Disabled residents bear the brunt of state cuts as services are scaled back on the Peninsula

Patty Ozella likes to think about the way one Hampton woman’s face would light up when Ozella helped her get one of those ordinary chores of daily life right for the first time — but that's help the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board can't offer any more.

A financial squeeze at the board, caused by new state policies, means the kind of help for people with developmental disabilities that has been Ozella’s life’s work for decades now has to come from other agencies— who don’t know those people the way Ozella does.

Ozella, a veteran CSB employee, was there for the Hampton woman when she decided she wanted to drive a car. They went down to the DMV together to pick up a driver’s manual. They read it together — well, Ozella mostly read it to her, since the woman didn’t read that well.

Ozella was there for her when she took the test to get her learner’s permit and barely failed. She was there for her to deal with the disappointment and to help find other ways to get around. She would have been there if the woman had earned the learner’s permit and needed help finding a driving instructor, or even for the much bigger challenge of figuring out how to afford a car.

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