Children at The Playing Field, a Madison child care center that participates in the federal Head Start program. (Courtesy of The Playing Field)
Head Start child care providers in Wisconsin and five other Midwestern states were stunned Tuesday to learn that the federal agency’s Chicago regional office was closed and their administrators were placed on leave — throwing new uncertainty into the operation of the 60-year-old child care and early education program.
“The Regional Office is a critical link to maintaining program services and safety for children and families,” said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, in a statement distributed to news organizations Tuesday afternoon.
The surprise shutdown of the federal agency’s Chicago office — and four others across the country — left Head Start program directors uncertain about where to turn, Mauer said.
“We have received calls throughout the day from panicked Head Start programs worried about impacts to approving their current grants, fiscal issues, and applications to make their programs more responsive to their local communities,” Mauer said.
The regional offices are part of the Office of Head Start in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In an interview, Mauer said there had been no official word to Head Start providers about the Chicago office closing. Some program leaders learned of the closing from private contacts with people in the office.
“We have not seen official information come out” to local Head Start directors, who operate on the federal grants that fund the program, Mayer said. “It’s just really alarming. For an agency that is about serving families, I don’t understand how this can be.”
The National Head Start Association issued a press release Tuesday expressing “deep concern” about the regional office closings.
“In order to avoid disrupting services for children and families, we urge the administration to reconsider these actions until a plan has been created and shared widely,” the association stated.
Katie Hamm, the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at HHS during the Biden administration, posted on LinkedIn shortly before 12 noon Tuesday that she had learned of reduction-in-force (RIF) notices to employees in the Administration for Children and Families earlier in the day.
RIF notices appear to have gone to all employees of the Office of Head Start and the Office of Child Care in five regional offices, Hamm wrote, in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Seattle in addition to Chicago.
“Staff are on paid leave effective immediately and no longer have access to their files,” Hamm wrote. “There does not appear to be a transition plan so that Head Start grantees, States, and Tribes are assigned to a new office. For Head Start, it is unclear who will administer grants going forward.”
Hamm left HHS at the end of the Biden administration in January, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Mauer said regional office employees “are our key partners and colleagues,” and their departure has left Head Start operators “incredibly saddened and deeply concerned.”
Regional employees work with providers “to ensure the safety and quality of services and to meet the mission of providing care for the most vulnerable families in the country,” Mauer said.
The regional offices provide grant oversight, distribute funds, monitor Head Start programs and advise centers on complying with regulations, including for child safety, she said. They also provide training and technical assistance for local Head Start programs.
“The Regional Office is a critical link to maintaining program services and safety for children and families,” Mauer said. “These cuts will have a direct impact on programs, children, and families.”
In addition to Wisconsin, the Chicago regional office oversees programs in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota.
Head Start supervises about 284 grants across the six states in programs that enroll about 115,000 children, according to Mauer. There are 39 Head Start providers in Wisconsin enrolling about 16,000 children and employing about 4,000 staff.
The federal government created Head Start in the mid-1960s to provide early education for children living in low-income households. Head Start operators report that the vast majority of the families they serve rely on the program to provide child careso they can hold jobs.
The regional office closings came two months after a sudden halt in Head Start funding. Head Start operators get a federal reimbursement after they incur expenses, and program directors have been accustomed to being able to submit their expenses and receive reimbursement payments through an online portal.
Over about two weeks in late January and early February, program leaders in Wisconsin and across the country reported that they wereunable to log into the system or post their payment requests. The glitches persisted for some programs for several days, but wereultimately resolved by Feb. 10.
Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday that so far, there have not been new payment delays. But there has also been no communication with Head Start operators about what happens now with the unexpected regional office closings, she said.
“No plan for who will provide support has been shared, and the still-existing regional offices are already understaffed,” Mauer said. “I’m very nervous to see what happens. With no transition plan this will be a disaster.”
In her statement, Mauer said the regional office closing was “another example of the Federal Administration’s continuing assault on Head Start” following the earlier funding freeze and stalled reimbursements.
She said closing regional offices was undermining the program’s ability to function.
