Task force tells family members of Options clients about end of workshop program

CEDAR RAPIDS - Family members of developmentally disabled adults who have depended on Linn County's Options sheltered workshop program mixed questions with resignation Tuesday night as they learned that their adult children will need to find another place to spend their workdays.

About 100 people, including some Options clients, turned out at the county's Community Services Center, 1240 26th Ave. Ct. SW, to hear firsthand the recommendations of the Options Future Planning Task Force.

The first of the recommendations is the clearest: The sheltered workshop piece of the Options program will close no later than June 30, 2016, and could close much sooner.

Patricia Cavanaugh, whose sister is an Options client, said last night that she was in the same boat as the others in the room, but she already had begun to work with a case manager to identify other community programs and to plan how she and her sister would investigate each to find the best one for her.

'We have to make some decisions, and they're not going to be easy,” Cavanaugh said. '… But you're not going to be alone.”

Mechelle Dhondt, Linn County's director of mental health and developmental disability services and a member of the new board overseeing those services in a nine-county region, said other providers also are phasing out their sheltered workshop programs. But at the same time, they will be hiring additional staff with new or modified programs to take on Options' clients, she said.

One attendee was eager to get a list of the other providers, and John Brandt, Linn County's executive director of community services, said his office would provide a list. Another meeting will be scheduled so providers can explain their programs to family members of Options clients, he said.

Those providers include Goodwill of the Heartland, Systems Unlimited, To The Rescue, REM and others, he said.

The closing of the sheltered workshop, which serves 97 adults, could accelerate if the program's federal certificate to pay wages far below minimum wage is not renewed when it expires at the end of 2015, Brandt said.

He said the closing also could come quicker if federal Medicaid funding to the program is discontinued at the current rate.

The Options program also includes a 'day-habilitation” or activity program for 102 developmentally disabled adults not able to participate in the sheltered workshop, let alone in a job outside the workshop.

Brandt said the 'day-hab” program will continue at the Linn County facility if federal Medicaid funding supports a program redesign that gets the population into the community more than now.

Some of the 51 Linn County employees now at Options will have their jobs eliminated.

The Options program has been confronted by three forces, two of which - a federal push to better integrate clients into the community and to pay them at least the minimum wage - are confronting providers of programs for the developmentally disabled throughout Iowa and the nation.

However, the Options program is facing a problem unique to it in Iowa in that its employees are public employees with union wages and benefits that are substantially higher than those paid to employees in similar jobs working for private providers. Federal and state reimbursement rates are lower than rates needed to support the costs that come with Linn County's public employees.

Some parents last night questioned how employers in the community are going to be able to provide work and to pay minimum wage for the developmentally disabled. One parent wondered how employers will be trained to make sure the disabled are not verbally abused at work.

Delaine Petersen, executive director of The Arc of East Central Iowa and a task force member with an adult daughter in the Options day-habilitation program, said one promising model for employment just started in the area. St. Luke's Hospital has agreed to work with 12 disabled clients in a program designed to employ them in nine months. The 12 have job coaches at the hospital, but the clients are not paid as they train, she said.

Dhondt said some at the Options sheltered workshop now may choose not to be at a job site and to use a day-habilitation program instead. But those programs also will be required to get their clients into the community more, whether by taking tours or even volunteering, she said.