Mondays with Mike: Real life comes calling

As many of you know, our son Gus lives in a group home in Wisconsin that is operated by Bethesda Lutheran Communities. Gus is developmentally disabled, and he lives with three other developmentally disabled men in a yellow ranch home in a bucolic little burg called Watertown.

Beth, Gus, and the late, great Flo hanging out in his room.

Some terrific people have cared for Gus and his pals. A lot of them, over time, given that the turnover is pretty high. Which is sort of a problem but also, given how difficult the job is, an understandable one.

And the low pay doesn’t help the case a lot. Still, even though the names and faces change, we always feel like the salt-of-the-earth Packer, Badger, and Brewers fans do right by our Gus.

And we have, since he moved up there, felt lucky and grateful to have found a good place for him. We wish he lived closer, but Illinois—a relatively wealthy state—has always been abysmal when it comes to services for people like Gus. I put that down to a lot of things, including what I’d call the corruption tax. That is, resources that could go toward things like solid safe group homes and services for developmentally disabled people are essentially wasted on corrupt contracts, employing well-connected hacks, etc.

States like Minnesota and Wisconsin have always stood in stark contrast to Illinois in terms of their politics—Illinois hardly shining by comparison. It’s no accident that Gus ended up in Wisconsin in his adulthood.

But we got some bad news the other day—Bethesda is closing four homes in the Milwaukee area. I learned about it from a woman, with whom I served on the parent league board. Her daughter is in one of the homes to be closed. (Gus’ home is not affected by this closing.)

The good news is that Bethesda has worked to find placement for the residents of her daughter’s home—they are moving together to a home operated by a different organization, that’s relatively close by.

Still, it’s sobering. A TV news story on the closings stressed that a shortfall of donations is to blame. I’m doing a little research on that, but meantime, I’m quite sure that’s not the only reason. The state’s reimbursements to operators of group homes are woefully low—they have been for years, and apparently, in Milwaukee, push has come to shove.

The funding issue is pretty complicated, a little too much to try to wrestle with in a blog post.

But, in the meantime, it’s worth remembering that for all the Sturm and Drang in the news and on our Facebook pages, there are real consequences to public policy. I’m pretty sure we all agree that we can do better.