We’re alarmed by the announcement this morning that the Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS) will dramatically cut back its workforce and shutter essential companies that help older adults.
The announcement particularly requires the Administration for Group Residing (ACL), whose packages older adults and folks with disabilities depend on to stay wholesome and unbiased in the neighborhood, to be dissolved into different places of work inside the Division. ACL incorporates the Administration on Ageing and the Administration on Disabilities, amongst others. The lack of an company centered on older adults and folks with disabilities will probably end in wants being missed and worse outcomes for older adults.
The press launch that introduced these modifications acknowledged that the companies ACL and the opposite eradicated companies present can be absorbed into different components of HHS, however provided no specifics on how the packages ACL oversees will proceed because the company fires 10,000 individuals and closes 5 regional places of work. HHS has offered no details about how the company will proceed important companies that individuals throughout the nation depend on every single day.
If entry to the packages that ACL oversees is hindered, older adults and folks with disabilities will lose the power to decide on the place and the way they need to reside and totally take part of their communities. Many can be pressured into establishments once they need assistance with actions of day by day residing resembling bathing, dressing, and consuming. Households who’re struggling to take care of family members may have nowhere to show for the coaching, respite, and help they want. Older adults will lose entry to Grownup Day Applications the place they’ll obtain meals, socialize with others, and entry fundamental preventative care. Availability of transportation companies to senior facilities and physician appointments will finish. When an older grownup experiences monetary exploitation or abuse, the free authorized companies they depend on won’t be accessible.
This newest transfer is a part of a sample of assaults from this Administration on the well-being and well being of older adults and folks with disabilities, together with the administration’s help for Congress’ deliberate cuts to Medicaid, DOGE’s hollowing out of the Social Safety Administration, the termination of funding for analysis into Alzheimer’s illness and the shuttering of companies just like the Client Monetary Safety Bureau that shield older adults and others from monetary fraud and abuse.
