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GREENSBORO — Despite a last-minute plea to legislators, funding for group homes serving children who are suicidal or violent or have severe emotional or mental problems will be cut from the state budget.

The budget eliminates $38.4 million for group homes over the next two years.

Leza Wainwright, director of the mental health division in the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, said Wednesday that the cut would lead to better treatment for the children.

“Historically in North Carolina when we compare ourselves to other states, we have a far greater number of children in out-of-home placement,” she said as legislators finished the state budget and sent it to Gov. Bev Perdue to be signed.

The idea to cut group homes is part of the state’s effort to change the system, also pushed by budget cuts from the General Assembly. The budget gives an Oct. 1 deadline for a plan to place the children elsewhere, which will be reviewed by legislative committees that determine funding for departments such as mental health and juvenile justice.

Wainwright said the state is trying to reduce dependence on group home care for children “so that children can stay preferably at home with their own family and in the most homelike community.”

Instead those most troubled children would be served by foster homes with more intensive therapy or at home with in-home help for the family and child.

The budget cuts, 37 percent over two years, also will cause some group homes to close, Wainwright said.

Group home supporters say they provide a needed step between therapeutic foster homes and psychiatric facilities. They are home to kids who have gone through the juvenile justice system, substance abuse system and other state systems.

“Of course, this is a part of a person’s livelihood,” said Crystal Pressley, an assistant director at Lydia’s Home, a Greensboro group home with room for four children in residential care.

Pressley’s concern is greatest for the children, though.

“These kids can be a threat to themselves and others,” she said. “Some have issues, most of them with parents or guardians.”

Lydia’s Home isn’t the only group home that could be hurt by the cuts.

“It’s not so much about needing the job, it affects me in the way of these children,” said Sharonda Hall, a staff member at the group home Inspiration House in Winston-Salem. “I’m here to help these children.”

For the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice, the cuts mean finding a place for more than 700 children in group homes.

The department has 435 beds at its disposal and each is

full, juvenile justice spokesman William Lassiter said Wednesday.

“There are not a lot of placements for them, other than our committed facilities,” he said on how closing group homes will impact that department.

“There will be a lot of crime,” Hall said, “and I don’t want that to come in my community.”

Putting those children elsewhere, such as a regular residence, could put problems in communities that then would be handled by state systems for mental health, substance abuse and criminal justice.

“Some of these children have put knives to their parents’ throats,” Pressley said. “Some have real serious mental issues. Some can’t write a complete sentence. They have no independent living or social skills.”

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com