DHS cuts would shut down Natchez program

From staff and wire reports

The Natchez Democrat

More than 100 families will be stripped of their child-care assistance and 238 employees at state-run family resource centers will lose their jobs in budget cuts announced by Mississippi Department of Human Services executive director Don Taylor.

The cuts were announced at a news conference on Friday.

But the first personnel of the Adams County Youth Court and Families First heard about the change was Saturday, when they saw a newspaper article about the cuts, said Families First Director Mary Jane Gaudet.

Gaudet said she, Youth Court Judge John Hudson and other Families First supporters are lobbying legislators and other state officials to stave off the cuts. And she’s encouraging the public to do the same.

&uot;We’re trying to impress on them that we’re unique from other resource centers, that we were one of the first 12 in the state,&uot; Gaudet said.

What would it mean to the community if Families First does close?

About 800 youth cases came through the center last year alone. The cuts mean &uot;kids who are arrested for delinquent behavior, we won’t have probationary services to assign them to. And they need to know there are consequences for their behavior,&uot; Gaudet said.

The center’s library also has more than $25,000 worth of books and videos to keep teach the public parenting skills. Families receive counseling, youth are taught life skills, teen parents are taught parenting skills through the center. In all, it served almost 2,900 people last year.

Taylor said the measures were necessary because the department has a $20.7 million budget deficit, which he blamed on a shortage of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds. &uot;The department has over-committed, in past funding some $20.7 million in TANF funding,&uot; Taylor said. &uot;That over commitment is in this fiscal year, which means we are going to have to cut the budget and services this month.&uot;

Taylor would not speculate on how the miscalculation in funding was made.

He said his staff was able to slice the deficit in half by shuffling some funds, but the remaining $10.3 million must come from cutting services.

&uot;We had some very, very difficult decisions to make because everything we were doing with that TANF money does a lot of good out there,&uot; said Taylor, appointed to his post in January by Republican Gov. Haley Barbour.

By the end of March, 34 family resource centers will be shut down, Taylor said. Closing the centers will put 238 people out of work. When first proposed to lawmakers in 1999, family resource centers faced criticism from Republicans who said government-funded parenting programs were a bad idea.

Proponents of the centers said they would create a better life for families by arming families with the knowledge and support needed to keep them out of the welfare system.