Bill Harlan, Journal staff

Former Easter Seals kid Abbi Wells of Rapid City depends on Michelle Findley to help her live as independently as possible.

Findley is an associate instructor for the Black Hills Workshop, which serves 600 developmentally disabled adults. Wells, now 29, lives in one of the workshop's group homes.

Higher wages for Findley and her colleagues, who take care of 2,650 other disabled adults throughout South Dakota, will be the subject of a debate when the Legislature convenes in January.

Advocates for the state's 19 adjustment training centers, including Black Hills Workshop, say the state should spend more money to bring pay at the centers up to market levels.

Gov. Mike Rounds has proposed a 2.5 percent inflation increase for health-care providers such as ATCs, but that falls far short of what advocates for the centers want.

Rep. Jeff Haverly, R-Rapid City, who is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, predicted legislators would propose more money for ATCs. "There will be something more," Haverly said. "We need to make sure we're taking care of people the way we should."

The Black Hills Workshop takes care of people with developmental disabilities ranging from mild to severe. Wells, who has cerebral palsy, needs full-time assistance. Her parents, schoolteachers Marti and Kent Wells of Box Elder, cared for her until she was 25, when they lost a trusted private caregiver. "The problem is, who can you rely on to always be there?" Marti Wells asks.

The answer for the Wells family was Black Hills Workshop and people like Findley. "She's very cool," Abbi Wells says. "She's a good person to be around."

However, it's increasingly difficult to keep good people like Findley on the job.

The wage gap

Associate instructors at the Black Hills Workshop earn $9.50 an hour to start. Findley, with three years of experience at the workshop and 10 years in the field, earns $10.40 an hour. For the extra 90 cents, she's also expected to train new hires.

These direct-care workers are expected to make health and safety decisions. They have to know counseling strategies and how prevent or intervene in crises. They also administer medications - all for about $20,000 a year.

"That just isn't enough for what we ask our folks to do," Black Hills Workshop vice president Brad Saathoff says.

The South Dakota Association of Community Based Services estimates there is a $1.06 per hour salary gap for direct-care workers like Findley. The result, the association argues, is that 48.5 percent of the direct care staff at the state's adjustment training centers have been on the job less than two years.

Solutions A and B

The association's proposed solution, presented to the Legislature's interim appropriations committee last month, would provide an additional $19.2 million over the next three years - mainly to give raises to Findley and her colleagues at the state's 19 private, nonprofit adjustment training centers.

That would also include a 3 percent-inflation raise that would mainly go toward increased costs such as fuel, utilities, maintenance and employee health insurance.

The state's share of the increase would be $7.5 million, which would trigger an additional $11.6 million in federal funds.

That money would be in addition to the more than $90 million a year in state and federal funds that South Dakota already spends for people at the state's 19 private, nonprofit adjustment training centers.

ATC advocate Tom Scheinost says his group, the South Dakota Association of Community Based Services, already knows that the $19.2 million plan is "too big a chunk," even spread over three years.

A more modest ATC proposal would give the workers earning less than the mid-point wage for their position an additional 2.5 percent raise. State workers are on a similar plan.

Giving the lowest-paid ATC workers would cost about $1 million, Scheinost says - or $400,000 in state money matched by $600,000 from the federal government.

The Rounds budget, however, has no money for that plan, either

Part of the debate in January will be about where extra money might be found for ATCs.

Living a 'whole life' For Abbi Wells, the debate is about quality of life.

Wells and a dozen other Black Hills Workshop clients live at a group home on Sitka Street in Robbinsdale, in a quiet, well-kept neighborhood of single-family homes.

On a typical afternoon, electric-wheelchair traffic is heavy in Sitka. "Sometimes, this place is like a war zone," Findley says, the way you'd say that about any family get-together.

Residents live in single rooms in Sitka. They have their own televisions, phones and computers, if they can afford them, and they decorate their rooms to their taste.

Wells' room, for example, is filled with Betty Boop memorabilia. A typical morning for Wells begins about 6 a.m., when Findley helps her into the electric wheelchair she can operate herself. Findley helps her bathe, dress and make breakfast.

Wells is not housebound. She has a job stringing blinds at a workshop on Range Road in west Rapid City, and she also gets out for shopping, trips to a city pool or to meet with a writers' group.

"I'm very busy," she says.

An associate instructor is always close by, but Findley considers herself a teacher and coach, not a caretaker.

