How social service cuts will hurt recovering addicts, veterans

Shirley Protis brushes some crumbs off Andy's face as he finishes his lunch.

“Who is that?” he asks, pointing at the woman in the purple sweater putting away dishes.

“That's Despina. She's your wife,” Protis tells Andy Kyriazes. They've been married 58 years.

Now 89, Kyriazes' dementia has gotten progressively worse in the last 10 years. With 80-year-old Despina as his full-time caretaker, the couple have managed to stay in their Palatine home.

But she can't do it alone.

Their daughter in Lake Zurich helps when she can, but in the past two years, it's Protis who has become like another member of the family.

A volunteer with Legacy Corps, a Lutheran Social Services of Illinois program serving 265 families statewide, Protis comes from Wheaton every week.

She helps Despina get Andy, a World War II veteran, out of bed and around their Palatine split-level, lifting him by the gait belt around his waist to move him to the table for lunch, to the bathroom when he needs or to his favorite chair to listen to music that stirs up wisps of his memory.

“She's my little angel,” Despina says. “I couldn't do it without her.”

Last week, the cost of running Legacy Corps, rehab centers and dozens of other programs became more than Lutheran Social Services of Illinois could handle without a state budget.

The largest statewide provider of social services announced that because of the budget stalemate, it is cutting 30 programs that help nearly 4,700 people.

Several programs helping people around the suburbs will end within the next month. They include an inpatient substance abuse rehab and men's halfway house in Elgin, and a similar women's program in Chicago, plus mental health counseling services in Des Plaines, Downers Grove, Elmhurst, Prospect Heights, Wheaton and Villa Park.

Also cut is Legacy Corps, where volunteers help veterans and their families by giving respite to caregivers, and taking their clients to appointments and shopping.

This week has been a scramble at Legacy Corps, said Director Peg Saintcross. As a division of AmeriCorps, Legacy Corps gets half its funding from the federal government and the other half from its host agency, which until recently was Lutheran Social Services of Illinois. In other states, groups like Goodwill or Easter Seals have hosted the program.

Saintcross said Legacy Corps is desperately looking for another host agency.

“The work we do is too important. We have to find a way to keep going,” she said.

Besides respite services, the Corps hosts community peer groups for veterans to talk about their experiences, something Saintcross said is vital because of high rates of depression. The group lost one veteran in August and another two weeks ago to suicide, she said.

Vicki Kaminsky understands. She leaned on Legacy Corps for her father, who needed help getting to his doctor and to follow-up appointments, sometimes multiple times a week. The group also helped her father-in-law, a 97-year-old widower who looked forward to visits from volunteer Diane Blanks. She took him to the barber and the grocery store, and then stopped for a companionable lunch where she coaxed him to try foods he hadn't liked in nearly a century.

Both World War II veterans have since died, but Kaminsky still considers Blanks and their other respite volunteers like part of the family. She's aghast that the Corps is in danger of going away.

“These veterans deserve as much care as they can possibly get,” Kaminsky said. “It's just sad.”

Blanks, who lives in Park Ridge, has been with Legacy Corps for seven years. She worries about what will happen to veterans who can't get the help they need.

“It's going to be devastating,” she said.

Nothing left to lose

When Kristen Ward walked into Lutheran Social Services' women's rehab program in September 2013, she had nothing left to lose.

The 44-year-old had just finished five months in Will County jail for a retail theft she committed to fuel her heroin addiction - which eventually burned all her bridges with friends and family. The nursing license she had worked so hard to gain had been suspended.

“Nobody wanted anything to do with me,” Ward said.

For 13 months she lived in Lutheran Social Services housing, going to morning and evening meditation, group therapy and private counseling, all in an environment where she could save money and resist temptation.

“I was able to go there and rebuild my life,” Ward said. “It's an important thing to have somewhere comfortable and safe where you can heal. It's priceless.”

Frank Harris, director of the Elgin substance abuse programs being eliminated, said last year the residential rehab and men's halfway house served more than 450 people.

Anyone already in the 28-day inpatient program will be allowed to finish, but the men in the halfway house who typically stay three months to a year will have to leave. More than 20 people on the waiting list will have to find somewhere else to go.

“They are all being cut short,” Harris said of his clients, many of whom are dealing with heroin addiction and hail from the Western suburbs where, he says, the problem is severe.

Harris's team is trying to find beds for the men in other programs, but spots are scarce and he worries it will be jarring to move them in the middle of treatment.

Word spread quickly among the patients after the cuts were announced.

“It was shock at first, then sadness, then it's inevitably going to turn into anger,” Harris said. “It takes such an effort to start this recovery process, and then to take away their means of doing it in a safe and supportive way is upsetting.”

Aside from the people in treatment now, Harris said the ramifications of closing the programs are serious.

“You are going to have more people winding up in ERs, more people incarcerated, more people in whatever mental health facilities are left,” all of which cost more in increased medical costs, higher crime rates and more overdose deaths, he said.

“There are going to be a lot of other dominoes falling because of this,” Harris added. “Aside from that, these people are not going to get the care they need.”

That care was life-changing for Ward. With the support of counselors at Lutheran Social Services - which will fire 43 percent of its staff, or 750 employees - Ward went before the Illinois Board of Nursing and got her RN license back. She will come off probation later this year.

Moreover, Lutheran Social Services put her to work as a nurse at its medical detox program in Chicago, which will stay open.

Every day she sees people in the throes of withdrawal, which strengthens her resolve.

“It keeps me sober,” Ward said. “I'm reminded every day of what I went through and how painful and dark it was. When I tell them I was addicted to heroin just like them, I see hope in their eyes.”

Ward said she is shocked that the program she attended in Chicago and similar ones in the suburbs will be gone.

“With these programs, miracles happen every day. People change their lives around,” Ward said. “It's hard enough to recover as it is, and now it will be harder.”

Back at the Kyriazes' house in Palatine, Protis sits with Andy while Despina naps, a rare treat for the 80-year-old who has spent years taking care of her husband 24/7.

“When I'm home alone I can't sleep,” Despina says. “I have to always be alert.”

Even without support from Lutheran Social Services, Protis promises she will keep visiting. Not all of the nearly 50 volunteers - who each contributed an average of 700 hours last year - will be able to do so. Lutheran Social Services carries insurance for volunteers who drive clients around, and without it, the visits get a lot riskier.

“I panic every time I think about it,” Despina says of the idea of losing her support.

Protis started volunteering in retirement and won't stop until she has to. “It gives me purpose again,” she says. “It fills my heart.”

“It fills ours, too,” Despina pipes in.

A familiar song emanates from the CD player next to his blue chair, and Andy Kyriazes suddenly comes alive. “If I were a rich man,” Andy sings, raising his arms above his head like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“All day long I'd biddy bum, if I were a wealthy man,” he croons.

Memories of his World War II service, his decades teaching in Chicago Public Schools and being the choir director at St. George Greek Orthodox Church on the North Side are irretrievable - lost in the mists of dementia.

But old show tunes and Frank Sinatra songs still give him pleasure.

Protis reaches across for his hand.

“You're still in there, Andy,” she says.