Rates Cut for Some Special Needs Workers, Raised for Others



A group of home aids working with special needs children is at odds with the State's Department of Health over cuts to their rates. The network of therapists, educators, nutritionists, social workers and psychologists is concentrated in Bayside, at 220 local members.

The group, called The United New York Early Intervention Providers, has 700 members statewide, and is the first group of its kind in New York.

Early intervention is funded by the State, City and federally. Children under age three are evaluated for their need to be placed in the program.

Reimbursement payments for specifically for their services were cut by the DOH by 10 percent. The mostly not-for-profit agencies that oversee their services, which are also confronting cuts, have passed on their losses to the providers, according to UNYEIP Founding Director Leslie Grubler.

The DOH, in what they call an "interim measure" to help abate the State's deficit, has not decreased funding across the board for early intervention services. Funding is instead being reallocated to centralize intervention to group settings.

Group developmental intervention rates were increased in funding by 17 percent, facility-based visits were increased 21 percent, and support groups for families were given 43 percent in additional funding for staff.

"…[T]he majority of Early Intervention administrators [agencies] have passed this reimbursement rate reduction not as a 10 percent decrease but in some cases as high as 20 percent -- to the exclusion of any other programmatic changes or pay decreases of staff or administration," read a statement by Grubler.  "Are there not more equitable means of reducing costs?"

"Even with the 10 percent reduction in the home and community-based visit rate," said DOH spokesman Tom Allocco, "the Department estimates that approximately half of the approved early intervention provider agencies had a net increase in overall payment."