“We call on Congress to immediately investigate this blatant effort to hamper Head Start’s ability to provide services,” Mauer stated, “and to hold the Administration accountable for their actions.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order March 14, 2025, imposing dramatic cuts on seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services. (Catherine McQueen/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s move late Friday to dismantle the agency that serves as the primary federal funding source for libraries and museums nationwide prompted questions over the weekend about how the agency can continue to carry out its core work.
After Trump signed an executive order Friday that called for severe reductions in seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services that provided $266.7 million in grants and other awards last year, groups representing museums and libraries across the country called on Trump to reconsider the move and asked Congress to intervene on their behalf.
“By eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Trump administration’s executive order is cutting off at the knees the most beloved and trusted of American institutions and the staff and services they offer,” the American Library Association, the oldest and largest library association in the country, said in a statement over the weekend.
The Friday order, titled “continuing the reduction of the federal bureaucracy,” called for eliminating “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” listed agencies’ functions that aren’t statutorily mandated. It also called for reducing the “performance” of agencies’ mandated functions and “associated personnel” to the legal minimum.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services, which Congress established in 1996, has a mission to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.”
The states that received the highest total awards from the agency in 2024 were California at $26.4 million, New York at nearly $20 million, Texas at $15.7 million, Florida at $11.4 million and Illinois at $11.3 million, according to data from the agency.
The order to downsize the agency is part of Trump and billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service’s initiative to slash federal government spending and go after what they deem unnecessary.
“The American people elected President Trump to drain the swamp and end ineffective government programs that empower government without achieving measurable results,” a White House fact sheet accompanying the order read.
The other agencies affected are the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency.
Library, museum organizations react
The American Library Association said the order would decimate services such as early literacy development and reading programs, high-speed internet access, employment assistance, homework and research resources and accessible reading materials.
The organization called on Trump to reconsider his “short-sighted” decision and encouraged lawmakers to “visit the libraries that serve their constituents and urge the White House to spare the modest federal funding for America’s libraries.”
EveryLibrary, an organization dedicated to building support for libraries, said in a Saturday statement the group is “extremely concerned” the wording in Trump’s executive order “could result in cuts to the core functions” of the agency.
The organization said the agency’s “statutory obligations to state libraries include federal funding through the Grants to States program, the National Leadership Grant program, and all current contracts, grants, and awards” and that “this core work cannot be disrupted or dismantled by DOGE.”
In a statement shared with States Newsroom on Monday, the American Alliance of Museums, which includes 35,000 museums and museum professionals, said Trump’s effort “threatens the critical roles museums and museum workers play in American society, and puts jobs, education, conservation, and vital community programs at risk.”
“Museums are vital community anchors, serving all Americans including youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and veterans,” the statement read. “Museums are not only centers for education and inspiration but also economic engines — creating jobs, driving tourism, and strengthening local economies.”
Neither the Institute of Museum and Library Services nor the White House responded to a request for comment Monday.
Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) testifies March 4 in favor of requiring a revocation recommendation when a formerly incarcerated person who is released on community supervision is charged with a new crime. Sitting with him is the bill's Assembly author, state Rep. Brent Jacobson (R-Mosinee). (Screenshot/WisEye)
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
An Assembly committee will vote Monday on a bill that could result in more people on correctional supervision — parole, probation, or extended supervision — facing revocation, resulting in a portion of their remaining sentence being served in incarceration. It is one of five bills to receive a committee vote.
Revocation occurs when those on correctional supervision, as part of their sentencing, violate a condition of their release, such as consuming drugs or alcohol or re-offending. In a hearing, an administrative judge determines if they have sufficiently violated their conditions to return to prison and serve some or all of their remaining sentence.
Presently, parole or probation officers can decide whether to recommend a revocation hearing, which can result in a temporary jail hold while an administrative judge considers the request.
Committee considers 5 bills
The Assembly Judiciary Committee will vote on five bills Monday:
AB-066 would require prosecutors to get a court’s approval to dismiss certain criminal charges.
AB-075 would require the state Department of Justice to collect and report a list of facts about each criminal case filed in Wisconsin.
AB-085 would require supervising corrections officials to recommend revoking extended supervision, parole or probation for formerly incarcerated people who are charged with a new crime after their release.
AB-086 would impose a life prison sentence for someone convicted of child trafficking.
AB-087 would require a person convicted of child trafficking to pay restitution immediately, authorize the seizure of their assets in lieu of payment. It also requires that anyone convicted of a felony must pay all outstanding financial obligations from their conviction before their right to vote is restored.
