Federal service cuts, tight state budgets, and AI technology all threaten human services, according to members of a new coalition organizing in Bloomington-Normal as part of the statewide group Alliance for Community Services.
Members of the group spoke at a forum held Thursday at the Bloomington Public Library.
"The alliance organizes to protect, expand and improve public services that meet essential human needs, such as health care, education and welfare, putting people before profit and the public good before the private gain. So together, we are just calling for health care and human services for all person-centered, fully staffed and accountable human service offices," said Carson Cross, an independent living advocate at LIFE-CIL in Bloomington.
Cross said changes to Medicaid and other programs are confusing a lot of people, and new qualification standards make it tougher for people to jump through all the administrative hoops to get certified.
Jennifer Thibodeaux Sands of Bloomington is a senior community mobilization manager of the Going Home Coalition at the Arc of Illinois, a statewide group that advocates for people with disabilities.
"We have a huge obstacle to integration because people are living in congregate care. They are living in nursing homes when they don't need to. They are living in SODCs, which are state operated developmental centers when. They. Don't. Need. To," said Thibodeaux Sands.
The group will lobby for changes to health care coverage and fight against reductions in support systems.
The alliance has been working on a package of bills in the Illinois General Assembly. Initially, they would provide $40 million from general revenue to bolster human services.
“We see disability not as an isolated issue, but we work to understand how systems of oppression affect all of us, and how disability is interwoven into all of the discrimination that many of us face," said Rio Goodwin Perez, director of the Going Home Coalition. "We're currently facing weaponization of social services in our country and attacks from the federal government. We're looking at defunding Medicaid and SNAP."
The Going Home Coalition is a grassroots movement that advocates for integration of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities into their communities.
At some point in life, Perez said everyone will have some form of disability.
“We have billions of dollars for militarization, but we don't have socialized health care. There's always a profit to be made, and often times it comes at our expense, at the expense of our community, especially individuals with disabilities and other marginalized folks,” said Perez.
Over time, LIFE-CIL Executive Director Rickielee Benecke said the coalition hopes to replace the medical model of care with an independent living philosophy. She said people with disabilities are not the problem. Barriers are, barriers of attitudes as much as physical barriers.
“Disability justice says we need to go beyond just access,” said Benecke. “Disability Justice pushes back against the idea that some lives matter less than others.”
Elijah Edwards, president of the 450 member AFSCME Local 2858 in greater Chicago, told the crowd of about 25 people that the Alliance for Community Services formed about a decade ago when the state reduced its footprint by closing public aid offices in Black and brown communities.
Edwards said there is not a lot of good news right now.
“The big ugly bill by the Trump administration has cut funding for public services and Medicaid. The ACA adult subsidies will impact Medicaid as well at the federal level, and also they cut $183 billion to snap at the federal level,” said Edwards.
He said technology changes also may have an impact on the quality of human services delivered. When he started his career as a caseworker decades ago, Edwards said he managed public aid cases from A to Z. Increasingly, he said software is making that job a task-oriented job — not a people-oriented position — and one person does not manage all aspects of a single public aid recipient’s case.
“This new platform that we had for that we probably spent close to half a billion dollars towards now is taking the human service out of it. It's not person to person,” said Edwards, adding that can tend to dehumanize the institutional response to need.
And automation can complicate documentation people need to retain certification for aid and other services.
“They're ineligible because they didn't turn their stuff in. Well, a myriad of things could have happened. They could have had a family emergency. They could have gone to the hospital, but the system automatically cuts them off if they don't turn it in on time,” said Edwards.
Edward’s solution is to hire more people to manage cases, though he acknowledged that may be a tough sell as AI continues to enter workplace processes.
All those things, organizers of the local coalition chapter said, make advocacy more important than ever.
“We can push to make human services humane again,” said Edwards.
