“There’s no question that we’re getting short-term savings that will result in greater long-term human and financial costs,” said Linda J. Blessing, interim chief of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, expressing the concerns of officials and community agencies around the country. “There are no good options, just less bad options.”

Arizona has one of the nation’s highest deficits in relation to its budget. As revenues sank late last year, forcing across-the-board cuts this spring, the child protection agency stopped investigating every report of potential abuse or neglect, and sharply reduced counseling of families deemed at risk of violence. Some toddlers with disabilities like autism and Down syndrome are not getting therapies that can bring lifelong benefits. And here, as in other states, the drive to help disabled people live at home has been set back.

Mary Beth Thompson, 57, who lives in an apartment with two small dogs here, is on the growing waiting list for help. Seriously overweight, with chronic pain and weakness on her left side, she has trouble moving about and cannot step into the bathtub without falling, she said, displaying the cast on her broken wrist.

“I can’t even walk to do the laundry anymore,” she said from the chair where she spends most of her days playing with her dogs, one of which she has trained to knock the handset off the telephone so she can reach it when she falls.

Winona Conn, 75, who uses a wheelchair because of a paralyzed leg, has been on the waiting list for home aid for a year. “It feels like you’ve been shelved,” she said.