The proposed legislation, AB 85, would mandate that those same probation and parole officers must recommend a revocation if the person on supervision is charged with a new offense.
Two Republican authors of the bill and law enforcement representatives spoke in favor of the bill at the March 4 Assembly Committee on the Judiciary public hearing. Proponents said the legislation is needed to ensure at least a revocation hearing is held after a new offense is charged. They said leaving it up to the parole or probation officers’ discretion doesn’t automatically result in a revocation hearing.
Supporters of the bill also said it is necessary to hold repeat offenders accountable and ensure public safety.
Opposition to the bill comes from those advocating for prison and judicial reform, who argue that the present system already results in too many people being revoked for technical reasons. They argued that current protocols are sufficient to protect the public. Instead of focusing on revocation, they said the state should support services that help those on supervision be more successful in reentering society.
Hearing witnesses said that , in most cases, when a probation or parole officer recommends revocation, the administrative judge supports it.
In its 2025-2027 budget request, the Department of Corrections (DOC) set reducing revocations as one of its goals over the next three years. As part of the public hearing, the DOC submitted written testimony opposing the proposed legislation.
For AB 85
The committee’s vice chair and the bill’s Assembly author, state Rep. Brent Jacobson (R-Mosinee), said the legislation is needed to ensure an administrative hearing is held to consider a revocation.
“It may come as a surprise, but a convicted criminal on community supervision is not immediately revoked if they’re charged with another crime,” said Jacobson. “Under current statute, whether such individuals are reincarcerated or allowed to remain on our streets, is decided by an administrative law judge. However, in order for a judge to hear a revocation case, revocation must first be recommended by an agent of the Department of Corrections. According to the DOC’s own estimates, in 2019 there were 6,280 individuals on community supervision who were charged with a new crime but not revoked.”
Jacobson and others who spoke in favor of the bill all said they were for giving “second chances” to those who had violated the law, but they also noted a responsibility to protect the public from repeat offenders.
The bill’s Senate coauthor, Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), said AB 85 is part of a package of bills that are “addressing the revolving door of crime and the cycle of lawlessness” that, he said, is allowed by the “lenient part of our judicial system.”
“Far too often, law-abiding citizens become victims of crimes committed by repeat offenders” who have been released on parole, probation or extended supervision, he said.
“When a prisoner is granted release before the completion of their sentence, it becomes an expectation of good behavior, and that release is only as good as that person behaves,” Hutton said. “An individual who has been charged with a new crime while on release has violated their promise of good behavior and should have their release revoked. However, under current law, that is, frankly not the case.”
Joel Moeller, vice president of the Milwaukee Police Association, talked about working in a probation parole unit with a representative of the DOC looking for parole violators who had committed crimes after their incarceration.
“We were looking for serious guys that were in prison for serious things, and they committed serious crimes again,” Moeller said. “A lot of times we would find them, arrested them. They’d sit in jail for four or five days, and then they would just be out with the hearing date where they were just committing more crimes.”
Moeller said it was critical to ensure those who were charged with another offense had an appearance before an administrative judge to determine whether probation should be revoked.
“Some of these people are model citizens when they come out [of incarceration], but a lot of them aren’t,” Moeller said. “They go back into the same lifestyle they were living when they went into prison, and sometimes they need to go back to learn a lesson.”
Alexander Ayala, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, said that while he served in the robbery unit, some of the robberies he investigated wouldn’t have happened and citizens wouldn’t have been “victimized” if the suspects had their parole revoked.
Committee Chair Ron Tusler (R-Harrison) noted that the argument could be made that passing the bill would increase costs for the state. But he said consideration should be given to the “cost of recidivism” of parolees violating the law, such as the expense incurred by district attorneys prosecuting new complaints.
Against AB 85
Sean Wilson, the senior director of organizing and partnership at Dream.Org, a non-profit for “closing prisons doors and opening doors of opportunity,” spoke against AB 85.
“Rather than implementing measures that may increase revocations, we urge the legislature to introduce and pass legislation that supports the successful reintegration of individuals in supervision, investing in programs that provide education, job training, mental health, and substance abuse treatment, which can significantly reduce recidivism rates and promote public safety,” Wilson said.
