CVCS discusses its deficit

By Cynthia Pegram

Published: July 24, 2008

With the first month of the new fiscal year nearing its end, Central Virginia Community Services is heading into 2008-09 with new financial policies and some bad memories of the past 12 months.

“I’m looking forward to the changes,” said Wayne Trent, director of administration, addressing the board this week. “I don’t enjoy at all getting up here talking about our deficits.”

The agency’s budget deficit at year’s end was about $761,000, he said. It does not continue as a debt because the gap was covered by the agency’s contingency fund.

The board continued at Wednesday’s first meeting of the new fiscal year to evaluate last year’s financial problems. This year’s budget is about $33.3 million.

The behavioral health agency’s direct services come under two main departments — Adult and Family, and Child and Family. Board members wanted to know how Adult and Family came through the year with huge debt, and Child and Family came out with a slight surplus.

Trent noted the differences in the funding availability for behavioral health services for children and those for adults. He also said that unfilled staff positions — which plagued both departments — have a direct relationship to the ability to provide the services that generate the fees.

The adult side, he said, faced high expenses, which included the high costs of hiring contract physicians who don’t practice in a community but fill in for limited periods of time.

CVCS has shuttered the 28-day Arise Residential Program as a major cost-saving measure. In addition, employee benefits were reduced, and a new financial accountability system set in place.

Managers are now accountable “for a much, much greater level of detail than they’ve ever had before,” Trent said.

In other business:

- Sandy Bryant, director of Child and Family Services, reported on the 2,642 children served by the agency. Children range in age from three to over 21, with the largest percentage in the 14 to 17 group. The child-client population is 60 percent male.

The children under treatment include 1,094 from Lynchburg; 395 from Amherst County; 216 from Appomattox County; 389 from Bedford County; 38 from Bedford City; and 510 from Campbell County.

Bryant said the agency is now limiting clients from outside Central Virginia to about 5 percent of the total client population. While people have a right to choice in agencies, Bryant said, choice also depends on the agency’s resources.

- Felicia Prescott, recently hired as new director of Adult and Family Services, updated the board on its request last month that a community task force be organized to meet monthly over six months to research program design and funding for transitional housing for people in recovery from substance abuse. She said she’d had about 18 positive responses from 100 invitations.