Why? The decision, according to Michael Donnelly, director of rehabilitation services at the Kansas Department for Children and Families, was made because fewer people were asking the agency for help.
If KDADS hadn’t returned the $15 million to the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Education, it would have had to put up roughly $3.5 million in matching funds, he said.
It didn’t make sense, Donnelly said, for DCF to spend state dollars on federal funds it wasn’t in a position to spend amid a tight Kansas budget situation. The $15 million constituted nearly 60 percent of the state’s $25.5 million federal allotment of vocational rehabilitation funding for the year. No other state, according to RSA reports, relinquished a higher percentage of the money set aside for it.
The unspent funds have been made available to employment programs in other states. Kansas also returned $7.5 million in FY 2014, Donnelly said.
Donnelly defended the decision to relinquish the $15 million, noting the department has enough money in a reserve fund to cover the program’s projected costs for this year and will have access to its allotment — roughly $29 million — in the next federal fiscal year.
Read entire KHI News Article for more on how this decision will impact Kansans with disabilities.
So VR pays their staff so little that they don't stay, and their vendors so little that they reduce or eliminate their employment services, while their procedures to access services become more & more exhausting for job seekers. All this has resulted in a bottleneck for service access, and "VR fatigue" for job seekers & providers who eventually give up on VR. It is not because the need has diminished, but it makes a convenient excuse to reduce some state spending, and makes VR a model program to this conservative administration.
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