Sean Wilson of Dream.Org testifies in opposition to AB 85, arguing that already too many formerly incarcerated people have been revoked from community supervision for technical reasons. (Screenshot/WisEye)
He noted that many on supervision are required to make restitution to victims or must pay child or marriage support, but when supervision is revoked, that delays those payments.
Wilson said In Wisconsin many have already been revoked for a “technical” violation of the condition of their release.
“Between January 2019 and May 2024, there were over 13,000 such admissions [revocations back to prison], accounting for approximately 34% of all prison admissions during that period,” said Wilson. “Implementing AB 85 could exacerbate this existing problem by increasing the number of individuals recommended for revocation based solely on criminal charges, regardless of conviction.”
Revocation before a person is tried for a new offense “undermines the presumption of innocence and will disproportionately affect marginalized communities, further exacerbating existing inequalities in our criminal justice system,” he added. “While we acknowledge the intent to enhance public safety, it is crucial to consider the broader implications of AB 85. Enacting legislation that may increase revocations and contradicts the direction of effective criminal justice reform and does a disservice to the people of Wisconsin.”
Tusler asked Wilson whether a revocation could intervene and stop criminal behavior.
“We send over 3,000 people back to prison each year as a result of technical revocations,” Wilson responded. “Often in those cases, there’s not a new crime; there’s an allegation of a crime, and individuals are sent back to prison as a result of that. I’ve traveled this state from North Wisconsin all the way down south, east and west, and I’ve heard stories of individuals going back to prison just for the sake of moving, just as a result of moving from apartment A to apartment B without getting proper approval from their probation agent”
Wilson claimed the annual fiscal impact of the technical revocations is $200 million.
He contended the DOC typically recommends revocation in most cases and it made no sense to have a mandatory recommendation.
Tessler said the bill didn’t address “technical” issues of revocation. He conjectured that even when there is a technical revocation, there were probably other issues that had exacerbated a parolee’s standing.
Two representatives of Ex-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) — Operations Director Marianne Oleson and Executive Director Jerome Dillard — also spoke against the bill.
Oleson advocated for the state to allocate more resources to help those on probation become successful. She discussed the typical struggles people face in obtaining housing and employment and advocated for “true wraparound services that support people in recognizing we are more than the choices we regret.”
AB 85 would “overtax an already over-taxed system,” said Oleson, and she encouraged more support for organizations like Dream and Expo.
Dillard said that after working 20 years in prisons and outside, most probation and parole officers are doing their jobs correctly, and the current process works.
He argued that not every charge should result in a revocation, such as retail theft or a misdemeanor offense. Dillard said he knew of someone who was revoked for a misdemeanor, returning to prison for 24 months, but the judge in the misdemeanor case only sentenced the person to 90 days.
A new charge could also result in a revocation hearing even if the charge is later dismissed.
“I don’t see where this legislation is really needed in the systems that we have today, because community corrections do their job, and sometimes I feel [they are] overzealous because individuals are locked up on hearsay,” said Dillard.
The Wisconsin State Public Defenders office and Wisconsin’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also registered in opposition to the bill.
Personal care worker Nate Walker demonstrates how he uses a hand-powered hydraulic lieft and a sling to help Mike Jones into and out of his bed. Walker is one of thousands of personal care workers in Wisconsin whose jobs are made possible by Medicaid coverage of home care for people who are eledrly and frail or who have disabilities. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
As Congress cuts spending, Medicaid is looking like a potential target. A three-part series on how the health insurance plan for the poor touches Wisconsin residents.
At the age of 54, Mike Jones has spent a lifetime having to depend on others for meals and personal care.
Nate Walker is one of them. Walker visits Jones and other clients several times a week, helping with tasks that may include showering, getting people out of bed and meal preparation. He offers companionship as well.
Jones has cerebral palsy, an accident of birth, he says, when his oxygen was momentarily cut off. He requires a motorized chair to get around. Walker and other personal care aides who assist Jones use a hydraulic lift in his bedroom, along with a special sling, to help Jones in and out of his bed.
A Medicaid long-term care program allows Jones to live on his own in an apartment. “I am incredibly lucky,” Jones says, because unlike some of his fellow CP patients, his intellectual and cognitive skills were not impaired.
