Final State Budget Raises DSP Wages, but Cuts DSP Hours
The Illinois General Assembly passed the annual state budget late in the night of Saturday, May 31, 2025 -- just before their midnight deadline.
The final FY2026 budget makes significant cuts to human services. Even in this difficult environment, our advocacy and personal outreach ensured that the final budget includes a larger Direct Support Professional (DSP) wage increase and smaller DSP hours cut compared to the Governor’s original budget proposal:
The final budget includes:
1) A $0.80/hour increase to DSP wages
• Adding an estimated $32 million in funding for DSP wages
2) A cut of more than 622,000 DSP service hours
• Equivalent to 1.2 hours per week lost for each person served, and a loss of 305 DSP positions
The Governor’s budget proposed in February included:
1) A $0.50/hour increase to DSP wages
• Adding $20 million in funding for DSP wages
2) A cut of nearly 900,000 DSP service hours
• Equivalent to 1.7 hours per week lost for each person served, and a loss of 430 DSP positions
• Which would have removed $32 million in funding from the community residential system
So, our collective advocacy over the last three months -- in an extremely tight budget year when many lost funding -- secured an additional $0.30/hour for DSP wages and saved more than 270,000 DSP service hours. Every call, email and touchpoint with legislators made a difference!
We are disappointed that the General Assembly cut DSP hours, but we made progress toward of goal of increasing DSP wages to 150% of minimum wage. At the beginning of the legislative session, DSP wages were reimbursed by the state at $20.50/hour, which is 137% of minimum wage. After applying the $0.80/hour increase, that percentage will increase to 142%.
How We Got Here
There were multiple rounds of negotiations over the final days of session involving the House, Senate and the Governor’s Administration. Based on what we heard from supportive legislators, your messages broke through. Thanks to you and our champions in the General Assembly, we gained enough support to reduce the cut.
While we appreciate the DSP wage increase, the cut to DSP hours is much more consequential for people with disabilities who depend on those hours of support. It would have been better for the people and families we serve if this year’s budget did no harm—by not including any cut to DSP hours.
Where We Go From Here
We have work to do to help our state leaders understand what the community residential system needs to best serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. To resolve this, we hope the Illinois Department of Human Services will meet soon with the Ligas Oversight Committee made up of nonprofit providers, associations, advocacy organizations and family members of people with IDD.
Your voices are an important part of this effort as well! Starting in 2026, every person living in a CILA group home will lose more than 63 hours of staff support per year—a little over an hour a week. We will be back in touch about ways to make your voice heard in the future.
Thank you for taking action this spring for people with disabilities and DSPs!
Sincerely,
The They Deserve More Coalition
