerate crucial programs that allow people with developmental disabilities to live safe and meaningful lives in community-based settings.  We should all wonder aloud why this population of marginalized people should be so brazenly abandoned.  After we wonder about it, we should be appalled.  We should also be gravely concerned for another forgotten group: the dedicated workforce of professionals who support these people in the community.

For too long already, we have allowed people who do the very difficult work of direct care to be almost entirely neglected by national policy makers.  Advocacy to guarantee legitimately livable wages and increases, affordable health care, access to higher education and professional development too often fall on deaf ears in Washington D.C.  Publicly, officials praise the incredible work being done by so many committed professionals.  Privately, they do little to support this workforce.  Now, astonishingly, the Trump administration is dismissing these professionals and the value of their skills by proposing a budget that will make it virtually impossible for them to get paid appropriately for the vital work they do every day.

According to the Baker administration, a cut of this magnitude would cost Massachusetts approximately $1.5 billion in the first year alone.  Obviously, this kind of cut cannot be absorbed under current revenue collections, meaning that the state will have to significantly cut programs for developmentally disabled people or significantly raise taxes or, more likely, do both.  The needs of an already underpaid workforce will certainly not be prioritized in state contracts under such conditions because the money won’t be there.  We already have a genuine workforce crisis in the field of human services in this country.  By obliterating the funding mechanism that pays direct care professionals, the Trump White House is saying loud and clear that the new administration values the wealthy above the disabled and those who do so much to help them.  How sad that after so many years of advances in overcoming disabilities, stigma, bullying, isolation, and discrimination, the disability community now faces its greatest threat from people elected to help them.  How sad that the dedicated people who work tirelessly to this day to make these advances possible stand to be abandoned by those who once promised unequivocally not to cut Medicaid.

It is totally irrelevant where the plans to cut Medicaid by such a staggering amount originate.  The position, the political party, the individual, or the special interest group that encourages such devastation doesn’t matter.  Anyone who plans to do harm to so many must always be challenged and educated to understand what Medicaid truly does.  Such massive cuts as currently planned dangerously expose people who need help through no fault of their own.  Just as troubling, they signal a total dismissal of the very real needs of the many professionals who already sacrifice so much to help others.  These amazing men and women deserve much, much better than that.

Don’t Betray Innocent People

Posted on by Paige Mador

By Mike Hyland, President and CEO

Once again there is a bill in Washington that would replace the Affordable Care Act with another version of health care policies, regulations, and practices.  Obviously, this is a heated political issue and will likely remain so for many years – but the politics of it tend to obscure an important fact: the current bill, like the last failed bill, will unequivocally harm people with disabilities and the professionals who support them.  In other words, it betrays innocent people.

The proposed bill will punch holes in Medicaid funding that individual states will not be able to fill.  With cuts of almost $850 billion over the next ten years, people with disabilities and their advocates once again find themselves (for the second time in a year that is barely four months old) in danger of being left behind.  In fact, given that this is the second bill in 2017 that threatens them, it would appear that a good many people in Congress are also choosing to simply say that these people just don’t matter.  How in the world can that be okay in this country?

Medicaid is a $600 billion annual program that contains many provisions and it is probably time for the program to be evaluated in terms of efficiency and outcomes.  Nonetheless, converting it to a block grant or per capita program goes well beyond that.  It destroys safety nets and opportunities for people with disabilities and turns a blind eye to the work force that has battled for years to be recognized with appropriate pay and benefits for the valuable work they do and have always done.  Drastic reductions to Medicaid funding undeniably makes it even harder to support professionals who are already stretched too thin.  Clearly, these proposed Medicaid cuts are tantamount to Congress and the new administration telling this workforce that what they do isn’t important.  At best, the people proposing this latest bill just don’t understand what this industry does.  At worst, they just don’t care.

People with developmental disabilities rely on current levels of funding to stay safe, to remain in a community of choice, to get to work programs, and to access wellness and recreation.  It’s utterly baffling that this would be a group that politicians seem to have deemed as needing less than they get now.  We’ll ignore the reality that savings realized from service cuts to disabled people are intended to fund a tax cut for people making a million dollars a year and up.  That’s an issue to be taken up elsewhere.  What needs to be talked about is the reality that the current legislation, as written, will take away from people who essentially have the least.  People with developmental disabilities already struggle to work, to get adequate health care, to have reliable transportation, to develop social networks, and to be heard.  They also are victims of abuse and neglect at a higher rate than the general population.  So why does Washington believe that reducing programs that support them is a good idea?  No one seems willing to answer that question, particularly those who when campaigning pledged not to cut Medicaid.  The hypocrisy is staggering!

The ACA is obviously a hot button issue that will remain so for a long time to come.  It’s expensive and it is the duty of elected officials to examine it and anything else that divides so many people.  But don’t do something that harms people who are ignored far too often.  Don’t turn back the clock and wipe out years of progress on so many fronts for people with developmental disabilities.  Hey Washington – don’t betray innocent people.

20th Annual Charity Golf Classic

Posted on by Paige Mador

Venture is looking forward to the summer with the 20th Annual Charity Golf Classic! Over the years, we have received an outpouring of community support at this event, and this year we are even more excited that the location of our golf tournament is right down the street from our brand-new day services program in Uxbridge.

If you’ve already registered – THANK YOU! We also still have plenty of registration spaces available to golfers who are interested in joining us.  Enjoy 18 holes of golf at the beautiful Blissful Meadows Golf Club in Uxbridge, including golf cart, golfer gift, continental breakfast, boxed lunch and dinner.  There are plenty of chances to win prizes, with fun games and contests on eleven holes.

After a great day out on the course, golfers will enjoy an Italian buffet dinner in the club’s new pavilion, complete with lawn games, cash bar and silent auction that will include summer trips and family outings, gift certificates, creative gift baskets, and more.

We’d also like to recognize our many generous sponsors for this event: Starkweather & Shepley, Fallon Health, MDG Employee Benefit Solutions, Southbridge Savings Bank, C.K. Smith & Company, Country Bank, Group 7 Design, OFS Optics, Arland Tool & Manufacturing, Bank Hometown, Dave’s Pest Control, Guaranty Glass & Mirror, Howe Lumber, JD LeBlanc Electric, Load Controls, Osterman Propane, Quality Van Sales, Savers Bank, Southbridge Credit Union, Al Brousseau Flooring, Cormier Jewelers, Cosgrove & Blatt, Gaudet Landscaping, Guardian Life Insurance, Stephenson & Brook, TMG Carpentry, All Star Incentive Marketing, and ACT Leasing. Thank you for your support!

Sponsorship opportunities are still available with great benefits for you and your business.

We hope you’ll consider joining us on Friday, June 16th at Blissful Meadows Golf Club for a great outing to support programs for people with disabilities, including adaptive equipment and assistive technology.  For more information, contact Paige Mador at 774-922-1135 or pmador@venturecs.org.

Register online today!