He’s also lucky because he can feed himself, he says. Jones has met other patients who must use a feeding tube. Nevertheless, his food has to be prepared for him. Among his favorite dishes: pasta with parmesan cheese, capers and a white wine sauce that Walker makes.
“I rely on Nate for everything you take for granted,” Jones tells a visitor. “Without the help, I’d be stuck in bed, and I’d be in the care of my elderly parents. It would be a very, very bad situation.”
For Walker, the wage is modest — about $15 an hour — but he finds the work rewarding. “I feel lucky to be able to help people for a living,” Walker says. “Helping people makes me feel better.”
Walker works for Community Living Alliance (CLA), a nonprofit that serves 11 counties in South Central Wisconsin. CLA provides care services at home for about 400 clients, most of them in Dane County, says Patti Becker, CLA’s director of program operations.
Walker is one of more than 320 employees at CLA, and CLA is just one of some 30,000 businesses in Wisconsin providing home care for the elderly and people with disabilities, Becker says. Some of those businesses might have just one or two self-employed people, while others have a sizable workforce.
An economic engine
Congress is preparing to follow through on a budget resolution enacted late last month that calls for $880 billion in cuts over 10 years from programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Medicaid is the single largest of that committee’s programs, and the size of potential cuts has patients, providers and health care policy analysts all wary about the outcome.
Much of their concert surrounds people who get health care — from a doctor’s visit to long-term care in a nursing home or at home — from the Medicaid program. Advocates also point out that by addressing people’s health Medicaid bolsters the broader economy as well.
Medicaid pays for nursing home care for more than half of all residents living in them. LeadingAge Wisconsin is a trade association for Wisconsin nursing homes, including those run by county governments and nonprofit organizations; its members also include assisted living homes, some of which have residents who get long-term care covered by Medicaid under Wisconsin’s home- and community-based Family Care program.
“Medicaid is the only program that pays for long-term care support,” says Lisa Davidson, LeadingAge Wisconsin’s executive director.
“Regardless of their location, their size and their services, Medicaid is a significant source of revenue to all of our members,” she adds. “And anything that would change the support that Medicaid provides would be extremely, extremely concerning — not only for the people that are receiving care now, but those that will need it in the future.”
Medicaid also pays for home care workers and supports clinics that serve low-income people, including those without insurance. By supporting people with disabilities, it can enable some of them to hold jobs themselves, or enable their family members to work outside the home.
Roughly 90,000 Wisconsinites work in the home care sector. “About $15 million a year of Medicaid dollars goes out in services and wages for the people who provide those services,” Becker says. “If you remove that wage amount from the economy, you’ll have a ripple effect there very similar to losing any other wage source.”
Forging stable health care relationships
Medicaid is a principal source of revenue for federally supported community health centers. And by covering their routine health costs, it enables patients to develop an ongoing relationship with a health care provider who can help them address illness more quickly, those providers say.
“When you don’t have health insurance, what do you do? You forgo necessary treatment. You put things on hold. You don’t access your preventive care,” says Patricia Sarvela, chief development officer at Partnership Community Health Center in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley.
Instead, patients may end up going to a hospital emergency room, “or having a preventable hospitalization and ultimately ending up with poor health outcomes,” she adds. “And when people are sick and not well, they don’t thrive in school, in their job, in life.”
Partnership Community Health has clinics in Winnebago, Outagamie and Waupaca counties. In addition to primary care, including pediatric care, the organization offers dental care and treatment for mental health and substance abuse.
It’s one of 19 community health center organizations in Wisconsin, operating in 60 locations across the state. The centers provide health care free or on a sliding scale for people without insurance with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty guideline. The centers also have patients enrolled in BadgerCare Plus, Wisconsin’s Medicaid program for primary health care.
“Unlike some other types of health care organizations, community health centers are required to provide care regardless of insurance status,” says Richelle Andrae, associate director of government relations for the Wisconsin Primary Health Care Association, which represents the centers.
According to Andrae, 55% of the Wisconsin centers’ patients are enrolled in Medicaid, but Medicaid accounts for 73% of their revenue. The centers “would not be able to maintain the same level of care or expand the way they have without that revenue stream,” Andrae says.
