Carrin Brandt, Brian Cluckey and Norman Hill walked up to Chesterfield Del. Kirk Cox’s receptionist carrying packets of information and sporting colorful links from a paper chain wrapped around their necks like scarves.
“We’re just delivering our agenda from the ARC,” said Brandt, a volunteer with the group, which aims to help people with mental illness or mental retardation.
Brandt handed the receptionist a packet and a link from the paper chain to give to Cox. They signed the delegate’s guestbook and moved on to the next receptionist.
The three were part of a group of about 80 advocates who gathered in Richmond on Monday to urge lawmakers to better fund mental health and mental retardation services in Virginia. They gathered outside the General Assembly building and unfurled a paper chain for dramatic effect. Each of the chain’s 3,800 links was signed by an ARC supporter, many of whom need the kind of services the group is advocating for. The chain was then broken up into 22 segments which volunteers gave to lawmakers.
“I’ve been challenging all the members of the legislature to take their chains and to put them back together by the end of the session,” said Nancy Mercer, executive director of the ARC of Northern Virginia.
Brandt, a Springfield resident, is relatively new to mental health advocacy. In the fall of 2001, her four-month old daughter Bailey had a series of seizures which left her brain impaired. Bailey was enrolled in the county’s early intervention program where she receives therapy. When she gets older, however, she will no longer be eligible for these services, something which worries her parents.
Hill, who lives in Arlington, is both a consumer of mental health services and a peer counselor. After graduating from Northern Virginia Community College and spending a summer at Oxford University he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1984 and has been piecing his life back together ever since.
“It’s my third trip to Richmond,” he said. “I love this city.”
<b>MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATES</b> are no strangers to Virginia’s political process. Many of them have been lobbying their elected officials for years for better services. But their efforts have not stopped those services from slipping. Last year, Virginia sank to 50th nationwide in the level of support the state provides for its population with mental retardation. And advocates fear the situation could get worse as Republicans in the House of Delegates reject tax increases proposed by Gov. Mark Warner (D) and Sen. Finance Committee Chairman John Chichester (R-28) to help balance Virginia’s tight budget without cutting programs.
Last week, the House of Delegates indicated its support for a new Republican plan that would raise some business taxes and generate more than $500 million a year.
The activists in Richmond this week urged lawmakers to raise cigarette, gasoline and sales taxes asking that more money be allocated for programs that let citizens with mental illness or mental retardation live independently. There are already 1,416 people on waiting lists for these services, some of whom have been on the waiting list for decades. Right now, those people are either forced to stay with aging parents or are placed in nursing homes or institutions.
A 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision said that state governments are required to provide services for people with mental illness or mental retardation who want to live independently in the community. But Virginia’s dismal budget outlook makes it unlikely that the state will live up to the court’s requirement anytime soon, say advocates.
<b>THE WAITING LIST</b> for community care slots doesn’t reveal the extent of the need, said Brandt. When she tried getting her daughter a spot on the list, she found that only those with urgent needs were allowed on the waiting list.
“In order to get services for my daughter after early intervention, I would have to divorce my husband, I would have to die or I’d have to abuse my child,” she said. There is a $3 billion gap between the need and what the state provides, she added.
At the same time, state human service programs are unable to pay social workers enough to keep them from taking more lucrative positions elsewhere.
Many local jurisdictions have been forced to compensate for the lack of state funds. In Fairfax County, for instance, the Board of Supervisors funds 70 percent of the county’s Community Services Board, the agency in charge of providing services for people with mental illness, mental retardation and substance abuse. But that support could dry up as homeowners pressure supervisors to cut real estate taxes which have seen double-digit increases each of the past three years.
“Politics need to go out the window,” said Amber Nightingale, an Alexandria resident whose sister Victoria lives in a supported living program in Prince William County. “As a society do we really value people with mental retardation or should they be stuffed away in an institution somewhere?”
<b>BECAUSE THE HOUSE</b> was in session, none of the delegates were around to talk to Brandt, Cluckey and Hill when they stopped by their offices. But they had better luck when they checked in on the senators. Sen. James O’Brien (R-39) accepted the link of chain and the packet and thanked them for coming by.
“To me they are the best lobbyists,” said O’Brien after the advocates had left his office. “How can you look [Brandt] in the eye and say ‘I don’t feel for you’? It’s a very compelling story.”
But he said he had reservations about some of the tax increase proposals. An income tax increase would harm his relatively affluent constituents and a gas tax increase would be passed off to consumers, he said, although he left open the possibility of a higher cigarette tax but only if it applied statewide. Higher taxes would harm the economic recovery that is taking place across the state, he added.
“You’ll be pulling the money out of the economy and then strike a blow at the recovery.”