Beacon Center board members voted Tuesday night to spread the $2.9 million the center had received from the state to improve developmental disability services over the next four years, but only $580,000 of that money will go directly to patient therapy.

More than 30 parents and family members were lined up in a hallway in Wilson Medical Center before the board meeting started, waiting to hear how soon they might start getting services or whether the therapy hours that had been cut last year would be restored.

Although Karen Salacki, executive director of The Beacon Center, explained how the money would be spent, parents were given no assurances that their situations would change.

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It’s Oscar Night, Wilson style.

The fifth annual Wilson Crisis Center Oscar Night will be held Friday evening at the Elks Club on Fieldstream Drive from 7 p.m. “until.” And when the invitation says “until,” I’m assuming it means when the band packs up their instruments or someone locks you out of the building.

Wilson’s own fabulous The Monitors will be playing and heavy hors d’oeuvres and “spirits” will be served. Attire is dressy casual, and the Monitors will make you want to boogie, so wear your comfortable dancing shoes.

Oscar Night is the Wilson Crisis Center’s big fundraising event of the year, and although the center is a United Way Agency, it depends on funds raised at this event for a large chunk of its yearly operating budget.

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SHELBY - When Cari Bellairs moved here in August 2007 with her three children, she had more to do than enroll them in school.

Each of Cari’s children has an IEP - Individual Education Plan. The IEP is developed for a child who has been identified as a special needs student.

“I had to pre-plan,” Cari said. “I had to work with the school system to find the best place for my children.”

While Cari is familiar with how the system works, she didn’t know about parent support groups and training available to her.

She learned about those meetings from Cindy Aguero, a System of Care Support Specialist working through the Cleveland County Mental Health Association.

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SHELBY- Rapid changes in the North Carolina mental health system have trickled down and local mental health providers are frustrated.

“We don’t have a mechanism in place to communicate mental health reform to consumers,” said James King, owner of Piedmont Behavioral Resources in Shelby, whose company provides a range of mental health services. “It is left up to individuals to figure out the system.”

Among his frustrations is checking the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse services Web site daily to see if any changes have been made in state mental health policies.

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While Vet Centers are already in all 50 states, 39 communities will get a new center for combat veterans who will receive readjustment counseling and other assistance, according to a press release from the VA. Eighteen of the counties gettingcenters already have one or more; the other 21, including Onslow, are receiving their first.

Rebuilding after a rocky year, Albemarle Mental Health Center should have enough funding for the coming fiscal year despite a Spartan outlook for the state budget in general.

Funding for local management entities such as AMHC is faring pretty well in the budget as it stands now, according to Jim Jarrard, resource and regulation management section chief for the N.C. Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services.

“As far as the LMEs in general and Albemarle in particular, there do not appear right now to be any severe cuts,” Jarrard said. “In fact, there are no reductions identified for systems management or for services. That should bode well for Albemarle.”

A new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports that rental housing is more difficult to find and too expensive for an increasing number of families.

The study, “Out of Reach 2009,” found that a household must earn $37,105 a year to afford the national average two-bedroom fair-market rent of $928 a month. Someone working full-time, year-round would have to make $17.84 an hour to afford it, according to guidelines that say no more than 30 percent of income should be spent on housing.

Yet the average hourly wage of a family that rents housing in the United States is just $14.69.

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Pathways officials say they have obtained a full roster of the people who were served by a Gastonia developmental therapy clinic that recently closed without notice.

Excel Tutoring and Personal Development was providing aid to 39 consumers before shutting its doors on Garrison Boulevard - apparently more than a month ago.

“We do have a caseload list,” said Gayle Mahl, director of operations at Pathways. “We’ve been searching through pay claims to make sure we know who they were authorized to provide service to.”

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