A link to the work world
Julie Strenn is the president and CEO of Opportunity Development Centers Inc., based in Wisconsin Rapids. The business employs workers who provide personal care such as cooking or cleaning for people with developmental or intellectual disabilities who are living at home or in the community in long-term care.
ODC also has a staff of job developers — coaches and counselors who work with some of the same clients, enabling them to take jobs in the community. When a person is hired, Strenn says, the job developer may continue the relationship, so an employee can navigate difficulties that come up at work — a change in supervisor, for instance.
ODC’s current clients include about 400 people who are looking for jobs and 250 who are employed — “working for all kinds of businesses in the community,” Strenn says. “They’re employees that are needed in the community, sharing their gifts and talents.”
Job search assistance is funded through the state’s Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Clients who have a job and receive ongoing support include people who are enrolled in Family Care or IRIS — Medicaid programs that cover long-term care services for people living at home or in the community.
More than 80 clients who are working have had their jobs for six years or longer, Strenn says, and another 100 have been working from two to five years.
“The work we do is proof that Medicaid dollars are supporting individuals with disabilities to be taxpayers, working and living in their local communities,” Strenn says. It also enables family members who would be responsible as caregivers full time to hold jobs themselves.
More fulfillment at lower cost
Providing skilled care at home costs on average about $4,250 a month, Becker says — less than half the $10,000-a-month cost of living in a nursing home.
And it’s a fraction of the $45,000 a month that the state spends for every resident living in a center for people with developmental disabilities, she says. The figures are included in a recent publication by the Survival Coalition, a group of organizations that serve the interests of people with disabilities.
Yet the role that this sort of support plays is often invisible. “When we do community services well, which is what Wisconsin tries to do, you don’t notice them,” Becker says.
Danielle Tolzmann is the executive director of Family Voices of Wisconsin, an advocacy group for families of children with disabilities. Medicaid support for those families ripples through the economy, she says.
“Some of those Medicaid-rooted supports allow families to have two parents working,” Tolzmann says — typically one full time and one part time. “If the supports that allow the parent to work part time were to disappear, the work environments would lose that employee. They would have to shift gears and become 110% caregiver.”
In this 2014 photo, Phillip Redman leaves his home for a day of appointments with clients whose documents he shreds. Accompanying him is his IRIS-funded caregiver, Kris Ann Domino. (Photo courtesy of Rich and Harriet Redman)
Phillip Redman is 32 years old and lives with his parents, Harriet and Rich, in Appleton. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant, Phillip has rare abnormalities in his genetic makeup and his brain.
Although doctors assumed he would never walk, his family says, Phillip learned to walk at the age of 10. His care was supported by Medicaid through the Katie Beckett waiver, which enables children who need intensive long-term care to receive that care at home instead of in an institution. At age 18, he was enrolled in one of Wisconsin’s Medicaid-funded long-term care programs for adults with disabilities, IRIS.
Had those programs not been available for Phillip, “the ultimate result would have probably been a nursing home or some type of institution,” Harriet Redman says. “That’s not physically or financially beneficial to people with disabilities or their families.”
It was in high school that a teacher saw Phillip was fascinated by the noise of a paper shredder, his parents recall.
“He loves the sound of the garbage disposal,” Rich Redman says. “It becomes an incentive for him to do things.”
With the support of the care professionals that worked with Phillip as he grew up, his family hit upon a way that Phillip “could be involved in the community,” Harriet says: Offering his services as a freelance operator of a shredding service.
The result was a small business that the family named “ShhRedman and Co.” With a caregiver, Phillip goes around to a half-dozen offices on his client list and shreds documents that are to be disposed of. The name is a pun both on the nature of the business and on Phillip’s ability to keep confidential the contents of the papers he shreds, since he neither reads nor speaks, his parents explain.
His enrollment in the IRIS home care program keeps him healthier, they say.
“When he’s inactive and more isolated he doesn’t feel as well,” Harriet says. “He gets stiff and more disabled.” The result is better care at less expense than if he were to be in a nursing home — but also greater freedom for the whole family, she says.
Without Medicaid-funded caregivers, “families, us included, would be even more dependent on support from the government,” she says. “It’s part of a sensible economy if you can keep people working and keep people active.”
Artwork for cover and divider pages created by Kimber Horne using generative A.I. in Adobe Firefly
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