Illinois agencies hope for the best

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By Deirdre Cox Baker | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 2:05 AM CDT | () comments

Rozanne Robinson hopes to make a fresh start with the support of several Illinois Quad-City social service agencies.

In the next few weeks, Robinson, 40, will celebrate a year of sobriety, and she has an upcoming court date, which, she hopes, will result in three of her children being returned to her care.

She has accomplished this, and much more, with the help of the Robert Young Center for Community Mental Health and the Riverside chemical dependency treatment program. She recently moved into a beautiful apartment at Douglas Park Place in Rock Island and has begun doing volunteer work.

Such personal growth, accomplished with the help of the Quad-City-based programs, will be far more difficult to achieve if State of Illinois budget cuts are not restored, said Dennis Duke, director of outpatient behavioral health services for Robert Young.

The massive statewide cuts, made earlier this summer by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in an effort to balance the Illinois budget, will have a devastating impact on critical social services, Duke and other advocates said during a news conference held Tuesday at Douglas Park Place in Rock Island.

The news conference was held at the same time as others in nine metropolitan areas across Illinois.

Cut programs

The Robert Young Center faces $340,000 in cuts to its budget, which will mainly affect the treatment program for adolescents, Duke said. Right now, the center is holding open all unfilled positions in hopes the budget will be restored after the Illinois Legislature reconvenes to finalize some outstanding budget issues.

A 20-year-old program called Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities, or TASC, will be decimated by a 73 percent funding cut, administrator Andrew Young said. TASC helps nonviolent clients in Illinois’ criminal justice, corrections, juvenile justice, child welfare and public aid systems stay free of alcohol and drugs.

The budget reduction probably will eliminate TASC, Young said. There is a four-person staff in the Rock Island office, but TASC operates all over Illinois. Such community-based programs are much less expensive for taxpayers in the long run than paying to incarcerate people, he added.

Hits home

Matt Kustes, 20, a patient at Riverside, has used its treatment programs to stabilize his life and find a job. The East Moline native was in college at the University of Oregon when he decided to come home and seek help.

He suffers from bouts of depression and anxiety, and is a perfectionist with obsessive-compulsive disorder. “Riverside helps make my life more manageable,” he said, by teaching him both coping skills and how to pursue a healthy lifestyle. Those are the types of programs threatened by state funding cuts, Duke said.

The impact on the community overall worries Joseph Cowley, the clinical director of the Center for Alcohol and Drug Services, or CADS, in Davenport and Rock Island. “We want to help people alter and make changes in their lives,” he said.

The preventive services that CADS provides are much less expensive than treating individuals after they begin to abuse alcohol and drugs, he added.

Deirdre Cox Baker can be contacted at (563) 383-2492 or dbaker@qctimes.com.

Call your state legislatorSocial service advocates attending a news conference Tuesday in Rock Island urged Illinois residents to contact their state legislators to protest state budget cuts.

The Quad-City area legislators are:

- Rep. Pat Verschoore, D-Milan, telephone: (309) 558-3612; fax: (309) 793-4764; e-mail: pverschoore@patverschooore.com

- Rep. Mike Boland, D-East Moline, telephone: (309) 736-6478; fax: (309) 736-3478; e-mail: ILRepMikeBoland@aol.com

- Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline, telephone (309) 797-0001; fax: (309) 797-0003; e-mail: Jacobs@senatedem.state.il.us