The State of Indiana hired the accounting firm of Davis-Deshaies to initiate a new system for determining the services a consumer receives and the rate of reimbursement.

Providers in Florida who experienced the Davis-Deshaies process suggest we will have a reduction in rates of payment and consumers will have fewer services. An exercise in Indiana in the 1970s and 1990s resulted in exactly that.

Davis-Deshaies says that with their process, providers should accrue the same total income. Pardon my skepticism.

Of significant concern is the position of Davis-Dashaies’s Norm Davis, that services should be time-limited. If the consumer wants that service after the allowed time, the State of Indiana would not pay for it. As there is no other source of funding, services for consumers that exceed the approved timeline would end.

Some consumers in our Work Services programs have been with us for 40 years. If Norm Davis has his way, there will be a time limit imposed on this program. After that, the State of Indiana would no longer reimburse us for that service. The consumer would be forced into a community-based job.

Another program such a system could impact is Community Living. Although persons receiving Community Living services are in apartments, the level of support would be time-limited. After that time, support would drop to zero. Adults with developmental disabilities would be forced to find group homes, which are no longer allowed to be built, or institutions, which are all closed.

The State of Indiana continues pushing for the centralization of services, although lately it has done so through privately contracted monopolies rather than direct provision. We have seen the centralization of case management, with a decline in quality. We have experienced the centralization of crisis intervention, with the result that one of our consumers was refused critical services. In spite of years of evidence, the state has yet to learn that centralization of services is a recipe for mediocrity.

In September, the state announced that 11 consumers in Cass and Pulaski counties were approved for waiver services. Eleven out of 200 people who are waiting were approved. The state released a few hundred waiver slots last year, but the waiting list remains at 15,477 people.

Once the consumer accepts services, the state takes 17 months to process the paperwork they already have. When community providers are notified that services can begin, we initiate services within 60-90 days. In spite of the evidence, the drive to centralize services continues and the state keeps questioning the capacity of community-based providers to offer them.

The threat of centralizing all services with two or three providers is alive and well in spite of the evidence that centralization is a path to failure. Institutionalization does not require walls. We closed institutions, because they were inhumane. Now the state is seeking to exert the same level of control over community programs, and we have plenty of evidence that such control will generate the same lamentably tragic results.

We need to stop this dangerous trend in Indiana before locally managed and directed community-based programs like ours become an endangered species. Please contact your representatives, now.

Don Weikle is the Executive Director.