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AARP: WI Family Care is a Good Deal for Taxpayers

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Wednesday, February 1, 2012   

MADISON, Wis. - Wisconsin's popular Family Care program, which provides long-term care for people with disabilities and elderly residents, has been capped in the 57 counties where it's available as part of state spending cuts. AARP-Wisconsin is supporting legislation aimed at lifting the enrollment cap and expanding Family Care to the state's remaining 15 counties.

Helen Marks Dicks, state-issues advocacy director for AARP Wisconsin, says her group believes the bills - SB 380 and AB 477 - deserve passage.

"It's really very important because people, both the seniors in the program and the people with disabilities, really want to stay in the community with their families and with their social networks. It's so much less expensive for the state, actually, to provide these services in the home, where people want them."

Thousands of people - two-thirds of them age 65 or older - are on the waiting list for Family Care. There is disagreement about the size of Wisconsin's budget deficit, but some say it's reason enough not to expand the program. Dicks says AARP disagrees.

"That's kind of a false economy, because it costs - and I'm going to use the elderly since that's my field, as the example - it costs an average of $1,800 a month to provide someone with Family Care services, and it costs $4,000 a month to provide them with services in a nursing home."

Dicks is convinced that lifting the enrollment caps and expanding Family Care to all Wisconsin counties would be of benefit to taxpayers as well as families who are waiting for help. Ten senators and 25 representatives are co-sponsors of the legislation.

Part of the success of the program so far, she says, has been its individual approach to providing services.

"It is a good program because it provides services in proportion to what you need. It's much more tailored to a person's needs than any of the more institutionalized programs."

Texts of SB 380 and AB 477 are available online.



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