VALLEY COUNSELING Noncrisis clients won't receive care

The agency's budget was cut by $700,000.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Hundreds of patients will be cut off from services from Valley Counseling Services as a result of reductions in funding for the nonprofit agency, officials say.
Valley Counseling is the oldest and largest nonprofit provider of mental health counseling and out-patient psychiatric care in Trumbull County. More than 60 percent of the agency's roughly 3,500 clients earn less than $10,000 a year, and few have private insurance, said agency President Alvin Beynon.
The plan
The agency is planning to stop serving clients who are not covered by Medicaid and whose problems are unlikely to immediately land them in a psychiatric hospital or who were not recently discharged from a hospital. The number will be in the hundreds, with typical problems including anxiety, depression and difficulty coping, Beynon said.
The agency is also going to stop taking noncrisis clients who are not covered by Medicaid, Beynon said.
"They have no insurance, they have no money, they have no Medicaid, and I don't know where they are going to go," he said.
It is not clear how many people will be told they can no longer see Valley Counseling counselors or psychiatrists, but it will number in the hundreds, Beynon said. Staff members are preparing a list.
Those who are receiving medications from a Valley psychiatrist will probably be given a copy of their prescription to bring to their primary care doctor, he said. Many patients probably don't have regular doctors, he said.
"We are just going to pull the carpet out from people," said Bonnie Wilson, a member of Valley Counseling's board.
Budget cuts
For the fiscal year that started this month, Trumbull Lifelines slashed Valley Counseling's $6 million budget by $700,000. However, the agency could recover up to $300,000 of that if it manages to increase Medicaid billing, officials say. Lifelines, the county mental health and drug rehabilitation board, provides about 98 percent of Valley Counseling's funding.
Valley Counseling has laid off four top managers and eliminated six other positions to save money, Beynon said. The agency employs 82, down from 100 a few years ago, he said.
Lifelines itself is funded both locally and through the state, but state money has diminished while Lifelines has repeatedly failed to pass a new levy. Meanwhile, costs at agencies like Valley Counseling continue to rise, officials say.
"We tried and tried to generate some new money into the system," said Lifelines director Nick Ceglia "Unfortunately, the levy failed each of the times. This is a fallout of that."
Ceglia said that he expects Lifelines to be on the ballot again in November, this time to replace a 1-mill levy that has been in place since 1984.