"If they can help pour cereal or help make a pancake, if they can mix up something in a bowl - whatever it they can do, that's fine," she said. "We want them to be as independent as possible."

Gates says, "We really have a direct impact on whether people have a whole life or not."

Wells' day, for example, also includes hanging out with friends like Kelli Blosmo, 29, who lives across the hall.

Blosmo, who also has cerebral palsy, moved to Sitka four years ago from another group home. "It's more fun here," she says. "I have more freedom to do whatever I want."

Blosmo gets around town on her own. "If I want to go for ice cream or go shopping, or if I want to be with my friends, I call Dial-A-Ride."

Blosmo likes Dial-A-Ride so much she's campaigning to expand the service's hours. Sometimes, speech is a struggle for Blosmo, but she's talkative, cheerful and determined learn how to express herself better. "I'm working on it as hard as I can," she says. Findley, 37, works hard, too, and it's difficult to put a price tag on her experience. In three years at Sitka, she has earned the trust and friendship of Wells, Blosmo and other clients. Just as important, she knows them well enough to accurately measure their progress.

But Findley also needs a part-time job to make ends meet. "There is a burn-out factor at work here," she said - even for someone who loves the work. Staff turnover is always hard on clients.

"I get very emotional when they leave," Blosmo said. "It really breaks my heart. I love them and like them very much."

Blosmo says she has learned to adapt to new staff. "After two or three weeks, I'm sort of used to them," she says.

Tara Wilcox, community living supervisor for Sitka and three other group homes, says her staff also has learned to cope with turnover.

"We're making this work," she insists. But Wilcox wants to make direct care at group homes a destination job that employees will keep for more than a year or two.

Saathoff says low pay also is a problem for middle managers and supervisors, who run the workshop's 17 residential facilities and job sites scattered throughout Rapid City.

Barry Gates, for example, is a service coordinator at Sitka. He monitors continuity of care - making sure nothing is overlooked - and he works with associate instructors to help clients to develop long-range goals and dreams.

Service coordinators must have a college degree, but the starting salary is only about $25,000 a year - or about $5,000 less than a starting teacher in Rapid City.

Gates is retired from the Air Force, and like many workshop employees, he's going to school.

When he gets his degree in special education, he'll leave his job at Sitka for a better-paying position with a school district. The effects of that turnover can be dramatic. On a recent afternoon, one of Gates' clients at Sitka erupted in anger, throwing a chair, acting out his frustration and sadness over Gates' upcoming departure.

Pay raise prospects

A proposal similar to the new $19.2 million plan failed to win enough support last year even to be introduced as legislation.

"I think it was sticker shock," Saathoff says.

Last month, however, legislators on the interim appropriations committee seemed to support spending more on ATCs. State Sen. Jerry Apa, R-Lead, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called staff turnover at the centers a "crisis," saying it threatened the survival of some the facilities.

In the long run, Apa argued, closing centers could force clients into the more expensive state-owned facility at Redfield.

State Rep. Jim Putnam, R-Armor, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, suggested a three-year pilot program to see if raises reduce turnover.

"We want to keep good folks on the job," he said.

Scheinost said, "We jumped at that suggestion."

But even lawmakers who support spending more on ATC care are uncertain where they'd get the money. Putnam also points out that employees at other nonprofit facilities - nursing homes, for example, and drug treatment centers - also will want raises.

Haverly, however, said ATCs should be "on the top of the list," in part because they've been making their case for at least four years.

Gov. Mike Rounds, in his state budget address Tuesday, said he wished he could give schools, state employees and health-care providers a 3 percent-inflation increase, but the governor also repeatedly said the state didn't have enough money.

Even a 3 percent-inflation increase would fall well short of the three-year, $19.2 million proposal, and it would not provide bigger raises to the lowest paid workers.

In January, ATC advocates will see whether lawmakers can pass their own bill and, if they do, whether the governor will sign it.

Scheinost said he was "not completely pessimistic," but Rounds said Friday he was unlikely to approve more money for ATCs beyond a 2.5 percent raise. "That's not on my radar," he said.

Whatever the governor and the Legislature decide, Abbi Wells and her family will learn to live with it.

If the turnover rate remains high, Wells might miss out on some of her activities. Her educational progress might slow. But she has no other options.

"The Black Hills Workshop is the only game in town," Marti Wells says.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com