Budget Cuts FY09 Fact Sheet 8 Aug 08 (2)

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Illinois' Healthcare Crisis:

Budget Cuts are Decimating the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment System

Facilities have closed doors; discontinued services; and forced thousands onto waiting lists

Statewide Effects of Budget cuts

Ø $43 million cut from addiction services; more than $11 million cut from programs serving women and children, youth in treatment, youth in the community court system, and people addicted to methamphetamine

Ø Cuts have reduced the treatment system by 43 percent, a brutal and indiscriminate reduction that has devastated treatment providers across the state

Ø Many providers have closed intake programs, discharged clients, cut services, and laid off staff.

Ø Approximately 42,140 people will go without critical treatment services that are essential to making them productive taxpaying citizens.

Ø Budget reductions will result in a loss of $55 million in federal matching dollars.

Ø Loss of GRF dollars coupled with loss of matching federal dollars will result in an 85 percent reduction of the prevention service system, forcing many prevention providers to close their doors.

Ø Illinois already spends approximately $3 billion on the consequences of untreated addiction, including: crime, lost worker productivity, fatal vehicle crashes, higher insurance premiums, school dropout, teen pregnancies, child abuse and domestic violence; a 43 percent reduction will cost the state $4.3 billion to deal with untreated addiction.

Effects of Budget Cuts on Constituents

Ø Include here the short and long-term effects of the budget cuts on your agency.

Ø Consider staff cuts, closed programs, decreased services, longer waiting lists, fewer clients served, decreased prevention services.

Ø The more specific you can be the better.

Ø Try to provide specific numbers in terms of losses, numbers turned away/not served, percentage decreases in services etc.

Action Needed NOW

Ø The leadership of the State of Illinois must work together to identify a revenue source and restore funding to community-based treatment and prevention services.

Ø A $55 million cut to our system, a system that has served the people of this state for more than 3 decades, will turn thousands of people in treatment today out on to the streets, and will deny access to thousands more who desperately need our services.

Ø By attempting to balance the budget on the back of Illinois' most vulnerable citizens, the state is also turning away $43 million the federal government is willing to give this state to serve thousands of people!!

Ø This cannot stand! The leadership must identify a revenue source and restore treatment funding!!!

Nothing was cut from Governor Blagojevich's Sheridan Project, which offers substance abuse treatment to reduce recidivism. These budget cuts will not reduce recidivism. Crime will increase in our communities. I will write an essay on this issue next week.

Fred L. Nance Jr., President & CEO
ABD, MA, CADC, NCRS
C.L.I.C.K. Services, NFP
http://www.clickservices.org/