“Whatever barriers the federal budget cuts create for you as an individual without a disability, multiply that by 10 for a person with a disability,” Garrick Scott, a disability rights leader in Athens, told Flagpole.
Scott experiences these barriers firsthand as a person who is blind, but also through a wider community lens as the director of Multiple Choices, Athens’ Center for Independent Living (CIL). In this role, Scott helps facilitate services this community needs, connecting people to the essentials of daily living within a society that frequently excludes them. However, Multiple Choices faces massive uncertainty due to the possibility of federal funding cuts that could slash its budget by nearly half, joining many other federally funded and necessary services for people with disabilities that might be drastically reduced or even become nonexistent.
Multiple Choices’ 17 team members serve Athens-Clarke County residents and nine other surrounding counties, officially providing assistance to 110 people enrolled in their services. However, they unofficially serve a much larger population with transportation, as well as providing other hard-to-quantify services like information and referrals.
When describing their work at Multiple Choices, Scott said, “We don’t have the same level of transportation. We don’t have the same employment opportunity. We don’t have the same social opportunity.” CILs throughout the U.S. are meant to help provide a stopgap for these disparities.
CILs came into being as an outgrowth of the Independent Living Movement of the 1970s. Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 created a network of these organizations throughout the country.
A concrete example of how Multiple Choices and other CILs offer support is through providing home modifications. “There are so many people with disabilities that may just need support with a ramp, or they just need a new grab handle,” said Scott. For a person with a disability, this often makes the difference between being forced to live in a nursing facility versus being able to live independently.
Basic mobility is another important area where they offer critical services. “We support people with transportation, ranging from a doctor’s appointment to needing a haircut, to even those wanting to participate in one of our events,” Scott said.
Other important services like peer support, which offers a sense of community, and additional access to resources, job support and skills training all make daily life more manageable for this community. However, these resources are under threat. Multiple Choices receives approximately 45% of its budget through federal funds via the Administration for Community Living (ACL). This agency is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is facing $40 billion in cuts and a massive restructuring. Should its funds be dissolved in the process, it could lead to Multiple Choices letting go of about half of its staff members.
The threats the disabled community is facing extend well beyond the CILs. President Trump’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education, already in process, could pose major threats to the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, of major concern for students with disabilities and their parents. Also, an already implemented reduction in funding to the Social Security Administration creates the possibility of long wait times for disability claims and payments for beneficiaries in Athens, as it has in other areas throughout the U.S. While the Athens SSA office remains open, five others in Georgia have been closed.
One example of direct harm is the termination of a program called “Charting My Path for Future Success.” The initiative was helping high school students in certain districts within Georgia, Virginia and Arizona transition to college or working life after high school. It was unceremoniously cut in February as part of the several thousand contracts ended by the Department of Education.
Of paramount concern, cuts to Medicaid would have an even wider reach in the disability community. According to Zolinda Stoneman, director of UGA’s Institute on Human Development and Disability, “The disability community is especially concerned about potential cuts to Medicaid. Medicaid funds therapies and other important services for children with disabilities. Through its Home and Community Based Services waiver program, Medicaid is also the primary funding source for adults with disabilities living in the community. Cuts to Medicaid could jeopardize the health and wellbeing of people with disabilities from infancy through adulthood.”
Beyond the material impact of these cuts, it’s impossible to measure the internal strain all of this creates. “The mental anguish that comes along with it is taking a toll,” Scott said. Living under these threats can undermine confidence in virtually all the basic components of daily living for people with disabilities.
To give some scope to the impact nationwide, the CDC reports that 28.7% of the U.S. population, or roughly 70 million people, are living with a functional disability. Scott said that he doesn’t know of any such percentages for Athens-Clarke County specifically. However, he added that even if there were a figure, it would be smaller than the actual number, since people with functional disabilities frequently don’t identify themselves for fear of discrimination.
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