A Lifeline for Families Faces Cuts

By Robin Shulman - Washington Post Staff Writer - Sunday, December 14, 2008 In N.Y., Caregivers Grapple With Likely Loss of Programs for Dementia Patients Sometimes it seems as though all Doreen Tiseo does is care for her 87-year-old father, who has memory loss from Alzheimer's disease. She supervises him in the shower and gives him reminders, such as "pick up the soap" and "wash your face." In the morning, she helps him dress and slips a handkerchief into his pocket. At night when he wanders, she tells him, "It's dark out, time to sleep." But during the day, she gets a respite to go to her job as her father attends a city-funded program. It offers people with dementia and Alzheimer's art and music therapy, lunch, physical activities, and guided discussions and socializing -- critical, Tiseo says, to keeping her father alert, happy and relatively healthy. Now, because of a budget crisis, New York City plans to eliminate funding for all 12 of these adult day-care programs at the end of this month, saving $1.2 million before the next fiscal year begins in July. The programs, which receive most of their funding from the city, are facing immediate closure unless they can raise fees dramatically or find new donors -- in a climate in which other government agencies, corporations and individuals are also cutting back. Even then, they may be able to remain open only a few days a week. -------- Faced with the need to make cuts, it seemed better to "surgically eliminate" these small adult day programs, said Edwin Mendez-Santiago, who recently resigned as commissioner of the city's Department for the Aging, rather than programs such as home-delivered meals, which reach 17,000 people daily, or senior centers, which serve 20,000 each day. Mendez-Santiago said the department's staff would help redirect the 300 or so people who attend these programs to state-funded, Medicaid or private-pay day-care programs, or to home-care options. But he acknowledged that only a portion will qualify for Medicaid and that state budgets are also facing reductions.