By:  Jim Cline

SPRINGFIELD, Mass (abc40) -- Springfield's Center for Human Development got the word about a week ago.  The funding for PACT in Western Mass is being eliminated, probably by February.  PACT stands for Program for Assertive Community Treatment and it deals with the severely mentally ill.  The program currently has 60 clients, among them, Patricia Dickson's 25 year old daughter, Takiyah.  Patricia says her daughter was a good student at high school.  She was on the dean's list at college, but after a year and a half, something snapped. "She was lashing out," she says, "walking around Springfield unaware what she was doing in her pajamas and high heels with blisters on her feet."  

Dickson says she has to protect her other children and this program has done that for her.  When she got the call at work that the program was being dropped:  "My mouth literally dropped to the floor.  I wanted to cry, I wanted to lose it."  Dickson says this is going to be a blow to a lot of people.  She can see them going back on the street, doing drugs and not taking their medications.  There'll be more homelessness.  "Those people are just going to be lost.  I can see them being incarcerated because my daughter at one point was incarcerated," she says, "she was walking around the streets spitting at people's cars."

Jim Goodwin, the president of the Center for Human Development, says it's a serious situation.  "Most of the people in this program do not have the capacity to make it without high levels of support.  It's a high need population, people that have suffered from severe and chronic mental illness for many years and without intensive support end up in hospitals or incarcerated."

There are a dozen or so PACT programs around the state.  Two are being eliminated.  One of them is in Springfield.  It's the only one in Western Mass.