Future of Abbe Center deemed 'tenuous at best'

Linn County supervisors this morning began the process of moving dozens of people with mental illness from the county-owned Abbe Center for Community Care to small neighborhood group homes. The move came after a warning from the center's director.

"We've been struggling to figure out how we're going to stay in business," Dan Strellner told supervisors. "The future of the care facility is tenuous at best."

Strellner is excecutive director of Abbe Inc., the non-profit that operates the center at 1860 County Home Rd., Marion, for the county. The $2.8 million in cuts approved unanimously by supervisors include shifting 85 Abbe residents to the smaller homes, where Medicaid will pay more for their services than it does in large institutions.

Along with $439,000 in cuts approved last week, today's budget adjustments leave $647,000 yet to cut to fully address the $5.3 million shortfall in the MHDD budget for the fiscal year ending next June 30.

Strellner said some Abbe residents will move to facilities outside the county.

"It will be a huge transition for people," agreed Mechelle Dhondt, the county's MHDD director, noting some Abbe residents have lived there for 30 years. "They're going to lose relationships they had. I'm not discounting that at all."

But Dhondt said she's also heard from Abbe residents and families who are looking forward to moving from the isolated center to neighborhoods.

Dhondt said staff from Abbe and the Department of Human Services have begun assessing clients to determine who can move to group homes with a lower level of trained care.

"We won't be moving people into a three-bed home who need 24-hour nursing," she said.

Mobile Crisis Outreach, the county-funded service that provides counselors around the clock to answer calls from troubled residents and police, will probably no longer provide 24-hour service after today's cuts, said Alison DeFrance, the program's coordinator.

DeFrance said Mobile Crisis usually sends a two-person counseling team to help police with persons being committed to psychiatric care.

“That allows us to do some on-the-spot counseling with people, and that allows the sheriff's department or CRPD to get back to their regular duties," said DeFrance, who works for Foundation 2, the nonprofit that provides the service under contract. "We would cut all the committal calls entirely. That would leave everything to law enforcement."

"It's really done a nice job of getting things calmed down before things get out of hand," Dhondt said of the service. "When people do need to go to the hospital they kind of help them get to that decision. It's been a great service."

With the county cutting half the program's $93,286 funding halfway through the fiscal year, DeFrance said she expects to eliminate Mobile Crisis' nighttime availability. The program's counselors answered about 200 calls last year affecting more than 400 people across the county.

“It's really incredible how much it's grown and how we're known in the community" since the program was launched in 2004, said DeFrance.

Supervisors also approved $1,650,000 worth of revenue increases, including $925,000 in state aid as the county adopts a waiting list for services and $550,000 in higher case management fees.

State law limits how much counties may levy for MHDD services, and county's can't shift money from the general fund to cover the shortfall.

The cuts approved today include services replaced by other providers:

• Transfer of supported community living clients to other providers: $37,000
• Eliminate supported employment at Options of Linn County: $72,950
• Discontinue protected payee management of Social Security benefits: $67,000
• Move seven clients from county funding to Medicaid-funded residential program: $54,772
• Transfer 85 Abbe Center residents to small-group homes Jan. 1: $352,443
• Administrative and staff cuts that shouldn't be noticed by clients and families: $316,023
• Services reduced or eliminated, with no replacement: $1,931, 78. These include $33,500 for bus passes, $26,000 for the Dreams peer-support drop-in center in southeast Cedar Rapids, $32,500 for jail diversion services, $46,643 for Mobile Crisis Outreach, $65,500 for Options' enclave job support,  and $10,000 in adult day care