I am writing to inform you of some serious matters that are directly affecting the disability community and those who love and support them.

Many community-based services that allow families to keep their loved one with a disability home and out of costly institutions are being stripped away.

Waiver slots, the promised help to families who “waive” their right to institutionalize their loved ones, will be frozen and no new slots provided. Some families have been desperately waiting for their waiver slots for more than 10 years! Care providers, who already get paid minimally for their extensive and excruciating services will see pay cuts in their future checks, and respite care hours will be sliced by more than half. Most disturbing to many is the attack against Brain Injury Services, one of the smallest operating budgets in health and human services.

Brain Injury Services provides extensive services to hundreds of individuals living with a brain injury. Comprehensive services such as day programs, case management, job coaching and transitional housing help provide our clients with the opportunity to not only stay in their communities, but to thrive in them as productive citizens. The meager size of the budget leaves some areas of our state without any services at all while others have wait lists growing daily.

Cutting brain injury services by 5 percent would not only deny the hundreds of individuals on our waiting list these essential services—it has the potential to strip away these services from clients already receiving them.

Brain Injury Services continues to provide the support needed to both keep and return individuals to their communities. A 2007 Joint Legislative Audit and Regulatory Commission report of Brain Injury Services concluded that the cost of funding our services is far less expensive for the state of Virginia than institutionally based care.

It seems that we as a state have decided that giving Metro a facelift is of more importance than giving individuals with disabilities a fighting chance. The words of equality, of all men being created equal, those words so eloquently spoken by Dr. King have been lost when it comes to those who are disabled. Equality is not only an issue of gender or race—it has now become an issue of ability.

As we continue to fund state-run institutions with skyrocketing costs per person, we are refusing to provide funding to those who chose to keep their loved one at home for a much smaller price tag.

The disability community has been left, forgotten, for years. They suffer in relative silence, as they themselves cannot always speak loudly enough to be heard and their families—who struggle to just provide care to their loved ones—do not have time to make it to public hearings.

But today it is no longer about being forgotten; no, today the disability community is being attacked. This attack has caused many individuals, of all abilities, to join together and rise up against a government that is refusing to offer the simplest of needs and the most basic of rights.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Not if you’re a disabled Virginian.

Brooke Annessa

Aldie