Pendleton, Salem, and Portland Forums
4/23/2010
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"We need to get more seniors on SNAP. Without nutrition they can fall which leads to injuries and expenses."
"It is not the responsibility of the government to take care of you; it's individual's responsibility to take care of themselves."
"Home and community based services are critical; need to minimize institutional care."
"We can't prioritize; we feel like we're down to the bone. The most that we can say is minimizing the harm [responding to questions about prioritizing the 2011-2013 budget]."
"Education and prevention - keeping people healthy, catching them when their young and healthy and establishing good habits. Using dollars efficiently and increasing personal responsibility, possibly by establishing habits. Using dollars efficiently and increasing personal responsibility, possibly by establishing habits consequences for certain behaviors."
"Our priorities should be about organizing services around people; streamlining those services; aligning eligibility determinations; creating one-stop shots and focusing on family centered services with plain language applications."
"Involve communities in preparations, create local action teams to brainstorm, get people involved. Create a fact sheet on the implications of the budget shortfall."
"Local communities also need to work together to make things more efficient, more streamlined and hopefully save money."
"We need changes to adult protective services. There is a lack of coordination between long term care and mental health and how services are made available."
"I'm concerned about the future of long term care if we short adult foster care. And with more cuts people who are developmentally disabled are not going to have as many outside activities available and that helps keep them healthy."
"When DHS has to put up a cuts list I'd like to see the downstream impacts as well as the impact that destroying capacity has and how long it takes to recreate programs we've spent decades building."
"We need to look at children who are going to be cut across the board - education, developmental disability services, family support - these are our future."
"There is not enough acute care and it is not spread out well. It's very hard on the families. We need to be careful about cuts to outpatient care for alcohol and mental health treatment. It's more effective when care is provided in the communities and early. There needs to be strategic planning for any reductions in this system because those cuts result in severe impacts on local and county programs including health departments and law enforcement."
"There's not much emphasis on public health; we need to shift from sick care to prevention."
"I support the parent mentor program but the lack of child mental health professional sis critical. We don't always know what is available so we need support for a statewide registry of services. We also need continued training for care professionals and increased support for teacher training about new information, tricks for working with children who have problems."
"Improve communications and reduce the overlap of services."
