The loss of federal grant and stimulus money will lead to cuts in several Department of Economic Security programs next fiscal year.

According to DES, the agency is losing about $1.8 million in Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) funding, which the federal government provides to states for programs such as day care, housing, independent living and services to people with disabilities, among others.

In fiscal year 2015, DES will also lose an additional $1.3 million from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus act. The money was used to offset cuts to the agency’s Division of Aging and Adult Services.

The amount of money DES receives from the block grant program has decreased over the past few years, dropping to $32.7 million in fiscal year 2014 from $35 million the year before and $36.3 million in fiscal year 2012. The decrease comes as the DES stimulus funding is running out as well.

DES spokeswoman Tasya Peterson said the decline in SSBG funding is a result of sequestration, a series of automatic federal spending cuts.

“The department has made every effort to leverage fund sources and prevent unneeded service reductions,” Peterson said in an email to the Arizona Capitol Times. “Unfortunately, the impacts of sequestration mean reduced federal funding and the department will manage within its allocated budget.”

The drop in federal funding resulted in cuts to a handful of programs. In addition to the $1.3 million in stimulus money, the SSBG reduction resulted in cuts to aging and adult services; child welfare and legal services at the new Child Safety and Family Services division that replaced Child Protective Services; employment and rehabilitation services; hunger relief; and services to people with developmental disabilities.

Andrew Wilder, a spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer, said the state simply isn’t in a position to backfill the loss of federal dollars, such as stimulus money, with general fund dollars.

“The current economic reality is that agencies need to do their best to maximize every dollar of funding they have in order to provide all the services possible. However, that economic reality is going to result in shortfalls at times. And that’s an unfortunate fact,” Wilder said.

The Division of Child Safety and Family Services lost about $714,000 in funding from the SSBG cuts, according to DES. But Brewer wants to turn the division into a standalone agency, separate from DES, and the governor and Legislature are expected to increase funding for the new agency during an upcoming special session.

Wilder wouldn’t comment on any specific funds. But he emphasized that the new CSFS agency will be funded adequately.

“All areas of funding will be on the table for discussion during a special session. But … one thing that we do know is the governor is going to insist that the new agency have the resources to be successful and to protect Arizona’s children,” Wilder said.

Adult services to be hit hard

A major chunk of the lost federal funding will come out of adult services. Mary Lynn Kasunic, president and CEO of the Area Agency on Aging for Region One, which covers Maricopa County, said her organization will lose about $816,000 in funding from DES, about half of the $1.6 million hit that the state’s area agencies on aging will take.

Kasunic’s agency provides services to elderly people who need help with homemaking, personal hygiene and other things that help people stay in their homes. The agency already has 600 to 700 people on its waiting list, and losing so much funding will be painful, Kasunic said.

“The intent of our home-based services is to keep people in their home and out of institutions as long as possible,” Kasunic said. “So people depend upon us to come out a couple times a week to give them a bath, maybe come out twice a month for an hour or two to do some general homemaking like changing bed linens, scrubbing toilets, scrubbing bathroom floors, doing laundry, grocery shopping, some of that kind of stuff.”

Kasunic said her agency has received $288,000 in additional federal funding from the Older Americans Act. But that still leaves it with a substantial hole in its budget.

“We didn’t find out about this until … the middle to end of March. So it kind of puts us in a bind for services July 1. And what we’re doing is we’re trying to do whatever we can so that we don’t have to take a lot of people off of services,” she said.