Program's closure leaves disabled scrambling for services.
Katie Zmeskal-Shanahan lies in bed on a Friday afternoon, buried beneath a colorful cloak of blankets, and begins to cry.
The 57-year-old quickly gathers herself and looks around the small, cheerful room at the group home where she lives: the comforting Bahai prayers tacked to the walls; the black-and-white photos of her in a wheelchair when she was a little girl; Zmeskal-Shanahan's sleepy-eyed 2-year-old poodle Grendel, who nuzzles its little beige head against her cheek.
"I'm very upset," Zmeskal-Shanahan says finally, her speech slurred by the cerebral palsy that has twisted
***image1***
her tiny body for as long as she can remember, her breathing racked by the bad asthma which accompanies it. "And I'm scared."
Zmeskal-Shanahan is particularly emotional since recently learning that Challenge New Mexico, a non-profit which provides support services to disabled Santa Feans such as herself, will close several of its programs by the end of the year because of financial troubles.
Challenge, which relies on more than $500,000 in annual state funding, first announced its decision to slash its Supported Employment, Assisted Living, Day Habitation and Community Membership programs late last month, it was first reported in the Dec. 9 Santa Fe New Mexican. What was not addressed in the story, however, is the short time period-approximately one month-during which Challenge will need to transition the 25 participants affected into other similar agencies throughout the city. Current employees say such a task is daunting and probably not feasible.
"It's unconscionable and insensitive in my opinion for a board of directors of an agency such as Challenge whose mission is to support people with disabilities to shut their doors with basically two week's notice," Cynthia Ballas, a therapist who has worked with Challenge participants for the last five years, says. "People are scared and feeling like they don't have a choice. They're feeling abandoned and confused and unclear on what's going to happen."
Linda Allen, who manages Challenge's Assisted Living program, calls the situation "heartbreaking." She says she was shocked by the short notice.
"The stress is unimaginable, both for clients and staff," she says. "It's close to the holiday season and nobody's in town. It's frustrating. We're running out of time."
Allen's program helps take care of finances and facilitates doctor's appointments, grocery trips and recreational activities for six Challenge participants who live on their own. Three have a "developmental-disability waiver" through Medicaid that allows them to choose another agency to help them manage their lives once Challenge shuts down. Two others, however, do not. Allen says Challenge applied for an emergency waiver with the New Mexico Department of Health but has yet to hear back. Allen is getting worried because one of the participants she's waiting on is a 52-year-old with serious diabetes and a heart condition, whose deteriorating medical condition requires constant monitoring from support staff.
"This is someone who is basically in a medical crisis, whose health is at risk," Allen says.
The sixth client quit the program a month ago.
Challenge Executive Director Chris Werhane, however, assures SFR that all participants will be successfully transferred to other agencies in town.
"We've closed down programs before and given three months and had the same response," Werhane says. "It doesn't seem to matter how much time we give, people are always going to want to push it back."
Werhane says half of the affected Challenge participants have decided on a new agency for help and a quarter have already made the switch.
"We've had some people switch programs the very next day after we announced we were closing ours down," he says.
New Mexico Health Department Spokeswoman Deborah Busemeyer says the state only requires agencies such as Challenge to give 30 days notice of closure. She notes that Challenge is, by law, mandated to successfully transition all of its participants into other services no matter how long that process takes.
Easier said than done, according to Richard Garcia, associate director of ResCare for northeastern New Mexico. ResCare, a national organization that also cares for the disabled, will begin providing support services for between eight and 12 Challenge participants. Garcia expects that transition to go relatively unimpeded because the majority of that number already live in ResCare group homes (like Zmeskal-Shanahan). What will be problematic, he says, is figuring out how to provide other critical support services to Challenge transfers-services like supported employment (job coaching), which Challenge offers but ResCare does not.
Zmeskal-Shanahan, for example, sells newspapers at the Roundhouse and tutors students at Tesuque Pueblo every week, all with Challenge's help. While ResCare will be able to transport her to and from her jobs, it doesn't have the staff or the money to give Zmeskal-Shanahan a job coach, an invaluable aid for someone in her condition.
"She'll have to go to New Vistas for that," Garcia says, referring to the only other agency in Santa Fe which provides such services for the disabled. "It's a difficult situation. I would have liked to have seen more time allotted. It seems like this was done at the spur of the moment. It's very stressful."
Particularly for Zmeskal-Shanahan. Without help with her two jobs, she worries she'll spend the rest of her days sitting alone in ResCare's small "Day Habitation" center, confined to keeping her mind sharp via the word finders she now enjoys in her spare time. She's also worried about losing the supportive relationships she's built up with Challenge staffers over 12 years since she began participating in its programs.
Zmeskal-Shanahan holds Grendel in her arms and draws the covers up around them both.
"My life is in the hands of others, and I don't like that. I don't know what's going to happen," she says. "I'm afraid I'll be lost."
