By Dawn Wolfe Gutterman
DETROIT – On April 28, AIDS Consortium of SE Michigan, the first AIDS service provider in Detroit to receive funding for case management services, closed its doors after 16 years.
Board President and Interim Executive Director Ona Harris blamed a changing mission and downturns in funding for the closing.
Harris assumed the head administrative job in August to see if the agency could be saved. "Through my evaluation and working with the funders and many clients and community representatives it was very clear to me that AIDS Consortium had really changed their mission over the years," she said. "They had taken a different turn, which to me [meant] they were providing less services to the community."
According to Harris, the AIDS Consortium board voted to dissolve the agency on March 16.
"The budget steadily declined for six years and it just did a very dramatic dip within the past three years," she said. "It's not like it was 10 years ago. You have more sophisticated non-profits now, they're larger, and a small agency just cannot survive in that type of environment. Seeking money is a difficult job – unless you are able to forecast and stay on top of where the dollars are being generated you just lose sight on what your purpose is."
Harris said that the agency's remaining clients, roughly 20 HIV/AIDS patients and their children who are receiving services through Title IV funding, would be transferred to AIDS Partnership Michigan as of April 28.
"I think they're a very capable organization and I'm quite sure [the clients] will receive excellent service," Harris said.
"It makes me very sad. Very, very sad," said Barbara Murray, executive director of AIDS Partnership Michigan, of the closure. Murray confirmed that the Consortium's remaining clients were being transferred to her agency and added that many of the Consortium's other clients, HIV positive inmates of Wayne County jails who have received services through Title I funding, were transferred to her agency late in the fall of 2005.
"It's very sad, because they've always done an exceptional job of providing case management services to their Title IV clients," said Debra Szwejda, manager of the HIV/AIDS Prevention & Intervention Section of the Michigan Department of Community Health. "It's sad for us to hear that they're closing because they were a very valuable resource in the HIV/AIDS community."
"Over the years they've made a very positive impact on many lives, and I wish to thank them for their dedication and support," she added.
Harris said that, in considering whether to try to build the Consortium's level of funding and services to previous levels, she had to look at how hard such a task can be.
Harris, one of the early executive directors of Simon House (a Detroit shelter for HIV-infected women and their children), said, "I know what it means to build, I know that you have to sacrifice the ones that build it. I'm semi-retired, I just don't have the energy or the finances to work for two years without pay. I don't have the energy and the years on my side to be able to do that."
"I know that the agency has been in the community for almost two decades and we provided much, much service to the AIDS community – and I don't feel bad about it," Harris said of the closing. "I think we did our job, it was a job well done, and it's time to bow out."
AIDS Consortium is the second Detroit AIDS service provider to close within the past year. On Dec. 1, 2005, Wellness House, a community-based provider that had been helping people living with HIV/AIDS for 20 years, closed its doors citing lack of funds and a dispute with the Detroit Health Department.
