The MENDOCINO COUNTRY Independent
8/29/09

FUNDING CUTS HIT LOCAL PROGRAMS
    The state budget signed in Sacramento the beginning of August has had a devastating effect on local service programs.
    • Mendocino Community Health Clinic will remain open but Medi-Cal will no longer fund dental, chiropractic, optical, and podiatry services. The funds were cut in February in a deal between Democratic legislators and the governor. The decision resulted in a loss of federal matching funds.
    • In-Home Supportive Services serves 1,500 elderly and disabled seniors with daily supportive care, but now 250 clients are ineligible and another 600 will suffer reduced services as a result of state funding cuts.
    • Potter Valley Health Clinic has closed after losing $546,000 a year in the governor's signing vetoes, 1/3 of its annual budget. The clinic served 3,000 patients a year from rural Potter Valley, many elderly seniors too frail to drive to Ukiah.
    Other clinics at risk are Anderson Valley Health Center in Boonville, Long Valley Health Center in Laytonville, Mendocino Community Health Center in Ukiah, Willits and Lakeport, Mendocino Coast Clinics in Fort Bragg, and Redwood Coast Medical Services in Gualala.
    • Ukiah Senior Center Adult Day Health Care has been reduced by 40%, 18 of 35 infirm clients have lost daily care. MediCal will now reimburse only 3 of five days a week, family members must pay for the other 2 days care at $76 a day. Elderly citizens in 80s and 90s cannot get to doctor or provide for their own needs at home are abandoned.
    • Project Sanctuary remains open, according to director Dina Polkinghorne, despite the loss of $207,000 in annual domestic violence counseling funds from California, eliminated by the governor's last minute last minute line item vetoes. That's because it is a multi-service agency providing four services:
    1) domestic violence counseling; 2) rape and sexual assault counseling; 3) legal advocacy for restraining orders; 4) prevention education for schoolchildren.
    Dina told MCI that her agency has cut one full time position and all staff have volunteered to work reduced paid hours in order to save a modicum level of services.
    She mentioned that legal advocacy had been cut the deepest, and the sole worker was continuing on a limited on-call basis.
    Ana Ariaza the agency's primary bilingual counselor continues with the program.
    Project Sanctuary provides services to over 2,000 adult victims of domestic violence in Mendocino County per year, most of them women, according to Dina.
    She expressed disgust that the governor with one stroke of his veto pen eliminated an average of $200,000 from each of California's 94 domestic violence counseling centers when that money is among those dollars are among best spent in terms of social service benefits in California.
    "There are very few whose lives have not been touched by domestic violence," she emphasized.  "We are first emergency responders like the police or fire. When a woman has 5 minutes to leave the house with her children after being hit by her abuser, we are the only ones there."
    Project Sanctuary's services are still available 24-7 thanks to volunteers at the crisis line, 1-800-575-HELP, or 1-800-575-4357.
    In response to the funding cuts for domestic violence services, Polkinghorne is seeking more volunteer telephone counselors at this time. Volunteers must undergo an extensive training program and make a committment of one year to serve Project Sanctuary.
    For more information call 462-9196.
    • Healthy Families to lose $3.6 million in Mendocino County, requiring new clients to be placed on a waiting list instead of being insured. In addition, the current 2,500 children of poor and working families now enrolled will be placed on the waiting list as they come up for annual renewal.
    • UVAH's Mayacamas Industries which employs developmentally disabled faces eventual shutdown. As of now, is required to cease hiring workers over 50.