Program facing cuts

By Taryn Plumb
Turley Publications Reporter

REGION - It took 18 months for Savannah Cioppa to mumble her first word.
And after that, her vocabulary didn't expand much – for a while, she only had a cache of about 10 words, and some of those weren't often clear.
Also troubling: She had a hard time comprehending what was being communicated to her, and she didn't immediately imitate the speech going on all around her (as anyone who's ever spent time with a newly-talking child is well familiar with).
So last February, at the urgings of her pediatrician, her parents brought her to the Southbridge-based Early Intervention program, which caters to infants and children up to age 3 with various developmental delays.
And now, about a year later? The 2-and-a-half-year-old is much more articulate, her mother reports, with a vocabulary of about 100 words.
“There comes a point where you have to accept it,” said mom Christine Cioppa, of North Oxford. “It's upsetting news. You want your child to be a scholar. But you get past that, (and start to think), 'this is where we're at. How can we help her?' We don't want to set the bar any lower than what she can achieve.”
But if funding issues persist, that bar may inevitably be lowered for developmentally delayed children like Savannah.
Due to decimated state and federal budgets, the Early Intervention program is at risk.
The two-decades-old initiative, offered through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, caters to children up to age 3 who have the potential for developmental delays. Its 59 locations scattered across the state serve 30,000 children; locally, around 800 families from Sturbridge, Brimfield, Holland, Wales and 11 other towns seek out its services through the Kennedy-Donovan Center in Southbridge.
But this fiscal year, the program is contending with a $2 million funding gap, according to local program director Robin Weber.
And that picture gets even worse for next fiscal year, when the deficit is expected to widen to $10.5 million.
Over the past two years, federal stimulus money has helped to preserve the program's services – but that has since run out.
Still, there is some hope.
In early March, Early Intervention received word that Gov. Deval Patrick was working to address shortfalls in this fiscal year's budget. Program officials credit this in large part to a “stroller-in” demonstration at the State House on March 1.
Still, as Weber noted, the future is “still an unknown.”
If budgeting issues persist, parent fees could be raised anywhere from 700 to 1,300 percent, based on family income, Weber said, and changes to the eligibility requirements could exclude or deny services to more than 10,000 children – or one out of three now receiving assistance.
“To think that kids who qualify now may not qualify – that's tragic,” Cioppa said.
Weber described it as more of an outrage. “I don't know how the state can balance its budget on the backs of families whose kids have developmental disabilities,” she said as she sat in her office in the Kennedy-Donovan Center, tucked along Route 169.
But these funding issues also come down to a larger, more fundamental problem with health insurance coverage, Weber explained. Most notably: Self-insured plans under the state's universal health care system don't cover Early Intervention programs.
“More has to be done, or else the state's not going to be able to afford it,” she said. “They keep chipping away.”
And if funding further slices the program apart, it could ultimately cost the state more, she said.

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