Kaine: Part of CVTC’s $43M should be used to provide smaller homes

Part of $43 million that the General Assembly approved for Central Virginia Training Center earlier this year should be used to provide smaller homes in the Amherst County area for some of the center’s residents, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Wednesday.

The training center still would get $24.5 million under Kaine’s proposal so it could add safety improvements such as sprinklers and elevators.

But $18.5 million of the money appropriated earlier should go toward construction or renovation of “smaller, more efficient community homes” for CVTC residents, said Meghan McGuire, spokeswoman for the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.

In remarks about his latest state budget Wednesday, Kaine told legislators that Virginia relies too much on institutions when it provides care for mentally disabled people. The state should provide that care in community settings, Kaine said.

“Compared to other states, we are a dinosaur in this,” Kaine said during a news conference after his budget message to lawmakers.

“The only way to do it right is by funding more community-care options,” Kaine said, and his budget proposes to close three state institutions. Kaine wants to use the money from them to provide more community homes for people with developmental disabilities.

Kaine’s proposals went a long way toward meeting the community-housing goals set forth recently by a new alliance of four advocacy groups for people with disabilities.

Using the name “Virginia Alliance for Community,” the groups said they wanted to reform CVTC and move all its residents into community homes.

Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge, said he thought the state and the groups were moving toward a compromise.

“One of my main concerns is ensuring that the renovation money remains in the Amherst area for residents of CVTC,” Cline said.

“As long as those group homes are in the Amherst area, we can work with that,” Cline said.

“But renovations at CVTC are badly needed, just as CVTC as an institution is badly needed for many of the residents there, so there is a balance to be had and we are moving in that direction,” Cline said.

McGuire, in describing Kaine’s proposals for revamping Virginia’s mental-health system, said no layoffs are proposed at CVTC in the next 1 ½ years.

But redirecting some of the renovation funds to smaller homes, each of which would house four to six people currently living at CVTC, was part of a dramatic overall change the governor proposed Wednesday.

Kaine proposed closing the Southeastern Virginia Training Center in Chesapeake and laying off 470 workers there, saying the center would cost too much to renovate.

He also proposed closing the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents in Staunton and laying off 130 workers, as well as shutting down the Southwestern Virginia Mental Health Institute’s Children and Adolescent Center in Marion, ending 28 jobs.

Kaine said none of the people living in those centers “will be discharged without an appropriate plan of care and full funding to receive that care in a more appropriate setting.”

Together, the job cuts account for most of the layoffs Kaine proposed in his budget.

The state’s 40 community services boards, which operate several mental health facilities around Virginia, escaped any further cuts when Kaine announced his new budget Wednesday. In October, Kaine had asked them to cut administration costs by 5 percent.

Many details of the changes proposed at the Central Virginia Training Center are still to be planned, McGuire said.

The smaller homes to house some residents could be either newly built or existing structures, McGuire said, and it’s not clear yet how many of them can be provided with the $18.5 million or exactly where they would be located.

Employees at CVTC should be able to transfer to jobs at the smaller homes, McGuire said, and possibly continue working with the same residents they currently serve.