To: The Michigan State House, The Michigan State Senate, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer
Restore Critical Funding For The Disabled!
Budget Cuts Impact over 9,000 Michiganders with Disabilities
- Michigan’s Centers for Independent Living (CILs), lost 25% of their funding to other Department of Health and Human Service priorities.
- The federally established CIL program supports 40,000 people with disabilities per year to live independently and achieve economic self-sufficiency, educates 80,000 people on inclusion and barrier-free communities and has demonstrated a strong return on investment of $41 million in 2018 alone.
- These cuts will lead to a reduction in services that will impact 9,200 people with disabilities and cause lay-offs of 33 employees, many of whom have disabilities.
- The line item cut is titled Independent Living Services. The total cut was $3.5 million: $2 million was current funding and $1.5 million was a proposed increase.
- Many people with disabilities depend on CILs to help them achieve their goals to find jobs, move out of nursing homes, regain skills after acquiring a disability and transition out of special education into adulthood.
- A majority of both staff and governing boards of each of the 15 CILs are people with an array of disabilities, ranging from wheelchair users, people who are blind, staff who have mental illnesses and employees who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
CIL services slated to be cut include:
o Mobile outreach to rural communities;
o Crisis services;
o Voter accessibility work;
o Census 2020 efforts;
o Emergency preparedness;
o Outreach to help people move out of nursing homes; and,
o Occupational therapy to help people facing nursing home admission remain in their own homes.
The Disability Network will continue its advocacy efforts with decision-makers to restore $3.5 million to the Independent Living Services budget.
- Michigan’s Centers for Independent Living (CILs), lost 25% of their funding to other Department of Health and Human Service priorities.
- The federally established CIL program supports 40,000 people with disabilities per year to live independently and achieve economic self-sufficiency, educates 80,000 people on inclusion and barrier-free communities and has demonstrated a strong return on investment of $41 million in 2018 alone.
- These cuts will lead to a reduction in services that will impact 9,200 people with disabilities and cause lay-offs of 33 employees, many of whom have disabilities.
- The line item cut is titled Independent Living Services. The total cut was $3.5 million: $2 million was current funding and $1.5 million was a proposed increase.
- Many people with disabilities depend on CILs to help them achieve their goals to find jobs, move out of nursing homes, regain skills after acquiring a disability and transition out of special education into adulthood.
- A majority of both staff and governing boards of each of the 15 CILs are people with an array of disabilities, ranging from wheelchair users, people who are blind, staff who have mental illnesses and employees who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
CIL services slated to be cut include:
o Mobile outreach to rural communities;
o Crisis services;
o Voter accessibility work;
o Census 2020 efforts;
o Emergency preparedness;
o Outreach to help people move out of nursing homes; and,
o Occupational therapy to help people facing nursing home admission remain in their own homes.
The Disability Network will continue its advocacy efforts with decision-makers to restore $3.5 million to the Independent Living Services budget.
Why is this important?
We are public servants who provide services to the disabled in Wayne County and are seriously concerned about the disabled not receiving much needed services.