WHO WILL STEP UP TO FILL FUNDING VOID?

A month ago I asked Pat Drennen, regional administrator for the Department
of Mental Health, about the impact of the cuts in the state budget for
southwest Missouri.

"People could die because of these cuts," Pat said. She was intensely serious.

Treatment for the disease of alcohol and drug addiction has been so
curtailed because of budget slashes that many of those who need treatment
will not be able to access it. If they can't access treatment, they will
remain addicted. Just ask Sigma House about that.

And adults whose disease is untreated are more likely to be unemployed, hit
their partner and children in anger, and engage in criminal activity. Check
that out with shelters for domestic violence and law enforcement. Thus, the
budget cuts will increase the likelihood that children will be abused.

Unfortunately, the impact of abuse is forever - not just for two or three
years of budget cuts.

Southwest Missouri already has one of the highest rates of child abuse and
neglect in the state. And the budget cuts are reducing the services of the
Division of Family Services. This means less time for preventing child
abuse. That's analogous to trying to get out of debt while activating new
credit card offers.

Every year of operation, The Child Advocacy Center has served more
children, investigating child sexual abuse. Their budget has been cut also
- - they are being asked to do more with less. If it is your child needing
these services, you won't want to wait, not even a day. Celeste and Vernon
will testify to that. Their 17-year-old was abused in a group home setting;
they sought immediate assistance.

We already know that on average in Missouri, we pay more to board a dog in
a kennel than we pay foster parents to care for our children. What a
statement that makes. How can we say we value our children? What message
are we giving children?

And this year we are reducing available dollars for grandparents to help
them raise grandchildren as their own. Carol knows about that. At a time
when peers are retiring, she and her husband have a young grandchild to
rear. Every dollar counts. They need multiple levels of support that they
probably won't get this year.

Cindy is a 37-year-old quadriplegic, with a 14-year-old daughter, who wants
to be at home rather than in a nursing home. She needs personal care
assistants to do this. Each PCA applicant must undergo a series of
background checks that can take four to six weeks to process.

She has already lost one good candidate who took another job while waiting
to be approved. She believes the staff cuts at the Department of Health in
Jefferson City will increase approval time, thus making it harder to hire
PCAs to keep her home.

Talk with families in Caring Communities neighborhoods. Jennifer and her
three children participated in the FAST (Families and Schools Together)
program at York Elementary last spring. She says her kids are doing better
than they've ever done thanks to the program.

Will parents this year be able to benefit from FAST? Not at Shady Dell or
Watkins elementary schools.

Southwest Missouri is losing millions of dollars in human services due to
budget cuts at the state level. This translates to reduced services. The
impact on individual families hasn't begun to be felt yet. The worst is yet
to come.

And, yet, I have never believed that money alone will solve our social
ills. I strongly believe in the power of people to make change and craft a
better world for our children, our grandchildren and ourselves. This takes
action. Not haphazard action, but carefully thought-out action with each
step being a building block in the process of re-inventing a sense of
community.

Who will act as a catalyst for that action? Who will lead the way? My
highest expectation of leaders is that they will have the ability to
inspire others to positive action.

I look for that at every level of leadership: parents in families; civic
leaders; agency leaders, CEOs and classroom teachers; spiritual leaders in
the pulpit and in religious classes; small business owners as well as store
managers; elected officials and in neighbors seeking healing from
neighborhood violence.

Show us the way.

This is the time for inspired leadership to map out myriad pathways where
each person can find a niche and make a difference. We need pathways to the
prevention of alcohol and drug abuse, early pregnancy, school failure and
dropout, youth violence, child abuse and neglect. If we prevent these
things, budget cuts 15 years from now will not have a devastating impact.
We need to take care of our own because they are our own. All children are
our children.

I look to re-create an actively caring community. We will be building on
our present strength. This caring community will be a place where
preventing child abuse is something we take care of right in our own
neighborhoods. If we exercise that power of doing it ourselves, we are not
vulnerable to the massive budget cuts coming out of Jefferson City for
investigating and treating child abuse.

I look for preventing domestic violence and alcohol and drug addiction as
well as treating the disease. I look to build air-conditioned,
state-of-the-art schools with inspired teachers, rather than
state-of-the-art-jails. That's a first step in graduating citizens, not
criminals. Only when we make this shift to prevention - and it will take a
long time - can we avoid the devastating impact of massive budget cuts from
the state.

The reality of today is our agencies face budget cuts. Families, especially
children, will be hurt. We must take action now to help those families
being hurt by this year's funding slashes. We must get beyond ourselves and
our comfort zone. Simultaneously, we must take action to re-build
community, thus creating strong, resilient children that will reduce the
need for human services in the future. This means we need leadership with
the capability of inspiring us individually and collectively to action.

Who will be the catalyst for this? Will you?