Proposed cuts in Fairfax County’s mental health services would shunt more than 300 mentally disabled riders off the county’s trusted transportation service, as well as squeeze other support services for a highly vulnerable population.
County leaders, facing a $500 million budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year, have asked all agencies to show how they could trim their bottom lines by up to 15 percent.
That exercise includes the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board, which delivers mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse services to the county and its surrounding small cities.
Transportation services for the intellectually disabled are the first on the list of the agency’s suggested cost reductions. Among the cuts, 303 users of the Fastran program would need to find different Medicaid-funded transportation to the county’s day programs, saving $2.4 million.
Fastran is heralded as the most reliable of a handful of transportation options.
“It’s the safest form of transportation for our folks,” said Nancy Mercer, executive director of the ARC of Northern Virginia, an advocacy group for the intellectually disabled.
“We have highly vulnerable individuals where a lot of abuse happens on the transportation system.”
Mercer was heavily involved in community meetings leading up to the CSB’s cost-cutting proposal and said she understood the agency faced a tough choice in finding savings.
Alan Wooten, the CSB’s director for mental retardation services, said the riders would still be guaranteed free transportation, though he acknowledged that families were concerned the quality and safety wouldn’t be the same.
“We felt like that was one that had minimal impact to individuals in the big picture,” he said.
The agency’s list also includes millions of potential cuts to vocational services, mental health clinics, detoxification treatment, and other functions of the CSB. But the most endangered items revolve around transportation.
The county provides the vast majority of funding for the CSB, which is the largest such agency in the state.
