|
The Keene Sentinel
August 4, 2010
Cuts hit Keene agency again
But plan is to grow services
By Dave Eisenstadter
Sentinel Staff
The latest cut to state mental health centers will reduce Keene-based Monadnock Family Services’ budget by nearly $200,000, but the agency still hopes to expand services.
How? Belt tightening on one end and taking on more unpaid interns on the other, said Chief Operating Officer G. Gail Coburn.
Coburn did not rule out staff reduction, but said no one who offers direct service to clients would be let go. She hopes any effects from the cuts will be invisible, especially to the agency’s clients.
In the past few years, the number of clients served by Monadnock Family Services has doubled, Coburn said. She attributes this to the organization offering more support groups and to stresses related to the economy and America’s foreign wars.
“People with mental illnesses feel those pressures even more intensely than others,” Coburn said. “If you have paranoia, it’s hard to separate what is a world problem and a problem specifically targeted at you; then we have people with severe depressive disorder and the happenings of the world are one more piece of evidence that things are not good.”
For the coming year, clients will be more likely to see interns than clinicians for minor, short-term service.
Monadnock Family Services’ internship program will increase from two interns to seven this year.
While clinicians will spend more time supervising interns, those interns will take over work with less serious cases, freeing up time for the clinicians to work with the most severely mentally ill, Coburn said.
This practice will increase revenue, according to Coburn. The ability to see more clients means more reimbursement from insurance companies.
“The more billing there is, that will increase the revenue,” Coburn said. “If we can keep service up, we won’t have to worry as much about cutting.”
And there is lots of demand, Coburn said.
Monadnock Family Services has access to many formally trained, qualified interns, primarily from Antioch University New England, looking for practical experience, Coburn said. She said she did not know why the internship program was not larger to begin with.
Interns trained through the program also become good resources for the agency, which offered jobs to its interns from the previous year, Coburn said.
More interns also increases the capacity for unpaid work, such as working with homeless residents, many of whom are affected by mental illness.
So the state cuts have actually led to a positive change?
Not quite, Coburn said. The internship program itself will not close the budget gap, and Coburn is worried about further cuts in the future.
A previous cut announced at the end of 2009 forced Monadnock Family Services to make cuts in administrative personnel.
Staff may be further reduced from this cut, which was effective as of Aug. 1.
Off the table is reducing the pay rate of employees. The agency reduced salaries by 6.5 percent two years ago, which were eventually restored. The pay reductions were a hit to morale Coburn did not want to repeat.
Instead, the agency has been scouring its budget, even cutting in half the cost of its annual meeting through a deal with the new Courtyard by Marriott hotel.
“If there’s any fluff anywhere, we’re going to be cutting it down to the bone,” Coburn said.
Monadnock Family Services’ overall budget is about $10 million, meaning the state cuts are a small percent of the total.
Coburn is trying to look on the bright side.
“Hopefully we can make some lemonade out of these lemons in terms of utilizing interns. We can provide a rich work experience that they can carry on to a real world job.”
Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1432, or
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
