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Budget cuts in adult day care would force many seniors into more expensive nursing homes.

Over 1,500 Alabama residents will lose their homemaker and/or day care services unless the Alabama Department of Human Resources (ADHR) gets a budget increase, which seems unlikely, DHR Commissioner Page Walley told the Birmingham News.

Currently, there is no legislation to provide homemaker and day care services, which costs Alabama $3.6 million a year, Walley said. With rising costs in child welfare and other programs, Walley said he’s uncertain his department can afford the day care and homemaker services.

In Birmingham’s Jefferson County, there is a need for additional social workers and adult day care aides, said Louise Julian, the county’s program coordinator for adult protective services.

Home and day care services are the life lines that keep adult clients in their own homes or with families, Julian said. Alabama investigates 5,000 adult abuse cases each year, 675 in Jefferson County, she said. Individuals qualify for DHR assistance only after a social worker makes a home visit and files a report.

Jefferson, the largest county in the state, has just 40 homemaker slots and 50 day care slots for adult DHR clients, the News reported.

"It seems like every time we turn around, every year, they are dropping our numbers," Julian said. "And now we are on a freeze."

If DHR funding for adult day care services is eliminated, Jefferson County’s Wylam Adult Day Health Care Center will close, said director Roy Howze.

The families of its 51 clients -- 48 of which are served through DHR, would have to find care elsewhere, he said. The majority don’t qualify for federal insurance funding since they are under the age of 50 he said.

"This will be really devastating to the state and this county if the services are stopped,” Howze said. “I have clients who are 21. I have one client who is 99 years old. They need the center. They cannot stay home “

Julian said the need outweighs the funding and that will only worsen when baby boomers need adult respite care. "Bottom line, if Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance would ever start covering more home services, it is so much cheaper to keep people in their own homes,” she said. “There are so many people who have to go into nursing homes because that is the only place where they can get coverage."

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