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  • Todd Vaarwerk, a white man with grey-brown hair and beard, speaks at a press conference. He is sitting in a manual wheelchair, wearing dark pants, a brown windbreaker and light colored shirt. He's also wearing eyeglasses and a baseball hat. His hands are in his pockets. A group of people are standing behind him, in front of a paratransit bus.
    Emyle Watkins
    /
    WBFO
    Disabilities Beat: Personal care in New York is about to change
    Emyle Watkins
    In New York, hundreds of organizations administer the Medicaid-funded Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program - or CDPAP. This program allows people with disabilities to hire their own personal care aids, who are paid through these organizations, which are considered fiscal intermediaries, or FIs. But in a last minute curve-ball, the state included a move to a single FI in their state budget.
  • A photo of a framed, undated photo of the Catalano family. In the top row on the left is James Catalano, a tall white man with dark buzz-cut hair wearing a dark-colored button down shirt. His brother-in-law Douglas Tubinis is to the right of him, and he's wearing a white button down shirt and has short dirty blonde/brown hair. In the bottom row on the far right is James' mother Barbara Catalano, a white woman with a short haircut with blonde highlights, wearing a dark blouse and red lipstick. James' father Joseph Catalano is in the middle of the photo, he is a white man with white, short swooping hair and is wearing a dark-colored polo shirt. On his lap is James' nephew John Tubinis, a baby boy with blonde/brown hair wearing a white and blue sailor shirt. James' sister Annemarie Tubinis sits to the left of Joseph and John, and she is a white woman with dark shoulder length hair, wearing a dark-colored short sleeve blouse, small hoop earrings and red lipstick.
    Courtesy Annemarie Tubinis
    Disabilities Beat: How NYS' budget could impact living opportunities for people with disabilities
    Emyle Watkins
    New York is less than a week away from the deadline for the 2025 state budget. Every year, people with disabilities, their families, and the agencies that serve them watch this date closely, because the results of the budget vote will determine living opportunities for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. This week on the Disabilities Beat, we highlight one family's decades-long story of fighting for their loved one's opportunity to live in his community, which is now threatened due to a workforce crisis that many advocates attribute to underfunding in the state budget.
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