Scelena Coombs and Wayne Chase prepare meals at a Meals on Wheels event held at the Buttonwood Park Senior Center by Coastline Elderly Services highlighting the funding threats to these types of programs.
Washington D.C. – The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has enacted sweeping layoffs, slashing staff at key federal programs designed to support aging, disability, and anti-poverty initiatives. The move has thrown the future of these essential services into uncertainty, raising concerns about their continued operation and the millions of Americans who rely on them.
At least 40% of employees at the Administration for Community Living (ACL) received layoff notices, with many workers turned away at the door when they reported for work on Tuesday. ACL, a division of HHS, plays a critical role in coordinating federal policy on aging and disability, funding programs that operate senior centers and distribute 216 million meals annually through Meals on Wheels.
Alison Barkoff, who previously led ACL under the Biden administration, described the layoffs as devastating. “The programs that ACL implements improve the lives of literally tens of millions of older adults, people with disabilities, and their families and caregivers,” said Barkoff, now a director at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. “There’s no way to have these RIFs (Reductions in Force) and not impact the programs and the people who rely on them.”
HHS previously announced that ACL’s responsibilities would be reassigned to different parts of the department, but it remains unclear how those transitions will be managed. Complicating the situation further, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—a controversial blueprint for reshaping the federal government—had proposed expanding ACL’s role to include oversight of special education services following the elimination of the Department of Education. Now, with ACL’s staff gutted, that plan appears uncertain.
In addition to ACL, the Division of Energy Assistance, which administers the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), was completely eliminated. LIHEAP provides critical support to 5.9 million low-income households by helping pay heating and cooling bills and funding home repairs to improve energy efficiency. Former employees Andrew Germain and Vikki Pretlow, both laid off Tuesday, expressed alarm over the program’s future.
“LIHEAP provides life-saving services,” Germain stated, noting that the program helps low-income individuals keep their electricity on for medical devices, refrigeration for medications, and basic survival during extreme weather. He also oversaw compliance monitoring to prevent fraud and ensure proper state-level use of funds, though he emphasized that fraud in the program was rare.
Congress allocated $4.1 billion to LIHEAP for fiscal year 2024, but without federal staff to administer the program, its future beyond September remains unclear.
For Pretlow, the layoffs are more than just a job loss; they mark the dismantling of a service-driven workforce. “You can be paid more elsewhere, be praised more elsewhere, and be appreciated more elsewhere. But the people I worked with had a great heart for service,” she said.
With these drastic cuts, millions of vulnerable Americans now face an uncertain future, as the safety nets they depend on hang in the balance.
