Organizations compete to serve disabled in Pittsburgh
Robin Truax became blind nearly five years ago from a rare condition that caused ulcers in her corneas when she was 47.
Beyond the devastating impact of losing her eyesight, the hardest part for the Bluff neighborhood resident has been figuring out how to navigate the bureaucracy that has the resources to help her with transportation or personal assistance but makes it difficult for almost anyone to figure it out on their own.
Fortunately for her, last week she got the assistance of the Center for Independent Living of South Central Pennsylvania (CILSCPA), which helps people with disabilities get the support they need to live on their own.
“I’m going to do everything I can to help you,” Rusty Loudermilk, an independent living specialist with CILSCPA, which is based in Altoona and recently began working in Allegheny County, told her in a meeting last week. “The goal here is to make you independent, not dependent.”
The Altoona organization, which already operates in seven Central Pennsylvania counties, is now working here because Three Rivers Center for Independent Living — the 36-year-old organization that served Allegheny, Armstrong and Westmoreland counties — closed its doors last fall.
The closure — after a series of catastrophic financial problems that its board chairman, Ralph Manning, said it simply could not solve — left in its wake more than 1,000 existing Three Rivers clients, but also hundreds of potential new clients who enter the system every year, like Ms. Truax.
Centers for independent living like Three Rivers are federally recognized to cover a specific area to help provide services — from transportation to help filling out forms — to the disabled. They are supported, in part, by a federal grant.
The federal recognition that a specific organization is the designated center for independent living (the “CIL”) in a particular county is key to that organization’s ability to do its job.
That is why now that Three Rivers is closed, at least three organizations — including the Altoona organization — are competing until September to see who will get the federal recognition as the CIL for Allegheny, Armstrong and Westmoreland counties.
“It would be huge for us,” said George Palmer, executive director for the Altoona organization. “We’re busting our fannies to show we deserve” the grant.
It would be a three-year grant awarded by the Administration for Community Living, a federal agency that would provide the winning organization up to $166,000 in administrative funding each year, with the potential to take in more revenue — and have increased costs as well — as the organization helps more and more people.
To the surprise of many in the community, earlier this year CILSCPA was awarded the temporary grant to fill in for Three Rivers in the three counties until the end of September. It was a surprise because CILSCPA only has about 300 clients and Three Rivers had more than four times that number, while other, larger organizations were not given the grant.
One of those is the Transitional Paths to Independent Living (TRPIL), a center for independent living based in Washington, Pa.
TRPIL served more than 1,600 people last year in Washington, Fayette and Greene counties, and is also competing to win the grant for the former Three Rivers area.
“It’s really up for grabs right now,” said Chad Underkoffler, TRPIL’s spokesman.
Thefailure of Three Rivers “is a crisis” for clients in the region, he said. “But it’s also an opportunity for other organizations to help.”
In a strange turn of events, while TRPIL and CILSCPA might be the two strongest competitors for the grant, the two nonprofits agreed to share office space in Monroeville earlier this year. From their shared space, they are both trying to gain clients in Allegheny, Armstrong and Westmoreland counties.
It might seem strange from the outside that they would cooperate, but “to me that’s the way it should be,” Mr. Palmer said. “If they can get the [grant] award, God bless them.”
So far, TRPIL has about 150 clients in the three counties, andCILSCPA has about 100.
There is at least one other competitor for the grant, a for-profit company, Alma Health, which is based in Carlisle, Pa., but has service coordinators all over the state.
It, like TRPIL, had previously picked up some of Three Rivers’ clients after it failed.
“We think we did well because some of the [former Three Rivers] consumers realized we have some of the service coordinators who worked at Three Rivers,” said Rachael Tackett, assistant administrator for Alma Health.
Though the federal agency is awarding the grant in a competition, Ms. Tackett said: “I don’t know if I’d call it a competition; it’s just doing what we can for people in the community.”
The need that the winning organization will oversee is huge, as evidence by Ms. Truax’s situation.
She moved home to Pittsburgh from Virginia a year ago and has been fighting to get the assistance she needs that entire time, without much luck. Her two biggest roadblocks have been getting occasional physical assistance and transportation, something she needs to help her shop for groceries.
Until now, she relied on the kindness of people who live in her building in Bluff, or the occasional nice cab driver, to go with her to buy groceries.
But a couple of months ago, she ended up in the hospital after going three days without eating because she could not find anyone to volunteer to help her — or to provide door-to-door transportation.
“I’ve been so depressed about this I’d lay in bed all day and cry,” she said this past week.
She said she has been denied physical assistance because she told the agencies that she doesn’t need it all the time, and she was told she can’t get door-to-door transportation for the same reason.
“It just seems like it’s a whole lot of red tape to get any services here in Pittsburgh,” she told Mr. Loudermilk.
Mr. Loudermilk, who has cerebral palsy and has dealt with assistance and access issues all of his life, was moved to tears by her story.
“We can help you,” he said. “I’ll die before they continue to deny you services.”
But passion is only part of the solution for Ms. Truax, he explained. There is nuance to applying for services, and he promised to help walk her through the process.
Mr. Palmer, who was not at the meeting, said later when he heard about the efforts underway to help her: “When you help a woman like that, that’s what it’s all about.
“That’s just pure good.”